#and just general lives at the time that they couldn’t focus enough on themselves to do anything abt it

[thelilylav]

See the thing about Brapple is that they are requited, but never at the same time. Briar fell first and dedicated her life to making Apple happy but ended burning out because it was too much too soon, and Apple fell too late. By the time she realized what the unspoken feelings were, things had changed too much. There was nothing left to say.

[sleeplessdreamer14]

𝕬𝖍, 𝕭𝖚𝖙 𝕿𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝕱𝖎𝖗𝖘𝖙 𝕶𝖎𝖑𝖑

𝔣𝔞𝔫𝔡𝔬𝔪: what we do in the shadows

𝔰𝔲𝔪𝔪𝔞𝔯𝔶: you’re a half-blood vampire and you take your first victim.

𝔴𝔞𝔯𝔫𝔦𝔫𝔤: canon typical themes, brief cathartic violence, (implied) attempted sa, minor character death, blo0d (obviously)

𝔞/𝔫: the ending may be a bit rushed I just really wanted to post this already

“I was bitten, I believe…” you began, pausing for a moment to do some math in your head, wiggling one of your feet as you sat on the couch. “Two months ago. And y’know, in terms of vampirism, being a half-blood has its perks.” you continued with a shrug.

The scene cuts to you sitting in your bedroom in the light of the sun, completely unharmed. And your bed wasn’t a coffin, but took a similar shape. You gave the coffin a try once when you were first turned, but you couldn’t really sleep. Another scene showed you snacking on a Kit-Kat while reading.

“I can still eat human food, though I am garlic intolerant now, which is kind of a bummer. But that’s not even my biggest problem.”

The camera shows footage of you unscrewing the cap on a liter bottle containing a thick, dark burgundy liquid before pouring it into a glass.

“My vampire half still needs blood, like once or twice a week. Found that out the hard way.”

During your first week of being a vampire, you got very lightheaded and fainted in the middle of the hall since you hadn’t drank any blood since turning. Since you could digest human food, you could go a bit longer than most vampires without blood, but you still needed it.

“Straight up, I’m not a fan. Drinking it is one thing, draining it from the body is another.” you admitted, shaking your head and shrugging. “I ju- I can’t. I’ve tried, and I can’t.”

Thankfully, Lazlo had recently taken a victim that day so they gathered enough spare blood out of the chap to give to you.

The cameras cut to an interview with Lazlo and Nadja, sitting side by side as per usual.

“We don’t really mind saving blood for them sometimes,” Nadja said. “Most of our victims, we don’t even finish all the way.”

The footage cuts to a short scene of Nadja holding up a still bleeding victim by the shirt whilst Guillermo holds the aforementioned liter bottle with a funnel in the top to collect blood, grimacing and trying to just focus on keeping the funnel in the bottle.

“Yes, but we do believe it’s about time they learn to attain blood for themself.” Lazlo said, and Nadja nodded in agreement. “The only thing I’ve seen them drain was a goose. And even after that, they insisted on burying it.”

“Even though it bit the shit out of them.” Nadja added. “In the wild, baby animals rely on their mothers for sustenance for the first few months of their lives before learning to hunt for themselves. (Name) is kind of like our weird little pup.”

You knew they were right. You had been a vampire for two months, and you still had yet to take a human victim. The problem was that you would always overthink it. For one thing, you didn’t want to kill an innocent person, but he cause of all the ‘what if’s, you couldn’t really detect anyone really deserving of such a gruesome and sudden death. Curse this big heart of yours. Plus it was New York, and Staten Island for that matter. Who knows where these people have been and what’s running through their veins?

But half-blood or not, learning to hunt is essential.

Anyway, you were walking through the streets one night with the others since they had recently found a good hunting ground and didn’t want to leave you alone in the house. Nandor suggested that maybe one of them would have the general disposition of a goose and you could drain them. You weren’t too sure about that, but thanked him anyway.

Now, one of the perks of your vampire half was an enhanced sense of hearing, and because of this, you overheard a conversation from inside one of the apartments,

“I’m should really go now… I can’t stand up.”

That made you stop. If your blood wasn’t already running cold, it just got colder. Guillermo seemed to notice you falling behind. “(Name), are you still coming?”

“Uh, yeah, um..” you hesitated, glancing between them and the apartment, bouncing on your feet slightly. “I’ll uh.. I’ll meet you guys there, okay? I’ll just be a minute.”

Before they could respond, you turned into a bat and flew up towards wherever the voice came from. A knot began to form in your tiny stomach as you dreaded what you might find, and when you came up to the window, your suspicions were confirmed as you peered into the dimly lit room. That was all you needed to bare your teeth and shift back into your human form, rearing your foot back to kick the window open.

It seemed the universe noticed you needed incentive and answered.

Nadja wiped some excess blood from her jaw and licked her lips, humming contently. It had been only been about twenty minutes since you went off on your own, and she hoped you were alright, wondering what you could have been doing. As if on cue, she heard a familiar squeaking and the sound of little wings flapping towards them.

“Nadja! Nadja Nadja Na-”

POOF

“Nadja!” you exclaimed joyfully after landing on your feet and regaining your composure. All three vampires and one human turned to face your direction, and were surprised to see you with a beaming smile on your blood stained face. “I did it!” you exclaimed with excitement, panting slightly.

Realization dawned on the pod of vampires, and Nadja’s smile grew to match your own.

“All by yourself?” “Yes!!”

Laughter filled the air as Nadja pulled you in for a short hug. You sighed in exhilaration, “Call em crazy but I kinda wanna do it again.”

“We have plenty of time before the sun rises again,” Lazlo said, smiling proudly at you with a hand around your shoulders as you walked with them. “Plenty of time to get your practice in.”

Yeah, you were gonna do just like fine.

[sunshine-for-serotonin]

I did things just a bit different in order to keep the flow in my brain going, but hopefully you like it still!

God damn this took forever-

❣️It should be noted I write Scarab with a nonhuman dick❣️

❣️reader is also vaguely mentioned to have a decent sized chest at one point, but it can also be interpreted that you’re just wearing a tight fitting top❣️

❣️Scarab demands to “properly” court reader when they’re done as a stipulation❣️

❣️reader gets a lil mean but is generally a soft dom and she’s only mean because Scarab gets a bit bratty❣️

Being a friend of Fiona’s, of course you were concerned when she and Cake went missing, only to return a few days later after you, Gary, and Marshall Lee had scoured the city looking for her, raving about how your universe was bound to turn magical any second and how you all lived in some dude named Simons head.

….did her overalls just talk?????

After Fiona and Cake try explaining things more thoroughly to you three to clear up confusion, (it didn’t help much), they had both run off to try and find a portal, leaving you, Gary, and Marshall to talk amongst yourselves.

….at least you would have, had it not been for the commotion emanating from where they had run off too.

Arriving at the scene, you just barely managed to catch the oversized, red, alien looking bug that had been launched at you through the air by a poorly aimed kick from Cake.

Immediately, the creature began to try and bite you, struggling in your grasp to break free with its large yellow eyes unfocused and wild.

looking it over curiously, you noticed the large crystal that had embedded itself in the creatures exoskeleton. It looked painful, to say the least.

Gently cooing at it, you cradled the agitated bug to your chest.

“Poor thing, no wonder you’re so worked up! That must be so uncomfortable…”

Something about you speaking to it caused the creature to calm down slightly, staring up at you and blinking owlishly as it began to focus on your face, stilling enough for you to pry the crystal from its back.

“There you go, that’s it… good beetle…”

You could have sworn you saw a red coloration coat just under its eyes at your soothing praise, a small purr rumbling from it and causing small vibrations to shake its body.

After tossing the crystal to Fiona, you wrapped both arms around your new “companion” and hummed thoughtfully, taking note that it was still staring up at your face.

“You know, you’re quite cute when you’re not so fussy.”

more dark red spread across its cheeks to the point you knew you weren’t imagining anything, now avoiding your gaze by closing its eyes.

Gently stroking its abdomen seemed to make the purring increase, and it almost seemed like the creature was unaware of its actions, feeling the spikes on its joints dig themselves into your clothes so that you couldn’t pry it off.

“Ah, that thing seems quite attached to you, (y/n)…”

*gasp* “(y/n), quick, put him down! That’s Scarab and he’s dangerous! Give him to cake to contain him for now!”

”Scarab, huh?”

At you saying his name, the mini Scarab nodded and pressed his face against you.

“Are you sure he’s dangerous, Fiona? Look at how cute he’s being!”

“(Y/N)!!!”

“ugh, fffiiinnnneeee…”

When you try to gently pull the mini Scarab off of you, it starts to squirm to try to keep its sharp appendages stuck to your clothes.

seeing as though you weren’t going to give up trying to get him off of you, Scarab licked your neck to catch you off guard and quickly crawled under your shirt to rest against your chest when your grip loosened in shock.

looking down at the yellow eyes that slowly closed as he rested against your chest, you sighed.

“Dude, there’s not enough room for you in there. Every time I take a breath, the combination of you and my boobs makes me worry my top will break.”

When you tried to reach for him to take him out from your shirt, the mini Scarab glared at you so fiercely you gave up.

“okay, okay, fine- you can stay there, but my friends are going to take you sooner or later.”

All that comment got in response was a low purr and the closing of eyes as you rewrapped your arms around him.

After making your way back to Fiona’s apartment once the other Scarabs had been rounded up, you tried to carefully remove the sleeping Scarab from your being, only for it to awake and start babbling indecipherable things as it clung to you tighter.

“Uh, guys? A little help here?”

Despite all the efforts of your friends, Scarab held onto you stubbornly, sharp cries of “No!” emanating from his mouth.

“Fiona, are you sure he’s dangerous? All he seems to be doing is clinging to (y/n)…”

“Marshall, he literally tried to kill me and Cake! But…. Maybe it would be a good idea for her to keep holding him. We’d be able to better prevent him from fully forming that way.”

At Fiona’s words, Scarab looked up at you and let out another purr, nuzzling into your hands.

“For a cosmic god auditor, you sure are a clingy little thing…”

Glaring up at you before hiding his face in your chest, Scarab felt you walk around the room and release one of your arms from around him to open Fiona’s fridge.

Taking out a pumpkin bar, you took a few bites before noticing Scarabs gaze fixated on your lips. Not saying anything, you broke a piece of the bar off and placed it in his mouth, watching as he gave a purr and mindlessly began chewing, still hyper focused on your mouth.

Back and forth you two went, you carefully feeding Scarab while he stared at your face with such intensity that you almost wondered if he was even aware he was eating.

By the time you two had finished eating, you just barely registered the deafening silence that had taken over the room. Strange, considering the other mini Scarabs had never shut up about calling your friends “abominations” and other various insults.

turning, you saw that all the other scarabs were also staring at you, seemingly in a trance.

when your gaze would land on any of them, they would whimper pathetically and try to paw out of their enclosures, the ones in glass jars only being stopped by your friends firmly gripping the containers.

unlike with LSP, they weren’t doing this to manipulate you into freeing them. They had seen how gentle you were with their other counterpart, and they wanted that softness all to themselves.

“Well, they all seem to like (y/n)…”

“Yeah…”

You were startled out of your thoughts when you felt something wet and slimy moving over the expanse of your neck before something started sucking on your skin, like a muscular straw.

Looking down, became shocked and appalled to see that scarab was seemingly using his tongue to suck small marks onto your skin, essentially non traditionally formed hickeys.

“Hey! Stop, you’re going to leave a mark!”

Once again, the red bugs only response was another low purr and an increased fervor for marking your skin.

With a sigh, you simple rolled your eyes and walked back over to your friends with an annoyed look on your face.

“Kiss each oth-”

“Stop that train of thought right there.”

Eventually you all made your way outside, the mini scarab still held tightly in your arms, before a loud explosion turned all of your attentions to Fiona’s apartment complex, now with a gaping hole in the side.

——————————————————————————

Smoke poured from the side of the once pristine complex, a much larger version of the mini Scarab in your arms standing in the ruins with its eyes scanning the surrounding areas before locking on you. Before any of you had the chance to react, the large creature leapt down to the ground and skittered over, barreling into you and knocking you to the ground. It’s large eyes gazed at you and the smile on its face revealed several razor sharp teeth before it shoved its head beneath your shirt to merge with its other mini counterpart, a white glow overtaking its body before the fully formed Scarab appeared and pulled his head from your shirt to glare at your friends.

“Crossovers…”

“Oh, Crud.” “Oh no, he’s hot-”

All you could do was stare up at him in fear as Scarab suddenly turned his gaze down to you, still half laying on top of you as the eyes of his mask narrowed. Everyone held there breath for a few seconds before Scarab murmured in a quiet voice;

“Not you… stay out of this.”

Before anyone could react, Scarab snatched you up and skittered to the top of the now ruined apartment, wrapping you up tightly before going to fight your friends and destroy the universe as you tried to escape your bonds.

You weren’t sure how long had passed, but through tons of spite fueled cursing and you wriggling around, you had eventually managed to escape the apartment and track down Scarab, creeping up to him as he blasted another building out of existence. Thinking quick, you jumped on his back, doing your best to wrangle the crystal out of his hands.

“Wha- you! What do you think you’re doing?!”

“Stopping you from destroying my world! Seriously, what’s your deal?!”

Through some squirming and manhandling on both of your parts, you manage to get Scarab on his back as you keep him pinned by straddling his waist. You’re certain he could throw you off if he truly wanted to, and yet he doesn’t.

“Now you listen here. This is my world, my entire existence! And you think it’s alright for you to come here and start destroying everything I love? You think it’s okay to just tie me up and let me sit by as you decimate the lives of millions of people? Well it’s not.”

You jab a finger into where his tie lays, paying no mind to the way Scarab trembles and shudders beneath you. You assume it’s from rage or shock at the audacity you had of standing up to a god auditor. After a few seconds, he looks away, unable to meet your gaze. You’re about to make a retort, something along the lines of “What? Can’t even look at me now?” When you feel something slick prodding at your underwear beneath your skirt.

“What…?”

Looking down at where your hips trapped his and moving back slightly, you saw that a slit had opened up in Scarabs suit, and a thick pink muscle was slowly coming out, twitching and oozing a white liquid. As if that was not strange enough, the thing began to move on its own and almost tie itself up in a knot, like it was its own sentient being. You look up at Scarab in shock, your lips slightly agape as surprise coats your expression. He still wouldn’t look at you, a thick blush coating his cheeks.

“Scarab, are you…?”

“…yes… don’t look at me.”

“I would’ve expected you to deny it, honestly.”

“It would be pointless, seeing as it’s so obvious. Besides… it would be improper to lie a young woman. Stop staring.”

It was incredible, seeing the behemoth of a being reduced to nothing but flushed cheeks and shy whimpers beneath you. You don’t even think he realized it, but he had moved his hands to your hips and was nervously rubbing circles into your sides, marveling at the feeling of how squishy and soft you were against his exoskeleton. As you sat there, partly out of shock and embarrassment and also partly to figure out what your next steps should be, you could feel small movements coming from Scarabs hips. Looking down, you could see that the movements were aborted thrusts and that his dick was now flushed a painful looking shade of red, with what you assumed to be precum leaking rapidly from the tip and pooling on his tummy. An idea started forming in your head.

“You know…”

Your hands began to languidly explore the expanse of Scarabs exoskeleton, feeling him shudder and bite back a whimper low in his throat.

“I would be willing to help you out with this, if you follow my requests.”

You watched as his eye sockets narrowed, obviously not wanting to comply, but also very desperate and needing you.

“What… what are your requests?”

“One, you have to let me see you. That means no hiding behind your faceplates. Two, you have to buy my world some time, at least give my friends a chance to try and save ourselves. Do we have a deal?”

Scarabs disbelief was tangible, the shock that you struck such a hard bargain shaking him to his core.

“Buy your world time? You can’t just-!”

“Do you want me to fuck you or not?”

It was silent for a few seconds and you feared he may reject your offer and go back to destroying your world, weird tentacle boner and all. Luckily your fears were washed away as his faceplates slid back, allowing you to see the flustered yellow eyes staring up at you.

“I accept your terms. But I have a request of my own to make. When we are done, you must agree to let me court you properly.”

“Do you really want to dance that dance?”

“I do. Even when this world is destroyed, you must agree to come with me and let me be your partner.”

“What a gentleman. I also accept those terms, but my world will not be destroyed. We’ll find a way.”

“We shall see.”

With that, you moved yourself to rest against Scarabs dick, grinding against the appendage and feeling the inhuman ridges bump against your clit through your underwear. Not having expected the pleasurable contact, Scarab startled and gave a little whine, bucking his hips without meaning to as his eyes became half-lidded. You couldn’t help but give him a little smirk.

“Sensitive, huh? Tell me, have you ever had anyone touch you before?”

The look Scarab gave you was a mix of a glare and a plea, and from that alone you could take a gander and be certain in yourself you knew the answer. Shaking his head no, Scarab wrapped his arms around you, wanting you close. He could feel your slickness through your underwear, mixing with his own steady stream of precum.

“Aww, how cute~”

“Please-mmm~…”

At his begging, you could feel the heat in your lower belly start to pool, urging you to just go ahead and fuck him already. He hadn’t even truly felt your pussy and he was already a moaning, keening mess beneath your hips. Leaning down, you began to suck and kiss along his neck, paying no mind to the strange texture.

“Mm, ah! Please, I-I wanna be inside!”

“Shhh, it’s okay… I’ll put you in. If it ever gets to be too much, just tell me to stop, okay?”

Giving you an eager nod, Scarabs eyes were practically rolling in his sockets as his dick gave an eager twitch. As soon as you had lifted your hips even slightly, it was squirming beneath your underwear and into your pussy, stretching you out on the thick appendage as you let out a satisfied hiss from between your teeth. Scarab on the other hand couldn’t help the high pitched moan that escaped from his vocal chords, sounding more like a desperate cry than anything else. Letting out a breathless giggle, you check in on Scarab, trying to focus through the feeling of his cock wriggling inside of you.

“How do you feel, Scara?”

All you could hear on his end were breathless moans, grappling with the feeling of you surrounding him as he struggled to form coherent thoughts.

“Feeling a little overwhelmed?”

"Maybe… but… it feels so good… I can't even explain it… I'm-I'm-hngh…”

The only thing on his mind is how good you feel and he just wants you to keep going, how he wants you to use him like a toy and let him fill you to the brim with his cum. Taking the hint, you began to roll your hips in a steady motion as you lazily played with your clit, a smug grin on your lips.

“Good boy, Scarab~ Taking everything so well and making me feel so good~”

“D-Don’t-haah-! Don’t patronize me… mmm-!”

“Please, you love it. Wanna know how I know?~ It’s because your dick writhes every time I even remotely praise you.”

Now that pulled a keen from his throat, despite him looking like he would rather swallow glass than admit it. Feeling the pleasure start to pool in your tummy, you decide to really start toying with him.

“Look at you, needing a human like me to tell you what a good boy you are in order to get off~ How does it feel to rely on an “abomination” for the praise you oh so desperately need, Scara?~”

“I-I don’t-mmm! I don’t need your praise! Aah!”

“Really? Then what if I told you that you weren’t being good? What if I told you how pathetic you were and that you were nothing more to me than a quick fuck to save my world?”

Those comments were enough to bring tears to Scarabs eyes, and he barely managed to speak through the cacophony of his own sniffles and moans.

“N-no, don’t like that-!”

“That’s what I thought. So just accept that you’re my good boy and I’ll praise you as much as you want, ‘kay, good boy?”

Nodding his head, Scarab began to frantically buck his hips as he felt the coil in his lower stomach begin to tighten rapidly from you calling him a good boy.

“You’re all mine, lovely~ Taking everything so perfect~”

Scarab looks at you and now he seems to be getting a bit emotional again. You are saying such good things to him and it makes him feel so incredibly good and special.

"I'm proud to be yours… I'm-I'm lucky. And… and it feels so good to… to hear you praise me!”

Smirking, you throw your head back as you let out a small moan, him finally giving in and admitting defeat made this all so much sweeter than you could have ever imagined as you continued the rapid pace of your hips, a ring of creamy white coating the base of Scarab’s dick from the inhuman amount of precum he was leaking combined with your slick.

“mmm~ Gonna cum for me, lovey? Gonna fill me up like the good boy you are?~”

That seemed to do it, a wanton cry erupting from the depths of Scarab’s being as he came with an almost frightening amount of force, filling up every bit of space your pussy could possibly have and dripping out of you to collect in the space between your bodies. Tensing your thighs and leaning down, you bit harshly into the dip between his neck and shoulder, feeling your own high crash over you and waves of bliss rocked your body and you thoroughly milked Scarab’s cock.

With a shuddering sigh, you slowly lifted yourself off of Scarab’s hips, slipping him out of you with a wet squelch and moving your underwear back into place as you settled beside him.

“You alright? You seem a little out of it…”

“I… I am fine, I simply need a minute.”

Thinking for a second, you looked down at him and cupped his face from where he lay panting, gently brushing his skin with your fingers.

“If you can get us into one of the empty buildings, we can take a bath and get cleaned up. I imagine you don’t want to go around attempting to destroy my world covered in cum.”

Your words pulled just a hint of a smile to his mouth, yellow eyes peering up at you like you were the most perfect thing in existence. You couldn’t help but think to yourself that you were absolutely going to fuck him more often if this is what he was like post-orgasm.

“You… you’re going to clean me up? Really?”

“Of course! What kind of partner would I be otherwise?”

——————————————————————————

a/n: Howdy, my loves! I realize this took a long time to get out, and I apologize for the radio silence, but I hope this is satisfactory for my fellow Fiona and Cake fans!

Drink water and take care of yourselves or I’m going to be under your bed tonight :)

byyyyyeeeeee!

[owl-with-a-pen]

okay but another angsty thing re: Brainy and sleeping, what if he wakes up from a nap or something in the Tower soon after the season 5 finale and thinks he's still in that room with the radiation poisoning him (like maybe he has a nightmare about that), so someone has to calm him down and bring him back to reality

If the 3,000+ word count wasn't a dead giveaway, I had some fun with this one 😉

If Nia was certain of anything, it was that Brainy was going to crash real soon. He’d been looking pale ever since they’d returned from the Fortress, and there was no way in hell she could ignore the feverish heat that had prickled from his skin while her face had been buried so snugly against his throat. He hadn’t said anything then, but when they’d eventually picked themselves up from the lab’s floor, Brainy had been ready to drop long before they made it to the elevator. Without Nia's guiding hand, he never would have made it to the loft in one piece.

By the time they were hunkered down on a sofa in the Tower’s living nook, tablet balanced precariously between them, one of J’onn’s blankets folded over their knees, Brainy been close to passing out entirely. The only thing that stopped him was his relentless focus on the task at hand.

Every now and then, Nia caught his eyes as they worked a path across the data she’d been able to draw up from their borrowed intel downloaded from the Fortress’s supercomputer. It wasn’t much, but between the Tower, Legion and Kryptonian archive, they had a halfway decent snapshot of what the Phantom Zone might entail.

Finding Kara, though? That was the tricky part.

Nia’s heart hurt every time she thought about it – of Kara lost and alone in that place. She’d once described it to her as worse than hell. A terrifying purgatory where nightmares held a tangible presence.

No one had gone home that night. Nia lost track of Alex some point past midnight when Lena appeared with enough Big Belly Burger to feed a small army. Her best guess was that she’d retreated downstairs in the commotion to get first dibs on J’onn’s intergalactic coffee machine. They could’ve all used the kick right about now, and any other night Nia would’ve been shouldering her way to the front of the line.  

But coffee wasn’t going to cut it today. Besides, shoulder-to-shoulder with Brainy was exactly where she needed to stay. Maybe he hadn’t been eager to share anything out loud, but when he’d refused to eat any of Lena’s generous offerings, Nia had known what was up.

The nanites were starting to hit back. Hard.

She could survive without the caffeine, she rationalised. Maybe it was a good thing. She’d been doing pretty much anything to deny sleep for the last few months, hating herself whenever she slipped into a dream with Brainy as the centrepiece, goading her even in the deepest corners of her subconscious. She’d spent so long convincing herself that it was all in her head, that it was her grief and guilt that had conjured him up as her eternal tormenter. Knowing the truth of it still stung, an ache that went bone-deep, but that pain had started to ease the moment she’d locked her pinkie with his.

She wasn’t sure how easy she’d sleep now, but she knew that she couldn’t ignore the tug of the dream realm any longer. It was the only place she could figure any of this out, no matter how uncertain she felt. Besides, she wasn’t alone this time. She had Brainy back on her team, his promise to her as unbreakable as steel, and knowing that made everything feel just a little lighter.  

Nia wasn’t surprised when the words on the tablet began to blur into an incomprehensible muddle, the lull of her unconscious mind far too pressing of a force to refuse. Soon, she was lost to that darkness, pulled dizzyingly fast towards the threads of a dream already spun partway together.

Sometimes, her dreams came to her in quick successive flashes - other times they settled into specific locations, familiar or alien alike.

The room she awoke to was hazy, shimmering with rippling heat that rose in waves from the surface of the ground, enough that she couldn’t see a thing inside it. There was light, though, a deep orange spectacle that shone from somewhere close to the floor.

Before she could even try to understand where she was, pain like nothing she’d ever experienced erupted across her skin. It didn’t have a source, rather it radiated from all-round. It was a tangible pressure, raw and harsh, a laser point fixed solely on her that bypassed clothes and flesh alike, blistering straight to blood and bone. Her limbs felt like lead wherever it penetrated, targeting her joints until she folded with a swallowed scream to the floor. Nia’s chest held stiff, refusing to draw in the air she suddenly, desperately needed.

Because every breath burned - worse than the last - as though her lungs were lacerating inside her ribs. She gritted her teeth like she was biting down on leather, the sting of her tears sizzling to vapour before they even had a chance to fall.

What was this place her mind screamed, that too sounding warped and winded to her ears. Her dreams had certainly terrified her before, but they’d never hurt her like this. Like they could kill.

Nia gasped, gripping for her throat when the pressure of the air thickened inside her mouth, scalding her tongue. She could nearly taste it, bitter like battery acid, sharp like blood. Something about that taste was familiar to her, like when she’d overexerted her powers or…

No… there was something else. Because she had felt this before. Just for a second. Just before…

Before she’d been thrown from Leviathan’s ship.

Leviathan.

That didn’t make sense. If that was what her dream was trying to tell her, it’d missed the mark by a mile. The ship was gone – Leviathan along with it. No amount of pain could convince her otherwise. And if that was true, then there was nothing left of this dream that could hold a connection to the future.

How could her dream prophesise something that no longer existed?

Just as Nia had forced another breath through her bubbling lungs, bracing herself for the pain that would follow, she heard something. A sound that cut through the fog in her mind, that made everything suddenly so clear.

A soft, barely audible whimper from across the room.

Nia curled her hands into fists, jerking against the molten metal that greeted her knuckles, and looked up. Beyond the stifling power of Leviathan’s radiation, she could see the shape of a person pressed up against the console of the furthest edge of the room. She blinked against the stinging in her eyes, realising that the orange light she’d seen before had been coming from there. Now, that glow sharpened into something starker, closer matching the pale hair it illuminated – pasted against the jawline of a very familiar green face.

Nia’s eyes widened in shock, gasping his name.

Brainy sat with his knees drawn towards his chest, his body curved protectively around an object cradled closely to his centre. Even while she watched, Nia could see the spasmodic convulses of his chest as he tried to draw in breath, quickly followed by a barely muted cry of pain when the radiation crept in instead; his teeth an off-white smear fixed into permanent misery.

Nia’s heart twisted hard enough to outweigh her own pain. Because… it wasn’t her pain. It never had been. She’d never been inside the ship long enough to feel its true effect. None of them had.

None except…

Brainy. Of course this was Brainy’s dream. She wasn’t inside a vision at all. In her exhausted confusion, she must have slipped right into Brainy’s mind.

It was rare – rarer than rare, actually. But sometimes it could happen. If she and Brainy were tired enough, if they hadn’t been thinking, or even if they were thinking too much, then…

It hadn’t happened in so long, though. It couldn’t. They would have needed to share each other’s space, each other’s bed…

Now a new pain fluttered in her heart, an ache she thought she’d begun to remedy. But it had become such an old pain now, something that had fused itself to her after months of grief and frustration and anger.

In a way, this place was that and more. She’d never seen Brainy’s mind palace after he’d taken off the inhibitors, never experienced his dreams with his true self restored. And despite the heaviness of this place, the colours here were more vibrant, every light source so bright they could have been blinding. There was a sound beyond the buzz of the radiation, one that thrummed at the base of Nia's skull like old whispers, slipping in and out of audibility between every laboured pant of Brainy’s chest.

He looked like he had in the vision Nia had seen not a few hours earlier – when he’d collapsed to the ground after absorbing all that targeted radiation.

Ten minutes had already been too much for him, and those ten had turned into fifteen, twenty—it had taken Nia far too long to make it down there. And then, even after she’d found him, she hadn’t been quick enough, hadn’t had the power or natural immunity to drag him to safety.

It could have killed him. It should have. Nia’s dreams had been right to make her feel that way. This was to as near-death as she could have experienced without being in Brainy’s place.

And, for whatever reason, Brainy’ subconscious had decided to drag him right back here.

Now she was beginning to understand the rules of this dream, Nia realised that the radiation didn’t hold the same power over her. With a deep breath, she drew her shoulders together, pushing herself back onto her haunches. The radiation still barrelled at her, but now it held the potency of a soft breeze, nothing she couldn’t push past.

It wasn’t her pain, she reminded herself. And the more she thought that, the easier it became to ignore it. Soon she was back on her feet, crossing the room as easily as Kara or J’onn had made it look when they’d crashed inside.  

Nia didn’t stop walking until she was crouched at Brainy’s side. His chest was rising and falling in short, breathless exhales, too weak to draw in the air he needed. His head was tipped skyward, lips parted into a strained grimace.

At first, she wondered if this was some sort of punishment he'd conjured himself, a side-effect from all the guilt he’d been harbouring over the last few months.

That was until she realised what it was that he was holding so tightly in his arms, and how quickly he flinched away from her when she tried to reach for it herself.

“N-no,” Brainy whined, a panicked sound. He shook his head vehemently, curling even further into himself, obscuring the bottle from sight. The yellow hue it gave off was unmistakable, painting his face a sickly shade. His expression contorted again when more pain rolled through him, trails of salt staining his cheeks. “I-I can’t let go, I-I can’t let him win.”

“Brainy, it’s okay,” Nia said as gently as she could manage, sidling in closer to him. She kept her hands a practiced mark from the bottle, hovering steadfast. “You’re dreaming, okay? But I can help. Take my hand.”

Brainy whimpered, a strangled sound catching in his throat as fresh tears flooded his blood-stained eyes. “N-no,” he croaked. “Lex’ll – I can’t – or-or Kara will—”

Nia’s heart broke for him. This wasn’t about punishment; in his delirious state of mind, Brainy must have brought himself back to the moment just before Lex had stolen the bottle from him.

No matter what she’d told him back in the waking world, it hadn’t been enough to relieve him of his guilt. Not in the way he needed. But she knew this wasn’t going to help him, either.  The whispers in the air were as thick as the radiation shield itself, droning from every corner, warping into nothing but a mechanised garble.

He wasn’t going to go willingly, she knew that, and Nia was too afraid that taking him by force might make things worse.

Looked like she’d have to do things the old-fashioned way.

“I’ll see you on the other side, Wildcat,” Nia murmured, closing her eyes, losing sight of the prison Brainy had designed for himself as quickly as she’d entered.

Nia only felt a drifting impression of Brainy’s consciousness before she was back in the waking world. When she blinked her eyes open, she was inside the Tower again, with the real Brainy pressed tightly to her side.

His golden hair was slick to his forehead with sweat, his eyes skirting uncertainly behind closed lids as he muttered fretfully in his sleep. Some of the words were English, others held the mechanised characteristics of fluent Coluan. There was another language, too, one that overlapped the others, far separate from anything she’d heard him speak before.

She recognised it though, the ancient consonants that rolled from his tongue even while he was under such duress. It was the same language he’d spoken with Rama Khan. The language of the gods.

He was still bartering with Leviathan somewhere deep down, trying in his own way to fix his mistakes. But his pleas fell on deaf ears. All ears, but hers.

Suddenly, Brainy whimpered again, a sob catching him so hard that Nia worried he’d choke. He clawed at her front with weak fingers, lashes fluttering beneath layers of delirium.

She knew she had to wake him, but it was still a delicate procedure even outside of the dream realm. Carefully, Nia wound her arm around Brainy’s back, clutching the fibres of his suit, securing him against her side as she ran her free hand over his chest. Brainy didn’t fight her, instead he buried his nose into her throat, his clammy skin cold and fervid at the same time. She could feel the sting of his life projectors even from a distance, prickling across her gloves as she searched for his frequency, bringing it into step with her own.

Usually, once she’d found a target, that’d be her cue to drag them into a sleep they’d have a hell of a time coming back from. Now, she sought that power in reverse, pulling back on her usual gift so that she could dispel a dream sequence rather than enforce it. Blue energy swirled from Nia’s fingertips, coalescing with the white of Brainy’s central projector, knocking on the fragile door of his unconscious mind.

When that door creaked open, she let her energy soar, illuminating all that had been buried so that it might rise to the surface unimpeded.

She felt the tug of his consciousness before he woke, and when Brainy shot forward in the confusion that followed, Nia was there to steady him, pressing her hand reassuringly into his centre, trying to draw in on the pleasant fog that often accompanied a nap post-waking.

But peace like that couldn’t be manufactured.  

“N-n-no—” Brainy gasped, choking hard enough that it induced a coughing fit so violent he nearly retched from the strain.

Nia held him steady, worried that he was about to make himself sick. She rubbed his back, soothing him with breathless reassurances while simultaneously mapping out the closest trash can in case she needed to make an emergency dive for it.

“It’s okay,” she said, a gentle murmur in his ear. “It was just a nightmare, Brainy. You’re safe.”

But even as she said it, she couldn’t be sure that it was true. The sweat on Brainy’s brow wasn’t just a result of his nightmare. As Nia rocked in time with him, she could feel his body convulse against her with shudders that he was powerless to quell. He was burning up, his eyes glazed and fever stricken.

He was sick. Sicker than she’d ever seen him, and there was nothing she could do to take that pain away.

She felt useless.

Then, miraculously, Nia heard a creak on the floorboards and suddenly Alex’s head popped into view. Her eyes held an exhaustion that went way beyond the physical, but just seeing her made the knot in Nia’s stomach loosen. Nia shifted Brainy’s weight in her arms, holding him tightly as the coughing fit finally abated and he slouched with a groan into her shoulder. She desperately wanted to warm him with her energy, but that probably wasn’t the right call when he was already burning like a furnace against her side.

“Hey, hey, I heard the commotion,” Alex said, her expression serious as she took stock of the situation. Habitually, she rolled up her sleeves. “What happened?”

“He had a nightmare,��� Nia said, trying to sound stronger than she felt. “I barely got him out of there. He was dreaming of Leviathan’s ship again, of being trapped in that room—”

Alex sighed before Nia had even finished talking, leaning heavily into the arm of the sofa. “I was afraid this might happen,” she admitted. Her eyes flickered back to Brainy sympathetically. “He’s put up a good fight so far, but that radiation did a number on him. Whether he likes it or not, those nanites are going to have to run their course.” She pressed her hand to the bridge of her nose, squeezing her eyes shut. “Damnit. I shouldn’t’ve called him to the Fortress. I just got desperate. I-I thought that maybe he could reverse the projector if we did it fast enough. That Kara—”

Her voice warbled over her sister’s name and Nia immediately reached out to take Alex’s arm, meeting her eye firmly. “Don’t blame yourself,” she said. “You and I both know he would’ve come either way.” Nia was forced to let go of Alex when a particularly harsh shudder ran down Brainy’s spine, all but immobilising him. He tensed against her before groaning out, wrapping his arms tightly around his front, obscuring the wavering flicker of his central projector.

When he was able to open his eyes again, he saw Nia first. “N-Nia?” he croaked, his voice so stricken it hurt. He shook his head, barely able to articulate himself. “You c-can’t be here—t-the radiation.”

“Hey, hey,” Nia soothed, taking his face, running her nails beneath his jaw. She drew his eyes up to meet hers. He felt so delicate in her grasp, as fragile as cracked glass. “It was just a nightmare. We’re at the Tower, remember?”

Brainy bared his teeth, his dark eyes flashing with fresh tears. He ducked his chin into her cupped palm. “B-but it hurts.”

“Oh honey, I know,” Nia said, her own eyes stinging as she let Brainy fold fully against her. His pulse raged in his forehead, beating an obscure pattern into the base of her throat. He was crying again, his tears dousing the collar of her suit, but even that was too taxing on him now. He’d slip back into restless sleep sooner or later, whether that would be better for him had yet to be proven. She looked up at Alex desperately. “Can we give him another dose of those nanites? Maybe that’ll—”

But Alex was already shaking her head. “They’re doing their job,” she said. “I know it looks rough, and it is, but I promise he’s healing, Nia. He just has to ride this out.”

Nia closed her eyes, pressing her cheek into his damp hair. “He’s in so much pain.”

“I know,” Alex said softly. She sighed, crouching down so that she could run the back of her hand against Brainy's cheek. When he didn't stir, she stood, jerking her head towards the elevator. “Look, I’m gonna get Lena’s portal watch from downstairs. It’s the quickest way to get him home so that he can sleep this off safely.”

Nia could only nod. It didn’t feel like she was even fully there anymore. A part of her consciousness had tied itself far too deeply with Brainy’s pain, maybe from the moment she’d first slipped into his nightmare.

She hardly heard Alex when she asked, “One last thing; do you know where he’s calling home these days?”

Despite that, she didn’t hesitate. “My apartment,” Nia said, wiping the tears from her eyes in an automatic gesture. She sobered as she stared at the moisture on her fingers, for a second unsure whether it had come from her face or Brainy’s. She glanced up again. “He’ll be safe there,” she explained, before hastening to add, “besides, I can’t leave him alone like this.”

Alex’s expression was warm. She glanced between Brainy and Nia knowingly, an eyebrow half raised. “Are you two…?”

“We’re figuring things out,” Nia said. As if on cue, Brainy made a soft sound against her, desperately nuzzling into her throat, a crackly hum easing from his chest. His breath was hot and welcoming, his lips brushing her skin without being fully conscious of the act. Even still, Nia felt her face warm.

“Looks like it’s going well,” Alex noted with a smirk. It was the first time Nia had seen her smile since they’d lost Kara. It was a tired smile, sure, but if nothing else, she was glad she could offer Alex at least that. Even if it did come at her own expense.

Alex winked before she turned away. “I’ll get the watch.”

“Thank you.”

Nia waited for Alex nervously, her fingers tugging gently through Brainy’s sweat soaked hair. When his eyes fluttered open again and he found her so instinctively, she kissed his forehead, letting her lips linger on his clammy skin. He tasted of salt and metal.

“Hold on, Wildcat,” she murmured. “You’ll be home soon.”

Home. The word had come out so easily, but the moment she said it, she knew it was the truth. She didn’t want Brainy anywhere else. Not tonight, not ever again. And as he sagged gratefully into her embrace, lowering his head with the barest hint of acknowledgement, she knew that he felt the same.

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

started watching the new live action avatar

it’s. It’s pretty ok I guess? But there’s a lot of things I’m not altogether happy about. It feels very. Generic. Which is kind of sad.

I’m only two episodes in though, so I won’t be too harsh. But there are a few things that I really don’t like, and number one was Aang going into the Avatar State in front of Sokka and Katara for the first time when seeing Monk Gyatso instead of when escaping Zuko, and that moment being isolated instead of the moment everyone in the world knew the Avatar had returned

in the original series, Aang goes into the Avatar State when confronted by irrefutable proof in the form of the skeleton of his best friend and mentor - the airbenders really were massacred and he can no longer deny it.

every statue of the Avatar around the globe lights up in a single moment. the legendary figure’s destined return is announced to the world by an overwhelming outpouring of grief and rage from a young child who just discovered that everyone he ever knew and loved is gone. it’s poignant. the Avatar’s return in that moment is not a triumph. that terrifying show of strength and power, enough to light up the world in its glow, is pure emotional anguish from a small twelve year old, who just saw the dead body of his mentor and now believes he is all alone

and Katara and Sokka having seen the Avatar State before means that there is less of the shock and “what is happening” in this pivotal scene (which was the main focus in the live action). of course Sokka is still concerned about them potentially getting flung off the mountain. but both of them know this reaction for what it is - mysterious power, sure, but primarily, they see and recognize his grief.

I just. what happened to “we’re your family now” and “neither of us are gonna let anything happen to you”??? :(

on a side note, I do feel like Katara and Sokka themselves have been heavily (heh) watered down. it’s a shame. Sokka’s my favourite, and I just think that I. Don’t trust writers with Katara now. (Why is her waterbending a secret? The whole reason she didn’t learn was because there was no one to teach her and she couldn’t leave… also where is her instant connection with Aang… where is their silliness… where did it go…)

however! I did like a couple things that were done and I want to be a bit positive so here

love Zuko and Suki’s actors. they did a great job

Sokka and Suki’s training together was cute ☺️ (though I wish he had worn the uniform of the Kyoshi Warriors…)

Aang himself is adorable :) (wish he got to be a little more silly but Netflix adaptations always are more serious for some reason)

I actually kind of enjoyed getting to see some of the scenes from the war’s outbreak. I prefer the way the original show portrays it, with a lot of info being learned reverse chronologically, but it was cool to see Sozin, and some of the airbenders, and a little more of Gyatso (who I also really enjoyed :’) )

Katara bending water at Aang and it reducing to them splashing each other without even trying to bend. Rare sillies!

I thought Kyoshi herself coming to defend her island was pretty sweet!!!

Katara getting flashbacks to her mother’s death on seeing firebending. Well I don’t like this, obviously, but it clearly shows how her mother’s death haunts her, and if they have Katara face off against Zuko again at the North Pole, it’ll be all the more triumphant.

Suki’s mom!!! Damn she was so cool!!!!!!

[clarepreed]

Micro-Story: Larissa's Decision

Story Content and Summary - 2,007 words. A depressed Larissa realizes how easy it would be to slip away while Mitchell sleeps. Symptoms, asthma, vague resuscitation descriptions.

Previous installment: Hurt/Comfort.

--

Mitchell slept deeply beside her, lost in an unusually carefree slumber. She could hear him gently breathing, occasionally punctuated by a soft snore. His body radiated warmth, and the blanket over them was soft and plush.

Despite this, Larissa felt cold. Cold and inescapably sad. Her brain lied to her, whispering to her soul that she was miserable, isolated inside herself, and unworthy of her generous lot in life. Her toes, nose, and fingertips burned with this knowledge. The depression nearly stopped her breath in her lungs. Literally, her breathing shallow and labored as she stared up at the ceiling.

I’m so tired. I just want to rest.

A miserly finger of warmth swept across her eyes. Tears brimmed against her lashes. More weight sank into her chest, making her wheeze. The burden of breathing plagued her. 

Burden.

Insecurity welled up; this was a word to which she was sensitive, even if she was the only one wielding it. A burden. How different Mitchell’s life was now that he dealt with her poor health. Going from the CEO of the company he built to carer for his fragile wife. How stressed her parents were, worrying about her when they should focus on themselves and Poppy. The drawn looks she’d seen on Mark and Samuel’s faces the last time she was in the hospital. Her friend Kieran crying on the phone with her, having had a dream about Larissa nearly dying after her wedding. The weight dragged down everyone who cared for her. 

So much angst, because of me.

Add to all of that her own growing sense of discontent and boredom. She didn’t have a job. Her friends lived scattered across the globe. Sometimes, she was well enough to run, but at other times, she couldn’t even go for a walk. Even simple pleasures had been taken from her. Bathing without fear of drowning. Eating a meal without fear of choking. 

She loved Mitchell. She couldn’t put into words how much she loved him; hadn’t known that was even possible. And yet…

It’s not enough.

Sick and in love. Not enough.

I’m so sorry, honey. It’s not enough.

Her heart, instead of pounding in her ears as dread and depression pressed her into the mattress, beat slowly. 

Thump.

She felt dizzy, the dark room canting around her.

Thump.

Thump.

I could let go.

The realization dawned slowly. She could let go.

Feels like it would be easy.

 She would stop breathing first. Lay there as her heart fluttered. Then her heart would stop completely. And it would just be over. No pain, no panic. Just this inexorable pressure, then nothing. She didn’t know how she knew this, she just did.

Her thoughts turned back to Mitchell. There was a chance he would sense something, would know somehow that she was in grave danger. He would awaken and find her still and lifeless beside him. He would shake her, gently at first. Then hard, making her head sway side to side. He would turn on a light, take in her staring gaze. He would shout and listen for breath and take her pulse. 

He would call 9-1-1 and throw back the covers. Haul her bodily from the bed, her skull thunking on the floor in his desperation. His hands would stack on her chest and pump her heart. She could feel it, the relentless pressure focused on her sternum, making the bone sink toward her heart before letting it recoil. Her blood would move incrementally, rhythmically, through her veins. 

Thump.

Then he would crank open her airway, pinch her nostrils, and cover her mouth with his. She could feel the ghost of his touch on her lips. His warm breath forced into her lungs. The dampness of saliva passing between them. Then another round of chest compressions as he counted and moved almost like a professional, efficient from all his practice.

I’m sorry, honey.

Thump.

He would do this for two minutes, then he’d leave her, sprinting for the linen closet they’d converted into a first aid cabinet, wired for outlets and well-illuminated. He would return with an AED. There would be another round of compressions. Then he’d fit a pocket mask over her face. She could feel him cradling her head with a shaking hand, settling the mask over her nose and mouth. The air flowed into her, disconnected from him. 

Rustling sounds, accompanied by Mitchell verbally encouraging her to pull through. His voice heavy with heartbreak. Cool sensations up her midline as he cut through her shirt. More compressions, her chest sinking and her stomach bulging. Her feet rocking. Breaths. Sticky pads applied to her chest.

Her heartbeat continued to slow, though in her reverie, it was already still. She knew the AED would not advise any shocks, but Mitchell’s agonized begging was still a shock to her stagnant system.

Thump.

Thump.

More likely, he would wake in the morning, when she was well and truly gone. He would stretch and reach for her like he always did. And he would know immediately, as his arm slid across her stomach. She would be still and cool to the touch. Eyes dull when he lurched up to look at her face. Fingers pressed desperately into her carotid would tell him what he already knew. He’d had enough nightmares to this effect that he would spend a few minutes insisting this was a terrible dream and trying to wake himself up. And when he realized the truth…

Her mind sent her a horrifying approximation of the mourning sound he would make, and she pulled back mentally from it so hard that her hands, curled limp on the mattress, flinched.

He would surely never sleep deeply again.

I’m sorry, honey.

Thump.

Thump.

Still, not enough.

Thump.

Thump.

What would be enough?

Her breath hitched, and her vision exploded into a kaleidoscope of gem-colored imagery. A 5k race finish line. Mitchell looking up from a book and offering her an easy smile. Kieran’s first child cradled in her arms. Sitting in a room of students with a box of freshly sharpened drawing pencils, listening to an instructor. Holding Momma’s hand at Poppy’s funeral. Filing LLC paperwork for a consulting business. Stepping off a plane in a far-off land. Calling Mark’s sister, Angie, just to tell her something funny she’d read. Sitting with Mitchell at a concert, grinning as the bass tickled her sternum. Petting one of the neighbor’s white, fluffy cats. Moving her parents into the Ohana. Watching Mark and Samuel renew their vows. Driving on a closed course. Mitchell in bed, coming apart beneath her with his heart pounding under her hand. Standing in the sunlight with her eyes closed, the breeze caressing her skin.

I don’t want to die.

Thump.

I don’t want to die.

Thump.

Is this a dream? When did I close my eyes?

No!

“Mitchell,” she whispered out loud, peeling her eyes open with difficulty. He didn’t stir; she hadn’t spoken loudly enough to wake him.

Larissa tensed her legs and arms, then released them.

Thump. Thump.

Her breath wheezed in and out of her. She needed her inhaler, but she was still being dragged along by the inertia of sleep.

Or death.

 Larissa licked her lips and forced her hand to slide across the fitted sheet until she bumped Mitchell in the back.

“Mitchell,” she croaked, then coughed.

He stirred. It always fascinated her how quickly his mind cleared when he woke up. She probably wouldn’t have to say his name again.

Thump. Thump.

A few seconds passed, and he bolted upright. Another few seconds, and she heard the click of the manual button on his smart lamp. 

“Larissa?” He leaned over her, his eyes quickly scanning her face. He looked concerned, but not yet panicked. “Asthma?”

She nodded, though it took a lot of effort and she saw his eyebrows quirk. Mitchell pulled back the covers, and she shivered.

“I’m sorry. I just want to help you sit up, baby.” He did more than that; he wedged his hands under her arms and hauled her up, then held her close to his chest with one arm while he dragged the pillows up behind her. He leaned her back against them, frowning when her head lolled. Mitchell moved quickly, straddling her legs and leaning over to open her nightstand drawer. “Hey, Google. Turn on Larissa’s bedside lamp.”

The light flicked on. Then he had her inhaler, shaking it before he held it to her lips. “Ready, baby? I can help you.”

She struggled to raise her arm, so Mitchell said: “Okay. I’m going to count to three and then I’ll give you a pump. One, two, three—”

Larissa gave it her best effort, inhaling as he depressed the canister. Then she held her breath, letting the medicine move through her lungs before exhaling.

Thump.

Thump.

“Okay, one more.” He held the inhaler close to her face, and she wrapped her lips around the mouthpiece again. “One, two, three! Good, good job, baby.”

The inhaler went back into the drawer; Mitchell was very good about putting things away so he could find them later. He wasn’t the sort to leave his underwear in the bathroom, or things on the stairs for her to trip over.

I’m thinking about too many things when I should think about breathing. 

It was harder than she thought, and she concentrated on breathing in and out, hoping Mitchell wouldn’t have to call an ambulance.

Thump. Thump.

Thump.

Mitchell cradled her wrist in his hand and pressed two fingers to the inside. He made a sympathetic sound when he touched her. “Geez. Your hands are so cold!”

Larissa reclined against the pillows, tipping her head back and closing her eyes. Keeping them open seemed like it was taking a lot of her energy. She could hear herself wheezing; it would take the Albuterol a few minutes to work.

Thump.

“Larissa.” Mitchell’s tone was sharp, so she cracked her eyes open. “Is anything else wrong?”

“I was—” A coughing fit took her, and she was vaguely aware of Mitchell moving around; when she could draw breath again, he had her phone in his hand. She didn’t want to try speaking yet, so she offered him a thumbs up and the OK sign.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

I’m going to be OK.

Now.

Mitchell made a face at her, something between frustration and worry. She shivered in response, and he let go of the phone so he could reach out and rub her arms. “Soon as I’m sure you can breathe, I’ll get you some things to warm you up, baby.”

“Sorry,” she croaked, coughing again.

“Don’t apologize, Larissa. Thank you for waking me up. I don’t like to think about you struggling in the dark alone.” Mitchell reached up and cupped her cheek. “You’d help me if I needed it. You have before.”

She nodded and took a few careful breaths. She felt a little stronger now; holding her head up didn’t take quite so much effort. More importantly, she no longer felt like she might leave the mortal realm at any moment. Relief that she was apparently going to live filtered through her, leaving her confused as to whether or not she’d been having a nightmare or if everything she’d felt had been real. Guilt prickled across her cheekbones; she had no intention of telling Mitchell any of it. Especially not when he was looking at her like that, like she was a precious thing, easy to lose. 

Mitchell leaned forward and kissed her forehead before climbing off her legs. His lips felt warm on her skin. “I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.” He winked at her, dispelling some of the worry on his face, and she offered him what smile she could muster.

He returned soon, with fluffy socks, a knit hat, gloves, and a blanket. As he was pulling the hat down over her head, each movement deliberate and gentle, she whispered: “I love you.”

It’s enough… for now.

--

The story continues with Neighborly.

[officialchristiancagebbgirlblog]

The Feeding

Brood! Christian x f/reader (filler name of Jen)

Fic type: smut

Warnings: mention of blood and periods (yes related)

Word count: 1898

Link to masterlist

🩸Happy reading 🦷

Living with three male vampires posed its challenges. Jen was certainly lucky that, for the most part, everybody got on with each other and there weren't any attempted ‘love triangles’ or any drama related to being the only girl in the house. She was sure her partner, Christian, would have something to say if that were the case.

He was somewhere in their shared home, probably downstairs talking with his fellow vampires about…whatever it was they talked about. Jen tried not to get involved in their business as it wasn’t anything for her to know about. They had their business, she had hers. And that’s all that mattered. She was thankful that there was mutual respect for that aspect.

She lay in the middle of their shared bed, clutching a hot water bottle to her lower stomach. Unfortunately, it was that time of the month for her. And it had decided to read its head at the worst possible time as she was without any sanitary products. Well, almost. There was one lonely pad she found in the depths of the bathroom cabinet. Not wanting to go downstairs and face all three men to announce she needed one of them to haul themselves to the nearby store for her, she waited upstairs for Christian to make his way back up to her. Although Christian was the only one who fed off her, there was no telling what could happen if they figured out that she was a feeding source that didn’t require access via fangs. The last time she was on her period, it was almost a nightmare as the other two were having trouble sourcing food to eat but her partner refused to share with the other two. She wouldn’t have minded helping out (provided there was a way she was able to use an item for ‘collection’ so to speak to avoid that physical contact with anyone but Christian) but…well let’s just say this was a rare treat that he refused to be generous with. Something about these types of feeding just made him so much more protective, ravenous, and desperate.

Being so distracted by the twisting cramps, she didn’t even hear Christian enter the room. And where she didn’t notice him, he initially didn’t notice the gorgeous smell emanating from her body. His focus was only on the concern he held for her upon discovering that she was visually in pain.

“Oh you poor thing,” he cooed with a gentle voice, “are you okay? Because you certainly don’t look that way.”

Even though he had been turned into a vampire years ago by Gangrel, he still hadn’t lost the slight lisp that came with trying to pronounce his ‘S’s or ‘C’s. It certainly wasn’t as prominent nowadays but if you listened to him long enough, it was obvious. Unfortunately, not a lot of people did listen to him for that long to find out this interesting little fact about him. Most people who got close to The Brood would flock to Edge, being the tallest and most conventionally attractive out of the three. Jen, although she couldn’t deny the beauty of Edge or the kindness of Gangrel, found herself preferring the company of one Christian. Naturally he became quickly attached to her, like a lost puppy in desperate need of attention and affection.

Jumping slightly at the sudden sound of his gentle voice, she turned to look at him through half lidded eyes. She didn’t even have to say anything before he gave her a sympathetic smile and sat on the edge of the bed to properly check up on her. Just as he leant in closer, the smell of her predicament hit his nose. His pupils expanded as his expression changed, mouth beginning to water. He even noticed that his fangs felt that little bit sharper at the excitement of that realisation.

“You know, it’s been a little while since I last had something to eat…” his voice trailed off back into quiet as his soft hand travelled down her aching stomach to her right thigh, gently resting on top of her leggings.

“Wait, before you go any further I need you to do something for me!” She interrupted abruptly, slipping her hand under his. Doing so almost fully broke his trance of excitement. He hummed in question, meeting her face with a soft look in his eyes and a slight smile on his face.

“Can you go out and just grab me some…uh products for me please?” She asked, still finding herself getting shy at asking him to do the thing he’d been happily doing for her since they met. Chuckling slightly, he leant over to plant a quick kiss on her cheek before mumbling “I won't be long, then” and leaving the room with haste. He was clearly hungry but was willing to put that need aside to help his beloved. And with that, she was left alone.

One thing that was interesting was that each vampire had a special gift beyond morphing into bats and inhuman speed: Gangrel had his strength, Edge had his healing, and Christian? Beyond his fantastic ability to be the world’s most annoying vampire, he had this incredible ability to be very compelling, almost borderline manipulative if the situation called for it. Though he couldn’t show this off as much because, as mentioned before, no one really paid that much attention to him beyond the people he lived with. Nonetheless, it was a power of his. Hidden, but existing. Before he had realised Jen was the one for him, he was the main ‘Hunter’ so to speak as he could attract anyone and everyone. Suffice to say, they had a lot of skeletons in their closet. Literally. As much as she loved Christian, she sometimes wondered what compelled her to fall in love with him so quickly. She was glad she did for a variety of reasons but it was still a question that she found floating around in her head years later.

Once again, she was so distracted that she hadn’t heard him re-enter their room holding a plastic bag full of goodies for her. Well, goodies with the addition of pads and tampons.

“I got you some extra bits which I figured you’d probably need!” He said, with a smile in his voice. Jen took the bag off him, returning that smile as he kneeled on the bed in front of her.

“Thank you, I appreciate that,” she groaned as another wave of cramps passed over her body, “I’m gonna put it away quick so I can lay down and-“

“Pass it here, I’ll do it!”

He wasn’t usually this eager to do a chore but she reckoned it was his way of trying to make the inevitable feeding a bit nicer. He couldn’t make the pain go away and this way of feeding was so messy that it always made Jen feel a little uncomfortable. But seeing how happy and satisfied he was afterwards helped her get through it.

He had taken the bag from her hands, practically throwing things in the hopes he could get them to their homes quicker so he could get on with his meal. Grabbing a large black towel, baby wipes, and tissue paper, he jumped back on the bed.

“Let’s get these off…” he mumbled, pulling on her trousers and underwear until he was able to just fling them off her legs. Tucking the folded towel under her bum, he opened her legs. She watched him take a deep breath in through his nose, closing his eyes as he enjoyed the smell. When his eyes flicked back open she noticed that they were darker, full of both lust and hunger. But as clearly desperate and excited he was for this, he didn’t rush into it. Instead he took his time kissing up her thighs.

For a vampire, he had very warm lips. The rest of his body was cold and pale yet his lips were light pink, plump, and warm to the touch. It still shocked her to feel the difference in temperature when she felt his chin or nose graze over her skin.

The softness of his kisses as they travelled slowly upwards sent tingles down her body to meet his lips in the middle. It felt incredible when he took his time with her, but she could tell he was becoming impatient. As much as Jen wanted him to keep planting his lips on her legs, she inched her way down to signal that she wanted him to attend to his needs. And he obliged with glee.

As he licked one long stripe between her lips, she gasped at the contact. He groaned in return as the taste of blood sunk into his taste buds. Normally he would spend a moment or two savouring the taste, enjoying the feeling of his favourite meal! But he was so hungry, he just couldn’t take it. Taking a hold of her legs to pry them further open, he delved in between her thighs. At this point in time, it felt incredible. Getting simultaneously eaten out and cleaned up felt so good! Christian did his best not to instinctively bite down as he licked and swallowed each droplet of blood that came freely from her body. It was such an intense flavour that he did gently nibble once or twice.

“Oh my god,” she whispered, “that feels so nice…”

Again he hummed in response, flicking his tongue up against her clit to give her some more pleasure. It earned him a whine to which he smirked, spending some time in that precise area. Considering his experience it was no wonder that he knew exactly where her clit was. One of the many pluses in their relationship.

As time went on, his mouth was beginning to ache and tire. Although he was still hungry for more, his jaw was certainly on its way out to exhaustion. Still, he pushed on. To give his jaw a short break, however, he dipped his long, slender fingers deep inside her to lick up the blood that way. As he lifted his head to suck on his fingers, she noticed what looked like a long string of blood attached to his bottom lip, still connected to her. Seeing that made her feel strangely aroused and she couldn’t think why. Perhaps it was the idea that he was so engrossed in what he was doing he didn’t care about it as much as he normally would? Or maybe it was the idea that he was enjoying himself so much, he made a complete mess of the two of them? Either way, it was hot.

Christian continued this for another few minutes before he finally reached over for the bag, grabbing a tampon to use on her so she didn’t have to, and using the towel and nearby wet wipes to clean her up. He’d normally clean her up with his tongue but he had been down there for so long that his tongue needed a moment to rest.

“I’ll probably be coming back for some more,” he chuckled, kissing her shoulder before laying next to her briefly, “but I’ll let you rest and get yourself in comfy clothes, and then we’ll have a cuddle. I think we both could do with a little rest after that.”

[liltaz-asatreat]

Anyone up for Grand Relic Analysis?

I think the power and destructive capabilities of each Relic corresponds to each person's understanding of magic and the Light of Creation really well. Like, in order of least destructive and powerful to most destructive and powerful, we have the Animus Bell, the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet, the Philosopher's Stone, the Oculus, the Gaia Sash, and the Temporal Chalice, which may seem like a weird order considering I put the Animus Bell first and the Philosopher's Stone third, but let me explain.*

*I'll get to Lucretia's at the end and why it wasn't listed above.

The Animus Bell, while it's horrific and powerful enough to knock someone's soul out of their body and allows the person wielding it to take over the victim's body and live in it themself, it only targets one person at a time. All of the advanced magic and everything else that happened in Wonderland, the Wonderland twins were already doing themselves before the Starblaster crew got there and made the Relics, so that was the only thing that we know of that the Bell was capable of doing. So all in all, not a super powerful destructive force in regards to destruction on a large scale, and because it only did one very specific thing, it couldn't be used for other purposes to do further damage.

The Phoenix Fire Gauntlet also only had one thing that it did, and it was just to produce fire and be used as essentially a very powerful flamethrower. As Taako said, it couldn't be used to do anything else like the other Relics could, and it did actually mitigate a lot of potential damage by just being an effective flamethrower because even when the wielder lost control, it only destroyed the area in a half mile diameter circle.

It was Barry and Lup's job to study the Light and know everything about it and to study magic and science, and they were both basically the best ever at that. They're also the ones who came up with the plan in the first place, so they knew the most of what they were doing and how to use the Light in a way to dampen its effects and curtail the damage it would be capable of causing. They also knew the best on how to make sure to focus their artifact into doing only one thing because of their extensive background in magic knowledge and because they knew if they made their power too broad, it could be used in a number of ways that would spiral out of control.

The Philosopher's Stone, while it did have the capability of doing a lot of damage (re: the threat of turning the whole world to crystal in the Crystal Kingdom), it really only had one power too. Sure, that power was a bit broad in being able to transmute anything into literally anything else, but that was the end of it. And honestly, it could be argued that the threat of turning the whole world into crystal was a fluke because it was basically just constantly turned on during that arc because Maureen's mind was gone and she had a bunch of different spirits also possessing her in a way, so there was really no one controlling the Stone except to channel it like if you were to turn on a light switch. Most of the time though, it couldn't have been that much of a threat to the entire world because during the war and while people were still going after them, even the girl we heard about losing control of it only turned a town into peppermint. And whoever else had the Stone obviously also didn't destroy the whole world with it.

Also, Lucas and Maureen were pretty lucid while they were in possession of the Stone. They had to be for them to have had it for that long and had only used it to make planar mirrors and nothing else. So the general thrall of that Relic couldn't have been as strong as the other ones, or at the very least, even if it was, it would take a really long time for the wielder to be completely taken over and might have only happened if they felt like they were threatened, whereas with most of the other Relics, it didn't really take as much for them to take over their wielder.

Taako is also basically the best magician ever, and he'd know and understand how to make magic items and how to control how powerful they are in general and to narrow down the range of that power, but he didn't work with the Light as much as Lup and Barry did. He probably a little less prepared for how powerful the Light really was and didn't know how to work with it in a way to mitigate it as much as Barry and Lup did, but he still knew what he was doing more or less.

The Oculus and the Gaia Sash could honestly be probably tied for second most powerful and destructive because their powers are so broad in very similar ways.

The Oculus could literally make anything the wielder could imagine without any limit, and it was able to destroy whole towns and let loose monsters across the continent. With the power to make anything, it could and was used to bring the impossible to life, and honestly, things probably could have gotten so much worse if it kept landing in the hands of warlord after warlord who had the kind of imagination to bring a black hole to reality and a willingness to use it. Or literally anything else just as, if not more destructive. Imagination is a very powerful thing.

The Gaia Sash had a broad power over all of nature, which you could say at least it was narrowed down to just nature, but that's still a very broad domain. It sank an entire island chain in minutes, and if it was possible to survive wielding it for a long time while completely taken over, it could have destroyed the entire continent within the week at least.

Davenport and Merle knew magic, obviously, but they had very little to do with actually studying the Light hands on at all. They knew enough about magic to make magic items and to make them cool, but they had no way of knowing how powerful the Light was going to make them because all of the information about it they would have gotten second hand and probably only the amount of information Lup and Barry felt was necessary to share for the mission in general, not every single detail of the inner workings of the Light. Davenport was a pilot and engineer and Merle was a biologist and healer. They both weren't astro-arcane-physicists. So they probably just focused on what would be a cool thing to do if their artifacts were used right. Like, with the Gaia Sash, you could fix droughts and help crops grow and with the Oculus, you could fix poverty or create fun, harmless things or even advance science and arcane studies like how the IPRE used the Light to build the Starblaster in the first place. The broader their powers, the more good they had the potential of doing.

They just didn't think about how opening up that freedom also gave them even more potential to go horribly wrong.

And then the Temporal Chalice, well. It has such a broad dominion over time that on the less effective end of the scale, it can put up its own brand of protection bubble and rewind time over and over again until the wielder shrivels up and dies. But its main power of being able to rewrite time completely is absolutely terrifying. The fact that it can play with the strings holding together reality itself, because if you think about it, if someone were to have taken up the Chalice's offer and use it for its intended purpose: to fix a mistake in the past with the expectation that you have to want everything to happen after that to keep the new timeline intact, they would have eventually experienced something in the new timeline that they would also want to fix. And they already have the Chalice, so they just go back and fix it and rewrite the timeline again.

And then they do it again.

And again.

And again.

The Relics eventually take over their wielders outright, so if the Chalice completely took over someone's will, it would just completely break timeline after timeline until time got so broken that it would be unfixable. There wouldn't be any way to come back from that. Istus certainly can't fix it because she would have stopped existing by that point according to what she told the boys herself during the Eleventh Hour, so reality itself would be lost.

Magnus knew fuck all about magic in general. Sure, he was surrounded by wizards for a hundred years, but there's a difference between being able to define what a spell slot is and recognizing what his family's individual styles of magic looks like and actually being able to work with magic himself. He probably also didn't do a whole lot of studying magical theory by himself, so literally the only things he knew about magic going into this was what he passively picked up from his fellow crew members and the one year they spent at the Hanging Arcaneum. The one year of study he did there, seven years prior to actually making the Chalice. Did he keep up with practicing artificing during those seven years? Maybe, but I sincerely doubt dedicating an at least decent amount of time studying and practicing artificing during those seven years was something he would have decided to take up.

And on top of basically not knowing what he was doing, he probably was really focused on what would be really cool to do and didn't spend a single second to stop and think about should he do this. At least, not until it was too late, and he saw the power the Light had inside the artifacts made by the people who actually did know what they were doing way more than he did.

As for the yet to be mentioned Bulwark Staff, we don't really know if it was destructive at all because Griffin never described it being circulated, and it isn't 100% clear what its general capabilities were supposed to be. We know it must have some general magic capabilities like a wand because she used it to put the tres horny bois asleep before the Test of Initiation and to channel the pieces of the Light of Creation out of the other Relics. She mostly did save it though for casting protection bubbles, and as abjuration is her specialty, it's safe to assume that that was the main focus for the Relic in general. She honestly, might have made it solely for the purpose of eventually enacting her plan and refrained from making it explicitly with the intention of making people want to use it, so it had less of a thrall effect, which made it stay hidden during the war and unused by anyone. That's why she was able to find it so quickly and easily and without any trouble.

[iamvegorott]

Meeting A Magical Man Pt. 52

Part 1: Link Prev: Link Next: Link

“Lesson learned. I am not trusting Mad alone at a bar for more than a minute at a time. I’m getting him a babysitter for my next shift,” Mare said as he washed glitter off his arms in the kitchen sink. “And I’m kicking my brother’s ass for giving Mad that body glitter.” 

“At least he only got to your arms.” Marvin chuckled from where he sat on the table, combing his hair and trying to get some of the thicker clumps of glitter out that way. 

“I guess I shouldn’t complain. Anti got the worst of it.” Mare knew they could use magic to help get rid of the glitter, but there was always this weird residue feeling left over after using it to clean something off the body, so they were going to be washing themselves regardless. 

“At least Mad had a good time.” Marvin made a face when the comb got snagged on a knot. “But you’re right about fighting Phantom for giving him that glitter.” 

“He just loves to encourage the chaos.” Mare sighed. “I think that’s the best I’m gonna get tonight.” He said about his arms and turned off the sink. 

“Speaking of a subject change, could you do me a favor? Well, two favors?” Marvin asked as he worked out a tangle in his hair. 

“Considering you’re letting me stay at your place for free, I can spare a couple of favors.” Mare grabbed a dish towel and dried off his arms. 

“I’m working on figuring out Mad’s relaxing activity. We have a theory that you might be connected to it. Could you play a video game, let Mad watch you, and tell me how he is? I want him to have something that lets him turn his brain off, and maybe watching you play might be it, or just let’s play stuff in general.” Marvin ran his fingers through his hair after he felt confident it was clean enough. “Anti sent me a few links to some of them he knows, so we’ll try those, too.” 

“I don’t think Anti and Mad are going to have the same tastes.” Mare sat the towel down and leaned against the counter, hands holding the edge. “But yeah, I think I can handle spending time with Mad.” He chuckled.

“I really have to pull your leg for that, don’t I?” Marvin giggled. 

“Any excuse to have it be just me and Mad is welcomed. When we lived in that other place, it was just the two of us most of the time when Actor wasn’t…yeah, but it wasn’t as peaceful as he needed. The puzzles were the closest thing to peace he got, but even then, they’re like a competition to him, wanting to see how fast he could get them done, and that’s not really what you’re looking for when it comes to his relaxing activity. So if what gets him to finally not have that brain of his going at a thousand miles an hour is me playing some games while he watches, I’ll be more than happy to do that. Hell, I’d do anything if it meant Mad could breathe without overthinking it.” 

“Mad’s lucky to have you,” Marvin said with a smile. 

“I’m lucky to have him.” Mare smiled back before asking, “So, what’s that second favor of yours?” 

“Yeah, you know that tone you used earlier when you told Mad to drink his water?”

“I mean, yes, what about it?”

“Could you teach Chase how to use that?” Marvin huffed when Mare started laughing. 

“You want me to teach Chase how to use a stern voice?” 

“Yes.” 

“Why don’t you just ask Jackie to work with Chase?”

“I am not asking my ex-boyfriend to give my current boyfriend tips on how to be more dominant in bed.”

“He might have some little tricks Chase hasn’t figured out yet. You know, sensitive spots, movements you like, maybe some-”

“Forget it. Just focus on Mad.” Marvin pouted and bounced off the table. 

“You’re the one that started this.” Mare hummed as Marvin left the room. 

“Don’t be a dick.” 

“Good night~” 

x~x~x

Chase hated math. He hated figuring out his financials and couldn’t afford to pay someone to do it for him. It was all too complicated, and the legality of it was messy. He stared at the papers in front of him on his table and held his head like his brain would start leaking out. It was the next day, and he and Marvin went to his place while the others were working on their own things.

“I’m not going to be able to afford this place anymore. Phantom’s paying me fairly, and even then, I’m gonna have to go into savings, and that won’t end well. Stupid bills keep getting higher every year, and now I don’t have insurance and-”

“You could sell the house and move in with me.” Marvin offered. 

“I thought you didn’t like having roommates,” 

“You’d be a lot more than a roommate.” Marvin placed his hand on top of Chase’s, squeezing it. “You’re my partner. I’d be very happy to see you even more than I already do.” 

“I have a lot of stuff.”

“I’ll make room.” 

“Never thought you’d be the one to suggest living together.” Chase chuckled as he leaned over and kissed Marvin. 

“You practically live there already, not really much of a stretch.” Marvin leaned back before Chase could kiss him again. “But, there is one thing you’ll have to do to move in.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t want a gun in my house. It…I just can’t.” 

“I’ll sell that too. Maybe I could talk Mad into making me one of those mallets as well. Or, like, a really cool baseball bat.” 

“You really are a big sweetheart.” 

“I try.” 

“That’s why you’re my favorite.” Marvin giggled. “Phantom and Jackie are touring a house. Maybe they’ll be going out while you’re coming in. We’ll have plenty of hands to pack and carry everything.” 

“Is it bad that I’m happy that the big stress of our life is going to be selling a house and moving?” Chase chuckled.

“Sounds a lot less dangerous than defying a powerful magic user twice in the same week.”

“Just a little.” 

----------

Tags: @brokentimewatch @bookwormscififan @d-structive @rainymae523 @ashtonisvibing

[handgiven]

this is a happy birthday short story for fox mulder @spookyagentfmulder && just a general happy day story for herald who deserves all the love that people have been giving him 💛💛

I saw you in a blazing light. I could not quite figure it out for what it was. A part of me assumed it was just the brightness of your mind, the way it warped and twisted itself in order to reflect on the universe. I could tell that much about you while the first couple of words from your mouth still hung fresh in the air, like apples for the picking on a lovely old apple-tree which only ever grows where you have lived and loved once. A part of me knew there was more to it than that. That you were but a man yet there was something else about you, otherworldly. Or there would be. Whenever I tried to touch it, it went out of focus. The only thing I knew about it was that overwhelming sense of warmth and love.

Here is a good man, I thought while I entertained your nibs at philosophy. Beautiful mind. A well of wonder to drink from, a heart pumping it full so effortlessly, like breathing. I wanted to touch you, even then. I wanted to be close to you while you explained things that to me were simply wrong. But it was all a part of the process. How else shall humanity learn besides exploring universal truths for themselves? How else shall you learn the truth about the you and the me unless I allow you to walk the steps? And walk the steps you did. I worried for you all the while, small and open to the greatness of the world.

Fox Mulder, the man who would be touched by an angel. It took you long enough. It took us long enough. The truth of the matter is I knew I was, or would be, in love with you by the time you finished your first sentence. I knew you to be a good and gentle man by the time you finished your second one. The third sentence seeped into the skin of my hands who felt that phantom affection and longed for a touch. Not yet, not yet. You cried the first time we met and I touched you then, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world. I couldn’t tell if you knew. You didn’t, but perhaps in some way you did, because I knew, and because a part of me is a part of you now.

Do you ever think about that? The connection that became apparent before none of the things that make it up from the fabric of the universe even happened? The way my hand slipped into yours and your lips slipped against my lips and none of it ever felt like crossing a milestone but rather like settling into the predetermined order of things that sang the song of you and me since the beginning of time? The way I hold you now, sweaty and glowing and bare, and all of the before makes as much sense as all the after.

There is a piece of you inside of me, much like there is a piece of me within you. And that piece of me is the greatest act of love and kindness to myself I have ever done. The first selfish act in a line of many, all of them pertaining to the way you would be mine. The way I longed for you to be mine. The way I marked you now so that some time in the past, I would have known to look your way and not only that – I would have known that you were special. As for the piece of you… That piece hardly shines as brightly as that divine light of mine – in fact, it possesses a slightly dimmer space between my ribs – and yet when I think of it, when I think of you, I can do nothing but to engulf it in the light of my own all over again. I wonder if you can feel it. The way loving you has become a tic, an act embroidered into my mundane; running a hand through my hair, entangling my fingers into one another, and flooding the little part of your soul I have been given to guard with love.

[kariachi]

Oh look, a commissionpiece for @thenixkat! 10.7k words for what is now the Werewolf!Richie trilogy!

Times don’t really get any easier for our poor boy.

~~~~

The life of a hunter was not glamorous, nor was it easy. Their work was hard, dangerous, and messy. Civilian attitudes veered wildly- a hunt where you were all but paraded down the street as a hero could be followed immediately after by one where naïve locals condemned you as worse than the monsters you killed. Their clients were often peculiar and unpredictable. Gear suppliers few and far between. Informants wary, mysterious.

A hunter lived and died by those informants. Most beasts were well experienced in hiding themselves, slipping carefully under the radar of the humans that lived around them. Tracking them required diligent monitoring of human and animal deaths, and even an experienced hunter may not find enough of them to support their living without concerned residents offering them places to focus their investigations.

And then, some days, all they had to do was turn on the news…

*** ***

The Foley household did not get an hour after getting Richie comfortably settled in the basement, curled whining on a bed that had housed three generations of Foley wolves, before there was knocking at their door. Luckily it wasn’t an oddly polite hunter. Nor a witch, the government, or the police. Who it was was Batman, come all the way from Gotham of all places. Maggie couldn’t have honestly told you if this was any better. Maybe if it had been Wonder Woman- they’d worked together on wolf things before, she would probably understand- but the Bat was an unknown.

Normally she would have been self-conscious having a guest, especially such an important one, in her home when she was so tired and harried, but that night, with blood awash on the streets and her son’s hands? Self-consciousness took more energy than she had to spare. It was pure luck she even managed to put out a package of cookies like a good host, even though this was Batman and he probably subsisted off justice filtered from the air like some sort of sea sponge.

“Mr. and Mrs. Foley,” the Caped Crusader said once he was settled at the dining table and had politely polished off a singular oreo. Maggie was sat across from him, but Sean refused to take a seat, instead standing by her chair. “I have some hard news about your son.” Because that didn’t raise hackles like nothing else.

“Do you now,” Sean said in a tone that was as much warning as anything else. Batman looked at him, but otherwise appeared unfazed.

“Your son is a werewolf,” he continued, only for Sean to snort harshly.

“He better be.” That fazed the man, facial expressions hard to read with the cowl but the way a second cookie smushed in his fingers and the muscles around his mouth tightened said it just as well. “He was when he went to Gotham.”

“So he was,” Batman said, slowly. “Are you aware, then, of what’s happened tonight?”

“Yes,” Maggie answered this time, pulling together so her voice was firm and back straight. “We know what happened, and that Richie is safely secure now.” And hero or no he couldn’t have pulled the ‘where’ out of her with torture. Batman sighed, just barely, and set his cookie down.

“I understand you want to protect him,” he said, “but I need you to understand that Richie is very dangerous-” She hadn’t realized her hackles could go any higher.

“Richie,” Sean growled- and though he didn’t have enough wolf to him to see through magic like she and Richie did, between his parents and his sister he could growl and howl near as well as anyone- “wasn’t a danger to anything but a rack of ribs and the occasional stray cat until we let him run off to your turf, and the cat was more likely to get the scare of its life than anything.” The Bat tensed further.

“He’s killed thirteen people and injured more.”

“And it’s not going to happen again.” Batman met her eyes, unblinking.

“You can’t assure that. I just want to suggest sending him somewhere he can be kept an eye on, where he won’t be a threat to himself or anyone else.” Channeling her cousin, Maggie maintained eye contact.

“Our families have been handling young wolves for generations,” she said, “and have had one rampage to worry about-”

“That only happened because you didn’t do your damn job,” Sean interjected.

“-I think we can manage.” More tension.

“Mrs. Foley-”

“If you want to make a fuss about it,” Sean said, and she knew his hackles were raised at least as high as hers. He was far from the best husband and father, but he was at least good enough for this. “-then you can feel free to try.” And God as her witness she was on his side. Yes, Batman was a superhero, yes, he was only looking toward the greater good, but she was a mother. One who had more information than she would ever feel comfortable giving him, after Richie had confided in her about his obvious discomfort when he’d learned her boy was a werewolf. He wanted to lock her only child up- and that was what it was, he could talk until he went blue in the face but everyone in the community could read between the lines. Given the opportunity Richie would be locked up until they found a way to ‘fix’ him or a hunter or witch stole him away.

That wasn’t about to happen. Slowly, Maggie rose to her feet, eyes still on her ‘guest’.

“I think you’ll find,” she said, “that the door is right where you left it.”

*~*

The moon is up again and he’s in the basement with the door firmly latched. His pup is with him, his dam is with him, but neither is a substitute for the open air to which he’s accustomed. To running under the moon.

He can’t run in the basement. From one wall to the other is little more than two strides, with no way to build the sort of speed that makes him feel alive. At most he can pace, back and forth and back and forth in what feels more like loops than lengths. Stop on occasion to press his nose against the cracked window, breathe in the cool night air, and whine.

“I know,” his dam says, “I’m sorry. You can’t go out tonight. Too many people are hunting.”

He knows this. People are hunting him because he was a Bad Boy. He ate too much, he hurt his pack (his tail hasn’t wagged since he became himself again and at the memory of his brother and sister on the ground it presses between his legs) he was Bad and now he’s in trouble. Now he’s hunted like prey and locked in the basement and his siblings are nowhere to be found.

He’s tempted to howl, to call them, but that would be Bad.

He’s tempted to slip deeper into the layers of his city, find a place to run and leap, but that would be Bad too.

Whining again, he plods back to his bed, worn to comfort and smelling heavily of kin, and collapses on it, laying his head in his dam’s lap. She scratches behind his ears as his pup comes and settles in beside him- stroking his fur in his best attempts at grooming- and hums an old lullaby about wolves and bears. As she does, she moves a platter of ground meat to where he can easily tuck in.

Stomach still fuller than he’s ever known, his sister’s blood behind his eye, he turns away.

*~*

“Richie?” There were many benefits to being an adult, the greatest one being that while her father’s reaction to everything that had happened the night before had shaken Sharon as badly as it had Virgil, she didn’t actually have to obey his ‘you’re grounded’ if she didn’t want to. At least not if she had a good enough reason. Leaving her free to, after a few respectful days, personally go around and check in on the kids. Though Daisy and Frieda had at least come to the door for her.

“Come on in.” Steeling herself more than she’d like to admit, Sharon nodded and slipped into the bedroom. Richie was sat at his desk, a videogame of some sort going on his computer, wearing what she had to guess was his father’s shirt. Understandably so, as the muscle he’d built up over the last month had clearly not gone anywhere and instead been joined with a nice layer of fat.

She supposed eating a street’s worth of people would do that to anybody.

Beyond that and the mildly haunted look in his eye, though, there was little sign of the things he’d done just a few nights before.

“I brought over that necklace we mentioned,” she said, pulling it out of her pocket. A perfect match to the bracelet around his wrist. “How are you holding up?”

“Fine,” Richie said, taking the necklace from her with forced casualness and putting it on as tightly and firmly as was possible. “Mom wants me to stay where she can keep an eye on me for a few days more, but other than that...” Sharon raised a brow. It wasn’t abnormal for him to not sleep well over the full moon, but the dark circles under his eyes still didn’t speak to ‘fine’.

“I’m a counselor, Richie, no lying to me.”

The two stared each other down for a long moment, Sharon blindly stepping over to pat BackPack when the machine whirred at them. Richie, tired as he was, broke first, slumping with a sigh and faint smile.

“I put my two best friends in the hospital, killed a load of people, and haven’t really slept since before we fought those worms.” A quiet, forced laugh. “Been a bit of a week.” Yeah, it had, for all of them. She’d preferred to think of it as little as possible. With a sigh of her own, she pulled him into a hug that was as much for herself as him.

She could’ve very easily lost both her brothers that night, and much like her father she wasn’t sure what she’d have done had it happened.

“It’s all over now,” she said as he held her back. “Just keep the necklace or the bracelet on-”

“Oh, I’m wearing them both forever now.”

“-while we figure out a way to actually fix this. Until then-” She pulled back with a supportive smile. “-I’m going to get your mom to make you some cocoa and a good meal-” Something twinged across his face, but she let it pass. It had been a bit of a week, after all. “-and then you’re going to get some sleep. Okay?” Richie nodded.

“Okay. Thanks, Sharon.” They both knew it was for a million things, from still looking out for him to bringing the necklace and everything he’d apologized for over shock vox. She just nodded.

“It’s nothing.” Flashing a smile, she reached into her pockets again. “But, whenever you feel up to it, there’s a favor we’d like to ask you…”

*~*

There was nothing that distracted from nasty memories like work, any work, so Richie was more than happy to take an hour or so to sit down, BackPack in his lap and a bowl of pasta by his side, and modify the communicators they’d all gotten from the League.

Batman hadn’t shown up at anybody else’s house yet, presumably because even in this sort’ve situation you didn’t just risk outing somebody’s secret identity, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t made attempts to contact the rest of the team.

They’d all feel better not picking up calls if he had his own ringtone to avoid.

*** ***

Dakota was a mess. The young man at his motel who had, with a smile, handed him maps and guides and a list of nearby restaurants had given only praise for the city, but he was a local and Armel was a professional. He knew a monster when he stepped into it and the city of Dakota, with its hour drive of abandoned warehouse district and advice to pull over and wait three minutes if he ran into a sudden dead end, was a monster filled with monsters. Especially in the last few years. He’d had an inkling as he’d done his research, but now that he was here, he was certain a more generalized hunter could make the place their life’s work. A whole team maybe.

But he was a specialist and would be gone as soon as he’d cleared up and processed their little werewolf problem.

There were at least four. He had evidence of three, from various news reports, but his parents had taught him that there were always more wolves than your first count gave you. Informants, the news, often only caught wind of the least cautious, and you could rest assured that there would be more who were better at hiding behind them.

Finally bringing his van to a stop outside his motel room, after seven dead ends and at least three turns that shouldn’t have been wrong, Armel set to work unloading the newspapers and security footage he’d managed to get his hands on while he took in the lay of the land. Step one of a hunt, after all, was always to figure out precisely where you could find your prey.

*** ***

For the first time in his life, Richie was eating a green bean. He wasn’t normally the sort for green food- green was the color of mold and clearly that was a sign- especially not fucking green beans, but desperate times called for desperate measures and these times were nothing if not desperate.

The hunger that had been a background noise to his entire life, not so strong as to do him ill but as much a steady thrum as his own heartbeat, had come back full force after only a few days. Unfortunately, so had his instinctual craving for meat, no matter that even the sight of a steak made a pained whine rise unbidden in his throat. Chicken tasted like hot red blood in his mouth. If he shut his eyes, he could swear he was back on the street with his teeth in a woman’s throat.

He'd spent an hour on the phone with his grandmother that morning, trying to figure out why. This hadn’t happened after his first transformation, and he’d eaten an innocent man then. Yeah, he’d yearned for some produce afterwards, but it’d only taken at most an hour to turn right back around to his beloved meat. Their best guess, in the end, was a sheer matter of scale. Before he had never done more than toy with crowds, nip and play. To suddenly go to full scale slaughter? Even if it had been normal behavior, rather than brought on by presumed illness, the change would have had an impact on him.

Whatever the case, his body seemed not to have gotten the memo that meat was no longer a good option, and the crunch of frozen vegetables was- not a good substitute for the urge to chew a bone, but about what he was getting.

*~*

“Well,” Richie said with forced levity as he sat down in his normal spot at the lunch table, “if I had a social life before we can safely say it’s gone now.” All the tables around theirs were barren of any sign of life or use, with all the rest of the cafeteria crammed tight with students who clearly did not want to be anywhere near him.

“Don’t worry, Rich,” Virgil tried and failed to sooth him, “things’ll calm down. It’ll be fine.” Richie very, very much doubted that. From the moment he’d walked back into the school people had kept their distance, even ‘subtly’ trying to move their desks aside during class. Eyeing him with suspicion and fear when they thought he wouldn’t notice. Worse, eyeing Frieda and Virgil with pity as it became clear that they were still hanging out with him. Her less than him- you could mostly hide a concussion, but a broken arm was pretty obvious.

“I think there’s maybe three people who believe he was kidnapped,” Frieda said. “Everyone else is certain he’s a werewolf.” Fighting to keep his shoulders from tensing, Richie shoved a handful of fries into his mouth and worried the amulet around his neck with his other hand.

“Everyone,” he asked as incredulously as he could. Just because people thought he was a werewolf was no reason to admit it in public. Daisy shrugged.

“You were showing all the stereotypical signs,” she said. “There’s not a lot of people who don’t at least know somebody who likes werewolf media, they recognize the tropes.”

“Maybe if you’d come back to school sooner-”

“Or thinner.”

“-leave him be, Virgil. Maybe if you’d come back sooner the rumors wouldn’t have gotten the time to stew, but right now this is what we’re dealing with.” The frown on Frieda’s face said she probably didn’t believe it herself, and neither did Richie. The rumors weren’t baseless, after all. Knowing about them now, he couldn’t even blame people for wanting to avoid him. If this had been happening to someone else last year, he probably would’ve been wary too. And he had eaten like a dozen people.

It was really fucking messed up.

“Like I said, my social life is officially dead.”

*~*

The less said about his attempt to apologize to Russ for his behavior- about his tight smile, about his forced laugh- the better.

It stuck like a knife in the gut.

*** ***

The first wolf was a breeze to figure out. Armel had just had to find the first news article to mention them, and then comb through the rest for any mention of their name. Each time he found one, he noted down the area they were seen. Then it had been a simple matter of grabbing a map of Dakota and marking off all the sightings to figure out a general territory. He’d also looked into the family, but all reports seemed to agree that the wolf was one of those ‘Bang Babies’ that infested the place, and a weekend stakeout had provided no evidence otherwise, so he set any concerns about them aside. He had their names and their address; he could always check again when he was done.

The others were more trouble. One of them had gone on a little killing spree the year before, tearing through pets, zoo animals, and one unfortunate civilian, but since had only been seen occasionally loping about side streets and alleyways. The other had only appeared the once, not seen any of the other nights of the moon and with no more victims found. There was, as suspected, no video that he could find that showed any transformations, and neither had had any scars or accessories he could pick out on the footage that could be used to track a human shape. Worse, the patterns of sightings and attacks were all over the place, with no obvious paths or territory to focus his attention on. But Armel was a professional, and he was certain that with more digging he would find a lead on at least one of them. There was the risk that, like the first one, these were also both Bang Babies and so there would be no connection to pull on and find the greater community in the area- there was one, he always found one- but even so.

Until then, however, there was still plenty he could do. With a huff and a heave, he swung a crate of hook traps into the back of his van, all freshly cleaned and sharpened, shoving it back between a box of hardware and the brightly-colored pup traps. A big cooler of chicken quarters followed, carefully secured before he slammed the door shut, sealing it with a padlock.

If nothing else, it seemed like you didn’t have to wait on the moon to go a-trapping around here.

*** ***

“Daisy! Freida!” The pair stopped on their way to the doors at the end of the day, turning to watch Carmen Fonseca run up the hall their way. A nice enough girl, if a little self-important. She all but skidded to a stop in front of them, shoving out her hands with a smile. “I made these for you!”

A quick look and Frieda felt her mouth twist in a frown. A pair of butter knives, painstakingly bent into loops that matched the spoon around Carmen’s wrist.

“Thanks, Carmen,” Daisy said far more politely than Freida felt, “but we’re good.”

“Better safe than sorry,” Carmen countered, eyes flicking to Freida’s head. Her ire kicked into a higher gear.

“Just because the rest of you have gone paranoid doesn’t mean we have,” she said. Already she’d been annoyed, right from when Richie came back to school and most everyone had avoided him like the plague. Then, not even a few days later, people had started showing up kitted out in all the silver they could get their hands on. She knew for a fact a few of their classmates had mugged people for jewelry.

The good news was that eventually it had given people the confidence to stop maintaining a six-foot gap between them and her friend whenever possible. The bad news was that Richie was having one hell of a time getting around without hurting himself or letting on he actually couldn’t touch the silver.

Nobody wanted to know what would happen if the rumors got that sort of fuel.

Scowling, Carmen dropped her hands, going to put the ‘bracelets’ back into her bag.

“When Richie eats you,” she said admonishingly, “I won’t feel bad. I’ve done what I can.” They watched silently as she, with a small huff, shoved passed them and walked out the big front doors. Freida shook her head.

“Remind me to never do her a favor again in my life.” Heaving a sigh, Daisy readjusted her hold on her backpack and headed out.

“No problem.”

*~*

Richie may as well have not been eating at all, for how his stomach was acting. It didn’t matter how many carbs, eggs, cheese, vegetables he threw at it, that gnawing hunger refused to soothe back to it’s normal undercurrent. He could all but hear a refrain of ‘meat’ in his head, the smell of it at dinner and in the lunchroom as alluring as it was off-putting.

A yearning as deep as the pit in his stomach and the guilt in his heart.

*~*

A week and a half after The Event and nobody had seen Richie eat a meat product. If this had been one of the girls, or even Virgil, that wouldn’t have been a big deal, but this was Richard Foley, who they’d all assumed was required to eat at least three hamburger patties a day lest God strike him down.

None of them could bring themselves to mention it though. Daisy and Sharon had watched him eat a man, and while they would never say it, they were kind of happy not to see him tear into anything more visceral than an onion ring. Virgil still keenly remembered teeth bared in his face while he struggled to breathe. Frieda had the least trauma there, and still it had only taken seeing the look on Richie’s face when offered half a burger- yearning, disgust, hunger, pain- once to break her heart and do

Nothing.

*~*

Static lays on the ground beneath him, pinned with long clawed hands. His breathing is shallow, bones cracking one by one under his weight. Blood bubbles from his mouth, just as it did from his sisters’, and Richie knows it’s not enough. Not enough blood, not enough meat, and he’s so so hungry that it’s easy to lean down for a bite

Richie woke to a mouth full of sharp teeth, an endless whine in his throat, and BackPack’s worried prodding. A jolt of fear and disgust shot up his spine as the remnants of his nightmare, blood and meat and pack, swirled into the dark depths of his mind. His jaw clamped shut, he yanked BackPack close to him, curling as tight as he could against the comfort of whirring gears and clicks as he tried to force back his teeth and a whimper.

His stomach growled.

*~*

The more time passed, the more he started itching again.

Richie’s first instinct when he’d noticed had been to panic. After all, the whole last month preceding his rampage had been marked with constant itching of the scar still sat over his shoulder. This wasn’t so centralized, however, which was a relief for about as long as it took to remember that it was also the main symptom of his transformations. Lo and behold, a few checks showed patches of fur, long teeth, claws, all trying to work their way out when the itching started.

He panicked all over again.

*~*

“Okay,” Daisy said, slumped on the couch and silently wondering if they were ever going to stop having Richie issues, “so you’re transforming just, whenever?”

“Only a little bit,” Richie said like that made it better, then dropped the act. “I’m not sure why, this hasn’t happened before.”

“Maybe it’s another witch thing,” Virgil suggested. “Have you smelled anything weird lately?”

“No.” Richie shook his head. “Everything’s been as normal as it ever is in Dakota.”

“That’s not exactly a high bar.” She had to agree with Freida. Neither of them had ever been out of the state, but they engaged with media from elsewhere and…

Two weeks and the werewolf rampage wasn’t even a footnote in the news anymore.

“We should probably keep an eye out anyway,” Sharon said. “Better safe than sorry.” Everyone nodded their agreement. After all, if this was more witch stuff then it was entirely possible this one was using different spells than the last.

“Either way,” Virgil said, “we may wanna see if we can safely solder those amulets on.” Snorting humorlessly, Richie flashed a grin and waggled the wrist with the bracelet.

“I’m way ahead of you, Virg.”

*** ***

He blamed Dakota itself for the issues he was having. Not a single one of his traps had caught this damn wolf yet. In fact, so far all they had caught was dogs. Big, identical dogs that he kept having to shoot so he could just get on with clean up. Not like he had to worry about maintaining a salable skin, the damn things’ ragged hides weren’t worth the time they’d take to remove. Meant a nearly free source of bait meat though, so at least it wasn’t all a wash.

‘Still’, he thought as he stuffed trap and dog both into a waterproof sack, tying it shut, ‘it’d be nice to hear an alarm and have an actual fucking catch.’ It didn’t help that he felt like he might finally have found a lead on those other two wolves. A kid had disappeared around the time they each popped up, same one both times. Might have been an adolescent they’d been teaching, and if so that meant those two were probably of the same pack, found in the same area. It was worth looking into, but first he’d hoped to have this one’s skin and fat stored away for processing. Hunting unrelated wolves at the same time could be an absolute bear.

Heaving a sigh as he tossed the sack into the back of his van, shutting and locking the doors, Armel shook his head and started for the driver’s side.

If he wanted to get this done before the wolves caught on, he was going to have use the hands-on approach here.

*** ***

They changed where they normally sat in the lunchroom. Ostensibly they picked a new corner spot so that Richie didn’t have to deal with people side-eyeing him through lunch, his friends now a full barrier between him and the rest of the rest of the school. Functionally, he was able to actually eat when there was a lower risk of somebody noticing that he had claws half the time.

*~*

“Had lunch with some of the guys from the west end. Apparently they’ve been finding pools of blood out in the Dockside District,” his dad said during dinner one night, to he and his mom’s surprise both.

“Pools,” she asked.

“Pools. Lab came back this morning saying they’re dog but, has to have been some big fucking dogs. Hewitt says it looked like somebody’d bled the damn things out.” Richie kept his eyes on his salad, already tasting like ashes in his mouth before the topic had changed. Dog sounded far too good in that moment.

“Do they have any idea who did it?”

“Not a clue. All they’ve know is whoever it was loaded them into some sort’ve vehicle and they wear a size ten boot.” His mom shook her head with a tight frown.

“That’s horrible.”

“Yep,” his dad said, “some sick people out there. What the fuck would you even need all those dogs for, they found at least ten pools.” Stomach rumbling loudly, Richie shook his head and changed the subject.

*~*

Unsurprisingly Richie got into five different confrontations once the ‘dead dogs’ news trickled fully into the school. Physical violence was thankfully avoided, but only because three times he’d been with Virgil and the girls and had numbers advantage, and the other two the ever-popular Joey Bombura had helpfully reminded everyone involved they needed to get to class and escorted people himself. After all, who in their school was going to fight him about it?

The way his blood started pumping whenever he was challenged, Richie was more than grateful for the help.

*~*

“Gear?” Only halfway through the fight did the others notice that their friend had just, stopped in midair. Out of the way, thankfully, but still odd behavior to put it lightly. Enough so for Hurricane to abandon the conflict- not like the other girls couldn’t handle it for a minute or two- to fly over and check on him. “Gear? Are you okay?” She put a hand on his shoulder, reeling back when he started like a spooked deer.

“Hurricane?” Eyes torn from their opponent- yet another newly public Bang Baby who’d figured out how to weaponize walking on anything- he faced her, breathing heavily, muscles tense.

“Are you okay,” Hurricane repeated, a twisting worry in her gut. Slowly, Gear nodded.

“Yeah,” he said haltingly, “yeah. Just… I think I should probably bow out today.” Well, that did nothing to help her concern. Still, Hurricane nodded.

“Okay. Don’t worry, we’ve got this.”

*~*

“Did you read in the paper,” Frieda asked at lunch one day, “Jaron Coombs got shot last night.”

“Who,” Virgil asked, echoing the first word in Daisy’s head.

“Wolfboy,” Richie said.

“Oohhh, him, okay. What happened?”

“More importantly,” Daisy cut in, “who’s ‘wolfboy’? I thought we only had Richie?”

“He’s a Bang Baby,” Virgil explained, “tried to go on a rampage pretty much immediately. Then Hotstreak lit him on fire, and he’s mostly kept a low profile ever since.”

“You’ve got to give him that at least,” Richie said. “There aren’t too many people around here who figure out they’re outclassed and decide to just keep themselves to themselves.”

“Nobody’s really sure what happened,” Frieda said. “Some old lady found him curled up under her porch, took him to the hospital. He’s still there.”

“Well,” Daisy said, “I hope he recovers alright.”

She didn’t mention the niggling in her gut that some paranoid local may have mistaken him for Richie. They probably all were thinking it anyway.

*~*

“You’d think ‘The World’s Greatest Detective’ could take a fucking hint. Why is he still calling us?”

“Do you think the Justice League has a complaints department we can get in touch with?”

“I’m beginning to hope. Wonder Woman would take us seriously about it, I’m sure.”

*~*

Richie was so fucking hungry…

*~*

He’d begged off lunch, even though it visibly sent up about every red flag in the world for his friends. Still, they’d let him go, begrudgingly accepting his list of excuses as to why he needed to hit the library up that day and why he couldn’t go after school and why they totally should just go and have lunch themselves he’d be fine don’t worry about it. They were going to worry about it, and he felt guilty, but that was no change from his new norm and

And he couldn’t do the lunchroom right now.

Not when he could smell all that meat, right there. Not when it made him itch- and it was definitely that making him itch. He hadn’t been able to admit it when the theory first came to mind- not while he still couldn’t handle eating the stuff and god had he tried- but the longer this went on the more he knew it in his rumbling gut. Especially now the scent left him about ready to vault a table and sink his teeth into whatever fleshy bits he found. Better to go the empty library and keep himself busy until they could all sit down and talk about it. Keep himself distracted from his stoma-

“Richie, man, I was wondering where you were. You never skip lunch.”

Alarm bells started going in his chest as Richie looked up from the book he was hardly managing to pay attention to to see one Joey Bombura crossing the room with a smile. They weren’t necessarily friends, but they’d always been friendly, willing to lend each other a hand if needed, and even as the school descended into werewolf paranoia the other boy had never been one of the ones eyeing him like he’d bite. Never worn silver (not even a little charm-)

“Hey Joey,” Richie said with a pasted on smile, resisting the urge to scratch the itch creeping up his spine. “Yeah, got a full day so, only time I’ve got for the library.” Joey nodded as he reached him, a wall of teen that would’ve felt like it was looming had he been anyone but himself (so much meat-), holding out his fist companionably.

“Do you need some company,” he asked as Richie mirrored the action, stomach roaring (meat-), hands itching (meat!)

His lunge stops short, jaw snapping shut over open air. Joey’s sudden grip on his shoulders is tight, sleeves catching under his claws as he tries to dig in, rip it away.

“Richie, Richie relax!” He strains harder against the hold, teeth yearning for a throat they can almost reach-

Joey walks backward, dragging him with him. His arms are locked, holding Richie at a constant distance as he checks the hall and pulls him into it. This doesn’t stop Richie’s struggles, snapping, snarling, clawing and kicking at him in an attempt to get close enough to bite, kill, eat, he’s so hungry- The third door down the hall is nudged open, and Richie unceremoniously tossed inside. He goes to spin around, lunge again as the door slams shut

Something squeals.

Like a switch Richie turns towards the back of the room, sniffing for the source of the sound. A big glass tank, a fuzzy little thing running in circles, terrified by the sudden appearance of a new predator in its vicinity. His chase instinct kicks in.

In a flash his head is in the tank, snapping once as the critter bolts away. There’s not enough space to avoid him though, not when he has two hands to snatch and teeth to snap. Quickly it’s crunching in his jaw. Hot blood, soft flesh, crunchy bone. He doesn’t normally eat all of his prey but he’s been so hungry for so long and soon his hands are empty, his stomach beginning to settle as he licks them clean-

“Richie? That better?” He froze, every muscle going tense as Joey’s hand fell onto his shoulder and his human mind clicked back into place.

He just ate Mr. Thornton’s guinea pig. In front of Joey.

He just tried to eat Joey.

“Oh god,” Richie groaned, pulling away and sinking against the back cabinets, guts twisting as he hit the floor. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean- I wouldn’t- I’m so sorry!”

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Joey said, still smiling as he knelt beside to him. “No harm, no foul.”

“I tried to eat you!”

“But you didn’t.”

“Because you shoved me at a guinea pig!”

“And I’d do it again.” Looking at him, Richie could only stare. Clearly being cute, strong, and personable was all that was keeping this boy alive, because he apparently had no survival instinct. “Are you still hungry? They’ve got those riblet sandwiches in the lunchroom today.”

“No, thanks,” he forced out, thumping his head against the cabinet behind him, willing away claws and teeth with effort. His heart and gut couldn’t take it. Not after everything, and now a guinea pig. Nearly a classmate! Joey nodded calmly.

“Okay.”

*~*

There were only so many things you could hide from your team. Or, more to say, only so many things you could keep quiet about. So long you could keep you’re here-to-fore unproven theories to yourself. Especially when they already had gotten up your butt more than once about not talking to them about shit you were dealing with. He’d been pushing that line for days.

So, that afternoon, when the team met up pre-patrol, Richie flopped down on the couch with a tight smile and confessed.

“I almost ate Joey Bombura today.”

The rest of the team froze, turning towards him slowly.

“Say that again, Rich? I seem to have gone deaf.”

“I almost ate Joey, at lunch today. He came looking for me when I didn’t show up to eat and…”

“Does he know you almost ate him,” Sharon asked, with the sensibility and foresight that came with being the only adult in the building. He nodded slowly.

“It… it was really, really obvious.” Surely straight up admitting to trying to rip a guy’s throat out with his teeth wasn’t necessary, they wouldn’t make him do that. “He’s not hurt.” They also surely wouldn’t make him admit to eating Mindy. Mr. Thornton’s afternoon classes had all been cancelled after he found his beloved class pet nothing but a small puddle of blood-soaked bedding, and even thinking of his reaction was like a spike through the heart.

“Ah.” Daisy collapsed beside him, staring straight ahead. “So, he knows the werewolf thing for sure now.”

“Yeah,” Richie said. “I think he’s cool though. Literally said ‘no harm no foul’ once I came back to my senses.”

“I knew there was a reason I voted for him,” Frieda said, plopping down on his other side. “Is there a particular reason you tried to eat him? Normally you’re very… Puppy.” Chewing his lip, he glanced around at everyone, watching him with concern and curiosity.

“I was hungry,” he settled on. “I was so hungry and he was just, so much meat in one spot and unprotected.” Besides his own strength which, thank god for that. The others glanced between themselves guiltily, which did nothing for his own regret.

“So, avoiding meat has been a bad thing for you then,” Frieda said more than asked, and Richie cringed. Logically he’d known they had to have noticed his change in diet, but nobody had said anything and he’d let himself hope- Hope that he wouldn’t cause them any more worry than he normally did. (Bad boy-)

“We should’ve known,” Virgil muttered. “He’s a fucking werewolf, of course he needs to be eating meat!” He collapsed into one of the other chairs with a huff and a guilty frown, Daisy leaning over to pat his good arm.

“Okay, yeah, we probably should’ve accepted it was a problem, but nobody is hurt and we can handle it now.” She turned her attention back Richie’s way. “Why haven’t you been eating meat, if you need it?”

The room went quiet. There were a million things Richie could’ve said. He could’ve lied. He could’ve told them everything. He could’ve downplayed things. He could’ve dropped a flashbang, jumped over Frieda, and booked it home never to bring this up again. It took what felt like forever for him to make a decision that didn’t pull at the dark spots in his brain too much.

“You,” he finally said, “try eating fourteen people and see how looking at a hamburger makes you feel for the next few weeks.”

“That,” Sharon said, kneeling down and putting a hand on his knee as the others looked anywhere but at him, “is perfectly understandable. It was a bad experience for all of us and you were the one right in the middle. But, if going without is going to mess with your control like this, we’re going to have to figure out a way to get you passed it.”

Richie nodded slowly. He knew that, he really did. But that didn’t make it better. Didn’t make the smell of meat excite and disgust him any less, or the taste bring back any better memories. Maybe, he could just let the change take over for a bit? He’d eaten the guinea pig fine (meat-) But then could he trust, in that state, that he wouldn’t try to eat a person again? That wasn’t a chance he wanted to take.

“I think, first of all, we should probably take him off patrol,” Frieda said, looking his way. “No offense, but, I think all five of us would feel better if you weren’t getting riled up right now.”

“No, no, I get it.” He nodded, a little relieved somebody else had brought up the option. “I totally understand.”

“So, we try to get him eating meat again,” Virgil said, “and you girls handle things on your own in the meanwhile. That’s totally doable.”

“And, we make sure he’s not going around alone anymore,” Daisy added. “I’m glad Joey’s okay, but someone else might not be so lucky.”

“I’ll have a talk with your mom,” Sharon said, “maybe she can figure out some ways to sneak meat into your diet without setting off your trauma.” Fuck, she was right but hearing it called that burned. “Meanwhile, you and I can see if we can talk you through this. Set up some meetings when we’ve got time. Okay?” Still, Richie nodded again, making himself smile wider. Anything to not hurt anybody again.

“Okay. Thanks, guys.”

“It’s what friends are for.”

*** ***

The fucking wind had changed. At the last minute, just as Armel’d lined up his shot, the goddamn wind had shifted right around and left him upwind. He’d still tried to take the shot, of course, but the wolf had known he was there and bolted as soon as they glimpsed the flash of metal. The bullet hadn’t even lodged, going through the back of a leg and winding up embedded in the wall of the building behind them, and there’d been no chance he was going to catch up with them, even with the injury.

He'd hoped for another chance, but some moron had found and moved them to a hospital, and the reward wasn’t worth the risk of having to fight through a bunch of innocent, idiot civilians.

So, he’d been forced to move on to the other lot. Taken a few days to scope out the home of that potential adolescent, look at the neighborhood. He was pretty sure he had a pack going there. There was some wolf scent, and a look around the property when it was empty had found claw marks at the back of the foundation that lined up well with a digging wolf. It was a relief after the shitshow on the west end, to have this part come together so easily.

Now he just needed to find a good spot to lay some traps, where no kids or anything would run into them, and hopefully things would be golden.

*** ***

“Seriously, man, who designs these fitness tests? I’m a werewolf and those sprints left me out of breath.”

“You sure it’s not just that you still haven’t dropped that weight,” Virgil laughed, poking him in the little remaining pudge around his middle. Richie bit back the urge to playfully swat him with his own backpack.

“I’m still at over ten more pounds of muscle than you, Virg, I’m allowed some fat!”

Idly, he wondered if he’d have kept more of the fat on if he’d kept up eating meat or if the amount of cheese and eggs he’d tried to replace the protein with should’ve managed that on its own. He’d have asked in their health class but, it was only two days after the great guinea pig ‘vanishing’ (meat, meat-) and he wasn’t ready to look Mr. Thornton in the eye like that.

He was still avoiding the lunchroom, the brief taste of meat having seemingly put a sharp edge on his cravings. Instead, he was continuing to spend lunch in the library, and the rest of his team had begun skipping as well in solidarity and to make sure nobody got eaten. Joey had been joining them, had even brought an extra hamburger (meat-) the day before in an attempt to keep Richie fed, though he’d come empty handed that day, after being told having meat there might do more harm than good. He’d even offered to fill the role of walking him home once they, giving in to the fact that he was already in on the werewolf thing, gave him a brief- heroless- run down on the situation, but been politely informed the position was filled.

The fact it was filled by Virgil was a point of contention. Not with Joey, he was cool, but Sharon’s big sister instincts were screaming at her. After all, while Virgil was pack, and just as powerful as the rest of them, he was also the most grievously injured. Concussions could take a while to heal, yes, but broken bones took longer. Sharon had insisted that this meant he was in greater danger if Richie got desperate enough to forget he was pack, Virgil had been indignant about the idea that he couldn’t protect himself from his bestfriend, there’d been furious debate over whether Richie even could get that desperate without outside influence- In the end everyone had been forced to agree that, since they were the two currently not doing the hero thing, it was the most convenient option, and the risk to Virgil himself was low, so Sharon was outvoted.

“If you’re not careful, Rich, you’re gonna start looking like your dad, and how are you gonna find a man then?” Oh, were it not for those busted ribs (meat-)

“I’ll have you know there are plenty of guys out there-” He paused for a moment on the sidewalk as a sharp, metallic scent hit his nose (meat, meat, meat-) then shook his head clear. “There are plenty of guys who are into fat dudes.” Virgil stopped short when he did, worry creasing his face and lips twisting down.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Richie said, waving the matter off as best he could with his hands full. “Somebody got back from the butcher or something” (meat, meat, meat, meat-) “I’m, I’m fine.” For obvious reasons, Virgil didn’t look convinced.

“Come on, let’s get your butt home.”

Richie didn’t know that he was convinced either, especially as they started back off, at double the pace, and the scent only got stronger (meat, meat, meat-). Enough to set him itching, shifting their backpacks in an attempt to scratch. No dice. The closer they got to home the stronger the scent was- red meat, bloody, dog, it shouldn’t have smelled so appetizing it was dog (meat, meat, meat, meat, meat-) and the fiercer the itching. He picked up speed again, Virgil jumping to keep pace, as he tried and failed to force the transformation back, clothes shortening, teeth shifting, pants too tight

“Richie? Come on, just a one more block, we can play videogames or fetch or something, you just have to-” Their backpacks hit the ground and he’s running.

It feels so good to run in the open air after those days locked up. To stretch his legs and howl to the bright, blue sky. Bone-aching hunger is all that keeps him from running laps around the neighborhood, the bright metal scent of blood and flesh calling like a siren’s song, over fences and through yards. Even the wind’s shifting back and forth can’t deter him, too late and slow to hide his heading. The call brings him to an empty house, one of the hundreds of abandoned buildings that litter every inch of his city, the doors and windows open wide.

He beelines for the meat, a pile of furry pieces sitting in the kitchen, up against the oven, and skids to a halt in front of it, horking down great mouthfuls before he’s even stopped moving. Not the most marvelous thing he’s eaten, that’s the little squeaker that’d come after weeks of all-but nothing, but certainly the next best thing. Warm meat, soft and bloody, the itch of fur a pleasant addition, sliding down his gullet in big chunks. This, this is what he’s been needing all this time, why had he ever stopped

A chunk of silver lodges in his throat.

*~*

It always took a little while to group up for patrol. The entire team had different things they had to deal with after school or work, and so generally never ended up going directly to the Abandoned Gas Station of Solitude (and now that they had it to themselves for the next while the girls were considering changing the name while they couldn’t be outvoted under ‘we were here first’ law). But they did generally end up getting there at about the same time, more often than not walking in as a single unit.

Meaning every active member was there at once to find their current least favorite hero standing ominously in a corner.

They all tensed.

“Batman,” Sharon led, as the eldest, “what brings you here?”

“I’ve been trying to get in contact with you,” he said.

“Really? Nothing’s come through on our end,” Frieda lied through her teeth.

“Maybe the communicators aren’t working,” Daisy offered. “I mean Static’s all electricity all the time, he might have shorted them.”

“Maybe.”

“This is important,” he cut in firmly, eyes narrowed at them.

“Important enough to catch us out of costume,” Sharon countered. She was fairly certain there was some sort of code about respecting secret identities. But then, this was Batman, he’d probably known who they all were before even meeting them.

“I’ve been maintaining surveillance around the Foley home,” he said like all three of them weren’t going to immediately have their hackles raised to the ceiling.

“Hold on,” Daisy said, “you’ve been spying on one of our team?!”

“Only outdoor cameras, nothing in the home,” he said. It didn’t make it better, but he continued before any of them could say anything. “I noticed this.” He pulled out a picture and held it out for them. Frieda caught it in a gust of wind to bring closer- it showed an old brown van, nondescript, uninteresting.

“Okay, and...” she asked.

“That van was stopped on their block four days in a row. Always on a different street. During this time, a man inspected the property while Mrs. Foley was out. Prior to this the van came up on multiple cameras in the Dockside District.” Where those puddles of dog blood had been found. And, fuck, hadn’t that one wolfy Bang Baby gotten shot out there…? “I’ve checked across the city and there’s no sign of it in Dakota prior to the last full moon.”

Sharon could all but hear pieces clicking into place for the girls, same as they did for her, and for a moment she couldn’t breathe.

“Someone’s hunting werewolves,” she said faintly. Batman nodded.

“I think so.” He didn’t even finish the words before Sharon had her shock vox out, putting out a call. She couldn’t let the boys run around not knowing this. Fuck, they’d had enough going on- picking up Virgil’s slack, poking at leads for fixing Richie, figuring out what was wrong with Richie now- they’d never given the mess out there a second thought, considered that it might be a werewolf thing, or that whoever was behind it might gun for Richie…

“Virgil,” she started as soon as he picked up, but got no further.

“Richie got a scent! He bolted!”

Fuck.

“Find him, now! We’ll be right there!”

*~*

Shoving his shock vox back his pocket, Virgil flew as fast as he could in the direction Richie had run, cursing his broken arm. Getting the Static Saucer out of his bag with one hand was more difficult than he’d like at the best of times, and Richie was fast enough like this that he was left to scan from the air for signs of his passage. Torn up yards, scratched up fences, a swing set still going. Thankfully Richie had never been a wolf to hide his tracks, and it wasn’t difficult to trail him to an old house, the door wide open.

Virgil nearly fell off the saucer in his haste when he flew low to investigate only to hear banging and gurgling whines.

“Richie!” He didn’t even think to be wary as he charged inside, nearly tripping over his own feet. Something was clearly wrong, and once again they were not losing him!

Though it may have been a near thing.

Following the noise led him directly to the home’s kitchen and far more blood than he ever would have liked. There was a pile of raw meat on the floor, but more pressing was Richie, thrashing about, whining and hacking. Blood poured from his mouth as he strained, fighting, against a chain running from the oven into his throat. For a good three seconds Virgil’s heart didn’t beat.

“Richie,” he cried, running to his side and trying to get a hand on him as he rolled and clawed. “It’s gonna be okay, man, it’s gonna be fine! Just gotta be a good boy and calm down for me-” The whine that came out of him, bloody and agonized, tore right through Virgil’s heart. “-come on, just a bit so I can help, please.”

No dice. Richie was very clearly in pain and panicking, neither of which Virgil could blame him for. Instead he turned his attention to the chain, wrapping his good hand around it and trying to yank it free. If he got lucky, then working together they could do it and then Richie would calm down. But this clearly wasn’t his day. The whole thing was slick with blood, both Richie’s and whatever poor animal had been dismembered for the trap, and he couldn’t get a grip.

Virgil threw out every curse he could think of as he gave up. He might have to wait for the girls, if Richie lasted that long.

“Fucking finally!” Spinning in place, Virgil saw a large man stood outside the open window.

“Who are you,” he demanded as the pit of his stomach fell out. Wasn’t hard to guess that this was the work of some sort of hunter, but the seeming confirmation, and that they were right there, certainly did nothing to help anything.

“Was beginning to think this city would fuck me over completely,” the man muttered, ignoring him completely in favor of eying Richie. “Rangy thing, but the pelt’s pretty enough.” Lips pulling back in a deep scowl, Virgil surged to his feet, sparking heavily as he sidestepped a thrash from poor Richie.

“The pelt’s off limits,” he said, forcing himself not to growl it even as the image of Richie’s skinned hide hanging on somebody’s wall sank itself into his brain. Finally, the man looked at him, eyeing him up with an unimpressed frown.

“Of course you’re a fucking Bang Baby,” he said, shaking his head, “because a ‘good samaritan’ civilian wouldn’t be annoying enough to deal with… Whole city’s fucking infested, swear to god…” As he grumbled, he took a few steps back, raising a rifle Virgil hadn’t seen.

Practice as a hero had Virgil acting before his brain fully processed the weapon, letting off a blast of electricity that shattered the window and sent the hunter diving to the side and out of sight. A string of annoyed curses came through on the breeze, fading quickly as the man seemingly ran off, though who knew for how long. Virgil’s first instinct was to go out after him, but another, weaker whine pulled him back to the whole of the situation. The idea of leaving Richie bleeding out alone wasn’t one he could entertain, not for a minute, especially not now.

But there was a man with a gun outside looking to kill them, and he had to do something. Glancing frantically about for something, anything he could use, Virgil found himself putting his powers to use moving the fridge in front of the broken window, and a busted old dish cabinet in front of one of the two passages into the room. That left only one weak point in his patchwork defense, and he made sure to face it as he dropped to his knees beside Richie again.

“Come on, Rich, work with me, I know it hurts but you need to let me help.” His thrashing was weaker as he wore himself out and lost more blood, and with every heartbeat Virgil’s worry heightened, that it may be too late before he could get Richie still enough to find and fix the problem.

A crash rang outside that certainly didn’t help matters, not when he didn’t know who or what he was dealing with, or if the man had back-up, what he was doing out there-

“Virgil?! Richie?!” At no point in his life had he ever been so happy to hear his sister yelling, or the thump of shoes on carpet.

“In here!” Sharon rounded the turn to the kitchen fast enough to overshoot the entrance and have to readjust. “I can’t get him still!” Immediately she nodded and took the cue, using her powers to hold Richie firmly to the floor. It didn’t do anything about the heart wrenching whines, but with the thrashing stopped wholesale they had a proper chance to work.

“We’ve got a hunter gearing up out there, Batman and the girls are handling him,” she said as she dropped down at Richie’s other side and, seeing the chain, wrenched his mouth open. The name ‘Batman’ raised Virgil’s hackles, but he had bigger things to worry about right now than what the man would say or do. Without an ounce of hesitation he shoved his hand into Richie’s mouth, feeling down the chain into his throat, muttering ‘good boy’s all the while. Something was down there, angular and sharp inside a tattered piece of meat, and he set immediately to carefully easing it free and out.

He didn’t even look at it, tossing it aside carelessly in favor of pulling Richie’s head into his lap.

“There we go, you’re gonna be okay now, the nasty thing’s gone,” he said, breaths coming heavy and heart going a mile a minute at the close call. Richie continued to whine, but his tail faintly wagged as Sharon stuck her hand into a hole in what had once been his clothes and gave him a good belly rub.

“You were a very good boy there,” she said, “very good. But you can’t keep running off like this, or I’ll be grey by thirty.”

“We both will,” Virgil managed.

“Oh, thank god.” With a brush of fresh air Frieda and Daisy slid into the kitchen, quickly joining them on the floor, burying their hands in Richie’s fur as his tail managed to wag harder. There was no way Virgil could’ve felt more safe and secure in the circumstance. But even that couldn’t stop him tensing when Batman followed only a few minutes behind them.

The older hero gave them as wide a berth as he could as he passed, heading for the trap. Finally, Virgil looked at it, ire rising in his chest at the jagged, z-shaped hunk of metal Batman hefted in his hand. That had been stuck in Richie’s throat, purposefully baited to be swallowed. Clearly Batman found it as inhumane as he did, scowling harder than any of them had ever seen as he turned it over and, inspection done, dropped it to clatter unceremoniously back onto the floor. Only then did he turn his attention to the team, standing, wiping his hand clean on his pants, and taking the few steps to join them. Virgil resisted the urge to spark as he knelt down beside him, eyes on Richie.

His brother whined.

Batman put a hand between his ears. Gave a little scritch.

“Don’t worry, with what was in his van, that man will be in prison for a very long time, I promise you.”

*~*

“Okay,” Sharon said as she finally joined the rest of the team in Richie’s room, taking charge of his desk chair after a quick visual confirmation that between the teens and BackPack there wasn’t space to collapse on the bed anymore, “I think your parents and I have managed to talk Batman around. Or at least convince him you’re not normally dangerous.”

“So, silver lining, seeing somebody try to hunt him and another mostly-innocent wolf for profit got him off our backs,” Virgil asked, good arm still right where it’d been around Richie’s shoulder when they’d first gotten to the house.

“Oh no, he’s still annoyed at the rest of us for ‘being reckless with civilian safety’,” Sharon explained with a sigh, “and intends to have a talk with us at some point, but he seems to have accepted that Richie being dangerous is abnormal. I had to give him a full rundown on how we were managing your presumed allergy and the current situation but, I think we’ve managed.”

“Hold on,” Frieda said, “‘the current situation’, tell me you didn’t tell him Richie nearly ate somebody. He’s already spying on him!”

“Wait, what?!” Richie sat up straighter, voice still slightly raspy and eyes going wide as his grip on BackPack tightened.

“Relax, man,” Virgil said, pulling him back down, “now we know we can find and fry his cameras, we’ll make a day of it.” Frowning heavily, Richie made himself relax.

“I’m scavenging at least two for parts.”

“We expect no less.”

“I kind of had to,” Sharon admitted. “It’s not like a lack of transparency’s done us any good in the past. I think he’s probably going to go talk to you guys’ friend before he makes a final decision though.”

“Joey?” Richie’s expression shifted to something more curious, then he nodded. “I’m good with that, actually.”

“Yeah, it’s not like he’s going to throw Richie under the bus,” Daisy said. “He’s too nice for that.”

“That’s good to hear.” As she said it a visible weight shifted off Sharon’s shoulders. “When I came up here Batman was talking about helping your parents get some recipes together so they could sneak meat back into your diet, so, fingers crossed. I think your mom might lock you in the basement again at this rate, though. Says these past two months have taken a decade off her life.” The others sighed, shaking their heads. Richie patted BackPack as the machine whirred at him.

“You know, after today,” he said, “I’m almost willing to go along with it.” Huffing a little laugh, Daisy clapped a hand on his shoulder.

“You say that- I’m pretty sure by the time this next moon’s done you’d be howling a different tune.” He huffed one of his own, giving the rest of the team a small smile.

“That depends, how do you guys feel about taking a few nights off?”

[youcantseeus-fan]

Fic: Survivor’s Guilt (T, Gen, Haymitch-centric)

Warnings: Alcoholism, general Hunger Games-related awfulness, angst. 

Written for April 2023 prompts on reddit: Genres of Fanfiction 

Prompt - Survivor’s guilt (Angst 1) 

The Mentor Center is quiet this year. Subdued. Many of the victors who normally mentor will be competing in the Games as tributes. There is no joking around, none of the dark, playful banter that victors usually engage in. Everyone looks grimly at their blank screens, waiting for the Games to start. The only sound is the mentors from Districts 1 and 2 whispering among themselves on the other side of the room.

Haymitch reaches for the flask in his pocket, takes a long drink. He’s already been drinking too much and he’s starting to get quite a buzz. He reminds himself again that he should drink just enough to stave off withdrawals, not enough to get drunk. He screws the cap back on his flask with regret.

There’s some murmuring as the screens come on. The tributes are coming up out of their tubes, surrounded by water on all sides. Haymitch isn’t surprised about the water. Plutarch has dropped some hints. That’s the main reason that Finnick got the bracelet instead of one of the others.

The camera moves in to focus on Katniss’s face first of all. Haymitch frowns. Something is wrong. Katniss looks frantic; tear tracks running down her face, taking shallow breaths. When Haymitch left her, she was grimly determined. Is she finally cracking? Or did Snow arrange some special torture in the time between when Haymitch left her and when she entered the arena? Haymitch makes a mental note to check on Katniss’s family as soon as the bloodbath is over.

The camera switches to Finnick. Haymitch thinks that this is probably to capture his reaction to all that water. Finnick flashes a dazzling smile that tells Haymitch that he is well aware of the cameras. Well. Finnick has always had a lot of camera presence.

The camera then switches to an aerial view of the arena which is laid out in a circle with spokes. Haymitch tries to catch sight of Peeta, but he can’t spot him. Once the bloodbath is over, he’ll have access to any camera footage that is near his tributes, but for now he has to wonder. He doubts that the Gamemakers put Peeta anywhere near Katniss.

As the timer counts down, the footage shows one tribute after another, most of them Haymitch’s friends. Some of them will be dead in just a few minutes. Maybe Katniss and Peeta will be dead and this rebellion idea will die with them.

Haymitch decides that he needs another drink after all. He unscrews his flask and brings it to his lips. The alcohol barely burns anymore.  

It strikes Haymitch that he’s right back in the position that he was in last year, the position that he’s in every year. The only mentor from District 12, trying to do the impossible, trying to bring home two kids marked for death.

Somehow, he’s always the one watching the deaths, always the one in the survivor’s seat.

At the last Quarter Quell, forty-seven children had died so that Haymitch could live. He may have only killed three of them. But all of them had needed to die in order for Haymitch to have life.

After that, the deaths had started to pile up. His family. Friends. And of course, the tributes. One can never forget the tributes. Some years, Haymitch had tried so hard to save them and other years he’d barely tried at all and it never mattered either way. Until last year.

The camera shows Katniss’s face again. She has recovered a bit and is looking at the water with a determined expression. There’s the Girl on Fire.

Haymitch laughs, darkly. All the shit that he pulled last year so that Katniss could win and now she’s right back in the arena. This is what happens when Haymitch tries. For years, Haymitch had thought of the other victors as the only people who couldn’t be taken away from him at Snow’s whim. Snow used to prefer his victors alive. But now Haymitch knows that even that was an illusion.

Everyone Haymitch touches turns into a corpse.

[meta-squash]

A review of Querelle de Roberval by Kevin Lambert

I picked up Querelle de Roberval at work and decided to read it with absolutely zero expectations or knowledge of its contents, only a deep love for Genet’s work. It is, it seems, meant to be an homage or at least inspired by Genet’s novel Querelle de Brest. I spent the time it took me to read the book completely uncertain whether I liked it or not, and after having finished the novel and mulled it over for the rest of the day, I think I have to conclude that I didn’t like it.

It is well written; Lambert’s prose is stylish, sharp, and flows well. I am not Canadian and therefore don’t know the nuances of specifically Quebecois politics or social issues, but I really struggled to pin down the political message of this book, and it was clearly gunning for something. The ironic, fourth-wall breaking chapter at the latter half of the book set the stakes for the rest of the book too high; the scene in which the neighborhood Greek chorus mourns over Querelle’s body does not feel as heightened as it was obviously meant to feel, because the fourth wall chapter cuts down any faith the reader may have in its glory or passion.

Stylistically it felt like two separate novels that someone had attempted to twist together into one -- the realism of the strike, and the poetic fantasy of Querelle’s world and that of the other queer boys. Unfortunately, either the attempt at combining them was not strong enough, or the lyrical alienation of the queer world from the straight working class world was not deliberate enough.

Aside from the two main characters, Querelle and Jezabel, the rest of the cast felt undercooked; some were not fleshed out thoroughly enough, and some should have remained more like two-dimensional side characters but were given only a little bit extra characterization and therefore felt strange and incomplete.

And unfortunately I couldn’t help but compare Lambert’s work to Genet’s original, and it falls far short of the beauty of Querelle de Brest, or Genet’s work in general.

Part of the fascination of Genet’s work is how often violence or “perversion” (sexual or otherwise) is not an act of revenge or anger, but one of love or reverence, and more importantly one of transcendence. Aside from the descriptions of Querelle with his lovers and Jezabel’s final act in the pool, this symbolism and emotional transformation did not occur. The violence was just violence, something more akin to torture porn than something loving, transcendent, or symbolic. Murder itself - the actual taking of a life - as an extension of the self and therefore an act of complete liberation of the self is not the point of Lambert’s work like it is in Genet’s. Instead, it is the violence itself, the causing of pain that he seems to focus on. In Genet’s work (particularly Funeral Rites), consumption of another is not an act of revenge or hatred as it is in this work, but one of reverence and love. Acts of violence such as sacrifice, murder, and betrayal take on a transcendent, romantic symbolism because they are acts in which the self is destroyed and transformed into something else. Corruption, violation, violence, perversion, are rarely about the outside world directly. Rather, they are ways in which the self becomes something more, confirms itself to be a living thing or an empty thing or a thing which acts out of love, submission, or dominance. Rarely are acts of violence things Genet’s characters do solely for themselves; they are ways in which two characters are eternally entwined, which is what makes his violent or twisted characters so romantic.

All this is something that is consistent throughout Genet’s work and blatant in both his direct prose and his symbolism. Much of the violence in Lambert’s work lacks that philosophical thoughtfulness, and the political passion that would have smoothed that over does not seem fully thought out.

Unlike Genet, whose feelings towards authority have a conscious duality and whose works are unmistakably working-class, with the questionable morals of its characters being portrayed as a positive aspect, Lambert seems more intent on portraying the strikers as reprehensible in their actions, in that they are merely violent rather than transcendent in some way. This frames their actions then as either simply brutish or ultimately futile, rather than an act or event which either allows them to come alive for the first time or to change their self into something else. It also means that the characters whose morals are more “old-fashioned” like Fauteux or Bernard do not have the same dark, rounded-out intent and shadowy depths like that of Mario in Querelle de Brest, and instead are simply shallow and unlikable due to sexism etc.

In Genet’s works, violence always, always means something symbolically, and its meaning is usually expanded upon through descriptions of the character’s internal monologue or reaction or transformation. But much of the violence in this book was simply vengeful or retaliatory (the coffee, the molotov cocktails) and the moments during and after the fight with the baseball bats did not dig deep enough into any symbolism to make it feel like anything more than a violent, vengeful midnight rumble at a park. The closest thing was perhaps Jezabel’s vision in the grass of the little children healing her wounds and the neighborhood sleepwalkers singing a Greek chorus mourning for Querelle, but even that did not quite dig deep enough into the the tender, sensitive bits of Jezabel’s emotional transformation.

Querelle, in this case, was not a vehicle by which the novel’s characters as well as the reader are made to ponder relationships between people who mirror each other or expose hitherto unknown passions or weaknesses; instead, he was simply a vehicle for violence that is hardly thought out, and the brief paragraph referencing the sexual insecurities and incestuous perversions of the fathers was not enough to change that. Similarly, the sex scenes in the novel could have been the most Genet-esque thing about Lambert's text, but it supplants the transcendent and self-defining or self-immolating nature of strange or unsavoury sex in Genet's works with simple brutality. The "second" boy of the three unnamed teenagers nearly meets the brief, as he is described as having love within him that the other two must dig out, but Lambert only allows this theme a single sentence, then returns to grotesque and visceral sex without the layers of symbolism and subconscious conflict that gives Genet's views on sex that mystical, philosophical quality.

Within Genet’s work, his voice not as the narrator but as the literal writer Jean Genet is consistently inserted, so that throughout all of his novels he inserts himself and his own thoughts and experiences into the narrative, breaking the fourth wall to describe a memory or emotion of his past that connects through layers of symbolism and feeling to the narrative. The single chapter in which Lambert breaks the fourth wall and lets his voice through does no such thing, and is introduced so late in the novel that it simply pulls the reader out of the narrative entirely, and it is a struggle to get back into it.

No matter how meandering or erratic the narrative of Genet’s work, it always seems extremely self-contained, as though Genet has tight control over every piece of the story and his choices to digress to a personal memory or focus on a different character are deliberate. The self-contained nature of Genet gives the reader the sense that he is writing for himself first, and for an audience second. Lambert’s work, while interesting, can’t decide if it wants to be a kitchen sink drama or magical realist, and therefore its rambling nature seems less self-contained and less controlled.

I think the major issues I had with this book were its ambiguous political stance, its uncooked characters, and its rather bland use of violence. Compared to Genet’s deeply personal, extremely strong and passionate symbolism and emphasis on emotional and mental transformation, this novel felt shallow and disconnected, and without any firmly established positions, opinions, or symbols. I think if an author writes a novel and deliberately mimics the title and main character of a different, more famous novel, they should have a clear and solid reason why they have chosen to draw such a distinct and direct line, and some consciousness of how their work will be compared to the other by readers. This book seemed to lack that clear reason or that consciousness.

[maytheoddshq]

Bobbi Blue (she/her). District Eight Mentor. 77 Victor. Forty-Eight. Sandra Oh.

Born Bobbin Blue LaRaun, Bobbi grew up with a rather unremarkable childhood. Her two older brothers, Threader and Thatch, were both outgoing enough to afford Bobbin her introversion, and her parents both worked jobs in the neighborhood factory. She followed in their steps, making the extravagant fashion pieces that the Capitolites consumed and discarded each season.

Eight was too small a District to not be impacted by the Games. The LaRaun family had friends lose children, entire generations to the mill. But year after year, they got through unscathed. Year after year, all five of the LaRauns would return to work the day after the Reaping, where the parades and Games were broadcast on screens they could not escape. Peacekeepers were on hand to dispatch anyone who dared speak against them. And even if they weren’t around, the floor manager was there to make sure no one lost productivity. If there was one thing Bobbin learned - it was to keep her head down in all situations. Keep your head down and focus on the task at hand.

This continued for years, and eventually she was the final LaRaun eligible for Reaping. Threader and Thatch had survived, and on her eighteenth birthday, there was a tension hanging in the air. Her final year. And they felt it - it seemed as if no family had ever gone untouched by the Games. The Reaping came… and the Reaping went. Another two Tributes were called, sent, and lost. And it wasn’t Bobbin. The family would never tell anyone (because how could you celebrate such a thing?) but they threw a small family party that night. The LaRaun family had done it - they had survived with all three children out of Reaping range.

With a newfound sense of freedom, Bobbin began experimenting with design. She would steal spare thread from the factory while the floor manager was distracted. Her parents encouraged her pursuits. It was a good time for the LaRaun family.

Then, the Quell happened. It passed, as it always did, more tragic and more heartbreaking than others. And the announcement was made - biannual Games. More tragedy for other families. But then - the age limit was expanded. It didn’t feel real, especially because in the 76th Games, two fifteen year olds were Reaped. This was normal. Even though Thatch was back on the list at 25 and Bobbin was in the line at 20. It wasn’t real. They weren’t actually at risk. Thatch just had to stand there - he was safe again. And soon enough, so would be Bobbin.

Until the whole process came around again in January. It was too soon. They hadn’t even finished the mourning of the previous Tributes. It was too fast. Too soon. And then came the Escort’s voice, “Bobbin LaRaun.” It couldn’t be. No. That wasn’t - she was twenty-one. She couldn’t be Reaped. It was winter. There should be no Games. And yet, here she was: Bobbin LaRaun, aged twenty-one, a Tribute from District Eight in the first ever Winter Hunger Games.

In “celebration” of the first ever winter Games, the Gamemakers had outdone themselves. The 77th Arena was an arctic winter wonderland. The Cornucopia was made of ice block. There was cracking ice, blizzards, and a host of arctic Mutts - polar bears, foxes, and a particularly distressing flock of killer penguins. Bobbin won her Games as she lived her life: by keeping her head down and fighting like hell when needed. It was only needed twice for her - once when she and her District partner were discovered by the pair from Four (only she walked away from that fight) and in the final moments between her, the girl from One, and the boy from Eleven. She found the two of them locked in a fight, and seized on his exhaustion after he had defeated the Career. Otherwise, she kept out of sight - cleverly avoiding no less than three major fights that most Sponsors assessed she would lose.

She came home a changed Victor, inadvertently leaving her mark on history. Her family welcomed her back with tearfully open arms, but over the years she grew more and more reclusive. She used her winnings to finally achieve her dream - launching a luxury fashion house entirely designed and manufactured in Eight. But something had changed within her. She poured herself into the work, quickly building a small empire. Feeling the need to distance herself from her time in the Games, she dropped the “n” from her name and used her middle as her last: emerging into the fashion world as Bobbi Blue. Still, the Games never let anyone out of their grasp, and she was one of only a very few Victors from her District. Only a round or two after her Games, she was summoned to serve as Mentor. She has returned year over year, watching pair after pair disappear into the maws of the Capitol’s entertainment - until Ramona.

+calculated, confident, unafraid of silence -reclusive, judgemental, dismissive

PENNED BY: M

[modern-inheritance]

An Update and Ramble on the Forgiveness Prompt

The ‘forgiveness’ prompt fill is somewhat completed, but it feels…off. I’ll be honest, I’ve never actually thought out how Brom would actually react to seeing and interacting with Murtagh (and Thorn, who I think would soften Brom up a bit because he’s not only a dragon but has a fiery spirit and let’s be real, MIC!Brom has a major soft spot for spitfire types).

I’m just going to ramble this out here. If you’re waiting for the prompt itself and don’t want anything spoiled, then wait to read this. 

I thought back to the two bigger stories where Brom and Murtagh interacting was a major focus: Judge Me Not and Judge You Not. Brom is gruff in those, establishing his baseline of how he interacts with most everyone in MIC. He is reluctant to give any compliment, grouchy, and verbally rough. Murtagh is somewhat haughty, fiercely defending his right to be seen as someone other than a copy of his father, and easily angered but slightly confused as to Brom’s occasional leeway/grudging acceptance. Brom, deep down, wants Murtagh to become so much more than Morzan and also wants him to carry on a memory of Selena. He has high hopes for him, and is almost desperate to steer him away from Morzan’s path.

The only other hints at how Brom would react to Murtagh post war are found in Father and Son and Collateral (Smoke and Mirrors). Brom erupts in rage at Murtagh claiming that Eragon is Morzan’s son in the former, and in the latter Brom is hovering around the same level of rage as he had before he met Selena, but while it is generally around Oromis’s death, the rage is more about how he essentially failed to save Murtagh from that path, and in some way he feels that the only way to save him and Thorn now is to kill them. And he hates that.

Murtagh and Thorn are more wildcard for me concerning how they act and feel post war. We know they are traveling to find themselves and be at peace with what happened to them. I have some interaction between Murtagh and Arya post war, where Murtagh is less haughty than before and is almost humble in a way. I feel like Murtagh is a raw wound. Everything hurts and stings, he needs comfort, and yet somehow he’s almost…calm about it. Constant anxiety over how Brom would react to him and Thorn, always wondering when Brom is going to lose it and try to destroy him, but he deep down wants things to be, if not good between them, at the least okay. He wants to be understood but is uncomfortable with that, and maybe even feels like he deserves whatever Brom says or does in retaliation for what he did under the King’s influence.

So I was stuck. I knew that what was sort of expected was gruff, angry Brom laying into Murtagh, maybe cuffing him upside the head a few times, then realizing that he was under the King’s control for most of it and forgiving him. But that’s not how I see it happening really.

Brom deeply loved Selena. Eragon got his devoted puppy love gene somewhere and it had to be from dad. Selena in a sense gave up after Eragon was born, returning to Murtagh only to die. Brom hated that he couldn’t be there to save her or show her that there was more to live for since Morzan was dead, and somewhat blamed himself for not being able to save her. Murtagh fought the King’s influence for as long as he could, but despite Thorn pushing for more resistance, he also gave up when he saw what the King was doing to torture Thorn.

So Brom, a year after the war, after coming upon Murtagh and Thorn, is hit with the realization that Murtagh gave up to save Thorn. Selena gave up, maybe in part because she knew that if Morzan made it back alive there would be no way to hide Eragon’s existence and so gave up her life to save him. He’s reminded that he was in Morzan’s estate for long enough to have made a plan to rescue Murtagh as a child, that he could have tried to save him and prevent any of this happening.

I didn’t want angry Brom. Brom without that undercurrent seems a bit off. But again, this is post war. He has less to hate. He can finally fully let go of all that rage he had towards Galbatorix and the Forsworn. Meanwhile, Murtagh is trying his best to let go of his own anger and hate towards the world and finds that Brom is someone he still really wants a connection with because he managed to look through his father and see Murtagh as an individual.

I donno. I think I gave up the general plot of the forgiveness fill right there but…I needed to justify what I wrote before I post it and make it canon. This is another one of those that I’ll probably rewrite at some point, as it took me several false starts to get going, and then a few more before settling on that one.

I promise I’ll post in the next few days, just gathering intel and reactions from some people to help guide me on if I’ve established post war characteristics properly. Cheers!

[lisette-digitalbusiness]

From Debt to Financial Freedom: How One Couple Transformed Their Lives with a Home-Based Business

For Dave and Roxanne, the road to financial freedom was a long and difficult one. Just four years ago, they were buried in debt and struggling to make ends meet. But with hard work and determination, they were able to turn their lives around and achieve the financial stability they had always dreamed of. Here’s their inspiring story.

The Beginning of the Journey

Dave and Roxanne’s journey began in 2017, when they found themselves buried in debt and struggling to make ends meet. Dave was working as the general manager of a cleaning company, while Roxanne was a finance professional at the City of Calgary. Despite their best efforts, they couldn’t seem to get ahead.

One day, they found themselves praying to God for a way out of their financial struggles. And as they prayed, they felt a sense of peace and hope that things would get better. At that moment, they decided to take control of their finances and do whatever it took to get out of debt and build a better future for themselves.

The Road to Financial Freedom

Dave and Roxanne knew that the road to financial freedom wouldn’t be easy. They knew they would have to work hard, make sacrifices, and face challenges along the way. But they were determined to succeed, no matter what it took.

The first step they took was to get a handle on their debt. They made a budget and began working to pay off their debts one by one. It was a slow process, but with determination and perseverance, they were able to pay off all of their consumer debts, totaling over $86,000.

But Dave and Roxanne didn’t stop there. They knew that in order to truly achieve financial freedom, they would need to find a way to make a consistent, reliable income. And that’s when they stumbled upon the concept of home-based businesses.

The Power of a Home-Based Business

Dave and Roxanne were sceptical at first. They had heard about home-based businesses before, and many of them seemed like scams or get-rich-quick schemes. But as they did their research, they found a business model that seemed legitimate and achievable.

The business they found was a home-based business that focused on personal development and helping others achieve their goals. It was a business that they could do from home, on their own terms, and at their own pace. And best of all, it had a proven track record of success.

Dave and Roxanne decided to give it a try, and they were amazed by the results. Within just a few months, they were making a consistent income and building a business that they were passionate about. They were able to quit their jobs and focus on building their business full-time.

The Results

The results of Dave and Roxanne’s hard work and determination were nothing short of amazing. Within just a few short years, they were able to pay off all of their debts, save up a six-month emergency fund, and even save up enough money for a down payment on a new home.

In March of 2021, they were able to move into their brand new home, a 2000-sqft house with three bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, and a finished basement. They were able to furnish their new home with the money they had saved up from their home-based business.

But the benefits of Dave and Roxanne’s home-based business didn’t stop there. They were also able to take a month-long vacation to Las Vegas with their family, and when they returned home, they were greeted with a mailbox full of blessings.

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