#and he hates scooters on the sidewalk

[sweet-sexy-small]

It’s the giant ass water jug for me folks

[randomprose]

missed calls and white cosmos

[ao3] - set during chapter 452 Guan Shan will never say it, because he’s a lot less brave than He Tian is, but he hopes He Tian knows he feels the same way.

Mo Guan Shan will be the first to admit that he tends to get absorbed in his work. He can’t help it. It’s a job that he actually enjoys, pays ridiculously really well, and lets him express his artistic side. Of course, he’d get bouts of hyperfixation.

He really didn’t mean to blow off He Tian and he really did intend to call when he’s done. It’s just that he got done late. Really late. And on a night when He Tian said he had some good news to share too.

‘Ah, shit,’ Mo Guan Shan thinks, sighing to himself. ‘He’s gonna throw a bitchfit. I just know it.’

10 missed calls and 20 messages though, really?

He doesn’t bother going through each of them now as he hurriedly dresses himself while trying to ring back He Tian.

“C’mon, chicken dick pick up,” Guan Shan mutters, cursing when he nearly busts his nose on the floor as he hastily changes out of his overalls and into his pants. “I know you know I’m calling, asshole. Fucking pick up already.”

‘sorry. late. where r u?’ he types with one hand as he shoves his feet into his sneakers.

“Fuck,” Guan Shan growls as he revs the engine of his scooter. In his head, he’s frantically thinking of a way to make it up to He Tian but he’s drawing up blank. In the years he’s known He Tian ignoring him is just about the worst thing you could do to him.

He passes by a flower shop and thinks about buying a bouquet but his skin is not thick enough to carry one around while he’s on his Vespa trying to find a stupidly unresponsive He Tian. He knows it’s probably the kind of gesture He Tian will be surprised at coming from him, would likely get him instantly forgiven for being late and not checking his phone just because He Tian is easy like that when it comes to him for some reason, but it seems so insincere and very obviously pandering and Mo Guan Shan does not do insincere or pandering, especially not with He Tian.

Instead, he stops by the road when he sees something that catches his eye. He plucks a single stem of white cosmos from the plotted plants on the sidewalk because it reminds him of He Tian. He tucks it in his pocket, careful not to squish it as he cruises the streets to find his no-doubt sulking boyfriend.

Blessedly, he finds him soon enough by the bridge near the restaurant they agreed to meet. He’s leaning on his parked car and even from the distance Guan Shan can feel his bad mood, can just imagine the pout on his face and the tantrum he’s gonna throw. 

“Hey, there you are. How long have you been waiting? Have you eaten?” Guan Shan prods even though he already knows He Tian has been waiting for him for three hours and he likely hasn’t eaten because he’s always hated eating alone.

Silence. Mo Guan Shan tries a different tactic.

“You look pretty handsome in that suit.” The compliment comes easily to him because it’s the truth. He Tian really does look handsome in his suit which is why it makes Guan Shan all the more sorry and the guilt in his gut much heavier that he didn’t come to meet him sooner. “Say something. I really was busy.”

Mo Guan Shan has long shaken off the habit of ignoring He Tian. How could he when the man is so stubbornly persistent in making sure Mo Guan Shan’s thoughts are never devoid of him? Not for long anyway. And it’s not like Mo Guan Shan has ever had any success in keeping his thoughts free of He Tian either.

Yet right now He Tian is making a valiant attempt at ignoring him and Mo Guan Shan finds that he does not care for it. He does not care for it at all.

‘Fuck. He’s even giving me attitude.’ Mo Guan Shan can’t help it. He’s so irritated his hand comes up on its own to snatch at the cigarette dangling from He Tian’s lips because he knows for a fact he’ll hate it.

Except He Tian unexpectedly turns to him, thin eyebrows drawn down into a frown, eyes full of annoyance and a touch of anger.

‘Fuck me. This handsome face,’ Mo Guan Shan furiously thinks even as he appreciates the view. ‘I swear to god your stupidly handsome mug is gonna be the death of me one day. Fuck!’

“You…really forgot about me?” He Tian finally speaks and Mo Guan Shan blushes at the slight whine in his voice and the almost imperceptible pout on his lips even as the bastard blows smoke directly at his face.

Guan Shan coughs and pulls back as He Tian turns away from him again, still sulking. He digs into his pocket for his peace offering, wincing slightly when he sees that it’s wilted and bent in the bud but still offers it in all sincerity.

“He Tian…” Guan Shan holds the small flower up and it immediately catches He Tian’s eyes. “Don’t be mad…okay?”

The crease in He Tian’s brow vanishes and an arm reaches out to pull Guan Shan by the waist. Guan Shan easily goes, wanting to be close the moment he found He Tian. His hand fists at Guan Shan’s shirt as if he’ll disappear if he doesn’t hold tight so he wounds an arm around He Tian’s shoulder and leans down to plant a featherlight kiss on his temple, an apology and an assurance in a single gesture.

“Fine…” He Tian sighs, sagging against Mo Guan Shan in what feels like surrender. “It’s my fault I can’t live without you.”

Mo Guan Shan will never say it, because he’s a lot less brave than He Tian is, but he hopes He Tian knows he feels the same way.

[pumpkinsy0]

fuck it, more Purly Haitian vacation thoughts:

On the first day, Ponyboy got sunburnt to all hell. Yeah he was made fun of for it, but whatever they gave him wasn't regular aloe, it was better.

Runs out of clean clothes (he didn't have much to pack anyway) so he makes due with the clothes given to him (and insisted he keep and bring to america)

Curly jokes he'd look cute in a karabela. Pony doesn't know what that is and just rolls his eyes.

Sandals! Everyone wears them. Ponyboy watches fondly as Curly's aunt weaves him a pair, asking him if he likes the color purple, which he responds "Wi Matènèl." Just like Curly taught him.

The mornings come early and while Curly would love nothing more than to lay in bed all day with Pony, he does want to wake up early and take him for scooter rides. Ponyboy holds on to him tightly as they weave around corners. Curly is in heaven.

Ponyboy is interested in the literature and art of Haiti and loves the bright colors of the homes. He loves their cheap art galleries and after dinner he's read to in Kreyole first and then English second because he wants to try and learn what stories are being told to him.

Darry has asked him to call if possible. There's only one phone avaliable and it's at "the big house." it costs a lot of money to call but The Shepards don't bat an eye giving him the coins he needs to tell his brother he's okay and what his day was like.

Curly avoids all questions asked to him about family back in America. He can't stomach the thought that his relatives think he's living it up and couldn't be further from the truth.

He hates America. Hates the racism. Hates their stupid laws. He hates how their mother left this beautiful place to chase a man that doesn't give a hang about them.

Curly needs a cigarette. On the porch, he pauses:

Ponyboy is given a pretty red and yellow choublack flower crown (cause it's still the 60s) and is out on the street with a bunch of Curly's younger cousins who ask him to draw on the sidewalks with them. Ponyboy never got the opportunity to be a big brother, so it's all fun and games with him. It's lightly raining, a sunshine shower. Ponyboy is smiling, laughing and singing along to some child's song, slightly butchering the words.

Curly is whipped at the sight.

i JUST woke up to this absolute GEM of an ask im going insane im like a dog with zoomies after a shower another BANGER anon ask about haiti omg

AND AND I WANNA ADD MORE THOUGHTS☝🏽☝🏽☝🏽☝🏽

•the shepards has family in the countryside of haiti, and they have a fucking donkey and that thing would nibble on ponys shirt everytime he came near and it was ALWAYS him and him alone like dude???fuck of?????

•pony would LOVE ti kawòl (its this ice cream in a bag thing, comes in different flavors) but he likes it when its melted so he literally WAITS till its a liquid again, pokes a hole in the bag and drinks it and curly, tim, angela, and their family think hes so WEIRD for that

•curlys aunt is always making malta ak lèt (just means malta and milk) and its curly, pony, and the younger cousins fault that its always gone within a few days like my god

•theres a good chunk of reptiles in haiti and curly used to spend his time catching the fuckers when he still used to live in haiti, and ik he took pony to the best places he would find em, however outside of that sometimes pony would find them on accident and his body would take a ss

•kite flying is pretty important, i think pony and curly should be allowed to make their own cool looking kite at least once

•tim and curly were def stealing cool looking plates from their aunts and was forcing pony to be apart of it, he was a mess trying to keep it together

•OHOH sometimes they would have to ride tap taps (just look it up im WAY to lazy to explain it) and pony was a bit nervous bc theres rlly no specific individual seats and no seatbelts, so curly would hold onto him to make him feel safer so gay

•pony def accidentally got some mannerisms from his time there, this is more of a “if u get it u get it” thing, but if yknow that look ur haitian elder gives u when they catch u doin some stupid shit and they just stand there w their hands crossed???yea pony started doing that LMAOOO

•angela made pony this bracelet w seashells, she was makin em w her fav aunt :3

•the whole family went to the beach and curly hit pony w a wet sandbl and IMMEDIATELY fell and got a cut on his knee by a seashell and i promise u, when there was a collective sound of “gade” (means look in creole) in a ‘well thats your karma’ way, i mean it

•pony and curly both have to share a place on the couch to sleep on so they r just all up on each other by the time 4am rolls around

•curly has this scarf thats used in haitian folklore dances and he is NOT using it to dance, hes using it to pull pony in by the neck or hips, i can feel it trust me on this

•one of the shepards family members is a snack vendor, like the kinds w the snack cart right outside schools, and they would always get free snacks, in return they helped w the homemade snacks they sold, but that goes as well as it can w pony and curly making food, they r NOT allowed to make fresco again

•curly would climb treats for fruits pony wanted he def would

•pony brought the gang lil souvenirs :P

[borathae]

hey! i don't understand what is happening rn... i tried reading a few articles but i can easily make out that it's fucked up propaganda and are highly biased. ik that yoongi got in a case. i've seen the vid too so ik that it isn't THAT BIG OF DEAL. so idfk know wtf is happening at this point. cud u break it down pls? I wouldn't mind a link to a genuine article that's just facts...

thnx!! much luv ✨️

On the 6th of August, Yoongi drove around 500m on an electric scooter (something like this, not the correct model idk the correct one but something like this) from a restaurant he had dinner at to his house. He drove on the sidewalk in a straigth line, very slowly and carefully then when he took a turn into his apartment's street, he fell. He wore a helmet and the only person "who could have gotten hurt" was himself but he didn't. He got up right away but three patrolling officers saw him and confronted him. They suspected him to be drunk, so they did a breath analyser test and the results came out to something under 0,08% (idk the exact results, but they were under this number or this number exact. and to give a perspective, that's around the number you have after one and a half beer) and because of that, he got fined and his scooter license revoked. The punishment was done. The case was closed.

Or so we all thought.

Yoongi instantly came onto Weverse and confessed. HE WAS THE FIRST PERSON WE EVEN HEARD OF THIS INCIDENT FROM!!! HE LEGITEMATELY WAS THE FIRST AND HE APOLOGISED RIGHT AWAY!!!!

And it should have been done by then. He apologised, he got the legal punishment and IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE BY THEN.

But it wasn't. South Korean Media (aka Satan's spawn which came outta his asshole) blew it out of proportions, they spread false information, spread falls cctv videos, spread lies about him in his service, slandered his name and shamed him. They literally tried to fucking murder his public image and many "ARMYs" jumped on the hate train as well (they're another species of Satan's asshole spawn). Obviously Knetz did as well because they're jobless, loveless assholes. They wanted him to apologise over and over again, wanted him to leave BTS, wanted him jailed, wanted him dead. It is literally fucking insane.

It came that far that it has been literally almost a month and it's still going on (bear in mind, Yoongi was the first person who dropped the news on the night of it happening and he apologised right away and took responsibility. It should have ended with that).

Then on the 23rd of August he was called to the police station because the entire backlash started an investigation (like WTF???) and K-media reporters were illegally (or legaly? please correct me if I'm wrong) waiting in front of the station, bombarding him with cameras and making him publicly apologise for everything (I thankfully didn't see anything about it except one video on tiktok I had forced onto my FYP about him literally bowing while too many camera flashes went off. I reported and blocked this account so fast, seeing this video upset me so much).

It should have been over then, fuck it never even should have come that fucking far, but it wasn't.

Now today, Yoongi comes online and writes this heartbreaking apology letter and it breaks my fucking heart. It should have been over when he wrote that first post, he got legally punished and he apologised. It should have been over then, but instead it escalated into this.

If you want to help check out Cam's twitter page, she has templates we can send to companies etc. which will help Yoongi. Also check out Min Suga HQ and their template. And keep reporting people who spread hateful lies about him on social media. Please don't share any pictures/videos about the incident or police station and don't engage with these accounts except for reporting & blocking them.

Let's keep sending him loving messages on Weverse and stream/buy his music! istfg I wanna do so much more for him, but at least like this we can show him that he is loved 💜 let's keep fighting for him and showing him love 💜

I hope he is surrounded by people who truly love him and that he finds some sort of rest soon 💜

[katyawriteswhump]

the freak in the penthouse pt 13

E-rated (for sexual content), accidental millionaire eddie/sex-worker steve. On tumblr: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3.1 Part 3.2 Part 4.1 Part 4.2 Part 5.1 Part 5.2 Part 6.1 Part 6.2 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 or search #thefreakinthepenthouse :) On AO3

Chapter 13: Just tryin' to kill the pain

Five days earlier

“I asked you a question, man!” yelled Dickchester. Godchester. Eddie didn’t give a flying fuck either way.

He breathed hard and fast through his nostrils. His teeth grinded. Then he turned about and picked up Robin’s rolling pin.

…

Half an hour later, Eddie huddled behind a dumpster in an alleyway, hugging his guitar case to him. He recalled what had happened next in vivid flashes.

His red-hot rage when it grew crystal clear how Godchester had hurt Steve. 

The horror contorting Godchester’s reddened face, when Eddie went for him, rolling pin raised. 

The hint of ‘wtf-am-I-doing?’ when Doreen pawed at his shoulder—“Eddie, no!”—and his grip on the rolling pin faltered.

The flash of Godchester’s cane in the corner of his vision eclipsed his growing doubts. He jerked out of the way. The rolling pin slipped from his clammy grip. He punched the son-of-a-bitch in the face, again and again, his rings acting as knuckle dusters, till the sucker went down.

Doreen gasped. Eddie fled, blindly.

He’d bypassed the elevators, and tore down a stairwell, winding down, down, down. The slap of his sneakers on the steps jarred through his shins. His hand hurt, his arm hurt and his shoulder hurt. He’d left everything! Oh, okay, no. Not everything. He’d gotten his original beloved guitar, handle clutched in his sweaty hand, with no recollection of grabbing the thing. He thought about Steve, and it felt for a flash like he’d left everything else he’d loved in that lousy penthouse.

No. Steve was gone. 

That son-of-bitch lay bleeding on the floor, and Eddie felt… numb.

Kinda sick, actually. He literally hadn’t known he had that in him.

At the bottom of the endless stairwell, he blundered out through a fire-escape. In the passage between the hotel and the next block, he gagged on the stench of stale garbage. Then he reached the sidewalk. The raw horror of his situation slammed home.

People.

Lots of them, walking, talking, shouting, laughing, stepping in and out of stores. Vehicles hooted, scooters droned, and breaks screeched. He’d rooted himself to the spot. He glanced up at the too-wide, way-too-bright sky, and it threatened to cave in on him.

He attempted a step. Another step. Three or four more, then froze up completely. His heart galloped like a Derby champ, and he squeezed his eyes closed. Gaudy sun-blobs spoiled his quest for darkness. Somebody shoved him from behind:

“Watch it, buddy—I’m walking here!”

Eddie shuffled onward. The sweat streamed from his brow, sizzled down the back of his neck. His hair stuck to him. He faintly recalled Henderson had sent a ride for him. No way could he go back to the hotel now.

Shiiiiit. 

I CAN’T DO THIS.

He plunged up the nearest dark alleyway. So, there he was, snivelling behind a dumpster, cradling his bruised knuckles, the flesh swollen around his rings. The sky darkened, the streets quietened slightly, and the rats grew bolder. His thoughts were a scattered mess, and he needed to find Steve. 

No! Again! Terrible idea. Steve is safer with Robin.

Eddie couldn’t even keep himself safe. Couldn’t walk down a street. His heart panged then settled into a dull, gnawing ache.

After dark, he flagged down a ride, and asked for the bus depot. He spent the cash Henderson gave him, to settle any sundries on his final check, on a one-way ticket to Portland. To Wayne.

The Greyhound bus was quiet. Eddie hunkered down at the rear, started thinking clearly again, and he grew sicker than ever. He hated LA. He hated the penthouse he’d escaped from, and he didn’t regret handing that limey son-of-a-bitch his ass. He could never regret it. The world didn’t do justice for folk like him or Steve.

But his dreams of being with Steve—of taking care of Steve—were as long gone as his fortune.

I’m gonna have the cops on my tail playing hunt the freak. Always knew I’d tippy-toe into my old man’s footsteps one day.

He clonked his forehead to his precious guitar case and wept till the stickers smudged and streaked.

...

Five and a half-days later

“How far to the next gas station,” asked Robin. “I need to pee.”

Steve was pretending to be asleep. He cracked an eye open and noticed dawn had broken. Dustin had passed driving duties over to Suzie and now gawked back at Robin, incredulous. 

“We stopped an hour ago,” said Dustin. “How many times do you need to go?”

“As many times as I need! Your chuggy-chuggy Volvo makes me wanna hurl and the I-5 gives me the creeps.”

“How can a road give you the creeps?” asked Nancy.

“Have you any idea how many serial killers operate on this strip of asphalt?” replied Robin. “Too many. They’re literally tag-teaming it, as we drive merrily along… very possibly to our doom.”

“Seriously, Robin?” Steve rubbed his eyes. “You read way too many crime mags.”

“Yeah? Let’s hope your boyfriend doesn’t get his face in one any time soon.”

The loaded silence was like a deep breath before a plunge into a pool. Then Dustin relaunched the defence of Eddie that Steve had caught snatches of all night. Dustin was for sure a loyal buddy. Yeah, he was also a mouthy little shit. Steve warmed to him anyhow.

“I find it difficult to comprehend that Eddie would ever hurt a fly,” concluded Dustin. “I mean, he’s been framed, obviously—this is Eddie !”

“I’m sorry, Dingbats,” said Robin. “Still not in the fan club. He got my best friend arrested. He’s flushed about a billion pounds straight down a gold-plated toilet. He’s wanted by the cops. Even if we find him, how exactly are we gonna get the hairy-ass loser outta that dingy hole?”

“If you’d stop shitting on him for five seconds,” said Dustin, “we might let you in on our plan. Oooh, and here’s a curveball—you could help us! You work at that doily-saturated hovel, right?”

“I hope I still do,” said Robin. “Another reason we need to stop somewhere—I gotta call in sick this morning or I’m gonna be in deeper do-do than Eddie-‘America’s-Sweetheart’-Munson.”

“I’ll pull over at the next opportunity, I promise,” said Suzie, and then, “Nance, you gonna tell them?”

Nancy shrugged. “Sure. So, Dustin got wind that the guy pressing charges against Eddie was a Lord-something.”

“The right-honorable Jacob De la Moer Gurderville-Smythe, aka Lord Godchester,” chipped in Suzie.

“Dickchester,” spat Robin.

Yeah. I know who he was. Steve slid down the seat and pretended to doze off again.

“Nomenclature aside, Godchester’s lawyered-up to his aristocratic ears and bullying the police into a manhunt for Eddie. Contesting the charges against that kinda ammo is gonna be tricky. However, if we could dish some real dirt on a bona-fide Lord and threaten to sell it to a high-profile newspaper, we might get enough leverage for the charges to be dropped. So, Suzie and I did a little undercover espionage—”

“—we pretended we were temping in reception—”

“—and got talking to the staff. Lord Godchester had only been there 48 hours and he'd upset a ton of people—”

“—Lord Gropechester would be a better title.”

Lalalala, not listening.

Steve groaned softly to himself and wilfully blanked their voices out. Robin was right about the chuggy Volvo and its stinky seats. He hadn’t felt carsick like this since he was a kid, and it didn’t help that his stomach was growlingly empty.

Thinking about Eddie, on the other hand, helped slightly.

He clung to memories of those final precious moments in the penthouse. Snuggling on the bed, with his head tucked beneath Eddie’s chin. It hadn’t been about the sex anymore. It’d been about being together, about tentatively learning to trust. About needing each other as bad as the air they breathed. And then, that sweaty hug before they’d parted. 

“I’m crazy about you, Stevie,” Eddie had whispered.

In the past few days, Eddie’s vow had seeped like a healing balm into Steve’s skin. Though Eddie had disappeared without a word, Steve trusted the words Eddie left him with. Even his own arrest hadn’t shaken his faith in Eddie for more than a few, fleeting heartbeats. Now, every sinew in Steve’s being yearned for Eddie.

Screw crazy. I’m in love with you Eddie Munson. And I’m dead worried about you. And your agoro-wotsit. Where the hell are you, you dopey idiot?

As promised, Suzie pulled over at the next gas station. Robin had no sooner peed, than she sought out Steve. He was trying to have a quiet moment with a banana, his prevention meds, and some Cherry Coke. She hooked her arm through his, and urged him toward some trees, which he felt a deep urge to flee into.

“Steve,” she said softly, “are you really not gonna say anything?”

He tugged himself free, nearly choked on his banana. “About what?”

“About Dickchester! Listen, I’ve been down on Eddie, but I’m starting to get it. Dickchester was one of them , right?”

He stared at her, weathering the latest shockwave. If her voice wasn’t so soft, her gaze brimming with concern, it would’ve been easy to yell at her. Now… God, was he gonna flip out again? He felt shaky and drained, as if his days of recovery at her mom’s had never happened.

Worse, Steve was starting to ‘get’ what Eddie had done too.

“Eddie said that somebody from your past had reared their ugly face,” she said. “I gave him an utterly Dickensian rogue’s gallery of suspects, and I guess you told him—"

“I told Eddie squat.” Steve ground his toe into the dirt. Now, he had to think about the scary stuff. Eddie was accused of attacking a man who’d abused him. Eddie could go to jail, and Steve couldn’t handle that.

Robin’s words kept coming: “Listen, Steve. If Nancy can dish some real dirt on that shitbag, she could destroy him. I mean, it’s not only about getting Eddie’s charges dropped. You can't imagine you're the only person he… they … hurt. This could be your chance to get even with some of the bastards who used you when you were paying back your trust fund and your parents’ debts.”

Steve’s face burned. He knew she meant well, that she wanted to help. But his mouth hung open, his throat too dry to speak. Jesus, how could he make her see?

“You had to pay back your trust fund?” asked Suzie, startling Steve so badly his hand flew to his chest. “That’s not right. Look, I only study law at bedtime—I find it profoundly relaxing—but I’m pretty sure trust funds can't be in debt.”

“Yeah well, mine was,” croaked Steve, raw anger forcing his tongue into action. “End of story. Let’s move on.”

It was Dustin’s turn to drive again. Steve secretly prayed that Suzie would take a nap, or at least have other ‘business’ on her mind.

Unfortunately, she was excruciatingly bright-eyed and super-earnest. Before Dustin had shifted into third gear, she renewed her attack: 

“Steve, it’s highly unlikely you would be liable for your parents’ debts. And trust fund investments fundamentally don't work that way. You need a better lawyer. What was your parents’ lawyer’s name?”

The first part of this speech had stressed Steve out. The final question throttled him, mind and body. 

No, no, no, no, no, no. Can’t!

“Stop right there, Miss Shiny-shoes,” snapped Robin. “Can’t you see he doesn’t wanna talk about it?” Steve snorted because it was actually hilarious, given she had been the one ‘poking the grizzly’ five minutes ago. 

Poking the grizzly. Oh God, Eddie, I miss you. I know we’re a pair of sad-sack morons, but how did we screw things up this bad?

Still, Robin had saved him for now. He unleashed a shuddering sigh and prayed the others would reinstate finding Eddie as the hot topic. Then he glanced at Nancy. Her pursed lips alone begged a million questions from him.

He had to deflect, before he blew a gasket. Or did something worse, like crying: “This is doubtless a dumb question. If you guys are loaded, why are you driving to Oregon?”

...

Part 14 on ao3 Part 14 on tumblr

Thank you for reading. Likes, reblogs and comments much appreciated and will feed the bunnies🐰💕🐰💕🐰💕🐰💕

On tumblr: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3.1 Part 3.2 Part 4.1 Part 4.2 Part 5.1 Part 5.2 Part 6.1 Part 6.2 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 or search #thefreakinthepenthouse :)

On AO3 All my ST stuff on AO3

[timeofjuly]

i keep thinking of the scenario if electrician were to run into ppl of her past like izzy from new years… i like imagine her going “ bunny it’s been so long you look better then ever “ and electrician is like 😀 do i know you..? due to their gaps in memory (i’m also interested how much their memory will affect them as the story progresses, i myself suffer from the issue and being young it’s kinda scary sometimes 😞)

This ask made me write something! This is set pre-RTC in the earlier days of MC’s sobriety. They’ve just moved to New Ebott here. 

Read it on AO3 or read it below!

Licence

You’re leaving the DMV, of all the fucking places, when it happens. 

Most people hate the DMV but you had practically skipped into the place for your eleven am appointment, overcome with joy at the thought of getting your driver’s licence back. The public transportation in New Ebott is great and your ass looks amazing after all the cycling you’ve been doing when the weather is nice, but there’s something about the independence of a car that you’ve missed. With your licence back, your employment prospects won’t be limited to the boundaries of public transport and your stamina when pedalling. 

With your licence back, you’ll be able to go to school. 

That’s the thing you’re most excited about. School. College. University. Whatever. You just want to learn something, to use the brain that you’ve let go to shit. You don’t even care what - at this point, with your dismal record and embarrassing results from high school, you’ll take what you can get. 

You’ve wasted enough of your life and you don’t want to squander a second more. 

After tucking your brand new licence safely in your back pocket, you leave the DMV, still smiling, and make your way to the bus stop. You’ll miss catching it; all the drivers are lovely and it’s nice to be driven around the city, like your own personal tour. 

You’ve got time to kill until the bus arrives, so you open your phone and start scrolling through hundreds of second hand car listings. 

You’re not picky; you have a tight budget and will probably hit your fair share of curbs in it anyway, but it’s nice to look at the fancier ones and dream. A convertible sounds nice; there’s a bright red one for sale, way outside of your budget. You imagine the wind in your hair, the sheer cool factor of rolling down the street with the top down. Oh, or maybe a motorbike; you had loved your stupid, ugly little scooter, and a motorbike would be even better. And you’d get to wear all the sexy leather gear. Double win. 

“Oh my stars, do my eyes deceive me?”

The cold hand of panic twists through your ribcage and wraps around your heart, fingers taking hold and squeezing. 

You know that voice. 

You turn around.

On the sidewalk are two people staring at you with equally ecstatic expressions and you only recognise one of them. 

Izzy looks… well, she looks good, you suppose, clothes fashionable and scales polished to a sheen, though you can see a few of them are missing. The spines on her head are droopy, a little paler in colour than what you remember, and there’s a beadiness to her eyes that you never noticed before. 

You haven’t seen her in months but from how unfamiliar she looks, it feels more like years. 

“Damn, you’re looking good!” says the man you don’t recognise. 

And you know that you knew this person once, can hear the echo of his voice through the fog of your memory, even recognise his hands for the way they’d felt on your skin, but there’s something missing, something your stupid, ruined, useless brain is unable to grasp.

“Hey,” you say, affecting your brightest party-girl smile. “Long time no see.”

“Fucking hell, no shit!” the man laughs. He’s handsome, tall and very blond. “How’ve you been? You look so different.”

With each month you add to your sobriety, you’re told that with increasing frequency. You don’t really see it yourself - you feel like the exact same person most of the time. Worse, even. You’re horrible to be around when you’re in pain. 

“Good, really good,” you say. “How have –”

“Dude, I thought you were dead!” Izzy crows, looking delighted. “You just disappeared, like that.” She snaps her fingers, a jarring scrape of scale-on-claw. 

“Yeah, we all thought that Jesse threw the bunny out with the bath water,” the man says. His tone is light, like it’s a fucking joke or something. 

This person is a stranger to you. You couldn’t even guess his name if you tried. And yet he knows about that —

You tense. Pull a smile to your face. Do your best to shake off the phantom feeling of ice crystallising on the tip of your nose. “Nah, I’m not that easy to get rid of.”

And he laughs and so does Izzy and you laugh too, even though it feels like glass in your throat, because what else can you do?

“Well, I’m glad,” says Izzy and then she sweeps you up into a hug. She smells like old perfume clinging to unwashed clothes and you can feel a faint tremble in her hands as they grip your back. 

You hug back, even though you suddenly feel strange and unwieldy, like your arms aren’t your own. 

I want to go home, you think. Another thing you’d be able to do if you just had a fucking car and hadn’t lost your fucking licence in the first place. 

Izzy pulls back but then the man swoops in to take her place. You’re pressed to the line of his body, and though you’ve probably seen it naked, touched it all over, the feel of it is foreign to you. 

You let go first. 

“What’re you doing in New Ebott, anyway?” Izzy asks. 

“Just passing through,” you lie, because fuck if you’re letting her know that you live here now. “What about you guys?”

“Same thing,” Izzy says. “We’re crashing with Palyso at the moment, remember him?”

Nope. 

“Oh, yeah, totally.”

“Yeah, good guy, really funny. Hey, he’s actually having a party tonight, you should come! Just like old times.” The stranger waggles his eyebrows at you. 

You don’t need to remember the specifics to work out what he means. 

“Yeah, come with us,” Izzy begs. “Everyone’ll be so happy to see you. I’ll make it worth your while, I promise.”

The itch you’re not allowed to scratch burns. It’d be so easy, so fucking easy, to say yes. What’s one night? You don’t even need to use; who says you can’t have fun sober?

The word yes sits in your mouth like a hot coal and then the memory of water, cracking with thin shards of ice, washes over it. 

The desire is gutted out. Not even smoke remains. 

“I’ll sit this one out,” you say. 

“Aw, c’mon, bunny! You’ve gotta—“

The sound of an engine rumbles behind you and your soul sings with relief. 

Thank you, timely public transportation of New Ebott. 

“This is me,” you say, hoping you sound apologetic. “It was nice seeing you guys!”

You don’t wait for a reply, practically flinging yourself onto the bus. The driver gives you a concerned look - you’re a regular and most of them know you by name  - but you just give her a reassuring grin, because you’re fine. You’re fine. You’re completely, one hundred per cent fine. 

You take a seat near the front and stare down at your hands. You think of the way Izzy's shook. The way yours had once. The way they don’t anymore. You hadn’t noticed that until now. 

God fucking damnit. 

Stupid, unwarranted tears prickle hot at your eyes and worse, there’s something sharp poking you in the butt. 

Fearing that you’ve sat in something that’ll rip a hole in your pants - wouldn’t that be your fucking luck - you lift your hips and grope blindly at your ass. 

Oh, right. 

You forgot that you wedged it in your pocket after leaving the DMV. 

You look down at your brand new licence, turning the shiny plastic card around in your hands. Your own face stares back up at you. 

You dig around in your purse and from the very bottom, unearth the remains of your old licence, kept purely for sentimental reasons. It’s cut clean down the middle, made unusable the moment you’d lost it, but the image of your face is still intact. 

You compare the two, side-by-side. In the new one, your face is fuller and your skin smoother. Your lips have colour to them and your eyes are bright and awake, the whites white rather than bloodshot yellow. 

In the new one, you’re smiling. 

Huh. You see it, now. 

You do look different after all.

[slafkovskys]

pls part two to that holtzy blurb

warnings: mentions of a past arguement

read part one here!

you watch as a pair of kids roll by on their scooters. you knew them, had seen them around. they were the only actual kids who lived in your former neighborhood of strictly college kids. you think that one of their grandparents was a professor or something, that’s what one of them had told you once, who had moved into the neighborhood back before the students had taken it over and it was mostly families. they also let it slip that they were only allowed to visit on sundays because that’s when everyone was too hungover to come outside.

they wave and you send one back before resting your head back on your arms. you hear the familiar squeal of the front door before the screen door slams shut almost immediately after. he’s quiet for a moment, just lingering behind you before he finally opens his mouth, “i thought you had left.”

“you said that you wanted to talk and i’m ready to be done with this,” the with us is silent, but the audible gulp he makes lets you know that it’s understood. the boards creak under his weight as he crosses them to sit beside you on the steps. you move your mug and rest it on your knee, “did you see the ibuprofen that i left out for you?”

“i did, thanks,” he chuckles. he nudges his hand toward the tupperware containers at the edge of the steps, “have you seen wiley yet?”

“he came to say hi a little while ago,” you smile at the mention of the stray you had taken responsibility for during your time at the house. the boys pretended to hate it at first, but after naming him and spotting a fresh box of the same brand of cat food you used to buy for him, it made you happy to know they kept up your task of making sure he was fed. you move your arms to wrap them around your knees before clearing your throat, “you wanted to talk, so let’s talk.”

“i don’t know what you want me to say,” through your peripheral, you watch as rubs a hand over his face, letting out a wince when he reaches his mouth. you still refused to look at him. “last night, that- i- that was the first time that something like that happened since you left-”

you scoff, “if we’re going to talk, you can at least tell the truth. you asked me to leave.”

“i did not. we got into an argument and the next thing that i know, your side of the closet is empty and the key is on the counter!”

“you said that you weren’t ready for the things that i was,” it was your turn to swallow the lump in your throat as the memories from that night come flooding back. the yelling, the tears, the slamming of the front door as steve left and you had started to shove your things into bags, “you’re the one that said that things were moving too fast and that you didn’t need me. what did you want me to get from that, steve? that you still wanted me to sleep beside you every night like i didn’t hear the person that i loved the most say those things? that i wasn’t wasting my time?”

he sighs, “i shouldn’t have said those things in the heat of the moment, or in any capacity, because i didn’t mean them. at the time, i didn’t know what i wanted, but now i do. it’s you, y/n. you’re all that i want.”

“and it took me leaving for you to figure that out?” you utter the same thing that you had the night before, pulling on the sleeve of the shirt you had borrowed from his dresser to sleep in.

“y/n, i-” he buries his head in his hands, “these past two months i have been miserable without you. nothing makes sense. i want you with me and i am prepared to do whatever you want me to do to prove that to you.”

you slip into an uncomfortable silence, you keeping a grip on your coffee cup so tight you worry it might break and him, you still won’t offer him more than a glance. you watch as a girl stumbles down the sidewalk in a mini dress and up the path to her house, barely making it to the front door before she loses the contents of her stomach. the two kids watch before sharing a glance and scooting off in the direction of their grandparents’ house.

“i want you to promise me something, steve,” you say as you push yourself up off the stairs. you look at him then and that’s when you finally see the extent of the damage that was done to his face, more swollen and bruised than it was the night before, “the next time that something happens like last night or if you even think about calling me, don’t. and you can pass that onto your boys. that privilege stopped two months ago. it’s time for you to let me go.”

“y/n-”

“i loved you a lot, steve and i’m sorry that you couldn’t see that when you had the chance.”

[emile-hides]

when the theater guy WHAT

I went to see the FNaF Movie today and seeing as I have a total of Zero friends in real world event range and both of my parents hate horror I had to go to the theater by myself for the very first time in my life, which was fine. Until it wasn't

The dude in charge of ticket checks stops me and instead of asking to see a ticket asks if the mask I was wearing was part of some costume. Little black cloth face mask, covid thing. He was an old man on a scooter and not wanting to have a discussion with this tiny old man about Covid19 I just went along with it and said sure yeah. It kind of was anyway, it has a little bear mouth on it and I was wearing Bear Ears and a brown cardigan as well.

Man goes "You can't wear a mask in here." I say "Why not?" He says "You can't wear a mask in here." I go, "I heard that part. Why Not. "Policy, I don't make the rules, just enforce them." I realize this man is being paid minimum wage to sit here and police people so I go, "Okay." and walk past him because he's just some guy in a little scooter in the middle of the atrium and he hasn't asked for my ticket so I assume that's Not His Job

He calls me back for my ticket so I take out my phone with the QR code with my ticket on it and he takes my phone to (I assumed) scan the code and then he pulls out his walkie and calls his manager and I realize very quickly he is not scanning my ticket and I want to Leave Now.

"Can I have my phone back?" "When my manager gets here."

"Give me my phone back." "When my manager gets here."

"Bill. Give me. My Phone." "As soon as my manager gets here"

I make a swipe to grab my phone from him and this tiny little 60 something man in a scooter in the middle of a theater atrium as the audacity to hold it back over his head like I am a Toddler he is preventing from grabbing at a knife.

I am now having a panic attack.

Manager walks over and I am a broken little Autistic man who just wanted to watch a Bad Horror Movie (it was actually pretty good) so I scream at this lanky probably 30-something in the middle of a Cinemark Theater Atrium with many a random bystander around "TELL HIM. TO GIVE ME. MY PHONE."

I swipe my phone from Bill's hand, full turn, and bolt out the door half way across the parking lot and call my mother in a heap on the sidewalk.

It's a very good thing the Five Nights at Freddy's movie was way better than I was expecting or today would have been awful.

[wack-ashimself]

That is fucking it! I think we should sue every city that allows those electric scooters that you can use for an hour with an app and the company that makes them. They're scattered everywhere, they're clearly only for middle class to rich people because poor people sure as fuck aren't going to use them, and they're in the middle of the fucking sidewalk half the time. That is literally a danger to us. I hate capitalists. They all think the short-term game. Greedy fucks. Don't get me wrong if they were put into a specific place out of the way, fine. But they're literally everywhere. The new show 'platonic' does my favorite thing. Seth Rogen anytime he sees an electric scooter in BFE literally kicks them down, or throws them as far as he can. EVERY- SINGLE- TIME. Even teaches others to do it. I think that's what we should start doing. I genuinely think it was written into the show to start the trend of people trashing these electric scooters, and I think we have the fucking right. Because they're not for the public. Public means you don't gotta fucking pay for it. So see them for what they are: an eye sore, and trash. And treat them as such ;)

[imhavingdifficulties]

ode to fish lady, for my childhood

im depressed everyone. allow ke to explain why. i w

okay. i went to the store. fish lady looming st me through the window. like i mean her HEAD IS IN A TUB OF GLASS. there is a little bit of seaweed in there

kind of like thom york in that

music video. where he looms like hes suffering greatly for no apparent reason and his face starts to annoy you

her face is disgruntled i know shes judging me bc i have a toohat on and shes got a fish head and like. i dunno. life isnt fair. ive got a bunny rabbit in here thats my child self's bunny, who is lost amd chases stars on the street. and hes my favorite he reminds me of easter and things making sense when i was small

i glare at this bitchass fish lady. and i also motice that she has very large boobs. like you could be wrapped in them

anyways i broke eyecontact (after she looked away first cyz im not a pussy) and i got my fuckin. salami. and all my little college student snacks to tife me over and eat like a little rat.

i miss how id eat snacks with my best friend in the park, when we were in higschool. things were simpler. wed sit on the grass and construct the toys in the kinder egg candy. wed roam the city and wed get tired and wed want to talk at night and wed call through the day, about how we felt, what our lives were,

wed flirt and wed hurt each other.

i go up to fish lady who turns out to be the cashier. i think cashiers hate me. this fact is exacerbated by the fact that i always find a way to look as fucking clueless as possible. she glares at me but tell me to have a nice day

i like her. little bit. ive got my back on my back and i take it off and go inside. i feel like a kid today. i feel like lost like how i did when i felt more, most, everywhere, exploding, incessantly growing out of my own skin. i still felt like a little shell when i was in highschool like that. like so small.

my hat is sagging behind me as i walk

its dragging on the damn sidewalk

is salami a good enough replacement for kinder eggs.

do i get out of gnawing on salami what i got out of the kinder eggs??? do i care enough? if i got a kinder egg now. im pretty sure that it would be less nice as it was before with my best friend ever,

lately ive been wrenched away, a little sideways. where stuff aint the same, where im unavoidably growing

this salami is making me think different

when i was little i loved things that were perfectly ordinary. exactly right. i loved it. i followed , with t shirts over long sleeves so i felt just right.

with my bunny just right. things in line. with a fiery attitude that somehow countered all that. isa, my sibling being too nice

and then i GREW AGAIN. so suddenly to make me cry! theres an owl ina tree calling softly for my past self. the owl that everyone loved. it was everyones owl. and jow how am i in new uyork with a new ideneity i dont even know, without myself but clearly uanging on to a past version of me.

and im in new york and im jn new york and i wish i had a ling top hat that dragged on the ground with my star chasing bunny and my kinder eggs and my long sleeves my scooter my toys, my isa.

annd now isas gone

and im quite sad

and im sitting out . on the edge of the morning, typing to myself . wish i could say rains bangin on the window but really theres not the sound of honking and my roommates sleeping, and the vents working and , ill wake up again in three hours,

[failedintsave]

Kloktober Day 8: Childhood or Getting Old

I love some kidklok but it's all so traumatic (and I'm saving up for some other prompts jsdjgsjdk) so I went with Old Folks Skwistok 👴👴

Will You Still Need Me, Will You Still Feed Me

Although he knew the route by heart after so many weekly trips, Toki squinted at the amber letters of the scrolling LED display at the head of the bus, just to be certain he hadn't lost track of the journey. Patting his breast pocket and finding it empty, he located his glasses perched atop his head in the usual place and slid them down to his nose to confirm their location.

"Dis ams our stop," he said, nudging the dozing figure next to him.

Toki got to his feet as the bus pulled to the curb, feeling more than hearing the screech of brakes as the vehicle ground to a halt. A wise CFO had once (twice, a thousand times over) advised them all to wear earplugs during their sets, and the irony of those warnings falling on deaf ears did not escape Toki now. Soon enough, he would have to follow Pickles' example and get fitted for hearing aids. Out of all the patents that had expired after Dethklok's reign, Liquid Purity sound technology had yielded the most versatile applications. Toki wondered if Charles would be pleased to see it put to good use, or if he was rolling in his grave over the market ventures they'd left untapped.

Humidity fogged the lenses of his readers as he stepped off the bus and onto the sidewalk, waiting patiently at the door for his fellow passenger to debark. Heat mirages shimmered across the blacktop of the Finntrolls parking lot, the sun a blazing disk in a cloudless sky the color of window cleaner. The late September warmth had not deterred Skwisgaar from donning a cardigan before they left the house, though he scowled into the bright afternoon light as he rounded the steps. Perpetually cold, even in his prime, it had been years since he'd let goading commentary about outerwear sway his wardrobe choices.

"T'oughts fall started last weeks, dis look more like summer vacation weathers to me." The thump of the tennis ball covering the end of his cane undercut some of the scorn in his voice, the same way it softened the overelaborate dragon motif for which he'd chosen the rod.

"You knows we never gets a real fall in L.A., elskling." Skwisgaar accepted Toki's outstretched hand, allowing his junior to assist him down the last steps and towards a nearby bench. Hot air gusted past as the bus pulled away from the curb, the stench of exhaust roiling in its wake. "Or you shoulds know dat, after almost thirty years."

"Ja, ja, still terribles any ways you slice it t'ough. I hates it."

"Ams somebody crabby today? Was you nap on de way here not longs enough? I woulda packed de insulated bags if I'd known we needed to rides to de store across town instead. I don't think your sherbet would makes it all de way home wifout dem." Toki laughed when Skwisgaar swatted his helping hands away, settling onto the shaded bench and pointedly looking the other direction. He set their canvas grocery sacks on the seat next to the Swede, leaning to plant a kiss on the part of his hair. "Be right back, don't runs off."

"So glad I ams married to de comedians…"

The automatic door of the food library slid aside with a hiss, unleashing a gust of chilled air that obscured Toki's glasses again and leaving him to fumble past the shopping carts until he found the reason for his solo sojourn. Toki plopped onto the cushioned seat, driving the scooter into the parking lot.

"Hey dere, sexy," he called, lifting his thumb off the accelerator and coming to a stop at the edge of the sidewalk. "You wants to come party wifs a rockstar?"

Skwisgaar watched his approach, unamused, with both hands stacked on top of the handle of his cane. Determined as he was to always do everything himself, he still disliked using the motorized cart. Really, he disliked anything that forced him to acknowledge the changes that age had inflicted upon them all—though Nathan's dentures were to be expected after decades of avoiding the dentist, and no one was entirely sure if Murderface's memory issues were real or if he was just being a dick.

Given his way, Skwisgaar would have hobbled painfully up and down each aisle under his own power, but arthritis had other plans.

His slouch was more pronounced now, his fingers curled and knuckles rosy with inflammation, yet he still held his nose in the air and sneered with all the lordly pretense of someone who had once ruled the world. For all the frowning he'd done in his life, he bore fewer wrinkles than one might expect, the most noticeable being the crow's feet that sprouted from the corners of his eyes as they narrowed in Toki's direction. Perhaps there had been something to all those expensive skin balms and salves after all.

"You goingk to be likes dis all day?" He groused, levering himself to his feet with some effort.

Toki stepped off the scooter and caught Skwisgaar's elbow as he listed to one side. "Til deaths do us part."

"Euughh, Odin, takes me."

Together, they crossed the last few feet to the cart and Skwisgaar lowered himself gingerly onto the seat. Toki placed Skwisgaar's cane into the wire basket within easy reach and dropped their bags in as well, taking a step back so Skwisgaar could get the vehicle turned around. Sunlight cast a shimmering halo on the crown of his head, his locks tied in a neat knot at the nape of his neck. He refused to part with the length despite the fact that what was once burnished gold now shone silvery platinum, and though Toki had long ago adopted a shorter crop for himself, he was glad Skwisgaar still wore his hair in long, soft waves. It suited him.

"You know, I think maybe I gets it why you always had de hots for all dems old ladies." Biting back a giggle when Skwisgaar cut eyes at him again, Toki fell into step beside the scooter as they made their way towards the front door. A pearly wisp of curl had come loose from its binding, and he reached out to tuck it behind Skwisgaar's ear, twirling the end around his finger. "You still lookin' mighty fines to Toki, even 'dough you ams all gray and wrinkledy now."

"Tch, you aments no springtime chicklings you'self, ya know. Dildo." Skwisgaar scoffed, ascending the slight ramp of asphalt that connected the sidewalk to the crosswalk.

Toki pushed his glasses back atop his head before being subjected to a third blast of blinding fog at the entrance, and when he dropped his arm, Skwisgaar's fingers closed around his wrist and pulled. The motion caught him mid-stride and he stumbled sideways, landing awkwardly, halfway on Skwisgaar's lap.

An arm wrapped around his waist, slimness belying strength as it held him close. "Hej, baby," Skwisgaar's voice in his ear was a playful growl. "You wants to go for a ride?"

Toki nodded in reply, grinning wide and swinging his feet onto the floorboard between Skwisgaar's loafers. The scooter's electric motor whirred as Skwisgaar depressed the forward lever, its wheels juddering over the threshold onto gleaming tile. Laughing as they zipped through the produce section, he swiped a package of blackberries from the display, hooting again when the scooter tipped onto two wheels momentarily. It might be far cry from screaming down the interstate on the murdercycle, wind whipping their hair, but it didn't matter. So long as they were together, the thrill remained.

[eiirisworkshop]

DragonCon Gothic: 2021

(Sequel to this.)

-Loki is everywhere.

-You keep saying “last year” but you mean the 2019 con. Everyone understands. Everyone else is doing it too.

-Scooters clog the sidewalks. You hate them. You are tempted by them.

-A ducky squeaks nearby.

-Most people are in masks, some begrudgingly, some casually—some have incorporated masks into their cosplay so beautifully the costume is incomplete without it.

-A battalion of stormtroopers pass. You wonder if their helmets are CDC approved face coverings. You imagine wearing a mask under a helmet. You’re glad you’re not a stormtrooper.

-You ask a question at a panel. The panelist looks you in the eye and says, “No, you should just kill people.” You can’t help but agree. This is a writing panel.

-You can tell exactly who spent all quarantine working on their cosplay. You know they still finished it last night.

-You are in a panel. The person in front of you is dressed all in the Marriott Carpet, from facemask to shoes. You cannot remember how long it’s been since the Marriott had that carpet—you know many con goers now have never walked upon it. You cannot remember what the carpet looks like now. You are in the Marriott. You look down at the floor. You look up again as the panelist speaks. You have already forgotten what the carpet looks like now.

-There is a family of Marriott carpet dinosaurs. The dinosaurs are in cosplay.

-You are waiting for MARTA. You are not at Peachtree Center. You are in full cosplay. Down the platform is a girl with pink hair. And a sword. You catch her eye, she nods. You nod back.

-You are waiting for a panel. Nearby, a track leader is arguing with another member of staff. Rooms are down to 2/3 capacity. According to the hotel, the room your panel is in holds 300. It’s set up to hold 82. The track leader keeps insisting that 2/3 of 300 is not 82.

-You have seen 5 shirtless male cosplayers within 3 minutes. Only 2 are characters who don’t usually wear shirts. Maybe it’s just summer in the South and the cosplayers have gotten smarter, or maybe the men really have gotten sluttier over quarantine.

-A mother is dressed as Misty from Pokémon, her baby is togapi strapped to her chest. Ash follows behind them with a diaper bag.

-A father is Din Djarin, the Mandalorian, his baby is Grogu strapped to his chest. Cara Dune follows behind them with a diaper bag.

-Apparently, everyone dyed their hair blue over quarantine.

-You have never seen so many men in the Starfleet minidresses. They really did get sluttier over quarantine. You’re happy for them.

-A woman in an extravagant ballgown walks into the bathroom with three other people. They are there to hold her skirts.

-You are at an audience participation panel. The moderator calls on Loki. The eight Lokis in the room all look at each other before asking for clarification.

-Harley Quinn rides by on a scooter.

-Walking through the food court is Weird™️.

-There are several plague doctors on the train. Two are in bird-nosed masks and hoods. They are going to the con. The rest are in scrubs and N95s. They are going to work.

-Every panel starts with “welcome back.”

-It’s been two years. You’ve forgotten your hard learned lessons. You wear the cool looking shoes. You relearn your lesson.

-Spider-Man’s suit rips. He summons a Cosplay Medic armed with needle, thread, duct tape, and battery powered Ryobi hot glue gun. Four more people with cosplay problems descend on the Medic. He fixes everything, using materials in ways they are not intended to be used.

-A man in a brown trenchcoat and Converse approaches a man in a red cape and blue scrubs in a skybridge. “Doctor,” the man in the cape says, nodding. “Doctor,” the man in the trenchcoat says.

-The shawarma place is covered in Avengers memes, as it should be.

-Someone is dressed as the Evergiven. They are blocking the skybridge. You’re not even mad.

-At least a dozen Harley Quinns pass by in ten minutes. They’re all going the same direction. You wander what the group noun for Harleys is.

-The group noun for Lokis is a mischief.

-There is no wait to get into the dealers room. It’s Weird™️.

-A small child cries, overwhelmed in dealers. The child can’t be much more than a year old. They’ve probably never seen this many people in their life, of course they’re overwhelmed. You haven’t seen this many people in what feels like a lifetime. You are overwhelmed. You buy a plushy.

-Two Lokis pass on the street. “Hi, me!” greets one. “Variant,” the other says with disdain, then smiles.

-The Hard Rock is by reservation only.

-You see an amazing cosplay. You desperately want to compliment it. You cannot remember the name of the character. The cosplayer walks away before you can call it to mind. You walk the opposite direction. You remember the name.

-The moderator attempts to begin the panel—there is immediate squealing feedback. Everyone cringes so hard you can see it through the masks.

-There is someone in a sportsball jersey and a Joker mask.

-You do not have the Con Crud. Through learning to guard against COVID, you have learned to defeat the Crud. Your cosplays will include masks from now on.

-Monday, in some ways the con begins to die down, in other ways it goes on. Feathers, badge ribbons, and a surgical mask tumble down the street. Life goes back to….whatever passes for normal these days.

-You are so glad to have been back.

[peterpparkerwrites]

revelations - part three

a/n: currently on hiatus - look at my pinned post for more info! this fic has a lot of parts so I’ll have it scheduled to post twice a day - once at 11:00 AM PST and once at 5:00 PM PST. since I will be gone and can’t update links, if you want to find previous parts, just scroll down my page :) warnings: a little angsty, language, the usual pairing: peter parker x reader word count: 2.7k summary: peter hates the idea of soulmates. he certainly can't afford to be with his soulmate when they do show up, not when there's a chance he won't come home one day from being spider-man. he can't do that to them, he can't lose someone he loves and he can't have them lose him - he saw what it did to his aunt may when his uncle died. but meeting your soulmate is inevitable, and it's not always so easy to avoid what the universe wants to happen.

masterlist ~ requests are closed ~ part two / part four

taglist: @lilbeatlebear @somefuckshit1 @hufflepuffseeker

~

"Stop grinning," Spider-Man grumbled, causing Shadow's smile to widen.

"How do you know I'm grinning? I'm wearing a mask."

"I can just tell," his mask's eyes narrowed at her, making her bite her lip to not laugh.

"I'm sorry," she finally let out a chuckle, "But that was the funniest thing I've ever seen."

"It was so not funny," he complained, throwing his arms up, "If it happened to you, you would not be laughing right now."

She burst into laughter, not able to keep it in now, while he just shook his head and crossed his arms. She didn't have to see his face to know he was pouting.

"Hey, don't be like that," she said between laughs, "It's not my fault you got owned by an eight year old!"

"That's not what happened!" He protested while she kept giggling, her hands on her stomach, "He ran over my foot with his scooter, that's it!"

"Yeah, but then he told you 'watch where you're going, bug boy'!"

He threw up his hands again while she caught her breath, still holding her stomach. "You can't deny that an eight year old schooled you for not watching where you were walking. Isn't it your job to keep people safe, Spidey? And here you are being reckless and not looking both ways before walking. We have to count of the youth to protect our sidewalks, now."

"Yeah, yeah," he waved her off, not able to keep the grin off his own face.

They fell into a silence for a minute, sitting on the ledge that had become their meeting spot for the last several weeks. Fighting together was now second nature to them both, and it was something they each looked forward to throughout the day.

Peter hadn't felt this comfortable around anyone. Of course, he wasn't necessarily uncomfortable around his friends or aunt, but he never presented this hero side of himself to anyone but Ned and May, who barely scratched the surface. He could completely be himself around Shadow, just minus the fact that she had no idea who he actually was. They hadn't shared much personal information with each other, and Peter had only let slip a few things that wouldn't give away his identity. She had been pretty strict on not saying anything about herself - he only guessed they were the same age when she mentioned homework once.

"Why do you wear a mask?" Her question startled him out of his thoughts. "Like, Captain America and Iron Man and all of them don't wear masks, or they at least don't hide their identity. So why do you?"

"Well, Iron Man is rich, and can afford to have every one know who he is," Peter chuckled, "And I'm pretty sure Captain America can protect himself. But I don't know, I think for one I don't want bad guys to know who I am because they can hurt people close to me but...also because I think I feel better behind a mask, ya know? Different, I guess."

"I feel different behind the mask, too" she agreed, "Not necessarily more confident, but definitely more me than I am without."

"Me too," he replied honestly, "If I told anyone I was Spider-Man, they'd never believe me. We're like...two entirely different people."

She laughed, "Yeah. Me too."

"You never talk about yourself," he commented.

"Neither do you," she countered, shooting him a look even though he couldn't see her face. "What's your point?"

"Well, shouldn't we know a bit about each other by now?" He asked curiously, his mask's eyes squinting a bit. "We do trust each other, right?"

"Of course," Shadow said quickly, "But we've both got identities to protect. I just...I don't want to give anything away that might be too much information, ya know?"

"I get that," he replied, "But like...what about little things?"

"Like?" She prompted.

"What's your favorite color?"

She laughed, "Really? That's the question you're gonna ask?"

"Well, would you rather me ask what your real name is?"

"Ha! Well, if you really must know. It's F/C."

He smiled a bit at that. "Mine's red."

"No shit," she gestured to his suit, making him roll his eyes. "Okay, my turn. Who's your favorite avenger?"

"Iron Man," he said instantly, making her burst into laughter.

"God, that was a quick answer," she snickered, "My friend loves Iron Man too. Mine has to be Black Widow. It's gotta suck being one of the only women in a group of men."

He laughed, "Yeah, probably."

The good mood was ruined when Peter noticed something on the horizon, his eyes squinting. Shadow followed his gaze, seeing what he had seen - a plume of dark smoke against the skyline.

"Shit, that looks like a bad fire," she muttered, looking at him, "I haven't heard any sirens. We should go."

He nodded, and soon enough he was swinging them to the building as quick as possible.

The scene was much worse up close. They both noticed someone on the phone in front of the building, likely calling the fire department. Flames were going up the side, luckily the building was a standalone so it wasn't spreading. But the wood caught easily and the whole place was probably aflame, inside too.

"You should stay out here," Spider-Man went to go inside, but Shadow grabbed his arm to stop him.

"Are you crazy? If you're going in, so am I," she said stiffly.

"Fine, just-just be careful," he stated, "Your suit doesn't look fireproof."

"Neither does yours, bug boy," she rolled her eyes, following him into the building.

Shadow had never been this close to flames before, and she never wanted to be again. The duo went opposite ways once getting inside, hoping to find any people (if there were any) and get them out as soon as possible.

"Anyone there?" She shouted into one of the rooms, one that wasn't as hot as the other side of the building, where Spider-Man ran to.

"Yes!" She perked up when she heard a woman's voice call out, and immediately headed for it, avoiding flaming wood that fell from the ceiling in certain spots.

"I'm here," Shadow breathed a sigh of relief when she saw a woman near the open window, holding her arm up to her face to cover from the smoke.

"Let's get you out of here," Shadow reached a hand out so she could help her walk over the weakening floorboards, "We have to get out now before the fire gets worse."

"My husband is still here," the woman held onto the wall a bit, "I can't leave without him."

"He's probably outside," Shadow said calmly, though she really couldn't be sure. "People have been coming out of the building. You need to come with me now, before this place burns down."

The woman hesitated but took her hand, letting her lead her out of the building. No cops or firemen had arrived yet so she had the woman sit on a bench, breathing in the fresh air.

"He's not out here," the woman said after frantically looking around, "He's still in there!"

"I'm sure he'll be out soon-"

"Please, he's-he's my soulmate, I need to get to him," the woman begged and tried to get up, but Shadow held her arm, not letting her budge.

"Ma'am, if you get closer, you might get hurt," she tried to reason with her, almost horrified by the desperate look on the woman's face. She had never seen someone so set on running into flames for someone else.

"Please, let me go," she tried to break her grip again, but Shadow was too strong.

"Spider-Man will get him," she said, hoping her voice didn't shake with doubt. They had been in there a while. "I'm sure they'll both be out any second."

"I can't lose him," the woman said tearfully, "I can't-"

She was interrupted when Spider-Man finally came through the door, holding a man around the waist, the man's arm slung over his shoulder as he coughed. The woman broke away to run to them and Shadow immediately felt relieved, not realizing how panicked she was at the thought that her partner wouldn't come out.

Firemen had showed up by then and were taking care of the situation while Spider-Man helped the woman's soulmate into an ambulance gurney waiting outside the burning building. She was sobbing over him while he held her hand weakly, not able to speak much when they put an oxygen mask over his mouth.

The whole scene put a lump in Shadow's throat as she watched him get wheeled in the ambulance, the woman not letting go of her soulmate's hand for even a second as she climbed in with him.

"Hey," Spider-Man's voice pulled her out of her thoughts and she looked at his slightly charred suit. Without thinking she pulled him into a tight hug, forgetting momentarily how strong she was.

"Can't breathe," he choked a bit, making her step back immediately.

"Sorry," she whispered, "I-I was so worried you weren't gonna come out. You can't scare me like that."

"He was stuck under a fallen beam," he replied, ignoring the skip in his heartbeat at her worry for him. "It took longer than planned. But...we got him."

"You got him," she corrected, "You did amazing."

He smiled a bit at the praise, still slightly out of breath. "Thanks. Let's get out of here, before it gets too crowded."

"Good idea," she replied, checking how he was holding an arm around his stomach, "You're okay to swing us out of here?"

He scoffed, "Don't doubt me."

"Just checking," she smiled a little before frowning, the woman's distraught face still haunting her thoughts, "Let's leave before I go crazy still being here."

Moments later they were on their usual rooftop, taking a much needed break after the fire.

It was quiet between the both of them after they witnessed that. Shadow felt a pain in her chest at the look on the woman's face as her soulmate was stuck in a burning building. She felt horrible for being late to the scene, knowing Spider-Man felt the same.

"That sucked," she said flatly, glancing up to see him nod. "I feel so bad for them. I can't imagine what it's like to see your soulmate like that..."

"You-you haven't met your soulmate?" He asked curiously, wondering if he was crossing a line. She never talked much about herself, and he knew she kept her identity a secret for a reason, but it would be nice to know more about her.

She bit her lip, hesitating. "No, I haven't. I've been waiting to meet mine forever, but that...I would never want to go through what she just went through."

Peter nodded, "Yeah. Me neither."

"So you haven't met yours yet either, I take it," she mumbled, kicking a rock from the ledge. "Lucky us."

He chuckled lightly, "Nope. And I'm fine with that."

"You don't want to meet them?" She asked, frowning a bit.

"Not really," he admitted, and she waited for him to continue, but he ended it there. She felt a little sad to hear that, feeling bad for whoever his soulmate was. If he never wanted to meet them, well...it would suck to be them.

"Let's go see if there's a cat to save out of a tree, yeah?" Shadow changed the subject.

Peter smiled a bit, "Sounds like a plan."

-

"I freaking hate this class," you groaned dramatically, dropping your head on your friend's shoulder. He tried to ignore the tight feeling in his chest at you resting your head on him by laughing at you.

"If you hate chemistry so much, why did you go to a school designed for science?" Peter teased, making you roll your eyes and glare at him as you sat up.

"My parents are scientists, dummy," you tapped him on the head with you pencil, not noticing him frown at that statement like something just occurred to him. "They pushed for this school. Now stop being annoying and help me with this problem."

Whatever he thought of went away as he focused on the problem, muttering, "You only use me for my brain, I swear."

"Maybe so," you joked, "I don't get what it says here..."

The both of you went back to studying like you had been for the past hour, your brain starting to hurt after a few more hours. After a break for dinner with May and a bit more studying after she left for a late shift at work, you finally called it quits.

"If I don't know it by now, I won't know it for the test," you sighed, packing your textbook and notes into your bag.

"I'll walk you home, it's pretty late," Peter smiled at you, the same smile that always made your heart skip a beat.

"Thanks, Pete," you grabbed your bag and swung it over your shoulder, "And thanks for taking a break from the internship to help me with this."

"Of course, Y/N, anything for you," he said the sentence so easily, but those last three words really put butterflies in your stomach. He probably thought nothing of them but they made you more confident in your decision.

You were finally gonna tell him how you felt.

What Ned had said during lunch the other day sat with you for a while. You couldn't help but think maybe Peter did have some feelings for you - before Liz was in the picture you remembered how nervous he used to get talking to you, and while that part changed, you did know he was still sweet and funny and was always there for you even despite the internship. It was probably past time to tell him.

You tried to work up the nerve on the walk back to your place, Peter always bringing up a different subject before you could get the guts to spit it out. Luckily, he didn't seem to notice how tense you were.

"So..." you trailed off once it became silent, chickening out at the last second. "What're your plans for the rest of the weekend?"

"Well," he sighed, shrugging, "Internship a bit. I know May's been dying to see a chick flick that's out, so might go see that with her."

"Sounds fun," you mumbled, biting your lip as you repeatedly called yourself a coward in your head. You knew if you didn't do it now with all your pent up emotions, you never would.

Finally you reached the stop before your apartment, where you always parted after school.

"Well, I'll see you Monday," he grinned and went to head back, but you stopped him. Now or never.

"Hey, Peter?" You grabbed his wrist, your heart racing. You weren't going to chicken out this time. You weren't going to make some stupid excuse in your head.

"Uh, yeah?" He asked carefully, hearing your heart rate increase with his heightened senses. He was confused for why you seemed so nervous, when a second ago you were fine.

"I-I need to, to tell you," you bit your lip, trying to make eye contact with him and not falter. "I have feelings for you."

His eyebrows raised in shock, "You-what?"

You let out a nervous laugh, "Yeah, I...I've liked you for a while, in a more-than-a-friend-way. I just thought...you should know."

He felt his heart drop a bit, knowing that if you had said this last year, he would have been ecstatic. He still was - knowing you liked him made him so incredibly happy but terrified at the same time. You feeling the same wasn't something he had considered a possibility.

Things were complicated – not only did he reject any idea of being with anyone like that, soulmate or not, but now he had weird feelings he couldn't place for a certain vigilante, and while he still knew he liked you...he couldn't figure out how to respond.

"You don't have to say anything," you said after a minute, letting go of his sleeve, and stepping back a bit. His heart ached at the distance you put between the both of you, and how your eyes weren't meeting his. "I-I just needed to tell you."

"Y/N..." his voice trailed off and you nodded, trying to force a smile.

"I'll see you around," you said quickly, turning and heading home. He didn't call after you, or follow you, not that you'd expected him to.

The look on his face told you enough.

[house-of-no-regrets]

No Regrets [in the wee hours]

Took a bit longer than expected, but I’ve finished the next little story! Hopefully I’ll be able to keep a decent pace on these. No overarching plot, just little stories in the same universe with the same characters. Warning for ~*murder*~ in this one!

-------------

I've been all-too-easy to wake up since I was a child; I'd often needed to go from dead asleep to functional, if groggy, as soon as I heard my father demanding action or attention. While I no longer need that reaction time, the old man long since locked up to rot, my brain is set in its ways and very convinced that I need to be able to bolt out of bed and fight God if a dust bunny moves too quickly in my vicinity.

Which is how I found myself waking up in the middle of the night, the sudden shift in the atmosphere bringing on consciousness with all the subtlety of a foghorn.

My room was silent, still, but I knew without opening my eyes that there was a spirit somewhere, and I didn't even give them a chance to speak before I pointed at the sign posted on my wall, barely shifting from my comfortable snuggle in my blanket and not even opening my eyes. Yes, this happens more often than I care to admit. No, I do not enjoy it. At all.

"Resurrection hours are noon to eight. I'm still alive and still need sleep to function."

There was silence, but the presence didn't leave, so I groaned and raised my head, finally opening my eyes to see the translucent, vaguely glowing, and unfortunately blurry spirit at the foot of my bed.

It did finally speak in a bewildered voice.

"Um, I'm being murdered."

Ah, fuck.

I grabbed my glasses from the bedside table and put them on. The spirit at the foot of my bed was tallish -- I've always been bad at estimating height, maybe half a foot shorter than Yvette? Five-nine... ish? -- and seemed to be in his twenties. There was a considerable dark stain on his chest and belly; likely blood, and the cause of his death. The newly-dead tend to show things like that, as they haven't had the time to get used to modifying their form.

I really hate it when brand new ones find me. I'm not sure how it started, but it seems like more and more often, now, the dead are drawn to No Regrets before they even realize they're dead, at least if they're the type to need my help. Wish I wasn't the one who had to break it to him. I'm not great with people.

"Sorry, bro, but I'm afraid they succeeded. Where was it? I'll get the police over there."

"Uhh... my house. I think. It's a little..."

I sighed. Right.

"You're probably a little out of it still... fresh dead usually are. C'mon, I'll take you around until things look familiar."

Climbing out of bed, I headed over to grab my hoodie from the back of the chair. I learned the hard way that sleeping is not a tits out sort of occasion when you're liable to get the dead dropping in at all hours of the night, so I sleep in pajama pants and a tank top. Little too chilly for tank tops outside, though. I shoved my phone in my hoodie and my feet into loafers, then started heading out of my room and down the hall.

"You remember your name?" I asked, trying to make conversation and learn what I could.

"Uh, Davis. Craig? Craig Davis."

"Well, Craig Davis, I'm sorry to hear about your passing. You're gonna need to possess me for this little adventure, by the way, but I'll walk you through it once we're outside."

"I- what?"

Considering how often I find myself lost in normal conversations, dealing with confused new spirits is especially difficult. Still shaking off my body's angry demands for More Sleep was not helping matters in the slightest, either.

"Possession. I'll explain it in just a minute." I rubbed an eye and yawned as I stopped in the foyer to pull a set of keys off one of the hooks on the wall.

Usually, I've got a driver. Not for vanity reasons, but after three or four near-misses caused by Sudden Spirits appearing in the car with me, I elected to hire someone to drive me into and around town as needed. But it was Fuck-This-Shit O'Clock in the morning, and Graves deserved their rest. The dead don't need to sleep, but they can if they so choose -- and it does, after all, conserve energy. The same goes for Yvette and Ashby; it was too early in the morning for most people to be out and searching for a necromancer to kill, so I wasn't gonna disturb them. I could handle a simple spirit chauffeur and 911 call on my own.

The keys were to the motor scooter; it was the better choice in this situation, allowing for more mobility and no passenger seat for any extra ghosts to drop into. That did, though, mean that Craig would need to ride shotgun in my body.

When I got out to the green scooter in the driveway, I paused and looked over at Craig.

"Hey, I know you're probably still a little out of it, so Possession 101." Script time. At least having this stuff memorized made it easier to do while dozy. "Our bodies need to take up the same space, so c'mere." I beckoned Craig over.

"So like… step into you?" He asked. Good, seemed like his head was clearing up some.

"Yeah, that's part 1."

He nodded and complied, crossing the space between us and settling in the same location, the two of us clipped into each other like bugged NPCs. It always felt so weird, those moments before a spirit actually possesses you. A sort of wobbly, in-and-out feeling like physics is trying to crush you and the spirit together, or, failing that, just kick your ass to the ground so you're not both in the same place at the same time.

"A'ight, now turn around and face the direction I’m facing, and overlay your hands onto mine as best you can." It was just a moment for him to obey, and I continued. "I'm not resisting, so you're gonna start feeling like you're being pulled in and pushed out at the same time. Space is trying to equalize. Let yourself be pulled in. It's gonna feel a bit like-"

The whirlpool effect kicked in before I could finish, the sudden snap and release of tension as Craig's spirit sank into my body. I wobbled a bit and grabbed the handlebar in front of me, then shivered at the sudden chill and dizziness. I'm pretty good at taking on passengers like this, but that didn't make it any more pleasant.

"You in there, buddy?" I asked out loud. Especially with new spirits, trying to think at each other was more trouble than it was worth. My lips moved to answer, though it wasn't my voice coming out.

"Uh- yeah. Yeah I'm here."

I grabbed the helmet hanging on the other handlebar and snapped it on, kicking the stand up and plopping heavily onto the seat.

"Great. Let's go."

"Wait, why am I not in control?" came Craig's confused voice. He felt almost frustrated, an undercurrent of emotion that wasn't mine despite being in my mind and body.

"Because this is my body, and I let you in willingly. Easier to keep control when you're letting someone in. Plus," I gave a little snort. "You just died, dude. I've been letting spirits possess me since middle school."

I felt his frustration turn to grumpiness, and then the pressure in my head, like a storm rolling in, that I knew from experience was him trying to take control. I froze and let out an irritated huff.

"You stop that. I'm not dealing with you doing some dumb shit with my body. Either chill out or get out."

"Oh- uh. Just wanted to see if I could…"

"Uh-huh. Anyhow, now that you're together enough to try joyriding, do you remember much about where you were before you were killed?"

I started up the scooter as emotions rolled through my mind, detached and distant, almost like the muffled dissociation I was used to mid-shutdown. Possessing spirits' emotions always felt weird like that, both mine and not mine, held at arm's length. Craig's was especially turbulent for a new death, but given that he had been murdered… I didn't fault him for being a little confused and angry. Even if it did put me a little on edge. 

"Uh- South Pine Street, Dogwood Acres housing development."

"Baller. That's not far from here. Once we get close to your body, you should be able to feel where it is, so I'll have a house number for the police. Don't want to have them scream in all blue lights and loud sirens and have your killer go to ground before they know which house, y'know?"

The muffled flare of anger that I felt was definitely not my own. I took a deep breath, hoped that the killer had panicked and tried to clean up instead of get rid of the body first, and puttered off towards Dogwood.

The housing development was quiet, lines upon lines of identical suburban boxes lit by flickering street lights that cast the sidewalks and yards in harsh white light. The occasional house had the glow of yellow within, but most of them were dormant. Weaving my way through the maze of streets, each one absolutely indistinguishable from the one before and the one to come, I felt terribly exposed -- and alone despite the spirit currently hitching along in my body.

I turned onto South Pine and brought my scooter to a puttering stop, stabilizing it with both feet on the ground. I couldn't help but bounce my legs to replace the vibration of driving; the sudden lack of sensation would ratchet my anxiety up even if I wasn't currently letting a frustrated dead man hang out in my head to catch his murderer.

...I should be more than a little anxious, really, but half-asleep Tabby once again wrote a check that more-awake Tabby is having to cash, and more-awake Tabby is very used to having to deal with the consequences of her idiot decisions. It occurred to me that normal peoples' consequences didn't usually involve murder, but when you live with the dead, you're bound to meet a few killers.

Two houses down, I could feel- not a tug so much as a presence, an echo of Craig's spirit reacting to his body. It was the only one on the street with its lights on and its garage, while not lit, was open. There was a car in the garage, another in the driveway, and a pickup at the curb in front.

"258?" I asked Craig, though I knew the answer already. His anger flared and I felt the oncoming storm again. I snapped at him. "That's two strikes, Craig. I'm sorry for your death, but if you end up driving my body into a crime scene or, god forbid, getting me killed next, I will kick your ass to whatever afterlife you're headed for and stay there to keep kicking it for eternity."

Big words for a short fat lady, but this is, in fact, my body on the line right now. I probably wouldn't be able to follow through on any ass-kicking, but dammit, I would try.

Craig was silent, and I could feel him steaming, petulant like a child denied a toy but with the power of a grown man behind it. With my stomach tying itself in knots and my hands starting to tremble, I dialed 911, hoping it would help quell the rising panic.

"258 South Pine Street. I think there's been a murder. I don't know the state of the crime scene or if the perp is still there, but you might be able to catch them if you hurry. The victim is Craig Davis, white adult male, either shot or stabbed in the chest, likely multiple times-"

"Wait, is this Tabby? The necro girl?"

Oh god I hope that isn't what the operators call me regularly-- I know I'm a bit of a 911 cryptid, since the usual intruder calls are to the non-emergency line, but if I get known as the necro girl I might have to move to a different state.

"Yeah, uh, necromancer, yeah-" I couldn't help but stumble over my words, now, with my train of thought derailed by the interruption. "-uh, murder?"

"Right! I'll send someone."

I murmured a thanks and hung up before she could ask me to stay on the line. I already had to stay around for the cops so Craig could give a statement, and making small talk with the 911 operator was not in the spoons tonight.

I don't like cops much, but in my line of work, they're kind of a necessity. I need to stay on the police force's good side because I need them to remove attempted murderers from my property on the regular. ...and also because graverobbing is still technically illegal, even if I do have the body owner's permission to dig them up.

At least most of the locals who know of me and my employees are chill about it. It took a bit of effort to get to that point, but now at least people don't run screaming from the less-presentable of my employees…

The blue lights of the police showed up fairly quickly, followed almost immediately by the red flashing of EMS. I puttered up slowly and parked my scooter just out of range as the officers set to work surrounding the house, then hung my helmet on a handlebar and walked up the rest of the way to watch the impending train wreck. I could feel Craig's anger boiling higher and tried my best to ignore it; Craig himself seemed to have fallen silent and sullen after I called him out.

"Tabby!"

I was standing just off to the side of the ambulance when someone stepped up behind me and called my name, making me jump and cringe.

"Oh- oh dear, I'm sorry, Tabs. I thought I heard you were the one who called this in!"

I straightened up immediately, face burning. I recognized that voice, bright and smooth and kind and--

"J-Jenna!" My voice was barely a squeak as I turned to face her, looking up at the round, dark face of one of the EMTs. She was a good six feet tall, maybe more, towering above me even in her uniform flats, with a brilliant smile and full lips and gorgeous natural hair pulled through the back of her uniform cap, the streetlight illuminating her from behind like a halogen angel.

Jenna had shown up to one of my early calls for assistance at No Regrets, and then she kept turning up, not every time I was in a situation where I'd be around EMTs, but often.

Concern showed on her face as she leaned to look me over.

"Are you okay? Did you see it happen, or-"

I shook my head, buying time to sort out words by tapping my temple with a finger.

"N-no, I uh- the victim woke me up, he's in here, uh, in case the cops need somethin' from him."

"Oh… are you getting enough sleep, dear? You sound exhausted. Do you want to sit in the back of the truck?"

It took me a second or two to recover from the way she called me dear, my face burning bright red. I couldn't make eye contact even for the second or two I can usually manage so that people don't immediately think I'm being dishonest.

"I- uh- um- w-well, it's, uh, it is like 4am--" I stammered, trying desperately to find words. "I-I guess 'm sleepin' okay, uh, how're… you doing??"

I have never been a great orator and the list of why that is gets a bit longer with every um and stutter.

Jenna's face bloomed into a gorgeous, open grin.

"I'm on 12-hour overnights right now, so I'm basically at least 60 percent Red Bull at any given time. Everyone okay up there at the House? Last I heard y'all were digging up half the lawn.”

I nodded, unable to keep from grinning. At least this was a subject I could talk to her about without making an absolute ass of myself--

"Yeah! The new girl, Chris, she's gotten Daryl and Roy to help her get the vegetable garden going! It's plenty big enough to take care of all of us, and I worked out a deal with the soup kitchen so that they get any of our excess, once things are running smoothly, and I can use their account to buy from that bulk food program that's usually only open to chari- oop-!" I bit my tongue and cringed. Right. I'm pretty sure that's technically fraud and I just admitted to it in front of-

There was a commotion from the house that snapped me back to attention, and the cops were leading a man out in handcuffs. He looked pale and shaken, spattered in blood, and not quite… present, like he had just checked out of reality for his own good. That… was a familiar look. I furrowed my brow. He certainly didn't look like a maniacal killer-

"He caught me with his wife," I said. Well. Craig said. I jumped. Jenna jumped. I flushed and covered my mouth reflexively.

"N-no that was him! The victim!" I squeaked. Jenna laughed, a hearty belly laugh, and covered her own mouth, though she was doing a terrible job of hiding her grin.

"I figured! If he caught you with his wife, it would be an upgrade!"

At this point, you could probably fry an egg on my face. Hell, my glasses were starting to fog up-- I stammered for a few moments, trying desperately to find something to say, and it was Craig who saved me, if you could call it that. I was too caught up in my embarrassment and awkwardness to realize how much anger and frustration he was radiating.

"Motherfucker told me he'd have my job! Son of a bitch thinks he can get away with doing this to me, he's gonna fucking pay--"

The oncoming storm crashed over me before I could get a grip on it, and all of a sudden I was lumbering forward, snarling words that weren't my own, and dragging a gardening pickaxe out of my truck -- Craig's truck -- on my way to the man and the cops--

I let out a shriek, in my own voice, feeling the sound cutting my throat raw. I wrested control of my body back with a lurch, falling on my ass in the yard with the force of it while the silvery-blue form of Craig was ejected from my body, screaming obscenities.

I threw my hand forward, fighting for whatever thoughts and words I could find to fix this. I saw Craig right himself and move back towards me, and the first incantation -- if you could call it that -- that my brain grasped left my lips in a single desperate breath, with a dizzying rush of power--

"INTHENAMEOFTHEMOONIBANISHYOU--!!"

The force of the hurried exorcism rushed outward like a sonic boom, strong enough for even the mundanes around me to feel, and Craig's spirit let out a yowl of rage for a brief second before twisting around itself and collapsing in with a sickening crunch, crushing smaller and smaller until it was gone.

I winced -- not my best exorcism. At all.

As the flare of adrenaline dropped almost immediately and I came back to myself properly, I realized -- blurrily, as my glasses had gotten thrown off somewhere -- at least two officers had their weapons half-drawn at me, though they were looking over at where Craig's spirit had disappeared.

I collapsed the rest of the way onto the grass, shaking, and covered my face with my hands, trying with everything within me not to start crying. I should have realized he'd try something like that, why hadn't I been paying attention- I could have been attacked, I could have been arrested, I could have had to watch myself beat a man to death and I- fuck--

The sob that came out was squeaky and pained, and I pressed my hands harder against my face, like that would stop anything else from going wrong. I should have brought someone-- I shouldn't have let him possess me-- I should have been paying more attention--

Warm tears ran from the corners of my eyes, down my cheeks, to pool in my ears, making my already-trembling body shiver harder with the unpleasant sensation. I'd let myself get complacent, hadn't lost control of a possession like that in years, and- I'd almost- fuck--

"Honey, honey, sit up for me. Tabby? C'mon, let's get you up--"

Numbly, I let Jenna help me into a sitting position, where she wrapped a blanket around me and pressed an open bottle of water into my hands.

"Take slow sips. Are you okay? Just shaken?"

I nodded, some part of me grateful that I couldn't quite see her face properly without my glasses, because I didn't want to see what she thought about me after that. She sighed, though, and sounded relieved when she murmured "Good."

My whole body felt like jelly, trembling so hard I could feel the water in the bottle sloshing around, and I kept flashing from too hot to too cold to too hot again, and I couldn't even sort out my thoughts--

Jenna sat down beside me and rubbed my back. If I wasn't having a complete breakdown, I might have enjoyed it.

I don't know how long it took for me to calm down and clear my head, but the car with the other man had left, and the other EMTs had loaded Craig's body into the ambulance while Jenna sat next to me and made sure I was doing okay.

After a while, though, I blinked and shifted my torso, then opened the blanket more and cursed at the bloom of red on my hoodie.

I heard Jenna curse as well as she stood up, but I grabbed her pants leg.

"N-no, 'm okay," I mumbled, and instead of trying to speak more, I reached to pull my hoodie and tank up my stomach to show bruised, but completely unbroken skin, covered in blood, rivulets following my stretch marks and making it look even worse despite my being otherwise completely uninjured. "See, 'm okay." This was not the first time I've had a possession lead to the dead's cause of death showing on my own body. It wasn't even the bloodiest.

Jenna sat back down, and I could see her leaning in a bit.

"Well damn. Magic ghost stuff, huh?"

I nodded.

"Magic ghost stuff."

I could see the flash of white against dark skin as she grinned.

"So that exorcism… Artemis or Usagi?"

It took me a moment to parse her.question, but all of a sudden I was completely back to myself, just in time to absolutely die of embarrassment.

"L-listen, I- y-you can exorcise i-in anyone's name, i-it's the power and conviction that counts--!!"

"Usagi, then." I could hear the laughter in her voice, laughter that bubbled out moments later. I wanted to crawl in a hole in embarrassment, but- it didn't feel like condescending laughter. I knew what that felt like. She seemed just genuinely amused. "I grew up with Sailor Moon, too."

I couldn't stop the squeak that eaked out, and I covered my face again.

"G-god I hope word about this doesn't get out, people already think I-I'm weird enough, and to- to fall back on anime for magic i-in a pinch is just--"

"Cute," Jenna finished.

I squeaked.

Jenna moved away for a moment, and then she settled my glasses on my nose. I couldn't make eye contact, but I did glance over at her and sheepishly murmur my thanks.

"The officers still want a statement from you, since you made the call and tried to go after the perp, but I don't think they're looking at any charges, given…" Jenna trailed off and looked over at where Craig had disappeared. "...yeah."

I nodded, slowly, and then found myself yawning, the adrenaline drop setting in especially hard.

"...d'you think it can wait 'til tomorrow… 've kinda had a rough night."

"I think they'll be okay with that."

[dynamoe]

part one | part two | part three | → part four ← | index | ao3

read on archive of our own | words: 7059+

SUMMARY: Billy has a new best friend. Pete has the ear of the nation. Both turn out to come with side benefits. TW: slurs, swearing, heartbreak, sexual refs.

(This draft is still missing a scene of Pete's radio show which I will add in a future update. I've been sitting on this chapter for months, want to get it out.)

"This entire decade…" Pete White declared into his microphone, "…was a mistake."

The trailer didn’t technically have an address so it couldn’t get mail. It wasn’t really a legal residence, just some unclaimed desert land near a disused highway. They had a PO Box at the post office in the nearest town. It provided a bit of legal insulation, since they bought dangerous chemicals, explosives, and bizarre medical equipment from mail order catalogs regularly. Billy felt relieved his mother didn’t know exactly where they lived to prevent any “pop in” visits. Picking up the mail was one of Pete's few chores; the PO box was way too high for Billy to open.

They informally divided their household labor without ever discussing it. Billy did most of the food shopping since White regularly forgot to eat if he wasn’t reminded. It meant most of their meals came from the bottom three shelves of the supermarket but Billy also bought produce from fruit vendors on sidewalks or brought restaurant leftovers from his dishwashing job. Pete’s tasks were driving the scooter and getting the mail; that was sort of the upper limit of responsibility he could be trusted with.

Pete didn’t even take off his crash helmet and goggles before entering the post office. This was a strictly get-in/get-the-stuff/get-out operation. Then he could go home to be with his records and his game consoles and his TV and not have to deal with sunlight or people.

↓ story gets more interesting below the fold ↓

PETE the WHITE HAS A POSSE (con't)

Going out in daylight was such a pain and nightlife in the suburbs was nonexistent. Pete hated leaving the trailer unless he absolutely had to. He went to work in the morning and came home in the evening if for no other reason that Billy demanded he be dropped off and picked up at his job on the way and he was the only one who could drive (or see over the handlebars of the scooter) so he ferried both of them around. 

When did he become such a homebody? He used to be cool and party all night. Must be a sign of getting old. He was already 30. Gahd, when did that happen?

“Mr. White,” a hoarse voice said behind him.

White whipped around with his back to the boxes, eye to the exit if he had to make a quick escape. 

“Mr. White. From the radio? White Nation?” a scrawny young guy with spiky hair asked, unsure of himself.

Pete nodded, he had his scarf wrapped tightly around his mouth. With the helmet, goggles, driving gloves and long-sleeved jacket, so little of him was exposed that he could have been anyone.

“We knew this was the PO Box you said on the air so we just waited until you came by so’s we could meet you in person.”

“We?” Pete asked.

“Hey, Martin. It’s really him. We got him.”

A much older man on a mobility scooter approached, long curly gray hair fell to his shoulders under a bucket hat and he was draped in a piano key scarf. He wore tinted glasses and had the down-turned rubbery lips of an irate trout demanding to speak to the manager.

“We did a stake out,“ the chicken-like man said proudly before realizing how that came-off, “But… but.. Not for bad reasons— we’re friends! Friends of the show. Friends of what you’re putting out there, right?”

The chicken-man turned to the man on the mobility scooter for confirmation. He grunted in affirmation.

“Oh, ok,” Pete lowered his guard slightly, “Glad you fellas like the show. Keep listening.”

“We support you.”

“Cool.”

“We like what you have to say.”

“Awesome..." Pete delicately tried to indicate this conversational exchange had run its course, "I’m gonna get my mail now.”

“We… we want to spread your message.”

His back to the fans, nose buried in the PO Box, “Always great to know people are still digging the music.”

The scrawny chicken man exchanged a glance with the old man on the mobility scooter.

“It’s garbage,” croaked the old man in a pompous voice, “Barely tolerable warbling of castrated effeminate half-men.” 

“It’s not that bad," admonished the chicken-y man, “I mean, some of it’s ok, I guess. We listen for what you have to say more.”

Pete turned back with a puzzled look (not that the goggles revealed much of his expression), “You like what I have to say? Those bullshit rants?”

They nodded.

The chicken-y man approached him nervously as he reached into his fanny pack, “You don’t sell gold or survival food or have a place to pledge a donation like the other radio shows so we didn’t know how else to support the station.” He thrust a manila envelope and thrust it into Pete’s hand and then jumped back like he had lit a fuse, "Just… take it. Use it to reach more people. A lot of guys like us need someone to tell us what to do.”

Pete cautiously opened the envelope with one finger, peeked inside to see a stack of folded twenties. He looked up and the two were already gone. 

He turned back to the PO Box and pushed Billy's boxes from eBay aside, pulling out a stack of envelopes addressed to WHITE NATION. He slit it open with his pinky nail and a crisp sawbuck fell out. The next one had five Lincolns. Tens and fives. One even had a 50. He never asked for money on air, just bitched about his lack of it but made it sound like a noble cause. Ever-popular again with dough to prove it.

YOUR STUPID MINDS! STUPID STUPID!

Billy did his usual post-work loop of Video Madness after work. He already knew what they had but he still liked to update his ‘to watch' list.

An old black and white movie was playing on the display monitors around the store but unusually Alison's attention seemed glued to it. She finally noticed Billy as he approached the check-out desk with his tapes.

"Hey, you're still wearing my glasses!" She looked happily surprised. She was donning some uncharacteristically understated wire-framed ovals herself.

"Yeah, I like them," Billy admitted, "I feel like some kind of cool jazz musician or 1950s intellectual like—"

"Allan Sherman?"

"I was thinking more like Dave Brubeck or Jean-Paul Sartre, not the singer of Hello Muddah Hello Faddah , but... sure."

The store was totally empty. Billy poked through the pile of returns on her desk but her gaze was already locked back on the store monitors.

"I recognize it now! Plan Nine from Outer Space!" Billy said, "The current holder of the ‘Worst Movie Ever Made' title."

"It's a pretty junior varsity pick from the cult cinema canon but I was just re-reading Nightmare of Ecstasy and felt like seeing it again, y'know,"

"Did you know Bela Lugosi died in the middle of filming? That's why he has his cape over his face the whole movie– it's a different guy."

"He died before filming even started," Alison corrected, "Ed Wood shot two reels in front of Tor Johnson's house to use for two future projects."

"I read that Tim Burton is making a biopic. We totally have to see it when it comes out," Billy said enthusiastically.

"Bela was replaced by Wood's girlfriend's chiropractor. Ed Wood claimed he had identical ears to Bela Lugosi. Never mind the guy was, like, a foot taller than him," She smiled at the shop TV, "the whole movie is just a compounding pile of bad ideas. "

She gazed up at the screen like anyone else would look at a newborn baby in an iron lung— simultaneously awestruck, protective and about to cry. Her pupils were wide but moved rapidly, studying the scene. Her guard was down, no smirking or sarcastic defense.  She wasn't judging it or mocking it or feeling superior to what was universally agreed to be poorly-written, slapdash, boring, stupid movie, but loving it for its flaws.

"Did you know how Ed Wood got the money to make Plan 9 ?" Alison asked and then turned to Billy with a crooked smile, "He got The First Baptist Church of Beverly Hills to bankroll it for if the cast got baptized. Then they made him change the title from Graverobbers from Outer Space to Plan 9 from Outer Space. That's insane, right?"

Billy's heart nearly stopped as it dawned on him what she was doing.

"And this shower curtain on the alien ship here," she pointed at the screen, "It's in the movie two other places: once in front of a bomb and once, well, just in a shower."

A True Quizboy gives trivia not to show off but to show affection. He mines out interesting information and shares it to say "Look what I've found to entertain you. To out-quizboy a quizboy is to answer back in his own language of love. Billy couldn't deny it anymore. It wasn't just a friendship on his end. Even if it was illegal, immoral or just creepy, Billy was head over heels in love with the teenage girl who worked at the video store.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed he was staring at her. She looked over the edge of her glasses sternly and flipped him the bird before leaning forward to watch the rest of The Worst Movie Ever Made™. 

Saturday morning, the Angel of Death Wagon pulled onto the gravel shoulder and honked twice.

"Billy's still in the shower," Pete White shouted while leaning out the door, holding a blanket over his head to deflect daylight. He waved her closer.

"We stayed up really late and he kinda overslept," White continued at a more civilized volume as Alison got out of the car. As she got closer she could see the hangover written all over his face as he held the door open for her. 

"What a libertine," Alison muttered in monotone, stepping into the trailer for the first time. It felt like an intrusion and she was sure Billy would not be happy she was in his home, but the inside of her car was boiling. She wasn't waiting out in the desert sun.

"Want some coffee," White raised his mug, "Or, wait, do teenagers even drink coffee?"

"I'm good," she said, "Thanks... um... White."

"Call me ‘Pete,' please. ‘‘White' is Billy's thing. He couldn't clear the jump from ‘Mr. White' to ‘Pete' and got stuck halfway," White (or rather, Pete) explained.

Alison stepped further into the room, looking around.  Her mouth seemed to be permanently set in an expression that read alternately as bored, annoyed or a sarcastic smile depending on the angle you saw her from. She pulled an asthma inhaler from her lunchbox purse, shook it and did a hit— a physical criticism of their slapdash house-cleaning skills. 

"I don't like girls calling me by my last name. It feels too gym teacher-ish," Pete explained as he swallowed two aspirin with his coffee.

She wore spiked bracelets, a flowery mini-dress mostly covered in a ratty cardigan, and tights with runs under knee-high combat boots. Her patchy colored dye job was pulled up in pigtails with loose strands hanging over her eyes. Pete could dig the vibe, that whole "Tank Girl meets kinderwhore" look, but still gave her the hairy eyeball as the she-harpy destined to sooner-or-later break the heart his innocent best friend. But it's not like he wasn't going to be polite to a guest in his home.

 "This is way nicer than I thought it would be," Alison without emotion, unclear whether she was speaking sarcastically, as she picked a pillow off the floor and placed it back on the plaid sofa. The room didn't smell too bad and was reasonably clean, but stuffed with far more random junk that the trailer was ever designed to hold.

"Yeah, it's not bad. Plus, no rent," Pete said while punching a Streets of Rage 3 cartridge into the Sega Genesis. He offered a controller to Alison, "Do you wanna beat up some bad dudes?"

She considered it while looking off to what she assumed was a bedroom door for any indication of Billy's time of arrival. 

"Yeah, I guess," she said as sat on the built-in couch next to him and half-heartedly clicked the controller.

"Where are you kids off to?"

"Flea market," Alison said,"then a movie."

"Wicked. Ever find any records at the flea market?"

"Some, but it's mostly ‘80s garbage."

"Ouch. That's my era you're insultin' there, lady," White reacted, seizing his heart mock-wounded, "Back when I was still deejaying on the radio."

"On the radio, huh?"

"I started in college radio. Then I went pro out in Los Angeles spinning New Wave Synthpop. Late Glam through New Romantic."

"Lame," Alison dismissed, "John Hughes soft boy crap."

The door to the bedroom slid open. Billy walked out. "White? Have you seen where I left my Hush Puppies? I—" he noticed Alison and White side by side on the sofa.

"I dunno, pally.  Did ya check—" Pete was cut off by Billy whizzing past to grab Alison by the arm to drag her back to the car.

"Nice meeting you... um... Pete," Alison managed to blurt out in the midst of being rushed out by a waist-high orange cyclone.

Buckling into the driver's seat, Alison paused and let out a breath, "Y'know, up close your roommate is really good-looking."

"If you're a sell out maybe," Billy snarled, fiddling with the car stereo and getting nothing, "If you're turned on by talcum powder and Reaganomics."

Alison teased, "Awww. The Little Mermaid is jealous."

"I mean, if you're shallow enough to be distracted by proportionate head-to-body-mass I can see ‘being into' someone like him, I guess," Billy spat with disgust.

Alison frowned, "Touchy touchy."

"Well, the joke's on you! He's probably gay. And he's, like, really, really old. He's basically as old as your dad," Billy pouted, "... and he does drugs."

Alison just snickered to herself and mumbled in her best stab at a Peteic accent, "Whatevah."

Billy's face felt hot; he didn't even know why he was so angry. He had never spoken ill of his best friend before but Alison wasn't allowed to like White. She was his friend. She definitely shouldn't like White more than she liked him.

Billy felt the pain of a thousand daggers stabbing his chest – The Ever-Popular Pete White, without even meaning to, had stolen the only girl he had ever loved.

JE POURRAIS ME PERDRE DANS CE BROUILLARD

Their end of Colorado had a couple of big sprawling multiplexes for all your big, loud, stupid action/dinosaur/superheroes-with-nipples needs but the arty indie films from New York and the film festivals never played there. There was an indie film revolution happening and suburban suckers like them still had to see fart comedies and thrillers than were 90% explosions; so unfair.

Alison got a tip from a customer that a couple from State University had opened an “art house screening room” for independent films that otherwise would be impossible to find, even on video. It was an long drive, but it seemed like an adventure.They drove on the highway past sandy nothingness heading for the northern suburbs. Just desert and scrub and rocks, sometimes going up, sometimes going down.The only excitement was when they passed a gas station once in a while.

“I’ve always wanted to go on a cross-country road trip,” Alison considered, “Drive from here to Graceland or something. Hit all the dumb roadside attractions like the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota.”

“Hmmm,” Billy mumbled noncommittally. He was sulking.

“Hey, let’s go on a road trip to Graceland and see the toilet Elvis died on,” Alison suggested, but Billy was lost in his own head.

The entire flea market trip was oddly tense, Billy’s mind kept creating images of his chalky roommate sweeping Alison off her feet. It looked like scenes from Labyrinth but with Pete in the David Bowie role, ballroom dancing in soft focus with Alison while he couldn't be anything but some ugly muppet wiggling his arms on the sidelines. Billy knew he was being paranoid but it gave him someone to be mad at instead of stewing in his own feelings. Despite the epic battle raging inside his mind, Alison remained oblivious.

“Great. Mom’s new billboard went up,” Alison finally broke the awkward silence as the giant sign appeared over the horizon and grew larger as they approached: a power-suited middle-aged woman holding up two thumbs and displaying a rictus grin that seemed more like an animal threat-display to the viewer than anything like a normal human expression of happiness.

"TWINKLE KAHAN, REALTOR. #1 Central Colorado Springs. I sell your house! You buy your dream! ” Billy read, unsure of the orthographic nightmare, “Your mother’s name is ‘Twinkle’ ?!”

“Her professional name. She thought it sounded ‘the most American,’” Alison said with an eye roll, “Colorado wasn’t ready for Bùi Thị Xuân Kahan to 'sell their house and buy their dream number one realtor' bla bla bla...”

“These ads are everywhere,” Billy said, “I never actually read the name before. Twinkle? Twinkle.”

“The billboards pretty bad but at least she stopped doing radio spots,” Alison said, “Every shithead at my school shouting their 'me-rikee G.I. suckee suckee' impression at me. Retards.”

“I can see that getting old fast,” Billy sympathized even if he was more ignored than bullied in high school. He was only nine as a Freshman. What psychopath would bully a nine-year-old? He got stepped on in the hallway a lot, though.

“I don’t need my own mother supplying ammunition for slope-browed shitheads to use against me. OF COURSE she didn’t care. She said that proved the ads were effective.”

She reached over to manually flip the cassette tape. The billboard disappeared behind them in the distance. She pulled another cigarette from her pocket.

“She doesn’t understand the American luxury of ‘embarrassment,’ Anything short of helicopters dropping napalm on your village can be walked off in her mind” 

“DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince said it best: 'Parents just don’t understand.'”

The Angel of Death Wagon sputtered and coughed as they did a rolling stop in front of the address. It didn’t look like a movie theater, but after driving forever they had to go in. 

Up two flights of stairs was a half-lit open lobby with a small hand-painted sign– CINEMA PURGATORIO. They walked down a short hallway lined with pinned posters for coming (or going?) attractions— Living in Oblivion, Spalding Gray’s Anatomy, Spanking the Monkey — to the single theater on the other side of a crushed velvet curtain. 

“I think,” Alison muttered conspiratorially, “this might just be a person’s apartment that they’re pretending is a movie theater.”

“We’re dealing with..." Billy glanced around furtively, "zoning scofflaws?” Alison bit her lip to stifle the audible laugh and Billy melted internally. He was devolving into a big gooey pudding minute by minute but he had to keep it together. Stay cool and ironic, right? Alison pointed to a pair of seats in the middle of a row.

As cramped as the apartment-cum-screening room was, it was noticeably empty. One old man at the front. Another couple near the back. There couldn’t have been more than 50 seats in the room and not one matched any of the others. All of the furniture and decoration looked like it had been rescued from a dumpster or demolition site.  Like a series of actual movie theaters had all exploded and the owners had squirreled away anything that wasn’t incinerated to ash to furnish this place. The room even smelled like smoke, but they both smoked a pack of cigarettes on the drive so everything smelled like smoke to them.

The room was quiet. You could hear a pin drop and they waited for the film to start.

“What’s that high-pitched whine,” Alison asked.

“What?”

“It’s like a tinny electronic buzz.”

“I can’t hear anything.”

“It sounds like someone zooming-in constantly with a camera.”

“Oh, I think that’s me,” Billy raised his mechanical hand, “I’m fidgeting.”

“Well, knock it off.”

“Sorry. Sorry. I’ll try.”

He was twitching his fingers even more now, but he put his sweater over his hand to muffle the gear noise. Why was he acting like a spazz all of a sudden? He didn’t have a reason to be nervous since nothing had changed between them, only what was going on inside his own cavernous head. Alison, again, remained oblivious.

The movie started. A low-budget French indie black-comedy that was already five or six years old now. Some ambiguously post-apocalypse Paris a building full of quirky weirdos was hiring unwary handymen to be murdered and butchered for their meat. But mostly it was disconnected moments of highly art-directed mayhem. Billy had no idea there were ugly people in France at all, based on their cultural output, but this movie seemed to corner the market on them.

Alison leaned over and whispered, “Do you know French too? You don’t need the subtitles I bet.”

“I can understand it better than I can be understood,” Billy whispered back, the same situation for any of the dozen languages he’d taught himself and then been totally unable to communicate for his slushy pronunciation.

“Why don’t you learn Japanese? There’s no ‘sssss’ sound  in it, only ‘ssssh.’ So ‘city’ becomes ‘shitty,” Alison suggested quietly, “You’d be a natural.” 

Billy nodded but kept his attention on the movie. It was ok, he thought. Alison seemed into it but Billy’s mind was drifting again. He was totally preoccupied with analyzing every conversational exchange for some clue that she liked him. Like, liked-him -liked-him and then double-checking his own behavior to make sure he wasn’t giving away his own feelings. 

He was brought back to reality when Alison suddenly jumped and gasped next to him. On screen, the final confrontation— the cannibalistic butcher threw a knife that boomeranged back and the blade slammed into the middle of his forehead. She was fully buying into what was happening on screen, no ironic distance. Billy tried to look over subtly but she was on his blind side so he couldn’t see anything out of his peripheral vision and turning his head too much might break her out of the moment.

Denouement. Having escaped murder, the clownish hero and his bespectacled love interest played a duet on cello and singing saw on the roof of the apartment building. Billy heard quiet rustling, felt her lean in and brush against his arm. He was frozen, even though his heart was racing.  He didn’t want to startle her as if she was some skittish animal he had spotted in a forest She reached out in the dark and found Billy’s hand, holding it. He opened his fingers and held it back. He could feel the pressure of the grasp but nothing else– she was on his right and got the metal one. He couldn’t feel anything at all.

Merde.  

--

“White doesn’t want me seeing you. Do you think he’s jealous?”

“Jealous of you for having a girl to see a movie with or jealous of me for getting to spend time with you?” Alison asked between licks of her ice cream cone. 

“Not sure. Kinda both?” Billy looked back at his paper cup of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, not really feeling hungry. His mouth felt fuzzy so he forced down a spoonful.

They sat at one of the few tables in the fluorescent-lit, candy-colored ice cream parlor for a post-movie ice cream break before getting back on the road.

“Your hands are different sizes,” Alison suddenly noticed.

Billy held up his hands. He pressed them palm to palm. The metal one was at least 10% larger.

“I guess they didn’t design hands any smaller than this when they put it on. Does it look weird?”

“It’s a robot hand. Of course it looks weird, Daphne."

Billy rolled his eyes and rested his hands back on the table. Alison leaned over his hand, poking the half-domes on his knuckles to see if anything happened, oblivious to the steady drip of melted Cool Britannia her cone was leaving all over him.

He obliged her by pulling back his sleeve, showing where the metal prosthetic ended at the wrist— a ball-joint recessed partly into a lighter metal cuff with a ridge on it, connecting to the arm. The edge overlapped the flesh – concealing and protecting the connection. 

“Can you take your hand off?”

“I can take it off, yeah,” Billy explained, tapping the edge of the cuff, “But it takes a long time and it’s a massive pain in the ass to put it back on."

Her sudden fascination with his hand made him feel like he was doing show-and-tell to a kindergarten class. It was weirdly cute. Worth having to blast out his knuckle joints with a can of compressed air tomorrow to get all the rainbow sprinkles out.

"I only take the hand off when it’s malfunctioning so I can work on it. It’s not meant to be detachable, really," Billy explained.

“How much of this is still you?” she stroked his forearm just above the metal like it was a pet cat. Her fingertips felt warm. Billy’s ears blushed scarlet, but he tried to play it cool.

“Most of it. There are wires inside to make the hand work. The outside is still, uh, human.”

“Can you feel this?” She dragged her finger over the metal palm.

“Just pressure. Not anything more specific,” he said, “I could feel pain there, too, if you wanted to hurt me.”

“Technology can’t live up to the original model,” Alison pressed her palm against his human hand in a slow-motion high-five, lining up the fingers.

“Whoa, even your person-hand is bigger than mine,” she compared the two, “You have big hands for such a little guy, Josie.”

He entwined her fingers in his. She didn’t pull away. They were holding hands again but now I could feel it for real.

“Alischon, do you feel… I mean. With me, could you, um…” Billy struggled as he got too tongue-tied to finish the thought.

“Gross! Your fingertips feel like gummi bears,” she squealed, fully distracted by squeezing his silicone fingertips. She hadn't heard a word he said.

---

Back at home, he had to keep his hands busy and his mind occupied or the thoughts would consume him. He bought a whole chicken at the supermarket to practice his suturing with a needle and thread. Over-and-unders. Vertical mattress stitch. Subcutaneous. Under his hand the poor ten-pound roaster was looking fully Frankensteined or like a needlepoint sampler in flesh made by a serial killer granny.

Pete walked by the breakfast table, sorting the mail, "You're gonna get salmonella, pally. Wash your hands before you touch anything."

"Do you want me to practice on poultry or to do it for the first time sewing up your neck after I cut all the melanomas out?

"I have tumors. Jesus. Where?"

"Not yet. You will," Billy stated, "If there's any justice." "How was the movie," he asked neutrally.

Billy ignored him and stabbed his needle into the breast of the roaster more angrily than a medical professional should. Pete frowned, picking up on the subtext.

"Pally, I swear I have no interest in your girl."

"She's not ‘my girl,'" Billy hissed, "She likes YOU."

"She doesn't like me. She doesn't know me. Nobody likes me once they know me."

"She said you were so good-looking," Billy spat.

"I'm way too old for her," White sputtered back, "She talks like a robot. She's not even my type!” 

"Because you're gay," Billy snapped, just to be hurtful even though it made no sense for his attack.

"I'm not gay," Pete repeated, just as he had a million times before in a million other arguments, "Look, pally, we just made small talk waiting for YOU, that's ALL."

When Pete "turned on the charm" he was revolting. Women were nauseated by him and men were moved to violence. But somehow an indifferent, distracted Pete White doing the bare minimum was irresistible. Pete himself never picked up on it.

"She told me my taste in music sucked. She basically called me old!" Pete threw up his arms for emphasis.

"If I find out you slept with her," Billy narrowed his eye and pointed with a scalpel, "I will literally, actually kill you."

"When would I have... Look, I met her this morning for the first time!" Pete argued, fully exasperated.

"I can forgive anything you've done to me but if I found out you're sleeping with her I will slit your throat myself without a moment's hesitation. I will slit your throat and sew it back up like it never happened just so I can slit it again."

Pete bit his lip. "So... you really like her then."

Ice-cold vengeance was too hard to keep up and Billy melted back into goo. He rubbed his free-range pullet patient and burbled, "It's killing me. I can't even tell how she feels. She'll be sweet to me one second and tells me to fuck off and die right after it! What should I do?"

"If I knew how love worked I wouldn't be sitting here with you. I'd be Mr. Mom-ing my own brood of perfect and exceptionally pale children while my bread-winning Mrs. — Steffi Graf— was off winning Wimbledon again."

"Steffi Graf?" Billy snapped, "Where the hell did that come from? You don't even like tennis."

"I dunno, it just seemed to make sense in my mind. So I said it," Pete shrugged, "I am dead set against any of this bullshit ON THE RECORD but... have you tried asking this chick to be your girlfriend?"

Billy looked puzzled, "I can just ask?"

"Yeah, just ask."

SERVING PETER FALK REALNESS

A few days later Billy jogged down the gravel path towards Alison's monstrous car as it pulled off the highway onto the shoulder in front of the trailer. She had climbed halfway out of the driver's side window and shouted to him, "Cosmic bowling!"

"I don't know what that is," he shouted back as he reached the passenger side door, "Should I? It's bowling, I assume."

"It's new. It's the newest. Bold wave of the future," Alison said deadpan, "It's bowling, but at night. With blacklight."

"Huh," Billy said noncommittally as he opened the car door.

"It's cosmic... but it's bowling," she shrugged as she slid back down into the driver seat and turned the ignition. The Angel of Death sputtered and whined.

"Wait, wait, wait, I have to show you something," Billy said, remembering what he had in his pocket. He palmed a curved white disk— a little smaller than a pog but bigger than a nickel. He checked his reflection in the car's side mirror and slipped it under his eyelid like a contact lens. He nudged it in place until it seemed like it was resting where it was supposed to be.

He took his seat on the passenger side and leaned toward Alison with his eyes bugged as open as he could make them.

"Check it out. It came in the mail today."

"A glass eye?"

"It's made of acrylic, but yeah," He tapped his right eye—  a realistic but unmoving plastic prosthetic, like a doll's eye.

"Oh that is so amazingly creepy. I love it."

"I couldn't afford to get a permanent one put in— they're like 10 grand and you have to see an ophthalmologist to get those custom-fitted and I don't have the insurance to do that, but I found these temporary conformer shells from the medical supply catalog..."

Alison moved closer, staring into his functioning eye and then to the prosthetic, looking closely at the details. He could feel her breath on his eyelashes.

"...You're only supposed to wear the temporary ones right after surgery until you get a real implant so it doesn't move. The temporary shells don't move, I mean, like a real implant would because the temporary eye doesn't connect to any ocular muscles," Billy over-explained breathlessly as her staring directly into his eyes, even for a clinical purpose, was making his heart race.

She tilted her head, concluding her observation. "Hazel," she said, leaning back into the driver's seat.

"I guess? The catalog just said ‘Color HLC-49C.' It seemed like the closest match. Does it look normal?"

"No. Of course not," Alison laughed.

Billy slumped, discouraged.

"D'awww. You try so hard," Alison said mock-pityingly as the engine turned over, "My little Sammy Davis, Jr.” 

"I'm not gonna show you my silicone skin hand cover now," Billy pouted, "You'll only dissch it."

"Dish it?"

"No dissssss. Like ‘disrespect.' Like I'm Biggie and you're Tupac. You diss my hand and then we got beef."

"Keep wearing the oven mitt with the tomatoes on it. I like that one," Alison said absentmindedly, pointing her land yacht towards the bowling lanes at the edge of town.

"I'll get some of those Freezie Freakies. They change color in the snow."

TAKE THE SKINHEADS BOWLING

They entered the dingy, mostly empty bowling alley at 11 PM.

"Oh. My. God," Alison's eyes sparkled with ironic appreciation, "This is even lamer than I was imagining."

 "The Only Way Is Up" boomed from free standing giant-sized club speakers rented just for the occasion. A disco ball spun above, reflecting the strobing multicolored spotlights puncturing the dim alley. Black lights lined each lane making the pins and balls glow. The whole grandeur of the cosmos in miniature... with rented shoes.

"It seems alright, I guess," Billy stated but his sense of "camp"and "kitsch" was not nearly as honed. He couldn't even see the difference between the two without complex analysis.

They paid for a lane and were shuffled on to the shoe rental. She took off her platform combat boots and put them on the counter, losing about a half-foot of height in the dismount. She reached down for Billy's sneakers to trade in for rental shoes as well.

"Oh my god. These are the most adorable weenie-teenie baby Chuck Taylors I've ever seen," she cooed as she held them.

"Ugh, stop," Billy groaned. 

The counter worker, grumpy and second-guessing the choices he made in life that lead to this moment of being forced by his boss to wear strings of UV-reactive candy beads and multiple glow-stick necklaces for "Cosmic" night, handed over their hideous two-tone lane shoes, "Nine for the lady and... a kid's size 3 for her baby brother."

Billy grumbled.

"At least he didn't call you my son," Alison offered as consolation, handing over his pair.

They claimed a lane with their coats and left to load up at the snack bar before diving into sporting pursuits.

"I haven't gone bowling since I was nine and since you have no depth perception, I'm going to assume we're both going to be terrible at this, right?" Alison asked.

"Probably," Billy shrugged, pulling on the rented shoes.

"Those are the teeny-tiniest, most adorable widdle twee bowling shoes I've ever seen."

"Shut up," Billy snapped, genuinely annoyed.

"So I propose we forget the scores," Alison tapped the lane scoring desk with the built in overhead projector, "And give each other points for style instead."

"You don't think I can't whup your ass in that category too?" Billy said, standing while stretching his arms and neck in anticipation of a dance battle.

Alison filled in the score sheet: Alison "Rolling Thunder" Kahan vs. "Baby Shoes" Whalen. She added some caricature doodles to the edge, making sure to highlight Billy's new glass eye with some sparkles and radiating lines.

He found a cotton work glove from the library in his pocket and slipped it over his mechanical hand. He wasn't sure if he was protecting his hand from the bowling ball or the bowling ball from his hand, but it seemed like a fair precaution. He approached the rack filled with special black-light reactive balls for the evening and tested some finger holes to pick one that would work.

Alison looked concerned, "Should I ask at the front if they have any, um, duck-pin sized balls for—"

Billy pulled an acid green ball from the topmost rack while standing on his tiptoes, "You don't think I can use a ten pound ball?" He held it up with one hand, using only his fingertips as he walked back to their lane.

"Do you know how much the Oxford English Dictionary weighs?" Billy asked, effortlessly spinning the ball in his hand, "Second edition, of course."

"Ok, fine. You're not as delicate as—"

"137.72 lbs. Twenty volumes. Our library system has two sets. I've carried those things— or books of a similar weight— up and down ladders and on and off carts for eight hours a day for four years. I can handle a fucking bowling ball," he stated as he whipped the the object in question down the lane in a perfect straight shot... directly into the gutter.

"Fuck me!" Billy sputtered, as his top-cool moment fizzled. Alison just howled with laughter.

"I'm stronger than I look is the point, ok," Billy said, defeated, "I could probably lift you."

"Lay one hand on me and you're riding home in the trunk, king of the beach," Alison shot back, drying her hands over the air vent on the ball return and selecting a hot pink-and-lavender marble swirled ball.

"No really. I can totally lift my roommate over my head!"

"Yeah, well, that guy has hollow bones and an eating disorder."

"I thought you said he was so handsome."

"Pretty face. No staying power," Alison shrugged as she hurled her pink ball down the lane carelessly, ricocheting off the side and knocking down three pins as The Pet Shop Boys cover of Go West bounced through the room.

"Woo! Ministry of Sound! MADchester! COSMIC!" Alison apathetically shouted in celebration, while performing a gyrating, arm-wiggling take on what she imagined a "rave dance" might look like despite having only read those words in SPIN so had no actual idea what a "rave" was. 

She also wasn't dressed for a rave nor was dressed for bowling either. She wore a child's velvet party dress with a lace collar, picked up for a couple bucks at the Goodwill. It was probably once some little girl's holiday dress, but on the taller teenager the hem stopped only three inches below her Merry Christmas. Even with the height lost with the amputation of her platform boots, Billy still could see directly up her skirt without meaning to. She paired it with neon pink tights that glowed under the black light and a necklace made of plastic Halloween skulls. Her sweet spot was a  perfect combination of stupid and hideous that dared anyone to find her attractive. 

Despite her efforts, Billy did. Obsessively so.

He had to do it. He was going to ask, straight on: "Alischon, can I be your boyfriend?"

She snort-laughed before noticing he was just staring at her. The plastic sclera of the glass eye glowed under black light, making him look half-possessed. 

"Oh shit, you weren't just being ironic."

"Scherious at a heart attack," he lisped stoically, his one good eye locked on hers. The fake eye looking blankly off at an angle.

She clamped her mouth to stop another torrent of uncontrolled laughter, "You're killing me, Pumpkinhead."

Billy looked at his feet. This wasn't going at all like the scenarios he had modeled mathematically.

"You're always flirting with me. Saying I'm cute or I'm sexy, it's..." Billy struggled for his tone, torn between rage and self-pity, "It's... fucking... fraudulent negligence.” 

"I'm busting your chops to make your ears turn red," Alison said, as if it was obvious, "I've done it every day since I met you!"

"It's driving me bugfuck nuts!" Billy roared.

"Why the hell would you take anything I say seriously?" Alison tried to pull her bowling ball from her fingers, exasperated, "I'm a liar and an asshole and a jerk. Only a mental case would want to date me."

"I can't tell if you're just teasing me because you can tell I'm crazy about you or... or..." the words tumbled out, "Or you maybe, despite giving me the finger and acting too cool for school, you kind of, um, actually like me like I like you?"

He looked up expectantly while bracing for the worst. His good eye flinched from the strain. Alison tried to lower the tension.

"What do you care about dating? I thought boys your age were still all ‘girls are gross.'"

"I'm not a FUCKING KID!" Billy shouted far louder than he meant to.

Alison stooped down to drop the ball on the edge of the lane.

"Why do you always wear such goddamned short skirts?" Billy muttered, any filter he had left was blown off in the hurricane of emotion coursing through his oversized skull, "I gotta excuse myself  to pound one out in the bathroom every time you lean over the ball return. Jesus."

"Is that why you keep going to the can? I thought the shitty nachos gave you the runs," Alison tilted her head to a paper tray of tortilla chips and neon orange ‘cheez.'

Billy slammed his forehead into the scoring desk.

"and I HAVE shorts under it. Thank you very much," Alison defended her virtue, pulling up the skirt hem to reveal bike shorts over her tights.

Billy just released a muffled irritated cry-moan. It wasn't getting through.

"With all these black lights in here you'd have to be extra careful with your aim..." Alison considered, miming a jerk-off gesture, "and you'd have to wash your hands really well."

"You're not even listening," Billy said pleadingly, "It's a joke to you,"

Alison finally took in how genuinely sad he looked, "I like hanging out with you. I like having a friend. Can't we just keep doing that?"

"We still could. We can. Everything stays the same..." Billy tried to sell her on the idea with forced enthusiasm, "...but with making out! Bonus!"

Alison went quiet and looked at the floor.

"We wouldn't have to do anything you didn't want to," Billy clarified quickly, spin-doctoring his pitch on the fly, "It's not a physical thing. I just wanted to..."

"But I don't feel that way about you," Alison blurted, "I don't feel that way about anybody. I can't."

No smirk. No joke. No sarcasm. Just honesty. She looked in pain to have to say something genuine. The words hung in the air.  From another lane, the sound of ball hitting pins echoed. Sparkly disco lights strobed over their faces.

"...Plus, you're, like, really, really weird looking,"Alison kept going unable to stop talking like her words were careening down a steep hill, "Your head is gigantic and you have all kinds of medical shit wrong with you so I can't even imagine how bizarre you look naked—

"No, no. I get it," Billy shook the aforementioned huge head.

"— Like maybe you have like... I dunno... two dicks or nine balls or some even weirder—"

"Alischon. Seriously. It's fine. Forget I brought it up."

She plunked down next to him on the scoring bench, looking drained. They sat in silence as C + C Music Factory filled the room.

Guys grab a girl, don't wait, make her twirl It's your world and I'm just a squirrel Tryin' to get a nut to move your butt To the dance floor, so yo what's up...

"Still friends?" Alison asked softly.

"Yeah, friends," Billy agreed, tight-lipped.

It's not a failure if you learn something out of it. After he got home, Billy sat in the shower for an hour.

It was a learning experience. He found out he could still cry out of the eye he didn't have any more.

.... to be continued

**This draft is still missing a scene of Pete's radio show which I will add in a future update.

OBEY's Andre the Giant Has A Posse stickers and their endless bootlegs/parodies have been everywhere since 1989, peaking in national popularity by the mid '90s. Didn't wanna do height/weight so added his pirate radio wavelength and OCA-1 is medical /genetic shorthand for Oculocutaneous Albinism type I: total lack of melanin in skin and eyes (though I guess medicine didn't know the exact gene affected until after the Human Genome Project)

The playlist for Pete's radio show is on YouTube and Spotify. Updated continually.

I fudged the years on this. Ed Wood came out in fall of 1994 and I said this was taking place in 1995-96, but I couldn't think of a better movie for this scene than Plan 9. This anachronism is eating away at me.

I'll answer ASKS on the story but if you got beef and you wanna tell me I am racist/homophobic/hot garbage, send it as a DM so I can delete it in private.

+ More to be added if I think of anything else.

⟶ All Master Billy & Mr. White posts 2022

part one | part two | part three | part four | index | archive of our own

[sunnysviolin]

Omotober Day Five- Photograph

“That's the thing about trust. It's like broken glass. You can put it back together, but the cracks are always visible--like scars that never fully heal.” ― Hope Collier,

Aubrey was almost out the door when her mother dropped the bombshell on her. Usually her mom wasn’t even awake when she was leaving for school, she was still sleeping off whatever bender she had gone on the night before. She was up today, in a stained robe with unkempt hair, but she was up.

“We’re going to visit Flora for dinner tonight. Go home on Basil’s bus, I don’t want you trying to skip out on this,” Past Aubrey would have been elated. Not only was her mom up, but they were going to see her best friend for dinner. Now she growled in irritation and rolled her eyes.

“Mom-”

“Aubrey, don’t even think about starting up,” Her mother cut her off with a warning look. Aubrey shut her mouth but hot anger lit up in her veins. She bit her tongue to stop from screaming as her mother continued her lecturing, “That woman is old and her time is coming soon. Respect thy elders, it’s the godly thing to do,”

The hypocrisy of it filled Aubrey’s mouth with poison, and she balled her hands into fists to stop them from shaking. Her mom loved to spout religious crap like this all the time, acting like saying scripture somehow equated to being a good person. Aubrey would have loved to ask her what part of her oh so precious book told her that getting drunk every night was godly, but if she started that fight again she would never make it to school on time.

“Whatever,” Aubrey muttered in lieu of her actual thoughts, pushing past her mother and out the front door. Her mother’s little lecture had taken long enough that the bus stop was completely empty, and that only made Aubrey’s mood even worse. She seized her scooter and whipped it around, putting all of her mental frustration into the physical act of riding to school and away from her house as fast as possible.

The ride did nothing to alleviate Aubrey’s anger and a dark storm cloud hung around her through every period. Students gave her a wide berth and teachers looked at her with distrustful eyes. They were all expecting something to happen, and she hated them for it. They always expected the worst of her. Kel had tried approaching her during their shared study hall, and she ignored him till he left. He wasn’t a true friend, he didn’t really care about her. Aubrey had to remember that, or she would fall for his tricks again.

By the end of the day, Aubrey was exhausted. To the rest of the world, she seemed just as bitter and angry as she was when she got to school, but it was just an easy front that she put out to keep them all away. Truthfully, she just wanted to go home, climb the stairs to her room, and curl up with her bunny (). She wanted to block out the world and all of the fake people in it, forget about false friends and the never ending loneliness that threatened to crush her at any point.

She couldn’t. She had to go to Basil’s.

She found Basil waiting outside, off in a corner. He was standing slightly hunched over, like he was trying to disappear right where he stood. Absolutely pathetic, but that was Basil. A weakling who had used Aubrey. Kel was with him, clearly talking at Basil and not to him. Basil wasn’t even paying attention, just staring off at the trees and playing with his fingers the way Aubrey hated. She walked over in long purposeful strides, putting herself in the middle between the two boys.

“Get lost,” Aubrey snapped, hoping that Kel would argue right back with her. It would be a good outlet, something that would get rid of the storm cloud. Basil was no fun to fight with, he just cried and apologized. At least Kel would do it properly.

But luck was not on her side. Kel didn’t fire back with a harsh retort or even give her a glare. He just sighed and rolled his eyes, something that instantly set alarm bells of resentment ringing in her head. She hated when he acted higher and mightier, rising above her like he was too good to fight with her. It was the same as her mother’s religious rambling, just another hypocrite who thought they were better than they were and judged Aubrey for not playing their game.

“I’ll see you later, Basil ,” Kel said, deliberately putting emphasis on ignoring that Aubrey even existed. The urge to kick out his legs and pound him into the dirt was overwhelming, but the sound of the buses starting to rumble cut off that train before it left the station. She growled and yanked Basil along with her by the wrist, walking over to his bus and climbing the high steps. Aubrey practically threw him into an open three seater and launched her bag in after, sitting as close to the aisle as she could and as far away from him as possible.

She didn’t want them, but as she sat on the bus with her former oldest friend, memories of all the times they had done this before came to her one by one. They had always chosen a two seater before, they hadn’t needed the room of three. They would cram close together and read the same book, or chat about all the things they could do when they got to his house. They had almost missed their stop multiple times because they were so lost in their conversation, and oftentimes they had to shout for the bus driver to hold on so they could get off. It was funny, sweet to the point of saccharine.

The thoughts made Aubrey sick now. She tried to pretend it was just the righteous fury she obviously should have felt at their betrayal, but there was something else in there. A thing with dark claws that dug into her chest and made itself known with pain. The word for it sat heavy in her mind, there but unspoken, pushed to some long forgotten corner that she never looked at and never wanted to. Aubrey had enough trouble grieving the dead, she had no need for grieving the living too. The bus reached their stop and she hopped off without looking back. Basil would follow or he wouldn’t, she didn’t care either way.

“Aubrey!” Flora tottered towards them down the sidewalk, her cane clutched firmly in her right hand. Her white hair was pulled up in her signature bun, and her dress was a pretty floral blue that matched her eyes.

She pulled Aubrey into a hug once the young girl was close enough, holding her in a tight squeeze. Aubrey put her hands around Flora, but she didn’t hug her back. Flora was fragile, her bones easily felt through paper dry skin. Aubrey hoped she never got old enough to feel this breakable, but the hug was still warm and comforting. Flora smelled like old lady soap and dried flowers and clean laundry, a smell that Aubrey loved for how safe it made her feel, and hated for how fleetingly often she got to experience it.

When Flora pulled back she kept her hands on Aubrey’s upper arms, looking the girl up and down. Aubrey resisted the urge to squirm, holding her breath as the old woman appraised her. She hadn’t seen Basil’s grandmother since the funeral almost two years ago, and she knew Flora hadn’t seen her shocking pink hair yet, or the new styles she liked to wear. Aubrey began to steel herself for a long winded speech about respecting her body like a temple, the kind her mom liked to preach after her second bottle of wine.

“You got taller,” Flora commented, turning around and leading the way back to the house, “Come inside, I made some snacks for you two,”

Aubrey slowly let out the breath she had been keeping, letting Basil walk in front of her and towards his house. Flora had never been a mean spirited woman or purposefully judgemental, but Aubrey’s threshold for trust was a lot lower than it used to be. Her anger began to bleed out and shame took its place. Aubrey usually thought the worst of people, and that didn’t bother her because she was usually proven right in the end, but there were exceptions. Flora had never done anything to earn her ire, even if her grandson had.

Aubrey followed them into their home, taking her shoes off at the entrance and looking around. Nothing had changed really, flowers and plants still hung in pots all around and the bookshelf was still packed to the brim. There was a pot bubbling on the stove and vegetables half cut on a board next to it. Flora gestured towards the table and slowly made her way to the fridge, pulling out a carton of strawberries and two oranges. She made quick work of the fruits and was soon putting a platter of cut up pieces of fruit between the two children.

“You two can finish your homework here while I finish up the grub. Dinner is going to be in an hour and a half. I know five o’clock is a little early for you youngins, but I like to be in bed by six!” The old woman laughed at her own nonexistent joke, the sound creaky and roughened with age. She had to stop to cough halfway through, but she waved away Basil’s worried gaze and reaching arms, “Please dear I’m fine. Aubrey you have to teach my grandbaby here how to relax more and just enjoy life,”

Aubrey didn’t respond, using digging through her backpack as an excuse to not have to acknowledge what Basil’s grandmother had said. It was less of a hassle to pretend that she hadn’t heard then to lie and act like she cared if Basil was uptight or not. Basil also didn’t say anything, he just started his work in silence. Flora’s genial mood faltered ever so slightly, but she took their dampened mood in stride.

“Okay then, while you two mope, I’ll keep working on dinner,”

Flora went over to the kitchen proper and turned on the radio, listening to some talk show that Aubrey’s mom also liked. The girl settled into her seat and began to flip through her work, picking and choosing which assignments she would do and which ones she would blow off. There was no point to doing some of them, the teacher was going to fail her anyway, so why should she try? At least if she put all her efforts into one or two classes with cool teachers, she might pass. It was almost dinner time when her peace was broken without her permission

“Did you understand the earth science homework?”

Aubrey looked up, shooting Basil a derisive look for even bothering to speak. He flinched away from her, but held firm, waiting for an answer. She didn’t even want to bother, but she knew Flora was nearby and probably listening, and she would have questions if Aubrey ignored her grandson, or worse, told him to shut up.

“It was easy,” Aubrey tersely replied, putting her anger into her pen. Her words started to come out jagged and uneven, but she didn’t care. It felt good, “It’s just identifying minerals,”

“I don’t get it,” Basil murmured, more to himself than to her. He scratched something out on his worksheet and fisted a hand in his hair, “She explained this over and over, I don’t understand why I don’t get it,”

Aubrey watched the display of his anxiety for a few moments before letting out an exaggerated sigh, letting her head flop back against the chair. It wasn’t even fun to watch him get upset, it just made her feel bad, which only made her angrier. She pushed her chair away from the table, enjoying the loud screech it gave and how uncomfortable it made Basil. Then she stood and walked around the table, leaning over him and getting in his space.

“Which one are you confused on?” She demanded, and he pointed to the question with a shaking finger. She looked at the problem and rolled her eyes. It wasn’t even one of the difficult ones. Their teacher had given them a table of potential minerals and then a series of questions with specific properties. They had to correctly pick which mineral went to which list of properties.

“Okay so you already got half of them, so you just have diamond, muscovite, talc, and gypsum left,” Aubrey stated, going over the options, “The mineral cleaves into thin sheets, has a white streak, and a pearly luster. Which out of those ones has those traits?”

Basil didn’t respond, still shaking from their proximity. He stammered out some unintelligible words, his hands clasping together around his middle. Before he could devolve into an entire anxiety attack, and more importantly before Flora noticed what was going on, Aubrey would have to deal with this

“Would you quit that? I’m not gonna bite,” She barked, and he flinched further away. Great. Aubrey forced herself to take a breath and count to ten, the thing that the annoying school counselor had showed her that almost never worked. Aubrey tried again.

“Okay instead of thinking about it that way. Let’s go with which ones don’t have those features. Does diamond have a streak?”

“No it’s harder than the streak plate,” Basil responded, which was what their teacher had said word for word. Aubrey had started off with a question she knew he would know the answer to, because Mrs. Tommen had made Basil repeat her when she thought he wasn’t paying attention earlier that day.

“So then obviously it can’t be diamond.” Aubrey said, unable to take all of the snottiness in her tone. It had to be good enough, besides he should know it was stupid that he needed help with this.

“The rest have a white streak though,” Basil said after a quick check of his notes, “It could be any of them,”

Aubrey briefly considered banging her head against the wall. Anything to get her away from rocks and this idiot. She walked around to her side of the table and went back to her own work, putting her head close to the paper.

“Look at the rest of the traits. They don’t all have the same traits. Just do it that way, and quit bugging me,” She hissed. Basil wilted, but he focused back on his work.

“Thanks for the help,” It came out quiet and timid, but it was there. Aubrey jerked her head in a nod, and the two of them lapsed back into silent solo work until Aubrey’s mother knocked on the door. She was dressed in a purple dress that had seen better days and came bearing store bought cookies that still had a sale sticker on them. Her hair was done, but flyaways surrounded her head like a dust cloud, and her smile was entirely fake.

Flora came over and greeted Aubrey’s mom with enthusiasm, thanking her for  her generosity and guiding her to the table. They made small talk as Basil and Aubrey gathered their things and Basil set the table. How her mom’s job was going, how was Flora’s health, all the usual things Aubrey couldn’t care less about.

The conversation only got more boring when dinner started. When they had done this in the past, Basil and Aubrey easily entertained one another with jokes and teasing jabs and barely noticed the time passing. Now each minute was an hour and Aubrey had achieved levels of boredom previously never reached. Aubrey caught Basil’s eye and nodded towards the doorway to the bedrooms, hoping he caught her hint.

“Um G-Granny?” Basil stuttered, grabbing her attention, “May Aubrey and I be excused?”

Flora looked at both of their plates and nodded, patting Basil on the arm. They gathered up their plates and put them in the sink. As she was about to finally escape, Aubrey’s mother crooked a finger in her direction. She walked to her mom and was pulled down roughly by the arm. It was nothing like the gentle pats that Flora gave Basil, but a clear warning.

“Behave,” Her mother said in a harsh whisper, and Aubrey gritted her teeth.

She hated that word. She hated her mother. She hated this whole stupid dinner. Aubrey didn’t bother to answer as she pulled away from her mom. Her mom didn’t want an answer, she wanted a doll for a daughter. A pretty perfect doll that made small talk and smiled at jokes that weren’t funny and did whatever she asked. Aubrey stole away from the kitchen table, walking into Basil’s room and shutting the door. She didn’t like spending time with him anymore, and she certainly didn’t want to talk to him, but anything was better than being reminded just how much her own mother didn’t like her.

Basil’s room was also in a stasis, unchanged and unevolved from when she last saw it. The only difference was a blooming white orchid, the petals spread around the stem like angel wings. An orchid that was cared for meticulously, surrounded in the dying light of the day with a golden halo. An orchid that stopped Aubrey in her tracks when her eyes landed on it.

Aubrey had only seen orchids like this in one place. She had assumed that the Pastor did it, or some of the church ladies. She knew that the auxiliary had a circulating list of volunteers that went to tend to the graveyard. Aubrey had even considered that the strange man who always seemed to be in the cemetery might put them there next to her.

She knew Hero didn’t visit. He never went anywhere near the church, hadn’t in years. She didn’t know or care what Kel did, and Sunny didn’t even leave the house anymore. Aubrey had thought she was the only one that visited, the last person that even cared. For some reason her brain had completely blocked out the logical idea that Basil, who loved flowers more than anything, would be the one to carefully tend to a difficult to grow bloom.

“You put these by her?” Aubrey asked quietly, tracing a finger over the delicate petals. Neither of them needed Aubrey to say who “her” was, there was only one person left that connected them. Basil nodded, keeping his eyes down and away from his former friend. Aubrey continued to stare down at the flower, her mind racing faster than she could catch up.

“It’s a white egret,” Basil said, sitting on his bed near her and looking at the flower, “It means my thoughts will follow you into your dreams. I thought it was...I thought she might like it,”

She would have. Mari would have thought it was incredibly sweet, and she would have been able to tell Basil so. She wasn’t like Aubrey who spewed hate without a care in the world but who could never manage to say something kind without stuttering. She would have been able to bring them all together so effortlessly, there would have been no issue. None of this would have ever happened in the first place.

Aubrey was adrift, alone in a sea of confusion that sent wave after wave to try and drown her. She wanted to sit on the bed next to Basil, wanted to finally crack open and let everything out. She could trust him to listen, trust him to care. He was the only one besides her who still cared enough to visit. She should do that. That would be good. But she couldn’t get her feet to move.

“Aubrey?” Basil said, hesitant but still reaching out. She pulled away from the orchid, stumbling back and looking around. A thick leather bound book in the middle of his bookshelf caught her eye, and she wandered over to it. She knew this book.

“Aubrey, don’t.” Basil ordered, his words meaning nothing to her. She could hear him say it, she could even be mildly shocked that he even dared to talk to her like that, when he had been so timid before, but none of it really reached her. Aubrey pulled his photo album out from the shelf, holding it in her hands and opening it.

Instead of the soft faded colors of their childhood, there was black. There was black over Sunny’s birthday, black over her pink raincoat. She could barely make out Hero and Kel arm wrestling, and she only knew which pictures were from the beach based on the small bits of yellow that peaked through the marker staining the memory.

He had scribbled over Mari’s picture.

Aubrey had never had an out of body experience like this. She was always solid, always grounded. Even when she had heard what Mari did, there was no part of her that was able to check out of the situation. Now she was high in the sky, somewhere distant and far where she could only watch as her heart was broken all over again.

A rough tug jerked her back into her body. Basil had snatched the album back from her, his eyes wild and blown wide open. She couldn’t even respond, she had no idea what to do first- steal the album back, or kill him.

“Get out!” Basil shrieked, holding the book against his chest and falling to his knees. She didn’t want to. She wanted to hit him, to feel his bones breaking under her fists and hear him crying out in pain. She could hurt him worse than he hurt her, make it so she wasn’t the only one suffering. He did this. He was the one who did this, and she wouldn’t be to blame for that. She wanted to wring his neck, to break down and start sobbing.

She wanted to run.

Aubrey shouted in rage, beyond words and beyond any outward expression of the emotions roiling within. She bodily threw the door open, running past the table and out the door. She heard her mother and Flora calling for her, but she ignored them, slamming the door and continuing to sprint away. She got back to her house in record time, not bothering to close the front door as she climbed up the ladder to her room as quickly as possible.

Aubrey locked the trap door to her room, finally letting out the scream that had been building up within her. No one was there to hear it but her bunny, and she was currently hiding in her hut from Aubrey’s meltdown. Aubrey flung herself onto her bed and buried her face in her pillows, screaming again. She could hear her mother coming into the house now, screeching in rage at Aubrey’s dramatic exit, catapulting insults left and right about Aubrey. The girl wasn’t listening and didn’t care. Her mind was focused on one thing and one thing only. She would get that album back from Basil, whatever it took to do so, and she would never, never, trust him again.