#angel resse | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ktaerssoi · 8 months ago

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same team, different goal

(pt.1) (pt.2) (pt.3)

summary: the three weeks leading up to the draft, or the three times you realize caitlin isnt all that bad.

(2k)

week one

march was coming to an end, and Iowa had made it to the elite eight. tomorrow you would play against LSU, and you were a little nervous. your nerves didn't ease up when you were practicing the night before on an empty court.

it was almost ten, but you hadn't eaten or even thought about anything but the game tomorrow until you heard someone enter the gym, and then you weren't alone.

looking up from the ground, you shot the basketball towards the net, your arm stretching out and your feet coming off of the floor for a moment, but to no avail, it hit the backboard and bounced back to you.

"you should ease up your arm, you're too tense to be playing to your full ability." you turn to see caitlin standing by the court's edge, a calculated look on her face. "clark, I really don't need your help, I just need to practice. you're not exactly helping with that by the way."

she put her hands up in defense, "Actually that was exactly what I was doing. Plus, this isn't your gym, I can come in and practice too if I want." and that's what she did. every time she threw the ball you heard a faint swish and turned to see her lazily going to retrieve the basketball. she's some freak of nature really.

"wanna run some defense real quick?" she throws the ball to you, which you catch with an annoyed look. "sure," the tone of your voice would be enough to turn anyone away normally, but caitlin was one to never quit.

you guys had been trying to block the other on and off for about an hour, caitlin having more success than not. "seriously caitlin, I don't get how you just walk in here and play so easy." you guys were over by the benches, getting some water and checking your phones.

she looks up at you, shrugging. "no I mean seriously, if I told you to stand anywhere on the court you could make it. you practice infinite hours and yet your grades almost never falter." you hadn't really realized that you were going on a rant, but you were nothing but amazed by her talent. well maybe a little jealous too.

"wow l/n, I didn't know you were that big of a fan, do you want me to sign a shirt or something?" you would usually be annoyed by a snarky statement like this, but something about the exhaustion of practicing and the smile on her face made you smile a little too.

you woke up the next morning feeling less nervous about the game. practicing with caitlin was helpful, even if you swear for the rest of your life that it wasn't. She had told you about herself, in between breaks you guys would talk about what it was like playing basketball growing up.

she was easy to talk to.

you had been warming up for a little, talking to kate and trying to relax, like caitlin said. by half, both teams were tied at 45, and you were trying not to stress. you knew that you had a good team, and you knew that even if we were to fail it wouldn't be the end of the world.

you had a short water break at half, and caitlin came up to you, leaning down and whispering in your ear. "hey just relax, we got this, just get out of your head." you nodded, looking up and her. kate had given you guys an odd look, along with the rest of the team.

once the third quarter started, you were trying to guard angel resse. she was a difficult player to block, but you had managed to stop a few points and by the end of the third quarter Iowa was up by 11.

you could tell caitlin wasn't happy that we were so close to the end of the game and we barely had a lead. "c, just play like you did last night, don't think just play. you're not the best at thinking anyway." she rolled her eyes at your comment but smiled nonetheless.

"That's not what you said last night," she said as the whistle for the fourth quarter blew. your cheeks had turned a light shade of pink, one that you hoped you could play off as a tough game. you hadn't been put in for the fourth quarter coach opting to put someone else in and give you a break.

"since when have you and caitlin been friends?" you turn to see jada, confusion written on her face. "um, we've always been friends, just, not like good friends." you say, taking a sip of your water. "not "good friends?" you guys fight like there's no tomorrow. something happened and I and kate will find out." you shake your head, a smile on your face as you picture her and kate in old-timey investigater outfits.

"you have fun with that."

the game ends quickly after that, Iowa winning by 7 points. you smiled as you saw the team celebrate on the court, still holding good sportsmanship to LSU (for the most part..), you walked by the other team, high-fiving and telling resse that she's a tough player to block. you guys chat for a little before you say goodbye and walk into the locker room.

"what were you talking to resse about?" you hear caitlin before you see her, but when you do see her she's in the middle of changing out of her jersey into some random shirt. "nothing really, I was just telling her that she played well." you shrugged, walking over to your bag to get changed as well, trying not to stare at anyone.

"yeah, she played well I guess, we still won though." caitlin grabbed her bag in a huff, seeming to be a tad annoyed. "if I didn't know any better I would say you're mad I talked to her," you mumbled, but caitlin still heard.

"I'm not mad I just don't get why you don't treat our team like that, I mean you didn't congratulate any of us and we were the ones who won." caitlin's voice was raised now, you weren't sure where this was coming from but it ticked you off nonetheless.

"fine, you need some praise? good fucking job caitlin, our very own lord and savior." you rolled your eyes, grabbing your bag, and walking out to the bus to head back to campus. sitting down in the seat next to kate you were silent, not wanting to talk to anyone.

one thing though was that you most definitely hated caitlin clark.

you had gotten to Cleveland earlier that day, you had talked to the UConn team, since you used to play for them it was fun to chat with old teammates and meet the new players. you knew that caitlin and paige were friends, they used to play together and were a great duo. That's why you weren't surprised when she came over and started making her presence known, shutting down the conversation you were having with paige.

"yeah and then she had the audacity-" you were cut off by caitlin, smiling as she walked over and hugged paige. "hey bueckers, you better be ready to lose tomorrow." you glared at her not so subtly, sighing. "clark I was kind of in the middle of talking." she looked down at you, rolling her eyes. "yeah because you always have to talk to the opponents?"

paige had turned away at that point, talking to ice because she knew it was bound to be awkward if she continued standing there. "what is your problem? just because I didn't feed your ego one time im a problem? you need to get a grip." her jaw tightened at your words, you hadn't spoken loud, not wanting to draw too much attention to you guys.

"me? I'm not the one with the issues, you just seem to hate me for no reason at all. seriously, ever since you transferred to Iowa I've been trying to be your friend but you've taken everything I've done as an attack on you. me getting you dinner was not meant to send you into an allergic reaction and get you out of a game!" she hadn't taken into consideration that other people were around and she was talking at a voice level far too loud for the small area you were in.

you had dragged her to a corner, deciding it would be the easiest way to defuse the situation. "okay I'm sorry, you're just good at everything, and it's kind of hard to be friends with someone like that. it makes me feel like I have to prove I'm better which usually doesn't go over well. also, it wasn't even about the allergic reaction I just don't know why you got me dinner. I was fine by myself." caitlin rolls her eyes at your words but nods regardless.

you guys had won the game against UConn the next day, and you and caitlin finally working well together and not arguing throughout the game. there was a sort of understanding between the two of you guys now.

week two

you guys had ulitamtily lost the game against NC state, it was close and you guys had played hard. caitlin was anything but happy by the end of it, and not even kate or gabbie could fix it.

"clark, like you said, its not the end of the world. there will always be another game." you had said it to not only help her, but yourself. you weren't exactly pleased with the outcome of the game, none of team had been.

for caitlin it was different, she was going to the draft next week and losimg her lat college game wasn't something she could live with. but she would have to.

even though you hadn't really meant to, you had cheered caitlin up. even if it was only a little bit, her mood had improved and she was able to talk to the team with out an undertone of anger. the ride home wasn't the best trip of your life but you guys had managed to make the best of it for everyone sake.

seeing caitlin sit quietly on the bus made you start thinking about what it wold be like on the team with out her next year. with out her it would be so different, not to mention you were losing a bunch of other great players. but with out caitlin who would you compete with? she wasn't just a teammate, she was a friend, whether you guys were fighting or not you would miss her. plus she was nice to look at.

half way through the trip back to campus you guys had stopped to stretch your legs. when you got back on, you sat next to caitlin before she could put her feet up and block the seat.

"hey c," you smiled at her, and though she didn't show it you could tell that she was okay with you being there. you had looked over at what she was doing on her phone and you saw she was looking at her possible outfits for the draft.

"i like that one." you had pointed to your favorite of the options, a sparkly cropped top with a white button down and a skirt. it would look good on her.

she nodded, and quickly sent a text to her stylist that that was the one she wanted to wear. you had just picked out caitlin clarks wnba draft night outfit.

"i don't know what im going to do next year. i mean, the wnba is going to be great but seriously this team is to good to not miss." caitlin was picking at her fingernails, a bad habit of hers. "even though im on it?" you laughed a little, you knew she hadn't always liked you.

"no i think especially because you're on it. you've really been my number one compeition and with you gone i don't know who's going to keep my ego in check." she smiles at you, and you shake your head. "trust me clark, someone is going to get fed up and humble you."

something about the way she smiled the rest of the way home made you feel good. you really were going to miss her.

week three

it was draft night, and you had been invited along with some other team members to attend for caitlin. she and everyone looked so good, and the outfit you had chosen definitely distracted some people. (you included)

the draft was about to start and caitlin had been standing with you, kate, gabbie, and jada for a while before she finally had to leave. your leg was bouncing with anticipation when the commissioner came on stage with the first pick, but instantly cheers erupted from your group and many others in the room.

you were surprised when caitlin didn't instantly get up and head to the commissioner, instead, she hugged her family, stepped down off the stage to hug you first, and then, kate, jada, and gabbie, and then finally went to the commissioner. that's going to be in an edit.

the night went smoothly after that, you were getting texts from her often, and one of the commentators had pointed out that you both both on your phones. when the cameras panned over to her and you, the crowd cheered and you both waved. you felt your phone buzz a few seconds later with a text from caitlin, "they're watching us 😉" the cameras were still on you, so you flipped your phone showing the camera her message.

later that night, at the after party you were talking with Nika when caitlin had excused you both and you walked over to some corner. "hey, you know I was tal-" you were cut off by caitlin's lips on yours. it took you a moment but you kissed back.

what the fuck was happening.

she pulled away after a second and you looked at her stunned, confusion evident on your face. "um, so like why did you do that?"

her face guys pink, and she looks confused as well. "I, um, i don't know why i did that. i just really wanted to kiss you." you nodded at her admittion, yet still confused.

"i think i've liked you since you transferred. i mean, i just like, i think that's why I've always competed with you, i just wanted to show off. It's why i got mad the other day, sorry about that by the way-" she was the one to get cut off this time as you kissed her again.

pulling away after a few seconds you smiled up at her, taking in your high difference for what seemed like the first time. "you're not all too bad either clark." you gave her one more peck and your smile widened even more if possible. "congrats on getting drafted by the way. I'll have to get you to sign a jersey for me."

CHAT I HATE THIS SO MUCH SOME ONE END ME. no like all jokes aside this is actual dookie. but i finally finished this little side blurb thing so yay!! making brownies rn i will update you on them! thats all chat, once again sos. - kate

#wcbb #caitlin clark #caitlin clark x reader #paige #kate martin #iowa wbb #iowa hawkeyes #i love her sm

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lucifers-rubber-duck · 9 months ago

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Husker: I am in misery-

Angel: I save dick by giving a CPR~

Reader: RESSE'S PUFF RESSE'S PUFF

#hazbin hotel x reader #husker x reader #angel dust x reader #𖤓 posting #I love the idea of these three interacting

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 2 years ago

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North To The Future [Chapter 15: Drive] [Series Finale]

The year is now 2000. You are just beginning your veterinary practice in Juneau, Alaska. Aegon is a mysterious, troubled newcomer to town. You kind of hate him. You are also kind of obsessed with him. Falling for him might legitimately ruin your life…but can you help it? Oh, and there’s a serial killer on the loose known only as the Ice Fisher.

Chapter warnings: Language, alcoholism, addiction, murder, violence, character deaths.

Word count: 7.3k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

Taglist: @elsolario @ladylannisterxo @doingfondue @tclegane @quartzs-posts @liathelioness @aemcndtargaryen @thelittleswanao3 @burningcoffeetimetravel @poohxlove @borikenlove @myspotofcraziness @travelingmypassion @graykageyama @skythighs @lauraneedstochill @darlingimafangirl @charenlie @thewew @eddies-bat-tattoos @minttea07 @joliettes @trifoliumviridi @bornbetter @flowerpotmage @thewitch-lives @tempt-ress @padfooteyes @teenagecriminalmastermind @chelsey01 @anditsmywholeheart @heliosscribbles @killerqueen-ofwillowgreen @narwhal-swimmingintheocean @tillyt04 @cicaspair418 @fan-goddess

A/N: This is the fic I almost never wrote because I didn’t think anyone would be interested in some random, angsty, 1990s, Alaskan, crime-thriller AU. Thank you for proving me wrong. I hope you enjoy the ending. 💜

Almost everything about your existence is pure chance; it’s the most freeing and horrifying truth imaginable. There’s the genetic lottery and corporate downsizing, revolutions and hurricanes, plagues, asteroids, famines, faulty airplanes and malignant blooms of cells and drunk drivers. There are 100 billion planets in this galaxy and your atoms ended up on the one called Earth. After all that, do you really think what you want matters? So make all the choices you like, all the nail-biting deliberations and promises and vows, weigh costs and benefits, do research, roll dice, ask astrologers and palm readers, start over every New Year because that’s something we tell ourselves is possible. The fact that you exist at all is one big cosmic coin flip. If you think you’re the one driving, you’re dead fucking wrong. You’re the speck of dust on a windshield, the spin of a roulette wheel. You’re a flash of silver in the universe’s pinball machine.

I spend a lot of my time thinking about chance, okay? My family is one of the wealthiest in the Western Hemisphere, and I didn’t do anything to earn that. I was born first, and I definitely didn’t do anything to earn that, Jesus Christ, what a chromosomal fuckup. I inherited an affliction that others get to live without. I can’t imagine what it feels like to wake up and not be horrified by myself, my shortcomings, my failures: too small, too stupid, too wild, too weak. And the first time someone says something like that to you, you want to apologize, you want to drop to your knees and cling to them and beg for absolution, maybe even the first hundred times, the first thousand. And then it just starts to piss you off. Yeah, I know, I’ve heard it all before, why would you expect anything different? Isn’t this getting old, Mom? Maybe you’re the stupid one, Dad, if you think you could cut me and anything but disappointments would fall out. I’m not horrified by the fact that I’m an addict. The horror came first. The horror is what led to all the rest of it.

One day when I was in 10th Grade—I was slumped way down in my chair and drinking vodka out of an Evian water bottle—my American History teacher, purely by chance, assigned me to make a poster about Juneau, Alaska. Some other kid got Los Angeles (Hollywood! The Whisky a Go Go!) and another got Chicago (the Mob!) and another got Nashville (Johnny Cash!) and some jock moron I hated got Baltimore (um, crabs? the War of 1812…?), but I got fucking Juneau, Alaska. I thought this was so unjust that I never forgot it, the fact that I had to get up in front of the class with my pathetic Crayolas-and-magazine-cutouts poster and pretend that Juneau was a place that mattered, that microscopic cloud-covered relic of a late-1800s gold mining settlement on the shores of the Gastineau Channel. Juneau was never on my list of cities to run to. It just wasn’t. It didn’t have anything I wanted. But when I started thinking about places where I could really disappear, where no one would ever bother looking, where days are short and dark and incurious and irrelevant…well, that sounds like Juneau, right?

Let me tell you something about the night I left. I’ve been more messed up, yeah, and I’ve hurt people worse, and I’ve been closer to death, I’ve been one more powder-white gram on the scale away from oblivion; but I’ve never felt that fucking low. I can’t decide if I wish I’d never gone to Juneau at all. I can’t decide if it was a blessing or a curse.

My flight is a red-eye with a layover in Ketchikan, American Airlines, bound for Seattle. Sunfyre has the window seat. He’s wearing the bright red Service Dog vest that I once stole for him specifically for such occasions. My dog fly with the cargo? My dog?! Bill Clinton will be elected pope first. Sunfyre is chewing contently on Milk-Bones and watching the sun rise over the Pacific Ocean. He knows the drill. We’ll touchdown and deplane, and then…and then…

And then we’ll start over again somewhere new. I’ll find a flight board and pick a destination; Seattle is a hub, with spokes leading everywhere. I could go south, to Galveston, Lafayette, Biloxi, someplace where it gets hot, someplace where I can sweat her out of me, purge every cell that still remembers what she felt like. I could go west, fading into mountains or cornfields, vapid infinitesimal towns in Montana, Iowa, Idaho, Nebraska. I could go to New England or the Great Lakes or freaking Hawaii, sleep in hammocks, swim with sea turtles, drink my rum and Cokes out of coconut shells. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that nowhere really sounds good to me. My legs are suddenly tired of running. There’s an ache that rattles down to the bone.

I don’t have to tell you that I love her, right? It’s not so easy for me to say. But it’s true, and it’s beautiful, and it’s torture, and it’s a dream. It’s pain that flays you alive and then builds you back again, layers of fresh muscle and tendons and veins growing over ribs and vertebrae like a trellis thick with ivy. It’s not a high. It’s just the best life can get down here on earth. It’s the ocean, it’s the Northern Lights.

I’m swimming in a black hoodie that is three sizes too big; I haven’t slept and I’m pale and raccoon-eyed, looking like death, feeling worse. When the stewardess rolls by with her clattering cart just slim enough to fit through the aisle, I order a cup of water for Sunfyre and a double rum and Coke for myself. It arrives with two blood-red cherries bobbing in a caramel-dark carbonated sea. The guy in the next seat over gives me a judgmental little eyebrow raise.

“That doesn’t look like breakfast,” he says.

I bite off both cherries—juice dribbling down my chin, wiped away with a sleeve—and throw the stems over my shoulder. The lady sitting behind me yelps in disgust. “Because it’s dessert.”

The man smiles and shakes his head, one of those I shouldn’t find it funny but I do sort of looks. I inspire a lot of those. He’s maybe mid-thirties, long hair and ripped jeans, very punk rock, cool as hell. There is a constellation of pins on his denim jacket. One of them has a roman numeral 10 on it, a stark X nestled inside a triangle. Unity, Service, Recovery, the gold letters say. To Thine Own Self Be True. It’s an Alcoholics Anonymous pin. What are the chances?

He catches me staring, and I ask: “Does it really make you a better man?”

“It doesn’t make you better. It just makes you real.” He smiles again, patient and kind. “It makes your emotions and experiences real, your relationships real. And so you become whatever version of yourself you were always supposed to be. But you have to want it. Not your wife, not your parents or your kids, not your pastor, not your friends, not your parole officer. You.”

I speak without knowing what I’m going to say. “I want it.”

“Yes, I think you do.”

He sees a lot, I think, as the plane descends into the grey fogbank of Seattle. 20/20.

When we land, the man squeezes into a cab with me and Sunfyre—he sniffles into a Kleenex for a while before reluctantly admitting that he’s allergic to dogs—and pays the fare. The cab’s worn brakes squeal to a stop outside a residential treatment center on the banks of the Puget Sound. When we step out onto the sidewalk, I ask the man if he’s going to take me to get one last drink first. He laughs in my face. Fucking jerk.

He pulls out a black Sharpie and rummages through his pockets, his wallet. He can’t find a scrap of paper. He writes his phone number on the underside of my arm instead. “You call me, okay?” he says. “Call me when you get out. Call me before you get out, if you need to. I don’t care if it’s in five minutes, I don’t care if it’s at 2 a.m. You just make sure you call.”

“Why would you do this? I mean, you don’t even know me. You have no idea who I am.”

“Because once, years ago, someone did the same thing for me, and someone did it for her too. Maybe one day you’ll be able to pay it forward. I don’t care who you are or where you’ve been. It doesn’t matter to me. I’d like to think that we’re all more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”

And then he waits for me to go inside. He doesn’t leave until he watches me check in at reception on the other side of the rain-flecked glass. Outside, a brand new day is beginning. A misty sun rises as pieces of the sky fall.

Sunfyre trots into the lobby alongside me, panting cheerfully, shaking the perpetual Seattle drizzle from his fur. There’s a girl at the front desk, just a girl, and that’s the other thing that’s different now. She’s not a maybe-future-one-of-my-girls. She’s just like anyone else. I already have a girl. I mean, I don’t anymore, not really. But I still do.

I throw my things onto the counter: my single suitcase, my tattered wallet, my bundle of cash held together with rubber bands, my scraped-up electric guitar.

“Checking in?” the girl asks.

“Yeah.”

“For how long?”

“As long as it takes, I guess.”

She opens my wallet, reads my license, blinks in bewilderment. “Aegon…?”

I sigh dramatically. “It’s Greek.”

~~~~~~~~~~

You dream of him; and when you do, he’s always smiling. He’s reading your palm in an empty Taco Bell, he’s kissing you under the Northern Lights, he’s regaling your parents with stories—of lobster fishing in Portland, of cattle ranching in Denver—all through Thanksgiving dinner, he’s undressing you in his moonlit apartment, he’s climbing into your bed. He’s not angry, he’s not ruined, he’s not running away. He’s exactly as you remember him in his best moments. He’s all chaotic white-blond hair and weightless light, sharp laughter and bright eyes. And each morning there’s a splinter-thin moment before you remember that he’s gone. That’s the worst part, really. You always knew it would be. You can’t even begin to forget him.

Your friends want to help you, but they don’t know how. Neither do your parents. Your dad gets an atlas from the study, throws it down on the dining room table, and opens it to a map of the world. “Pick anyplace and we’ll go there,” he says. “We’ll close the vet clinic for two weeks and we’ll all go.” But you can’t give him a single name: not Athens, or Paris, or Buenos Ares, or Cairo, or New York City, or Rome, or Tokyo, or anywhere else for that matter. It’s the strangest thing. All your life you’ve been waiting to get out of Juneau, but now nowhere sounds good to you. And maybe that’s a lesson you wish you’d never learned: sometimes freedom is less about places than it is about people.

The blood on the equipment recovered from Trent’s apartment matches DNA from the first three victims. He is charged with eight counts of first-degree murder and held awaiting trial in the Lemon Creek Correctional Center. His family visits him faithfully each week. His lawyer is exasperated that he won’t plead guilty and spare his parents the humiliation and expense of a protracted court battle. But Trent’s story never changes: he’s innocent, he’s never killed anybody, he doesn’t understand how the blood could have been found on his belongings. He wants to know exactly what items the police tested; he and his lawyer are still waiting for the prosecutor to turn over all the details during discovery. In the midst of the scandal, the upheaval, you fade into the backdrop like the stars behind fog. People talk around you and through you. They offer gaps that you don’t care enough to fill in. Drinks clink, whispers fly, conspiracies are exchanged between pool shots. You watch the days grow longer and wait for the future to arrive. You don’t know what it will look like, you can’t even begin to fathom it. But surely there must be a future. Life goes on. It did for your mom after Jesse. It will for you too.

A week after Aegon leaves, there is a knock at your parents’ front door. You open it to find Aemond standing there in the muted amber-pink afternoon light. His hair is long and loose, his Armani suit immaculately tailored, his BlackBerry nestled in his right hand. He glances up from it at you and his jaw falls open. And only then do you realize how awful you must look.

You tell Aemond, your voice hushed and heavy, ankles in quick-drying cement: “I don’t know where he is.”

“No, I can see that,” Aemond replies, dull horror in his blue eye. Then he turns around and strides halfway down the driveway towards the street, where a cab idles as it waits for him, engine exhaust pouring into the air like smoke from a firepit.

“How’s your dad?” you call after him when you get your bearings.

He pauses under the dwindling light. “Alive. For now.” And then Aemond considers you for a while. “I suppose if I ever want to find you again, I know where to look.”

You nod. “I’ll be here.”

I’ll always be here.

A month crawls by like a wounded animal, dead leaves snared in the fur of its belly. The flesh on your thigh knits back together. The things that Aegon ordered show up in Juneau, packages left on the front porch and stuffed into the moose-shaped mailbox like Christmas gifts in a stocking. You pack these remnants of him—Zoobooks and cooking accessories, knives and Chia Pets—into a cardboard box and tuck it away in a dusty, cobwebbed corner of the attic, and you’re aware the entire time that this has happened before, almost exactly twenty years ago. When your dad puts a Third Eye Blind or Red Hot Chili Peppers or Oasis album on his record player, you find some excuse to leave the room. When you tack magazine cutouts of beaches and cityscapes to your bedroom walls, all you can think about is where Aegon might be now. You wonder where he works during the day, a surf shop or a construction site or a farm or a fishing boat; you wonder who he spends his nights with.

I’ll always be here. Even if I leave, I’ll always be here.

~~~~~~~~~~

Twenty years ago to the day, almost to the hour, a man fell into the Gastineau Channel and drowned. They found water in his lungs, though the autopsy was only a formality, an afterthought; Jesse had a reputation in Juneau, and no one was particularly surprised to see how his story ended. There were abrasions on his back and shoulders, contusions on his wrists, but so what? He probably tripped half a dozen times before he tumbled over some guardrail and into the frigid black water. There was a bloody mess of an impact wound on the side of his face, but who cares? The blood alcohol concentration doesn’t lie. The man was wasted, and more than that he was a waste. If his premature demise hadn’t been then, it would have been later, in a week or a month or a year. And when someone like that goes, there’s a sigh of relief that accompanies the misery, isn’t there? There’s the sense of a weight being lifted from a scale.

You’re sitting in Ursa Minor at the usual booth, but the bar is practically empty. It’s Valentine’s Day. Joyce is with Rob, Kimmie is with Brad; Heather’s parents have spirited her away on a short vacation to Sitka to try to take their minds off Trent’s imminent lifelong incarceration. Your mom and dad’s February 14th tradition is cooking a homemade Italian dinner together—pasta, bread with herbs and olive oil, caprese salad, tiramisu—and then settling in for a romantic Blockbuster rental. This year, it’s Runaway Bride. Your mom loves Julia Roberts. They didn’t ask for privacy, but you gave it to them anyway. Kimmie offered to drop you off at Ursa Minor and then drive you home after her date with Brad so you could drink away your sorrows without having to worry about calling a ride. So now Kimmie is getting wined, dined, and plied with boxed chocolates at the Red Dog Saloon while you drain appletinis and flip through one of Jesse’s journals, not knowing what you’re looking for.

Dale is washing pint glasses in the sink behind the bar and humming cheerfully along to a Cake CD. It’s just you and him tonight; evidently, Dale doesn’t have a hot date either. It was nice of him to eschew the usual Shania Twain or Sheryl Crow soundtrack. He’s trying to spare you from any crooning love songs. He must have forgotten that Cake has its own little slice of relevance in your memories of Aegon, those memories that refuse to fade, ink in your skin as dark as night.

Your fingerprints trace Jesse’s scrawling, handwritten letters. It’s his very last journal, the last words he ever wrote. His final entry is unremarkable, a lucid recollection of his latest woodcarving project: it’s a family of tiny bears, three of them. He says he wants the cub to have the same slope of your cheeks, the shape of your eyes. And it’s just like your mom said. It really did seem like he was getting better.

You flip to the next page, blank. The heading reads: Thursday, February 14th, 1980.

You go back a few days. And your gaze catches on words that you’ve read before, months ago, back when the journals were a new discovery like striking oil. The entry is from Saturday the 9th. It ends with an unceremonious bullet point of a reminder: dinner w/ Dale on Thursday.

You leaf forward to Thursday, to the blank page that tells you nothing. Back to the 9th, forward to the 14th, again, again. Valentine’s Day 1980, before Dale had married his wife, after your mom had stopped trying to make plans with Jesse, maybe even rebelled against them; just two unromantic, discarded men with a vacant slot in their calendars and troubles to drink into submission. Except that Jesse never came home.

Dinner with Dale, you think dizzily. Dinner with Dale on the night he died.

The opening notes of The Distance shout from the stereo. Everything suddenly feels very loud.

Reluctantly crouched at the starting line,

Engines pumping and thumping in time…

What had Aegon said about that song before you sang it together, stomping and staggering across the hardwood floor? It’s not about NASCAR, it’s about a journey!

Outside, it’s a rare clear night in Juneau. The Northern Lights are a kaleidoscopic ribbon against indigo night, the sky a mausoleum of stars. And you remember when Aegon sang Everlong, when he grabbed your hand, led you upstairs to the roof, kissed you for the first time under the ethereal, shimmering curtain of green and purple and blue…before Heather had interrupted to tell you that Dale was closing the bar. He was irritable, he was tired; he wanted to go home.

The arena is empty except for one man,

Still driving and striving as fast as he can…

And then they found a body, didn’t they? Yes, you can remember being in Aegon’s apartment and hearing the police cars zoom by. You remember the red-and-blue flashes on his face. You remember thinking they looked like sapphires and rubies, the ocean and blood.

The sun has gone down and the moon has come up

And long ago somebody left with the cup,

But he’s driving and striving and hugging the turns

And thinking of someone for whom he still burns…

Icy claws glide down the length of your spine. Memories play back with a focused clarity that you didn’t have before: Dale groggy and yawning just before they found the fifth victim at Christmas, and again before they found the eighth the same night Trent dragged you—shrieking, bleeding, virtually naked—out of your Jeep. You remember Dale at your parents’ New Year’s Eve party talking about how maybe the killer was an athlete with brain damage from CTE. You remember him offering to give Trent a box of his old equipment from when he was a park ranger. You remember him watching as Trent towered over you here in Ursa Minor with a cue stick clenched in his fist, demanding to know where you had been the night before, Dale’s eyes gleaming with disapproval and fascination and…and…oh god, opportunity.

He’s going the distance,

He’s going for speed,

She’s all alone (all alone)

All alone in her time of need…

And now Aegon’s long gone, but you’re still here. And so is the Ice Fisher.

You’re staring at Dale, eyes huge and glossy with terror. He glances up, gives you a brief casual smile, looks down at the pint glasses again. And then his eyes come back to you. He sees you and you see him, really see him, and it’s the first time in your life that you can recall him being a centerpiece instead of an ornament for gazes to skate over like ice, wallpaper or taxidermy deer heads or a mirror. And you watch as the thing that lives inside Dale stirs awake. It is a shadow with fangs, talons, barbs down its spine, a weblike scribble of a brain loud with the echoes of screams; and it unfurls and fills him completely, all the way to his fingerprints. It possesses him, it eclipses him.

It’s Dale, you realize like a bullet slicing through an aorta, spilling an ocean of hot blood. It was him twenty years ago and it’s him now.

You gasp and fumble for the cannister of bear mace still clipped to your purse. Dale crosses the room with staggering swiftness, like a wolf, like a storm, one pint glass still gripped in his hand. He reaches you just as your thumb presses down on the cannister’s release tab. The rust-colored mist spews not directly into his face but into the room; Dale is hacking and rasping, you both are, but he isn’t in too much pain to haul you out of the booth and onto the floor. You’re screaming, you’re clawing at him, your eyes feel like they’re on fire, tiny pinpoint infernos that drill down to the bone. You can feel the ice-cold juice and schnapps and vodka of your appletini, knocked off the table when you fell, soaking through the back of your sweater. You can feel pebbles of glass as they burrow into your flesh. You are dimly aware of a barstool tumbling over as you struggle with Dale.

“No!” you cry into the monstrous hand that he clamps over your mouth. “No—!”

Dale brings the bottom of the pint glass down on your head. The Distance lyrics—she’s hoping in time that her memories will fade—swirl around inside your fractured skull.

Silence descends like a curtain, shadows in, lights out.

~~~~~~~~~~

I knock, and he opens the door. The house smells like fresh bread and alfredo sauce, rosemary and crushed garlic. My rental—a Toyota 4Runner, I remember what she said about the Nova being a bad idea in Alaska—is parked in the driveway behind her Jeep. Sunfyre is standing beside me, eyes sparkling, smiling with that unburdened-by-intellect innocence that dogs have. There’s a bouquet of blue-dyed roses in my left hand, cool melancholy blooms of life like seawater, like bruises.

“Hi,” I say to her dad as he stands in the doorway. “It’s good to see you again.”

“It’s good to see you too, Aegon.” He’s not just staring at me in the artificial front porch light; he’s gawking, he’s damn near speechless. “Wow. Wow. It’s really good to see you.”

Yeah, I know I look different. The dark rings around my eyes have vanished, my face is less puffy, my hair is trimmed and healthy and mostly out of my face, I stand taller. I’m wearing a white turtleneck sweater and a leather jacket, black skinny jeans, my combat boots. I have a red chip in my pocket that I can’t fucking wait to show her: 1 month sober. On the first day, you think you’re going to die, and on the second day you wish you would. But you don’t. You live, and that starts out as a grisly inconvenience, and then you get a taste for it. “You can probably guess who I’m looking for.”

“Yeah, I reckon I can,” her dad says. “But she’s not here right now. She went to Ursa Minor.”

I grin, a crooked little curl of the lips. “I think I remember how to get there.”

I hop back into the 4Runner with Sunfyre and pull out into the street, snow and ice chomping under the tires. I had missed driving, I realize now. I got so used to almost never being able to do it that I forgot how good it feels to turn the wheel yourself, to watch the speedometer ramp up when you decide you want to fly. Ten minutes later, I swerve into Ursa Minor’s deserted parking lot and screech to a stop across three separate spaces.

“Oh, what the fuck!” I choke out as I step into the bar, coughing into my sleeve. The blue roses tumble out of my hand. Ursa Minor is empty, but there’s something in the air, something invisible that drives scorching, stinging needles into my eyes and my sinuses. Tears stream down my face; my exposed skin prickles and burns. Sunfyre sneezes over and over again and lingers in the doorway, gulping in fresh night wind from outside. There’s shattered glass and green liquid on the hardwood floor. There’s an upturned barstool. The stereo is playing Cake’s cover of Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps.

What the hell happened here—?

And then I see it: the cannister of bear mace that had rolled under the booth, the same one she and her friends always sat in.

She used the bear mace. She finally used it. But why?

There’s blood on the floor. There’s blood on the table too. There’s a tattered, olive-green journal opened to a blank page. The pieces slide closer and closer and then link together, an explosion in my mind like fireworks.

I bolt outside and study the snow-covered parking lot. There are fresh tire tracks there under the murky luminescence of the streetlights; they lead out to the main road and then north towards the lakes.

“No,” I whisper to no one but the fierce wind, the sky threaded with the opalescent Northern Lights. “No, no, no…”

I sprint back inside Ursa Minor, get the phone Dale keeps behind the bar, and call the cops. “Stay where you are,” the 911 dispatcher instructs me sternly. “Wait for the police, do not attempt to investigate yourself, do not attempt to intervene—”

“Yeah, fuck that,” I say, and slam the receiver into the cradle. Then I swipe the black 8 ball off the pool table.

I load Sunfyre into the 4Runner and spin out of the parking lot, following the parallel lines of tire tracks like the etching of veins beneath skin.

~~~~~~~~~~

There’s a sound, rough and grating; and then you realize that it’s you being dragged across the ice. When your eyes flutter open, you see the uninterrupted sky: indigo night, distant stars, the Northern Lights. Your clothes are wet with snow; it’s so cold that the fabric is freezing, stiff and crackling when you try to move. Dale is lugging you over the frozen lake by the collar of your sweater. It’s choking you, but of course that doesn’t matter much. He’s about to kill you anyway.

“It’s not right,” Dale mutters, and you’re aware through the disorientation and the fog-like cloud of pain that he’s not really talking to you. “Your mom’s a nice lady. It’s not right that she had to lose two people this way, she doesn’t deserve that. Oh well. It can’t be helped now, can it?”

You whimper something, disjointed helpless words. Please, hurts, don’t, please.

“It’s not me,” Dale says, as if it’s perfectly logical. “I mean, not really. It’s this part of me that I can’t cut out. I can only feed it so it goes away for a while. It quiets down sometimes, it hibernates like a bear in the winter…but it always comes back. And my god, is it hungry.”

You smack clumsily, futilely at his hands as he hauls you over the ice. Dale doesn’t seem to notice.

“You have to make it look like an accident. That’s the ticket, if you don’t want anybody to know. You shove a hiker from a ledge, a drunk into the ocean. I did that for a long time, never raised suspicion. Never pinged on anyone’s radar. Jesse was the hardest, though. Good lord, did he fight. Had to pour a bottle of Everclear down his throat. Had to make it look like he was drinking that night. He wasn’t, which was unusual. Kept saying he wanted to turn things around. I think you had something to do with that. Now this? You were never supposed to be here, ladybug. What a shame. What a goddamn shame.”

Consciousness is a river that you dip in and out of; blackness crumbles around the edges of your vision, collapses in, recedes, swells again like a wave. You moan, you beg, you struggle as much as you can. It’s not much. It might as well be nothing.

“Things were easier after I got married,” Dale continues. He has a large hiking backpack slung over his broad shoulders, you see now. It jostles from side to side as he drags you. You know what’s in there: a chisel to break the ice, fishing line to strangle you. “Having someone else there all the time, it was a distraction. And it kept that thing inside me…not tame, no, I wouldn’t say that. But chained up down in the basement, maybe. Now I’m alone again. And when the chains start rattling, there’s nothing to stop me from hearing them.”

You get your feet under you, twist around, and slam your fists into Dale’s chest as hard as you can. He laughs in a baritone rumble and shoves you back down onto the ice; your head hits the ground, and you can feel yourself fading again, the last wisps of sunlight at dusk.

“Sometimes you want to hide,” Dale says. “And sometimes you don’t. I was ready to stop hiding. I can’t tell you what a high it was every time they found a body. The news, the ceaseless chattering around town, the name they gave me…incredible. Exhilarating. I couldn’t sleep for days after each kill. I’d toss and turn all night imagining what the headlines would be. Let me tell you, ladybug. I’ve never tried heroin, and I never need to. It can’t possibly be better than this.”

What will happen to my parents? you think, heartbreak gutting you, dull knifes rearranging your organs. What will happen to Heather and Kimmie and Joyce? What will happen when Aegon finds out he left too soon?

“I knew I needed someone to pin it on,” Dale informs you calmly. “Didn’t take anyone who went to the bar, didn’t take anyone who could be traced back to me. And still, I knew they’d figure it out eventually if I didn’t give them another suspect. At first, I was thinking I might use Aegon. He was a little small, sure, but he showed up around the right time and he was an outsider. Then I saw the way Trent was with you…aggressive, menacing…and I knew it had to be him. It was almost too easy. I planted the seeds, and good lord did they grow.”

“They’ll know,” you croak. “If you kill me, the police will find my body and they’ll know Trent’s not the Ice Fisher.”

Hideously, horribly, Dale smiles down at you. “Oh, ladybug, I don’t think they’ll ever find you. They found the others because I wanted them to. And no one is looking for victims anymore. Once you sink, I’ll cover up the hole with ice and snow. No blood, no signs. People will assume you’re a runaway. It was just too much, wasn’t it? Trent getting arrested, Aegon leaving town. Maybe you ran off after him. Maybe you threw yourself in the channel. Who could say? No, your bones will become silt, your name will slowly disappear from Juneau. And in ten or twenty years, your parents will have you declared dead in absentia. That’s my best guess. That’s how it will go.”

“No,” you sob, battling against the hands knotted into the collar of your sweater. “No—!”

His knuckles bash the side of your head, and a black silence rolls in like high tide, engulfs you, drowns you. When you swim back up into consciousness again, Dale is a few yards from you and drilling a hole in the ice with his chisel. You try to crawl away and promptly collapse, frail and boneless. He glances over at you, chuckles pleasantly, and then begins using a hatchet to widen the opening.

No, you think, hooking your fingers into the snow and dragging yourself towards the forest. No, no, no…

Dale’s ready for you. He walks over, grabs both of your ankles, tugs you with terrifying ease to the hole in the ice. Then he has a length of fishing line in his hands, and he’s looping it around your throat again and again, and he’s tightening it until the needle-thin nylon wire bites into your flesh, spilling tendrils of blood. You know you don’t have a chance, but you try; you owe it to your parents to try. You claw at the fishing line and you struggle and you cry out in hoarse, useless screams—

And then you hear something that doesn’t make any sense. Through the darkness, through the wind, there are the barks of a dog. Sunfyre rockets into your dimming field of vision and jumps on Dale, snarling and growling and snapping at his hands, his face. Dale flings the dog away, and as he’s distracted, Aegon arrives. He’s holding—ludicrously—a black 8 ball from a pool table, and he smashes it into Dale’s head. A sick, wet, crushing sound ricochets, cracked bone cushioned by flesh, and Dale howls as he rolls onto his side and covers his head with his hands.

He peers up at Aegon, furious and pained and stunned. “You?!”

“Me.” Aegon’s voice is dark and low like thunder, like the iron gale of storms over the ocean. “And I’m a killer.”

He lunges at Dale, still wielding the 8 ball. Dale’s massive hand juts out and closes around Aegon’s wrist, and then he yanks him to the ground. They’re grappling on the snow and ice, they’re striking out with knuckles and elbows, they’re ripping at each other with their bare hands. You’re trying to unravel the fishing line still coiled around your throat, panting in deep, frantic breaths so you can see and think clearly, so you can scramble to your feet, so you can help Aegon. And then Dale gets away from him just long enough to grab you again, to wrap the ends of the fishing line around his fingers. He delivers one last macerating blow to your skull, pulls you by your throat to the gaping hole in the ice, and shoves you through.

The water is so cold it’s paralyzing. There is a thought that seizes you—so overwhelming, so strangely rational—that says all you have to do is stay where you are, to wait a little longer, and then you’ll never hurt again, you’ll never be disappointed or caged, you’ll never be anything. And you think of all the lives you could have lived, all the places you could have gone: cities and beaches and deserts and valleys, gardens and rivers, ruins and glass. You were always so afraid of really going after them. What the hell were you so afraid of? Everything worth fearing is right here in Juneau.

I can still do those things. I can still live. And I can still help Aegon.

You jolt out of your inertia and clamber madly for the surface. But you don’t hit frigid open air; you hit ice, ice too thick to break through, ice too thick for more than a murmur of light to penetrate. Your palms press against the semitransparent wall; bubbles of carbon dioxide spurt from your nose and mouth. You feel for the opening that Dale made, but you don’t know where it is. You are lost beneath the ice, running out of air, fading rapidly. Then you hear Jesse—and you aren’t sure how you know what his voice sounds like, but you do—speaking softly and kindly to you, comforting you, telling you which way to go.

I’m sorry that no one knows the truth, you say without speaking. I’m sorry we thought you destroyed yourself. I’m sorry you never got the chance to truly live.

You were all better off without me anyway, he answers, without any bitterness at all. And that’s true, isn’t it?

There is a great disruption that rocks through the water. New currents stir into existence, fresh waves spring out of the darkness. And then someone takes your hand and draws you towards a noise, muffled through the ice and water: a dog barking, you realize. Then your palms find the opening and you inhale brutally cold air into your aching lungs, the best you’ve ever tasted. Aegon helps pull you through the hole and out of the lake, out of the jaws of oblivion.

You lie together on the ice, breathing in gasps that turn to mist in the night wind. Dale’s body is sprawled several yards away. The hatchet he’d used to break up the ice is buried in his neck, spine severed, eyes slick and vacant. You can see reflections of the Northern Lights flickering in them.

“You came back,” you whisper to Aegon as whirling police sirens approach, the lights dancing on his face: blue like the ocean, red like fire and blood.

“Of course I came back, Appletini,” he says, laughing with frenzied relief, kissing your cheeks and forehead over and over again, lake water dripping from his hair. Sunfyre jumps around you both, yapping ecstatically, his tail wagging. “I couldn’t leave without my Juneau girl.”

~~~~~~~~~~

There’s wind, but it isn’t sharp like a blade. There’s a sky, but it isn’t cloaked in cloud cover or fog. The boats that bob in the surf are sailboats and cruisers, not fishing vessels. Dolphins crest out of the sun-speckled waves like someone coming up from a dream.

It’s June 9th, and you’re soaring down the Pacific Coast Highway in the red Ford Mustang convertible you rented after the plane touched down in Seattle. Aegon is in the driver’s seat, black sunglasses and white T-shirt, his hair whipping in the breeze. He has one hand on the wheel and the other behind your headrest. Sunfyre is in the backseat, grinning like only dogs can. You turn up the song on the radio: Drive by Incubus.

You and Aegon had stayed in Juneau long enough for your skull to heal, and for your parents to find someone else to take over the vet clinic. They settled on a 32-year-old from Detroit: Justin McNair, a former Marine like your dad, and he either has no family or a bad one because he never wants to talk about them. Perhaps it doesn’t really matter which it is; perhaps sometimes they’re just about the same thing. Your parents have already basically adopted him. He eats dinner with them three times a week and calls your dad when he needs help with house maintenance or scaring a moose away from his truck. And just before you went south, Aegon showed him how to make the world’s best hot chocolate.

You send postcards back to Juneau from each town you stop in. Heather’s bon voyage gift to you had been an indecently revealing swimsuit. Joyce appeared with—what else?—a stack of books fit for leisurely beach reading. And Kimmie gave you, however bizarrely, a compass. So you don’t get lost, she had said with an innocuous little smile. You honestly couldn’t tell if she was joking.

During his one month in jail, Trent learned how to meditate and do yoga. He’s still kind of a dumbass, but he’s also a supposedly devout vegan Buddhist, and he had the decency to leave you alone aside from an apology letter that he slid into the moose-shaped mailbox: handwritten, six pages, lots of spelling and grammatical errors. Oh, and he finally got that job with the Forest Service, probably mostly due to his high-profile wrongful detainment. Now hikers get to swoon over his muscles and hair flips.

You’ll go back to Juneau, of course. Maybe just for visits, maybe for more than that someday. But it will never feel like a cage again.

Aegon calls Aemond every two or three days, a habit he started when he was in rehab. At first it was by necessity—he needed someone to pay the $30,000 bill—but now you think he secretly looks forward to it. He updates Aemond about how the road trip is going and reassures him that the plan hasn’t changed: south to San Diego, and then cutting east across the country to Miami. You don’t know what exactly life will look like there, and neither does Aegon. That’s not the important thing about going. Part of AA is making amends, and Aegon has a lot of work to do in that respect. He wants to go back to Miami, he says. He’s ready to go back.

San Diego is exactly like Aegon once told you it would be. You weave through the rust-colored peaks of the Laguna Mountains and there’s the Pacific Ocean, glittering and sapphire-blue, peppered with surfers and sea lions. It’s hot and it’s beautiful beyond words and everything grows there: ivy, cactuses, palm trees, calla lilies, roses. And for the first time that you can remember, the world feels breathtakingly, impossibly big. You get carryout from an unassuming restaurant called The Taco Stand, and then Aegon parks the convertible in La Jolla. You walk down the steps carved into the cliffside, paper bags in your hands full of tacos and churros, Aegon carrying Sunfyre so the dog won’t slip.

You sit together on the golden sand and watch the 8:00 p.m. sun sink into the waves, Aegon’s arm around your waist, your fingers tucking his lock of silvery hair behind his ear. And then he takes your hand, kneads it until it’s sinuous and relaxed, and reads the lines of your palm in the amber dusk like firelight.

“It says you’re happy,” he tells you. “And that you’re free.”

“I am,” you reply, smiling as the ocean stretches out like the arm of a galaxy: the ancient past, the infinite future.

#aegon ii #aegon targaryen x reader #aegon targaryen ii #aegon x reader #aegon targaryen #aegon ii targaryen #aegon x y/n #aegon x you #nttf #north to the future

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angelsanarchy · 8 months ago

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What It Cost: Samuel Lafferty x Y/N Mini Series PRT 02

Tagging: @ithinkitstimetonap @kappasbbgirl @chainsawgvtsfvck @luzclarita57 @miniisunshine @madamemaximoff06 @romanroyapoligist @thirtyratsinasuit @ethical-cain-vinnel @blueberrypancakesworld @dumbbitchdelrey @loljustignoreth4t @tvgirlsbluehair @s0ulfulll @dukesofsp00ks @mommymilkers0526 @vomiting-blood @lustkillers @s-0lar @hisemoslut @roryculkinsgf @ultrakissed @tempt-ress @starry-eyed-wild-child

Samuel was surprised when he heard they were baptizing Y/n into their church. She was apparently had already been baptized but she was urged into getting re-baptized so she could truly be apart of their family. This was a very special event that he would typically really enjoy but the uniform that they had to wear was always a pain to have to pull out. Having so many children and wearing a white suit was dangerous.

"Samuel, be sure to pull that hair back son." His father reminded him as they entered the church. He walked towards the bathroom and noticed Y/n trying to take a peak out of the curtains to see just how many people were already settled into the church pews. Samuel snuck up behind her and she jumped when he put his hands on her sides.

"Samuel! You scared the life out of me!" Y/n she gripped her chest and he smirked. She was dressed in the traditional white gown, not a single piece of makeup on her face, she looked angelic to him in this moment.

"You seem nervous. You've done this before right? It's not that big of a deal." Samuel could tell she was anxious by how she rang her hands out.

"Yes but this is different. It feels...different." She insisted. Samuel pushed the door closed behind himself so that it was just the two of them in the bathroom now.

"You're right. This is different but you aren't alone. You're joining this family we have here and we will never let you feel an ounce of fear ever again." Samuel rubbed her arms watching her take deep, calming breaths. He leaned his head against the side of her temple and she closed her eyes.

"You certainly have a way of reassuring someone." She smiled.

"You're going to be just fine Y/n. Hopefully you remembered to leave the red bra and panties at home today." He teased making her open her eyes.

"I did actually." She turned her head almost daring him to check. Samuel ran his hands down her the front of her gown and felt no resistance. His eyebrow went up slightly as he let his hand root to the bottom of her gown just to feel that she wasn't wearing anything beneath it. He felt his cock stiffen just touching her bare skin and she smirked.

"You do realize the moment that water cleanses you, the entirety of the church will be able to see you in all your glory." Samuel's fingers grazed her cunt and could feel the slickness between her folds.

"Naked in rebirth is how it should be." Y/n teased. Samuel couldn't help but push his fingers inside of her. She gasped gripping his wrist and throwing her head back.

"What sinful things have you been thinking about for you to be this wet?" Samuel pumped his fingers inside of her and used his thumb on her clit as she bucked her hips into his palm.

"I-I can't...oh Samuel." She turned her head to face him and he smiled watching her trying to contain her moans to an acceptable level as she rode his hand.

"Be a good girl and stay quiet." Samuel leaned forward and kissed the side of her neck as she whimpered. When she started cumming, he could feel her quaking around his fingers and he couldn't help but feel the front of his pants becoming damp with precum wishing his cock was buried deep inside of her cunt to feel the squeeze of her orgasm. She leaned forward and bit her hand to keep from moaning out loud before crumbling against the sink. Samuel removed his finger slowly and brought them to his lips, sucking her juices from them.

"Sweet...just as the lord intended." He smirked turning to the mirror and pinning his hair back while she collected herself next to him.

"You...you asked me what sinful things I was thinking about...it was you. You taking my body and thusting into me, cumming inside of me and knowing that I would be bathed in the holy water with your cum flowing down my legs.." Y/n explained. Samuel bit his lip.

"Is that so? Is that something you want? You want my cum inside of you?" He asked pushing her hair to the side.

"More than anything." She gripped his hand and kissed it. He thought about taking her right then and there but the organ music started to play and he knew things were getting started. He could see her stiffen knowing she had run out of time.

"You've got to go!" She fixed her gown and Samuel smiled impressed by her commitment to being baptized despite just being fingered in the church bathroom. He returned to his seat, hair now pinned back and uncomfortable hard on finally dying down as he sat next to his brothers.

He watched her go through the process of becoming an official member of their church and once she emerged from the vat of holy water, her white gown now soaked and clinging to her naked body, he could see her nipples and curves calling to him, begging him to be licked and sucked.

His brothers all shuffled a bit next to him, also feeling the arousal of her naked form but he had to smile to himself as her eyes met his. She belonged to him and no one else but God.

#TV Series: Under the Banners of Heaven #Samuel Lafferty #Samuel Lafferty x Y/N #What it Cost #What it Cost mini series #Rory Culkin #Culkin Cult #Under the Banners of Heaven

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ptseti · 7 months ago

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Bishop Talbert Swan

@TalbertSwan on X

White people have mass murdered Black people and burned entire Black towns like Rosewood, Florida and Tulsa, Oklahoma over false accusations of offending white women. Emmett Till was lynched over a false allegation of whistling at a white woman. George Stinney was executed at 14 years old over false accusations of killing two white girls. Five Black teens were unjustly imprisoned over false accusations of raping a white woman jogging in Central Park. Black men have been unjustly, profiled, arrested, prosecuted, imprisoned, and even murdered over false accusations of harming white women. There are four white women on the Olympic women’s basketball team. But somehow Caitlyn Clark is a victim of RACISM?

Note: Angel Resse wasn't selected either so how the Fvck can this be racist?🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄

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ghostliest-ghosty-ghost-bastard · 1 year ago

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Name 3 aesthetics that describe you. (if u feel like it)

Oooh, ok I'm a hoe for this shit so you might get more than three

1. Indie Grunge ( this is how id ress usually and a lot of my shit kinda falls in line with this, makes me happy lol )

2. Cassette Futurism ( it's cliche but I adore it. I was raised by very religious parents and they only approved of old tech, like VHS and walkman type shit, and also was raised on Ghibli, bing bang boom I thirst for the good old new shit )

3. Cryptid Academia ( GODS DAYUMN THIS SHIT, I love this, this is great, I had a Big Book of Cryptids when I was little and adored it and it also made me this way )

4.And then a bonus grab bag of aesthetics I love

Hauntology, Anglo Gothic, Hate Core (trust me on this one), ANGEL CORE !!!! (to quite Dare Devil "that would be the Catholicism), Midwest Gothic/Emo, Dark/Light Academia, Soft Apocalypse, and whatever the fuck Rodrick Heffley had going on

#ghostlywailingintothevoid #ghost answers #aesthetics #fucking hell ill rant about this shit all day #a lot of it cones from an obsession eith dingy browns and greens

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surveillance-0011 · 1 year ago

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I may blend the hotd and tboi x splatoon aus but it may be too many ideas or people in one place,, idk but ive got ideas,, and i’ll put em in one post ehehe

hotd x splatoon:

ams and nsbs are affiliated or just the same thing the idols r still there but more in the bg,, Maybe they’d all have different themed codenames rather than numbers.. lisa would probably be neo 3 or adjacent then. this is one of the points that would clash with mixing it with the tboi x splat au

All creatures are sanitized or like. half fuzzy half sanitized some sort of secret third thing fucking neosanitization idk maybe it’ll have to do with coral instead,, but curien is an inkfish so misanthropic he’s bringing squids back and/or continuing what Tartar started. Goldman is either an inkfish the opposite species of curien or some sorta fish. hm. goldfish hehe. but he wants to make a sanctuary of more “natural” beings. And thornheart is thornheart..

Most of the creatures are made from already existing people maybe theyd be able to be reverted back into their previous selves with some side effects. others are made in the lab. Most are inkfish but it gets wacky

Temperance is a part of the same clan as shiver and is like.her 2nd or 3rd cousin. they did not get along before hand and he’d try to upstage her a lot. now while warped he’s still relatively lucid so he’s just kind of an ass to her. ALso going to drag ocean hunter into this the shark he’s tamed is leviathan. Since the muatations still make him gigantic he swings the poor shark around.

Likewise Justice is a part of the eel clan though he is not as closely related to frye as shiver is to temp. He’s very cryptic and not rlly all there. Frye did used to look up to him so seeing him like this is distressing

Emp(eror +ress) and the world are hybrid lab-grown creatures, all glass octo + sea angel probaby? maybe human in there?

Heirophant is a salmonid yeayy

hotd x tboi

maggie is neo 3 isaac is lil buddy. samson is agent 4 lilith is 8 idk about the og 3 yet maybe cain

Isaac’s mom is a goldie. ??? the lost and the forgotten only exist in Isaac’s nightmares when he thinks about his future of possibly dying, being abandoned etc etc.

His dad is a steel eel driver but defected to grizzco bc he Fucked Up Big Time

idk if azazel would be better as a salmonid (bc isaac parallels/evil him) or an octoling i kind of want the latter

Most demons r octarians but some of the human kids r too. Eve escaped to the surface early on and participated in turf wars circa Splat1 while in disguise. She’s also a werekraken. She uses the .96 gal deco

Lilith as mentioned before is 8. Incubus is some sorta seeing eye octotrooper guide and gello is a bby zapfish. Dark one/Adversary is her dad and he gets sanitized

Horsemen r salmonids yeeeayayay

Beast is a super fucked up king salmonid, some sort of giant mudmouth

ig there is a sect of octarian + salmonid diplomacy that all of the bosses mentioned here work under ehhh

dogma is some sort of ai, maybe a remnant of human society

Apollyon is also a salmonid they’re basically a worse flyfish in a weird tartar-based shell

deadly sins are an octoling team or more salmonids

most monsters are weird fuzzied inkfish

bethany mains ballpoint splatling and one of the stringers. Laz has the same mutation yoko has which leaves him sickly but when he’s well he plays with the h3 nozzlenose.

#splatoon au #splatoon

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theroyalilithyiafamily · 2 years ago

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Quick character info

So I wanted to do a Q&A but realized I didn't properly introduce 'everyone' so I'll do it now and maybe I'll follow through with the Q&A

HRH King Terrence:

Terrence was born in 1993 to HRH the late King Dallas Of Lilthyia and HRH The Queen Mother Angel. He has three children with the queen consort

HRH Queen Resse:

Reese was born in 1994 to her parents His Grace Malakai The Grand Duke Of Holloway and Her Grace Tia The Grand Duchess Of Holloway. She has three children with the king

HRH The Queen Mother Angel:

The queen mother was born in 1969 to The king and queen of Tyrane. She has 2 sons The King and The duke of Athea

HRH Prince Wendell Duke of Athea:

Prince Wendell was born in 1999 to HRHThe late King Dallas Of Lilthyia and HRH Queen Mother Angel. He is currently engaged To Selina the princess of Sylvia.

HRH Prince Jayce:

Jayce was born in 2015 to King Terrence and Queen Consort Reese of Lilithyia. He is the heir and his title when he turns 18 will be HRH Prince Jayce of Delasia. He is currently the oldest out of his siblings and has just started getting into royal events and duties.

HRH Princess Evangeline:

Evangeline was born in 2017 to King Terrence and Queen Consort Reese of Lilithyia. She is the middle child of her sibling and hasn't started attending anything yet but has still traveled

HRH Prince Omar:

Omar was born in 2023 to King Terrence and Queen Consort Reese of Lilithyia. He is the youngest child of his siblings and is too young to travel as of yet.

#sims 4 #sims 4 royalty #simblr #sims 4 royal legacy #sims 4 royal story #my sims #sims 4 black sims #sims 4 gameplay #sims 4 royal #royal simblr

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escadaman · 5 months ago

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Peace: I've not seen WNBA since my girls Tina Thompson and Lusa Leslie were involved, they were dainty True Womb-men who I would visibly see in Los Angeles Cali South Central Los Angeles and played VS against them in The Great Western Forum. That was a second ago,now I'm into WNBA off the merrit of doll face hooper Angel Resse 😇 😍 💖 she's a 💎 out there‼️

➖️ Internet Do Your Thing 🪄✨️🪄💖🇲🇦💎🇺🇲

#AngelResse #Iwanttomeatyou #PlayHer1on1 #InviteHerTo #AlMasjid #themoorish #theunitingofasia #MOORS #WNBA #Summertime #southcentrallosangeles #RealTalk #TRŪ #ButYouDontHearMeThough

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human-antithesis · 8 months ago

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youtube

LAMC

Thank you for calling the Los Angeles Municipal Court. This is an automated system that can handle most inquiries. If after using this system, your question is not answered, please, stay on the line and a representative will be with you shortly.

If you are calling from a touch-tone phone, please press 1. If you are calling from a cellular phone, please press 2. If you are calling from a pay phone, please press 3. If you are calling from a car phone, please press 4. If you are calling from a secret-spy phone, please press 5. If you are calling from a princess, phone, please press 6 If you are calling from a car fax, please press 7. and If you are calling from a rotary phone, please, stay on the line

Make your selection at any time.

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For information in English, please press 1. For information in Spanish, please press 2. For information in Japanese, please press 3. For information in Chinese, please press 4. For information in Dutch, please press 5. For information in Latvian, please press 6. For information in French, please press 7. For information in Yiddish, please press 8. For information in Ig-pay Atin-lay, lease-pay ress-pay ine-nay.

[touch-tone 1]

If you are responding to a notice from the City Attorney's office, press 3. To check the amount due on a parking ticket, press 4. If you believe you are ticketed in error because your disabled person placard or your preferential parking permit was clearly displayed, or your vehicle is disabled, press 5. For all other traffic related matters, press 6.

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[three touch-tone 6's]

For traffic school information, press 1. For payment inormation, press 2. For court locations, press 3. For general ticket and warrant information, press 4. For court appearance and bail information, press 5. For traffic court appointment information, press 6.

[four touch-tone 6's]

If you need to make a traffic court appointment, please press 1, unless you have not filled out a DD form 3018, in which case, please press 2. To receive a blank DD form 3018, please come down to the Los Angeles Municipal Court building during normal business hours. If you have filled out DD form 3018, but have not reported to the City Attorney's office, please press 3.

If you are not receiving physical therapy but have a relative that voted 'no' on Proposition 187 * and have collected a notarized waiver from said relative, and have attached said waiver in triplicate to said form, please press 4, unless of course, said relative is not a naturalized citizen, in which case, please press 5.

If you are receiving physical therapy from a naturalized citizen but have not voted 'yes' or 'no' on Proposition 187 and have not reported to the City Attorney, but have filled out form DD 3018, please press 6.

Of course, if you have not had your eyes tested by your local Department of Motor Vehicles in the last three years, in which case press 7. If you have had your eyes tested AND voted 'yes' on Proposition 187, and have your DD form 3018 filled out and have already reported to the City Attorney but have never been called in for jury duty, press 8.

[touch-tone entry]

Make your selection at any time.

[here begins the touch-tone frenzy]

Make your selection at any time.

The system is waiting for a touch tone entry. The system is waiting for a touch tone entry.

There is a possibility that you have made an error in selecting your message. Please try again.

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I'm sorry, but we are unable to interpret your request. Please call back during normal business hours.

If you are calling from a touch-tone phone, please press 1. If you are calling from a cellular phone, please press 2.

#Tool #Progressive Metal #United States #USA #US #Youtube

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simplegenius042 · 6 months ago

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The most "evil" hero OC I can think of from the top of my head would be Kamski Neon. Sonya and Ress were a close second, however, when it comes to the most immoral acts, Kamski takes the cake. Kamski is Silva's personal/family doctor (and the father to her dead lover Irene who was killed in a massacre that they both survived), and Kamski has a (understandable) disdain towards so-called "prophets" and those who overzealously and blindly follow said prophets. And while he thinks he does have Silva's best interests in mind, it doesn't justify the acts he commits, which only increase tension and breaks his trust with Silva. Kamski kills the cultists in the Project at Eden's Gate (aka Peggies), including those who are unarmed non-fighters, and very much would kill any defectors seeking to change their ways. He destroys a lot of property that Eden's Gate initially stole from the locals, including resources that the Resistance could use, and he has no regard for his Resistance ally fighter's lives, which is mostly due to Kamski's "us vs them" attitude; with him and Silva as "us" and everyone else as "them". Kamski is also not hesitant in manipulating and pushing Silva into showing no mercy towards her enemies, actively discouraging potential peace and going behind her back in certain decisions.

The most "good" villain OC I have is Xiang Ba'al. A demon from the Sloth Ring of Hell, Xiang takes responsibility over the soul of a little girl named Jezebel who was damned as a "Sinner" down in the Pride Ring after being murdered by a Soulmate who wasn't appropriate for her. Angered by this injustice, Xiang takes Jezebel under his wing, teaching her how to fight and use her mantis cutters as weapons, and they travel to the human world to dismantle the Soulmate system after seeing how it negatively affected Jezebel. Xiang is well-intentioned, however, he was also very forceful in his cause, removing soul marks from people regardless if they asked him to or not, if they wanted it or not. However, Xiang doesn't harm anyone (at least, those who are innocent), though isn't afraid to defend himself and Jezebel from both humans and angels alike. Xiang is a well-intentioned extremist, one who tries to minimize harm rather than cause it (and though he does take away people's choice in whether or not they want to meet their soulmate, or worse, have met their soulmate but thanks to him, can no longer feel their connection with their soulmate, Xiang only harms others if it's in self-defence; so a literal noble demon).

Tell me, which of your hero OCs is the most “evil,” and which of your villain OCs is the most “good?”

#series: the silver chronicles #far cry 5 #oc: kamski neon #project at eden's gate #wip: wings and horns #oc: xiang ba'al #oc: jezebel ba'al #both kamski and xiang are similar in a way; however kamski is more selfish and destructive than xiang is

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 2 years ago

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North To The Future [Chapter 11: I Will Buy You A New Life]

Chapter warnings: Language, alcoholism, addiction, murder, discussions of sex, sexual content, violence, this chapter has something you’ve been waiting for. 😏💚 (And some things you have definitely not been waiting for.)

Word count: 5.5k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

Taglist: @ladylannisterxo @doingfondue @tclegane @quartzs-posts @liathelioness @aemcndtargaryen @thelittleswanao3 @burningcoffeetimetravel @hinata7346 @poohxlove @borikenlove @myspotofcraziness @travelingmypassion @graykageyama @skythighs @lauraneedstochill @darlingimafangirl @charenlie @thewew @eddies-bat-tattoos @minttea07 @joliettes @trifoliumviridi @bornbetter @flowerpotmage @thewitch-lives @bearwithegg @tempt-ress @padfooteyes @teenagecriminalmastermind @chelsey01 @anditsmywholeheart @heliosscribbles @elsolario

Please let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist! 💜

No one knows what to say to you: not Heather when you return to the Jeep with Sunfyre in tow, not your parents when you walk into the hushed house littered with glass bottles and wayward appetizer crumbs. Sunfyre immediately begins assisting with the cleanup effort, sniffing around the couch and under the dining room table, licking up the delicacies he finds there. Your parents look at the golden retriever, look at you, look at each other.

“Um…I’ll drive Heather home,” your mom offers. She finishes the Earl Grey tea she’d been sipping, sets the cup in the kitchen sink, and grabs her keys. They depart into the night together, Heather giving you one last long, sympathetic glance. But still, she doesn’t know what to say. You haven’t told her what you found in Aegon’s apartment, but all the same she can read the horror of it on your face. And perhaps that is more truthful than mere words anyway, unbound by the restrictions of jagged consonants and the curves of vowels, lexicons, syntax, ink.

In the silence, in the sunless dawn of the new millennium, your dad studies you, red dress and mascara-stained face and shoulders limp. He asks tentatively, like stepping through a minefield: “How long will Sunfyre be staying with us?”

“Forever.”

“Okay.” He nods, understanding. He doesn’t need to know the details. Addiction wears many faces—masks it peels off and discards until it finds the flavor you like best, the one that can knot itself around your throat—but its soul is always the same, grave-cold and grasping. “I’m sorry about Aegon. I’m sorry that you had to find out what this feels like.”

“He’s leaving. It’s over.”

Your dad smiles, profoundly sad, dreadfully patient. “I’ve heard that before.”

You’re so heartbroken and ashamed that you can’t meet his eyes. Jessie died twenty years ago, and now it’s all come back around again. He must feel like he’s seeing ghosts.

Your dad sits down at the dining room table, sighing deeply, rubbing his forehead with his thumbs. And he’s not talking about Aegon anymore. “I’ll never stop living in that man’s shadow. I know it. Your mother knows it. It’s not something we’ve ever discussed, but it’s there. And I can’t even resent her for it, because she would forget him if she could. I fully believe that. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t love me and the life we’ve built together. But it does mean there’s a part of her that will always be somewhere else. In another room, in another time. And I wonder sometimes…if there is an afterlife, if there is a cosmic Round Two where we all meet up someplace with harps and angels and cities made of clouds…who she will be standing with.”

The terror is overwhelming. Does it never end? This pain, this longing, this irrational hope? You wonder if there’s any cure for what you’re feeling. You wonder if your dad was ever some tedious, try-hard jock that your mom avoided at bars and parties.

“I know it hurts,” your dad says. “I know it hurts like hell. But I think it’s better if you can end things sooner rather than later. Because I imagine that once you start loving someone like that”—someone brilliant, someone broken—“it’s very difficult to stop.”

It’s too late, you know. You smooth the bloodlike satin of your dress, trying not to start sobbing again. It’s too fucking late.

“Jesse used to do things like that.” Remarkably, there is still anger in your dad’s voice: rusty, treacherous, decades-old anger. “He would make plans and make promises, and then your mother would be sitting there waiting with a suitcase and he’d act like it never happened. I don’t know if he really forgot or if he had to pretend he did because he’d blown all the money. And then of course he’d apologize and promise to make it up to her, buy her flowers, pour her tea. He was always saying they’d go to London together. They never did. They never got out of Alaska.”

The tea, you think, dismayed. The Earl Grey tea. Just like Aegon’s hot chocolate. It’s like looking at yourself in a mirror. It’s enough to drive someone insane. “I need to go to bed now,” you say, your words weak and splintering.

“Okay. Okay, ladybug.” He looks sorry, like he knows he’s said too much. He gets up to hug you goodnight. He’s immense and warm and strong, yet careful, yet benign, yet so palpably ordinary.

Why can’t I fall in love with someone like you, Dad? Why can’t I be happy here?

He helps you put out food and water for Sunfyre, and when you volunteer to gather up some of the trash in the living room he adamantly refuses. You climb the staircase in the high heels you hardly ever wear, your skull flooded with unwelcome reminders. Aegon was supposed to be here with me. In my house, in my room, in my bed. Now he’s nowhere. And he’ll never touch me again.

In your bedroom mirror, you stare at your reflection. You can’t explain it, but you don’t look like yourself. The red woman in the silvery glass is not self-possessed or pragmatic or wise. She is a frayed thread, and she is desperately, irrevocably sad. You step out of your heels. You unzip the back of your dress. And before you take it all the way off—Aegon was supposed to do that part—you tear the magazine cutout of the Mustang convertible flying down the Pacific Coast Highway off the mirror. You rip it in half over and over again until it is a flurry of unidentifiable scraps on the floor. You think of how you have never acted selfishly, never acted irresponsibly. You think of how far that dedication has gotten you. Not far enough. Nowhere near far enough.

You are trembling with exhaustion and fury. Your eyes hurt, your ankles hurt, you hurt in places so deep you can’t name them. You think of all the things about Aegon you were willing to overlook and how vanishingly little he could give you in return. You want him here, and because he’s made that impossible you want revenge; you want him to feel as viciously, nauseatingly betrayed as you do. You want to do something he could never forgive. You want to knock his memory out of you like the asteroid killed the dinosaurs.

She’s hoping in time that her memories will fade.

You see it in a sudden, scarlet vision: how enraged Aegon was when he thought you had slept with Trent, how he tensed up every time Trent touched you, how he didn’t want you to be alone with him. You see how Trent has been throwing himself at you—like a skydiver out of an airplane—in a way that is somehow both frightening and shamelessly pitiful. You had once told Aegon that Trent didn’t want you dead. I know, Aegon had replied. He wants you to be his wife.

You pick up the phone on your nightstand, and then you pause. Can I do this? Can I really?

You couldn’t yesterday, and you probably won’t be able to tomorrow. But right now…

You dial the number for Trent’s apartment across town. He answers on the second ring. “Sup?”

“Hi, it’s me. Are you busy?”

“Hey!” There’s a boisterous grin in his voice. “Nah, not at all. You need something? Are your parents rearranging the living room furniture again?”

“I don’t need anything, but I’d like something.”

“Oh yeah? What?”

“What you’ve been waiting for.”

Stilted, silent seconds tick by as he puzzles it out. “For real?” He’s ecstatic, yet circumspect.

“For real.”

“Why? I mean, I’m not complaining, maybe I shouldn’t be asking questions, maybe I should just be sprinting for my truck, but I’m…uh…you changed your mind?”

“It’s not a marriage proposal, Trent,” you tell him. “It’s not a date. I just want to start out 2000 the right way.” Without Aegon. Without any threads still connecting me to him.

“Hell, I’ll take that,” he says, chuckling.

“You have to come here though. It has to be at my house.” Where your parents are just a few rooms away. Where Trent will have to be the best possible version of himself.

If he was really the Ice Fisher, why would he have saved Aegon from the channel? Why would he have been so unabashed about his anger, his strength, his size 12 boots? This killer is quiet, strategic, invisible. That’s the only way he’s managed to murder five people without getting caught. Perhaps Trent really does lack the requisite subtlety…the requisite intellect, to be perfectly blunt about it. But then who else could it be? Who the fuck could it be?

“Totally. On my way now.” Trent hangs up.

When he arrives, your parents are still downstairs cleaning up after the New Year’s Eve party. They greet him warmly and (seemingly) without much surprise. He flips his hair and offers to lift the couch so they can get the bottles that have rolled underneath. They gratefully accept. Small talk and festive merriment are exchanged, and you marvel at how seamlessly Trent blends into this family, into this house, into Juneau; he was made for Alaska. It’s in his strapping muscles and lumbering bones. It’s in his claustrophobically small mind. And then you lead him upstairs.

You don’t waste any time talking. Already you’re losing your nerve, already you have a voice surfacing in the choppy waves of your mind like a drowning man: You don’t want to do this, you don’t want to do this, you know you don’t want to do this. You tug off Trent’s blazer, button-up shirt, and khakis and shoo him onto the bed. Then you take off everything that you’d put on for Aegon, back when the Alaska Standard Time Zone was still living in the dark dwindling hours of 1999.

You’re in control the whole time because you don’t trust Trent to be. You don’t want him to be. You don’t even want to think about him. It feels like nothing. There’s no moment to get lost in, because it’s not a moment at all. It’s just logistical adjustments and premeditated reactions and flesh, heavy, crushing, bumping, artless flesh. Your thoughts are far from this room, drastically far. You hope Aegon drives by in the morning and spots Trent’s truck in the driveway, or he hears about it, or he reads it in the straightforward, chiseled lines of Trent’s face next time he sees him. You hope it digs its razored claws into him and never lets go. You hope it fucking destroys him.

As soon as it’s over you get into the shower and scrub off every remnant of what you’ve done. You regret it immediately. Aegon shattered any chance the two of you had and you ended it, so you don’t know why this feels so much like infidelity; perhaps because the reality of it is less like betraying Aegon and more like betraying yourself. In the foggy bathroom mirror, you notice that Trent left a darkening violet bruise on the side of your neck. You don’t even remember him doing it. You were so far away from him: miles away, years away, in the ambiguous future, in the lurking past. You can’t stand the thought of sleeping next to Trent. You suggest he claims the living room couch instead, complete with fresh sheets and several spare pillows. He gamely agrees.

You are optimistic that Trent will be long gone by the time you wake up. But when you venture downstairs at just before noon on New Year’s Day, you find him in the kitchen making breakfast with your parents, flipping pancakes and turning bacon and whistling along to the Red Hot Chili Peppers song that spills from your dad’s record player: not Scar Tissue this time, but Otherside.

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s Monday, January 10th when the green Nova skates into the vet clinic parking lot and slides to a slippery rest across three different spaces. As the engine dies, the song that was blaring is cut short: I Will Buy You A New Life by Everclear. Aegon steps out under the fading midday sun, almost falls on the ice, traverses slowly and cautiously towards the entrance.

“Oh no, not him!” Jennifer laments. You rush back into the exam room and slam the door.

You haven’t seen Aegon since New Year’s Eve, but you knew he hadn’t left Juneau. You’ve spied the Nova parked outside his apartment building, and Heather has run into him around town: the Foodland, the Gas ‘N Go, Ursa Minor. And then there are the phone calls. He left fifteen messages before your dad picked up and politely asked him to stop calling. Then he started putting notes in the moose-shaped mailbox.

You can hear Jennifer telling Aegon to leave. She must not be very persuasive. He bursts through the exam room door and closes it behind him. He’s wearing all black—parka, turtleneck sweater, jeans, combat boots—and his white-blond hair slicked back from his face. It gives the impression that he has no distractions, no secrets. You are suddenly acutely aware of your own, your skin crawling everywhere Trent touched you. The bruise on your neck has vanished, but the memory of it is still trapped there, heavy and scorching like shame.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” you say coldly.

“Then you should have picked up the phone.” Aegon throws it down on the metal exam table: not a thick, neatly-sealed envelope but a lump of mismatched crumpled cash—ones, fives, tens, twenties—knotted together with several rubber bands.

“What is that?”

“It’s your half of the money for the San Diego trip.”

“How—?”

“I picked up every shift I could and I sold the necklace.”

“You sold it? Permanently? It’s gone?”

“It’s gone,” he agrees. He looks good. He looks more than good: the shadows under his eyes are almost nonexistent, his skin is bright and healthy, he’s even standing taller. He moves so he’s not blocking the door, so you have an escape if you want it. You don’t leave. You wish you wanted to, but you don’t. You just don’t. “It doesn’t matter. It was the last thing I had from home, it was time for me to let go of it anyway. That was my insurance policy for anytime I needed quick cash…I’ve probably pawned it fifty times in the past six years. But this was important.”

“You shouldn’t have done that,” you say. “I told you I wanted you to leave Juneau and I meant it.”

He searches your face, his eyes blue and clear and wide. “You didn’t mean it.”

“I did,” you insist, lying.

“Look, I’m…” He presses a palm to his chest. He glances down at your right arm, then comes back to your face. “I am so, so sorry that you had to see me that way. I’m sorry for what happened. But it’s not going to happen again.”

“I don’t believe you. And I’m not interested in making plans and sacrificing so they can be a reality and then waiting around to see if you ever show up.”

“I’ll show up,” he swears. His gaze flicks down to your arm again.

“What are you looking at?”

He doesn’t reach for your forearm. Instead, he points to his own. “I remember grabbing your arm, but I don’t know how rough I was.”

“Oh. No, it’s fine. You didn’t hurt me. I don’t think it even left a mark.”

He exhales, relieved. “Good.”

There is a lull that is quiet and still but not awkward. You can hear the clock ticking on the wall, miserably prophetic. The way I feel about him hasn’t changed, you realize with disbelief. I still want him in a way that is helpless, all-consuming. I still love him.

“What happened was a mistake,” Aegon says, slowly and with great effort. “But it wasn’t random.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“This isn’t going to make any sense to you, it’s going to sound insane. But I don’t like New Year’s Eve.”

“Well I don’t like having a heroin addict boyfriend.”

“I’m not a heroin addict.” His voice is sharp and forceful, but not cruel. “It was a momentary relapse, I detoxed on my couch, I’m fine now.”

“Why don’t you like New Year’s Eve?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

You scoff bitterly. “More lies?”

“Not lies,” Aegon says. “Secrets. I haven’t lied to you.”

“Yes, you have. You said you’d be there.”

He shows you the palms of his hands, empty. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“I want this,” Aegon says determinedly. “I’m not ready to give up on this. I want you back.”

“Why can’t you leave me alone? Why can’t you just jet off to some new city and resume sleeping your way through the eligible bachelorettes of the world and then maybe I could try to move on, maybe I could—”

“Because you ruined me!” he shouts. “Because I used to be that guy who didn’t care, I used to be able to be content with meaningless replaceable flings and now I’m this idiot who doesn’t even see other women. I tried to replace you. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even invite a girl to come home with me, it was all too goddamn sad. I’ve been with one other person since I met you, and that’s Kimmie, and it’s been over for weeks, and you knew about it the entire time, and that was nothing like it is with you. I don’t want anyone else. I’ve forgotten how to want anyone else. I don’t know how you managed that. I don’t understand what kind of black magic you have swimming around in your blood, but whatever it is worked on me. I’m hooked, baby. I’m fucking hooked. I’ll do whatever you want to make this work, just name it. Please just name it. I’m giving you the money back to show you that I’m sorry and that I know I messed up. But I still want to go to San Diego with you. Hell, I’d go anywhere with you. I’d go to Omaha fucking Nebraska if that was the place you’d dreamed of, the place you hung pictures of on your bedroom mirror. I want you back.”

You don’t have to say that you want him too. Aegon can read it on your face, can see the fight bleeding out of you like the sea at low tide. He’s going to find out about Trent, you think with ice-cold dread. Sooner or later, he’s going to find out and he’s going to lose his goddamn mind. Since he left your house on New Year’s Day, you’ve avoided Trent. What Heather said must have made quite the impression, because he hasn’t tried to pressure you into inviting him over again; he has given you a wide berth of space, passing waves and smiles but no demands. Still, he has this glow. He thinks that night was a stepping stone to something more. He thinks he’s got a real shot now, and he’s basking in the gilded potential of it. I made such a mistake. It feels like everything I do now is a mistake.

“And besides, even if I was willing to go, I can’t leave yet,” Aegon says. In explanation, he looks to the flier on the wall, the one with the shadowy red-eyed specter in a trench coat. Report suspicious activity immediately! Beware of strangers! Help keep Juneau safe! The sixth and seventh victims were pulled out of Crystal Lake three days ago: a couple this time, newly engaged, mid-thirties, snatched while they were hiking in the Tongass National Forest. No one died while Aegon was in the hospital, you think randomly, vaguely. Is that a coincidence? Or is that a clue?

“Aegon, how could you possibly protect me from the Ice Fisher when you’re passed out drunk at night? Or when you’re working on a boat out in the channel, or when you’re singing rock songs at Ursa Minor? You can’t follow me around all the time. And honestly, I think if the killer really wanted me, he could probably get rid of you too.”

“If I leave and I find out later that something happened to you…that maybe, somehow, things might not have gone that way if I’d stayed, that the dominoes could have fallen in a different pattern…I’ll feel responsible. And I’d never recover from that.”

His tattoo flashes in your mind like high-beams: I’m a killer. It’s a strange thing to get inked just above your heart, even if it is a Johnny Cash lyric. It’s a little too dark. It’s a little too real. “Okay,” you hear yourself tell Aegon. “You can stay, I guess.”

“Great. Also, I need my dog back.”

“He’s happy where he is.”

“I don’t doubt that. But he’s mine, and I need him.” And when you hesitate, he adds: “If you’re so worried about Sunfyre, I would encourage you to stop by any time you’d like to check on him. And me too, obviously.” He takes his keyring out of his pocket and slips off the spare key for his apartment. Then he holds it out to you, a sliver of gold in his palm. You consider the key for a long time before you take it.

“Fine. I’ll bring him over in a few days if you’re still sober. Well…your version of sober.”

“Deal,” Aegon says. “You haven’t been at Ursa Minor recently.”

“Yes. Because I didn’t want to see you.”

Aegon shrugs, his hands in the pockets of the black parka you gave him. “Maybe you’ve changed your mind about that. Maybe you’ll show up tonight. I hope you will.”

You can’t decide how to reply. Aegon leaves while you’re still mulling it over, a vast silence stretching out between you like the void between stars.

~~~~~~~~~~

Your parents don’t want you driving alone at night. They convince you to carpool with Heather, a prospect which elates her. “You’re finally leaving the house?!” she exclaims when you call, the vibrations of her voice shrill in the phone receiver. “You’re finally going to be kind of fun again?! Hold on, hold on. I’m just sending a quick mental thank you to sweet baby Jesus. And Buddha, and Allah, and Brahma, and Thor.”

“Odin’s the king of the Norse gods.”

“Bitch,” Heather says gleefully, and hangs up.

When her Chevy Suburban rolls into Ursa Minor’s parking lot—the night indigo and starless, the ochre streetlights dim—Heather kills the engine and opens the driver-side door. Frigid wind gusts into the cabin. She glances back, realizes you haven’t even unbuckled your seatbelt, and pulls her door shut again.

“What?” she asks.

You look at her, miserable and mortified. “I made a mistake.”

“Yeah, you wore that ugly fucking grandma sweater instead of something hot.”

“No, Heather,” you whisper, tears brimming in your eyes. “I really made a mistake.”

She is concerned, mystified. “What did you do?”

“I slept with Trent.”

“You what?” She blinks. “You what?!”

“I called him after the New Year’s Eve party.” You speak quickly, like tearing a bandage from a weeping, still-inflamed wound. “I was upset and I wasn’t thinking clearly and I asked him to come over. It was horrible. He doesn’t seem to know it was horrible, but it was for me. I mean, he wasn’t aggressive or anything, he didn’t do anything wrong, he just…he wasn’t who I really wanted.”

“He wasn’t Aegon,” Heather says quietly.

“Right.” You swipe away the tears that escape down your cheeks. “And now Aegon’s going to find out. I know he is. At first I wanted him to because I wanted to hurt him, I wanted to hurt him as badly as possible. But I don’t feel that way anymore. And I can’t take it back. Trent thinks I like him and Aegon is going to hate me and I’m…I’m just…” You break down sobbing, covering your face with your hands. “I’m just so fucking stupid. My entire life I had meticulous plans and I checked every box and now I’m this fragile, illogical, aimless, stupid loser who can’t manage to hold on to anything she wants. I can’t fix myself and I can’t fix anyone else either.”

“So you fucked up,” Heather says casually. She’s not really casual, but she’s doing a good job of making it seem like she is. “So you slept with the wrong person or said the wrong thing or made a wrong choice, or two wrong choices, or ten, or a hundred, or a thousand. Who hasn’t fucked up? I have, Joyce has, Kimmie definitely has. So what? It’s not like you killed somebody. You learned from it. You’ll be a better person in the future. Regret is a useless, poisonous emotion. It’s something evolution should have bred out of us eons ago. You don’t have to carry this weight around forever. You can let yourself bury it.”

Under the dim, yellowish streetlight luminescence like a sepia photograph, you give her a weak smile. “Really?”

“Really.”

“I love you.” And then you add, so she knows you’re okay: “Bitch.”

Heather laughs. “Let’s go get you drunk. Bitch.”

You hurry together to the front door, braced in hats and parkas against the wind. Inside, it is odd to see Ursa Minor stripped of all its Christmas decorations. The multicolored lights have been taken down, the ornaments removed from the taxidermy deer heads. From Dale’s stereo soars Shania Twain’s You’re Still The One. You hear Heather’s boots squeal on the hardwood floor as she stops dead, and then you see him too: jet black suit, spidery limbs, long silvery hair that is not unruly or tangled but pin-straight. He’s sitting at the bar with his back to you. The fingers of his right hand—elegant, willowy, uncalloused—are closed around a frosty Caipirinha.

“Oh my god,” Heather breathes. “There’s two of them. The Greek boys.”

If Aegon knows he’s been found, he’ll leave. And only now can you feel the true, unmitigated devastation of it. Had you really told him to leave Juneau just ten days ago? Had that really been you? No no no no no no. He can’t leave. He can’t leave.

“Don’t talk to him,” you order Heather in a whisper, then bolt to the usual booth. Kimmie, Brad, Joyce, and Rob are already there, eyes startled and darting from you to the stranger at the bar. “Kimmie, do you still remember Aegon’s phone number?”

“Huh? Yeah, um, I think so.”

“Here.” You root around in your purse for loose change and press several quarters into her palm. “Take this. Find a payphone outside. Call him and tell him not to come to Ursa Minor tonight.”

“Okay.” She doesn’t understand, but she’s obedient. Brad goes with her. When they open the front door, the stranger at the bar glances over to make sure no one new has arrived. That Aegon hasn’t. Because this is exactly where he’d be.

Another wave of horror crashes through you. He knows Aegon so well. We’re in such fucking trouble here.

As Dale finishes serving locals at the other end of the bar and returns to his section, the stranger begins asking him something. You have to shut it down; you have to stop Dale from telling the stranger that Aegon lives in an apartment building just down the street. You can see it from Ursa Minor’s parking lot. It’s a distance that could be closed in ten minutes.

You go to the bar and sit immediately beside the stranger. Dale—seemingly relieved—excuses himself, but not before raising his eyebrows at you. Crazy world, right ladybug? that look says. He sets an apple Bacardi Breezer on the counter and is gone. The stranger turns to you, and your jaw falls open before you can stop yourself; the gasp hisses free.

The stranger smiles, like he’s caught you in a lie. The right side of his face is pristine: angular, regal, beautiful in a way that is gem-rare. The left is bisected by a scar, gnarled and old. His left eye is gone. The scraps of his lids are ragged. In the useless, gutted socket is a gleaming sapphire stone, like what the ocean looks like in the pictures you’ve seen of California. “You must know my brother.”

I have to distract him. I have to get rid of him. “Oh yeah. Totally. He talked about you and Helaena all the time.”

The stranger’s lips curl into a sly smile. “Even he forgets about Daeron.”

Aegon, Helaena, Daeron…and at least one more sibling. This one. The determined one, the capable one. You don’t know what to say; you give him a vague smirk in return. The bells on the door jingle as Kimmie and Brad scurry back inside, cold wind chasing them and clawing at their hair. Kimmie shakes her head at you. No luck, she means. Aegon didn’t answer. Probably because he’s already on his way here. The stranger notices this exchange. He notices just about everything. And there’s no way for you to tell Kimmie or Heather what you need from them without him knowing. To stop Aegon from coming here. To stop him from being caught.

The stranger offers you his hand. “Aemond Targaryen,” he introduces himself. “Targaryen Enterprises.” His voice is unlike anything you’ve ever heard: low but soft, effortlessly dignified, beckoning you to lean in closer. Aside from the shade of his hair, he is very little like Aegon. He is tall and precise, every movement purposeful. Aegon slouches and flops and makes dramatic, unrestrained gestures; this man is a sculpture of marble and blue. This man is a work of art.

You shake his hand—cool and smooth—and tell him your name. “But Aegon always called me Appletini.”

“Appletini? Like the drink?”

“Exactly.”

“Yes, that sounds like him.” His eye sweeps over you. What he asks next doesn’t sound like a question at all. It sounds like a command. “Where is he.”

“Gone,” you say, perhaps too quickly. “He left last week. He’s in Chicago now. You’re a little too late.”

Again, Aemond smiles. He sips his Caipirinha. “Hm.”

The front door opens. You and Aemond both whirl towards the clanging metal bells. Aegon shuffles inside; he’s beaming, he’s humming brightly. He drags his boots on the doormat, kicking off most of the snow. And then he looks up. His face goes entirely blank; his eyes are mindless and panicked like a trapped animal’s, iron jaws snapping shut with such force they crack bone. A second passes, two, three. Then Aegon spins around and sprints out of the bar.

“Aegon!” you shout.

Aemond knocks his Caipirinha off the counter as he leaps to his feet and races after him; glass and lime slices spew across the floor. You follow Aemond as closely as you can, running out into the frigid darkness, your boots slipping on ice and crunching through mounds of snow. Aegon makes it a hundred yards up the street before his brother catches him. Aemond grabs the hood of Aegon’s parka, yanks him backwards, slams him face-first into a green Dodge Ram that is parked on the shoulder. Blood gushes from Aegon’s nose and splatters against the truck’s icy window. His lower lip is split; his eyes will blacken. He struggles futilely.

“Let me go—!”

“Six years!” Aemond seethes, pinning Aegon to the truck by his throat. “Six Christmases, six birthdays, six Januarys since you left and not a single phone call, no letters, no postcards, no emails, nothing, and who had to be there to comfort our mother? Who had to be there trying to convince her that you weren’t an unclaimed body on a slab in a morgue somewhere?!”

“You’re all better off without me,” Aegon moans, his skin stained red. Aemond smashes his face against the truck again.

“Stop it!” you shriek.

“You don’t get to leave,” Aemond growls at his brother. “You don’t get to abandon your responsibilities.”

“I won’t go back,” Aegon wheezes. “You can break every bone I’ve got, but I won’t go back. If you kill me, you can take me home in a box, I guess. But that’s the only way I’m going.”

Aemond shoves him away, disgusted. His brother sinks down into the snow, groaning, feeling his face with trembling hands to assess the damage. “I saved you,” Aemond says with cold, black fury. “I saved your life and you’re just throwing it away.”

“She doesn’t know,” Aegon rasps, his voice choked with blood. “Let me tell her. It should be me. Please don’t say anything. Please let me be the one to tell her.”

Now Aemond turns to you, as if suddenly remembering you’re there. His remaining eye narrows. He is deeply, genuinely perplexed; you’re a brand new species, you’re a comet that hasn’t clipped by Earth in a millennium. He says to Aegon, still looking at you: “Your type must have changed.”

“No, my type is still groupies and strippers,” Aegon replies, and spits a mouthful of blood into the snow. “I just fell in love with this girl.”

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