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suwya · 4 years ago

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Till the Stars Had Run Away - Chapter 6

Summary: Killian Jones was a voyager. Actually, he was many things, or at least he had been - a lieutenant, a brother, a loving boyfriend - until everything had turned upside down and his life had hit an all time low. So, he gave up. Aboard his spaceship he abandoned Arcadia, his planet, navigating the stars and other solar systems in search of... well, he still didn't know what he was searching for, but his rule was "never remain in the same place longer than necessary."

Rating: M

Prologue; Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5

AO3

A/N: Sorry for the waiting, but real life came along and I had to stop writing for a couple of weeks. Thank you @thisonesatellite for being the best beta reader I could ever ask for. And thank to all of you who are reading this. Happy Labour Day!

Chapter 6 . .

Be not inhospitable to strangers,

lest they be angels in disguise.

(W. B. Yeats)

When Killian regained consciousness he found himself in what reminded him of a military hospital. There were thin white curtains around his bed, but through them he could spot other beds like his, most of them empty. The room seemed large and dimly lit.

He closed his eyes and remembered the crash landing, the unknown desert planet, the great rock that was about to crush Henry, and that feeling of unease and imminent danger he had felt just before the impact. Where was he? And above all what kind of situation was he in, a good or a bad one? He opened his eyes again, and noticed he wasn’t alone. A woman was checking his IV, and a nearby monitor was beeping intermittently.

Killian tried to sit up, but a stabbing pain in his lungs made him desist immediately. He groaned loudly.

“Look who’s awake.” Said the woman, who was now staring at him. “Hello, handsome.” She added cheerfully.

Killian had found himself dealing with uncharted waters several times in his life. He decided to play the waiting game. “This is usually my line, well, more or less.”

“Really? In this case, I'll warn my husband not to approach you.”

“Don’t worry I'm not into men, not recently at least.” He smirked.

“Oh, but my husband is quite the charming one.”

“I still prefer the company of a fair lady, if I could choose.” He winked and chuckled, and a dull pain made him gasp.

“Take it easy.” She immediately shifted her attitude from playful to worried. “How do you feel?”

“As if I've been hit by a rocket.”

“Not a rocket, but yes, you’ve been hit hard. You’ve suffered two broken ribs. And believe me, you were lucky, it could have been worse. Do you mind if I run some tests and see how you react?”

“No problem.”

While the woman was busy measuring his temperature, making him follow a small blue LED light with his gaze, and extracting some blood to examine later, he took advantage of the opportunity to observe her more closely. She had short black hair and green eyes, bright and lively in contrast to her very delicate skin. Killian found himself thinking of another pair of green eyes, which had been filling his thoughts frequently lately. The memory brought him back to reality quickly.

“What is this place?” He inquired, eager to know what had happened while he was unconscious.

“Welcome to Vernal-Den.” She answered smiling.

Killian tried to remember if he had ever read about this planet. “Never heard of it.”

“Yeah, we’re not very popular.”

Was she too concentrated on checking-in his vitals, or was she being too concise on purpose? He didn’t know, but he intended to keep an eye on her. “How long was I out?”

“A while.” Another elusive answer.

He decided to test the waters. “Were there ….other injured people with me?”

“If you’re referring to Henry and Emma, they are perfectly fine.” She seemed sincere. “They are staying at our place. Henry has visited you every day since you came in.”

“And Emma?”

“Well, she can’t come in. She’s not a relative of yours. But she has spent long hours sitting just outside that door.” She said pointing towards the exit. “I had to order her to go home and get some rest.”

After that she excused herself, saying that she had to attend to other patients.

He realized she hadn’t even told him her name. He didn’t know if he could trust her or not. The fact that she had avoided some of his questions sent chills down his spine. And most of all there was the Emma problem.

Why couldn’t she visit him? Was it true that it was only a matter of rules? Or was she in some kind of peril? He needed to know what was happening behind those doors that separated him from the woman that had been pestering his dreams in the last ten years of his life. He had to know that she was alright. To hell with rules! He thought. And by the way, when was the last time he followed one. He had to get out of this place. He tried to sit up, but the pain in his lungs was so strong that his vision started to blur and cold sweat formed on his temples. He lay back down on the bed, aware that in his conditions he couldn’t have gone far before collapsing unconscious on the floor. He promised himself to solve the problem as soon as he had enough strengths, but he couldn't dwell too much on that thought, because sleep was reclaiming his mind again.

~·~·~·~

Time passed very slowly, or so it seemed, but maybe it was simply the fact that every day looked the same. Killian was mostly asleep, probably due to the painkillers introduced through the IV, and when he woke up he couldn't tell how long he had been out, he couldn't even tell if it was day or night. There were no windows in that room.

During one of the moments when his mind regained consciousness, he felt the mattress drop slightly to one side and he slowly opened his eyes.

“You are awake! How do you feel? Can you breathe? Of course you can, you would be dead otherwise! Does it hurt?” Henry was sitting at the end of the bed, and he was asking a lot of questions, as usual. “Sorry.” He suddenly looked contrite. “I should let you rest, but…”

“It’s ok, lad.” Killian cut him off. “I’m glad to see you’re all in one piece.”

The boy greeted him with a wide grin.

Killian remembered the last moments before getting injured, and he was relieved to know that he had been able to prevent that rock from hitting Henry. But other worries crowded his mind. “How about your mom?”

“She’s fine. She’s outside. They won’t let her in. You know, only relatives and all that stuff.” He explained.

“I see. And why are you…?”

Henry didn’t let him finish the question. “I told them I’m your son.” He whispered with a conspiratory smile.

“Clever boy.” Killian’s chuckle turned soon into a cough due to the pain.

“Does it hurt?” The boy asked, frowning.

The man dismissed the question with a wave of his hand. “It’s not a big deal.” He didn’t want the lad to feel responsible for his well-being. “How many days have passed since we landed here?” He asked, changing the subject.

“I don't know exactly.” And at Killian’s questioning look, he added, “It’s complicated.”

“How so?”

“People live underground here,” The boy started to explain, “With no opportunity to look outside. And there are no clocks. My watch had probably broken when we arrived, it doesn’t work anymore.”

The man hummed, he was starting to understand. The lack of windows, the elusive answer he had received from the dark-haired nurse… everything was beginning to tally in Killian’s head. “I want you to think carefully about everything you saw outside this room. Did you feel something was wrong?”

The boy shrugged. “I don't know.” He seemed to ponder. “This place is strange. Lots of corridors and passages underground. We are not allowed to go out into the open. They say it’s dangerous. But I never felt a threat or something. I would rather say it’s boring.”

“Why boring?”

Henry was trying to find the right words to explain it. “All the days are the same, people repeat the same actions every day. They say it’s useful to maintain a routine. But I don’t think Mary Margaret and David are bad people.”

“I’m sorry, who?” Killian asked.

“Oh, yeah, Mary Margaret, she is your nurse. We’re staying at her home. She is very nice. And David is her husband. He showed me the greenhouse. It’s awesome and huge, you should see it! But I don’t think he works there. I don’t know what his job is.”

Routine? New people? A greenhouse? Well, that was a lot of information to process. But Killian felt sleep calling him back. Next time I see that lady Margaret, I’m going to ask her not to put more painkillers in my IV. He thought. “Thank you, Henry, for everything. But I may need to rest for a while now.” He managed to say before falling asleep again.

~·~·~·~

Emma knew Killian was feeling better, Henry had told her about their short chat, and some of her child's enthusiasm had even infected her positively, but she continued to feel restless, she wanted to make herself useful. Most of all, she wanted to see Killian again.

All this absurd situation was her fault. And no, she was not thinking about the fact that Killian was lying on a hospital bed because of some bad decisions she had made lately. No. She was not going down that path again. She had already spent a lot of hours regretting many choices done in the last month.

But this was nonsensical, why couldn’t she visit a friend that was hurt and maybe in need of some company? She had actually had a chance to say that she was his wife; after all in the eyes of her guests, she and Killian had a son together, so why not lie a bit more and make Mary Margaret believe that she and Killian were married. But the thought of a possible long time spent together on this planet feigning to be a happily married couple scared her, and she couldn’t go on with the lie.

So there she was, sitting on a very uncomfortable metal chair in the waiting room. She had spent more hours there than she could count.

David had passed by to greet his wife, and he had offered to take Henry with him, on the way back home. So she was left alone with her thoughts.

Mary Margaret peeked out the door with a steaming mug in her hand. “Take this. It will help.”

She agreed with a nod. “Thank you.” She sipped some of the hot liquid and it felt like her nerves were starting to relax a little.

“You should go home and rest. It's late.” The woman said.

“Mary Margaret let me enter.” Emma pleaded for the umpteenth time.

“We have already talked about it. You know I can’t do that. There are strict rules down here, and the best way for us to survive is to follow them.”

“This is insane. I’m not a dangerous criminal or someone who is plotting to destroy this planet. I just want to see him. Please.” She begged.

The dark-haired woman seemed to be pondering all the possible consequences. “All right.” She sighed. “Let’s just say that I’m going inside and leave the door ajar, by mistake, of course. I have to check some very important documents, so I’ll be busy and concentrated. I’m not going to ask you what you’re going to do in the next... fifteen minutes or so. Okay?”

“Thank you.” Emma handed her the cup back, rising from her chair. “You won’t regret it.”

After Mary Margaret disappeared behind the door, Emma waited some minutes before going after her. The room was large and there were many beds, she had no idea where Killian was, but after a quick look at the surroundings, she discovered that only a couple of all the beds were occupied.

She approached one of those and gently opened the curtain trying not to disturb the patient lying inside.

Killian seemed asleep. He was pale, with dark circles under his eyes. She could only imagine the pain he was going through. She had her heart in her throat because she felt responsible for the situation. If they hadn't taken a detour because she had requested it, they'd probably all be home safe and sound by now.

“Hey, beautiful.” He greeted her with a painful grin.

Immersed as she was in her thoughts, she hadn't noticed that he had woken up. She smiled, trying to be strong and not show her inner turmoil. “Do they treat you well here?”

“I'm not complaining. The nurse is kind and the food is edible.” He tried to downplay the situation. “Although I would prefer the care and attention of a certain blonde.” He winked.

Emma chuckled. Then she went closer to him and sat down on the side of his bed, trying not to cause him any more pain. She looked him straight in the eye, and then, gently, she took his hand in hers, intertwining her fingers with his. She saw him swallow hard, and the beeping of his heartbeat accelerated on the monitor. She smiled softly again. “Thank you for saving my son’s life.”

She saw how he wet his lips before answering as if his mouth had been suddenly dry. “It was the right thing to do.” Was his answer, but his voice came out slightly choked.

Emma looked back, checking if any hospital employee was nearby, “I shouldn’t be here, and unfortunately my time is running out. But I wanted to see you... needed to see with my own eyes that you are ok... well, more or less.” She whispered, with her gaze lowered, avoiding eye contact. The physical connection of their joined hands was already arousing too many contradictory emotions inside her.

“Aye. I know the feeling.” He replied, letting her know that he had been eager to establish contact with her throughout his stay in the hospital.

At those words, she stared at him again. “Get well soon.” She bent down and dropped a mild kiss at the corner of his lips. “We need you.”

~·~·~·~

Killian was lying on his back staring at the ceiling. This time there was no way he would fall asleep again. Every time he thought about what had just happened his beeping monitor sped up. He blushed. It had been just a chaste kiss, nothing compared to the hot and breathtaking one they had shared a few days before. But she had said it had been a one-time thing and he had promised himself not to indulge in those lustful thoughts anymore. Yet, this last kiss had seemed much more real, and meaningful... it had left him with a feeling of hope.

Hope and distress. Emma was such a strong and beautiful woman, a marvelous creature, as he liked to describe her in his mind, and a princess even. And what was he? A rebel, and a scoundrel. Or a rapscallion... whatever. Okay, maybe not anymore, but he had been in the past, for many years. He had been trying to redeem himself lately. But was he worth enough of her? That was the million dollar question.

He was still ruminating on it when the known brunette peeked out the curtains. “Hello. How are you today?” She greeted him with a bright smile, as usual.

“Better.” He hoped the monitor on his right wasn’t showing his state of mind.

She came closer. “Do you mind if I check your ribs? It's time to change the dressing.” After a short pause, she added, “I'm sorry, but we don't have the best equipment to assist our patients. We have to work with what we have available on this planet.” She said pointing to the bands that covered his chest.

Killian nodded, and Mary Margaret started to untie the bandages. She seemed concentrated on her task, probably she was trying to avoid causing him any pain. It was only when she started to apply an ointment on the bruises, that she spoke again. “You love her.” It was just a whisper, and Killian doubted if he had heard correctly. But then she added “Emma.”

It wasn’t a question, and he pondered what was the correct answer, or if she was expecting one. “I'd go to the end of the world for her… Or the multiverse.” He said eventually.

“And she for you, I take it?”

Killian chuckled and shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“What’s the problem?” She looked at him surprised. Then took some clean gauzes and started to wrap them on him.

“She's bloody brilliant, an amazing woman. She fights for her son and always does what’s right.” Killian’s voice was so full of admiration.

“Is there something wrong with it?” Mary Margaret inquired.

Killian shook his head again. “She raised the bar very high. The fact is, I don't think I measure up.”

The woman folded the old bandages and took the ointment bottle, then she stood up, she was making an exit when she stopped short. “Since you came here I've been watching you.”

“I don't know if I should be flattered or scared.” The man tried to ease the tension of the moment.

“We don’t have many foreigners on this planet, but believe me, you're not one of the bad guys. You sacrificed yourself for the sake of a young boy. There's good in your heart.” She smiled at him softly. “I’m going to look for the doctor; I bet you’ll be leaving this room soon.”

~·~·~·~

The following day started the same as the previous ones. But during the first hours of the evening a man in a white coat came to visit Killian. He explained the medications and precautions to be taken to him, some movements that he should avoid for a while, and other tips for a speedy recovery. Then he handed over some papers for the patient to sign to be discharged. Finally some good news.

After a while redressing and packing up his few belongings in his satchel Killian went to the door. Walking hurt a bit but nothing he couldn’t bear.

Mary Margaret was already waiting for him, and a tall blonde guy was with her. “You must be Jones.” He said. When they shook hands, Killian learned his name was David Nolan, and he remembered Henry had mentioned him in his conversations. “I’m going to take you to our humble abode.”

Nolan's house was in fact modest. A loft with a large dining room, a kitchenette, a bedroom, and a small bathroom on one corner, all open, without doors, except for the bathroom. There was a raised bedroom opposite it, whose access was a metal stair.

Dinner was good, if a little awkward. Emma didn't interact much, and Killian wanted to ask if something was troubling her, but he preferred to wait for a better time, perhaps a less crowded one. Henry entertained them with what he had done throughout the day and kept repeating how glad he was that Killian was back with them.

But the man was still a bit cautious with those new people around him. He didn’t know them, especially the Nolan guy, who had been silent for most of the dinner, glancing sidelong at him as if he wanted to study him thoroughly before making a personal judgment. The feeling was mutual, Killian thought.

Just after dessert, David started to speak. “What will you need to restore your ship?” He asked.

“Uh… a new stabilizer, I think, and some parts of the propulsion engine for sure. But I’ll have to look closely at the damages to be sure there’s nothing else broken.”

The blond man nodded. “Not many ships come and go from here. But I hope we can find all the pieces you need.”

“Thank you, mate.”

“Tomorrow I’ll take you to the hangar where your ship is. We’ll have a look at it.” He seemed sincere in his generosity.

“May I help?” Henry barged in.

A chorus of “No!” echoed the room.

“I appreciate the support, but it could be dangerous.” Killian explained.

“I hate being here. I feel trapped.” The boy complained.

Mary Margaret sighed. “This is a feeling that will vanish with time.”

The woman was no doubt trying to instill some optimism, but Killian didn't like the idea of staying in that place longer than necessary. “Well, then, let’s hope we could leave this planet before the feeling has entirely vanished.” He made a grin and passed his hand on his side.

“Time for resting.” The brunette stated although it sounded more like an order. “But before that, we should change those bandages. Emma, would you like to help me?”

“Me?” Emma, who had been silent and a bit on the sidelines all evening, seemed to re-emerge from wherever she’d gone.

“He won’t be able to do it by himself when you won’t live here anymore. It’s better if you learn how to help him.” Mary Margaret clarified.

Emma looked like she was going to object, but in the end, she asserted. “Sure.”

~·~·~·~

If a certain nervousness had taken hold of Emma as she climbed to the upstairs room, it disappeared the instant Mary Margaret helped Killian get rid of his shirt. That wasn’t a thorax, it was a nautical chart. Most of it was covered by gauze, but she could still spot many marks and scars.

There was a tattoo, two of them to be exact, but Emma saw just one at first. It was on his right forearm; it was a big red heart with a dagger running through and the name “Milah” across it. Emma made a mental note to ask him later who she was.

Mary Margaret showed her how to unfasten the bandages, and then she ordered her to stand behind him, to help better in removing them all.

On his back, Emma saw the second tattoo, on his right shoulder. It was an old nautical instrument she had read about in a book when she was younger, but she couldn’t remember the exact name. The drawing was beautifully detailed, even if it had faded, it was probably older than the other one, she thought.

And when all the gauze was out of the way, she saw them: tiny, blurred, old scars that studded most of his back. Emma wondered what kind of life he had to endure when he was very young.

Mary Margaret asked her to help with the ointment. She had already opened the bottle and was showing the blonde woman how much cream to use. But Emma wasn't listening, standing now in front of the man, her attention was caught by the glorious chest hair that was covering most of his torso.

Okay, there was also a big, horrible bruise on his right ribs, but Mary Margaret was saying that it seemed on the way to a fast recovery, if the yellow and purple veining was some indication.

Emma was ogling and she wasn’t ashamed of it either. The amount of hair decreased in the lower part of his chest, leaving a black trail that disappeared under the hem of his pants.

"See something you like?" Emma was abruptly taken back to reality by a smug Killian that was smirking at her while arching an eyebrow. She blushed. She was caught red-handed, but she couldn’t let him win. She took advantage of the fact that Mary Margaret was looking for something in a nearby drawer, to get closer to him. She looked at him lasciviously from under her lashes. “Maybe?” She purred.

Now it was his time to blush, he looked intently at his feet, but she found the bright red that appeared on his ears extremely endearing. Point for Emma.

Mary Margaret taught the other woman how to fix the bandages, and Emma had to use some tiny hooks to hold them together. She did not miss the opportunity to casually slide her fingers over a part of his chest hair that came out of the bandages.

“Bloody Hell!” Killian muttered.

Emma retreated her hand immediately. “Sorry. Did I hurt you?” Worries that she had done something wrong clouded her gaze.

“Apologies.” Killian was scratching behind his ear, in evident embarrassment. “While I do enjoy two lovely ladies attending to my needs, I'm not used to someone taking care of me…” He smiled and brought his mouth close to Emma’s ear: “I’m usually the one who devotes full attention to a woman’s needs.” He whispered, but clearly not as quietly as he would have liked, because Mary Margaret's answer - “Well, you will have to put that off for a while” - made him blush again like a schoolboy scolded by his teacher.

~·~·~·~

Suddenly it was bedtime. Everyone was busy making preparations and taking shifts for the bathroom to change for the night. Killian was upstairs, staring at the bed he knew he had to share with Emma, who was arranging a pillow on the nearby sofa. He passed a hand through his hair and then scratched a spot behind his right ear. “I'll crash on that couch.” He stated as if it was the most logical conclusion to a battle he was fighting inside.

“Don't be ridiculous,” she scoffed. “It's barely long enough for Henry. Plus, you’re still recovering, you absolutely need to rest.”

He didn't seem very convinced. “Emma, I'm not sure this is a good idea.”

“And why is that?” Was her exasperated reply, turning towards him with her hands on her hips. “What are you going to do? Seduce me with a couple of broken ribs and a ten-year-old boy sleeping next to us?”

He lifted his arms and surrendered. “Fair point.” He conceded.

In no time they were all ready for the night and Henry was snoring softly on the sofa. Killian was supine, staring at the ceiling and thinking about the events of the day. In any case, sleep had no intention of coming, but he tried not to move. He didn’t want to wake up his roommates. Emma was lying close with her back to him and he didn’t know if she was already in the arms of Morpheus.

He turned his head to observe how her upper body moved with the rhythm of her breathing, blond curls covering her shoulders. Killian had to repress the urge to touch them. And as if responding to his call, she stirred and turned to face him.

Her eyes opened lazily. “Still awake?” She murmured.

“I have the feeling that I’ve slept enough for the rest of my life.” He whispered. “But you can’t rest either, I see.”

She didn’t answer.

Perhaps it was the closeness, perhaps it was the fact that they had spent the last few days apart. Killian didn't know how he found the courage, but he lifted his left arm as an invitation. “Come here,” he said.

She seemed to ponder the situation, chewing her bottom lip. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

He decided not to think about all the possible implications of that sentence. He was falling in love with her, he was aware of it. Probably the simple doubt that she might not reciprocate was already hurting him, but he knew that at that moment she was referring only to his physical bruises. “You won’t.”

She slipped under the sheets towards him, resting her head gently on his left shoulder and placing a hand on his chest, avoiding the bruised part. Not many minutes passed before her lids grew heavy and she dozed off to the rhythm of his heartbeats. Killian placed a soft kiss on her forehead.

#cs ff #cs au #Till the Stars Had Run Away #alternative universe #science fiction #space au #my writing

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justasparkwritings · 4 years ago

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Exile: Breaking Branches

Pairing: Timothée Chalamet x Reader

Genre: Angst, Slice of Life

Rating: PG15

Word Count: 1.8K

Warnings: Swearing

Summary: Timothée crosses the one line they've sworn they never would. Consequences, heartache, and despair enfold as Timothée tries to find his way back to her.

Exile Master List

She poured the last of the chardonnay into her glass, sipping slowly as she stirred the large pot of soup on the stove. The air had begun to bite, the leaves shedding their summers glow for autumnal comfort and eventual rest as winter hit. She was cozy in an old sweater she’d kept from an ex, his alma mater printed in large writing across the front. The years of wear and tear had become embedded in the print, cracking it to expose the maroon of the fabric it was pressed upon. She loved it, despite the gnarly way in which she’d come to collect it. It was her favorite garment for days like this. The cold air of fall, the emptiness of their home, and the long days where she needed complicated recipes to occupy her time… rather to bide her time until he called.

She glanced at the clock, he’d be calling soon, a call when he got up, before getting ready for set, or running his lines again, a call to start his day and wind down hers. She stared at the stove clock, permanently set either two minutes fast, or an hour and two minutes depending on Daylight Savings. She hated the thing; it was his purchase, a luxurious French stove with a manual written exclusively in French. Which was fine when Timothée was home, but alone she was at a loss of what buttons to push and how to fix it. Her remedial language skills were cute when they’d met, and she’d remembered a little more French from high school than she realized, but an entire manual with no pictures or diagrams? No, this was a Timothée chore that was waiting to be fixed. It had been waiting to be fixed since the first of the month, when they’d fallen forward.

She set her silicone spoon down and admired the space in front of her. She loved their kitchen. She had insisted on spending the most money on it and their master bath. They had found the home after a few months of looking. It needed a desperate remodel, a makeover to cleanse the house of years of neglect. It was in a secluded part of LA, with large trees and few neighbors. They’d bargained down the price and tossed it into their renovation budget. Which was why she stood on their herringbone reclaimed wooden floors, staring at their gorgeous French stove top, with the intricate black tiled backsplash that stretched the length of the wall. The gold hardware popped against the forest green cabinetry and accented the large marble island.

She sighed, resigned to the fact that he wasn’t calling today. She turned to set her wine down and glanced out the glass wall at their side garden. Tomorrow she would collect her harvest and add it to her soup, perhaps make a vegetable broth to be saved for another day in her empty home.

Across the world, Timothée was waking up, a hangover shredding through his body. He turned and looked at the person lying next to him, before getting up and searching for his boxers. She stood too and scrambled to find her own clothing before staring at him. Their eyes met, the haze of the alcohol and the realization of what had transpired crossed their faces at the same moment. She waved awkwardly, saying she’d see him on set, before darting out of his hotel room.

Timothée sat on the bed, head in hands. The grogginess of just waking up after a night of drinking was apparent as he tried to decide what to do. Would it be worse if he thought about it, or just called her?

She picked up on the first ring, excitement in her voice.

“Hi honey, I wondered if you were going to call,” She said, sighing.

She waited for him to say something, to greet her, call her a pet name, anything.

“I slept with her, I, I can’t believe, we slept together,” He exhaled it out through his lips, wishing desperately that the release of the statement would take the guilt and weight off of his body. He sat quietly, wondering what her response would be, hoping she could give him some sort of solace.

“Okay,” She said. She moved around the island to sit on their stools and took a gulp of wine. She began to bite her bottom lip as she set her phone on the counter, placing it on speaker.

“I’m so sorry,” Timothée said, his voice cracking.

“Tim, we have an open relationship,” She reminded him. He sensed the calm in her voice, the indifference to him relinquishing a regret she never wanted to hear in the first place.

“I know but, this, this is a line I didn’t want to cross,” He pleads. Why doesn’t she care more?

“It seems like you’re trying to make sense of this more than I am,” She said.

“I just, there was a line I didn’t want to cross and,” The tears are forming, the bile rising in his throat, he tries to inhale slowly, calm himself. If she’s okay with this, why isn’t he?

“And what? You did? Timothée, you have to live with yourself and the decision you made,” The words cut through him. They say the opposite of hate isn’t love, it’s indifference. He feels the air in their relationship starting to turn. She takes another sip of her wine and wipes the tears that have slid down her cheeks.

Their open relationship had been a mutual decision which they’d come to after his first film away. The desire for companionship, for intimacy on both their ends was palpable. Conversations became less about how they were doing and more about what they could do to get each other off. Their relationship became twisted, and once he’d come home, they’d forgotten how to be together. They had sat across from one another in her old one-bedroom apartment, sweltering in the summer heat. Did they break up, or did they find a way to work through it?

At first, they balked at the idea, an open relationship. Wasn’t that a phrase tossed about so people felt okay stepping out on their partners? Or was that the heteronormative notion they’d become invested in? What if, they supposed, when Timothée was gone for filming, they had an open relationship. They could sleep with or hook up with whomever they wanted? There would be no strings, no emotions. The utmost protection used, and most importantly to both of them, whomever she slept with while he was away was not to step foot in their home or her apartment. That bed was reserved for their love, and their love only.

Did they want details about who the other was fucking? What could be shared? They started by telling each other nothing. Which became complicated when they would come together in their bed with new tricks or skills. “Who taught you that?” was a question that became common in their first year as a selectively open relationship. So much so that they decided they would share who they were fucking, but no pictures, no googling, no details on what transpired. When they shared a new trick, it was “from a buddy”, and that was it.

They didn’t keep score, or a running tally to compare. They didn’t share details of how hard they came or what positions they used. They became so good at it that by year five, “I saw a buddy last night,” was all they ever needed to tell each other.

Which was why, in Timothée’s mind, this felt like a betrayal to both of them.

“I didn’t want this, I didn’t… Fuck, I’ve just been so lonely, and I’ve missed you so much,”

“Timothée this is what we agreed to,”

“I know I just, I can’t believe I slept with her,” He emphasized the pronoun, both in a show of his disgust with himself, and his deep guilt that it had been his costar. He knew how she felt about him sleeping with costars, how uncomfortable it made her when they’d walk red carpets or be at premiers. It became personal, intimate, addicting, when it was meant to just be a hit.

“How does she feel?” She asked.

“Well she left really awkwardly, and I don’t know if we’re ever going to talk about it,”

“Well it seems like maybe you need to do some soul searching,” The ice in her voice gave him goosebumps.

“Babe, I’m sorry,” He said, letting the crack in his voice radiate into the receiver.

“For what?”

“For talking about it with you, I know that our rule is that we don’t talk about who, but I just, I felt like I needed to tell you about it,”

“Tim, thank you for apologizing. Maybe you think it’s a big deal because you know how I feel about you sleeping with coworkers, or maybe it’s because you two are good friends and have been for years. You followed through on why we have an open relationship, but maybe you both took advantage of each other. She’s been broken up from Zach for what, a month? Maybe you feel guilty?”

“I feel so fucking guilty. So. Guilty.”

“Maybe you and Florence need to sit down and talk about it,”

“Ugh, yeah, you’re right,”

“Maybe that’ll make you feel better. Go get breakfast and lots of coffee.”

“We aren’t called until tonight,” He muttered.

“Maybe go back to sleep first,” She paused, the snap in voice striking her throat.

“I love you,” He said, his voice above a whisper, wanting to ensure her his heart belonged to her.

“I know you do,”

It wasn’t that in this moment, when he desperately needed it, that she didn’t return the sentiment. Was her love waning?

“When I come home, can we discuss this open relationship thing?” He asked, shoulders reaching his ears.

“Why?” She asked.

“I’m not happy with it,” He said.

“Because you slept with your friend and are trying to rectify it in your mind, or because you’re unhappy with it?”

In the best of times, he loved this about her. Her unflinching matter of fact statements, her ability to say what she thought, to ask the question that cut to the core of the other. But when he was hurting, all he wanted was for her to stop playing devils advocate, and just be there for him.

“I just want you,” He whispered.

“Okay, we can talk about it.” She said.

“I love you,” He said, punctuating the love.

“Love you,” She said swiftly before hanging up.

She sat back and tried to make sense of what had transpired. Because Timothée had fucked up, would she now have to rid herself of the occasional relief she sought from others? Because Timothée fucked up, would their relationship become toxic and unsustainable? Was she really worried that their relationship was doomed, or was she worried that she liked her rotation of strange men?

She didn’t know. And neither did Timothée.

Next: Five Whole Minutes

#timothee x reader #timothee x you #timothée chamalet #actor #male actor #writing #drabble #fanfic #actor rpf #rpf

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adobe-outdesign · 5 years ago

Text

The Draw of the Pipes

The ink is not alive, there are not voices coming from the newly-installed pipe in his office, and Grant Cohen is not crazy. At least, that’s what he tells himself.

Loosely based off of the DCTL lore, but modified to play nicer with canon.

(AO3 link here.

TWs: Unreality, suicidal idealization, accidental self harm, body horror, and some mild/unintentional ableism from some characters. This is a fic about someone with depression losing their mind, so there’s a lot of talk about mental health related issues. Approach with caution if these themes may bother you.)

__________________________________

Distribution fees, $9,842.31. Marketing and publicity, $10,372.12. Special projects, $64,921.98...

The door opens.

Grant sighs, setting his pen down neatly at the edge of the paper. “Mr. Connor, please knock before you enter. I’m in the middle of tallying this year’s revenue and I can’t afford any distractions.” And for that matter, neither could Joey.

“Sorry. Just came in to tell you you can move back into your office now.” The taller man leans against the frame of the door, removing his ink-stained gloves. “The pipe’s in place. We’ll need to put the wall back later, but it might be a while at this rate.”

Grant presses his hands against his temples, trying to fight off his incoming headache. “Remind me again why we’re wasting money doing this when we can barely afford to pay our taxes this year.”

Thomas shrugs. “I don’t ask questions, I just do the work.”

“I know. I was being rhetorical, see.” Of course it was Joey’s fault. When wasn’t it?

Grant stands up from his temporary desk, silently rounding up papers and jogging them into a neat pile before following the mechanic back to his usual office. He nearly winces as he enters the room, eyes going straight to the mess that the construction had left behind.

“You couldn’t have cleaned after yourself a little?” The entire back wall had been torn down, bits of drywall scattered about on the floor, with a massive pipe filled with black ink set back into the cavity. “Garish” would’ve been the nicest word he could use to describe it.

“No point when we have to reconstruct the entire damn wall again anyway.”

Grant just shakes his head, setting the receipts down on his desk. “I guess.” Maybe it would seem less intrusive if he just didn’t look at it.

Thomas turns to leave and then stops, standing in the doorway. “By the way, I should warn you that you shouldn’t get too close to the pipe. High ink pressure, exposed wall studs, that kind of thing. Could be dangerous.”

“I’m aware. I’ve already had to pay off several lawsuits from employees getting injured by exploding pipes.” He doesn’t mean for it to sound accusatory, but it probably did anyway.

“I already sent out a memo to the office telling everyone to stay out of the utility shafts. Nothing else I can do.” He pulls back on his gloves. “There’s a shut-off valve back by the right side, behind the drywall. You can use that to stop any leaks. Or refill your pens. But don’t-” Thomas pauses, looking back at the missing wall, as if there was something else he wanted to say. “Just don’t get too close to it unless you need to, all right?”

So am I supposed to touch it or not? Grant just shakes his head, too exhausted to discuss exactly what the mechanic meant by that. “Trust me, I have no intention to go anywhere near it,” he finally states.

Thomas nods, finally leaving, and Grant turns his attention back to the papers on his desk. He felt like something had been off about the conversation, but he didn’t realize what it was until later.

Not once during the entire conversation did Thomas look him in the eye.

__________________________________

Someone is knocking at the door, and it’s not making his headache any less painful.

“Are you still working?” someone asks, and he recognizes the voice of David, one of their auditors.

“I’m always working. You can come in,” he adds as an afterthought. David swings the door open with a bit more force than necessary, jacket already draped over one arm.

“Me and the fellas are headin’ over to Verdi’s to unwind,” he explains, leaning his arm against the back of Grant’s chair as he speaks. “You should come with! Bet they’ll be a lotta cute dames there.”

Grant attempts a thin smile, though it probably looked like more of a grimace with how much his head hurt. “David, I just got a divorce.”

“What do you mean, just? That was eight years ago!”

He ignores that statement but considers the offer for a moment. Going out for a drink certainly would be nice. Forgot all their financial problems for a bit, forget his headache...

“That doesn’t matter. Anyway, I need to stay here. I have to get these claims down to insurance by tomorrow afternoon or else we’ll all be in trouble.” In reality, he didn’t want to go because the last time he went out drinking he had ended up completely bent and crying into the arms of Toby, their paymaster. The man had acted sympathetic enough at the time, but Grant hadn’t been able to look him in the eye since.

“Your call. But hey, if you change your mind you know where to find us, okay?” David throws his jacket over his shoulder and leaves as quickly as he came in.

Time passes. Grant listens to the Bendy-shaped clock on the wall as it ticks down the minutes. God, he hated that clock. Joey had given it to him as a ten-year work anniversary present and had presented it as if it was a big deal, when in reality Grant was sure he had walked down to Heavenly Toys five minutes before to pick it up. Now it swings back and forth idly, as if mocking him.

Tick, tick, tick...

His writing was getting a lot lighter.

Grant leans back in his chair, looking at the pipe for the first time since he had fully moved back into his office. Thomas had said he use it for refills, but he had also said to stay away from it. Which one was it?

He studies it for another moment, contemplating and flipping his pen between his fingers, before sighing and getting up. If the damn pipe was going to be in his office, the least it could do was save him a trip up to the Art Department.

The pipe makes a strange groaning sound and he stops, remembering the multiple claims they had filed over the last few months regarding pipes exploding, but nothing else happens. It was just the glass creaking, he scolds himself.

He turns the shut-off valve slowly, and a smooth stream of jet-black ink flows from the nozzle and into the well in his hand. Grant returns to his desk, unscrewing the fountain pen. It was a bit of a hassle to refill it, but it was worth the effort - it had been a bar mitzvah gift years ago, and it was a finer pen than any others he had used over the years. He dips it into the well, twisting the end to draw the ink up into it, then screws it back together.

He takes out a handkerchief to blot off the top and somehow, while turning it around, stabs himself with it.

“Son of a bitch,” he breathes, holding his now-bleeding hand. He had refilled this pen hundreds of times before and had never managed to hurt himself with it. He wasn’t even sure how he had managed to do that.

He gently blots away the spot of blood, revealing a tiny puncture wound with a bit of black under the skin from where the tip of the pen had struck him. Grant shakes his head, annoyed at managing to injure himself while doing something so mundane, and goes back to his writing.

He had never written with ink that flowed so nicely, or looked so dark.

__________________________________

Grant swore his headache was getting worse, and the knocking at the door isn’t helping.

“Come in,” he calls out, lifting his hands from his head. The door opens a crack and in steps their file clerk, a timid young man in a cardigan holding a stack of reports.

“Your, uh, secretary told me you could take for a minute.”

“Yes.” He waits for a moment, but the man doesn’t seem eager to speak. “Well, go on. I don’t have all day. I have a meeting in 5.”

The man startles, like he hadn’t been expecting him to speak. “Uh, right. On these papers, sir, I think you got one of the numbers wrong?”

“What? Here, hand it over.” Grant briskly takes the sheet and sets it down, using his pen as a guide as he mentally calculates. $4,592 plus $319 equals $4911, that plus another $6,793 was $11,704, and that plus another $211 was-

$11,915. Not $11,825, as he had written down on the sheet.

“I’m- No, I’m sorry, that’s wrong.” He shakes his head and crosses out the number, recalculating the rest of the amounts quickly, the corrections looking bold and black compared to the rest of the ink on the page. He hands it back to the man. “Thank you for catching that.”

The younger man mumbles something about it being no problem and quickly darts out. Grant stares at the papers scattered about on his desk, head pounding.

He had worked at Joey Drew Studios for ten years, and had spent another 15 working in the finance business. He had never gotten a number wrong before.

__________________________________

“I’m not happy, Grant. Want to know why?”

Joey stands beside him, studying the “work hard, work happy” poster above his desk, which had partially fallen down at some point. The fact that he nearly had a foot and a half of height over Grant was intimidating enough, and sitting down only made the difference feel more extreme.

“Why?” he asks, not that he really cared but because he knew that that was what Joey expected him to say.

“Some people in the studio are starting to talk as if we’re in some kind of financial trouble! And they say they got that information from you!”

“Mister Drew, they were in overpay,” he explains patiently, scratching the wound on his hand. “I had to explain to them why we couldn’t provide them a check this week-”

“DAMMIT, THIS ISN’T ABOUT THAT!” Joey suddenly yells, slamming his hands down on the desk. Grant was very, very used to Joey’s sudden turns of mood, but somehow the sudden noise still manages to make him jump.

Joey takes a deep breath and is instantly back to his cheerful self, like flipping a light switch. “When people think there are problems, they start to get worried! And when people get worried, they start to leave! And if you don’t want to join them, you’ll stop talking about it. Got it?”

“I- Yes,” he breathes, looking down at his desk. Joey slaps him across the back, which was probably meant to be a friendly gesture but instead feels more like he just got hit.

“Good man! And make sure to make those Bendyland payments soon. Bertie won’t get off my back about it!” Joey chirps. He disappears out the door before Grant has a chance to object.

Well, it was official. His headache had been upgraded to a full-on migraine.

__________________________________

“I’ve told him before that we can’t afford to keep spending money like this. But he won’t listen to me, so there’s nothing I can do except cut the budget to other departments. And then that makes everyone blame me, see, even though I’m just trying to make sure we don’t all go bankrupt and end up out on the street.” Grant leans back in his chair, taking a drag off his cigarette. He didn’t normally smoke much, but right now he needs something to take the edge off. “And this migraine isn’t helping anything either.”

"Maybe you should take a break, sir. When was the last time you took any days off?” His secretary didn’t really need to sit there and listen to him, but she always did regardless. He appreciated it more than he tended to admit.

Grant sets down the cigarette in his tray, rubbing at his eyes. Why was he always so tired anymore? “I don’t have any more vacation days, if that’s what you mean. Used them all earlier in the year.”

“What about sick days?”

He scratches at the spot on his hand where he had stabbed himself absentmindedly. Was it just him, or was it bigger than it was initially? “I’m not sick, I’m just tired. Besides, I used all of my sick days up already.” He wouldn’t admit it, but most of those days had been spent on times where he physically couldn’t bring himself to get up out of bed. “And I can’t afford to take any unpaid ti-”

A thin, shrill scream cuts through the air, nearly causing him to double over in pain from his migraine. It was terrified and loud, like it had come from somewhere in the room with them. He jumps up from his desk - then stops, looking at Carol, who hadn’t budged an inch.

“What the hell was that?”

“What was what, sir?” She straightens her glasses, black curls bobbing as she looks around in confusion.

“The- What, you didn’t hear it?” No, she had to have heard it. It was so loud...

She walks over to him and puts a hand on his shoulder, redirecting him to his desk. “Try to take a break and relax, Mr. Cohen. All of this stress isn’t good for you.” She says it kindly enough but there’s an edge to her voice, like she was concerned, or possibly even scared.

It was just stress. Of course.

__________________________________

At first, Grant thinks it’s an error. As much as he hated to admit it, he had been miscalculating things a lot recently, or maybe there was just an extra investment made at some point that he forgot to account for. He doesn’t start to seriously consider the debt a possibility until he recaculates everything, and even then he tries to convince himself there’s an alternate explanation, even though he knows it’s a lie. He stares at the papers in front of him.

$48,128 short.

Grant checks the numbers, checks them again, over and over until his vision is blurry and his head is pounding harder than usual. He may have made a mistake earlier, but not now. Between the overdue Bendyland payments, the taxes they still owed, and the massive amounts of money Joey had spent on that damn Machine, there wasn’t even close to enough money to possibly cover everything.

He scratches at the ink on his hand again, which removes the scab that had formed there. Grant was certain now he wasn’t imaging the stain getting worse - it had progressed from a small barely-noticeable spot into an ugly black mark about the size of a quarter.

As Grant stares at the final calculations he scratches at the spot more aggressively, digging his nails into it as hard as he can as he thinks about getting fired, about what would happen when Joey found out. He can feel the panic attack coming on but he can’t do anything other than hold onto the table for support. He’s sweating, hyperventilating, his chest hurts, his vision is swimming, it’s so loud-

1-2-3-4. He forces himself to breathe deeply, leaning back to stare at the ceiling, trying to think about anything but the debt. Slowly, the attack passes, and the noise that he had been hearing slowly dims and then disappears. He couldn’t afford a panic attack, not now. What he needed was a plan, something to tell Joey so he might not fire him on the spot. They could file a bankruptcy claim and see if they could win back enough in the settlement to pay off their investments, maybe try to save at least the animation department and work up from there...

But first, he’d have to tell Joey.

He continues to stare at the ceiling, listening to the clock tick on the wall.

__________________________________

One thing he had learned since he started working at Joey Drew studios was that everything was his fault.

Not literally, of course. His job was simply to budget the numbers as best he could and advise Joey on how to invest his money, which he never paid attention to anyway. No, it was the way everyone else perceived things that made him a scapegoat. If someone got an overpay notice and his name was at the top of it, they would blame him, simple as that.

That’s not to say everyone did. His fellow accountants knew he was just the guy trying to keep the company afloat. Some of the department heads understood as well, especially the ones who he had already spoken to, but even their sympathies dried up when the budget cuts started happening.

Grant leaves his office as little as possible, only darting out to use the bathroom or to grab his lunch. It’s still not enough to hide him from catching the angry expressions and whispered conversations in the break room.

“Company will go under any day now...”

“Finances slashed our entire department’s budget in half, yet we’re still expected to produce the same amount of toys! How do they think that’s even possible?...”

“I’ve been in overpay for over two weeks! I’m about to go down to Finances and strangle that Cohen guy myself, I tell you...”

He wanted to scream at everyone, tell them that he couldn’t do anything about the budget except tell Joey not to spend so much and that money didn’t grow on trees, and if it was up to him he’d give everyone a month’s worth of paid vacation and a raise! But he couldn’t do any of those things, so he just spends his time hiding in his office, waiting for the day to be over.

He was tired. He could barely sum up the energy to make something to eat - his last meal had been a piece of slightly stale bread from the fridge. He couldn’t bring himself to have any water, either. For some reason the thought of trying to drink it repulsed him.

He has so many meetings anymore. Angry face after angry face, demanding to know where their last paycheck was or why they had been let go due to downsizing or why they couldn’t hire any new help. All he can do is explain as patiently as possible that there’s nothing the Finance Department can do.

They think he looks terrible, he can tell just by looking at their expressions when they walk in. He spends all day sleeping, yet the constant nightmares keep him restless, jolting him awake. The one where he melted alive, that was a common one. The one where millions of finance reports pile up on his desk and cut him open when he tried to touch them, that was another. And of course there was the most common one, the one with the strange demon creature with overly long arms that either ripped him apart or dragged him under a pool of ink, depending on the dream.

“Why can’t you do anything about this?”

His head hurts, and he’s so, so tired.

__________________________________

Grant studies the memo in front of him. It was some sort of mandatory form to be filled out by all employees, and when he had first got it he had set it aside, figuring it was a standard evaluation form or something. It was only upon actually reading it did he realize how strange some of the questions are. For every straightforward question asking about how their experience in the office could be improved, there was a question about how often they worked late or how many family members they had.

Who is your favorite Bendy character and why? Choose from Bendy, Boris, Alice, or the Butcher Gang. Grant just shakes his head, wondering if Joey had finally lost it. Still, the question was marked as mandatory.

He tries to think back to the cartoons he’s seen. Despite working in the studio, he rarely saw the finished products they produced - the only time he bothered to watch them was when they were screened for the entire studio after completion. They were amusing enough, he supposed.

Grant rolls his pen between his fingers as he thinks. Finally he writes down “The little spider fellow. He’s charming in a way.” He resists the urge to write “Why are you making us fill this out?” under the comment section and instead folds it up, setting it neatly on his desk so he can drop it in the mail boxes on the way out.

As he sets the memo aside he notices that his injured hand looks worse than it did earlier. He holds his wrist, inspecting it under the dull glow of his desk lamp. The black area had gone from a tiny pinprick to a large black splotch covering most of his palm. It didn’t hurt, but it did feel slightly numb and cold to the touch.

Maybe it was infected. Could infections cause headaches? That would explain some things. He didn’t know much about medical care, but he did know that infections should be drained and cleaned thoroughly to make sure they healed correctly.

He digs around in his desk, retrieving a letter opener from one of the drawers. It was one of the nice ones, with a carved wooden handle and a long pointed metal top. Almost more of a knife than a letter opener, really.

Grant takes out his handkerchief and lays it to the side of the desk. Cut open near the most infected part, drain any puss, and then wash and bandage the wound. Easy.

He selects a spot slightly above his palm and gently slides the metal point into the skin, wincing at the pain. He wriggles it a bit to make sure the opening is big enough, then sets down the letter opener and squeezes gently.

There is no puss, or any sign of an infection. What there is is a lot of blood. And then he realizes that his hand isn’t black, and it never had been - the wound was still a tiny pinprick in the center of his hand. What there was was now a much larger-than-intended cut on his palm, bleeding profusely.

“Son of a bitch,” he mutters, pressing the handkerchief against the spot. It’s soaked through within seconds and he quickly pulls off his neck tie, wrapping it tightly around the wound. Stupid, stupid. What the hell was he thinking?

Grant darts out of his office and takes the back way to the restrooms, keeping his head low and his hand close to his chest to avoid any questions from onlookers. He carefully unwraps his hand as he slips into the men’s room, and for one terrified second he wonders if the bleeding will actually stop. He breathes a sigh of relief as he unwraps the blood-stained tie, revealing that the wound had clotted and dried.

He washes the area carefully, then splashes some cold water on his face. The previous injury was still just a tiny speck in the middle of his palm.

It was just a hallucination, he reassures himself, rubbing his face with a hand towel. He stares at his own tired eyes in the mirror.

No, only crazy people had hallucinations.

And he certainly wasn’t crazy.

__________________________________

Grant had long since given up on trying to get Joey to meet with him by asking him directly, as it was becoming increasingly obvious that the man was just flat-out ignoring him. He had instead tried sending a memo to his secretary, asking her to slot him in as soon as possible. Apparently that had worked, as Joey had unexpectedly barged into his office that morning, slamming the door open so hard Grant was almost surprised that it didn’t fall right off its hinges.

“All right, all right, I’m here. What do you want?” he demands, quickly brushing out his suit. He looked disheveled, and there was ink splattered haphazardly on his hands and face. “For all of your ‘time is money’ talk you sure do like wasting mine, Cohen!”

This was not good. Joey didn’t take bad news well when he was in a good mood - trying to talk to him about the debt when he was already irritated was sure to end badly. “Mister Drew, it’s about our current budget-”

“Hmm? The budget?” Joey licks his finger and rubs at one of the spots at his hand, not looking at the accountant. “I told you, just pull the money from the investors!”

This would be easier if it didn’t feel like someone was pounding a stake into his head. “Mister Drew, as I explained in my earlier memo we don’t have enough funds from the investors to-”

“Isn’t it your job to handle the damn budget? Pull the funds from Heavenly Toys, I don’t care! Just make it work!”

“You see, we can’t cut funding to the Toy Department because-”

“It’s always the same with you! Complaining about taxes and budget cuts and everything else under the sun! Stop dragging me all the way down here and do your goddamn j-!”

“WE DON’T HAVE ANY MORE GODDAMN FUNDS!” Grant screams, standing up from his chair so fast that it crashes back onto the floorboards. He stands there, breathing heavily as Joey stares at him.

He had worked at the studio for ten years. He almost never yelled at anyone, as he considered it unprofessional, unnecessary.

And he sure as hell didn’t yell at Joey Drew.

“I’m sorry,” Grant mutters, slinking down to avoid the taller man’s gaze. Joey was at least looking at him now - really looking at him, like he was just now noticing how terrible he looked, or the ink splotch that once again seemed to be covering his palm.

“No, go on.” He can’t read Joey’s expression.

Grant takes a deep breath. He had mentally rehearsed what he needed to say dozens of times, but his outburst had left him struggling to remember any of it. “We can’t pull funds from the Toy Department because there are no more funds, Mister Drew.” He pulls the piece of paper with the damning final calculations on it and holds it out to Joey, who grabs it with enough force to crumple it. “Couldn’t even cover it if I fudged the numbers.”

Joey remains silent, looking over the sheet. Grant clears his throat. “The best thing to do would be to file for bankruptcy. If we aim for a Chapter 7 case, we could have exemptions cover the debt, so we’d be able to keep the studio’s property. And it takes less time to complete than a Chapter 13 case, see.”

The other man rises from his chair, sliding the now-wrinkled calculations back onto Grant’s desk. He puts his hand on the shorter man’s shoulder, digging his fingernails into his sleeve. “How did this happen, Grant?”

Grant was used to Joey screaming at him. He could handle Joey screaming at him. This weird pseudo-calmness was not something he was used to. “I tried to warn you, Mister Drew. About the overspending-”

He stops speaking as Joey puts more pressure on his shoulder, making him wince. “You see, I’m not very fond of people letting other people steal from me.”

This conversation was not going at all like he expected it to, and the sudden twists were catching him off guard. “What? Mister Drew, I didn’t-”

Another squeeze on his shoulder cuts him off. “Oh, but you did! If I put someone in charge of watching my house while I’m gone, and they let someone walk off with my $3,000 Kandinsky, whose fault is it that my painting is gone?”

He leans down close to Grant, close enough that he can smell the aftershave he put on this morning. “Fix. It.”

Joey stands up and slams the door so hard on his way out that it sends that godforsaken Bendy clock smashing onto the floor, breaking it into a million tiny pieces.

__________________________________

“Be quiet,” Grant insists, even though logically he knows there’s no one else in the room with him. He can hear all kinds of noises though - people screaming, crying, whispering so quietly he wasn’t even sure there was any whispering at all. He struggles to focus on the typewriter in front of him, the words on the page blurring over.

“Be quiet!” he snaps at no one, and the noise seems to quiet down a little. He eyes the pipe on the back wall warily. It sounded as if the noise was coming from-

No, that was crazy people talk. There were no voices - he was just overstressed and tired. Grant takes a moment to rub at his tired eyes before turning his attention back to the typewriter.

We regret to inform you that Joey Drew Studios is going to be significantly downsizing within the next few months...

His head feels like it’ll split apart completely if he doesn’t press his hands against it. Does the wording of this memo even matter? Everyone already hated him; it’s not like breaking the news that they’d all be out of a job soon would somehow make them change their opinions.

He turns his attention back to the pipe. The pipe... ever since that damn pipe had been installed he had been having these headaches, hearing the voices. But that didn’t make sense, did it? It was just a pipe full of ink.

“Stop it,” he hisses, one hand still pressed against his head. He uses his other hand to wipe away the sweat dripping from his brow as he stares down the pipe, as if expecting it to respond somehow.

The whispering... he can almost make out words, if he pays close enough attention. Something inside of him is pulling him towards the pipe, calling to him. He sets his head on the back of the chair, and as he does so he notices that his entire hand is black now-

Get outside. Get some air. Grant stands up unsteadily, knocking the chair over again and nearly tripping over its legs. The room swims unsteadily around him and there’s ink dripping down from the ceiling, from the walls...

The floor rises up to meet him and he grabs the trashcan from under his desk at the last second, retching into it. He takes a few deep breaths, trying to get rid of the burning sensation in his mouth as he opens his eyes again.

Ink.

There’s ink splattered over the inside of the trashcan, dripping from the crumpled papers inside and splashed up onto the metal edges. He wipes off his mouth and there’s more ink on the back of his hand, dripping onto his clothes. He can taste the saltiness of it in his mouth-

He might have screamed - he didn’t remember. Someone was grabbing him, dragging him away from the floor...

__________________________________

Grant wakes up slowly, waiting a moment for his eyes to focus. There’s wooden boards composing the ceiling above him. Still in the studio, then.

“Where am I?” he manages to croak. His voice is sore and his whole body aches. There’s something soft under him. A cot, maybe. A hand is holding out a wet towel and he takes it, pressing it against his head as he lies back down.

“You’re in the infirmary,” a voice he doesn’t recognize explains. “Your secretary brought you down. You have a fever.”

A fever. That was all?

He closes his eyes and goes back to sleep.

__________________________________

Grant spends the next two days lying at home in a confused, feverous haze. He can’t tell if what he’s seeing are hallucinations or fever dreams, if he’s awake or asleep. One minute there would be ink dripping from the walls; in another there would be a strange looking demon in the corner of the room. The pan he had dragged in by the bed yielded no more ink, just water and stomach acid. You’re not crazy, he reminds himself, staring at his mostly-black hand. You’re just seeing things because of the fever. The sickness was comforting, in a weird way, just because it gave him an excuse.

By the third day the fever has broken, and he checks the thermometer just to be sure. It yields a normal temperature, but instead of getting up continues to lie in his bed, staring up at the moulding on the ceiling. Part of him feels disappointed that he didn’t die from the illness, and yet another part feels guilty for thinking that at all.

The very idea of going back to work is overwhelming - even the idea of taking a shower feels like too much right now. But this was unpaid sick time, and he couldn’t afford any more of it. Skip the shower, he reasons, managing to sit upright. He manages a quick change of clothes - an undershirt and a vest, but forsaking his usual tie and sleeve garters. He doesn’t dare look at himself in the mirror.

Grant barely makes eye contact with Carol, just mumbling an apology for scaring her as he slinks back to his office. He eyes the trashcan warily, but Wally must have taken out the garbage since then, as there’s a fresh bag in place of the old one. He sits down, straightening the papers on his desk. There wasn’t any ink to begin with, he scolds himself, shuffling through finance reports and several statements from the IRS. Something dark catches his eye and he starts moving papers aside, sliding the page out from underneath the stack.

It was the jet-black ink from his pen, certainly, and it’s his handwriting. He can even pick out a few familiar sounding words from the scratchy jumble of words - “taxes”, “48,128 short”, “time is money”. The pen was pressed down so hard in some areas that it had torn straight through the paper. But he didn’t write it. He didn’t remember writing it.

Grant abruptly crumples the piece of paper and throws it into the trash can, pulse pounding. He forces himself to take a few deep breaths. I must have written that when I was ill, he rationalizes, but he can’t shake the uneasy feeling settling around his shoulders.

He leafs through the rest of the papers with a sense of dread, but there’s nothing but bankruptcy forms.

__________________________________

Grant hadn’t noticed it with everything else going on, but his headache had dulled considerably when he was resting at home. Now it was back in full force, and the ticking of the clock only seems to aggravate it.

He glances at it to check the time, only to remember with a start that it had broken permanently when Joey had slammed the door earlier. He shakes his head, combing his fingers through his greasy hair. Didn’t matter. He was pretty sure it was after five, at least.

There was screaming, and it was so vivid it was hard for him not to run off to try to find the source of it. It’s not real, he reminds himself, turning to glare at the pipe in the wall. No, don’t look at it. Focus on the bankruptcy filing, but the words blur and become meaningless the more he looks at them.

“Hello?”

Grant almost writes off the voice as another hallucination, but it sounds vaguely familiar, and after a few minutes of grasping at thoughts he realizes it’s the voice of Sammy, their music director. He didn’t know him very well, but they had spoken a few times about budget issues regarding his department.

“Can we talk for a moment?”

Normally Sammy’s voice was nice sounding, smooth and calm. Now it feels like every word is pounding a nail into his skull. He winces, clutching his head with both hands.

“Now’s not a good time. Come back later. Please.” Grant’s aware of how pathetic he sounds, but right now he doesn’t care. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to hold a conversation, not in this state.

“...Very well, then. I’ll be back later,” Sammy mutters. When Grant finally lifts his head, the room is empty.

Strange. He hadn’t even heard the door open.

__________________________________

“So we’re going to be keeping parts of the department, see? And if we’re keeping the animation department, we’ll need some sound to go with the cartoons.” Grant scratches at his hand, focusing on the papers before him. “We’ll need to downsize, though. Probably sell off some instruments as well…”

Jack leans back in the wooden chair, which creaks ominously under his weight. He takes a moment to wipe the sweat from his brow, revealing a rather obvious bald spot under his hat. “I guess. Never been very good at firing people though.”

“You’ll get used to it, don’t worry.”

Jack leans forward again, resting his chin on his hand. His eyes drift downward. “What happened to your hand?”

“My-?” Grant holds the appendage up, inspecting it under the dim fluorescent light. It was completely black now, like he had dipped it into ink and the skin had stained long after it was washed off. He stares at the cut on his hand, a reminder that this was yet another hallucination, that there was no ink.

And yet Jack was staring at him, normally cheerful face lined with concern. What was he looking at? The original puncture wound, which had long since scabbed over? The cut across his palm? Or maybe-

“I, uh, cut it. On some glass from one of the pipes,” he mumbles, hoping that was a decent enough explanation for whatever Jack was looking at.

Jack shifts his weight uncomfortably. “Sammy had stains like that all over his body,” he confides. “Then he went crazy and disappeared.”

“Yes, well, I’m not crazy, so-“ Grant stops mid-sentence, suddenly taking in what the lyricist was telling him. Sammy had disappeared months ago - that’s why he was talking to Jack about this in the first place, because he was filling in in Sammy’s absence. How had he forgotten that?

“What?”

“Sammy. Sammy was in my office last night, he…“ Grant stands up to look over Jack as if he expected to see Sammy still standing there, but there’s nothing except for the pipe.

Jack’s expression is somewhere between discomfort, concern, and fear. “Uh, no offense, but maybe you should consider taking some days off. I’m sure spending all day cooped up in here can’t be good for you.”

“He was here. He was here, I heard him-“ Grant looks around helplessly before slumping back down in his chair, holding his throbbing head. “He was here! You believe me, right? He was...”

__________________________________

The thing about rumors was that once they got started, there was no way to stop them. And after that meeting with Jack, there was all kinds of speculation being passed around that Grant caught in snippets and whispers in the halls. That he had gone crazy; that he had had a mental breakdown and that’s why he was out for a few days; even that he had rabies.

Perhaps the only thing worse than the rumors were the response people had towards them. Complaints and anger, that he could handle at this point. What he couldn’t handle was those complaints being replaced with sympathy or fear or sometimes both. People treated him as if he was fragile, like he would break if they said the wrong thing. Soft tones, simple wording, smiles from people who were supposed to be concerned for him but seemed to be more concerned of him. Grant hated that more than anything. He was not crazy, and he certainly wasn’t a child.

At their weekly department meeting, he puts everything into his performance. Dressing as best as he could, talking in fast tones and quickly and efficiently telling everyone what to do and how to do it. It was exhausting, but he was fairly certain he had convinced a good portion of the staff that he wasn’t crazy as they left the room.

“Nicely done, sir,” Carol greets, setting her ever-present clipboard down on the desk. Her appearance was impeccable as always, and it only made him look worse in comparison.

“You think so?”

“Better than your last few meetings have been, at least.”

“I’ll take it.” Grant rests his head on the desk, closing his eyes momentarily. “How many more meetings do I have today?”

There’s the sound of a paper flipping over as Carol checks something on her clipboard. “Six.”

Six meetings. He had only done one so far and he already felt like he was about to pass out; six was surely impossible. “Can you reschedule?”

She clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “You’ve already rescheduled most of them earlier this week, sir.”

Grant sits back up, struggling to get the desk back in focus. “I know, I know. Forget it. I’ll try to figure something out.”

Carol studies him for a moment with her sharp eyes. She was all business all the time - it was almost impossible for Grant to imagine what she was like outside of work. “With all due respect, why haven’t you quit yet? It’s obvious you can no longer function at work anymore.”

Quitting. God, how he had fantasized about the idea of barging into Joey’s office and handing him his resignation, savoring the look he’d imagine he’d have on his face as he told him off for all of the terrible decisions he had made as a CEO. The very thought of it made him feel better, at least for a fleeting moment.

“I have. It’s just...” he admits, then stops, not wanting to say any more.

“I take it that’s not an option?”

Grant remembers how proud his parents had been when they had heard what a high-end job he had snagged, how they had bragged about him to all of their family members. And he knows, deep down, that he simply will not be able to find another job as high-profile as this one, not like this.

But he can’t say that.

“I don’t think anyone will be eager to employ me after finding out the last company I managed financially went bankrupt,” he mutters, which isn’t a lie.

Grant sits in silence for a while, rolling his pen between his black fingers.

“I... I can hear things, sometimes,” he mumbles. He’s not really sure why he’s telling her this, other than the fact that she was there and listening and he felt like he needed to confide in someone. “It’s like the ink is... alive, or something. It wants me to be with it, I think, or a part of it-” He cuts himself off, burying his head in his hands. “Sorry. That doesn’t make any sense.”

There’s another uncomfortable bout of silence. Eventually Carol sits down on the edge of the desk, setting her clipboard in her lap. “Have you considered seeing a professional?”

She doesn’t say more than that, but he understands what she’s implying. “No, I can’t. If I told anyone else... they’d lock me away, I’m sure. I’ve heard of what goes on in those asylums of theirs; I wouldn’t make it out in one piece.”

“There’s no family members you can contact?”

He thinks about how disappointed his parents would be if they saw him like this, so tired and pathetic that he couldn’t even manage to do basic things like showering. He can picture the looks on their faces - his father’s stern look of disapproval, the disheartened look on his heartbroken mother’s face.

“No,” Grant mumbles.

She sighs, standing back up and straightening her pencil skirt. “I’ll try to clear your schedule for today.”

He nods, brushing his hair back. “Thank you.”

“And do try to at least eat something. You look thin.” With that she dismisses herself, leaving him alone in the room.

Grant stares at his pen, trying to remember the last time he had had a proper meal.

__________________________________

He was becoming increasingly good at avoiding people, slinking through the less-used halls and cutting through utility shafts to avoid the crowds. Now it’s inevitable that people see him as he shambles into the break room, and he does his best to avoid eye contact as he grabs a bag of nuts from the only non-bacon soup vending machine in the place. He fills a paper cup from the bathroom and finds a small secluded table tucked into the corner.

It couldn’t have been that long since I ate, or else I’d be dead by now, Grant rationalizes, but it feels like it’s been weeks since his last meal. Even when fasting he at least felt hungry; right now he feels nothing. In fact, the water seems downright repulsive, like a cup of lukewarm saliva. He tries to force himself to drink it, but a sudden convulsion causes him to gag and choke.

He straightens up, still coughing, and realizes that Thomas was watching him from the far table, with a look on his face that Grant couldn’t quite identify. As soon as they make eye contact Thomas looks away, quickly gathering his things from the table. But that one second is enough to know.

“Wait,” Grant manages to choke out between coughs. “Wait!” He abandons the table, scrambling after the mechanic as he darts around the corner of the hall. “What do you know about the ink! What-”

He stops short.

The hallway should have lead to the Art Department. Thomas should have been there. Instead he’s standing in an empty balcony in the center of a huge room with chains hanging from the ceiling. He brushes his fingers over the handrail in front of him, wondering if this was another hallucination, but it seems solid and cool to the touch.

Grant glances behind himself, realizing that the hallway leading into this room was completely different than the one he had just exited. Stop it, he insists to himself. Stop being crazy.

Cautiously he steps forward, walking around the perimeter of the balcony as he tries to get his bearings. There are no handrails in this section, just chains hanging down from the ceiling and descending into the darkness below. He leans dangerously close to the threshold of the wood, wondering what was so big and heavy to need that much support...

A loud grinding noise cuts through the air and he startles, stumbling back away from the edge at the last second. As the thing raises up, he notices the spicket first, then the pipes, then the ink flowing from it. The Ink Machine? He knew what it was - heck, he was the one who budgeted for all three versions of it - but he had no idea how huge this incarnation was. He leans closer, lost in thought. Why would Mister Drew spend that much money on something that just made ink? Joey’s spending may have been irresponsible and stupid, but he wasn’t irrational.

A cold sensation pulls Grant out of his thoughts, and when he looks down he sees that everything is covered in a strange black pattern, like spider webs. He runs his hand over the pattern on his clothes, but the darkness merely covers his fingers instead, like it was a shadow. No, no. Not now...

Grant takes a moment to breathe, willing the illusion away as he works his way back towards the hallway, dragging his hand against the walls to guide himself. The room seems to be getting progressively darker, and he can feel the hair on his neck standing up. Something was wrong-

He turns around.

It takes him a moment to realize there’s something standing on the other end of the balcony. Its body is emancipated, and so black it blends straight into the darkness, making only a few details visible - its face, its bowtie, the glove on its right hand. It looked like Bendy in a twisted way, like a terrible caricature.

It turns towards him blindly and starts slowly limping forward, one of its legs sticking to the floor and pulling away in long, gooey stands. Ink drips from it and puddles around the floor as it moves, the shadows on the walls seemingly following it. Run, Grant thinks to himself, knowing that he could outpace the creature easily. Instead he just stands there, paralyzed. He can feel something urging him towards the demon, the same strange draw he felt towards the pipe in his office. It was calling to him, and he couldn’t move-

Grant slumps down on his knees in a helpless panic as the creature approaches, getting close enough that he could see the drops of ink running down its skeletal figure. It tilts its head, its drawn-on smile vibrating, as if it were studying him. Slowly, it reaches a disturbingly human hand down towards him, sliding the ice-cold appendage under his head as he struggles to breathe. It curls its fingers, hooking its hand under his chin.

It turns its head again and taps his head up, once, like he was a child who had just said something amusing. It takes a step back, smile still vibrating, and walks directly through the wall beside him, the shadows vanishing with it.

Grant doesn’t remember how he found his way out of the department, or if anyone tried to stop him. All he remembers is running, running, running...

__________________________________

He had spent the weekend lying in bed, trying to lull himself to sleep, even though sleep just brought more nightmares of the strange demon creature. If he wasn’t asleep, he was crying; if he wasn’t crying, he was debating on overdosing on the pills in the medicine cabinet. The only real thing that stopped him was remembering that he had had the foresight to hide those pills on the top shelf when his depression had been less severe, where he would need a stepstool to get to them, and it was too exhausting to even think about fetching it from the garage.

And it was while he was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling with red-rimmed eyes, that he finally decided he had to quit. He simply wouldn’t survive otherwise.

The plan had sounded good in his mind - he would go into work on Monday, pack up his things, leave Joey a resignation notice, and check himself in somewhere to get help. It was only now, hitting the down button on the elevator, that he realizes that he couldn’t handle going back to work again.

As Grant steps onto the elevator, he notices the look the other occupant is giving him. Lacie, he realizes, one of the Bendyland workers. They had gone out drinking a few times before. Now she’s inspecting him with those sharp eyes of hers, taking a cigarette out of her mouth with gloves that were stained with either grease or ink.

You look terrible, he scolds himself, slinking into the corner of the elevator. When he was doing well mentally, he was an incredibly well-kept person - suit vests, ties, even taking the time to comb his mustache - because as far as he was concerned one’s appearance was as important to the job as their performance. Now he’s still wearing the same clothes he had been wearing on Friday, unbathed and unkept. Lacie continues to study him, as if she was debating on saying something, but the elevator screeches to a stop and she exits with commenting.

Carol doesn’t look the slightest bit surprised when Grant tells her that he’s quitting, nor does she seem bothered by him practically begging her to cancel his meetings for today. She just nods, her black curls bouncing, and he suspects she had already known this was coming for a while now.

Within the first half an hour of work he realized what a mistake this plan had been, and by the end of the first hour his head was pounding with another migraine. The walls swim dangerously around him as he pulls the cassette recorder from his desk drawer and sets it on his desk. Joey had distributed them around the entire office, claiming that they should use them to “express their feelings”, whatever the hell that meant.

Grant had only recorded one tape before, but now it seemed appropriate to do another, as surely a recording of his resignation would be better than a letter. He turns on the tape and tries to speak, but the words get lost among a sea of noise and screaming and he can’t remember what he needed to say or why he was saying it. He slams his hand down on the stop button and jerks around towards the pipe, which sits motionless in the wall.

“STOP IT!” Grant screams, even though he knows that the ink isn’t alive and that that’s crazy and everything he’s doing is crazy. He slumps down onto the floor, tears running down his face as he holds himself, as if he would fall apart into a million little pieces if he didn’t. “Stop it,” he begs. “Stop it. I don’t know what you want from me.”

The silence in the room is almost deafened by the noise in his head, but slowly he can make out a voice, a whisper, urging him to come closer. He can feel it, the need to be closer to it, to be a part of it. He shakily rises to his feet and stumbles forward, pressing his blackened hand against the cold glass.

The relief is instant - the overwhelming call of the ink is gone, the migraine suddenly subsided, and he understands that this is where he needs to be. He squeezes himself into the little cavity beside the pipe, curling up and resting his head against the glass. The noise is deafening, he can hear thoughts that aren’t his or maybe they were, but none of that matters anymore.

Grant drifts in and out of consciousness, struggling to keep some bearing on reality. He thinks he can hear the clock ticking but he has no idea what time it is, and it feels like it’s been days already but maybe it’s only been a few minutes.

He slowly comes to again and realizes that someone is standing there, trying to pull him out of the crevice. He struggles blindly against their grip. No! I need to be here! he wants to insist, but he can’t find the words. The figures shushes him softly and he hazily remembers how Carol had found him during his fever. Was he sick again?

He goes limp and the figure drags him out across the floor, propping him up against the wall. They roll up his sleeve and he can see that his entire lower arm had turned black, spreading out from his palm. His hand had tiny drops of ink clinging to the outside of it, and the veins above the area were dark. He wonders in a haze if the rest of his body was turning black as well.

“There, there, my sheep,” someone whispers, and some confused part of his brain recognizes Sammy’s voice again. His skin is icy to the touch as he puts a hand on the back of Grant’s neck, pressing something against his lips.

“Drink this,” Sammy insists, and he does so. The liquid is thick, salty tasting, and it burns his mouth slightly. He struggles to sit up, suddenly feeling a bit more lucid.

“Sammy...?” he manages to ask. The music director is covered in ink - it’s coating his entire body, dripping onto the floor, puddling around the Bendy mask he was wearing. Sammy merely shushes him again, wrapping his arms around his torso and dragging him to his feet.

“Can you stand?” he asks, and Grant nods, leaning against him for support. Sammy would bring him to the infirmary. He would be fine...

They walk slowly, Grant struggling to keep track of the hallways they were passing through. Some of them were familiar, some of them weren’t, some seem to lead to areas that logically they couldn’t connect to,

Finally they walk into a large open room, almost completely barren except for a few massive pipes running along the ceiling. Sammy guides him over to a nearby support beam and carefully pushes the other man away from him.

“Where-?” Grant mumbles, struggling to think, to processes what was going on. Something was wrong. They were supposed to go to the infirmary, weren’t they? Why were they here? He grabs at Sammy’s shoulder, only to recoil in disgust as his hand sinks into it, like he had just plunged it into a jar of molasses.

In one swift movement Sammy twists around behind the accountant, grabbing his hands and pulling them behind his back. Grant utters a protest and manages to pull free for a moment, but his movements are confused and uncoordinated and he merely ends up collapsing onto the floor.

“Easy, little sheep,” Sammy soothes, picking him up and dragging him over to the support beam, Grant struggling weakly as his hands are forcibly tied behind his back, then again against the pole. “Soon you will be in the hands of our Lord.”

Sammy seems to disappear for a few moments, and when he returns there’s a new voice with him.

“...It won’t work anyway! And I don’t need another corpse on my hands!” Joey, that was Joey’s voice. Why was he here?

“He's already infected. We need to sacrifice him now, so our Lord can save his soul-”

“Damn it Sammy, stop talking like a lunatic!” Joey snaps. Grant can hear him pacing, the wooden floorboards creaking beneath his feet. After a few moments the noise gets louder as Joey approaches, kneeling and cupping the other man’s chin with his hand as he forces him to look up.

“Grant, look at me,” he demands. Grant opens his eyes slowly, struggling to get Joey’s face to come into focus through the haze. It was hard to breathe, like his lungs were filled with water, and he was so tired...

He gives up and closes them again as Joey removes his hand, mumbling something under his breath. The other man stands back up and is quiet for a few moments, the only noise in the room coming from a persistently dripping pipe.

“Do it quickly,” Joey snaps at Sammy as he leaves the room. “You know how I feel about this.”

Grant can feel someone tugging at the rope around his wrists, loosening it. “What’s going on?” he manages to choke out. Words seemed almost impossible to form, the sentences breaking apart in his mind and falling from his lips in confused jumbles. Confusion gives way to fear as he struggles against the ropes again, but he only manages to fall sideways, hands still bound.

“Don’t be afraid, little sheep,” Sammy whispers, grabbing him by the shirt collar. “It will all be over soon enough.” He drags him a short distance across the floor, then forces him to sit upright in a kneeling position. There’s a screeching noise behind him that stabs into his mind, sharp and painful.

In front of him is a vast black area, expanding endlessly outward, and it takes Grant a moment to realize that it’s not the floor that’s black, but rather a huge empty space that’s been completely flooded with ink. Looking up reveals the cause - a shattered pipe, dripping ink into the basin rhythmically.

Something slams into the floor behind him with a heavy crash and a burst of steam, and he manages to turn around enough to see the Ink Machine, lowered so it was sitting on the floor. It’s on now, and the noise it’s making is awful, like the machine itself was screaming.

Sammy grabs him from the back, forcing him to lean forward, and as he does so he catches a glimpse of some sort of strange symbol on the floor beneath him. The ink is less than a foot away from his face now - it’s impossibly black, blacker than anything he had ever seen before. The only movement on the surface is a few small ripples created by the tears rolling down his face, which are lost instantly in the black void. He wants to struggle but he can’t, not with the ink beckoning to him.

“Sheep sheep sheep, it’s time for sleep,” Sammy whispers, shoving him into the abyss.

The ink is ice cold, and the shock of it makes Grant involuntarily gasp, his last bit of air escaping from his mouth and disappearing up into the void. He can feel the ink getting into his lungs, into his throat, but he can’t struggle and it’s not because of the ropes binding him. His lungs burn, everything burns, and it was dark, darker than he would have thought possible.

He stops feeling the burning sensation after a moment, and then he stops feeling anything. He just keeps sinking, deeper and deeper...

__________________________________

It was cold. Cold and wet.

Someone was grabbing him, pulling him away from the wetness, and he squeaks in protest. It wasn’t fair! He wanted to go back to sleep!

He can hear the person speaking, but he can’t make out all of the words. Something about asking if he was awake. Of course he was awake! They just woke him up, didn’t they?

“Edgar?” they try again. He burrows his way into their lap where it’s warm and tries to look around, but he doesn’t have eyes yet. Whoever it was sounded nice, friendly, but there was a strange edge to the way they speak that he can’t place. He knew that voice, yet he didn’t.

The ink making up his body suddenly spasms, twists. All Edgar can do is squeak in pain as the ink contorts, warping itself into a different shape. His limbs stretch out, refining themselves into fingers, forming into bone and flesh. He stares, transfixed. Hands. He hadn’t had hands before, had he?

His thoughts are abruptly cut off as the figure swears, shoving him off of his lap. He hisses angrily, wheeling around to face them. Part of his face burns, and he can see now in blurry black-and-white. In front of him is a massive machine, spilling gallons upon gallons of ink onto the floor from its spicket. In front of that is the man, who steps back away from him, recoiling in disgust.

“Damn it, I knew it wouldn’t work,” he mutters under his breath, and Edgar recognizes the man as Joey, except that wasn’t possible. He didn’t know this person, did he?

Joey squats down on the floor, suddenly cheerful, holding out his hand in front of him. “Why don’t you come here?” His voice is friendly, but his face is not. Edgar backs away, dragging himself on his half-formed legs.

“Grant, come here.” The cheerfulness is gone now.

Edgar puts his hands over his head, which was pounding with a stabbing pain. He can’t think straight. Grant. That was his name, wasn’t it? No, he was Edgar, he had always been-

The pain reaches its peak as his head abruptly rips open along the top, forming teeth and a tongue. The human scream that spills from it isn’t his. He claws at the new mouth frantically, ink spilling into the floor. No, no, this was wrong-

“I said COME HERE, DAMN IT!” Joey storms forward, reaching a hand out to grab him.

He doesn’t have fangs anymore, but he remembers how to bite. There’s a metallic taste that fills his head and a sickening cracking noise as his teeth clamp down on Joey’s hand. He screams, recoling, then draws his foot back and drives it into Edgar’s side. The spider releases his grip as he skids backwards over the wooden floorboards, squeaking in pain.

“SAMMY!” Joey barks, clutching his injured hand and backing away from the inky figure on the ground. Edgar slowly lifts his head, looking behind him. Some sort of inky mass is rising from the sea of black in front of them, as if the ink itself were trying to escape onto shore. Slowly it refines into a masked figure, who lays another mass of ink on the ground gently. They slowly move whatever the thing on the ground was into a horizontal position, ignoring Joey completely.

“Sammy!” Joey snaps again, voice tinged with pain and rage. “Lock that... abomination up somewhere!”

The masked figure raises his head for a moment, studying Edgar through cardboard eyes before looking back down again. “Whatever form he takes, it is our Lord’s decision, is it not? It is not our place to go against His will.”

Sammy lifts some part of the mass up, and as the ink drips down Edgar can make out a hand. Sammy gently draws it across the figure’s chest, then does the same with its other arm. Edgar perks up. Someone dead? Some of his best friends were skeletons. Maybe they would want to play with him.

Edgar glances back at Joey, wondering if he would try to grab him again. Insead the man takes a few steps back, face contorted in revolusion, and Edgar realizes that he was scared of him, scared of his own creation.

He cautiously drags himself across the floor, unable to stand fully on his half-formed limbs. Unlike Joey, the masked figure doesn’t seem to fear him at all. “It’s okay, little sheep,” he murmurs, moving aside so Edgar can get close. “You can look.”

Edgar nudges the body once with his hand, then pushes against it with both limbs, trying to get it to wake up. But it remains motionless, save for the ink slowly dripping away and puddling down around it.

“This body was poisoned,” Sammy explains. The corpse’s mouth is still wide open, black even on the inside, and Sammy slowly pushes it shut. “You would have ended up like me. Trapped in the abyss, lost... But through the grace of our Lord, you were saved. Your soul was still there, so He graced you with a new body, a new form. You should feel very blessed... do you understand?”

He didn’t, not really.

Edgar stares at the corpse, transfixed. Something stirs in the corner of his mind, except he’s pretty sure it’s not his memory. He remembers it being cold, noisy, hard to breathe. He was drowning-

A body. A dead body.

His body.

Both minds scream and claw at themselves in a panic, trying to get the ink off as it once again writhes and reforms. A searing pain shoots through the left side of their face, and half of the world is suddenly in color. Another throat and mouth form, this time in the correct spot, and they nearly choke on the excess ink. They manage to stand up as another limb forces its way out of their side, transforming into a gloved hand.

Get to the office, call for help...

Edgar isn’t sure why this is so important to his other mind, but he can feel his other self’s desperation as clearly as if it was his own. He rises to their newly formed legs unsteadily, his entire body aching. He looks around, half expecting Joey to still be standing there, but the room is empty save for Sammy and the Machine.

They stumble out of the room as quickly as they can, Sammy making no attempt to stop them. The winding hallways are strange and foreign to Edgar, but Grant navigates through them effortlessly, sometimes walking bipedally and sometimes scampering on all of their limbs. The halls swim around them dangerously, dripping ink - even their own body drips and leaves trails of it through the halls. They drag themselves through the doorway, eyeing the pipe on the wall uneasily, but the ink no longer calls to them. It no longer needed to.

Tape player. Use the tape player, call for help...

He grabs at his chair and uses it to pull themselves upward, blindly hitting buttons as another convulsion overtakes them. Grant tries to speak, but the noise catches in their first throat and comes out as nothing but a whimper. He starts tearing at the stitches over his mouth in a panic, a third limb starting to form out of their right side.

He thrashes around blindly in pain, unable to scream, knocking something off the desk and shattering it. Edgar is scared, crying, but the noise comes out as a strangled snarl. Ink separates from their back and starts to split down the middle to form two separate limbs, then stops. Grant struggles to stay lucid, to stop transforming, but he can’t do either.

Help, he tries again, but something is blocking one of their throats and he can only whimper again, gasping for breath. They clutch the table for support as the ink solidifies, forming flesh and bone, forcing them to cough up the thick ink that had been choking them. There’s excess ink dripping off of them, in their lungs, breathing for them. Edgar slumps forward onto the table, gasping for breath, mashing buttons on the recorder until it finally turns off. They lay there for a long time, Edgar crying, Grant in shock.

They start to write.

Over the walls, the floor, using the ink dripping off of their body. They write everything they can’t say, covering every inch of the surface, writing until their fingers are bleeding ink and they’re too tired to move. They write until the walls are as inky and black as they are.

It takes Edgar a long time to realize he’s screaming, and then he realizes that it’s his other mind screaming, the noise dying in their first mouth and coming out a nothing but a muffled whine. It hurt their throat a little, but Edgar just lies on the floor, not daring to move.

He stays there for a very long time, waiting patiently until the horror his other mind feels numbs back into shock, until the screaming quiets and then stops. He gets up slowly, cautiously, making sure the movement wouldn’t cause them to start screaming again. Their whole body aches, but he forces himself to move forward, slipping out the door.

This room gave them headaches.

__________________________________

Edgar was pretty sure that something was wrong with his other mind.

He doesn’t ask, of course, because Charley and Barley got annoyed with him if he asked too many questions. It was just a suspicion he had.

For one, his other mind had very confused thoughts, ones that didn’t make any sense to Edgar. Most of them were repeated, over and over; he couldn’t always remember if they were real or were just dreams. Sometimes he didn’t think at all, which was scary for both of them. On the other hand if he thought too much he’d send them both into a panic attack, so Edgar tried to distract him if he started thinking sad things again.

He pounces on a can of bacon soup, which he had been using as a toy for a few days now, because even though they were hungry Grant had refused to let him eat it. It springs out from under his hands and goes flying into the far wall, smacking Charley in the process. Edgar lets out a garbled giggle in delight, snatching the can from a distance before Charley has a chance to take it from him. Charley snarls, smacking his hand with his pipe in a rather un-Charley-like way.

Edgar had seen that kind of thing happen with his friends a lot. Suddenly they wouldn’t be his friends anymore and he’d have to wait patiently for them to wake back up, which wasn’t easy as he hated waiting. His other mind almost never forced him to do anything he didn’t want to, unless they were in danger or he felt Edgar was doing something foolish. Edgar suspected he was simply too tired to fight back.

He didn’t know much about his other half. He had learned from his memories that his name was Grant, and that he used to work here. He also liked numbers - he counted every day, keeping track of the minutes and hours as they passed, even though Edgar suspected he had lost count several times already. He wasn’t really sure why it was so important to his other mind anyway.

He tosses the can above his head with their mechanical arm, which ricochets off a rafter in the ceiling and clatters to the ground in front of him, and he stares at it, feeling inexplicably sad. His other mind was sad all the time - sometimes if Edgar was happy Grant would feel it, but sometimes if Grant was sad it would seep into Edgar’s feelings and make him sad too. And sometimes they’d even stare thoughts - he can hear him now in the corner of his mind. He was so tired. He needed to lie down, needed to rest...

Edgar stares at the can in front of him. It didn’t seem very fun anymore.

He picks it up carefully and sets it on one of the nearby hallway shelves, where hopefully it would be safe until he was ready to play again. He picks out a spot on a couch to lie down on, burying his head under his arms. His head hurts, which it does sometimes if he lets Grant think for too long, and he scratches at his second mouth unhappily before curling up to sleep.

Maybe Grant would want to play tomorrow. Maybe he wouldn’t feel so sad then.

Maybe.

#bendy and the ink machine #batim #grant cohen #sammy lawrence #joey drew #jack fain #lacie benton #bendy #butcher gang #thomas connor #tw: suicide #tw: self harm #tw: body horror #tw: unreality #outdesign posts things #outdesign attempts to write #when in reality this started out as a mental freeform fic and it turned out that most of the stuff in it ended up in DCTL anyway #like the ink being 'alive' and driving people crazy and infecting them was all in this before DCTL

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oftripps · 6 years ago

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“ –– wow. ” it’s not so much a critique as it is a g-rated expletive. tripp forces a smile mid-chew and blinks. “ my tastebuds are screaming. gah–– uh, singing. singing. ” he avoids swallowing and as ring-decorated fingers snag a napkin, wide eyes drifting to the tabletop as a small jingle breezes past tensed lips. “ ~ allergic to mushrooms ~ ”

or, alternatively: this is somethin’ new! the caspar slide pt. 2 !! & this time, it’s ‘bout to get funky !! so i’m linc and this is tripp and he’s........ a trip, honestly, so let’s just... yeet on into this ––

( joe keery + 22 + muse 12 ) isn’t that phillip joel “tripp” goodman over there? i heard he joined faction: one after they got back to west ham. it’s funny, ‘cause they were only on the service trip because HIS BANDMATES DUPED HIM INTO THINKING THE SIGN-UP WAS FOR A WOODS-THEMED OPEN MIC GIG. hopefully they fit in there – they’re JAUNTY but also OUTRÉ. oh, i’m sure they’ll be fine.

out the door ! ( tripp goodman: a roadmap )

look up townie family in the dictionary and you’ll find a portrait of the goodmans directly beside. these folks have a looooong flippin’ legacy here in lil’ ole west ham, kansas. it all started with montgomery goodman, a good man, who helped west ham’s founders break ground on this midwestern charmer several centuries ago. and now, the goodmans still live on the same property –– a refurbished farmhouse ( now closer to mcmansion ) surrounded by five acres of roooooollin’ hills. once upon a time, they were farming folk. now, theresa and joel goodman run the town’s one and only veterinary clinic.

honestly, growing up? tripp was a problematic kid. he’d take in frogs from the woods and start his own frog hotels. he’d sneak pets from the clinic to school who “ needed help learning their numbers ”. in class, he’d flick sunflower seeds at the backs of his peers’ heads and, when threatened with discipline, claim he simply “ wanted to see if they’d grow ” . so no, to answer your question–– tripp never really saw the real wrath warranted by his rulebreaking.

in fourth grade, he chose the saxophone as his required instrument. he caused such a commotion in his house, that his parents asked his teachers to suggest something quieter. the viola. the flute. the clarinet. the piano. instruments came and went,;instruments were quickly mastered and abandoned. because dear lord, how many times could they listen to the spongebob theme song played on woodwind ?! on strings ?! once middle school rolled around, little phillip joel knew his way around a whopping total of six instruments, a tally that would only grow in the coming years. eventually, his parents caved and allowed him to keep playing, so long as he respected instrument curfews. they gave song requests to avoid hearing the same pieces on repeat: the goodman household was probably the only one blessed with an oboe-and-beatbox rendition of under the sea. young phillip joel’s take on the issue was simple: not all heroes wore capes.

( tw: domestic unrest, mentions of violence ) theresa and joel split when tripp was 9. just seven months later, tripp’s mother moved in with her girlfriend: tripp’s guitar teacher, ms. lillith. tripp didn’t mind ms. lillith. she was chill. he came to find out she could knock back a chocolate milk almost as fast as he could, and she liked her grilled cheeses with swiss only. his best friend became a thirty-six year old woman who happened to be his mother’s girlfriend. and that was fine. he could dig it. but joel goodman? oh no. his family name was tarnished. the scandal was too much to bear. joel sued for full custody and nearly made it, thanks to hometown politics and loyalties. but then he made one fatal mistake: he crossed his own son.

at 10 years old, fifth grade phillip joel returned home to his father’s after school with three fingernails painted effervescent blue. sidney frasier made me so cool, he gushed as he put his colored nails on proud display. dad, aren’t i so cool? the next day, his dad enrolled him in the town’s peewee football program. he returned home from his first practice with a black eye and a split lip. from a ball, the coach insisted. hit the poor fella square in the face, real strong. phillip joel put up a fight against football; it wasn’t for him. it conflicted with music practice. couldn’t he just play music with ms. lillith instead?

the custody battle persisted. they settled on a parenting schedule. joel contested, consistently, months later. and so the cycle persisted up until phillip joel’s 12th year, when he was knocked out cold on the football field. the broken ribs came from hefty tackles. bruises from the fall. concussion from the impact. but theresa spun it to her advantage: joel had since started coaching the middle school team. this was an instance of parental neglect. and, when the courts didn’t comply, she instructed her son to jump down the stairs. one broken ankle later, and joel goodman was accused of child abuse. his word against his injured son’s. the maneuver won theresa full custody. phillip joel has yet to forgive himself.

after the custody battle’s conclusion, joel stayed in town: but phillip joel didn’t want a thing to do with sharing his name. his mother still scolds him as phillip joel, but to everyone else, he became tripp –– inspired by his knack for, you guessed it!, tumbling over his own two feet.

in high school, tripp was the class clown. always smirking, always grinning, always ready to catch someone off guard. he became a pivotal part of west ham high’s jazz band, and even formed a small group with a few buds: face. they played some school events: homecoming, pep rallies, prom. garage-baked young rock, their songs often preached meetings under bleachers and high school never ending.

in senior year, the band saw a reboot: and after assuming a more indie, spacey sound and a nifty new name –– 1757. –– they saw a rise in local celebrity. coffee shops commissioned them for jam nights. they played on the local radio. so they collectively decided to stick around and see how far they could ride this west ham fame train. with tripp as their frontman, they always leave a memorable impression: he’s not exactly the most run-of-the-mill performer.

1757.’s sound is reminiscent of LANY: i’ve reblogged a few tunes onto tripp’s blog for reference. he’s v much a paul klein / matty healy vibe. big into music. big into losing himself in it.

so what was he up to before the service trip? playin’ tunes. working part-time as a waiter. and brainstorming ways to get out of going on this trip, as soon as he realized his stupid bandmates lied about the form he signed. an open mic in the woods ! pah ! he should have known. but the concept sounded pretty flippin’ cool.

wear our shades on our nose, 'cause we're cool like that ( tripp goodman: the man, the myth, the ledge )

oh god, he’s w e i r d . he believes in goblins and ghosts and aliens ( oh my )!

still VERY VERY close with his mother. v broken up about not being able to get through to her, because it was about to be his parents’ wedding anniversary and they were going to anti-celebrate it with big slices of oreo cheesecake and setting things on fire.

how he feels about coming home to west ham: post apocalyptic version.

uhhhh... can he please get a waffle? specifically a cinnamon raisin waffle with extra cinnamon and a shit ton of syrup? actually. syrup with a side of waffles?

why he was banned from his personal twitter.

“ do you even lift, bruv? ” * proceeds to pick up a teacup & lift his pinkie like a true knock-off british monarch, shitty accent included *

listens to wham! and glam rock. unironically.bluetooth speaker mounted on his bike. no helmet! like an absolute boss. he knows!! wild!! shades on. it’s 2am. it’s dark. but true swag obeys no clock.

catch him biking everywhere stranger things style, actually. his bike’s name is milo because he can roll on for miles. mess with milo and he’ll fuck u up. aka find out if you’re lactose intolerant and slip heavy cream into your meal.

has a strong vendetta against blue doritos. which might take root in some horrific experiences involving cheez wiz, cool ranch, weed, and the new york subway system at 4am on a tuesday. spring break freshman year of college. oof.

he has a lil drawwwwl. tease him about it. he’ll probably blush.

stress-hums chili’s babyback ribs without realizing. catch him singin’ that about to be murdered.

weapon of choice: kindness.

actual weapon of choice: baseball bat.

he will write little jingles to keep morale up. “ so we’re trapped / cash us inside / how bou’ dat ? ”

has a passion for introspective literary quotes. but... has somehow managed to learn each and every one wrong.

friggin’ loves superheroes even though he can’t be bothered to watch the films? he just… always used to get made fun of for liking comic books even though he never read them? “ arachnid man is uh... heh. he’s pretty dope, huh? ” he embraces the falsehood. someone call him on it.

9/10 times if he’s in the gym, it’s just to eat his donut and watch pay-per-view movies on the bike for free.

apple pie can absolutely be breakfast if you try hard enough. jeez. get with the times, man!

he had a legitimate pet rock before going on this service trip. but has no idea where that bugger’s gone. probably got fed up with tripp serenading him with “ we will rock you ” at all hours of the night.

lawful good. will wave other drivers on forever.

got into an accident on his bike once. bitch broke his arm and he just kept on smiling. “ no you have a nice day! and uh.... hey. mind if we like... call an ambulance? ”

low key feels like he’s the reason his parents’ marriage crumbled. low key guilty about it. low key wonders if maybe he lived up to his father’s expectations, he might have saved them a lot of grief.

give benny goodman by saint motel a listen and tell me that’s not his soul in audio form.

known for slightly hyperbolic storytelling.

pansexual as heck. falls in love. hard. it’s a mess. he can’t hide it. hence the shades.

he has brilliant hair. and it’s immortalized in his high school yearbook.

is hellbent on being a source of positivity in this terrible situation. can he interest you in a meme in these trying times? how ‘bout a granola bar? maybe a good ole game of mash?

he’s convinced this is an elaborate prank. or a social experiment. maybe aliens. but let’s not question it too much, let’s just.... have a good time? hakuna matata? no worries? lol where the twizzlers at?!

leaves a voicemail for his mother every morning and every night. maybe he cries. maybe.

he has one ear pierced because like.......... senior year of high school, he wanted to feel more cool.

allergic to mushrooms, shellfish, eggs, and harbingers of doom.

he truly boggles minds. just.... v out there? v spacey. he closes his eyes and drifts about on stage, fingers dancing on the keys, body moving in eclectic ways. he says “groovy” and fuckin’ means it. he dresses in prints inspired by grandma’s carpet. lots of half-buttoned flowy shirts, boots, tailored statement pants, dangly necklaces. he’s got his hands full of rings –– they symbolize milestones. and some are just, like... pretty. and one’s his mother’s old wedding band.

where the hell are my friends ! ( wanted connectz. )

i was gonna do a whole section on this and got lazy but like.... anything. all the things. good, bad, ugly, beautiful. hurt him. make him suffer. but also support him a bit.

i imagine he’s got a solid squad goin’. he’s in faction one too, so... hmu for those.

i feel like he’d be pretty chill with the greeks? yeah bro, he parties. he’ll chill. he’ll crack open a cold one and pretend to understand what those letters on your jacket mean! pie-apple-fate-uh? cool stuff !

ride or dies. pls.

he needs someone to like....... melt his heart. maybe someone unexpected.

thisssss got long & disorganized but yes! let’s plot! let’s do this thang! #hype!!

#apogeeintro #✰ mother trucker dude; that hurt like a buttcheek on a stick ! isms.#if u cannot tell...... he is a gay ass MEME

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probikerbikes-blog · 6 years ago

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8 Tips from Pro Cyclists to Improve Your Next Ride

Whether you’ve been riding for decades or you’re just starting to pedal around the neighborhood, there’s always room for improvement in your cycling. Even members of the Rally CyclingSM team who have been racing for nearly two decades are still learning new tips and tricks. Here’s some great road riding advice from members of the men’s and women’s teams, sharing tips that they wish someone had clued them in on years ago.

1. Corner Like a Boss

Corners can be the trickiest piece of riding for new cyclists. Pretty much every cyclist manages some fear when heading into a turn, yet on the off chance that you pursue this guidance, you'll be cornering all the more easily in the blink of an eye. To begin, center around the passage to the corner.

"Cornering and braking go connected at the hip," says Erica Allar, who's been dashing for a long time. "You need to back off before you're quite the turn: You would prefer not to brake while turning." She's completely right. Braking in a corner can be perilous, as you'll lose footing and risk slamming.

She additionally reminds riders to concentrate on where they need to go, not where they would prefer not to go! "In a tight turn, on the off chance that you take a gander at the trees to the side, you'll likely finish up in the trees," she says. Ensure your tires have a strong association with the ground, and remain unfaltering by driving your outside foot down on the pedal. Long-term Rally colleague and previous National Criterium Champion Brad Huff says this will offer you the most footing and steadiness.

2. Discover Your Tribe

Indeed, even stars just wanna have a fabulous time. Nigel Ellsay's top tip is to concentrate on making riding fun, not a pound, by riding with other individuals who realize what they're doing, and who influence you to appreciate the time spent accelerating. His sister and colleague Gillian concurs, saying, "Be OK with the general population you're riding with: Don't ride with 30-year-old first class men in case no doubt about it!" You may need to attempt a couple of nearby gathering rides before you discover a team that feels like a solid match, so don't fear trying out a bundle of various gatherings.

3. Get Comfortable Riding in the Drops

Keeping your hands on the hoods of your handlebars for the simplest moving and braking access — and agreeable upstanding stance — might appear the best thought, yet you really lose a portion of your control. Riding in the drops (the lower some portion of bended handlebars) offers the best soundness, particularly at high speeds and going down slopes, says long-term professional Ryan Anderson.

"It's something you can chip away at on a straight street to become acclimated to it first. Riding in the drops isn't the most agreeable position at first, so do what needs to be done for a couple of minutes on end," he says. Center work off the bicycle can help make this vibe progressively agreeable, says Anderson.

4. Turn It to Win It

"Foresee the trip… and afterward turn to win!" says climber Gillian Ellsay. While the rider by you on your gathering ride may assault a slope in the enormous ring and blend, accelerating very moderate in a hard rigging, that is not the best technique — and you'll never observe a master do it. The quickest path to the highest point of a long trip is really pre-changing to a simpler gear before the ascension begins, and turning your way up it — that is Gillian's sibling Nigel's best guidance. You spare vitality, and by the top, the person in his huge ring will probably be granulating gears attempting to move down while you easily pedal past.

5. Accelerate Your Descents

Going downhill sounds straightforward, however most cyclists can review when they felt speculative on a winding plummet. Furthermore, that is totally fine, as indicated by Anderson. "You need to incorporate with it. Do what makes you feel great," he says. You need to feel in charge consistently, and if that implies crawling down a slope at first, that is totally fine. To work on including some speed, Anderson prescribes finding a drop that you do routinely, timing it, and afterward, "endeavoring to do it only a little quicker unfailingly." As far as where your eyes ought to be, Anderson alerts that taking a gander at the ground straightforwardly before you isn't the most secure: Always look in front of you to perceive what's coming!

6. Get in the Draft

Being in the draft — riding straightforwardly behind somebody in a gathering so as to make a "slipstream" impact — is an awesome inclination. It makes riding much simpler and significantly increasingly fun, however it tends to be an extreme expertise to ace. Long-term racer Danny Pate prescribes beginning little in case you're new to the idea: Get a companion to ride with you and practice with one individual. At that point, steadily, increment to a couple of companions or a little gathering ride, and get settled there before handling extensive rides or races.

"Give the individual before you a little space — you don't need to be an inch from his wheel like the folks hustling on TV!" says Anderson. "Focus on the breeze, as well. On the off chance that the breeze is originating from your right, endeavor to remain a bit to one side of the bicycle that is before you. It's somewhat more secure and it'll be significantly simpler."

At last, Anderson exhorts against gazing in the driver's seat before you. Rather, you ought to be always checking out the individual in front of you, so you can perceive what's coming up.

7. Find out About Cadence

Is it true that you are an apparatus masher who will not drop out of your huge ring? Assuming this is the case, you're missing out on important speed and power. On the off chance that you have a cycling PC that tracks your rhythm, investigate it while in-ride so you can perceive what rate you're turning. In the event that you don't have one, you can utilize a clock for one moment and endeavor to tally the pivots every moment (rpm) that you're accelerating. It won't be as exact, yet you'll get a thought regarding whether you're route down at 50 rpm or turning like insane at 120 rpm.

will feel and turn into."

8. Look for Expert Advice

"There's dependably somebody who has more involvement than you," says Danny Pate. Indeed, even following 18 years hustling as a master, he says that despite everything he adapts new tips each year — thus can you.

"On the off chance that you can look for other individuals' info and help, you'll get incredible guidance," he says. "That is the reason it's smarter to ride with individuals who are somewhat superior to you — you'll find out additional."

To discover incredible individuals to enable you to improve your riding, Pate suggests using neighborhood procedures like club groups and bicycle shops to discover rides. Be that as it may, there's one proviso: "Be honest with yourself about your capacity level when picking — you need to be with individuals somewhat quicker, not getting dropped each ride." If you are looking for more information about 8 Tips from Pro Cyclists to Improve Your Next Ride Click Here https://xpertchoose.com right away.

8 Tips from Pro Cyclists to Improve Your Next Ride Watch the Video

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mldrgrl · 7 years ago

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A.I.

by: mldrgrl Rating: PG Summary: Trying in whatever way I can to accept Rm9sbG93ZXjz as some sort of canon. This is my version of why it was and how it was.

They had two minutes left, according to the clock on her phone. She put it down on the diner counter and took Mulder’s hand. He looked at her and smiled, twisting their fingers together. She swiveled towards him and then tipped her head closer, closer, closer, until she rested against his shoulder. He put his phone down as well and she waited, not sure what would happen when the time was up.

Her screen went dark, clicked off suddenly so that her view was just black. She tentatively reached up to pull the helmet off and blinked rapidly, though the room was dim. She needed a moment to adjust back to reality. She rolled her head to the side and looked at Mulder, who was just removing his helmet as well.

“Wow,” he said. “Pretty cool, right?”

Scully shrugged. “Sure.”

“Damn, you’re a hard woman to please,” he answered.

“I’m actually quite easy to please, Mulder.”

“With the right little pink gadget?”

“Did you pick that out?”

“Hell no! I spent all the virtual cash on overpriced sushi.”

“Guess it came with the house.”

“I didn’t know you were going to splurge on a Smarthome.”

Scully’s cheeks darkened just a bit at the extravagant way she went about setting up her virtual world. “It came with a koi pond,” she said, shrugging one shoulder.

The recliner chairs they were both laid back in began to slowly move them up to sit. Scully held the helmet to her lap and Mulder scratched the back of his head. The lights in the room rose to normal and the doors opened.

“Shall we?” he asked.

Scully got up first and set her helmet into the stand next to her chair. She waited as Mulder did the same and he put his hand on her lower back to guide her out the door. He slid his hand up her back and briefly rubbed the ends of her hair between his fingers.

“What made you decide to go short?” he asked.

“Been thinking about cutting it lately,” she answered. “You didn’t like it?”

“I liked it. Took me back 20 years.” He smiled and brought his hand down to the small of her back again.

They exited a short hall into a reception room where a skinny young man with a closely clipped beard and long, dishwater blonde hair pulled into a bun stood behind a tall, round table centered under a skylight. He held an iPad which he placed on the table as Mulder and Scully approached.

“Congratulations,” the man said. “It took you 43 minutes and six seconds to conquer Robot Attack.”

“Is that good or bad?” Scully asked.

“You rank 4 out of 181,” he answered.

“Only four?” Mulder griped, narrowing his eyes. “Where did we lose points?”

“Your scorecard is available immediately.” The young man tapped his index finger on the iPad a few times and an animated score card appeared on the screen. “For an additional $29.99, we can email you a link to the video of your game play for download.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna need that video,” Mulder said, pulling out his wallet to get his credit card.

“I knew I shouldn’t have gotten in that car,” Scully grumbled, pointing at a number in the negative column.

Mulder clicked on the number and it opened up a tally of negative points. He raised his brows a little. “I don’t think it was so much getting in the car as it was abusing the emoji. Hashtag road rage.”

Scully pushed his hand away and swiped over to the next screen. “You’re one to talk,” she said. “Looks like we lost most our points while you sat around waiting for customer service.”

Mulder put his hands up in defense. “Listening to hold music and trying to navigate automated menus can make anyone feel personally attacked. I thought it was part of the uprising. Obviously my patience paid off in the end because 500 mini-drones showed up at my place and chased me into your realm of the A.I.”

“We could’ve had a much better time and score if you’d just tipped the damn robot waiter in the first place.”

“Well where’s the fun in that?”

“If you’d like to purchase any of the products featured in your game, you’ll receive a 10% discount if you make your purchase today in our app,” the young man behind the counter said, urging them along. He cleared their scorecard from the screen and brought up a page of electronic devices for sale.

“Anything you might want?” Mulder asked. “New pedometer, perhaps?”

“Hm.” Scully scrolled slowly through the phones and flat screens and security cameras, stopping when the an item under Small Household Electronics caught her eye. She took her time to look contemplative, tapping a fingernail against her tooth.

“Whatever you want, my treat,” Mulder said.

“I’m not sure,” she said, leaning against the counter on her elbow. She bounced her head back and forth in consideration. “I didn’t really get enough time with it to really explore all it could do.”

“Well, if what we have at home isn’t currently doing the trick for you for some reason, I’m open to exploring new options.”

“Really?”

“Of course.” Mulder bumped his hip against hers and grinned. “I hear those little Roomba things are fantastic!”

Scully laughed and shook her head. She wrapped her arms around Mulder’s waist and buried her head against his chest to stifle her laughter.

Mulder handed over his credit card to the kid behind the counter. “Just the video,” he said.

“Great, go ahead and sign here and enter your email address on the next screen. A copy of your receipt will also be in your email.”

Mulder signed the screen with his finger and entered his email address, one arm wrapped around Scully the whole time. He squeezed her waist when he was done and she turned out of his grasp. He took her hand as they made their way to the exit and tugged her back a little, leaning down to whisper in her ear.

“I don’t care how great the discount is,” he said. “We’re not getting you a new vibrator from a virtual reality gaming center.”

“Don’t worry,” she answered, giving his hand a squeeze. “What I have at home does the trick just fine.”

Mulder grinned and slipped his sunglasses on as they walked outside. “Should we grab dinner before heading back?”

“What do you feel like?”

“No sushi!” they said at the same time, and laughed as they headed to her car.

The End

#i wrote this #xf fanfic #msr #season 11 #virtual reality #rm9sbg93zxjz

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theonceoverthinker · 6 years ago

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OUAT 1X20 - The Stranger

Hey, stranger!

Meet me under the cut to read my thoughts on this episode!

Press Release August promises to enlighten Emma and take her on a journey that will show her how she can beat Regina, and possibly take custody of Henry; and with Mary Margaret returning to work, Regina puts a plan in motion to seduce David. Meanwhile, in the fairytale land that was, with the Evil Queen’s curse about to strike, Geppetto agrees to a plan that will save Snow White and Prince Charming’s daughter, but with a proviso that could also save his own son. General Thoughts Past Gepetto is the shining beacon of this episode. I love the lengths he goes to to protect Pinocchio and the dark places he goes to in the process. I also give the episode a lot of credit for showing so much of Gepetto and Pinocchio together in the earlier bits of the flashback. We see the selfless nature of Pinocchio that grants him his humanhood and seeing the two of them bond a bit make Gepetto’s blackmail so much more tragic and understandable. That said, while I love the way he emotionally blackmails Jiminy into helping him out, I do feel like it would’ve been a touch stronger had we seen their friendship a bit more in the second flashback scene. Wow, that scene with Pinocchio really didn’t do it for me. See, I get that Pinocchio left Emma and I can understand why. He was roughly 7-9 years old and a baby is a big responsibility, especially when you’re in a new land and are a kid. But I wish that we had seen more of a lingering effect of tension with Pinocchio taking care of Emma other than just one guy who was mean to him. I feel like an additional flashback scene would’ve come in handy here - one with Pinocchio taking care of Emma and one of him being exhausted after some time had passed, being told off, and then having the offer to leave. Because as it stands, Pinocchio only has that one bad encounter that takes maybe ten seconds total with a nothing character to take him away from a baby he cares about and a promise he made to his Papa. Present I find that the scene at the tree between Emma and August was a better version of Jefferson’s speeches from “Hat Trick.” Because August - in addition to being an established character, now ten episodes in the making - is Emma’s friend. Because he’s already earned a great deal of her trust and is implementing evidence (Something that he knows will better help her believe), it feels more like an earned discussion. And while I’ll take my objections with it in the next episode, I find that August demanding that Emma step up and be the Savior works better because his motivations are more selfish.

Also, I like how Emma’s desperation is playing out in the background of the episode as Gold and August continue to fail her, culminating in such a crazy and off the charts decision to abduct Henry. It’s a great moment where it’s completely indefensible both in-universe and to an Emma fan like me and the fallout in the next episode is so well-earned for a WTF decision like that, making me feel like the writers knew damn well what they were doing. Insights -That is the coolest door lock ever and I want it soooooo badly! -”My kid needs me. I don’t have time for faith.” Say what you want about Emma, but my girl has her priorities in check! -I know people have their problems with OUaT’s effects, but they’ve always managed to capture water so well. Whether it’s practical or in CGI, it’s both realistic and beautiful. -Alongside those lines, the Pinocchio wooden toy is so expertly crafted. Given how it’s only in a handful of scenes, it’s really impressive that they went to such efforts to make it tangible. -Regina, making everyone use those old school phones that take forever to reach someone was the most vile part of this curse! -There’s such a great stark contrast between Mary Margaret from the pilot and now. Back in the first episode, she could barely talk to Regina without getting barked at, but the tables have turned so drastically. It speaks to her development over the past 19 episodes, and what’s even better is that she retains her ability to forgive, an aspect of Snow that is such a big part of her, especially in later seasons. -Damn! Henry’s determination is really something else here! While I definitely feel for Regina (It must be awful seeing the child you raised turn on you and call you evil, not matter how true it actually is), Henry has clearly reached a limit and given that Regina actually did frame Mary Margaret, I can’t help but feel some catharsis out of that speech. -Gold, you bastard! That was so douchey, and I am cracking the fuck up! It’s probably some more catharsis, and not unjustified catharsis given August’s ploy in the last episode! He’s now just having all the fun in the world dicking around with August and while I love August, it’s so entertaining to watch! Oh! And when you see the clock, it all gets so much sadder! SO MANY FEELS! -To be fair, Pinocchio, I don’t blame you for tying up Jiminy. -Emma and Rumple just have the best discussions! I like how blunt Emma is with her demands and like Henry, she’s determined as hell! -I wonder if Regina got that rocky road from a certain Snow Queen. ;) -It only occured to me now that August’s presence was foreshadowed in the first episode. Why else would Gepetto speak of not having a child when in the previous scene in the pilot, he clearly did? -Regina’s fake story about finding David is like the evil version of Michael’s letter to Jane in Season 3 of “Jane the Virgin.” It reflects on themes of meant-to-be and coincidences. Also, I have to wonder how much of that story was improvised and how much of it had she planned beforehand. -The effects are on a roll here! I love how the tree in our world all but cracks open as Pinocchio enters our world. As a side note, it’s really lucky that humanity hadn’t built over his landing spot. Imagine that happening to Pinocchio at a Starbucks! XD -There’s such a sad contrast between the “fake” reunion in the past episode and the real one here. The “fake” one while...well, fake is so honest and upfront. You just know that that’s the kind of reunion August would want with his Papa, and in this episode, it’s so calm and lowkey, but tragic because it’s on a bed of lies. -Oh, Emma. That was a terrible idea! I get where you’re coming from girl, but...no! Arcs The Mystery of August Booth - Finally, all is revealed! I’m glad that they got the reveal out of the way earlier in the episode so that we could spend the rest of the runtime exploring his past and present relationships. It really helped to define August as a character. As for the reveal, it was always an engaging mystery that revealed just enough to make August’s character engaging, but not enough that the answer would become obvious. This may just be one of the most underrated twists in all of OUaT for that reason. Favorite Dynamic August and Gold I love how much resentment Gold has towards August and the petty and hurtful ways he lets it out. At the same time though, the two begrudgingly work together knowing that they’re the only other padults that they have on their side, and they’re surprisingly good at doing it. Because of that, how they work together and interact is so amusingly petty and yet coopertaive all the same and it makes me wish we could have seen more reluctant team ups between them. Their relationship is definitely a proto Season 3 Golden Hook, albeit toned down significantly due to circumstances. Writer Awww! It’s Andrew and Ian’s last episode of the season! These guys were a real treat. Their dialogue is fantastic and their theming, while it doesn’t match Fruit’s, works well here because both the latter past segments and the present segments show how far he’s fallen from his virtues and the emotional as well as physical consequences of that. But, they do a good job keeping August likable by showing just how much effort - genuine effort - he’s making to get Emma to believe here. Additionally, these guys know how to use just the right character at just the right moment. Nothing ever feels over or underused. Rating 9/10. We got an excellent exploration of character here. August comes out of this episode fully fleshed out and his dynamic with Emma really pegs home the danger that everyone is in going into the final two episodes. The pacing of the story gives us a fun adventure and every character featured has something to do or contribute to the story. I took a point off for the weak scene in the foster home as that’s supposed to be so much better than it ended up being.

()()()()()()()()()()()()

Thank you for reading and to the fine folks at @watchingfairytales for putting this together! Next time: We talk about fruits. How about apples?

Season Tally (176/220) Writer Tally for Season 1: A&E (50/70) Liz Tigelaar (17/20)* David Goodman (33/50) Jane Espenson (46/60) Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg (38/40)* Daniel Thomsen (8/10)* Vladimir Kvetko (9/10)* (* = Their work for the season is complete)

Operation Rewatch Archives

#ouat #once upon a time #watching fairytales #ouat 1x20 #ouat rewatch #jenna watches ouat #basically every character in this episode is discussed

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5160763 · 7 years ago

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At this point in his life, Saguru has heard a good many things about Kuroba Toichi. Notably, that he is good at magic, that he is charming, and that he is dead. The dossier in his study (the one that Kaito pretends to be ignorant of) is half the thickness of the novel that he currently reading, and on maudlin evenings, proves to be no less entertaining nor sobering. According to Kaito, his father was a good man. He was a bit of a rascal, but never meant any harm and was ultimately kind.

Kaito is wrong.

There are two important things that Saguru has gotten wrong in his dossier which needs immediate correcting:

1) Kuroba Toichi is an asshole

2) Kuroba Toichi isn’t dead

Across the kitchen table, the first Kaito Kid smiles benignly at him, and Saguru does a mental tally of exactly how many people he would be disappointing if he reached across to punch Kaito’s father in the face, not least of all Kaito and himself.

“More tea?” To the casual observer, Toichi seems entirely harmless. Kind, perhaps a little stern, but unremarkably harmless.

As someone who has the experience of dealing with not one but two generations of Kaito Kids, Saguru knows better.

“No, thank you.” Thanking his mother silently for schooling him in the art of being aggressively well-mannered, Saguru casts a pointed look at the clock. “I’ve imposed on you for far too long, and really should get going before my parents worry.”

“So soon? Please, Saguru—if I may call you Saguru? There is no need to be so formal. I should be thanking you for treating my son kindly, and for helping me in recovering my wallet earlier.”

“There is no need to thank me for doing my part. Anyone else would have done the same had they noticed.” Had he known, Saguru would never have interfered. Instead, he’d stepped clean into the trap Toichi had laid out for him like a complete idiot. He had forgotten exactly how adept Kaito’s father is at playing the long game, and really, he should have expected this ever since Kaito has made it his goal to ignore his family.

As long as Kaito doesn’t hear about this, there is still a moderate chance of Saguru possibly getting off scot-free.

"How old are you, Saguru-kun?”

Narrowing his eyes at the abrupt switch of topics, Saguru carefully schools his expression into indifference. “I will be turning eighteen this year.”

“Kaito will be eighteen this year, too.” The look of surprise that Toichi puts on smacks of condescension, Saguru smiling thinly in return. “Impressive, considering your achievements in London and Japan thus far.”

This, from a man who had successfully conned the world into believing that he is—was—dead for as many years, and Saguru is immediately disappointed in his predictability. Were he a year or two younger, and poorer in the experiences and the lessons that Japan had saw fit to teach him, he would have risen to the bait and given himself clean away. Now, instead, he assesses Toichi assessing him, and wonders at the kind of desperation that would drive a father to such disgrace.

“If I may speak my mind, Kuroba-san.” Gentling his voice as he would with a victim or a witness, Saguru picks his next words carefully. “I believe that it would be better for you to speak with your son directly instead of going behind his back like this.”

Toichi has played by far too many cons for his mask to slip, but Saguru reads it all the same in the brief pause that follows, in the deliberate way he leans back in his chair. “From what I hear, you are working on a case for him.”

“My duty as a detective—that is, to keep any and all information about my clients and cases confidential—comes before my personal relationship with you.” Refusing to be intimidated, Saguru stares grimly back. “Pardon me for being straightforward, but we’ve only just met today. We are essentially strangers.”

“You—”

The sound of jangling keys in the lock interrupts the rest of Toichi’s words, loud and sudden as a gunshot. Immediately, Saguru’s hands go to his bag, to—what? Throw it out through the kitchen window and follow after, like the few times he had seen Kaito do in his own residence? Before the panic has time to set in properly, Kaito has appeared in the darkened doorway of the kitchen, still in the wrinkled gakuran he had been wearing in the morning.

“Kaito, we—” A singular look from Kaito quells him immediately, Saguru shrinking back into his seat.

“So that’s where you are. I had been looking all over for you.” There is not a trace of anger in Kaito’s expression to be found. Instead, he allows his silence to speak for him, and under the weight of his accusation, Saguru finds that he cannot bear his gaze and lowers his head. The student had learned from his teacher well.

“Welcome home, Kaito.” Toichi says genially, Kaito moving past the both of them towards the stove, taking Saguru’s empty teacup with him. “I happened to run into a classmate of yours by chance. How was school?”

With his back to the stove, Saguru can’t see what Kaito is doing. There is the sound of running water, the click of a switch, and he startles violently when a fresh cup of tea is placed before him.

“No refill for me, Kaito? I hope you are staying for dinner this time.”

The smile Kaito directs his father is as bloodless as it is opaque, one hand resting on Saguru’s right shoulder possessively. “You know where the kettle is. Unless you’ve been away for so long that you’ve forgotten?”

“Kaito.” Toichi, disapproving now, and Saguru really does not want to be here for this.

“Leave my boyfriend alone, old man.” The hand on his shoulder trembles ever so slightly, Saguru seized with both the desire to take him someplace else faraway from his family and also to give him a good shake on if he was serious about this. “If there is something that you want to know, ask mum. I’m sure she will be happy to tell you.”

“I’m worried.” The admission is a strategic retreat on Toichi’s end, the manipulation transparent as day to an outsider like Saguru, and a cheap shot at Kaito. “You are hardly home these days. Your mother tells me you’ve lost weight.”

“Oh, good to know. Always been looking to go down a size or two for my disguises. Finish your tea, Saguru. We’re going home.”

Home, as in— Pushing away from the table, Saguru clears his throat uncomfortably. “I’m ready to go when you are. Shall I... wait by the genkan?”

“I’ll be just a moment.”

Author’s notes: Saguru is surprised by Kaito’s choice to 1) name their relationship as current boyfriends 2) reveal this to Toichi 3) only making him aware of this at this horrible moment because Saguru made a one sided confession to him at night and Kaito never graced with him a reply (yet)

Toichi here is rated a 8/10 desperate as in an actual adult cornering a teenage boy/his son’s classmate to see if there’s anything he can learn about his son that way while also trying to intimidate Saguru off the Kaitou KID case because it puts his son in danger (he knows Kaito was hospitalised once because of Saguru prior).

Painted him in a less flattering light here but since it’s written from Saguru’s pov... adults aren’t all evil and against teens (as much as western movies like to portray them as the bad person keeping their children from achieving things they want to achieve and doing things they want to do). Understand that Toichi married young and he left Kaito while Kaito was still a tiny. He hadn’t expected to be away for so long, and by the time he returns, Kaito is as good as a stranger and he’s terrified of losing his son before he even gets to know the person he grew up into. He’s definitely prideful, and hasn’t yet figured out a way to reconcile with his family. He will, eventually, with Saguru throwing him an occasional bone or two. Adults aren’t perfect and it’s illogical to demand perfection out of them. Character growth > Character bashing

Originally intended for a longfic but it would drag on by far too long. Maybe if I have the time I might revisit it. Haven’t been writing for a few months and its clear I’ve lost the edge... but I guess a sentence more is better than none. Sorry about the quality until I get back into the groove.

#kuroba kaito #hakuba saguru #hakukai #kuroba toichi #hkk #ff

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unfolded73 · 7 years ago

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The Nonlinear Property of Time (4/4)

A Season 7 AU story with time travel. Rated Explicit. Warnings for pregnancy sex and fanservice-ilicious daddy!Killian in this last chapter.

This fic is dedicated to @allrightfine – you finally wore me down. Thanks to @j-philly-b for betaing. Thanks to @bleebug for your amazing artistic talent.

A few important notes:

1. I came up with this fic before 7x02 aired based on a lot of the speculation going on in fandom, and even after it was no longer consistent with canon, I couldn’t resist writing it. It just became more involved to fully describe the time travel scenario. Anyway, the point is Wish Hook isn’t in this. But that does not mean I’m anti-Wish Hook – surprisingly, I’m pretty psyched for that story now. So please don’t compliment this fic by slamming that character and his storyline, because I don’t really want to see that.

2. This story has a present-Killian/future-Killian/Emma threeway. If that’s not your thing, this fic might not be for you, and that’s okay!

3. This whole scenario turned out to be way more angsty than I anticipated going in. (No wonder the Doctor is such a big mope.) Which I love but also it makes me glad this isn’t what happened canon.

(Chapter 1) (Chapter 2) (Chapter 3) (NSFW Chapter 3 art)

Chapter 4

They gathered after breakfast in the clearing near Henry’s cottage.

Killian stood beside Regina, the brace for his hook propped on the pommel of his sword, watching from a distance as Henry and Emma said their goodbyes. He could tell that Emma was trying to put on a brave face, but the tears were starting to flow as she pulled her son into a hug. His older counterpart was keeping his distance from everyone, allowing time for all the farewells.

“You gonna be okay there, pirate?” Regina asked him.

He met her eyes briefly. “I was imagining what I would do if staying here to protect Henry meant that I would miss the birth of my child. That I really would miss all that time with Emma. And… if I knew that that was the only way to keep both Henry and my unborn child safe from whatever is coming…” He sighed. “I’d stay.”

She reached over and tentatively squeezed his hand. “Thank you.” Regina then let go and stepped back, her discomfort with even that brief moment of connection evident. “But that isn’t what you’re doing. You aren’t going to miss the birth of your child.”

“Then why do I hate this so much?” he asked, his jaw aching as he clenched it.

“Because living day to day without the person you love feels like torture sometimes,” Regina said. “There’s an ending in sight for you, though. Focus on that.”

Emma and Henry walked over and joined them, and Emma pulled a surprised Regina into a hug. “I’m pissed that you won’t be there when the baby comes,” she said.

Regina laughed, her voice the slightest bit watery. “I’m sure you’ll have plenty of people willing to babysit.”

Emma scoffed as she let go of Regina. “Not to babysit, just… I don’t know. I figured you’d keep me sane when the baby is crying nonstop and my mother is being annoyingly optimistic about everything.”

Killian’s attention drifted from the two women to Henry, who had wandered over to the older Killian to say goodbye to him. It was such an odd thing, he thought. First, he had to endure a period of time without his wife, and then after that a period of time without his stepson. From the younger Killian’s perspective, at the start of this slow path through time, it felt like an eternity until they would all be reunited again. His older self might have kept mum on how long it would be, but Killian knew. The subtle signs of age on the other man’s body, the desperate way he had touched his wife, the sadness in his eyes as he said goodbye to Henry now. It would be years, not months.

“Hey,” Emma said, taking his hand.

Killian swallowed around a lump in his throat. “Hey, yourself.”

She put her arms around him. “Take good care of Henry.”

He chuckled. “He’ll probably need to take care of me. I’ll be useless without you.”

“No, you won’t.” She pulled him tighter, and he could feel the rounded bump of her abdomen, a little bit more pronounced every day.

“Look after yourself, love. Eat balanced meals, and take your vitamin—”

“Killian, don’t imagine it like my life is going on without you.” She pulled back and held his face in her hands. “Imagine that I’m frozen in a bubble. Nothing’s gonna happen without you there. I’ll eat healthy and take my prenatal vitamin because you’ll be there to remind me. Okay?”

“Okay.” He blinked, feeling tears spill over onto his cheeks, and kissed her. “Not a day will go by for me that I won’t think of you.”

Her resulting smile broke his heart. “Good.” She kissed him again. “I love you so much.”

“I love you, too.” He squeezed her hand, not wanting to let go, and brought it to his lips. “Always.”

She pulled away, and he finally had to drop her hand. Killian was barely holding himself together, knowing that breaking down into sobs right in front of everyone would just make all of this harder. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the magic bean, reluctantly handing it over to his other self. “Appreciate every single day,” he told himself.

“You know I will.”

Emma went over to Henry one last time, taking his face in her hands and kissing his forehead, just the way she’d done when he was little, when she had to lean over him to do so. Now he stood almost a head taller than her, his shoulders broad. When she seemed like she might linger indefinitely, the older Killian gently guided her away.

As Killian watched, his counterpart hurled the bean, and a portal opened in the clearing. Squinting, Killian could see the black pavement of Storybrooke’s main street in the middle of the glowing spiral hole, the clock tower in the background. He felt a swell of homesickness, not just for Emma, but for Granny and Snow, David and little Neal, Ashley and Alexandra and even Zelena, gods help him — all of the people who made his adopted hometown a home.

Emma looked back, her eyes filled with tears. The other Killian put his arm around her, and before he could take another breath, the two of them turned and ran through the portal. It closed behind them, the woods left unnaturally silent in its wake.

That night, as he fell asleep listening to the sounds of the nocturnal creatures of the forest, Killian mentally marked a single line on a tally sheet inside his mind. One day down without his wife; many, many more left to go.

~*~

Storybrooke, Years Ago

At least his time in Hyperion Heights meant he didn’t have to readjust to modern life. The way to brew a pot of coffee, or run the dishwasher, or drive a car — thanks to his cursed memories, all of those tasks were at his fingertips, so to speak. And thanks to his false memories of attending the Seattle Police Academy and studying to be a detective, he was now positively overqualified to be Sheriff’s deputy in a quiet Maine town where nothing remarkable ever happened.

The day they returned to Storybrooke, he took his prosthetic hand off and put it in a drawer. It reminded him too much of those lonely months as Detective Rogers, when he didn’t even know he had a wife to miss. When he didn’t know that Henry and Ella and Lucy and Regina were his family. If Emma had any opinion about him going back to the hook, she didn’t comment on it.

He could tell when Emma would start to talk to him about something like it had happened yesterday (because of course for her, it had), then would stop and check herself and gently back up and explain. He hated that she had to do that, that she had to be reminded of all the years he’d lived without her. He wanted her happiness to be pure, not adulterated with the knowledge of the time he’d spent away from her side.

On the plus side, the waning of Emma’s morning sickness as she started the second trimester of her pregnancy combined with his having missed her so desperately meant their sex life was electric — probably the best it had ever been, even compared to those first few months after their wedding. As they lay in bed in the soft afterglow, his hand on her growing belly, he would talk to her. He told of how the first time he saw the way Henry looked at Ella, Killian knew he was a goner. How he and Regina had witnessed their small wedding in the resistance camp in the forest. How Ella had gone into labor at the most inopportune of times, and that he had helped Tiana deliver the baby while Regina held off the forces of darkness with every spell in her arsenal.

He told her about Rogers, and how lonely he’d been, even if he hadn’t known why.

Emma combed her fingers through his hair and pressed her lips to his cheek and listened. In less time than he would have credited, it was like he’d never been away from her in the first place.

He marked the days, knowing that a time would come when he would need to let himself into the pawn shop for a particular magic wand and write out instructions and take them to Zelena so that the time loop would finally be closed.

~*~

Emma shut off the shower and slid the curtain back, pausing to squeeze the excess water out of her hair before stepping out.

“Swan?” Killian called, and she could hear his footsteps through the bedroom. “Do you need a hand?”

She rolled her eyes. “I can manage to get out of the shower without falling down, babe, I promise.”

He ignored her snark, walking over and holding out his elbow. “Nonetheless, I’m here, so you might as well hold onto me.”

She glared at him, but put her wet hand on his shirt sleeve and allowed him to take some of her weight as she maneuvered over the lip of the tub with her prodigious belly. Killian handed her a fresh, fluffy towel.

“Thanks,” she said, starting to dry herself off.

“Did the shower make you feel better?”

“My back is still killing me, so not really.” She grimaced down at her protruding belly button, now an outie, and observed once again that she couldn’t see her feet. “I’m ready for you to come out of there, little girl,” she said, patting her abdomen. As if she knew she were being spoken to, the baby kicked.

“Two more weeks, love.”

“Two more weeks ‘til the due date, but that means any time from now on would be considered full term,” she said as she toweled off her hair and followed him back into the bedroom.

“I’m sorry you’re uncomfortable,” he said. “What can I do to help?”

She sighed. “Can you rub my back?”

“Of course.”

Emma hung her towel up and pulled on a pair of clean underwear and lay down on the bed on her side, bringing her knees up so that her spine curved out. “I can’t even lie down on my stomach for a proper backrub.” Complaining felt good. “And my hips hurt, which is just stupid.”

Killian lay down behind her, his hand kneading into her lower back, and she moaned in appreciation. “Right there?” he asked her somewhat unnecessarily.

“God, yes, right there,” she gasped as his fingers dug in deeper.

He stifled a groan. “How it is that you can make me hard so quickly just with the sound of your voice? It’s witchcraft, Swan.”

She turned and looked over her shoulder to see this erection he was bragging about, and sure enough, she could see the hard outline of him through his jeans. Emma snorted and turned back around. “But then you look at me and it kills your boner just as quickly.”

“I can only assume, since I have told you a hundred times that I am aroused by the sight of your pregnant body, that you are fishing for reassurance. But that’s all right, darling, I’m happy to provide it.” His hand continued to work on her back as he talked. “You are beautiful and sexy, and when I look at you, I’m in awe of the fact that you’re carrying my child and at the same time I just want to fuck you.”

Emma shivered, smiling secretly to herself. “Okay.”

“I’m glad it’s okay with you that you drive me to distraction on a daily basis.”

“And here I thought you were afraid I was going to fall down in the tub; you just wanted an excuse to see me naked.”

He chuckled. “It can’t be both?”

Emma hummed to herself, dragging a thumb over her nipple. “We can have sex now if you want.”

Leaving off the deep tissue massage, Killian began trailing his fingers up and down her spine, making her shiver again. “What about your back and your hips and whatever else is paining you, darling?”

She shrugged. “My back is better, thanks to you, and now I’m kind of horny. Look, don’t question my rapidly shifting hormonal state. There’s no explaining it.”

Laughing, he curled his body against hers and reached around to stroke her over the thin cotton of her panties. She often felt a little swollen and sensitive down there these days, and his touch had her instantly gasping and grinding against his fingers.

It was clear that Killian wanted to take his time, as he gently rolled her over onto her back to spend some quality time kissing her. Which was nice, but what Emma really wanted right now was a quick fuck, not to be romanced. On the other hand, her husband was a wonderful kisser. Not only that, she could tell by the way he was stroking his hand up and down her body that he was trying to communicate to her through touch that he still appreciated her physically. The least she could do was lie back and enjoy it.

Killian pulled down her underwear and Emma helped him, kicking it off onto the floor. Before he could resume his attentions, the baby kicked hard enough to hurt, and Emma winced. Maybe lying back and enjoying it wasn’t in the cards for her either.

“I think she wants me to turn over,” Emma said, rolling away onto her side again.

She listened as her husband undressed, and then she felt him press against her back again. This time he was all skin and hair and hard cock, falling naturally against the crease of her ass as he nuzzled her neck.

Emma tangled their legs together, none too subtly spreading her thighs and angling her hips to accept him inside. Killian made some adjustments and used his hand to guide himself into her wetness, and she groaned with relief as he filled her.

It was a familiar rhythm for them, an all-too-familiar position, and Emma found herself longing for the day when she could feel Killian pressed against her chest again, could wrap her legs around his hips and lie back and let him fuck her into the mattress. She slid her hand down between her legs and clenched her thighs, her fingers kneading and pressing against her clit. Emma didn’t need his help with this part of it; in truth, preferred to take care of herself when Killian was fucking into her from behind, but he wrapped his arm around her and put his hand over hers and it was nice, like he just wanted to feel the way she pleasured herself, like it heightened his enjoyment to do so.

Emma tilted her head back and lost herself in the friction, the delicious pressure, and then her orgasm hit suddenly, making her moan low and loud in the quiet bedroom. After a handful of strokes, Killian followed, his teeth leaving impressions in the skin of her shoulder.

The lay together for several minutes, panting, breathing gradually slowing down and in no hurry to pull apart. When he finally slipped from her body and rolled to lie on his back, Emma turned over to cuddle against his side — as close as she could, anyway, given her current shape.

He put his hand on her belly and was soon rewarded with a flurry of motion from their daughter. Killian laughed. “There she is, right on schedule. Very indignant about the things we’ve been getting up to, isn’t she?”

Emma giggled and closed her eyes, enjoying the feel of his hand on her skin. “Should we tell her when she’s older? That we used to have sex when I was heavily pregnant and that she would always kick me afterward like she was taking a karate class?”

“Oh, aye. I’m sure we’ll scar her in a myriad of ways, Swan; what’s one more?”

~*~

“Killian?”

“Up here, David!” he called, holding the front part of the diaper down with the stump of his left wrist so that he could fold the tabs over with his hand. After two weeks, he almost had it mastered. Fastening the snaps of the little garment Emma called a ‘onesie’ with nimble fingers, he scooped up the crying, wiggling infant, putting his hand under her head and his wrist under her back. “Now now, Maureen, don’t fret. I’ve got you, sweet love.”

Turning, he looked at the disarray of the baby’s room and frowned. Not exactly the kind of thing that would impress his father-in-law. Maureen snuffled, rooting against his collarbone.

David ducked his head in and grinned. “There’s my granddaughter!” he said. He made a few silly faces at the baby before holding out his arms. “May I?”

“Of course,” Killian said, passing the baby over. “Did Emma tell you to check on me?”

David gave him a guilty glance as he led Killian out of the nursery. “She might’ve mentioned that she was going to run a few errands on her own this afternoon.” He bounced the baby in the practiced way of a man who had spent many an hour with his own, and Killian envied him his natural ease. “How are you?”

“Fine. Maureen was a little fussy earlier, but that miraculous pump Emma has allows me to feed her, so—”

“Yeah, there’s a lot of things in this realm that make taking care of baby easier,” David said as the two men went downstairs. “Not that I had the opportunity to take care of Emma, but… you know.”

“Aye. Can I get you anything?”

Little Maureen’s eyelids were drooping, seduced into sleep by the way David was gently swaying back and forth. “No, I’m fine. Just wanted to see this little one and check how you were doing.”

Killian scratched behind his ear. “I mean, I’m not as good as Emma at… anything, really. But it’s…” He looked at the way his daughter’s eyelashes fluttered, at her tiny, perfect nose and pink cheeks. “She makes it all worth it. I would endure every hardship ten times over for her.”

David brushed his lips across the top of the baby’s head. “Yeah. I know exactly what you mean.”

Killian decided to take advantage of not holding a baby for once and moved to start cleaning up the kitchen.

“So…” David said, still swaying back and forth. “I noticed you’re not wearing the hook.”

“Aye,” he said, filling the sink with hot soapy water. “Even though I don’t keep it sharpened, I was still worried I might hurt her.”

“Well, don’t you have a prosthetic hand? Emma told me you had one from when you were cursed in Seattle.”

Killian frowned, turning around. “She did?”

Another guilty expression from his father-in-law. “She might’ve mentioned it.”

Turning back to the sink, Killian concentrated on his task. “It belonged to my cursed persona there. I don’t… I don’t like the reminder.”

“Of being cursed? I can understand that.”

He winced. “I don’t mean a reminder for me. I mean for Emma.”

There was a pause. “Sorry, Killian, you lost me. Reminder for Emma of what, exactly?”

He dried off his hand, giving up on the dishes and leaning against the sink. “Of the fact that I’m so far removed in time from the man I was when she told me she was pregnant with that little life ruiner,” he said with a forced smile and a nod at his daughter, now slack and sound asleep in her grandfather’s arms. “I’ve been back for more than six months, and I think she’s almost forgotten.” He grimaced and shook his head. “Not forgotten, but she doesn’t think about it every day. She’s stopped constantly checking herself on whether she’s assuming I’ll remember something I might not remember anymore. I don’t want there to be a constant reminder for Emma of the fact that I had to live a segment of my remaining years without her, after how hard we fought to be together.”

“I’m not sure you’re giving my daughter enough credit. I mean, look, you should do what makes you comfortable. Wear a—” He glanced around the kitchen. “—spatula at the end of your wrist for all I care. But I just think if you have a device that would make it easier to take care of a newborn — not that you aren’t doing an amazing job already; clearly you are — why not use it?”

“Did Emma tell you to say that?”

“No.” David smirked. “Let’s just say I read between the lines.” The baby startled herself awake and wiggled in David’s arms. Shifting her position into the crook of his elbow, he looked down into her face and grinned widely. “I still think she kind of looks like me,” he said as he booped her gently on the nose.

Killian groaned. “Not this again.”

“Come on, she has my eyes!”

“I have blue eyes, mate.”

“Yeah, whatever, pirate.”

~*~

Storybrooke, Present Day

“They’re here! They’re here!” Maureen shouted from the front room, nearly knocking over her father’s telescope in her haste to get to the front door. “Mom! Dad! They’re here!”

She wrestled open the door a little bit too forcefully, and it banged against the doorstop as she ran onto the porch.

People were piling out of the nondescript dark blue car at the curb as Zelena’s green monster pulled up behind and she and Robyn got out. Maureen was almost distracted from the new arrivals by Robyn’s blue hair. She loved Robyn’s hair. She wanted blue hair too, but her parents said she wasn’t old enough yet.

Maureen hadn’t met any of the other people, but she knew who they were. Aunt Regina, she’d seen pictures of. Henry too, although most of the pictures of him were when he was a teenager, and he looked like a grownup now. The other lady must be his wife, she thought, and the girl was their daughter, Lucy. Maureen’s dad had told her lots of stories about Lucy.

There was a blur of blonde hair as her mom ran out of the house and down the stairs and collided with Henry, hugging him tightly. Then she felt her dad’s hand on her shoulder, and Maureen looked up to see him watching the reunion. He looked kind of like he was going to cry, which made Maureen’s stomach roll over.

Regina approached and held out her hand. “Hello, there. I’m Regina.”

Maureen shook Regina’s hand. “I’m Maureen.” Regina was pretty, with dark lipstick and dark hair, and Maureen felt nervous about what to say to her. She looked up at her dad again.

He smirked at Regina. “Do we hug?” he asked her.

“Absolutely not,” Regina replied, but then she hugged Maureen’s dad anyway, which was weird.

Maureen looked back at the lawn, where her mom was talking excitedly to Henry’s wife, her voice kind of high-pitched and fast. Lucy glanced over, and Maureen waved nervously at her.

With a smile, Lucy approached. “You’re my aunt, right?”

Maureen puffed up a little bit at that. She was someone’s aunt, and that meant she had responsibilities. “Yeah,” she said in a firm voice. “I can show you around if you want. Do you want to come see my room?”

“I delivered the package and the hook, exactly as instructed,” Zelena said. Maureen looked up out of curiosity. Zelena had delivered Dad's hook to someone? Why would she do that, Maureen wondered. For as long as she could remember, sometimes her dad had worn his hook and sometimes his mechanical hand, depending on what he needed to do. She’d asked him once why, and he had said that it took two hands to wash all the dirt off of her at the end of the day, but one hook to properly captain the Jolly Roger. She knew that last part wasn’t technically true, but after that one time a boy in her class had made fun of her dad for only having one hand, after she’d punched him and made his nose bleed, she’d decided that she didn’t really care why he wore the hook. It was pretty and she loved it.

~*~

Emma poured herself another glass of wine, smiling at the controlled chaos coming from the living room where everyone had gathered after dinner, her whole family under one roof, with kids and grandkids and great grandkids, even.

Zelena and Regina joined her in the kitchen, and she filled their empty wine glasses before they asked.

“So let me see if I’ve got this straight,” Zelena said. “You two and Hook traveled by portal to Ella’s realm by magic bean — let’s call that Point A — Hook and Regina stayed there for several years, got cursed to live in Seattle, the curse was broken with true love’s kiss, I brought the Black Fairy’s wand to them there — let’s call that Point B — Hook traveled back in time to Point A, took you back to here to Storybrooke, you had Maureen and lived happily until a few weeks ago when Hook sent me to Point B to bring him the wand. Have I got all that?”

Emma sipped her wine. “That pretty much sums it up.”

“And so for a little while there were two versions of Hook in the same place,” Zelena went on.

“For about twelve hours or so.” Emma narrowed her eyes at Zelena. “I know what you want to ask me.”

“No, you don’t, because I am going to be a bigger person than that. I don’t always have to be the comic relief, asking inappropriate questions. I’m capable of some measure of decorum, you know. I’m capable—”

“I did have sex with both of them at the same time,” Emma said.

“There isn’t enough wine in the world for this conversation,” Regina said, taking a large drink from her glass as if she were testing that theory.

Zelena put her own wine glass down and gripped Emma’s upper arms, looking her dead in the eye. “Emma, I’ve never respected you more than I do at this moment,” Zelena said reverently. “This is the true fairy tale.”

“Yeah, well, let’s keep this one out of any storybooks, okay?” Emma replied with a giggle.

~*~

“Finally, Captain Hook is starting to look his age,” Henry said as he came out onto the back porch to join Killian. Dinner had been demolished hours ago, and the two excited girls were finally in bed asleep, and Killian had taken the opportunity to sneak outside for a breath of fresh air.

“What’s that?”

Henry pointed at his hair, where Killian knew there was a liberal smattering of grey amongst the brown.

“It’s weird. It’s been two weeks since I’ve seen you, but for you, it’s been years,” his stepson said, leaning against the porch railing. “I mean, we knew this day would come, but it’s one thing to know and another to know.”

“Aye.”

“I can tell you’re happy, though. You seem settled — in a good way.”

“I’m very happy.” He scratched behind his ear. “Your mother and I missed you terribly, but it’s been a wonderful adventure, raising Maureen.”

“She’s very… spirited,” Henry said diplomatically, and Killian laughed.

“You can say it — she’s a handful.”

“Okay, she’s a handful, but she wouldn’t be my sister if she weren’t.”

“Aye, I suppose that’s true.” They stood side-by-side in silence for a few minutes, staring out at the darkened sky. “How long do you think you’ll stay here in Storybrooke?”

Henry shrugged. “For a while. There’s certainly nothing for us back on the west coast, and I don’t think any of us are in any hurry to get back to Ella’s realm.”

“That’s good news.” He knew Emma wouldn't want to let him go anytime soon.

“How do you do it?” Henry asked.

“Do what, my boy?”

Henry exhaled. “Live a normal life. A life without danger, and monsters, and curses. I grew up with all that stuff, and then for a few years, it was all so quiet. And yeah, I left home to visit other realms so that I could find my own story, and obviously, I’m glad I did. But I wonder if I didn’t also do it because I missed all the drama and danger. Maybe I’m addicted to it, a little bit. So now I’ve got a chance at my own happily ever after, my own happy beginning, and I’m terrified I’m going to screw it up because I have no idea how to just live an ordinary life.”

Killian reached over and rested his hand on Henry’s shoulder. “Well, first of all, I don’t think there’s such a thing as an ordinary life. There may not be monsters here anymore, but an interesting life doesn’t hinge on fighting monsters. It’s learning something new every day, or finding fulfillment in your work, or running through the forest pretending to be a wolf because your daughter insists you’re a wolf.”

Henry laughed. “You’re pretty wise, old man.”

“Aye, well, I’ve lived a lot of years. For example, I’ve lived the last ten years twice over, so I had plenty of time to soak up lots of extra wisdom to impart to my stepson.”

“Ugh, you’re going to be insufferable about that, aren’t you?”

Killian grinned. “You can count on it, my boy.”

END

#cs ff #captain swan ff #two killians fic #cw: pregnancy sex #daddy killian #captain charming brotp #hooked queen brotp #the nonlinear property of time fic #my fic #zelena x fourth wall

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News Updates Live: Technology is helping us deal with agricultural challenges, says PM Modi

!1 New UpdateClick here for latest updates

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