#beacon throws spaghetti

[blondeboyfriend]

𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐓𝐋𝐄 𝐎𝐍𝐄 (𝟏𝟖+)

𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐎𝐑𝐒 𝐃𝐍𝐈

[ PAIRING ] Eren Yeager x f!reader [ AUTHOR'S NOTE ] Another oldie. Shout out to Mica for beta reading this for me. [ SYNOPSIS ] You return home from college to housesit while your mother is away. Everything seems rather mundane until you have a chance meeting with a strange yet alluring man. [ WORD COUNT ] 4.1k [ CONTENT ] Dark content, modern AU, Eren's fucking awful in this, manipulation, stalking, masturbation, dubcon bordering on noncon, degradation, vaginal fingering.

“Thank you so much for watching the house, little one,” your mother said, pinching your cheek.

An action that would usually leave you aggravated was welcome intimacy. College made you miss everyone. Mundane things became beacons of light in a darkened sea of melancholy. It was hard not to internalize the pain, the loneliness that plagued you and turned your stomach into a bottomless pit.

Even as you stood in front of your mother and her kind eyes, you couldn’t help but think of how eventually you would leave this isolated exurb and return to hell itself. You’d wrestle with complicated coursework, cry in the communal bathroom when your roommate refused to stop blasting Post Malone, and sit through lectures with lecherous professors that asked you “to go on walks and discuss poetry.”

“Of course, you think I’m gonna turn down a chance to throw a massive party? I’m trying to relive my teenage fantasy.”

She rolled her eyes and gave you a hug.

“I transferred some money into your bank account for food. Please don’t spend it all on junk.”

Bags of Cheetos danced through your mind.

“You got it,” you lied.

She grabbed her suitcase and floated out the door, leaving you to your own devices. You watched her drive off through the front window, a puff of exhaust lingering as she sped off to the airport. You strode into the kitchen and rummaged through the fridge. The only contents being two jars of artisan mustard, a Greek yogurt, an absurd amount of spaghetti, and a bag of Rainier cherries.

“Pantry’s gotta be better.”

You flung the door to it and were confronted with a hard sourdough baguette and a box of generic Frosted Flakes. You sighed and closed the door dejectedly. Biking to the convenience store sounded woefully unappealing in 90 degree weather especially when the entire ride was sun-soaked.

“Eh, fuck it.”

You scrambled through your overnight bag and pulled out your sunscreen, slathering it all over you. You pocketed your wallet, grabbed your bike, and began your journey.

The second you opened the door, sunlight irradiated you. Quickly you put on your sunglasses and cautiously biked along the hyper heated concrete. Sweat oozed from your pores, sunscreen melting off your face and weaseling its way into your eyes. Wiping them crossed your mind but your hands were busy. You blinked repeatedly hoping to mitigate the problem but it was a thankless task.

When you finally got to the convenience store you dropped your bike in front of the entrance, growing more exhausted and thirsty by the second. A large “cash only” sign flashed in your face.

“Since when?” You asked no one in particular.

You stumbled inside the store over to the ATM and took out $40 from your bank account. The machine decided to take its sweet time, whirring for a good five minutes before spitting out your cash. After waiting for what felt like hours you trudged to the back and struggled to find anything that remotely looked like what you wanted.

“No, no, no,” you said as you peered into every fridge. “Fuck my ass. Come on.”

A stifled laugh brought you out of your trance.

“Watch out, some creep might try to take you up on that offer.”

“Oh shit, my bad!” You deferred.

The man turned his attention towards you. He was inhumanly gorgeous. His skin sun kissed, long espresso colored hair piled on top of his head in a messy bun, eyes greener than any field you’d seen. He wore a red tropical print button-up with short sleeves and fitted denim shorts. His smile was wide and jovial, one you could trust.

“’S all good,” he said, his eyes lingering on your lips.

“I, uh… Hey, have you seen anything that isn’t a Red Bull or a bottle of St Ides? I’d ask the guy at the counter but he seems rather engrossed in his reading.”

You slyly pointed at the cashier whose nose was buried in a vintage Playboy.

“I have, follow me,” he said, his voice like velvet. A siren’s song.

He wrapped an arm around you and led you to a fridge full of your favorite shit.

“Oh wow, thank you!”

His hands trailed down to your waist. “No problem. Hate to see a pretty thing like you look so lost.”

He looked you over one last time and headed over to the cashier. He pointed at a small bottle of silver Bacardi and slunk out the door after making his purchase. He slowly drove off in a burgundy 1970 Ford Galaxie.

The man was kind yet odd. A face you wouldn’t mind seeing again but one you’d likely run from if you encountered it in a dark alley.

You grabbed a couple bags of chips and one of the bananas that sat on the front counter. The ride home felt significantly easier this time around, your feet less heavy. Just a brief moment of social interaction was enough to make your day.

The pleasantness of your ride quickly dissipated as you noticed a car trailing behind you. You glanced over your shoulder, but as you turned your head to get a better look the car made a sharp u-turn, speeding off in the other direction. Unease crept up on you, making your hands tremble ever so slightly.

All you saw was a flash of burgundy.

The housing development your mother bought into was initially supposed to be a dream-like landscape of exurban bliss. Pastel tract homes with detached garages and green lawns thriving despite nature’s uninhabitable wrath. The money hungry builders saw the arid valley and thought “upscale homes with a golf course and an outdoor mall.”

Of course it never took off. Living in the rain shadow of a massive mountain range was a tough sell and anyone with a brain knew the cotton candy colored homes wouldn’t last in the heat. However those desperate to own land bought them up at auction, your mother being one of them. She ended up with the best one, in her opinion.

“Some of them were worth more than others,” she said, as if she got away with a crime.

The house sat at the edge of the development, a clear view of the towering, jagged mountains to the east. The only thing that separated you from the wilds of the valley was the shoddy fencing your mother haphazardly fixed from time to time. Your closest neighbor, Hannes, lived comically far away on the other side of the development.

You stared down a pile of empty chip bags, regretting your decision to buy straight up junk and a banana. Delivery options were limited to pizza and Thai food; not many restaurants liked driving to the edge of the earth for a single order.

You grabbed your laptop ultimately deciding to order pizza.

“Ugh, of course my credit card info isn’t saved,” you whined.

You patted your pocket where you had previously stored your wallet but nothing was there.

“The fuck?”

You tore off your shorts and shook them. Nothing. No wallet.

“Shit. Guess I’ll call the store.”

You called the convenience store guy and he was utterly useless. Your stomach grumbled, reverberating throughout your body. Hunger took hold of you. You decided to toast the stale bread and eat it with olive oil. You figured you should save the rest of your cash for actual groceries.

“’Hey little one, what’d you eat when I was gone?’ Oh nothing, mama, just fucking croutons.”

The kitchen was bathed in a pinkish glow. The sun settled behind the mountains leaving the sky shades of pink, orange, and blue. It was a loveliness you missed, something you couldn’t find in overly pruned parks and crowded campus cafes. You preheated the oven and struggled to break the bread into bite-sized pieces.

“Fuck,” you muttered as a particularly hard bit of crust works its way under your fingernail.

You held your hand up to examine it and breathed a sigh of relief, no blood. Your relief was short lived as you noticed something rustling in the checkerblooms. You leaned over the counter to get a better look but you saw nothing. Just purple flowers ebbing in the evening breeze.

“Coulda been an elk,” you said to calm your nerves.

That morning you found used condoms outside the kitchen window filled to the brim with milky cum. You didn’t mention it to Hannes when you biked down to his house for money and socializing.

The days were easy to get through. You biked around the development when the heat was at its kindest. You bitched to Hannes about how isolated you were but also how you were far too lazy to remedy the situation. You watched game shows and soap operas. Immersing yourself in daytime television was a welcomed, mind numbing distraction.

The nights were what got the best of you.

You called your mother when the fear became too much, when you’d hear footsteps outside your window. But her advice was always the same.

“Drink a Pabst and turn on Golden Girls! Or ask the delivery guy to hang out with you.”

“Don’t you have a security system?”

“Is this what college has done to you? I remember just last year you couldn’t even remember to lock the front door.”

A million thoughts ran rampant through your brain. She was right after all; you were rather careless growing up in the mundanity of the valley. You sought excitement by skipping through the alkali flats, kicking up rancid dust. You ran around with stray dogs and even got bit by one. A lonely, little girl like you was a professional at putting yourself in questionable circumstances.

“Whatever. I still can’t find my wallet though,” you whined.

“Did you try calling the store again?”

“Why would I call them again?”

“I don’t know,” she said, voice filled with exasperation. “The money I sent should get to you soon.”

“Still don’t think it was smart to literally mail me money.”

She laughed. “Alright, little one. Call me tomorrow.”

And with that your mother hung up. You gazed outside the window as a tule elk meandered by, sniffing the ground occasionally stopping to nibble on a shrub. It lifted its head and jerked it around quickly, an urgent look in its eye. Before you blinked it bounded off into the distance, almost like it was never there in the first place. Curiosity got the better of you and you decided to investigate. You grabbed a kitchen knife and held it like you’d seen all those final girls do in slasher movies.

“I can’t die like this,” you whispered to yourself. “I haven’t even had a threesome yet.”

You crept towards the front door and looked through the peephole. Not a thing, just dead grass and concrete. You sighed and dropped the knife, feeling silly for even grabbing it in the first place. With this new found peace you stepped into the kitchen to brew some tea only to be startled by a faceless figure.

“Holy shit!” You shrieked, ducking under the kitchen table knowing full well you were still visible. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” you muttered.

“Hi, didn’t mean to scare you,” he said.

His voice was oddly friendly, but not so much that you were willing to respond.

“I, uh, found your wallet. Sorry it took me a bit, you just live so far out here.”

You poked your head out from under the table and looked up.

It was the handsome man from the convenience store. He looked decidedly less gorgeous, but a babe all the same. His hair now hung past his shoulders, partially obscuring his face. He wore the same tropical print shirt and shorts you saw him in previously but they were now paired with a faded denim jacket lined with cream Sherpa.

“You want it back or can I keep it?” He asked, his voice as velvety as ever.

“I—I definitely need it.”

You crawled out from under the table and gestured for him to meet you at the front door. As you opened it you saw him leaning on his car, arms crossed.

“Hey, so my wallet?” You shouted at him.

“I, uh, left it at home.”

“Oh.”

He grinned. “Didn’t realize it until I checked my pocket. It’s back at my place if you wanna take a ride.”

Your stomach dropped.

“I—I have Thai food coming and like, so, I gotta be here when it shows up.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “I’ll drop by tomorrow then, that alright?”

No was the first word to enter your mind but you wanted your damn wallet.

“That sounds fine. Thanks, uh…”

“Eren,” he purred.

You forced a smile. “Thank you, Eren. I’ll see you tomorrow. Just gimme a call when you’re close, okay?”

He nodded and waved as you turned to go back inside. Once safe and locked in the house you watched him linger, his eyes still fixed on the spot you previously stood in. He waited around for a good five minutes before he got in his car and sped off.

That night, as you struggled to drift asleep, you reluctantly thought of Eren. You slipped your hand in your underwear and rubbed your clit, pretending that it was him doing so. You bit down on your bottom lip as you traced your fingers down your folds, coating them with your fluids. You slid your hand under your t-shirt and pinched your nipple.

“E—eren,” you whimpered, thrusting up against your hand.

You pictured his strong arms around you, plunging his throbbing cock deeper and deeper inside you. The look of unbridled lust in his emerald eyes as he held you close, pumping you full of his cum.

Your breathing quickened and your toes curled as your orgasm rushed through your body. You continued to mewl his name, your body going limp as your lust subsided. Shame immediately hit you and you rolled over onto your side in a fetal position.

“Why am I like this?” You asked as you tried to will yourself unconscious.

That morning you were greeted with a lack of cell service.

“Seriously?”

You made a few attempts to call your mother, groaning every time it was dropped. Eventually you resigned yourself to being even more cut off from the world. It’s not like you’d be alone for long. Eren did say he’d be dropping by with your wallet, though he never specified when that would be.

The day dragged on and your patience waned. You sat in the kitchen, eating cherries and scowling out the window. Eren finally arrived just as the sun started to lower itself.

He tapped on the door, with his car keys.

“Hi, pretty girl,” he crooned.

You cautiously opened the door and let him in. He smelled like rum and cheap deodorant. His shirt was dingier every time you saw it, it’s once bright hue losing saturation. His denim shorts were dappled with white stains and dirt. Everything about him screamed freak but you welcomed him inside anyway.

“Hey, so…”

“Ah, yeah,” he said, pulling your wallet out of his pocket.

He held it out of reach the second you went to grab it from him.

“Work for it.”

There was something inherently ominous about his grin. It wasn’t a particularly creepy one, in fact it was rather lovely. But his eyes hid something, there was a blankness to them. You couldn’t tell what he was thinking, utterly unreadable.

“Come on.”

You attempted to grab it again but he again jerked it out of reach.

“You come on,” he teased.

His eyes looked through you. It was as if he didn’t register you as a person, a human, an equal. You struggled to hide your fear which softened his demeanor.

“I’m sorry. I see a pretty girl and all I wanna do is fuck with her.”

He finally handed you your wallet, his fingers brushing yours.

“Those are some nice hands.”

You gulped and tried your best to look unbothered.

“Uh, thanks.”

“Any chance you could gimme one?”

“Excuse me?”

He flashed you another grin.

“My car’s having some trouble, thing’s old as fuck. Could you lend me a hand?”

“I don’t know much about cars honestly.”

“Having another pair of eyes on it will help. Maybe you’ll catch something I missed.”

You followed him out the door even though your conscious screamed for you to turn around, to go back inside and lock your door. He led you over to his car, the hood was already lifted. You stared into it not sure what to look at.

“See anything strange?” He said, wrapping his arms around your waist.

You laughed nervously.

“N—no, not really.”

He leaned closer to your ear and whispered, his breath reeked of rum.

“Oh come on, baby. Take a better look.”

He pushed you against the car, his semi-hard cock rubbing against your ass. You froze as he rocked his hips against you. Eren groaned as he continued to thrust.

Run, you thought to yourself. Get the fuck away from him. But instead you stood there, clenching your fists, fighting the urge to grind up against him.

“Oh you like that, huh?” He whispered, his tongue flicking your ear.

You arched your back and bit your lip as he rutted against you, his cock now fully erect. A small moan exited your lips as Eren shoved his hands down your shorts. He rubbed your clit through your underwear.

“Ye—yes,” you mumbled.

He leaned in and sniffed your hair, his breath hitching as he savored the smell of your shampoo. His fingers pulled your underwear to the side and he coated them with your fluids.

“You’re this wet already?”

You kept quiet, you were afraid of what depraved things would leave your lips if you opened them. It had been so long and you were so lonely. You couldn’t trust yourself to speak.

“It’s okay, baby. Open your mouth for me.”

He took his fingers out of your cunt and forced them into your mouth.

“Suck them clean.”

You ran your tongue on the underside of his rough fingers.

“Good girl,” he rasped. “Tell me how good this feels.”

He shoved them back down into your shorts and started to finger you. Stifling your moans was out of the question.

“Ohhh, Eren,” you whined. “Feels s—so good.”

“How would you like it if I fucked you in the back seat, baby?”

You nodded feebly. He let you go and led you to the back. You glanced inside and saw zip ties, duct tape, and a mallet on the floor partially hidden under the driver’s seat.

“I have to go!” You shouted abruptly as you ran back to the house, tripping on the porch.

Eren glared at you, his eyes losing any semblance of sanity.

“I’m gonna get you. You think runnin’ from me is gonna do you any favors?”

You sat there like a wounded doe, clutching your bleeding knee. You wanted to get up and run but fear had you in a chokehold.

“J—just leave, please,” you said, trying to sound brave. “My neighbor’s supposed to check on me any minute now. You don’t wanna deal with him.”

Lies. Hannes wasn’t coming and Eren didn’t move a muscle.

“You think I’m scared of some drunk that lives up the road? Hannes ain’t gonna do shit,” he hissed.

How the fuck did he know Hannes? Eren’s words were like poison. Whatever pleasantness you imagined was gone. He was a monster, a menace.

“Just go!” You screamed, voice cracking. “Get the fuck out of here!”

He stood completely still, not even his facial expression changed. You got to your feet and scrambled inside, locking the door behind you.

You watched Eren through the window as you attempted to call Hannes but the call refused to go through. Calling the cops crossed your mind but they were always useless so you refrained.

Eren lingered around for about a half an hour before he finally drove off, his car running perfectly.

You didn’t sleep that night. Didn’t even shut an eye. You sat on the floor, your phone dead in your hand. There was still no service. You felt more shut off than ever, haunted by your loneliness and what it made you do. It made you sick. Nausea plagued you all night, the lingering feeling of his hands on your body made the room spin. It was all too much to bear.

When you saw Eren drive up at dawn you barely had a reaction. You were too tired to be afraid. He got out of his car, still in the same outfit, his stringy hair hanging in his face. The sun shined behind him and his features seemed distorted in the early morning light. Maybe it was the lack of sleep or maybe there was something truly wrong with this man.

He sat on the hood of his car, staring at the front door. You were sure he could see through it, see your pathetic form on the floor. You hoped he’d leave, but he didn’t.

He sat there for an hour before you finally decided to peek your head out the door.

“Hey, baby, did you miss me?”

“No,” you said, opening the door completely.

“You invitin’ me in?”

“Absolutely not. Stay back.”

There wasn’t much space between you and Eren. The front lawn was of average size and it’s not like the sidewalk was very wide. He could snatch you up easy.

“Alright, alright,” he acquiesced.

“What do you want?”

He batted his eyelashes at you, clearly trying to disarm you.

“Come take a ride with me.”

“You’re insane. No. Now go.”

You pointed at the road. You tried to mirror how your mother told off overzealous evangelists that pounded on her door every so often.

“I’m not leaving without you.”

“Well I’m not leaving this house,” you said firmly.

“What do you think I’m gonna do to you, huh?”

“I saw what was in your car.”

“I keep a lotta things in there.”

“I called the cops the second you drove up,” you lied.

He smirked.

“They would’ve been here by now. Guess they’re not coming,” he mused, calling your bluff.

“I called Hannes too and my mom. The—they’re gonna be here soon.”

“Your mom’s out of the country last time I checked.”

“How—”

“And if I remember correctly the little jammer I set up shoulda been blocking your cell signal. So unless you got a landline you haven’t called shit.”

You wanted to puke.

“I—I—why?”

“Look at you,” he cheered. “Such a cutie, and so alone!”

He got up off the hood of his car and opened the door to the backseat.

“Hop in.” He said with a sick smile on his face.

“No, I’m not going.”

“You want me to grab you by the hair and force you in? I will if I have to.”

“Leave me alone.”

“I’ll rip that shit from your scalp. Wouldn’t bother me any,” he sneered. “I’d still fuck you.”

“I have a gun.”

Another lie. You didn’t have any weapons, not even a kitchen knife. You were defenseless.

“You think I’m afraid of some little slut with a gun? Get in the car.”

Tears fell from your eyes, but you didn’t make a sound. You just stared at the ground.

“Come on, it’s only a ride.”

“Okay,” you said in a small voice.

“Hmm?” Eren’s eyes widened.

“I’ll go. I just wanna grab some things. That okay?”

He nodded and you scurried inside. You grabbed your bag and tossed your wallet in it. Eren stood outside, checking his phone. You frantically yanked your phone charger from the wall and tossed it in along with your phone.

The sun still hung low in the sky. Eren honked his horn an obnoxious amount of times, each iteration filling you with more and more anxiety. You flung the back door open and hopped over the fence, your sock catching on it. Your ankle twisted ever so slightly.

“Sh—shit,” you groaned.

Eren continued to honk his horn. You stood up and sprinted away from the yard, your ankle throbbing the whole time. You knew civilization was in the other direction, but so was Eren. Avoiding him was more important. Escape was what you wanted, safety be damned. Every inch of the development was tainted with his presence, even your mother’s home. You knew running into the shadows of the mountains was a bad idea, but you didn’t care. You’d run forever if you had to.

Don't ask me for a part 2, y/n died of exposure. xoxo gossip finn

[sataidelenn]

I have some thoughts about the Blacksmith, and bear with me because I’m just throwing spaghetti at the wall with this somewhat disjointed analysis.

So in the story of Peer Gynt, the titular wastrel is nearing the end of his life and is approached my a mysterious man at a crossroads. The man introduces himself as the Button-Molder, and claims that he is here for Peer, as he has not accurately displayed the design with which he was originally printed (lost his purpose, in other words) and must be melted down and made new. The conversation calls back to an earlier part of the story, in which Peer is asked by the troll-king what the difference between humans and trolls is. The answer is that while humans say, “Be thyself”, the trolls’ maxim is “Be to thyself enough”. In living for himself, Peer has acted more like a troll than a human, and only narrowly escapes being reforged by learning how to truly be himself, which he finds through the love that his wife Solveig has for him.

Ruby, of course, is about the furthest thing from selfish you could be, but she’s still trying to be enough in herself, trying to mold herself into being something other than what she was meant to be because she feels that is what others need or expect. And just like Peer, the only way she’ll escape being melted down and turned into something else is by recognizing the love that her friends and teammates have for her. And I think that Jaune will be instrumental in that.

Jaune started his arc (Heyo!) trying to be to himself enough. He didn’t go to Beacon because he wanted to help people as a Huntsman, he just wanted to be a hero. It was all about his own image, about being the knight in shining armor, not the damsel stuck in a tree. After Pyrrha died, he swung to the opposite extreme and didn’t care about himself at all, to the point where he sounded borderline suicidal when taking to Cinder.

To me, Jaune’s moniker of the Rusted Knight calls to mind a character from George MacDonald’s Phantastes, whose armor became rusted after he disgraced himself, and had to fight until the repeated sword-blows scraped the rust from his armor and made it shine again. Shedding innocent blood is one of the worst betrayals of chivalry, and so it makes sense that Jaune’s armor would be stained red the same as his sword was last volume, and that he wants to atone for his failures, but there is another possibility for where the show might be going with him.

In contrast to what most of us thought, Jaune seems to still have his identity and memories intact; however, his previous focus on his image is gone. His name was not recorded in the story, his helmet obscures his face, which isn’t even the face any of his companions knew before, and the crest on his shield is almost completely obscured. Neither his own image or the family name he struggled to live up to are important to him anymore. However, he is also not succumbing to self-loathing like he did after Pyrrha’s death, which can be just as self-centered as his earlier obsession with his image. No longer either the hero or the martyr, he’s simply protecting whoever needs it in whatever way he can. I don’t know whether the Herbalist or the Blacksmith had anything to do with this, but I think he’s figured out how to be truly himself.

Ruby, meanwhile, is still firmly in the martyr mindset. She is disgusted with herself for never being enough, to the point where she is considering becoming someone else who could be enough to herself. And I think that Jaune could be in a position to flip the script on the pep talk about leadership that she gave him back at Beacon, and let her know that she doesn’t have to worry about being enough because it was never about her, and her failures, but about the people that she can help. Once she understands that, I think she’ll finally know how to be herself rather than what she expects herself to be; as Little put it, how to Ruby Rose.

[pory-z]

crying pissing throwing up spaghetti spilling out my pockets because my besties can't come to powerwolf concert with me next week and i have to resell the tickets

can't fault them of course but we were looking forward to it for a whole year now and it was the beacon of light after the shitstorm of these past months

i barely talk to anyone anymore because of Overwhelmed but these two are part of the handful of people i so see on a weekly basis i was so hyped to do a concert with friends. i guess we have different ways of getting overwhelmed. i can see how hours of train plus worrying about finding a place to sleep plus huge crowds of people plus the noise plus parisians isn't very attractive when you also have shit going on. for some people at least. i'm just built different concerts are my natural habitat.

[ellasalterationsllc]

The Silk Slip Dress: A Love Letter to the '90s

As we navigate the tides of fashion trends, the ebb and flow bring us pieces that are as ephemeral as the seasons.

Yet, in this sea of change, the silk slip dress stands as a lighthouse—a beacon of timeless style.

A Thousand Words on Silk and Simplicity:

Picture this: It's the '90s.

The air is buzzing with the tunes of grunge and the new wave of pop.

Fashion is in a state of playful rebellion, mixing the casual with the glamorous.

Enter the silk slip dress. It's sleek, it's chic, and it's everything the '90s fashion scene didn't know it needed.

The silk slip dress is not just a garment; it's a canvas.

It has borne witness to the leather jackets and combat boots of the grunge era, the minimalist luxury of the late '90s, and now, the eclectic remixes of contemporary fashion.

This piece is the quintessential chameleon of style—adaptable, resilient, and eternally elegant.

In the simplicity of its design lies its strength.

A straight neckline, spaghetti straps, and a bias-cut that glides along the body's curves—this is the blueprint of a fashion masterpiece.

The silk itself is an ode to the senses; it catches the light with a subtle sheen, its touch a gentle whisper against the skin.

Let's talk styling—a realm where the silk slip dress truly shines.

For a casual daytime look, throw on a fitted white tee underneath, step into your favorite sneakers, and you're embodying that '90s laid-back cool.

Want to dress it up? Layer it under a blazer, slip into stilettos, and adorn yourself with a statement necklace.

The slip dress agrees with you—it's versatile.

But the question remains, why has the silk slip dress persisted through the decades?

Perhaps it's the nostalgia it evokes, a longing for the simplicity amidst our over-stimulated lives.

Or maybe it's the ease it promises—a promise that style can be effortless and comfort doesn't have to be sacrificed at the altar of fashion.

As we wade further into the 21st century, the silk slip dress serves as a reminder of the timelessness of true style.

It doesn't shout; it doesn't need to. In a world loud with trends that demand attention, the silk slip dress remains a quiet constant, reminding us that sometimes, the most profound statements are whispered.

And let's not forget the practicality of care.

This might be a high-maintenance relationship—silk is delicate and demands your gentlest touch, after all.

But isn't that the case with all things precious? Hand wash or dry clean, and store with care, because this is a love affair meant to last.

So here's to the silk slip dress—a garment that has outlived the fickleness of fashion.

It's a piece that doesn't just hang in our closets; it lives in the streets, on the runways, and in the pages of our diaries.

It's a story of elegance, a testament to the allure of simplicity, and a legacy of the '90s that we continue to write with every wear.

As we look to the future, let's carry the silk slip dress with us, not as a relic, but as a living, breathing piece of our personal style narratives.

Let it be a reminder that in the fast-paced world of trends and transient fashions, there will always be room for the classics—for those pieces that stand the test of time and trend.

And now, let's turn the page to your thoughts.

How has the silk slip dress found its way into your wardrobe? How do you weave this piece of '90s nostalgia into the tapestry of your modern style?

Share your stories, your pictures, your moments—because this is not just a trend, it's a collective memory, a shared experience, a timeless trend.

https://www.ellasalterations.com/2023/11/18/classic-90s-silk-slip-dress-a-timeless-trend/

#EllasAlterationsLLC #90ssilkslipdress #silkslipdress #timelessfashion #slipdressoutfit #howtostyleslipdress #slipdressforwork #slipdressforwedding#slipdressfordatenight#slipdressforcasualwear #affordslipslipdress #designerslipslipdress

[laszlosharmonica]

my friend asked “what if people stanned The McElroys like they do kpop?” and well, I made exactly that...

my twitter is @/yeribluejeans 

Song is LP by Red Velvet

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

Could you talk about the Statute of Secrecy? Or the Ministry’s corruption in General :)

Well, those are two different things. Given that I believe I have an ask floating somewhere in my inbox on the Statute, I suppose we’ll talk about the Ministry of Magic today.

I feel like this is such a broad topic though that I’m not quite sure where to start. I guess I’ll just throw spaghetti at the internet wall and see what sticks.

The Ministry is a Reflection of Society Who Never Admitted They Were the Death Eaters

In the ministry of Harry Potter’s era the Ministry is hopelessly corrupt and filled to the brim with spies (more on this in a later section). Lucius Malfoy, very high up in an unofficial capacity in the Ministry and owner of the Ministry’s mouth piece: The Daily Prophet, was a known Death Eater with a very flimsy excuse.

How is he even able to wield so much influence, you ask? Well, I think it’s not just because of Fudge picking the wrong friends.

I think most the population probably does believe Lucius Malfoy is innocent the way Fudge does. I think it’s a very small subsection, i.e. Dumbledore’s lackies, who go “Nah, ain’t buying it.” I think that, in 1981, when it came time to reveal just how many were Death Eaters and how far this went many people just couldn’t handle it.

Because it was to the point where the nation wasn’t battling Death Eaters, Death Eaters were the nation. Look at the members, these are and were the most influential and prominent families in the country, who combined hold a non-small minority of seats in the Wizengamot. More, these were only the participants, combine those who given anti-muggle and muggleborn sentiment (which I believe are pervasive even among those who claim they fight for the rights of muggles and muggleborns) and you get a nation that is suddenly facing a huge cultural issue that was never previously acknowledged.

We’re talking an entire purge of the Wizengamot, of the Ministry, of the major families and cornerstones of this society. The Black family is completely and utterly destroyed.

People were and remain throughout the 1990′s, desperate to believe it was not as bad as it was or isn’t as bad as it is. If Lucius Malfoy says he was never really a Death Eater then he was never really a Death Eater.

The Ministry is Lousy With Corruption and Spies

What’s hilarious to me is not only is the Ministry incompetent. It is positively flooded with spies. Given the ministry’s overbloated, it’s not even a sizeable minority of employees, but nonetheless every major department has at least one person (if not more) who works for somebody else.

Most work for Tom Riddle. He seems to have intelligence in every department. Through Lucius, who is working pretty much as an unofficial aide to Fudge, he has access to Fudge, complete control of the Daily Prophet, and a voice on the Hogwarts’ board of governors.

Through Rockwood, Tom has direct access to the Department of Mysteries which Lucius is then able to take full advantage of.

Lucius is able to set up an ambush in the Department of Mysteries, getting escaped convicts into the building with the none the wiser, and, had his sole purpose not been a prophecy that only Harry Potter and the Dark Lord can touch, he would have been able to take what he liked. (Though it was always odd to me that the plan was to get Harry Potter to do it, when the better solution would have been to polyjuice Tom Riddle into someone else, set up a tour with the department, and then Tom wanders off conveniently to pick up the prophecy. My theory, I suppose, is that chasing after the prophecy was mostly an exercise in punishing Lucius. And then Lucius fucked up.)

And of course, in book seven, Tom Riddle makes a puppet minister. Point being, to me, it always said a lot that in Book Seven Tom just sort of walks into the building and says, “I’m in charge now” and everyone says “okay”. There was no second Wizarding War, it was a bloodless coup that met zero resistance from anyone but angry school children. 

But that’s Tom’s spies, we also have other spies. Who am I talking about, Dumbledore’s folks of course.

Shacklebolt, Moody, Tonks, and Arthur Weasley are all spies, they just don’t have the introspection to even realize it (which really tells you something about the state of corruption in the ministry). They all work for the ministry, yes, but they in fact pass on information to and serve another master, whose goals do not always align with the government and was a hop skip and a jump away from overthrowing the government at any given moment.

And they don’t even really realize they’re doing this! There doesn’t even seem to be a thought of “I’m doing this for the greater good”, they don’t seem to acknowledge that what they’re doing is very very very bad. Arthur, in fact, is appalled when Percy refuses to do this (well, he’s upset for a lot of reasons, such as that he thinks Percy is spying on Arthur for the minister, but in there is also that Percy refuses to help out with the Order or follow Dumbledore without question). 

Harry paints the Dumbledore’s Army threat that Umbridge saw as something utterly ridiculous, but honestly if I was the ministry I would be worried about this. Dumbledore’s people have infiltrated the ministry just as deeply and badly as the Death Eaters, Dumbledore’s known for recruiting children into his vigilante organization, I don’t know what he’s doing with an army of schoolchildren but I can smell a coup coming.

Anyway, I’m getting off track, point being though that corruption is not only expected and accepted by the ministry, they cannot recognize what it even is. They’re at the point where paying bribes is allocated in their budget.

I Don’t Blame the Ministry For Not Thinking Tom Riddle Was Anti-Jesus

Fudge is designed to get a lot of flack for his outright denial that Voldemort had returned from the dead. He, and other denier characters, are meant to be fools with their heads in the sand who can’t see the obvious.

I ask what about it was obvious?

The only witness to Tom Riddle’s resurrection, Harry Potter, has a known history of erratic behavior.

The previous year, he’d performed illegal magic on his muggle aunt and run away from home. During the previous school year, Harry was revealed to be a parselmouth in a time when the Chamber of Secrets was presumably opened and the mystery was never fully solved (remember, that it was a possessed Ginny never comes to light for more than a few people.) Beyond that, since his first day of school, Harry is routinely in and out of detention, constantly out after curfew, and only seems to not be in serious trouble because he’s openly favored by Dumbledore (who gives him hundreds of points for breaking one of his school rules, during the Philosopher’s Stone fiasco in first year). In 1994, Harry is entered into the Tri-Wizard Tournament under very suspicious circumstances.

We know why all this happens to Harry but from the outside he looks like a delinquent. In fact, he kind of is a delinquent. 

Point being, the only witness is not only Harry Potter (who is already sketch) but it’s Harry Potter holding a dead body of a rival in the tournament.

And he’s claiming that a man who has been nearly fifteen years dead, a man who held the nation in terror and Harry Potter is beloved for destroying, has returned from the grave and conveniently murdered Cedric.

Why is Cedric dead? Well, you see, he and Harry both touched the goblet at the same time because they were going to share the reward. The goblet, a national treasure, was turned into a portkey so that Voldemort could kidnap him.

Why didn’t Voldemort just kidnap him at any other point during the year where he’s guaranteed not to get tag a longs or the wrong kid? Uh... VOLDEMORT IS BACK (for the record, I think it’s because Barty got hung up on the goblet scheme and was determined to ruin his father’s day.)

Where is Voldemort at this very moment? Being evil, somewhere, that is not right here. No, Harry has zero evidence this happened.

Frankly, I wouldn’t believe Harry either.

And when Dumbledore goes about promoting this as sound evidence that Tom Riddle has in fact returned, it starts to get even sketchier. Rather than sounding the alarm, Dumbledore is using this boy’s madness to stir the public into a panic that he, perhaps, plans to take advantage of.

After Dumbledore does that, I would suspect that, even if Harry does give me a memory of the graveyard scene that his head had been tampered with by Dumbledore.

And it’s so convenient that, of all the names Harry picked, it’s Voldemort who killed Cedric. It seems like a ploy to not only deflect the fact that he murdered Cedric but 

Harry’s very upset when some don’t take him at his word but Harry’s also a dumbass and a psychopath. He hates everyone who doesn’t agree with him.

More importantly, necromancy isn’t a thing in the Harry Potter universe. People don’t rise from the dead. Horcruxes exist, but they’re extremely rare, and it seems like no one ever really makes use of them.

So, yeah, not unreasonable that Fudge didn’t immediately go, “My god, Voldemort has risen from the dead! LIGHT THE BEACONS AND SUMMON ROHAN!”

So yeah, it’d take me seeing Voldemort waltzing through the Department Mysteries to go “... Goddammit, this man is more unkillable than Sheev Palpatine.”

After the Epilogue, I am Certain It’s Still the Same Damn Ministry

People hate the epilogue, but in a way, I love it, because it confirms many of my headcanons: these people don’t learn a goddamn thing.

Nothing in their society seems to have changed. Instead of one set of families holding all the power it’s now a new set of families and friends holding all the power. The difference being that they are now all in some way connected to Harry Potter.

Nepotism’s still the name of the game, we still see only human children boarding the Hogwarts Express so you know shit hasn’t changed for the goblins, Draco Malfoy’s alive and well and holds a position in the Ministry that Kingsly graciously allows him to have, it’s just now you have Hermione writing all your laws for you.

The Wizarding World is still the Wizarding World in every single capacity. The only difference is that Voldemort is dead again. Hooray.

Harry and friends simply don’t have the introspection to even realize it.

[tails89]

Fandom: Teen Wolf Word count: 1289 Read on AO3

“You will not believe what just happened to me,” Stiles whines, bursting in through the front door and dropping down onto the couch beside Derek. Kicking off his shoes, he throws his feet up to hang over the armrest and slumps backwards into the cushions.

Derek doesn’t move—just glances around the pages of his book muttering under his breath, “Hey Derek. Nice to see you Derek. Can I come in? Sure Stiles, make yourself at home.”

“Pfft, this isn’t about you,” Stiles grins, flapping his hand at Derek. “Actually-” he sits up suddenly, pulling in his legs to cross them underneath himself. “It is. Do you know what Mrs Davidson said to me today?”

“Let me guess.” Derek throws one arm across the back of the couch. “She said, ‘here comes trouble’?”

“Uh, no.” Stiles rolls his eyes. “She asked me-” He lets his voice go high and reedy in a poor imitation of his elderly neighbour. “’What’s a nice boy like Derek Hale is doing with a boy like you?’ Which, first of all—rude! Second of all, me corrupt you?”

“Yeah, where on earth would she get that idea?” Derek asks, finally giving up on his book and slipping an old receipt into the pages to mark his spot.

“Hey, I am an upstanding young citizen,” Stiles argues, flopping back, his head pillowed against Derek’s thigh. “I am a pillar of this community. I mould the young minds of Beacon Hills.”

Derek barks out a laugh. “Who thought that was a good idea?”

Rolling over onto his stomach, Stiles steadies himself on one elbow and uses the other hand to poke Derek in the leg. “You sir, have everyone one tricked into thinking you’re Mr Deputy Goody-two-shoes, but I know the real you.”

“Oh really?”

“Yeah, and I know who of the two of us dug up Mrs Davidson’s daffodils, and it wasn’t me.”

“That was an accident and you promised not to bring that up again.”

“Well I’m a lying liar who lies.”

With a quick shove, Derek sends Stiles tumbling onto the floor and stands, moving for the kitchen. “And that’s why your neighbour thinks you’re corrupting me. You staying for dinner?”

“Yup, you making spaghetti?” Stiles asks, following Derek into the kitchen and hopping up onto the counter to watch him start pulling things from the fridge. He swings his legs, knocking his heels against the cabinet doors. “I distinctly remember you promising to make your Dad’s famous spaghetti if I made it through parent-teacher week without murdering anyone.”

*

“What does she even mean by that, anyway?” Stiles asks around a mouthful of pasta, his next forkful hovering halfway to his mouth.

Derek waits, tearing off another slice of garlic bread, for Stiles to explain his logic jump.

“Who?” He prompts, when the explanation never comes.

“Mrs Davidson,” Stiles tells him, like it was an obvious connection to make. “Why does she think we’re together?”

Shrugging, Derek uses his garlic bread to mop up the last of the bolognaise sauce. “We hang out a lot,” he says. “You’re either over here or I’m over at your place. It’s not an unreasonable assumption to make.” He pops the bread into his mouth and reaches for Stiles’ now empty bowl.

“I got it.” Stiles waves him off. “You cooked; I can clean up.” He stands, stacking the empty bowls on top of each other. “I’ll get the icecream if you queue up the next episode of Narcos.”

*

“I’ll be right back,” Stiles says suddenly. “Don’t let the next episode start.”

He disappears from the living room and Derek takes the opportunity to stretch out on the couch. It’s getting late, but the last episode had ended on a cliffhanger so there’s no way they can leave it there.

Reaching for the remote, Derek checks how many episodes are left—three. Tomorrow’s Saturday, so Stiles is off and Derek’s on a late shift so they can probably finish the season before calling it a night.

“You’re in my spot,” Stiles says, shuffling back into the room.

“It’s my couch,” Derek says, making a show of getting comfortable. “I think you’ll find it’s all my spot.”

Stiles slaps jokingly at his legs until Derek lifts them, dropping them down into Stiles��� lap once the human is sitting again.

“You’re such a couch hog,” Stiles complains, but he doesn’t push Derek’s sock-clad feet away. Instead, he stretches out with his own legs up on the coffee table.  “You know, I only come over here when Dad’s on the late shift.”

Derek’s finger hovers over the button on the remote but he doesn’t press play. “I know.” And it’s true, because when the Sheriff is home, Derek’s usually over at the Stilinski house with them.

“I just- do other people think we’re dating?” Stiles asks. “Like is this a widespread thing or is it just my neighbour? Do you think my dad thinks we’re dating?”

“I think you’re overthinking this,” Derek says, nudging Stiles’ leg with his foot. “Can I hit play now?” He doesn’t wait for Stiles to respond and the title card of the next episode flashes up on the TV.

*

“Hey, what time is it?” Stiles mumbles, rubbing his fists into his eyes.

Onscreen, Netflix is playing a trailer for another show, but Derek hits the power button on the remote to shut the TV off. Picking up his cellphone, the bright light almost blinds them both as Derek checks the time.

“Late.”

“Ugh.” Stiles mashes his face into the space between the back of the couch and Derek’s leg. “I’m getting too old for this,” he complains. “I’m feel like an old man— gotta be in bed by nine or face the consequences.”

“And all at the ripe old age of twenty-five,” Derek jokes, shifting to give Stiles more room to faceplant into the cushions.

“You don’t understand.” Stiles looks up. “You and your youthful werewolf body will never know my pain. My knees creak now Der, they creak.” He buries his face again, and Derek only just catches his mumbled. “They tell me when it’s gonna rain.”

“It’s a useful skill,” Derek tells him, laughing when Stiles flips him off.  “Come on, it’s late. You can crash here.” He lets Stiles use the bathroom first, stacking their icecream bowls into the dishwasher while Stiles brushes his teeth.

“Did I leave any clothes here last time?” Stiles asks, sticking his head out of the bedroom door. Jeans don’t make for particularly comfortable pyjamas and it’s too cold to sleep in his boxers.

“Bottom drawer,” Derek calls back over his shoulder.

“Found them.”

Turning off the kitchen light, Derek heads to his bedroom. He’d spent the afternoon lounging around in his sweats so after brushing his teeth he goes straight to bed, climbing into the sheets and rolling over onto his side.

He’s comfortable and warm, drifting right on the precipice of sleep.

“Oh my god!” Stiles lurches upright on the bed, almost elbowing Derek in the gut with his flailing. “We are totally dating.” Even in the dark Derek can see his dumbfounded expression. “How could you not tell me we were dating?”

“Knew you’d figure it out eventually,” Derek mumbles, tangling his fingers in Stiles’ and pulling him back down.

Stiles goes willingly, shifting back so that he’s pressed against Derek’s chest.

“It’s just— all this time we could have been doing… I dunno, boyfriend stuff.”

“We were.”

“Other boyfriend stuff.” Stiles rolls in Derek’s arms so that he’s facing the werewolf. “Like, kissing boyfriend stuff.”

Derek’s laugh is a warm puff that ruffles Stiles’ hair. “We have so much time for ‘boyfriend stuff’” He presses his lips against Stiles’ temple. “In the morning.”

[scarletwidowvibes]

Too Hot

Liam Dunbar x Reader

It was like 85 degrees in Beacon Hills and the heat wouldn’t break. It had been this way for a couple days and everyone was suffering because of it.

“Oh my god I’m sweating balls!” You exclaim, fanning your face with a piece of paper.

“Do you have balls?” Liam asks, looking over to you.

“Is that any of your business?” You reply, hitting him with your piece of paper.

The pack is in their coolest clothes, trying to keep from overheating. Most people have their shirts off but at this point no one cares.

“Oh my god!” Lydia yells, “Jackson has a pool!”

“Jackson isn’t here right now.” Stiles deadpans.

“No way,” Lydia says, “but we can still use the pool.”

“Are we sure Jackson’s okay with that?” Allison asks.

“Considering we saved him from Gerard, I don’t think he’ll care.” Lydia says, getting up.

“I’m going with Lydia.” You say, getting up and following Lydia to her car. The rest of the pack shrug at each other then follow behind you two.

You, Kira, and Malia take Malia’s car. Lydia and Allison take Lydia’s car; while Scott, Stiles, and Liam take Stiles’ jeep. Liam texts the rest of the pack and tells them to meet up at Jackson’s house.

You stop at everyone’s house to grab their swimsuits then you’re on your way to Jackson’s house.

“So Jackson’s parents are visiting him which means we have the house to ourselves.” Lydia says, parking in the driveway. Stiles parks next to her. Mason, Corey, and Theo park behind them. Derek brings Cora and Peter and parks behind Stiles.

“Okay, I’m not really sure how many bathrooms there are so people will have to take turns but let’s all change and hit the pool.” Lydia says, unlocking the front door with her key.

You take the first bathroom and change into your swimsuit. You grab a towel from the bathroom closet then step out and let the next person in.

Lydia, Liam, Stiles, and Scott are sitting by the pool. You set your towel down by the pool then wait for the rest of the pack to come out.

“So does Jackson have any like floaties?” Allison asks.

“I made him buy some.” Lydia says, taking Allison’s hand and leading her back into the house.

You’re standing at the edge of the pool, looking into the water. You hear someone come up behind you and you turn quickly, flipping them into the pool.

“That was my plan.” Liam says when he breaks through the water.

“Yeah I’m sure it was.” You say, bending down closer to the water.

You jump into the pool, landing next to Liam. You dip your head under the water and when you resurface Liam has moved closer.

“The waters cold.” Liam says, splashing you with the water.

“Yeah but it’s refreshing.” You reply, splashing him back.

Lydia and Allison come out of the house and throw the floaties into the pool. Everyone else jumps into the pool with you and Liam, some people racing to get floaties.

You jump onto a donut floaty and lay across it with your stomach facing the water and your back to the sun.

Liam swims up to you and rests his arms atop the floaty. He’s face-to-face with you, leaning on the floaty.

“How’s the water?” You ask, smiling down at Liam.

“It’s great, we should come here more often.” Liam says.

“Absolutely, but I hope this heat lets up.” You say, looking up at the sun.

“Yeah, though I think Malia is enjoying the heat.” Liam says, pointing at Malia who’s sunbathing on a long floaty.

You nod, resting your head against the warm floaty. Liam grabs your hand, intertwining your fingers with his.

“You should come over tonight.” Liam whispers, resting his head against his arms.

“Are your parents home?” You ask. Liam shakes his head,

“My dad is working the night shift and my mom is on a work trip.”

“Then yeah, I’ll go over tonight.” You say, smiling at Liam. A beautiful smile breaks across his face and he leans in to give you a kiss.

But before he can Theo cannonballs into the pool and creates a huge wave which splashes down over you and Liam.

“Theo what the hell!” Liam yells, splashing Theo back which causes a splashing war between the two boys.

You laugh at the boys as your pool floaty floats over to the edge of the pool. You lift yourself out of the pool and grab a towel.

“I think we’ve been here a little long.” You say, pointing to the setting sun.

“Damn, I didn’t realize we were here for so long.” Cora says, drying herself off with a towel.

“So are we going to eat Jackson’s food or?” Stiles asks Lydia as he dries himself off with a towel.

“Can you cook?” Lydia asks, “because most of the food in this house is ingredients to make food.”

“Let’s order takeout.” Stiles says with a nod, moving past Lydia.

“Ooo takeout sounds good.” Allison says, turning to Kira.

“You want takeout?” You ask Liam as you walk out of Jackson’s house and back into the driveway.

“We got some food at the house.” Liam says, holding your hand and walking past the cars.

You two say goodbye to everyone then walk to Liam’s house where you have some spaghetti for dinner.

After doing the dishes you crawl into Liam’s bed and curl under the sheet. Liam turns the ceiling fan on before getting into the bed with you.

“Today was fun.” You whisper to Liam.

“Yeah it was.” Liam whispers back, resting his arm behind your head. You cuddle into Liam’s chest, laying your head on his arm.

“I love you.” You say, looking up and giving Liam a kiss.

Liam cups your face, “I love you too.”

[marshmallow-phd]

Catching Rain

Part of The Untamed - EXO Wolf Universe

Genre: Wolf!AU

Pairing: Minseok x Reader

Summary: You were more than satisfied with your life. You attended a nice college, had nice friends, a nice boyfriend. That’s what your life was: nice. You weren’t looking for anything more, so what were you to do when this seemingly harmless boy walked into your life and turned your nice little world into one much more dangerous?

Part: 1 I 2 I 3 I 4 I 5 I 6 I 7 I 8 I 9 I 10 I Epilogue

**

The sound of your pencil tapping lightly against your notebook must have been annoying those around you, but you were too focused on the digital clock hanging above the professor’s head to care. Bright red numbers stole your attention; each time it changed you sat up a still straighter, scooted closer to the edge of your seat. The darkness of the room didn’t help. Even with the projector shining the notes you were supposed to be absorbing did nothing to block out the beacon. You were starving.

Okay, maybe not literally, but you were definitely ravenous. Breakfast had been the last thing on your mind this morning and now you were paying for it severely. A headache brewed right under the surface and your stomach gurgled and bubbled from the emptiness. The thought of leaving early did cross your mind, but that would have been rude, not to mention highly inconvenient since you were seated near the middle of the small lecture hall. It was best to avoid the dirty looks and low curses from those that you have to crawl over to get the stairs on the edge.

“And that ends the lesson for today.” The professor walked over to the side and flipped on the light. The sudden brightness made you squint, but it was worth the relief you felt. He’d ended the lesson a whole ten minutes early. You packed your belongs as quietly as possible while still keeping a listening ear. “Please look over chapter six, sections one and two before next class, there will be a two question quiz over the passages.” You scribbled a reminder down in the corner of your notebook and hopped up out of your seat. You weren’t the only one who had called it quits for the day even though the professor was still talking. “Don’t forget the first outline of your project is due next class as well, if it’s not turned in then it’s an automatic twenty percent deduction.”

Standing in line to shuffle out from the row of desks, you made a mental note to go over your outline one more time. You were already on the third stage of the project – gathering the necessary sources for the paper – but it was still a good idea to count your ducks and make sure they were lined up nicely.

You hurried to the cafeteria. The moment you were inside you hopped in the first line you saw, not bothering to take the time to consider your options. The line you were in was for the salads and sandwiches; boring food it was. Your stomach didn’t care if your taste buds weren’t going to be blown away today, it only needed sustenance. With your tray full, you moved over to the cash register and paid for your meal before finding a free table.

“Hungry much?”

Willa slid into the chair across from you, her own tray holding the spaghetti special. The buttery garlic smell drifted over to you and made your mouth water. You chewed slowly on your bland sandwich. Maybe later you could stop by for an afternoon snack….

“Already started without me, I see.” Eric dropped his bag in the half booth beside you and kissed the top of your head.

You smiled up at him. “Early bird gets the worm.”

“But the second mouse gets the cheese,” he countered as he pushed his glasses up his nose.

You leaned around him and stared at the long lines forming across the way. “I don’t think that second half applies here. You better get going before all the good stuff is gone.”

Erik followed your gaze. “Oh, crap. You’re right. Be right back!”

After swallowing a mouthful of noodles, Willa sighed. “You two are so cute.”

You snickered under your breath, but didn’t reply. Erik and you had met in World Music Appreciation your freshman year. In class, he was the slightly loud, slightly obnoxious kid who sat behind you with his friends. Somehow – and to this day you still weren’t sure the steps that led to it – you ended up in their study group for the final exam. You found that the boy who sat behind you was indeed funny, but also intelligent, generally entertaining to be around. After passing the exam that was much harder than any introductory music class should have been, you found yourself going out for celebratory pizza with him that morphed into your first date. The two of you had settled into a comfortableness with each other and you were happy.

As if trying to contradict you, Minseok’s face made an appearance in your mind. You shook the image of his smile away. That… that wasn’t good.

“Not hungry anymore?” Finally through the line, Erik sat down beside you and cracked open the can of pop he’d purchased. You looked down at the half-eaten sandwich in your hand. You hadn’t realized you’d stopped eating. The grumbling of your stomach hadn’t completely subsided, however, the bread and meat combination was no longer remotely appealing. Was this your “grass is always greener” moment?

To wave away the thoughts, you became playful again, reaching over and plucking a lob of cheese off the fresh slice of pizza on Erik’s plate and tossed in your mouth. “No, I just decided that your food looks better.”

“Well, then here.” Erik picked up your plate, took the sandwich out of your hand and slid his tray over to your side. “I’ll eat this.”

“No, Erik, give it back.”

“Seriously, (y/n), it’s fine.”

“Holy crap.”

Willa’s soft outburst stopped the playful argument in its tracks. “What is it?” Erik asked after taking a bite of your sandwich. Giving in, you nibbled on the pizza as you waited for the answer. Your taste buds cheered in victory. This was much better.

“A couple campers were attacked last night in the woods.” Willa’s eyes were trained on her phone, scanning the article that fed her the information. Whatever words she was reading, they must have been bad. Normally, Willa was the more upbeat, nothing-gets-her-down type. It must have been bad.

You leaned forward on the table. Your happy mood at the better-tasting meal as disappeared, replaced by worry. “What was it? Does it say?”

Willa swallowed thickly. “The one that was still awake said it was a wolf. A really big wolf.”

“The one that was still awake?”

“Yeah. I guess there were three of them. One died and one’s in the ICU. The third was only sort of injured when the park rangers found them.”

“Maybe he did it,” Erik said skeptically.

“I thought the same thing, but the police say the scene was consistent with an animal attack.” She clicked the lock button on the side of her phone and put it down. Her eyes flickered to you then back down at her food. It didn’t take a telepath to figure out where her mind had gone.

Erik threw an arm around your shoulders. “See why I don’t like the idea of you going out there by yourself?”

Guilt sunk your stomach. Now you really didn’t feel like eating. To try and hide it, you smiled up at him. “I’ve always understood, but you’re right, that’s a scary thing happen and it could happen to anyone.”

Satisfied, Erik removed his arm and turned his focus back to eating. You continued to pick at the cheese in order to throw off any suspicion. While the guilt of lying was still there, that wasn’t at the most forefront of your thoughts. As plausible as it was, you hoped that it wasn’t your wolf that attacked those people. Well, the wolf didn’t belong to you, but you couldn’t image such a creature killing a human being. He’d seemed to gentle and sweet to be able to do such a thing.

It was an animal, you reminded yourself. They ran on pure instinct. Besides, you didn’t know the whole story. Perhaps, if it was the same one you met in the clearing, he was provoked. Idiots were always teasing animals, whether at the zoo or the park. It was quite possible that the campers brought it upon themselves.

No. You shouldn’t think like that. A person died. Sighing, you pushed the tray away from you.

“Full?” Erik asked. You nodded and he picked up the remains of the pizza, devouring it in only a few short bites. You giggled at the grease stain left in the corner of his mouth. With the napkin, you wiped it away and started to feel somewhat at ease again.

**

Minseok was devastated. There was no other word for it. This- this was not a possibility he had imagined. How could fate be so cruel?

As he stood near the entrance of the cafeteria, he’d been overjoyed at spotting you, sitting alone at one of the hybrid tables near the middle of the large crowded room, devouring the food in front of you like Chanyeol at his favorite burger place. For a moment, he’d considered walking over and saying hi, but thought better of it since he wasn’t alone. Jongdae was chatting about his classes, laughing merrily with Jongin and Yixing beside him. All the noise was a simple hum in Minseok’s ears. His fellow students were nothing but blurs his peripheral; only you were in focus. One foot started your way despite his previous hesitation, but then another girl sat down across from you. He took that as a sign to slow down. Then a guy joined you, placing his bag down as if he owned that space beside you, and kissed your head. You beamed up at him.

The ground shook beneath his feet, vibrating his whole body. An elbow connected with his stomach and made him flinch. “Hey, you okay?” Jongdae asked.

“Yeah,” Minseok lied as he turned away from the sight that caused his blood to boil. The wolf had never been so hard to fight before. Human. He had to be completely human here. “But I think I’m going to take my food back to the lounge.”

“What? Why?”

“Is everything alright?” Yixing tilted his head in that way he always did when he was trying to read through the expressions on their faces. It was irritating at times, especially when they didn’t want to talk about whatever was bothering them. He meant well, but he wasn’t learning to become that kind of doctor.

“Yeah, yeah.” Shoving his hands in his pockets, Minseok forced himself to turn away before he stormed across the cafeteria. The sure fire way of having you reject him would be to slam your boyfriend against the wall. Jongdae opened his mouth to counter, but Minseok was already moving into the line, grabbing a faded red tray still wet from the washer and sliding it across the three metal bars that kept the herd of college students at bay. He swiped up a plate with a lukewarm slice of pizza and kept going. Bypassing everything else, the last thing he grabbed was a can of flavored coffee from the open fridge before going to the register.

Jongdae pouted as Minseok waved goodbye and walked out of the building. His grip on the tray was strained, knuckles pale and tendons popping out from under the skin on the back of his hands. This complicated things well beyond the obstacles he already had in his way. And here he had the fairytale in his head, thinking he would simply meet you, continue to “coincidentally” run into you and get to know you until the two of you naturally fell in love and then… well, he didn’t exactly have a plan after that, but now that would really have to be put off while he figured out how to get past step one.

Arriving at the mathematics college where he spent most of his time, he made his way through the halls until he found the lounge reserved for the GTAs. There were tables where they studied and put together lesson plans as well as couches where more naps occurred than other types of casual reclining. Against one wall was a stereo equipped with Bluetooth while a TV and game console sat across the way. It was a room where they could relax and bounce ideas off each other. The place was empty at the moment, most of the usual occupants either in class or eating lunch with their friends.

Minseok sat down at one of the tables. He aggressively chewed on the pizza as he tried not to think about what he saw a few minutes ago. And here he thought eventually telling you that he was a wolf was going to be the hard part. A large group came in then, happily talking amongst themselves. Spotting Minseok, they joined him. Sungkyu took the seat to Minseok’s right and dropped a heavy binder on the table.

“Sometimes I wonder why I took this job,” Sungkyu grumbled.

So much for peace and quiet. Oh, well, hopefully this would serve as a nice distraction. Minseok could go back to planning his next step later, once he’d calmed down a bit.

“Having fun with the freshman?” Minseok teased. As GTAs, that was the main group they taught. Not all classes were bad, but it usually took a while for some of them to realize that college was much more serious than high school.

“Actually, it’s not a freshman.” Opening the binder, Sungkyu pulled out a few papers stapled together. A sticky note covered the name written at the top, but the red ink that dictated the score was out for the world to see. “She’s close to our age, a senior, but she put this class off until the last minute. And I’m starting to see why. I don’t want to fail her, but….”

“Just give her an extra credit project,” Varya suggested between sips of her peach tea.

“Like what?”

Changmin was the first to have an idea. “Have her put together a project that applies the math to whatever her major is.”

Sungkyu wrinkled his nose at the idea. “That sounds complicated. She’s an arts major.”

“Get someone to help her with it.”

“Are you volunteering?” Varya snorted. Changmin was… charming and used it quite well, to put it mildly. “Who is it? Maybe I’ll help.”

Sungkyu peeled back the sticky note. “(y/n) (l/n).”

Minseok nearly choked on his food. Was this fate giving him a Get Out of Jail free card?

Varya shrugged. “Never heard of her.”

“I’ll do it!” The word were out before Minseok could figure out how to say them without sounding overeager. Everyone at the table was staring at him, confused. He wasn’t the kind to volunteer for these sort of things. He wasn’t the kind to add additional interactions to his schedule; he was too much of an introvert for it.

“You hate any sort of tutoring,” Sungkyu pointed out.

“I need it… for my resume.” He didn’t even have a resume. At least not a serious one. The last time he’d put together the paper bragging about himself was for a class three years ago. The file was probably somewhere on his laptop, but he doubted he would ever actually add something like this to it.

While Changmin and Varya still eyed him curiously, Sungkyu simply shrugged. “Whatever. This is only if she agrees to do it, anyway.”

“If she wants to graduate, she’ll do it.” Standing up, Varya threw out the remaining ice in her reusable cup and slipped her bag over her shoulder. “I’ll see you guys later. I’ve got a research paper that’s not going to write itself.”

In an overdramatic fashion, Changmin placed his hand over his heart and looked to the ceiling. “If only they did. My school career would be so much easier.”

Sungkyu rolled his eyes. “And yet completely negate the purpose of it all.” Changmin wasn’t bothered by the comment at all, pulling out his phone and scrolling through his social media as he leaned back in his chair. Sungkyu replaced the sadly scored paper and closed his binder. “Are you free tomorrow a little after four?” he asked Minseok. “I want to try and catch her after class. I’m sure she’ll agree to do the extra credit, but maybe having you right there to say you’ll help will nudge her if she’s on the fence about it.”

“Absolutely.” There was no way Minseok was going let this opportunity go. Maybe this was the better way to go about it. The two of you would be spending time together while he helped you with this project; endless time just you and him. He could get to know you, learn about what you liked and disliked, where you saw yourself going and where you’d already been. Then he could properly fight for your heart, win his mate over the right way. The excitement of what awaited him was almost too much. Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough.

**

You wanted to disintegrate there in your seat.

Right on the front of the homework you just received back was a sticky note asking you to stay back after class. Never had you want a period to not end, to go on and on in a cycle of torture. You knew it was about it your recent grades. It wasn’t as if you weren’t trying. But this subject had never been your strong suit and recently it had been harder to grasp the concepts. You were an arts student, a photographer. When were you ever really going to need to know how to find the function of x after this?

Unfortunately, the end came and you stayed seated while the younger students happily skipped out of the classroom. When it was only the two of you left, you got up and walked over to the desk.

“That bad, uh?” you said in an attempt to lighten your own mood.

Sungkyu, at least, seemed a little sympathetic. “I’ve seen worse.”

“Well, not everyone can be a math genius.”

“No. That’s why I’m going to give you a chance to make up the points.”

You perked up. This was… somewhat good, given your mind had wondered if he was going to suggest you drop the class for now and try again later, under a different teacher. “Really?” You couldn’t help but feel like a rabbit jumping for a carrot hanging in the air. “Whatever it is, I’ll do it.”

“Good.” Sungkyu reached behind him and plucked up a sheet of paper before leaning back against the desk. “I’ve got an outline here that’ll explain the project in detail.” He handed it over to you before continuing. “The basics, though, are pretty much just write a paper of how the subject relates to your major.”

You’ve got to be kidding me. Clearing your throat, you said, “O-okay. I think I can do that. Except….”

“You don’t know where to start?” Sungkyu guessed. You nodded. “That’s alright. I’m not going to make you do it alone. I’ve enlisted some help for you. Minseok?”

In from the hallway strolled in the very same Minseok you’d run into the day before. There was no way…. You nearly laughed out loud. This couldn’t possibly be a coincidence, could it? But the manner in which he shyly waved at you and fidgeted from foot to foot told you that it might be.

“Minseok will help you with the research and come with ideas. He’ll also help you with the examples that way you get all the points. Is that alright?”

Your stomach did a backflip. This meant the two of you would be spending time together – alone. Which wasn’t anything unusual; you’d had project partners of the opposite sex before, but none of them sent your heart leaping either. Perhaps it would be best to keep this on a need-to-know basis for the time being. Smiling, you looked at the expectant GTA.

“Peachy.”

[bowieandqueen11]

You’re An Idiot / Richie Tozier Fluff

Request: I loved "I'm an Idiot." It's super sweet and reads like the ending of a 90's/00's teen movie. I was wondering if you could write a Part Two that's set during Chapter Two? Where they re-unite either at the Jade of the Orient or they run into each other a little earlier while on their way to the restaurant? All fluff and hugs and happy tears? 

YOU ARE THE SWEETEST LITTLE BEAN @trench-coat-wearing-angel!! <3</b>

I hope you don’t mind I kind of flipped the tone around for the second, adult part! I just thought they both fitted the tones of the movies!

Warning, some strong language!

The sun had seemed to disappear in Derry.

Richard Tozier never thought people truly were themselves. To him, people were just fragments of others. Of people that they loved. And when they had finally all gone, and nothing was left to hold all the pieces up, they shattered and left you only broken inside.

He wish he could remember who had broken him.

When he had first gotten the call to come back home to Derry, his immediate response was to throw up. He wish, more than anything, he could pin down the reason why. Was it the fact he had spent hours driving in his convertible to a town he could not remember, or was it the memory of who had left him there that hurt the most.

When it had finally clicked, when he had finally remembered, he wished it had been the former.

Cursing, he made himself drag his feet across the frozen pavement and back towards the middle of town, where the Jade of the Orient stood proudly as a beacon to the Losers. Thoughts returning, swirling still in his mind, of his first crush, his first love, he knocked his glasses back up the bridge of his nose clumsily as he pondered at the ground.

‘Get it together, Rich. Even if you still love her, she won’t remember you.’

Other than the darkness, and himself, the only thing that seemed to be alive in this deserted main street was the biting wind that made him pull his leather jacket tighter around his shoulders. Shuddering to himself, his blood ran cold in his veins under the nonexistent stars and puffs of steel gray. He tried to take his mind off things, off of you, by thinking of how Eddie Spaghetti is probably pacing around the restaurant right now listing all the reasons, in alphabetical order, the place was a fire risk. 

There was just something about the night that scared him, left him feeling breathless despite how much he thought about his long lost, but long loved friends. The balls of cotton streamed ash and soot above him, blanketing the cold night and hiding the moon, no matter how desperately it fought to shine out on him. The clouds just smothered the light, bathing the tiny dot in Maine in an ominous feel.

Little did he know, as he was trying to pull his heart from his mouth and stop himself from getting hurt again by thinking of you, that you were nearby. He walked onto the edge of the pavement, the red and green neon lights of the Jade glowing warmly on his fearful face as he reached for the door.

He dropped it suddenly, the weight of everything he lost suddenly coming crashing down on him. In that moment, he looked so old, an unrecognisable version of his childhood self. 

‘Richard... Richie Tozier?’

You step out from the shadows, hovering around the nearby streetlight as Richie whips himself out of his daydreams to turn towards the noise.

‘Yeah - what- I’m kind of busy, at the moment.’

‘It’s me, Y/n. God, it’s been so long. Twenty four years in fact.’

Suddenly, Richie’s defences are just paper, paper that is being soaked by the rapidly falling briny drops. Before he can draw in the air his body needs he has rushed over and melted into your form, covering you in his shaking frame. His arms fold around you as you shut your eyes, drawing you closer into his warmth. He tries to rub his tears quickly away with his thumb, trying to stop himself from crying for all the missed time the two of you will never get back.

Pulling back, for just a moment, he can’t seem to let you go. His hands are running up and down your arms, as if he can't quite believe you’re not part of an almost forgotten dream. Suddenly, he seems to realise himself, and takes a heaving step back, eyes back on his feet.  

‘I can’t believe you’re really here’, he swallowed harshly, trying to figure out if he should stuff his hands back into his pockets or leave them awkwardly dangling by his side.

Instead, he did something he hadn’t done since he was a teenager. He began to hop a bit from side to side.

‘Still the same Trashmouth I see.’

‘And you’re still as beautiful as ever - I mean - I, fuck!’

You chuckle lightly, the sound making him relax, his heart melting a bit at the noise.

‘It’s okay, Rich - I should have got in contact sooner, I’m so sorry. It’s just college, and then you made it big and once I saw you on TV I got scared you wouldn’t want me or remember me-’

‘You- you remembered me?’

You bit your bottom lip, eyes roaming everywhere but on Richie’s face, the hope in his eyes and the drop of his jaw too likely to make you cry.

‘Of course... how could I forget the dork who came professing his love for me at my windowsill.’

‘...If you like, I could do it again.’

‘Do what?’

‘I still love you, Y/n. I always have - God I’m so stupid! Why did I ever let you leave!’

To shut him up, and stop him spiralling, you rush over to him and pull him down by the neck. His cold lips brush against yours, nearly tripping over your feet as you pull him into your touch. Placing your hand gently on his chest, you sigh into his mouth as you feel the thunderous, rapid pounding of his heartbeat against your fingertips.

Pulling back, a mixture of both shock and awe settles in his eyes as the two of you just stare at each other, frozen breaths mingling into one.  Unable to stop himself, he stooped, and our mouths pressed together again in a long, passionate kiss, closing the gap between the two of you until you couldn’t figure out where he ended and you began.

When the two of you finally pulled apart, you were surprised to find a pair of tears racing down his stubbled cheeks. You gently cupped down, rubbing them off before pressing a warm kiss against his skin, noting how he closed his eyes in bliss.

‘You’re an idiot, Richie Tozier.’

‘Yeah, well I’m your idiot.’

‘And I’m never letting myself leave you again.’

[writefightandflightclub]

Violent Delights: Chapter 6

Pairing: First Order!Poe x reader

Author’s note: This is different to the other chapters, but I hope you like it! I’ll probably fix typos tomorrow. I’m impatient.

Summary: This definitely answers that KEY QUESTION I left hanging at the end of Chapter 5! If you’re new to this story, there are MAJOR SPOILERS under the cut, so please do read the other chapters first (series masterlist here). Even if you’ve been following, you may want to recap Chapter 5 first! 

Song inspo: Oh, in my ears / My blood is just roaring / When he's the only one I've ever wanted / I suppose that's just the way it is / Just to think this could be / The last time I hold you, hold you / Ever again / Oh, I don't think I'll ever sleep till / Morning. (Nicole Aitken, The Way It Is)

Warnings: 18+ only, dark fic. This is nowhere near as dark as the preceding chapters but still some warnings: OOC!Poe, FO!Poe, Violence inc: injuries! shooting! Explicit language. Mentions of: torture / sex / death / poison! Let me know if I missed any others.

Taglist: @aussiefangirlwolfy, @localashe, @fictionalcharactersownme, @a-somehow-functioning-dumbass, @itsamedeemoney, @woakiees​​ @tintinwrites​@jyn-z-solo​ @spaghetti-666​ @kittyofalltrades​ @planetpoes (TAGLIST OPEN- let me know if you wish to be added / removed)

Word Count: 6K. Yikes.

GIF by @solorenskywalker​

It hurts you. Somehow, it hurts you.

And yet, you are solidified in place, no wound observable.

The moment slows almost to a halt as you register the shot.

Dameron is hit.

The blast hits first. Then, shock, pain, and anger strike all at once, eddying between you and the Commander like the swell of a vicious storm, the air charged and practically humming. At first, his rage at this insulting wound sunk into his flesh is so vital that an immediate hope blooms in your chest; how can he be fatally hurt if he seems so alive? Then; something alien surfaces in his eyes. Something which looks a lot like fear. He delivers an agonised moan, already sounding hollowed out, and your fleeting hope wanes with him.

He unfists his hands from your clothing as he moves to clutch his shoulder in agony. He is cleaved from you and you are split in two, in every figurative way possible. You are ruptured by the blast like a fault line snaking beneath an ocean. This boiling rage is subdued only by the heavy, cooling sea of grief with threatens to depress you down on to your knees. You are torn, the desire to erupt in retaliation on behalf of your “enemy” in stark opposition to your need to sink with your lover. You want to fall to the floor with him. To your knees. To hold him. No question. But if you try and help him, Barret might shoot you too.

The indecision burns you.

It hurts you, this shot.

But it hurts Dameron more.

The commander groans, creaks beneath the weight of this pain. It presses down on him and his body curls in on itself as he creeps further towards a colourless exit, the knives in his eyes blunted. There is no vivid, crimson tide of blood to warn you of death incoming. Not this time. This is death pouncing from the long grass like a whip crack. The predator no-one saw coming.

The commander’s face contorts in a rendition of agony, his face almost beautiful with it. But this is not the kind of pain he has made his friend. This is pain without pleasure. And, since you can’t reach out to him, pain without comfort.

The cruellest pain of all.

“No. No. No.” you repeat -almost inaudibly- as Dameron sinks to his knees. You feel like he’s sinking into the depths of a cold, dark sea. Sinking out of reach.

His dark, tempestuous eyes are directed up at you, teeth gritted, lips sucked thin as agony grips him. On his knees like this, he could easily appear like a beast defeated; defanged and declawed. But there is some fight left in his eyes yet. Enough for him to try and spur you into action. “Time to go, Rebel. You fly, he guns, understand?”

You don’t understand. How can you comprehend leaving him like this?

His voice is shot with gravel, full of holes, but it still speaks its way into the depths of you. “Now. Go!, he insists, his voice winding its way around your bones and pulling you into motion, as if he holds the reins in the palm of his hand. As if he can bend you to his will, even now.

He has been dragging you to him all this time and now he urges you to leave, as if he’s unaware of the strength it will take to release yourself from his orbit; from his gravity. But staying isn’t helping him. In fact, it’s worse than that, you’re a danger to him every second you’re still on this ship. You know too much. He needs you gone from his sky.

You obey reluctantly, giving him the smallest of nods, letting your trembling fingertips drag ever so gently, subtly along his jaw as you turn towards the TIE. You move with strings still on you, dragging you back to him and making each step feel like you are wading through mud.

Progressing towards the craft, you are vaguely aware of Barret barking at you, calling you in to the interior of the fighter. You clamber up the ladder and into the tight cockpit just as Troopers swarm into the hangar, the blaster shots bouncing off the ship’s exterior. Your shaking hands hover above the ignition controls, ready to punch it. Instead, you wait. You wait until you are assured that the Troopers have made their way over to the vicinity of the Commander. You wait until the last possible second.

With a final glance through the transparisteel windshield, you look down at his now stilled form on the ground below you. His crown of pitch-dark curls and his uniform-clad body splayed out -helpless- over the cold floor. You don’t know if it was a killing shot. Without a crimson tide of blood, you can’t tell if Dameron’s still alive. But you do know that you have to go, regardless. With a sharp growl of regret, of anguish, you boost the ship out of the swiftly closing gap in the hangar doors. Just in the nick of time.

And so, you fly.

You fly with a pounding heart, blood raging in your ears. You fly, so enraged with your passenger that you are tempted to crash the ship just to make him pay. But there is nothing around you. No ground, no sky. Nothing to cling on to. Just a loss. An emptiness. Just space. You fly away from him, like a satellite released from its orbit. Equally lost and purposeless in the endless dark. 

From out of the darkness, the thought of the Resistance base should be calling out to you right now like a beacon. A beacon inviting you home, now that you are finally free. But you’ve never before had to escape somewhere you wanted to be and return to somewhere you were no longer sure you belonged. The thought of retuning to base with Barret suddenly seems incomprehensible. And so, when you’re clear of the fleet, you don’t know what else to do except keep flying. No destination in mind, except away.

Flying. Simply flying away, is all you try to focus on. But all you can think about is turning the blasted ship back around. Flying toward him. Following those strings the commander has tied on to you which extend across space, drawing you back to him.

But you know that’s untenable. You fly, and it’s likely a good thing that the Order is in chaos, that the chain of command is interrupted. Otherwise, you’re not sure how -or if- you’d manage to lose the pursuing fleet. Not in your current state of fury. Not with Barret’s meagre attempt at gunning, through intermittent groans of pain.

Somehow, you shake them regardless. As the remaining TIEs abandon pursuit, you hear Barret breathe a sigh of relief from the gunner position behind you. The reminder of Barret’s presence is enough to make your hands tighten so hard on the controls that your fingernails dig crescents into your palms. To make your chest tighten.

Then: “They track these things. Did you disable the tracker?” he asks you.

You are loathe to acknowledge him. Even so, you fiddle with the dash until you’re satisfied that the Order can no longer trace you. You cut the strings leading back to him and you feel that you’ve just cut a lifeline. That suddenly you’re lost to liminal space, in-between anywhere and anyone you’ve ever considered home. Still ruptured in two. The feeling sets a hollowness in the pit of you, like you are a ripe fruit which has been scooped out by a cool spoon.

“Affirmative. Plotting a course to base.” You confirm in monotone, all emotion scrubbed from your voice.

“I can’t believe I got such a lucky shot at that bastard.” Barret continues, his voice sickeningly jovial and full of relief.

You feel like you might throw-up.

“Don’t speak. Save your strength.” You say curtly, inordinately thankful that you are back-to-back in the TIE. At least you don’t have to look at him. At least he can’t look at you – can’t get a read on the emotions you would be incapable of obscuring right now.

Still, as you programme your course you feel like his eyes are roving over you, all the same. You feel like he’s poking around inside you, wondering what’s wrong with you. You can imagine the gears in his brain working in an attempt to figure out why your reactions seem off, to unearth whatever happened to you on that ship. Whatever tortures you may have been subjected to. You can imagine him retrospectively register the bite marks on your neck, the cuts to your hands. The blood on your face and clothing. You practically feel his thought process creep over you in the cockpit like a cold chill.

“What happened to you?” Barret asks then, ever so softly, his voice heavy with the implication of imagined atrocities.

“It’s not my blood. It’s Hux’s. I killed him.” You say, hoping to deflect from exactly what happened to you on that ship.  

Barret hoots with laughter, and the sound jarrs you. You hear his hand slapping against his thigh in celebration. “Wow, we really fucked the Order over today, partner. Hux and Dameron dead!” Barret reaches behind him to squeeze your shoulder and you flinch away as if you are afraid of his touch; as if you don’t deserve it; as if he disgusts you. Perhaps all of those things.

“You don’t know that Dameron’s dead.” You bite off without thinking, molten tears of rage threatening at the corner of your eyes. The break in your voice is giving too much away. Emotion floods the cracks in your words like tributaries joining the churn of an unstoppable river. You can’t choke back the sob which follows.

Barret’s voice softens so much that you want to wring his neck to choke the pity out of it. “Did Dameron... hurt you?”. That’s why he thinks you’re crying, then? Because you can’t be certain that the commander’s dead, and surely you must want him dead for the terrible, unspeakable things he enacted upon you?

The truth might be even more unspeakable. The truth that you’re a traitor. The truth that you’d sell your soul to have the commander do those things to you all over again. To have him fuck you and hurt you and hold you. The truth that, yes, he did hurt you, buy you liked it. Barret doesn’t understand that you’re wretched with a crushing and unexpected grief at the thought that it may never happen again. Not since Barret did what you should have had the sense to do all that time ago. Not since Barret shot the commander.

You hope Barret doesn’t notice the course of the ship waver as your hands slip on the controls. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

The close air of the TIE is suddenly thick with a loaded silence as the ship shudders back along its trajectory. As you regain control of yourself and the craft.

Barret, however, does not relent for long. “Do you think when we get back to base we’ll be welcomed as heroes?” The question simply makes your stomach turn. You refuse to pluck at the question while it hangs there, ripe, and so it becomes a rotten thing in the air between you. You feel that chill creep over you again, as if Barret is reaching inside of you, panning for your secrets. No escape within the confines of this ship.

You think back to the last time you were confined with Barret. It seems so long ago that you hunkered in that stakeout room, tracking that shipment and thirsting hard for the commander. The commander who had consumed you with just one bite. Now, mere days later, your partner seems like a stranger and your enemy seems like your lover. You indulged your appetite for that tempting, delicious darkness; you were willingly suckered into Dameron’s honeyed trap. And now that you have been given a taste, you should feel sated. But the truth is you would gladly open your mouth and drink more of that darkness down. You’d drink it until you were spoiled and loathsome with it.

The most disconcerting aspect of these tumultuous events is how little you know yourself. What you are capable of. What you crave and how far you will wade in to the darkness to get it. You know these are your mistakes, your weaknesses to atone for. You know that despite what you’re feeling now, Barret doesn’t deserve your hate. A part of you still knows that. Knows that, objectively, he’s simply a good guy who shot a bad man. That objectively, you should still be on his side. You know you owe it to him to take him home. At the very least.

An older, softer part of you resurfaces as you hear Barret grunting behind you with a fresh wave of pain. It’s likely that the initial burst of adrenaline is wearing off and he is beginning to suffer.  

“You’re hurt.”

“I’ll be ok. My stomach is hurting like a bitch, though.”

In all the chaos, you’d given little thought to the extent of his injuries, until now. So, next, you ask a question you’re not sure you truly want an answer to. “What happened to you, Barret?”

There is a beat. He replies in a small voice. “The kinda stuff our training tried to prepare us to resist.” His answer is vague but loaded. That’s enough. That’s enough to understand what they’d subjected him to. Guilt flares in the pit of you, knowing that while he was being tortured, you were indulging your darker whims. Knowing how much you were enjoying yourself while he suffered. Enjoying yourself at his expense, when you could have been trying to get him out of there.

So, you still can feel guilt, then? You still know that, on some level, it was wrong. Maybe there is something of the Rebel left in you, somewhere. Buried under the landslide of darkness. But you know there is little chance of that part of you clawing itself out when your next thought is of the commander. When your whole body clenches around the memory of him, clings on to it. You think of how he can torture you in an entirely different way, until you’re begging for mercy. A part of you feels you’d raze everything you ever loved to the ground for a chance to beg him again.

Still, you’re curious. You’re curious whether your commander was involved in Barret’s torture. Perhaps so that you can weigh precisely how much you should loathe yourself. “Troopers, or one of the higher-ups?” you ask, trying to keep your voice level, void of feeling.

“Troopers mainly. Some droids, doctors…” Barret trails off, remembering. “Though, it’s funny, really. Dameron came to my room this morning. Told me -don’t worry- it would all be over for me today. Guess the joke’s on him. The bastard.” Barret’s voice sounds darker, more malicious than you’ve ever heard it.

“He came to your room? This morning?” Something about that doesn’t sit quite right with you, leaves you uneasy. Dameron doesn’t do anything much unless there’s something in it for him, you’re learning. Maybe the games he has been playing aren’t quite over yet. Is it wrong to relish that thought?

“He visited a couple of times. To mindfuck me, from what I can gather. Yesterday he tried to make me swallow some horrible lies about you. To make me think I was alone, I guess- to get some intel out of me. Today… well, he brought me my daily rations and told me it was all over. Well, fuck him, he’s dead.”

Panic flutters in your stomach. You try to remain steady on the flight controls, to calm your breathing. You know Barret doesn’t fully appreciate the implications of his words. Of the commander’s actions. But you might.

You have two burning questions you need answers to.

The first: How much did Dameron tell Barret?

The second: What did he feed him?

Your mind pores over any detail of Barret you can remember from the escape to establish which question is most pressing. You hark back to the sheen of sweat on his forehead, the glassiness of his infuriatingly concerned eyes. The way he was clutching at his stomach. More than being injured; Barret looked ill.

Realisation strikes you, and if you didn’t feel guilty before, you sure as hell do now. You can’t be sure, of course. But somehow you know. You’d bet that the commander had fed Barret some juicy, ripe, red fruit.

Bile rises in your throat, but you force yourself to gloss over your voice with a kind tone. To paint your face with a soft, reassuring smile. “Why don’t you try and get some rest, huh? You’ve been through it.” Your passenger hums, considering your proposition. “If I divert the power from the interior electrics into the thrusters, I can get us back to base a little faster than expected. If you don’t mind flying in the dark?”

Flying in the dark is all you’ve been doing ever since the commander hit your life and turned it upside down, like a hurricane. Ans it turns out you’re still caught in his wake. You can’t tell if you’re soaring or if you’re about to crash and burn.

“Yeah.” Barret reaches a hand around to squeeze your arm again and it is like a hand rising out of a grave. His hand is cold. You resist the urge to flinch away, despite the chill it sends down your spine. “Oh, and, partner? Thank you for rescuing me.”

You bite your lips between your teeth. You’re not sure if that statement could possibly be further from the truth of what happened. Hadn’t you doomed him, right from the start? From that first bite the commander took of you? A throwaway “You don’t need to thank me.” is all you can muster.

Barret curls himself in his chair and you are grateful to fly on in silence. Now that the affront of him is over, you suddenly realise how tense you are, how the emotions wracking you are beginning to take their toll. You can’t explain how it was more comforting to be in the arms of your enemy than trapped in the confines of this ship with someone you’d let down so badly. You owe it to Barret to try and make part of this right.

Don’t you?

An alternative option niggles at you, hiding somewhere beyond protocol, beyond the rules and conventions and obligations. Then you think that, perhaps, it’s a good thing for Barret that you can’t be sure if Dameron’s dead, after all. Because if you knew that he was, you don’t think you could find the compassion or strength to try to bring your partner home. You think you might seek retribution, in the end.

Regardless, you fly. You try and allow the darkness of the cockpit to swallow you. As if Barret is not sitting there, as if Dameron never marked you. You try and push it all down, but the commander did mark you. He’s branded you as his. He’d told you “don’t forget you’re mine”, and now his words are wrapped around your bones. His words will be buried with you. And every time you try and escape, your thoughts orbit back to him. His mouth swallowing your hot core, his hands delivering delicious tortures, his cock pumping into you. Most of all: those dark eyes, like shadowed planets you would kill to be marooned on again.

Left to the dark and the dark alone, your thoughts are consumed by him. That is, until you reach your destination, and swing your craft around in the air to bring her in for touch down. Until you approach base and spot that something isn’t right. Until you see the thick pillars of smoke billowing into the air.

“No. No. No.” You plead to no-one in particular, your protestations and erratic flying drawing Barret abruptly from his sleep.

You land harshly on the runway, avoiding blast holes and charred ground, and scramble hurriedly from the ship. Your feet relentlessly pound the tarmac until you’re in the centre of it all, scanning the scene around you with eyes wide.

No-one comes running to greet you or shoot at you. No-one is left. You look around you, surveying for damages. Surveying for bodies, you realise. That the X-wings and larger crafts are gone from the hangar provides some immediate comfort. Signs of a likely evacuation. Then, your eyes pick out the remains of familiar munitions, the tell-tale shell of a downed and lightly smoking TIE fighter.

The strike was committed by the Order. While you were taken. You shake your head in disbelief. It can’t possibly be a coincidence -not after everything that has happened. That means the Order somehow found out the location of the base while you were captive… but you hadn’t…

Oh. Oh.

You put the pieces together and turn back to Barret in disbelief. He has now come to stand several paces from you on the runway. Laughably, you know you must look betrayed when your eyes meet his. In one hand he grips a blaster and the other hand waves around defensively. No, he doesn’t look well. Now that you’re truly seeing him, he doesn’t look well at all. A sheen of sweat covers Barret’s face, his eyes red-rimmed, tears seeding at the corners. He instantly recognises the accusation in your eyes, in your stance.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” he professes, voice trembling. “I wasn’t strong enough. I hoped we’d make it back before the Order could put the intel to use. Or that we’d disrupted their plans. That maybe no-one would need to know.”.

“You sold the base out?” you spit with utter disgust, looking Barret over like he’s scum.  

Apparently, neither of you were returning to base as heroes after all.

He meets your question with silence, which says it all.

“Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?” You are yelling now. “You let the Resistance down! You betrayed them!”

You’re so angry that it feels like your blood is boiling beneath your skin. Your breath is ragged, your thoughts swirling. You feel darkness crowding at the edges of you. You feel like you are sucking it up through your fingertips, draining your surroundings of it. Feeling it course through you, like the hum of static before a storm. Barret betrayed the Resistance. He did this. And you’re so angry that you can’t see straight.

You are devoid of any sympathy or empathy for him. You’re so angry at him, of course, because you’re angry at yourself. If you can berate him for being a traitor you will take it, if it makes what you did seem to pale into insignificance.

Instinctually, although you are stood some distance away, you lift your arm as if you could simply reach out and choke Barret. Make him pay for his weakness. Your arm extended towards him, you have the desperate urge to just close your grip and crush. “I wish I could just…”

You are as shocked as Barret when he physically clasps his throat and starts wheezing, his eyes wide and afraid. It shocks you enough for you to drop your arm and physically step back from him. You shrink back from the look he’s giving you as he processes what just happened, raising his blaster arm unsteadily toward you. He looks at you questioningly. He looks at you as if he’s looking at a stranger.

All you can do is look back at him. You look Barret dead in the eyes, and you must reveal just too much. Because, if it’s possible, Barret pales even further, his eyes swimming with disbelief.

“It’s true, isn’t it? I’m not the only one who let down the Resistance, am I?” His voice is so thick with disgust that you can’t bring yourself to keep looking at him. To keep facing what you did.

“The things Dameron told me yesterday. They’re true.”

“What?” you say weakly, a pitiful attempt to backtrack, but you already know it’s futile. You’ve been found out. And you might be a traitor but you’re not a liar.

“You fucked the enemy.” Barret spits. “While I was being tortured in that cell. You could have stopped this.” He yells, gesturing around to the scene of devastation which envelops you. And, in his anger he overdoes it - ends up clutching his stomach in evident pain.

There is nothing you can say. No protestation you can muster. You had been angry and ashamed at yourself, but when confronted with it, you find a small, absurd part of you which is proud of it. Which has no desire to deny it. To apologise for it. Barret may have caved in to weakness, but you found power on that ship. Whilst he may dish out judgement, with the commander you had found understanding. Affinity.

Barret’s blaster wavered with the fresh burst of pain but now he has it pointed back at you, trained intently on you. “I didn’t want to believe Dameron. I didn’t at first.”, he bites off, chewing on his words. “But I promised him that if it was true, I’d kill you both myself. I picked your bastard boyfriend off earlier- so I guess I just need to make good on the other half of my promise, eh, traitor?”

You’re getting sick of this righteous bastard already. Hadn’t he been weak? Hadn’t he caved too? Maybe all rebels were simply hypocrites.Maybe the Order were on to something.

Then, of all the things you should say or ask right now, the next question out of your mouth is entirely self-indulgent. “What did he say?” you ask slowly, stringing out your words. In no rush. You have all the time in the world. Unlike your partner.

“What?!” Barret replies in utter confusion.

“What did he say when you promised to kill me? Because given that he poisoned you I don’t think he was too happy with you about something.” You know it’s wrong, that it’s too cruel, but you can’t help that your eyes flash with a perverse kind of satisfaction as you watch the realisation play over Barret’s face.

Is that why? Is that why the commander has poisoned your fellow rebel? To protect you? Because he threatened you? Oh, how a part of you hopes that’s true.

His blaster arm wavers again, and Barret is so weak of body and wrapped up in turmoil that you are able to walk towards him and take the blaster easily, gently from his hand. You look into his eyes, your voice steely, suddenly not feeling worthless or ashamed at all. Not anymore. Maybe you were cut out for these games, after all. “You don’t look so hot, Barret. So maybe we agree that we both made some mistakes on that ship, yes?” Barret considers your words carefully and then nods, and it acts as a meanwhile truce of sorts. You keep your tone impartial. “I’d suggest that if you want me to help you, you should take a seat. Before you drop. I’ll see if there’s anything left of the med bay.”

“You’re going to help me?” Barret looks at you in confusion.

“Yes, I’m going to help you. I’m not a monster.”

The way he looks at you in response signals that he thinks otherwise. You huff out a breath, perturbed by the condemnation. And so, for the second time that day, you aren’t able to offer comfort to someone in need. Instead, you sling Barret’s blaster on to your belt and jog towards the med bay. Barret’s only hope is that there are some shots left which haven’t been blown-up or cleared-out.

You move as fast as you’re able, gathering whatever supplies you can, but by the time you return, Barret is lying still on the runway.

You are too late.

Barret is the third body you’ve had lying at your feet that day. Three enemies, in the end. One of whom was a lover, and one of whom was a friend.

Despite what Barret had done, you feel no satisfaction in his fate. You sigh deeply and turn your head into your shoulder. You don’t look. You try not to look. All you can do is drag him into the hangar and cover him over, paying final respects to the fallen Resistance member.

Now, you are truly alone.

Feeling somewhat numb, you wander around base, confirming there are no signs of life left at all. Passing collapsed buildings, smoking craters, and remnants of devastation. You act on autopilot, and before you know where you’re walking to, you’ve reached the canteen, picking up some remaining rations and stuffing your face. Then, before you realise it, you’ve meandered across base and stand at the spot where your quarters should be.

All that’s left is a shell.

Suddenly, it’s as if you dropped the bombs yourself. As if you’ve intentionally obliterated everything you used to know and used to be beyond all recognition. You pick through the rubble, try to leaf through the ashes, but nothing at all remains. Still nothing to cling on to.

In your wandering, your quest for solace of some kind, the next place you find yourself is General Leia’s room. Hers remains intact. You find it empty, but her presence is there in all the tiny details. The uniform hanging up by the small closet, the table covered in datapads and holo equipment. Her comb and tumbler of water on the nightstand.

You dearly hope that she’s safe.

Being as quiet as possible, as if she’s sleeping there and you might disturb her, you perch yourself on the edge of her bed, grabbing her blanket and tugging it around your shoulders. You let yourself dwell on all the ways you’ve let her down, the ways you may yet break her heart, and you will the grief to hit you. But it doesn’t. You feel like you should be primed to lie down and cry, letting sobs wrack you. But there’s nothing. Only numbness. Perhaps, deep down, you feel you don’t deserve Leia’s comfort. Perhaps, deep down, you’re not truly sorry. Perhaps you are still too ruptured to start healing. Perhaps all of these things.

At least, sitting still allows the exhaustion to hit you. Still, you don’t feel like you could sleep. You feel restless. A lost celestial object with no course and no orbit. A dark, unlit moon. So, you continue your wandering, digging out some fresh clothes and taking a shower, the cool water sluicing Hux’s blood away. It circles down the drain in a crimson vortex. You redress and rewrap Leia’s blanket around your shoulders.

Without knowing where exactly you’re headed next, you find your feet gravitating towards the TIE fighter, which you half-landed and half-crashed into the tarmac.

Of course.

It’s the closest you can be to him right now.

You clamber inside, the snug cockpit encasing you. And then, finally, the rush of feelings hits you. You remember the Troopers swarming around his still form and it’s as if a vice clamps down on your chest. You imagine the chaos on the ship, the discovery of General Hux, washed up on that crimson tide of blood. You remember how it felt to kill him, and then to have the commander exalt you and kiss you and rail into you. You picture how it should have gone; General Dameron sitting coolly, smugly on the bridge. Taking Hux’s place, knowing exactly what he’d done. What you’d done. Sitting there as calm and devastating as the eye of a storm.

You screw your eyes shut tight against the thought you know will follow.

Is he alive?

And, as you close your eyes, various thoughts and faces eddy through the blackness, coming and receding like waves. As you focus in on each of them, in turn, it is as if you are slipping into a current, or a hyper stream; as if you can follow the tide which might lead you to them. One thought begins to jump out at you, tugging at you like a riptide, causing your mind to drift towards it.

Leia?

You reach out with your mind, searching for her energy. You can’t explain it, but you feel that maybe you can establish where they’ve evacuated to.

At least you think that’s where your heart is reaching out to. But wait; it’s not Leia. It’s something connected, but something darker.

Kylo.

Your eyes shoot open in fright and you startle in your seat. For a moment, it’s as if you have linked to him, as if his face is blinking in front of you. He looks just as surprised as you feel. You recoil in terror. For a good while, you sit motionless in the cold shell of the TIE, as if Kylo is a creature hunting you and any small movement might allow him to pounce. You don’t know how long you sit there, heart racing, and your fingernails digging into your knees threatening to draw blood.

You just touched something so deeply dark. Something frightening. Something you are not quite ready to face.

You don’t know how much time passes, but you sit there, practically frozen, until a blue light begins to blink on the dashboard of the TIE. Your curiosity overriding your fear, you press the button. It’s a holo, patching through.

A cool, rich voice resounds through the cockpit of the TIE.

“It’s General Dameron here.”

Your relief is palpable – a fluttering in your chest. A smile which begins in the pit of you and blooms through your whole body. You hold your breath until you’re sure you can believe what you’re seeing. Your eyes pore over the holo, trying to establish where he is, how he is. He looks as though he may be patched up and lying in a med bay.

“Maybe you thought you could run or hide from me, Rebel, but Kylo -the space bloodhound- tells me he found you.” He looks off to the side of him. “You don’t mind if I call you that, do you, Supreme Leader?”

His voice is still full of holes, shot through with gravel. But he’s alive. You’re sure you can see the hint of a shark smile spread over his features. He dips his head slightly towards the camera droid at that moment, lowering his voice just a touch, his eyes narrowing. Unconsciously you lean in toward the transmission. “So, Killer. As you know, Hux is dead, and you’re responsible.” He leans in even further and even through the holo his intense eyes bore into you. “But I’m very much alive. So, I just needed you to know...” he exhales a breath and bites his bottom lip as if his next thought amuses him. “...that I’m gonna be coming for you.”

Whether his statement is a threat or a promise, you can’t be sure. However, you know that the games are far from over. Whilst tomorrow you may need to figure out your next move, for now, you finally feel like you could cry and you could sleep.

You lean back in the pilot’s chair and allow yourself a deep, relieving breath. And yet again, you can’t hold back your own resplendent shark smile.

You press the button to reverse the transmission before sending a message back to General Dameron.

“Bring it on, General Dameron. I’m ready for you.”

He’s alive.

It’s not over yet.

As much as you would like to run back to him, you know now, more than ever, that you have to return home to the Resistance - to see if it’s still where your heart is. Or whether you have any heart left at all. Then, if you happen to discover that your heart does belong to the darkness after all, at least you know the darkness is coming for you. And at least then, you will truly know that you are ready for it.

You lean back in the seat and close your eyes, allowing your relief to wrap around you -like a blanket- as the darkness holds you and rocks you to sleep.

To be continued (Chapter SEVEN coming soon!)

Like this? Please consider reblogging, and/or sending feedback in an ask or comment. I LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU AND STORIES ARE NOTHING WITHOUT A READER. YOU ARE EVERYTHING + ILY + PLS VALIDATE ME.

Want more? You can check out my Masterlist to read more of my works! FYI: It’s always kept updated in my bio.

Want even more? Just ask if you’d like to be added to my permanent tag-list or any series tag-lists <3

[writingsbyari]

Sidereal | Ch. 1

Summary : Y/N Finstock never expected that her teenage years would be one that filmmakers would push towards an audience, but she expected it to be completely different than how they turned out. Being livelong friends with Stiles Stilinski and Scott McCall, and having a somewhat insane, loud lacrosse coach of a father, she had come to expect the unexpected. However, she truly did not expect for her friend to soon grow fur and howl at the moon, or the way her entire being was seeming to change with every passing day.                 

        She truly hated Beacon Hills.

Pairing : Multi Ship (Stiles Stilinski x Finstock!Reader, Derek Hale x Finstock!Reader)

Word Count : 2237

CHAPTER ONE : STUPID ADVENTURES MAY CAUSE BODILY HARM

sidereal : of, relating to, or expressed in relation to stars or constellations

  Highschool movies always were one of Y/N’s guilty pleasures. 

No matter how many times Stiles would complain or beg to watch something else while Scott just rolled his eyes and listened to the argument between his two friends, she couldn’t help but love them. Maybe she had already known she wouldn’t get the stereotypical teenage years, be stuck with something she had to settle for, so she tried to live through the movie.

She wouldn’t get the big glow-up the summer before freshman year started, wouldn’t be able to strut in with her chin held high, wearing stylish clothes and confidence oozing off of her. She wasn’t going to be able to somehow juggle almost all AP classes and a personal life full of parties and boys. God, boys.

There was truly only one boy she actually wanted, but it was far-fetched and a thought that shouldn’t pass through her head because every time it did, it left a pain in her heart and a slight queasy feeling. 

She knew she’d for sure only get one thing that the movies had, and that was game nights. And it wouldn’t be in the bleachers with a practice jersey and face paint, cheering one of the last names darting around the field against red mesh. No, instead she’d be right by the bench, a playbook in hand and having her father yell right into her ear, sharing bored looks with the bench warmers and frustration with the boys on the field. 

Now, however, she was sprawled across the couch in her living room, her father doing god knows what in his office down the hall. They had spaghetti a bit ago, the dishes still sitting on the coffee table. Her bowl had half-eaten seconds still in it, and the TV was playing the ID Channel, something that she only watched when she was absolutely bored, seeing as Stiles crammed the same things into her head almost daily. 

Y/N sighed, moving her eyes away from the screen to the dishes on the coffee table, debating internally if she really wanted to clean them now. It was undoubtedly the last home cooked meal for a while, seeing as school starting the next day also meant lacrosse started. On most nights, Y/N either stayed with her father during practices and they got something from the few fast-food and takeout places Beacon Hills had to offer, or she ate at Scott or Stiles’, which normally meant pizza of leftover Mama McCall dishes.

However, before she could fully come to the decision of whether she actually wanted to be a functioning human being, a sound outside her front door grabbed her attention. Her eyes snapped to the door, and then to her phone that was lying on the arm of the couch. The noise sounded again, causing her to jump. Craning her head to look down the hall, she could see the closed door of her father's office.

Knowing he was probably too engrossed in old lacrosse films, she stood up, grabbing her phone. She was quick in pulling up Sheriff Stilinski’s contact info, knowing he’d answer just as quickly as the operator if she were to call this late at night without prior warning. 

Y/N gulped as she walked to the door. Opening it slightly didn’t reveal a serial killer or kidnapper, and she pushed the door open more, taking a hesitant step onto her porch. The street lamps lit up the empty street, her brows furrowing. Her thumb was just over the call button. She stopped her steps just before her porch turned into steps, and she let her eyes dance around her yard and the sidewalk. 

After finding nothing, she lets out a relieved sigh, shutting her phone and turning on her heel, planning on going back inside to actually do the dishes again.

However, once she turned around she was met with two taller figures practically crowding around her. Her eyes widened and she let out a scream, throwing her fist out to hopefully catch one of them in the nose before they grabbed her. The two figures let out almost equally as high-pitched screams, and one flailed while the other took a step back.

Y/N’s heart rate slowed as she realized who the two people standing in front of her were, and she huffed, her brain only yelling the word “idiots’.

“Oh my fucking god! What the hell are you two doing? Trying to kill me?!” She screeched, now aiming for Stiles' shoulder with her fist. He flinched when it connected, whining out. Scott stared at her with his puppy eyes, and she lowered her hand to her side.

“We were trying not to bring attention to us! We know your dad is probably awake and-”

“Y/N! Where’s the thre-” your father yelled, pushing the door wide open and wielding a lacrosse stick. His entire posture relaxed when he noticed the two boys and the annoyed look on his daughters face, his shoulders drooping. “Oh, just you two. Dear god, can’t you just knock or something?”

You looked over your idiotic friends shoulders, nodding at her dad. “We’re good here, Pops. No threat for you to beat to death. I’ll be in soon.”

Finstock twirled the lacrosse stick, pointing it at the three teens in front of him. “School tomorrow. No stupid adventures that can cause too much bodily harm, and for all that is good no drugs. I don’t have time to deal with a daughter who has substance issues.”

Stiles smiled crookedly, giving a half-hearted salute as Scott nodded, his eyes wide at the prospect of Finstock getting mad at them for doing anything. “Yes Coach, we’ll make sure there are no drugs!”

Y/N raised a brow, not bringing up the fact Stiles didn’t agree on the whole “no stupid adventures” part. Her father seemed to notice too, and narrowed his eyes. He stared at them for a moment and then rolled his eyes, turning to go back in the house. “I don’t even want to deal with it. Be home by 2am.”

Once the door closed, Scott and Stiles turned to her. Crossing her arms, Y/N already knew where this was going. Almost a decade of friendship would do that to someone, she supposed. She also knew she was probably already growing grey hairs from the stress the two caused her, mainly the spastic one.

“My dad left about 45 minutes ago on a call.” Stiles stated excitedly, turning the girl around by her shoulders. Y/N sighed, slipping on the old boots that laid on her steps, letting Stiles lead her to the jeep. 

“He’s a cop, Stiles. That is not surprising.” She stated calmly, looking over at Scott with a raised brow. He gave her a knowing look, and she stifled a giggle.

The Stilinski boy sighed, looking over at her. “I don’t like that I’m rubbing off on you two, you know. But it's not the fact he left I’m interested in, it’s the reason why.” Y/N opened the door to the death trap her friend had started driving, humming to indicate to him to continue as she climbed into the back.

“They found a body. Well, only half of one, I guess. Stiles wants us to find the other half.” Scott rushed out, hopping up front. Stiles groaned, getting into the driver's seat as he smacked at his friends shoulder. 

“Dude, you totally stole my thunder there! My dad’s case, my epic reveal moment!” Y/N sighed as Scott began arguing with Stiles, leaning her head between the two seats, a small smile forming on her lips as she listened to the two.

                                            ⟴⟴⟴⟴⟴⟴⟴⟴⟴⟴

“I’m not actually walking through the woods to find a dead body, Stiles!”

“Half of a dead body, Y/N! And why?!”

She rolled her eyes, not escaping the comfort that the jeep gave her. “Because if there's half a body, then something had to rip it in half. And not to mention your father and the entirety of the Beacon Hills Police Force are out there looking too! We have school in a couple hours, and I don’t have time to be detained!”

Scott took out his inhaler, shaking it up, looking between the two with a slightly concerned look. “If Y/N doesn’t go, maybe we shou-”

Stiles pointed at Scott, eyes wide. “No! We are going to find that body! And anyways, you wouldn’t actually be detained! Dad would never detain you!”

Y/N crossed her arms, raising a brow. Her and Stiles stared at each other in silence and Scott sighed, putting his inhaler to his mouth. He hated when they did that. 

Stiles threw his arms in the air, with a small yell, and Y/N’s face broke out into a victory smile. Knowing she won, she held her hand out, Stiles griping as he dropped the keys to the jeep in her open palm. “Just...call Scott or I if you see something or if you get attacked, okay?” 

“And you or Scott call me when the Sheriff drags your asses back here so I can prepare my ‘told you so’ pose.” Stiles rolled his eyes, and with one last look over the girl, he turned to Scott. 

“Lets go, Scotty boy.” Stiles started off to the trees, and Scott gave Y/N one last look to make sure she was okay, and with a nod of hers followed behind him. 

Y/N sighed, leaning back in the passenger seat. She hummed, closing her eyes as she decided to sit back and wait for her idiotic best friends to show back up.

                                             ⟴⟴⟴⟴⟴⟴⟴⟴⟴⟴

It couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes from when Stiles and Scott disappeared to when Y/N heard it.

Her head snapped up, looking around in the dark. Pulling her phone out and turning on the flashlight app, she hopped out of the car, huffing. She could feel the cold hit her, and with a quick look into the back of the jeep she found one of Stiles’s flannels. She quickly put it on, relaxing slightly at the warmth and the familiar scent of her friend.

Paying attention again to the noise she heard, she stepped away from the jeep, her voice annoyed. “Seriously boys, this isn’t funny. You already scared the shit out of me once tonight, let's not do it a second time.”

Silence.

Y/N’s brows furrowed and she gripped her phone tighter, holding it out farther as to see more into the seemingly never-ending darkness. “Stiles? Scott? Come on, idiots. It’s cold.”

A twig snapped behind her, causing her to spin around. Her heart was beating faster, and her eyes looked through the window of the jeep.

On the other side of the jeep, a little ways off of the side of the road was a pair of glowing red eyes. Y/N felt panic settle over her, her hand shaking. A growl emitted from the same direction of the eyes, and she felt a scream bubble up in her throat.

Backing up, Y/N had a plan to run. One that after thinking it over during her ride home she’d come to yell at herself for. Before she could set off, though, the eyes disappeared and she heard the loud voices of the Stilinski men. Shaking in fear, Y/N turned to face the sound, seeing the Sheriff dragging Stiles along. 

“Ah, there she is. I knew you had to bring one of them with you.” Sheriff grumbled, tossing Stiles towards the jeep. Y/N’s panicked eyes turned to her friend, and he shook his head slightly. 

“I had to have one of them, Dad. Scotty was boring and didn’t want to come, so I took the fun friend.” Y/N gulped, craning her head to look through the window in the jeep, slightly calm now that she wasn’t alone and the Sheriff (who had a gun) was there.

“I assume I don’t have to explain how idiotic and dangerous this was to you, Y/N?” The Sheriff stated, causing her attention to snap towards him. She gave a shaky smile and a small thumbs up. “Good. So, now that I know at least one of you two have common sense, you both need to get home and get to sleep. School in the morning.”

Stiles sighed, turning to head towards the jeep. Y/N tossed him the keys, getting in the jeep. It was only once they were already half-way to town did she take a breath, leaning her head on the back of the headrest.

“Scott will be fine, right? He undoubtedly is getting caught, or he called his mom. He’d call his mom, right?” Stiles rambled. 

Tilting her head towards him, Y/N nodded. “Scott knows not to be in the cold woods all night long. He called his mom or found a deputy. He may be a little naive, but he isn’t dumb.”

With Stiles now slightly more calm, Y/N let her eyes drift to the side mirror on her side, terrified that the red eyes would be following behind them. Curling into the flannel over her body, she felt the calm wash over her again. She didn’t notice Stiles’ eyes and slightly blushed face.

Neither of them knew just what trouble their friend was actually in.

[akitokihojo]

Everything’s Okay

Sometimes, it was hard to be okay. Stresses weigh you down, your mind goes into overdrive, cruel thoughts break through whatever barrier you had standing, and everything seems just a little too bleak to trudge through. It would be better if you could just shut the world down for a while; quiet the nonsense, stop time, prevent everything that threatened to contribute to the lowness you already felt. If only. Getting a grip over toxic thinking was difficult enough, even for the healthy-minded. How could a single person halt the universe just for a moment's worth of peace?

Aside from the loud ticking of the clock on the wall, the apartment was silent. His car wasn't parked in its designated spot, so she must have beat him home from work. Usually, she would spend the time getting comfortable and starting dinner, but the longer she stood in the entryway, the thicker and stiffer the air became. It was like the abnormal sensations of her cramped mind were overflowing throughout their home, and nothing in the world could keep her busy enough to stop it from running free. Was this her breaking point? It couldn't be, she'd handled much more than this before without throwing in the towel. Then, there were occasions where it seemed she'd balanced even less and she snapped. Where was her median?

There was a hollowness in the cavity of her chest, leaving her feeling like if she swallowed a marble right then and there, she'd feel it scale down her ribcage. It was weird. It was foreign. If she moved, maybe she could leave the empty hole at the door, so she waded through the sludge of the room, skipping the option to change out of her work clothes because the task seemed too difficult at the moment, and pushed through to the kitchen to see if cooking would make her feel a little better. If she didn't get started, it may be the queue that something was wrong, and the last thing she wanted was to tip Inuyasha off. He didn't need to worry about anything other than the full plate he was already juggling. She could handle this. The feeling would fade. Hopefully another good night's sleep would finally do the trick.

But then she just ended up standing in front of the open fridge, the cold air wafting over her bare legs. Focusing was growing harder and harder as she pulled herself inward to prevent herself from crumbling. There was nothing in the fridge that seemed appetizing to whip up. She wasn't hungry. She'd had about a half a bottle of water all day. Spaghetti was easy enough, but shutting the fridge and moving to the cupboards was a chore on its own.

Why? She was home. This was where she was supposed to feel safe and warm and better. Instead, she was progressively getting worse, her fingers trembling, her eyes growing blurry as she blinked away the tears that burned behind her lids. It was all she could do to take out a package of noodles, a can of sauce, and put a pot of water on to boil. She found herself lifting her bottom to sit on the counter opposite the stove, her lungs no longer allowing full and deep breaths of air, her chin crinkling, her lids overflowing, her nose sniffling and a huff leaving her lips as she cursed herself for caving to nothing. It was nothing. And yet it felt like everything was against her. Her brain threw unheard insults at her, piercing her through because they were so, so believable. Her heart ached like it was empty and broken. All rational thought was out the window, and she was the victim of her own sorrowful negativity.

And if there was one thing a person could ever wish to control, it was that. Screw shutting the world down, and preventing an onslaught of more needless turmoil. Being able to tell yourself that everything's okay and you aren't as worthless as you currently feel, and then actually believing it would be the true superpower to behold.

He'd seen her car, smelled her fresh scent leading up the hall and to their door. She hadn't been fully herself lately. He'd noticed the shimmer in her deep, brown eyes dull and grow lackluster. It was hard to determine on his own, but he assumed the long week wore on her. A long week she hadn't really vented about, but he could visibly see the toll it was taking. For the most part, he'd stayed out of her way. He didn't want to say something wrong and spark an argument, and he definitely didn't want to push her into talking if she wasn't ready to open up. She was normally very talkative, but sometimes - rarely, but sometimes - she shut down. Who was he, of all people, to tell her that was the wrong way to go about things? It was uncommon, and it was truly rough to see her the way she'd been, and he could always tell when she was swallowing her feelings for the sake of anyone around her. Each day since he noticed her melancholic shift, he'd hoped she'd recovered from whatever was exhausting her, but no such luck. She was feigning her relief. She was holding back.

He walked through the door, the soft hiss of the fire burning mildly on the stove welcoming him in. "I'm home."

No answer other than the clock giving a loud tick.

"Babe?" He walked through the living room, following his nose, curving around the arched wall where he spotted her sitting on the counter in the kitchen. Her back was slightly hunched, defeat artistically splaying over the weakness in her muscles. Her cheeks were brushed red, eyes puffy, smile warm but forced. She'd been crying. "Kagome."

Just the concern in his tone had her chipping away, little-by-little, like a sculpture being molded but the artist was hammering too aggressively for smooth beauty. It was almost as bad as being asked, "Are you okay?" Because everyone could attest that that one question was powerful enough to bring the mightiest being to their knees to cry. Her lips fell into a deep frown, and her chin quivered, and she couldn't talk because the rock in her throat was too hard to swallow, but she communicated to him by holding her arms out.

And immediately, Inuyasha dropped everything in his hands and closed the gap between them. Her legs opened so he could press perfectly against her and he took her in his arms, wrapping her in the most tight and comforting hug he could conjure. She shook in his hold, her entire body quaking against him, almost bringing him to sway, himself. Her pain was his pain. Her tears were his downfall. Small fingers gripped the shirt over his back, sobs and gasps breaking through her clenched throat, and the liquid soaking his shoulder seared like boiling water being poured over that singular spot. His thoughts raced as he desperately tried to figure out what plagued her. Stress? Quarrels? Illness? Bad news?

"What happened?" He softly asked, kissing her hair. Kagome shook her head, firming her grasp and sniffling heartbreakingly. "Is this something I can fix?"

Again, she shook her head, crying just a little harder. Her reactions were all so uncontrollable, her body and mind aching for an ounce of relief from the invisible shelf of weight she'd been carrying. She didn't expect to fold so easily, thinking she could swallow it all in the presence of Inuyasha for the third day in a row. Yet, here she was, her upper body being completely supported by this man who loved her so much; something she could see but just couldn't feasibly wrap her head around with the dense toxicity convincing her the opposite. A beacon of light in her tunnel of nightmares. Arms warm and strong and never faltering around her unsteady frame. There wasn't a lick of irritation in his tone, even though she expected it when she couldn't give him an answer. He was so patient when she couldn't stand to be patient with herself. He was so tender when she hadn't even been able to bring herself to look in the mirror for more than five seconds at a time.

For as long as she needed, he stood there, holding her, breathing deeply to try and moderate her own lungs, only parting briefly to turn off the stove and silence the bubbling water before inching her chin up to look at him. Gently, he wiped the stains from her cheeks, new streaks taking over that he carefully smoothed away thereafter. He kissed the center of her forehead, long and lingering, wishing to convey just how much he adored her with the single gesture. He'd repeat himself as many times as needed.

"Was it me?"

Kagome shook her head fervently.

"Was it someone else?"

A mellow shake of her head.

"Are you just sad?"

She swallowed thickly, her expression of sorrow deepening as she nodded.

"About what, baby?"

And she shrugged. Surprisingly, he understood exactly what that meant. Inuyasha knew the complexities of the human mind and heart, and how it sometimes seemed like everything was as shitty as it could possibly get. No matter how hard you tried, or how positive you stayed, it was impossible to be perfectly okay all the time.

The stone cold truth was, it was perfectly okay to not be okay.

You don't always need a reason.

And believe it or not, no reason was reason enough.

Helping her down from the counter, he took her hands, both of them, and guided her towards their bedroom. She'd stopped weeping, but the tears still glided down her face. He knew that with so much stress, and hiccups, and trembling, and sadness came exhaustion and a headache straight from hell. So he got out a shirt of his own for her to don and tucked her within the heaviness of their comforter. He grabbed a glass of water, the bottle of ibuprofen, set them on the bedside table, and turned on the tv for background noise.

He refrained from asking anymore questions for the time being. He knew she wasn't hungry, and forcing food down her throat while her chest still slightly heaved would only make her sick. He'd wait her out a little while, until she calmed and stilled, and he'd order a pizza with her favorite toppings - because there was no way he was leaving her side long enough to make her a meal, himself. Absolute not. He'd have her sip her water, and if her head began to throb, the meds were inches away. And as he kicked off his shoes and crawled into bed with her, the frail woman curled into him so quickly; speaking volumes of what she wanted. To be held. To be soothed. To feel the sturdiness of someone's unfaltering support.

Inuyasha caressed back her hair before tucking himself closer so she would mold against his body, his fingers trailing in and out of her dark strands of untidy waves, up and down the arch of her spine. "You're okay." He whispered. "Everything's okay."

He felt her shudder, her breath hot against his chest. 

She needed to hear that.

She'd probably been desperate to hear it.

[wheredidhiseyebrowsgo]

are there any fanfics with one of them being famous and the other one isn’t? preferably sterek or steter but anything is fine ☺️☺️

Got a bit of both for you!  -Emmy

Until I Stayed Away Too Long by  melofttroll

(14,847 / Explicit / Complete)  *sterek, human au, writer!derek, teacher!stiles, single dad!stiles, famous!derek

NY Times bestseller Derek Hale hates a lot of things about being a modern author. Like being recognized, like needing a social media presence, like not being able to buy his own boxed spaghetti noodles without being asked for a selfie. Facing writer's block, he escapes to his old hometown of Beacon Hills, at his sister's insistence, for some reprieve and hopefully motivation. It's there his attention is captured by a gangly, socially awkward teacher, and the tiny little toddler at his side who know him only as that one basketball player who fled town at fifteen after his girlfriend burnt his house down.

You’ve Got Me on Pins and Needles by  jadore_hale

(17,611 / Teen / Complete)  *sterek, tailor!derek, famous!stiles, actor!stiles

“At any rate, I’m not here to steal from you. One of the biggest potentially most important moments in my life is coming up and I find myself in need of a custom tux.”

“A tuxedo?” Derek halted, then tried not to laugh as he gave the kid a good look up and down. “Biggest potentially most important moment of your life?”

Derek picked up the broom and started sweeping, shaking his head. “If you need something for your little costume party, kid, rent something from party city.”

✄✄✄✄✄

Stiles Stilinski needs THE perfect suit and Derek Hale is just the tailor to make it for him. Only Derek doesn’t exactly know that Stiles is kind of a famous movie star…

The Parlor by  featherflairs

(19,924 / Explicit / Complete)  *sterek, human au, famous!stiles, actor!stiles, sex worker!derek

“-reported that Stiles Stilinski and Heather Bellamy are officially engaged!”

Derek froze, his beer inches from his lips.

“Did you see that rock on her finger today when she came out of brunch with Emma Stone?”

He could only watch the TV in misery, because just hours ago the very same Stiles Stilinski had been under him, whining and begging for Derek to fuck him within an inch of his life. Derek knew his contract with Stilinski wasn’t going to be a forever deal, he just didn’t think it would happen this soon.

Celebrity Crush by  rarepairenabler, softywolf

(30,307 / Explicit / Complete)  *sterek, famous!derek, actor!derek, writer!stiles

Stiles wasn’t expecting to meet his favourite actor when Scott helped him land an internship on the set of Jackson’s new film, and he certainly wasn’t expecting Derek to fall in love with him. Not that Stiles was complaining.

Driving You (Wild) by  veterization

(44,344 / Explicit / Complete)  *steter, stiles/parrish, famous!stiles, actor!stiles, chauffeur!peter

In which Peter drives celebrities around, and up-and-coming actor Stiles Stilinski is his new client.

Game On by  Kaname

(50,225 / Mature / Complete)  *sterek, human au, sports au, famous!derek

Sometimes, Stiles whispers sweet nothings to his laptop and asks the gaming gods to bless him with quick fingers and an indestructible bladder. For gaming. Obviously.

What he didn’t ask for was a bitchy new guild-mate with a God complex and a famous next-door neighbor who plays footie and throws house parties every time Stiles is trying to sleep.

Or; The one where Stiles is a famous web denizen, and Derek is just plain famous.

Dirty Little Secret by  isthatbloodonhisshirt (wasterella)

(91,001 / Explicit / Complete)  *sterek, famous!derek, closeted!derek, secret relationship, human au

“Holy shit, this is a date!” he blurted out, turning back to Derek wide-eyed. “This is a date! You intended for this to be a date, this was supposed to be a date!” He figured if he said it enough times, maybe he would believe it, but so far, no dice.

Derek was scowling again—seriously, did he want wrinkles?—but he just reached into one of the bags and pulled out a burger, checking what was written on the foil in sharpie before handing it over to Stiles.

“Of course it’s a date, what did you think this was?”

The Awkward and Sometimes Painful Life of Genim Hale by  BlueRunawayMoon

(114,464 / Explicit / Complete)  *sterek, famous!stiles, writer!stiles

Stiles is a writer of gay erotica whose work, according to his Editor (one miss Lydia Martin) has gotten dull and boring. Lydia suggest's that Stiles try to LIVE a little, gain some new juicy experiences that he can write about and bring the heat up again. Only problem is Stiles is a bit on the dorky side and not good with 'living a little'. After a whole slew of embarrassing situations brought on by his best(sometimes!) friend Scott, he's given some wise advice and decides to take a tropical paradise vacation. All's going good and well, and he's got a major crush on his super hot tour guide Danny. Yet it seem's like he can't stop bumping into Derek, who, as annoying and brooding as he seem's, also makes it quite clear he WANTS Stiles. As in...wants wants. With the two being brought together almost by fate, Stiles discover's that Derek is more than he seems....WAY more.

[laszlosharmonica]

Things I might know about The Mighty Nein having not listened to it yet:

Nott:

Goblin. Uses a mask to appear human? I don't know if she's actually a kid but she's baby. Sticky fingers. Is with Caleb but I don't know why. I adore her.

Caleb:

Human wizard??? Tired™ He and Nott are either adventurers or on the lam. Has a fake accent??? Idk what his deal is but he has one. I like listening to him talk.

Beau:

Pirate? Ex pirate?? Rogue?? Doesn't express her feelings well. Could kick like everyone's ass. Is either gay for Yasha or Jester??? Gets teased for being sorta distant by another party member idk who. Her voice reminds me of Korra from LOK. 10 outta 10 would wife.

Caduceus:

Cleric? Warlock? Has a god. PINK. Chill. I would say maybe a satyr but I've also seen him described as a cow guy. Seems like a good friend. Soft?? I haven't heard him speak but I feel like he's got a gentle voice.

Mollymauk:

Purple. Tiefling? Dead??????? All the art I've seen of him is cool.

Jester:

Blue. Tiefling. Has a fucking fantastic voice. Gay for Beau??? Met her dad at some point but didn't know he was her dad. Good friend. Seems soft but I think she can be very mischievous. I would die for her.

Fjord:

Green. Tall? Has the same god as Cad apparently. I think he did a blood pact of some kind with Caleb at one point? Voice is deep as hell. I would trust him with my life I don't know why I just would. Vaguely yeehaw. ALSO HAS A FAKE ACCENT???? I love him.

Yasha:

I don't know much about her. Pirate? Warlock maybe??? She has a lot of hair and it's a look. Sad?? Goth aesthetic for sure. I feel like she needs a hug and someone should give her one.

I'm starting the campaign soon so I figured I should take my shots in the dark before I do.

[lacrossepapi]

Ache

@steterweek day four: Kicked out of the pack and Courting

Ao3 Link| words: 1423|

Stiles stared at his hands quietly, his father’s words echoing in his mind. 

Self-defense is not murder., and even if it was this was an accident.

You’re the best thing in my life, son. 

This doesn’t make you a bad person, it makes you a survivor. 

I love you, Stiles. 

He wrestled with those sentiments more than he let on to his father. How was he not a bad person when he’d killed someone? He knew rationally he hadn’t delivered the final blow, that he hadn’t been trying to kill Donovan, but he’d wanted to get away at any cost. That cost had been Donovan’s life. 

He’d called his father immediately, using the library’s phone since his cellphone was still in pieces on the ground outside. The Beacon Hills Sheriff had arrived quickly and quietly, taking care of Donovan as Stiles shakily started cleaning up the books that’d fallen. It’d taken three tries before his father was able to get his attention and herd him out of the school. 

His father’s departing words had been, “Call Scott, son.” 

How was he supposed to tell Scott he’d killed someone? He was scared and alone in his empty home with no courage to tell his best friend and alpha 

“You reek of negative emotions.” 

Stiles jumped and spun around to face Peter Hale, whom had apparently returned from whatever far off place he’d disappeared to a year ago and was now crouching in his bedroom windowsill. 

“Peter?” 

“Yes I’m sure you’re surprised to see me after you all threw me in Eichen to rot-”

Whatever he’d been about say was cut off by Stiles’ surprised and indignant “Eichen?!”

Peter stepped down from the window and tilted his head, surprised and confused, “Did you? Not know?” 

Thoughts of Donovan flew out the window as Stiles recalled what Scott had told him about Peter’s disappearance. 

“No. Scott said he asked you to leave and you did, that he didn’t ask where you were going because we’d be better off not knowing.” the words came out as a shocked whisper. 

How had he been so naive? 

Peter scoffed, taking a seat at his desk, “Why on Earth would I do anything that whelp told me to do, much less ‘asked’?” 

Overwhelming shame and regret filled Stiles. Of course he’d accidentally killed someone, his first step down that path had been not saving someone from the hell he’d been put in against his will too. 

“Peter I-”

“Save it. I thought you would have been against putting me in there and now I know you were. Do not fret things you have no control over.” Peter leaned forward staring intently at Stiles, “Now Stiles, what happened?” 

“There was an accident.” was all Stiles could manage, eyes on the floor. 

A moment passed in silence before Stiles braved a look at Peter, the man was watching him patiently waiting for more. 

“A boy threatened my dad earlier today. He found me alone at the school, my jeep was broken down again.” a pause to glance at Peter once more before looking at his feet. 

“He, uh, bit me, but it didn’t feel like a bite it felt like he was trying to eat me if that makes any sense at all.” Stiles’ shoulder still burned something fierce. 

“He’s a wendigo.” Peter supplied simply. 

Stiles nodded, that made sense when he thought about it, but that wasn’t the end of the story. 

“I hit him with my wrench and ran into the school. He chased me to the library. They’re doing construction on the second floor balcony so I climbed up the scaffolding. I just wanted to get away.” He looked at Peter through wet lashes before whispering again that he just wanted to get away. 

“Tell me what happened, Stiles.” Peter’s voice was even and calm, his eyes earnest and open. 

“He had my leg and was about to try to eat me again so I tried to throw something at him.” Stiles words spilled out in a quiet, wet, torrent of fear and shame. 

“I just wanted to get away, Peter. I had to get away. He was going to kill me. I threw a metal pipe down at him. It was supposed to knock him down. That’s all. I swear, Peter. I swear.” The last word broke over the sound of a sob. 

“And it did, but it killed him.” Peter said the words so simply it startled another sob out of Stiles.

“I killed him” the words were hardly recognizable through Stiles’ sobs.

“You did. He would’ve killed you if you hadn’t.” Peter was kneeling in front of Stiles now, his piercing blue eyes unavoidable even blurred as they were through Stiles’ tears. 

“That doesn’t make it better!” Stiles shouted outraged, but his tears slowed.

“No it doesn’t, pet, but it is important to remember the circumstances you were in.” 

“Why?” 

“Because without context your father would be a serial killer, but he’s not because each person your father’s killed had their own extenuating circumstances. It’s a last resort, Stiles, but sometimes it’s the only one.” Peter’s words were a shock but as he finished they started to soothe a ragged torn part of him. 

“I have to tell Scott.” 

“You do.” 

“Will you stay with me?” Stiles blinked the remnants of his tears away. 

“Of course, pet.” Peter didn’t have to request that his presence remain a secret, they both knew Stiles wouldn’t let him get sent back to that nightmare. 

-

Peter watched silently as Stiles tried to defend himself to Scott. The idiot alpha reacted exactly how Peter thought he would, with platitudes he didn’t actually believe and a lot of questions about every single detail as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Peter knew where this was going, and he wanted to protect Stiles from it. He couldn’t though, it had to run its course just like it had when he was a teenager and had accidentally killed a threat to his pack.

The difference this time was that Stiles and Scott were not born wolves and their bonds were not solidified by a life time of being pack and family. Talia couldn’t kick Peter out of the pack, it would have sent a ripple of despair through the entire family. Her only choice was to help him heal and get his bond back to thrumming healthily, but Scott was not Talia. Scott was young and stubborn with a very black and white world view, he would not have the strength and steadfastness it took to care for a pack member in pain. He would shun Stiles and make the darkness inside of him eat him alive. Scott would be Stiles’ ruin, which was unacceptable. If Scott was going to kick Stiles out of the pack then Peter would be waiting in the wings to save him. 

The phone call ended with Stiles’ wet goodbye, and Peter made a decision in that moment that he should’ve put more or really any thought into. 

“I’m going to make you some dinner.” 

Stiles’ whole body shot upright like he’d been struck by lightning, “P-Peter?” 

“Think it over while I’m cooking.” Peter nodded more to himself than to the shell shocked teenager. 

Peter hummed quietly to himself while he made a quick pot of spaghetti for Stiles. He knew the boy would see this as what it was, the first step in pack courting. Stiles was smarter than the others gave him credit for, and Peter knew Deaton had started giving him emissary lessons before Peter was sent to Eichen. It was a short logical leap to assume that meant Stiles knew about pack courting rituals, and even if he didn’t Peter would have informed him before he had a chance to take a bite. 

“You know it’s three in the morning, right?” Stiles was leaning against the kitchen doorway looking more put together than he probably was.

“And?” Peter plated the spaghetti before turning to face Stiles with an eyebrow raised.

“Too late for dinner, Peter.” Stiles answered with a crooked grin as he sat down at the kitchen island.

“Not too late to take a step onto a life changing road?” Peter asked, placing Stiles’ plate in front of him. 

“No. Not too late.” Stiles responded, his amber eyes locked onto Peter’s. 

“Good. Then, Mieczysław Johnathan Stilinski, do you accept my courting gift?” Peter intoned formally. 

“Yes I do, Peter Joseph Hale.” with that Stiles took a bite of the meal he’d prepared.