#car's going straight to scrap the whole engine was outside

[vullcanica]

Family member had a car crash friday and it's been a worrisome few days in the hospital but they're safe and sound!!

[braunbakery]

meet me at our spot (1)

☞ eren jaeger x reader [fem bodied] [chapter word count: 1.5k]

☞ sfw, fluff, mild angst, modern au, short fic, other characters present

fic plot: before high school, you and eren were best friends. after high school, you and eren are strangers still grasping at those same past threads.

inspired by meet me at our spot by the anxiety

next.

1. i’m not getting younger

it’s when you see eren have a small kickback after graduation through your bedroom window that you know you’re going to go back up to the treehouse.

it feels dumb that it had taken that long and it was that specific and pretty unsurprising straw that had led you to realise that, fuck, there is no small withering hope that maybe the two of you could go back to old times again.

there was something about the green and white graduation gowns sauntering around eren’s back yard that made your stomach turn, that made you realise that after middle school, small nods of acknowledgment and maybe a spare smile were all you were ever going to get from eren. even if you were neighbours or childhood friends or whatever string you thought would always remain between the two of you.

so you decide that night that you’re going to wake up the next morning and make the trip to the treehouse between your yards. you had stuff from years ago to get, and what better way to say goodbye to this part of your life than to pack it all up?

so why the fuck is it that at ten in the morning, after finally making your way up the dusty ass ladder to the treehouse, you’re met with eren bent in front of a box in the small wooden room and violently rummaging through it. you consider turning back around but he’s already craning his head back when he hears your heavy footsteps on the creaky floorboards.

“shit, hey,” he says, twisting his whole body to face you and standing upright. you don’t want to feel resentment towards him, but you can’t help it when he gives you a small smile like the two of you haven’t properly had a conversation since fucking middle school.

“hi…” you say carefully, “what are you doing here?”

eren laughs before he even makes a joke. you had forgotten that about him, “i mean, this is my treehouse too.”

“right.”

you don’t think you’ve stood in front of him for this long or this close in four years. and you knew he’d grown out his hair, so you don’t know why you can feel your eyes widening when you realise he has it tied up in a bun. eren cocks his head at you.

“you good?” he asks, pulling you straight out of your thoughts.

“right,” you repeat again, “well, i’ll just go then…” you start turning back around. childhood memory decluttering can wait.

“wait,” eren calls out to you and you freeze in place faster than you’d like to admit, “you don’t have to.”

“uh…”

“you’ve got stuff here too, right?” eren asks.

“yeah, i’m pretty sure anyway.”

you both shift awkwardly from one foot to the other.

“so you gonna get it?” eren cuts through the thick silence.

you blurt out a hurried ‘oh yeah’ and shuffle towards the side of the room he stands on, walking past him and crouching down to the same set of boxes he was rummaging through when he walked in. your hands freeze when crouches down next to you and his knee accidentally knocks into yours. what are you expecting? this place is tiny. you know this and you know that he’s just here to kill time probably.

you pretend to be intently looking for nothing in particular, sifting through scrap books and drawings and home-made keychains (and a box of dried paints and play dough? alright then.) maybe eren will get up and leave with whatever it is he wanted and you can be left in peace.

for someone who had spend the last couple of years wondering when he would speak to you again, you sure were in a hurry to get rid of him.

it’s just…awkward. and you’d rather avoid awkward.

“hey,” eren says, nudging your arm with his elbow. his touch makes you immediately jerk your head towards him, heart pounding, “check this out.”

before you can say anything eren is passing you a dusty photo album, his fingers slightly brushing over yours when he pushes it into your arms. you open the first page and there you and eren are, hanging off of the same tree you sit on now eight years earlier.

“i completely forgot about this,” you say quietly, flipping through more and more pages of you and eren and other people the two of you played with.

“yeah,” eren laughs curtly and you can feel his gaze on you. you can feel him watching you flick from picture to picture, and you think that this is starting to seem a lot more like before high school, “pretty sure we insisted we keep it here.”

“you sure that wasn’t just you?” you look up at him grinning and you’re so acutely aware of the way your nerves are starting to trickle away from you and for some reason you’re relieved.

“hey,” eren feigns offense, snatching the photo album up from your hands, “you used to be just as bad as me before you became all goodie two shoes in middle school.”

you laugh at his defensiveness, grabbing the photo album in his hands and attempting to pull it back to your lap, “i think that’s called growing up, eren.”

eren’s grip doesn’t relent, so you pull harder and harder at the photo album. his eyes look straight at you, teeth gleaming with that same cheshire cat smile from when he was a kid.

“you can do better than that,” eren teases when you fail to loosen his grasp on the album.

“fuck you,” you say, donning the same grin as him as you give the photo album one final pull. and suddenly eren’s grip is completely gone and you’re being sent backwards until your head hits the floorboards and you’re staring at the ceilings. you only realise eren has scrambled on top of you when his eyes enter your vision.

“shit,” eren exclaims, grabbing your upper arms in an attempt to pull you back upright, “sorry, i didn’t think you’d go fucking flying back.”

as eren pulls you back up the stray pieces of hair at the front of his head lightly brush against your face and you recoil at the tickling sensation. eren laughs at you.

“your hair is too fucking long,” you comment when you’re sitting back upright across from eren.

“oh really?” eren raises a brow, “there go my rapunzel plans.”

“yeah, yeah,” you roll your eyes at him and try to ignore the way your heart races when he chuckles again.

bzz bzz bzz

both of your eyes dart down to eren’s glowing pocket, and he immediately fishes out his phone and puts it up to his ear.

“hello?” eren speaks to the person at the other end of the phone. you watch him carefully, mentally tracing out all the new scars and bruises and wrinkles that mark his face now that hadn’t before. his brows are bushier, his under eyes slightly darker, and you think you can make out a hint of stubble. for some reason it just makes the feeling of loss that had always dawned upon you whenever you walked past his house, or past his lunch table, or past him come back to you.

why are you hoping you see him again after this? it’s over now. you both have your own lives. you’re both off to college after this summer. 4 years don’t disappear just like that.

“yeah, i’ll be there soon,” eren says before hanging up the phone and shoving it back in his pocket. he gets up off of the floor of the treehouse, looking down at you with an apologetic smile. why is he sorry? he doesn’t owe you anything. you don’t want him to owe you, you want him to want to hang out with you out of his own accord, “i’ve gotta head out.”

“yeah, see you then.”

“you staying here?”

“yeah.”

eren nods his head at you before making his way towards the ladder outside the treehouse. you can hear the creaks of the first few steps.

“hey!” eren calls out, and your head is jerking up again, meeting his eyes as he begins his descent down the ladder, “i’ll see you around, yeah?”

you smile and nod, “yeah.”

the disappointment sets in when you see him walk back towards his house. you wait until you hear him start his car engine and watch him pull out of his driveway ‘til you climb back down and make your way back inside your house.

you wanna say that this sucks because you were only just starting to get over the loss of one of your best friends. and then you had to see him and laugh with him and talk to him.

but you know that the truth is that it just cruelly reminds you of how you’re very much still not over it at all.

taglist;

@sashabrausbrainrot , @saramelcky , @chawyn , @xadist , @dai-tsukki-desu , @queen-flower

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[neverdoingmuch]

I’m here for the ‘swords not as pets’ agenda. Swords as cars: solid, get you from place to place, potentially dangerous, customizable, something people name. Wwx losing his license taking the fall for a mistake jc made (idk, dui maybe?) and just choosing to mod the hell out of a self-balancing scooter or segway or something so it goes dangerously fast. Alternatively: spending 3 months inventing the first functional actual levitating hoverboard, with an insane top speed. 3 months in the (1/2)

sawdfert this is delightful!! i saw segway and i immediately started wheezing,, there was no time for laughing i went straight to the wheezing. i think it would make more sense if wwx lost his car and got a motorcycle? like hoverboards and segways are cool but motorcycles have that big reputation of being dangerous and there’s the whole ‘rebellious teen gets a motorcycle and becomes a delinquent’ thing? like motorcycles are fast and if you crash it’s so much worse than if you were in a car and there’s no airbags or anything. but also?? wwx rocking up to school on a segway while playing his flute like the shittiest entrance ever? iconic. but let’s stick with chenqing as a motorcycle/scooter (motorcycle-esque scooter not the ones that try and take out your ankles).

okay so all the major sects are super rich so in a modern au it would make sense for all the sect heirs to get cars. i’m not saying that jc and wwx complain about jzx being stuck-up bc he was given a porsche for his birthday even though they were also given cars for their birthdays,,, but i am. at first it would have been this major point of contention between yzy and jfm bc wwx isn’t even their son so why is he getting a car too but wwx is like ah it’s so i can drive jc and jyl to school! you wouldn’t want their cars being left outside the school all day would you? someone in my maths class had their car get keyed and it was super expensive to fix,, and yzy is like yes wwx may have a car only to protect my children from parking hassles,, also wwx must pay for his own parking. so wwx and jc both get given cars for their bdays.

now wwx gets bored easily,, so you could translate him being a cultivation genius to him being really good at driving. im talking that jc is still getting the hang of switching gears and wwx is out there casually drifting around corners. (this does mean he has to get new tyres really frequently but he’s friends with wen ning, whose family runs the mechanics that wwx likes to go to so he just helps around the shop for a bit and gets a discount (yes its the family discount)). anyway wwx really enjoys driving, also! he just rocks up to wen ning’s place one day and is like dude, i wanna pimp my ride, wanna help and wen ning is like heck yeah. so wwx pays for some upgrades with his own money and he spends hours doing some custom work to make it look cool,,

it’s all going well until wwx and jc go to wen chao’s party one night and jc gets absolutely sloshed,,, like completely hammered. wwx had walked in, grabbed a cup of lemonade or something and was gonna hang with his friends but lwj was there for some reason so he spent the entire night talking to him in the back garden. which means that when jc wanted to leave he saw wwx hanging out with lwj and went ew gross and just decided to drive home himself. he crashes and when wwx comes home the next day jc gets super pissed at him bc he was meant to be the designated driver and if he hadnt been screwing around with lwj jc wouldnt have tried to drive home and now his parents will be super pissed and wwx is like woah chill my grandmother is a mechanic and she can fix this up just give me a couple of days. 

so wwx goes to baoshan sanren mechanics (which is just the back entrance to the wen sibling’s mechanics) and spends the next three days getting rid of all of his customisations and mods so his car looks exactly like jc’s. does he cry when he has to spend like five mins spraying the inside of the car with axe body spray to get the jc stench going on? maybe a little. but he does it and returns the car to jc! and jc is like oh wow my car is fixed, your grandma is a miracle worker and wwx is like haha yeah (:

anyway wwx mysteriously and suddenly discovers a passion for public transport,, it’s a good way to stay humble jiang cheng, he says, also i used all my petrol money buying porn from nhs or whatever. anyway wwx is doing the whole pt to school thing but then one afternoon wen chao and wzh find him and idk maybe the party got too rowdy so the cops came and wc got in trouble with his dad? he assumes wwx called the cops on him so he shoves wwx into his car and drives him out to the middle of no where and dumps him in the burial mounds scrap metal recycling place or whatever. 

the train line isn’t running that day and there’s no phone service either so wwx is stuck there overnight. he gets super bored. so what does he do? he finds an abandoned scooter and starts scavenging for parts. he’s not expecting it to actually work but by the time the sun rises he’s found some actually decent parts and he thinks that he could get it working. tbh he kinda forgets to go back home and just walks into town to buy some food and then goes back and continues fiddling with the scooter. he doesnt live there for the three months but the people in yiling just accept that this random teenager has all but moved into their scrap heap and adopt him anyway. so he goes and visits the burial mounds every day after school so none of his friends or family really see him anymore. 

until! one day he rocks up to school on his scooter. scooters,, are kinda like sad pathetic motorcycles,, but wwx mods his scooter with like a powerful engine and new steering and everything so people see it and go oh! a motorcycle! even though it’s not actually (can you do that with a scooter? idk but suspend your disbelief pls). so lwj is like hnnngg wwx in a leather jacket on a motorcycle but also wei ying, stop riding a motorcycle, *enter statistics about motorcycle crashes here* and wwx is like no! you cant take chenqing away from me. and jc is pissed bc they were meant to be brothers and have matching cars and be able to work on them and give them cool paint jobs together! but now wwx has this bike which has been modded to hell and back and refuses to drive his car bc it’s not as cool as his bike. so we get to have the whole ‘everyone thinks wwx is doing something dumb and dangerous’ bc he has a motorcycle and why isnt he just driving his car anymore? but we also get to keep some of the nuance of the demonic cultivation bc yeah it’s more dangerous than driving in a car but wwx doesnt have a car anymore and scooters are a loottt safer than motorcycles (if my two seconds of research is correct).

so! wwx won’t abandon chenqing and he did most of his work using scrap parts so he goes back to the wens and is like wen ning my best bro check her out and he’s like oooooooh and they start modding chenqing together. wen qing doesnt know why wwx is constantly over at their shop all the time but jc keeps arguing with wwx and wwx grows more distant with his family and friends bc he’s making ~bad decisions~ and a motorcycle is a gateway to idk teen delinquent shenanigans like smoking and doing graffiti so he’s kinda ousted from respectable rich people society and wen qing is like i have two (2) brothers now and they’re adorable not that i’ll ever tell them that. and wwx modding chenqing got him a reputation in yiling like everyone saw him walk in one day and then drive out with this sexy sexy bike so people start coming to him for mods and stuff and wwx earns the title yiling patriarch and wen ning, his trusted best friend and helper, gets called the ghost general bc idk he helps a lot but the customers never meet him. so they become some dynamic duo for car and bike mods!

anyway,, yzy delivers him an ultimatum one day: the car or the bike (or more accurately: the family or the bike) but wwx can’t drive the car anymore so he just gets quietly disowned and drops out of school. (we’ll save jzxuan the suffering in this au he can keep his car). he goes to the wens and theyre like hey whats up? wait no you cant live in a scrap heap,, not even if you buy a tent,,, just live with us please. and then wwx gets adopted by the wens and idk i want them to have a happy ending so wwx and wn go off and do some actual mechanic and modding training with some expert (sqdcfgt imagine if it was the real baoshan sanren who just happened to be in the market for some apprentices and saw wwx and wn’s work and was like them and then later realised it was her grandson). so they get their apprenticeship and they disappear off somewhere for a year or two - when wwx had been disowned he’d deleted everyone’s contacts and was like if they text me i’ll add them back but im not gonna have a contact list cemetery. (no one contacts him). 

eventually the 13 years pass and wwx has been helping the wens raise their little nephew a-yuan who is showing a real aptitude for being a mechanic even though he’s just a kid and just generally enjoying the quiet life of being a mechanic while doing fun mods and lil baby projects. then one day lwj’s car breaks down while he’s driving through the area and he calls up the local mechanic and guess who rocks up? it’s wwx. and then we get to have them dance around each other and wwx being like lwj doesnt trust me, he’s just sitting here and watching me work all day ): and lwj is like dont let him go dont let him go dont let him go,, and eventually they get their romance but this is way too long already so im im gonna end this here

i didnt mean to make this an entire au but i adored your idea so much anon so i kinda had to!!

[thiswasinevitableid]

Gift (Indruck)

A second fill for @crepuscularlives

16. we didn’t read the invitation that said this party was formal so we’re in our ugly christmas sweaters. SFW

Duck’s fully prepared for Aubrey, and maybe even Mama, to tease him for his Newton family christmas sweater. When he gets to the Lodge to find everyone dressed swanky, he thinks it’s some sort of elaborate prank. He decides to ask Barclay, since he tends to be less invested in pranks than the others. 

“Uhhh” Barclay points to a stray invite, “it said formal, see? We thought a change of pace would be fun.”

“Fuck. I just came straight from a family thing, didn’t think it’d matter.”

Barclay pats his shoulder with a warm smile, “Don’t worry about it, man, it’s not like anyone’s gonna toss you out for it.”

Duck grumbles something about not wanting to stick out as he turns, and spies an even uglier sweater across the room. It’s bright green and fire-engine red with, covered in old-school colored bulb christmas lights, blinking like fireflies. 

Somehow, it suits Indrid perfectly.

The Sylph waves when we spots Duck, coming over to join him by the drinks table. 

“Hello Duck, I’m glad this is the future where you’re here.” He ladles himself a mug from one of the two crockpots of eggnog. 

“Howdy, ‘Drid. Glad I ain’t the only one who went for the ugly sweater vibe.”

Indrid cocks his head, “This is the nicest thing I own.”

Duck groans, reaches up to hide behind a hat that isn’t there.

Indrids smile widens, “I’m joking. It was a, ah, what do always call it...ah yes, a goof.”

He laughs, relieved, “Jesus, you got me good.”

“It’s payback for the time you convinced me that squirrels were carnivorous.” 

Duck snickers at the memory of Indrid, in his moth form in the woods, eyeing the squirrels warily. 

He joins Aubrey, Thacker, and Dani by the fire, and Indrid wanders over to oin them, taking a seat next to Duck when the human scoots over to offer him it. Thacker talks about the library and the regrowing cities, and Indrid’s face turns wistful. Duck suspects only he can see it, Indrid’s glasses showing enough of his eyes from the side to make emotions clearer. 

(Indrid always sits across from people. The last few times they’ve met up, he sits next to Duck).

In spite of only some gentle ribbing about his clothes, he keeps picking at the sleeve of the sweater. It’s a little itchy, and he could have worn that nice green shirt with the pine tree tie that he likes. And every time he catches a glimpse of himself in a window, he’s back in space, watching an evil hivemind recreate it’s pattern on a mimic of his sister. 

“Is it bothering you a lot?” Indrid murmurs.

“N-no, uh, I, uh, just, fuck, it’s nothin,” He stops talking, flees Indrid’s red stare to refill his cider. He pauses to talk with Kirby and Ned, is looking around the room for a new spot to sit (and for Indrid), only for a tan hand to wave him into a hallway. 

“Here, try this.” Indrid ties a discarded gift ribbon around his wrist, and he’s no longer looking down at the wool sweater and jeans. He’s in a deep gray suit, with a green shirt and a silver tie. 

“Holy shit. Wait, do I look-”

“-different? No, I left your physical form intact. I can make disguises of different magnitudes. A simple clothing swap is easily done. And I, ah, I did not want you to spend a night with friends lost in frightening memories.”

Duck’s about to thank him when the words sink in. 

“There was a future where you told me. I, ah, you’ve mentioned what you saw at Reconciliation before, but not that detail.”

“Wasn’t scared so much as pissed.” Duck glances at his shoes, now well-shined loafers. 

“Understandable. And useful; the odds were not in your favor, believe me. But well-timed anger can change the course of fate. Just as choosing mercy--even when others urge for violence--can. Punching me also reset fate rather dramatically.”

“Yeah, sorry about that.”

Indrid’s smile is small, and stunningly fake, “It was for the best. I’m going to get some more nog. Would you like some?”

“Nah, still gotta finish this. But I do wanna try some of that salmon dip.”

“In true bear fashion.” Indrid’s smile turns genuine when Duck snorts and elbows him. 

They talk and mingle with their friends, Indrid making frequent returns to the nog bowl. Duck steps outside for air, comes back and spends a moment watching Indrid by the fire. Stern notices him, steps away from an animated conversation with a ghostly Boyd about art forgery to join him. 

“Quite the dapper costume change.”

“Thanks. ‘Drid did it for me.”

Stern follows Duck’s gaze, then casually sip his wine, “Have you told him yet?”

“Told, uh, told him what?”

“Duck, you spend more time with him than almost anyone else.”

“Half my friends live on another planet now.”

“And every time you look at him, your smile changes. His does too. According to Barclay, he talks about you like you’re the most fascinating thing on earth. Right, love?” He kisses Barclay’s cheek as the cook joins them.

“Yep.”

There’s a crash as Indrid loses his balance and knocks over a lamp, which Aubrey freezes mid-air.

“Shit, he’s hammered.” Barclay sounds surprised. 

“How much rum did you put in the nog?” Duck doesn’t remember the sip he had from Indrid’s cup tasting that strong. 

“I made two batches, one with booze and one without. Indrid was drinking the non-spiked one earlier. Wonder when he switched.”

“About the time Duck changed clothes.”

“...How did you not catch us durin the Pine Guard days again?”

Stern smiles, “Barclay can be very distracting when he wants to be. And none of you have ever asked exactly how much I worked out.”

He has a point. As does Barclay when he points out that Indrid should have someone take him home after the party.

When Duck offers him a ride, Indrid chirps excitedly, bonks his forehead on the roof of the car, and climbs in. By the time they get back to the ‘Bago, Duck knows he can’t just leave Indrid here.

“You’re staying?” Indrid bounces on the bed as Duck turns on the space heaters. 

“Just ‘til you sober up. I’ll stay out in the main cab so you can sleep.”

Indrid lets out a chirr that intensifies when Duck slips the ribbon from his wrist. It almost sounds perturbed. 

“I mean, uh, I can go if you really need me to.”

Indrid shakes his head, barely managing to get his shoes off before burrowing under to covers, “Please stay as long as you want.” 

Duck nods, excuses himself to use the bathroom, and comes back to Indrid chirp-snoring into the pillows. He’s such a cute, weird man. Duck will just sit down a second to make sure he doesn’t wake up and need something. 

The one small seat is taken up by a binder, which opens when Duck lifts it. Instead of the expected paper avalanche, he finds drawings, each in their own plastic slip. He flips through it as he settles in the chair. Interspersed with the drawings are papers labeled in one or two two words of Sylph, and Duck reverse engineers their likely meanings from the images that follow them. The section with all the plants and animals must be “nature,” the one with parties and state fairs “events.” There’s even a section that’s all elements of winter holidays; the Rockefeller tree with decorations that suggest the 1930s, a menorah in a window, candles on the table of a house that’s seen better days.  Towards the back is a section that has to be “friends.” There are one or two people who appear in images with Indrid. Including the kind that make Duck quickly turn the page. The further he gets in that section, the more familiar faces he sees; Barclay, Aubrey, Jake, Ned. 

He sees himself, returning from saving the world, battered but alive. 

“The odds were not good”

Tucked at the very back of the section, between the final empty pages and the binder, is a folded paper. Curious, Duck opens it. 

It’s him. With Indrid. They’re on Indrid’s tiny bed, kissing.

God that looks nice. 

Startled by his own thoughts, he tucks the picture back into the binder and sets the whole thing on the floor. Decides one of the paperbacks strewn on the floor is a better way to occupy himself then accidentally finding more personal images. 

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

The world is ending, everything is ripping away into the sky, everything he’s fought for is gone. He failed. He didn’t want a destiny, and he’s failed the fucking thing anyway and it’s all gone and there’s no future for him now but to be torn into ash-

“Duck, Duck wake up” 

He jolts, whams his head into the wall of the very intact Winnebago at the edge of the still standing Monongahela while a very alive, now-sober Indrid leans over him. 

“Owfuck.”

“Oh, oh no, I’m sorry, you were very clearly having a nightmare and I figured you’d like it to stop.”

“Yeah” He rubs his head, “yeah I did. Thanks. Sorry if I woke you up.”

“Given that in many futures our positions were reversed, I don’t have a lot of room to complain about someone shouting in their sleep.” Indrid sits down on the floor next to the chair, stays silent as Duck coaxes his breathing to even out. A hand hesitates in the air, then touches his arm, rubbing it reassuringly. 

No one else saw it. Not even Minerva or Leo, the only people who could understand the horror of seeing a thing unfold with scant chances of stopping it. 

Indrid’s hand brush lightly over his own before returning to his arm. 

No, not the only people. 

“Indrid, can I ask you somethin?”

“Of course.”

“The day we let The Quell through and saved the worlds did you, uh, did you see what woulda happened if Aubrey hadn’t blown the gate apart?”

“Yes.” The reply is quiet.

“Do you, uh, still see it sometimes?”

“Now and then, but I have far more bad timelines in my mind, and more failures in my past, for my nightmares to draw upon than you do. That is half the reason I drank so much tonight. Around the time of the winter solstice, my nightmares increase in frequency and intensity, Sylvain only knows why. Sometimes substances dull that.”

“Oh, ‘Drid.” Duck turns in the chair. Indrid’s gaze stays straight ahead, but his fingers shred a nearby scrap of paper. 

“The irony is, I love this time of year on Earth, in spite of the chill. I love the winter holidays, the gathering of warmth and light to hold one over until the spring returns. But my enjoyment of it is dampened by the workings of my powers and mind.”

“Fuck, guess I oughta count myself lucky I only got a few bad visions to remember.” The joke falls flat, and Indrid glances at him. 

“That vision is nothing to laugh at. I’m glad you had it all the same, glad you triumphed and survived.”

“Woulda really sucked to accept my destiny only to fail at the last fuckin second.”

He shuts his mouth to stop the next thought from escaping; Indrid doesn’t need to know that he sometimes fears that everything he’s done and wants to do now that fate is no longer hanging a talking sword over his head will somehow be hollow.

“You were so much more than your destiny, Duck Newton. You still are.” 

The sincerity, half-obscured in shadow and red lens, is too much. He doesn’t know what to say, or if he should say anything at all. 

“Guess, uh, guess you likin the holidays explains that section in the binder.”

“Yes. Wait. Did, ah, did you look through the whole thing?” Fear slips into his voice. 

“Uhhuh.”

“Even the, ah, the last page?”

“Yep. Some real beautiful drawin’s in there. Some mighty interestin ones too.”

Indrid nervously taps his fingers together, “Since you are about to ask, that future took place shortly after the cottonwood. You, you came by to apologize for punching me and to tell me you were glad I was alright and, and ask me to stay in Kepler and when I asked why, you did that. Just one little kiss. That’s as far as I got before the timelines changed. It’s, it’s alright, of course, that’s how timelines work, and you did eventually apologize.”

He did, two or three separate times, and each time Indrid brushed it off, insisting it was what needed to be done.

Duck sinks to the floor, turns on his knees to bring them face to face. 

“What are you-” Indrid stiffens as Duck gingerly pushes up his glasses. He’s never seen Indrid’s face like this, uncovered but still human, and it takes all the air from his lungs.

“Which eye did I hit?”

Indrid touches the right side of his face. Duck tips forward, balancing his fingers on Indrids thighs, and kisses the corner of his right eye.

“There. Now it’s a real apology.” He whispers in Indrid’s ear, close enough that faint, hopeful chirps reach him. He moves a few inches down and over, lips the barest strip of air away from Indrid’s own. 

“You, you don’t have to. Just because something appears in a future doesn’t mean it’s fated to happen.”

“What if I want it to happen?”

Indrid surges forward, cupping Duck’s face. His kisses re feather-light and sweeter than nectar, and Duck wants to drink them down, knows that after this taste he’ll never be full. 

“Duck I, h, I want” Indrid clings to him, his words turning to chirps nd clicks, as he’s so overwhelmed by a little kissing.

“Want me to keep, uh, ‘apologizin?”

“So very much.”

“Then take me to bed, darlin.”

The instant they hit the bed Indrid pulls Duck atop him, fingers fawning over his body as he kisses him over and over. When they stop to catch their breath, Duck remembers something,

“‘Drid, what was the other half of the reason you got drunk?”

“A problem of my own making. I did not foresee just how you would look in your suit, and I was trying to avoid an, ah, embarrassing bodily response. Alcohol helps my kind of Sylph in that regard.”

Duck chuckles, nips Indrid’s lower lip, “want me to put it back on?”

“Not just yet.”

“Want me to kiss you ‘til we fall asleep?”

“More than I’ve wanted anything for Christmas in a long time.”

Duck kisses him, keeps teasing their lips together as he murmurs, “then consider me your resent, darlin.”

[yes-i-am-happyaspie]

The Definition of Anything-happyaspie [2020-2-27]

The heater in Peter's apartment goes out on the coldest day of the year and the landlord seemed to be overrun with maintenance requests. Calling Tony to help him out seemed like the next logical solution. After all, he had told him many, many times that he should call him if he ever needed anything.  The man had never really specified what 'anything' meant but he figured that by definition, 'I'm cold and you know how to fix things.', fell into that category. Right?

                                    ❄----❄----❄----❄----❄

--Anything--

Pronoun: Any thing whatever; something, no matter what.

Noun: A thing of any kind.

Adverb: In any degree; to any extent; in any way; at all.

Link to AO3-The Definition of Anything-happyaspie

It was the middle of February and the temperature had decided to take a sudden nose dive into the negative numbers.   Not that those kinds of things would stop Peter from patrolling.  Seeing as Tony had helpfully provided him with an in-suit heater, he was sure he would be fine and for a while, he was.  Though once the sun had completely set, the wind started to become so bitter that, eventually, the heater could no longer keep up.

Seeing as the icy negative fifteen-degree weather seemed to be enough to detour any major crime from taking place in the borough, Peter began to swing him towards his warm bed. The first thing he noticed as he stood inside his closet shimmying off the suit was that it wasn't particularly warm in the apartment.  It wasn't cold... it just wasn't as warm and cozy as he'd imagined it would be.  So, once he was in a pair of joggers and t-shirt he walked down the hall towards the thermostat.  He wasn't surprised by the display saying that it was sixty-one degrees in the house.  The entire system was old and a little touchy.   It wasn't unusual to have to knock the desired temperature up a few degrees in order to get the unit to kick in.  Therefore, he hit the up arrow a couple of times, went back to his room to crawl under the covers and fell instantly asleep.

A few short hours later, he woke up to the sound of May getting ready for work.  Though, having not gotten to bed until late he didn't bother to climb out of bed.  He did instantly realize that his room was still cold and looked towards his window to make sure that he'd remembered to close it.  When it was indeed locked shut, he sighed and pulled his comforter up a little more tightly under his chin.  He wasn't worried.  If it was really that cold in the apartment, May would turn up the heater before she left.  

Except, the next time he woke up he could no longer ignore the chills that were dancing up and down his spine.  He lay there for several minutes waiting to hear the hum of the heater begin to blow warmth into his room but it never did.  So, with a huff, he pulled the blankets over his shoulders and sat up.  May was long gone for her first shift of the day and he was going to have to finagle the stupid thermostat himself.  However, once he placed his socked foot onto the laminate flooring, he sucked a hiss in through is teeth.  The floor was so cold that it burned but he powered through and hurried towards the thermostat in the hall that showed the temperature to be a balmy forty-six degrees.  

As he stood there hopping from foot to foot to avoid having any kind of prolonged contact with the floor, he tapped the arrow to send the desired temperature up well past eighty.  Though he knew it wouldn't do any good.  Something had finally given in and it was broken. There wasn't much he could do outside of requesting maintenance and he could do that from his bed.  

After leaving a message with the landlord, Peter tucked himself back down under his covers.  It crossed his mind that maybe putting on his Spider-man suit and swinging across the city with the heater running might warm him up but one look at the outside temperature had him changing his mind.  Even with the sun up, it was still below freezing.  Besides, he was already back to warming up under the blankets and the Spider-suit was all the way on the other side of the room.  

For quite a while, Peter patiently waiting for someone to come to fix the heat but they never arrived.  In fact, between the thin walls and the drafty windows, he could feel it becoming even colder in his room.  His nose was frozen and he could feel it starting to run as a result.  To make matters worse, his stomach was starting to protest his lack of breakfast.  However, rather than get up, he grabbed at his phone with his suddenly uncoordinated fingers and attempted to leave another message with the landlord, only this time it seemed that the message box was full.  Clearly, he wasn't the only one being affected by the cold snap.

Groaning in annoyance, Peter opened and closed his hands a few times to try and warm them up as he tried to decide what to do next.  He considered trying to call May but there was no reason to do that, really.  He'd already called to request the repair and it wasn't like she could do anything else.  Calling her would just make her worry.  Then he thought about going over to Ned's house because surely it was toasty warm in there but then he remembered he wasn't even home.  Unlike him, he was still in the Robotics Club and would be spending the weekend at the school working on all the last-minute programming.  Then, as he was flipping through his contacts list, his thumb landed on Tony's name... and that had him thinking.

The man was a genius.  He knew how to do everything from fixing old car engines to creating an arc reactor and an Iron Man suit out of a box of scraps.  Surely he could fix a broken heating unit.  That and he had told him many, many times that he should call him if he ever needed anything.  He'd never really specified what 'anything' meant but he figured that by definition, 'I'm cold and you know how to fix things.', fell into that category.  So, with only slight hesitation he decided to send him a message.  If nothing else, but to feel out the situation.

'Hey, Mr. Stark.  Are you busy?', he typed out knowing that he probably was and that he'd just asked the stupidest question of all time.  The man was a superhero who owned a gigantic tech business.  Of course, he was busy.  Then, just as he was about to retract the question he received an answer.

Tony, who had been in his workshop all night, literally knee-deep in a new Iron Man suit, smiled down at his phone when the familiar contact popped up on his screen.  Peter rarely texted him before noon and he found himself curious as to what the kid was up to.  'I'm always busy.  Why? What's up?', he typed back in return before his brain filled him on at least three thousand reasons why the kid could be texting him at nine o'clock in the morning.  Especially on a weekend.  Those were the days the teenager spent the majority of his time Spidering all over the city.  'Are you okay?', he added while simultaneously pulling up the information from the Spider-suit.  

Still feeling, slightly apprehensive about asking his mentor to come over to his house, of all things, he decided to once again remain somewhat vague. 'I was sort of hoping that maybe you could come over to my apartment and help me.', he replied not realizing that by leaving out all context he was sending his mentor's heart rate through the roof.  

A glance at the tracking information on the suit verified that it was inside of the Parker's apartment as Peter had indicated.  However, the suit didn't seem to be on and the last activity that had been recorded was from the night prior.  Upon further inspection, he saw that all of the vitals were within a normal range, short of a slight drop in body temperature and that there was no other indication that anything calamitus had happened.  That was all well and good but at the same time, he knew that the teenager had been known to mess with the coding to prevent him from getting certain kinds of notifications.  However, what was most worrying was that he'd straight-up, asked for help.  He never asked for help.  He could be bleeding out in an alley and would still insist that he had it all under control. He wouldn't put it past the kid to lay in his bed overnight, nursing a life-threatening injury, on his own, and then casually text him when he finally decided that maybe he didn't have it all under control, after all.  That was all it took for him to call in a functional suit so that he could take off towards Queens.  'I'll be there soon, kid.  Hang Tight.'

Being utterly relieved that help was on the way, Peter threw the comforter over his head completely and inadvertently drifted back to sleep.  He never once considering how odd it was that his mentor had so quickly agreed to come over help him, despite having no idea what he needed help with.  

While Peter was curled up in a tight ball, sound asleep in the little pocket of warmth he'd created for himself, Tony was flying towards him.  He'd spent the first few minutes of the trip having FRIDAY go over the Spider-suit's video monitoring in an attempt to narrow down what he would be dealing with upon his arrival but the AI found nothing.  He was trying to decide if that was more or less concerning when the familiar building finally came into view.  

Deciding that it would be suspicious for Iron Man to go running through the halls of the Queen's apartment, Tony ditched the suit on the roof and began to climb down the fire escape that led into an alley, cursing himself the whole time for not thinking to put on a coat before he left.  However, between the fridged air and the nagging worry, he managed to make quick work of the ricketty ladders and was soon inside, taking the stairs two at a time all the way up to the Parker's seventh-floor apartment.  

Once he was outside the door he didn't even bother to knock, instead, he took the key that May had entrusted to him for emergencies and walked right in.  He was unsurprised at the lack of activity in the large open room.  Peter hiding an injury from his aunt would be a given.  He wouldn't want her to worry.  The fact that she'd already left for work was to be expected.  Then, rather than announcing his presence, Tony bounded down the hall and threw Peter's bedroom door open steeling himself for the worst, only to end up face to face with a wide-eyed, sleep disheveled teenager looking back at him in surprise.

Having been abruptly pulled from his sleep by his bedroom door squeaking open, Peter rapidly sat up and pulled the light blue comforter off of his head while being careful to keep it tightly wound around his shoulders. "Mr. Stark!", he half croaked in surprise when he saw that it was his mentor and not his aunt standing in his doorway.  He didn't know how long he'd been asleep but apparently it had been long enough for Tony to dive all the way there from Manhattan.

For several seconds Tony stood there and took in the kid's appearance.  Well, what he could see of him anyway.  Which wasn't much.  All that was exposed was his head but his hair was a tangled mess, his nose was red and he could see him shivering where he sat.    Upon further scrutiny, he realized that there were no signs of blood anywhere in the room and that all in all the kid didn't seem to be in any kind of distress.  With that realization, he allowed himself to relax and it was then that he realized how cold it was in the room and involuntarily shivered himself.  "Do you always keep your room this cold?", he asked as he crossed the room, carefully stepping over the various legos and school books that were strewn across the floor.

"N-no.", Peter replied through chattering teeth.  "The heater's broken and the landlord hasn't sent anybody by to fix it yet.", he added before running his hand under his nose with a loud sniff.  "I'm f-freezing."

After standing there for several more seconds the dots slowly began to connect and Tony huffed a laugh. "Is that why you called me?", he asked with amusement.  "You're cold?", added, though he realized it was more than a little chilly in the apartment.  It was near frigid.

"Well...", Peter replied with a small, although it be a bit sheepish smile tugging at his lips.  "You said I could call you for anything, right?"

"I did.", Tony replied seriously.  He'd been trying to drill it into the kid's thick skull for months that he not only could but defiantly should call him whenever he needed help with anything.  Whether it had to do with Spider-man or not.  Though, he'd assumed that whenever that first call for assistance came in, it would be over something a little more... detrimental.  Not that he minded in the least but that wasn't going to stop him from giving the boy a hard time.  "I just wasn't expecting it to be because you needed me to put an extra blanket on your bed and tuck you in."

"Actually I was kind of hoping you could fix the heater, Mr. Stark.", Peter replied as another violent shudder wracked through him.  "...but an extra blanket would be nice too."

Tony then crossed into the room and patted Peter's leg so that he could sit down beside his shivering form.  As he did so, he was more surprised than he probably should have been when the kid immediately leaned over onto him in an attempt to sap up his warmth.  "Are you really that cold?", he asked with a chuckled as he wrapped an arm around the boy's blanketed shoulders. "How long has the heat been out?"

"I've been cold all night.", Peter replied with a contented hum, as the man started to run his hand up and down his back.  "The heater in the suit, which is super awesome by the way, thank you...  wasn't keeping up once it got really, really cold so I came home and I think the heater was already broken then."

"So, you never warmed up?  Geez, kiddo.  Come here.", Tony replied with genuine sympathy as he opened his arms up so that Peter could fall fully up against his body. They sat there for several minutes, Peter trying to absorb as much heat as possible from his mentor's warm embrace and Tony trying to come up with a plan that didn't have him sitting there acting as a human heating pad all day.  "Alright, here's what we're going to do.  We're going to move you out to the couch so that I can make you something warm to drink and then you're going to point me towards your tools so I can take a look at what's going on with the heater, yeah?"

"Mm-hmm.", Peter replied though he made no effort to remove himself from the comfortable position he was now in.  That is until the man stood up and begin to pull him to his feet.

"Come on Linus Van Pelt, get your blanket and start walking.  I'm too old to carry you.", Tony said once he had Peter standing reluctantly beside the bed.  

"You're not that old, Mr. Stark...", Peter said in return, though he'd meant it as a compliment and not as a request.

Tony laughed as he continued out of the room shouting, "Still not carrying you.", over his shoulder as he went.

After a very quick stop in the extremely cold bathroom, Peter was settled on the couch and being handed a mug of hot tea.  He took one small sip and then another, sighing as the warm liquid coated his throat and began to warm him from the inside out.  "This is really good.  Thank you, Mr. Stark."

"You're welcome.  Now, where can I find some tools.", Tony asked and once Peter had pointed him in the right direction he got to work.  First looking over the thermostat and then moving on to the heating unit its self.  He had it apart in no time and was quick to diagnose the problem.  "Looks like the capacitor's blown. That's why the fan won't cut on. Other than that, it looks okay."

"You can fix that, though, right?", Peter asked as he craned his neck around to where Tony was standing at the sink washing his hands.

"I can, but we need to get a new capacitor.",Tony replied with a casual shrug of his shoulders.  "They should have one at the home improvement store around the corner.  You coming with?"

"Sure.", Peter replied because that sounded better than sitting, cold and alone, on the couch while he waited for the man to get back. He was also sure that whatever fancy car the man had driven over would have seat warmers.  Then before anything else could be said, his stomach grumbled so loudly that he was sure they could hear it three apartments over.  "Can we get some food too, please?"

"Of course.", Tony replied with a chuckle. "I already messaged someone to bring me a car.  It should be here any minute.", he then said.  He'd actually done that the second changing the batteries in the thermostat hadn't done the trick and he was sure he would end up needing to go to the hardware store.  Then he glanced over to see the look of confusion on his mentee's face he rolled his eyes.   "What are you looking at me like that for? I didn't drive over this time."

"Then how did you get here?", Peter asked with perplexity.  There were only so many ways one could get to Queens from Manhattan and he couldn't imagine the man taking the bus or subway.

"Before I answer that...", Tony began as he pointed an accusatory finger in his mentee's direction. "...let me make it very clear that you were being oddly cryptic and I thought you were dying...", he said with seriousness but rather than looking any kind of remorseful, he saw a smile spread across the teenager's face.

"Mr. Stark!  You flew here in an Iron Man suit?", peter squawked with delight.  While he felt just a tiny bit bad that he'd scared the man enough to make him think that he needed to rush to his side in an Iron Man suit, he was also extremely amused.  It was sort of nice to know that his mentor cared that much about his well being.

Rather than playing into the kid's obvious enjoyment of the situation, Tony placed his hands indignantly onto his hips. "I repeat... you led me to believe that you were dying.", he stressed but even he could admit that maybe he'd overreacted just a little.  It wasn't like he'd taken any amount of time asking what was wrong.  The kid had said he needed help, his brain had demanded that he jump into action and his body had followed through.

"I'm sorry.", peter said though he continued to practically cackle at the mental image of Iron Man busting through the Tower's ceiling, jetting full speed across the city and landing on his building's rooftop.  

Tony took a moment to wait out the teenager's continuous giggling, before even attempting to reply and when he did it was with playful sarcasm.  "Yeah, you look it."

The trip to the store was quick, the fast-food was warm and soon the two of them were back in the apartment in their previous positions.  However this time, Peter had a small electric heater sitting on the coffee table in front of him, blowing warm air in his direction.  He'd been hesitant to accept the purchase when Tony had picked it up but now that it was there and cutting through the chill in the room, he was happy to have it.  Even if it did take the man no more than twenty minutes to replace the part.

"Thank you for coming and fixing everything, Mr. Stark.", Peter said once, Tony had successfully turned on the heater with a celebratory, 'Yay.', and was sitting down beside him on the couch.

"You're welcome, kiddo.", Tony said before leaning back on the couch and watching whatever nonsense show the kid had turned on while he was doing all the work.  Not that he was upset about that.  He was just glad that the kid, who had buried himself in his side the second he'd sat down, was finally starting to shuck some of the blankets that had ended up piled on the couch and was no longer sniffling every three seconds.  It wasn't until another thirty minutes had passed and he was really starting to feel the rise in temperature that he said anything to the kid who was still pressed tightly up against him.  "You do know that the heater's been running for the last half an hour and it's no longer cold in here, right?", he questioned as he poked the boy's side in an unsuccessful, though admittedly unenthusiastic, attempt to get the boy to get off of him.

"I know.", Peter replied before happily scooting just a touch closer making Tony smile.

"Alright, just so long as you know."

[believerindaydreams]

Okay I know there has to be a Boone/Arcade scene for pacing but this feels like treading water

Oh well, crossing at dawn 2.75 and then I'll be chronologically in order agsin

Boone

Don't know why now of all times, when we've finally sorted out our problems, I start having nightmares.

That time in the Legion, when I'm awake I hardly think about it. But when I sleep it grabs me, I'm wrapped in crimson that's starting to bleed and armed with a machete against men with grenade launchers and rockets.

Not that strange, it's what happened.

I get off the bunk, stealthy as I can manage; Manny's taken the top like always, he's out cold. My wife's fallen asleep on top of Veronica, hands entwined; I'd start wondering about that if the engineer wasn't so obsessed with this train. She's staying out, so the fling is a fling.

Can't complain, that's for sure.

Arcade's in the dining car, reading with his feet up; the place smells like frying fat and sugar.

"What's up?"

"Can't sleep. Didn't seem worth trying any longer."

"Well, I've got something cooking if you're sticking around. What would you normally do to unwind?"

"Practice my sniping."

"Ah. And you can hardly do that on a train, so no wonder you're stressed out."

Guess he has a point. Not many days I've spent without practicing with some kind of firearm or another. "What's cooking, then?"

"Fried Nuka-Cola balls." He's hiding behind his big book now, can't see him. "It's a classic recipe. I'm testing it."

"Can't get enough of the stuff, huh?"

"Followers," Arcade says, peeking over the top of the book, "are interested in all kinds of prewar experiences, valuable or not. Because it takes more than weapon schematics and vault doors to build a society- I think they started forgetting that, towards the end. How to live when your whole life isn't bent towards destruction. The more frivolous, silly, utterly human scraps we can salvage from the wreckage, the better off we all are."

"...so this isn't about your addiction then."

"Well, that too. Any Follower worth the lab coat can spout off nonsense to justify their actions, it's one of the first things you pick up at the Boneyard." He chuckles and tucks the book under his arm. Picks up a kind of metal net and shakes it out, then upends it over a plate. Golden balls spill out, like Manny's dumplings but smaller and less meaty. "Give those a while to cool."

"Guess I'm not going anywhere."

"Great," Arcade says, actually putting the book down. "Because I've- I have missed you, if that makes sense. Far be it from me to ever imply I miss the Sierra Madre, because I most definitely don't, but- you know what, there is absolutely no way of saying this without sounding terrible. That third rum was a mistake."

"With Nuka in it, I guess."

"...yes. Well. I could be even more drunk, but- you know what it is, I had approximately ten seconds to go from the idea of having finally, unbelievably, made a cautious attempt at opening up, to suddenly being the fifth wheel on a cart."

"There's only four of us."

"I'm talking metaphorically- Boone, it's been a lot to deal with. Manny was just that sniper in the dinosaur, Carla I didn't know at all, this is very much a case where I'm late to the party and I'm trying to get to terms with that by consuming junk food abominations and revisiting highlighted passages of the Wasteland Survival Guide. Please don't hate me for realising I'm not even the most important person in your life anymore."

The weird little fried balls are cooled off. I pop one in my mouth- kind of crispy on the outside, syrupy inside. It does taste like a soda, sort of.

"I'm not going to throw you over just because they came back."

Arcade stuffs a ball into his mouth, doesn't speak until he's done chewing. "Surviving the Enclave collapse did not, I'm afraid, do anything for my capacity to trust that a given situation will remain stable."

"...you want to fuck?"

"No. Yes. I would dearly enjoy a prolonged, imaginative and exhausting fuck, but right now I need to get to grips with this before I can get comfortable with you again. Boone, is any of this making sense?"

Wish Manny and Carla were awake, this is out of my depth. "They've told you they're glad to have you along. Don't know that me saying it helps you much."

We're getting through the balls at a fast clip. Saves looking at each other. "Is this because I shot those men at the Freeside gate? You look at me and wonder what other promises I'd break?"

Arcade blinks. Twice. "Not really where I was going with this, but carry on."

"Didn't kill 'em for my sake, when I could have turned myself in. Manny and Carla could have gone back to the Great Khans, they'd be glad to get a good soldier back and she'd stick with him if I vanished. But no way you could have gone with them, with that Legion alliance on the way. Had to make the choice, and I made it."

He slowly crushes a ball in his fingers, opens them up, looks at the dark liquid. "You're saying, cheer up, because I murdered some guards for you."

"Can't make you feel better about the others, because I'm not them. But you want to know if you matter to me? Damn straight you do."

"...I suppose that'll just have to suffice. For the moment."

Comes as a relief, when he quits talking and gets your hands and mouth sticky with soda syrup.

Action's a hell of a lot easier than words.

*****

Manny

Glory be, Veronica should have called it the Love Track. You can hardly move on this train without stumbling over somebody fucking or thinking about fucking or recuperating after the fact.

And I'm not planning to be left out altogether. Third day in I invite Arcade for a roll in the hay. Or maize husks, anyway.

"Why are we here? Cow won't need milking for at least two hours."

"Thought we could get to know each other a little better."

"Ooo-kay. Fine."

He's nervous. Forget the hay, then.

"See, I care about those two idiots out there, bless 'em, but Boone does not do feelings and Carla has been through so many kinds of hell since getting pregnant, I'm amazed she still gets up in the morning. So nobody else is going to ask this- are you feeling all right?"

"Good enough."

Wow. Boone's contagious. "Hey. If I can help, name it. I wouldn't be half as gracious about it if I was the one dumped into a three-way tangle."

"You could satisfy my incessant curiosity, I suppose." He picks up a brush and starts tending Cow; technique all wrong but they're patient animals. "How did you all agree to this, if I may ask?"

"Hmth. Sure you can ask, Boone proposed to her and she turned him down because she didn't believe that he wasn't sleeping with me. He came back to the barracks with a turquoise ring and a broken heart so bad he actually talked about it."

"Were you? Sleeping with him?"

"Not then. But we had done...so next leave, I went to Carla myself, told her it was killing my partner, that if it was me or caps or anything I had the power to change, name it and I'd do it. He'd been so happy with her...well. You met him before he got Carla back."

"I'm not sure I saw him at his worst, even so." Bless the man, Arcade's blushing.

"Could be, I wouldn't know. Well- she laughed and asked if I'd brought a ring too, and I said yes, just in case you wanted one. Nice bit of bone carving, you'd knock that off in a bored afternoon with the Khans. Anyway she suddenly took me seriously after that...she was in love, I was in love, Boone wanted both of us. And she felt better when she heard I didn't go for girls. So I went back, told Boone to try again...went storybook the second time, Carla said."

"Then you were always planning to make a life with them."

"Planning? No. I thought that she'd tell me to find my jollies somewhere else, I'd mope about it for a few months, and head back to the Khans- that was before Bitter Springs."

"So what made you stay?"

"You really don't let up with the questions, do you?" Arcade's not bad to look at, that's for damned sure. The distracted way he's brushing his hair back, for instance. But I'm not going to fuck him just because I'm here and he's here. "Cos I still wanted Boone. Because we were partnered and I couldn't have quit thinking about him if I tried. Because they were a couple of star-struck idiots and they were going to need help."

"I suppose you were right about that."

I'd just as soon forget the word Arizona, thanks. "Sure. Who else would have taught them a triple-step to dance at the Tops?"

"You know a triple-step? I thought that only- well, that only Enclave remembered that."

"Khans were from a vault, back in the day. Good exercise, and it's fun."

"Mmm. It shows."

There's a certain hunger the way Arcade says it, couldn't call it subtle. Suddenly I get to come to terms with just because I'm being polite and hands off, doesn't mean he is.

Well. I wouldn't mind being the one who gets chased, just for a change.

[imnotcreativeenoughtomakegoodurl]

Dean X cop! Reader: Soulmate AU - Part 1

Genre: Dean X Reader, fluff (??), soulmate AU, slight angst/whump (if you squint)

Warnings: Description of injury/blood (let me know if I missed any) Summary: 

Summary: This is based on the soulmate AU where any unnatural markings or blemishes (cuts, bruises, stains, marker, ect…) on your body will show up on your soulmate’s body. You got the short straw with whoever your soulmate was-This crazy bastard was always getting the holy hell beat out of him. Waking up in the dead of night feeling like a truck had just run you over went from terrifying to extremely annoying as time went on, but you always did your best to stay safe after one of those nights. However, being a homicide detective, “safe” wasn’t a word you got to use often.

          “Back again?” The doctor asked, flipping through the clipboard Janice had left on the door. 

          “Don’t worry Dan, Janice has already patched me up and just wanted you to check me over before discharge in case this is anything like last time.” You explained, casually rolling up your shirt to show Dan your several bruised ribs and what once was a deep gash in your side. 

          You were in and out of the hospital so often that you were on a first-name basis with the majority of the staff and even friends with several. It was almost routine for you to walk- or even be carried in at least once a week with an assortment of bruises, open wounds and the occasional broken bone. They often joked that once you met your soulmate they would thank him or her for giving them such a dedicated customer, that is if your soulmate didn’t get themselves or you killed anytime soon. There have been several times when your soulmate must’ve made the choice to fight a bear or something because more than once, you’ve come in half dead. 

          "Looks all good to me, (Y/N)," Dan said and you rolled your shirt back down. 

          He signed your discharge form while you gingerly slipped on your coat and detective badge. Dan indiscreetly watched the detective badge glinting on your belt disapprovingly as he walked you to the front desk. 

          "Hey, you gave me the all-clear, doc. Besides, if I don’t leave now, I’ll be late.” You said as you slid the paper across to the desk for Oliver to look over. 

          “Are you sure you’re ready to go back to work? Right now, today? I mean, I discharged you but that doesn’t mean you should pass up some bed rest.” Dan advises. 

          “I really don’t think there’s a point, Doctor.” Oliver sighs, handing you back some papers. 

          “I’m sorry but, Oliver’s right, Dan.” You feign an over apologetic tone, slipping the papers into your bag while walking backwards “There’s been more of those creepy homicides and the PD needs all hands on deck. There’s nothing I can do.” 

          “Oh, that’s bull and we all know it.” Oliver calls out, making Dan snort. 

          “Hey, whose side are you on, Oliver?” You demand. But halfway out the door you turn back and joke “Don’t worry though, I’ll be careful. My soulmate really doesn’t need another injury!” 

          When you make it to the precinct no one needs to ask why you’re late. Your soulmate problems are a well-known routine here as well. You slide into your desk but before you can even begin to crack the surface of the mountain of files before you, your secondary rushes over, brimming with enthusiasm. 

          “So primary, what’s the plan for today? Check-in at the crime scene? Take a look at those corpses firsthand? Interview suspects? Well, I suppose we should properly look over the security footage we just got-“ 

          You have to grab Natasha's arm to get her to stop bouncing around. “Let’s tackle one question at a time. I know this is your first homicide case as a detective and it’s starting to get pretty damn interesting, but we need to keep our heads clear.” 

            You look Natasha in the eye and half expect to see her pupils vibrating out of excitement. When they don’t and she just nods so hard that her blonde ponytail almost flops over her head, you sit her down and continue; “So, what do we know about the killer, Palmer?”

          You’ve barely finished your question before Natasha starts chattering away “Again, you can just call me Tasha, I’m not big on formalities. It’s so weird y’know-“ 

          “Tasha?” 

          “Right, the killer. They first struck a week ago and killed Patricia Davids and Brian Lee We know their MO is to kill a man and a woman within twenty-four hours by stabbing the victim’s brain through the eye sockets. The man and woman are usually involved romantically in some way, so we’re thinking that the motivation is love and the killer is someone with a vendetta against romance. Have you found out anything else on this lead?” 

          And once again, before you can respond Natasha gets sidetracked "This works so well! This whole call and response thing where we bounce clues around is never something I got to do as a cop! I-“ 

          “Well I’m glad you enjoy this tactic, Tasha, but it’d kind of dead in the water if only you get to respond.” You explain, feeling slightly guilty when she sagged a little at getting shut down for the second time. 

           You leaned in conspiratorially and as expected, Tasha’s excitement came flooding back as she leaned in to listen like a schoolgirl being let in on a secret “I went and checked out each victim's itineraries leading up to the homicides and got a connection: The last time each couple was seen together was at Vicci’s Diner. I was thinkin-“ 

          “What’s so special about Vicci’s Diner?” An unfamiliar voice asked from behind you. 

          Slightly ticked at the fact that more reporters wanted info on the murders, you put on your best passive-aggressive smile and turned. 

          Two men you guessed to be in their early to mid-thirties, wearing layered overclothes and muted colours looked down at you. The taller one had a longer hair and slouched a little, almost like he didn’t want to intimidate anyone with his height. The shorter one had green eyes that were fixed on Natasha and you could’ve sensed from miles away that he was about to hit on her. 

          “I’m Sam, this is Dean.” The taller one introduces “We’d like to ask some questions about the Davids and Lee case.” 

          “I’m sorry, but as I’ve told the several other reporters; we’ve already had all the information we’re allowed to disclose published so you can go and check that source.” You said through a gritted smile before turning your back on them. 

          “Well, can’t you tell us again? We want to hear it straight from the source.” Dean says a little too automatically, giving away that they had coaxed info out of people one too many times. 

          “What was the crime scene like?” Sam asks, hot on Dean’s tail “Did it maybe smell odd? Did things not add up? Any weird patterns?” 

          Tasha opens her mouth eagerly to answer but you didn't trust Sam's bizarre questioning and their rundown attire showed that they weren’t reporting for anything too serious. 

          “Well it’s a murder scene so things did smell a bit fishy and if things added up we would’ve found the killer- I’m sorry but I didn’t catch what news publishers you were reporting for.” You pointed out, watching the men’s eyes meet and Dean crosses his arms across his chest to seem more authoritarian as he prepares to deliver what you know is going to be a lie. 

          “Who’s the primary?” Sam asks, now addressing the two of you and dodging the question. 

          “Oh, it's not me.” Tasha answers placing her hands proudly on your shoulders from behind “It’s detective (Y/N) (L/N).” 

          Dean looks almost surprised, as most people do when they find out that someone like you is a high-ranking detective. For some reason, it ticked you off more when Dean didn’t think that you were one to solve double homicides than it did anyone else. 

          Great now the lack of sleep from bleeding all night was making you seek approval from a total stranger. 

          “Damn okay, I was expecting your pretty lookn’ partner to bee the primary but I can see how you could’ve fought your way to the top.” Dean smoothly dishes out a compliment with a smirk and once again you can tell that this is something he did often. 

          Sam elbows Dean and resumes the one-sided questioning “Could you tell us something about Vicci’s Diner maybe? Has anything like this ever happened before in this city?” You sigh and stand up from your desk. 

          Placing a hand on each of their backs you turn the boys around and guide them to the exit “Vicci’s Diner is a really nice place downtown that had some great soup and occasionally carters to the homeless. Personally, I would recommend their grilled cheese and I would also like to work on the case so I actually have some new information to give you ‘reporters’.” 

          You gently nudge them out the precinct doors and scribble your address and number onto a scrap piece of paper “Now I don’t know who you guy actually work for but if you really are that desperate for a firsthand account swing by at night and you guys can help me finish my pie while we talk.” 

          The door closes in the Winchester’s face and you hurry back to your desk, massaging your temples.

           Did I really just give two complete strangers my address? God, what is wrong with me today? 

          Outside the precinct, Dean memorizes (Y/N)’s address before pocketing it. “Quit pacing Sammy, we got an address, it’s fine.” 

          “Yeah, we know where there’s a connection, but the detective didn’t give us any clues on whether or not it’s supernatural.” Sam opens the Impala doors and awkwardly clambers in. “Maybe we would’ve if you didn’t scare (Y/N) off with your questions. You might as well have been screaming “hey do you think a ghost killed those lovebirds?’” 

           Dean starts the engine and the loud banging of a drum solo fills the car. Sam can barely hear Dean when he waves the address in his face and says triumphantly “And I wasn’t talking about the diner’s address; I just got the address of a cute cop who just invited me over for pie because I gave one compliment. What do you think I could get if I bought them a couple of drinks?"

          "A restraining order," Sam mutters as the car takes off. 

          The break room in your precinct had been transformed in the last few hours into a mess of loose papers and gruesome pictures connected by thread beautiful mind style. The cuff of your shirt was indefinitely stained with dry erase marker from the frustrated wiping blank of the whiteboard every time a lead didn’t pan out. 

          You took a swig of room temperature coffee as you reread the ME’s report but the words seemed to have lost all meaning in the 2AM stupor you were currently swimming in. You absent-mindedly run your hands over the puckered line on your skin where your soulmate’s gash had been patched up in your stress and sigh deeply. 

          “What are you still doing here?” One of the night shift detectives asked, poking their head through the crack in the breakroom door “Go home, you look like a mess- and so does your workspace.” 

          “Thanks, Nosellla.” You snap, picking your way across the cluttered room to shut the door and other distractions out. 

          Nosella wasn’t wrong though; you had bitten your nailbeds into raw oblivion and had to band-aid a few fingers. Your hair stuck up at the front and became an impenetrable net at the back from all the times you had run fingers through it and you didn’t even need a mirror to know that you had some killer bags under your bloodshot eyes. 

          Between your soulmate’s antics and this impossible case, you would be lucky to have gotten twelve hours of sleep in the last week. Maybe it was the stress or sleep deprivation or just delusions in general but you rolled up your sleeve and stood by the sink with a washable marker. 

          When you were a kid, you and your soulmate would hold little conversations by writing messages on your arm for the other to see and washing it off to leave room for a response. 

          You wouldn’t be surprised if you were called in to do a psych eval tomorrow for leaning over a running sink with a red marked poised against your forearm. The mess around you must not help your case either but what the hell-you were desperate. The paranoia sent you down a spiral of wondering if your soulmate- one of the only sure things in your life right now- was out there and alive. He had stopped responding when the beatings started getting really bad and you hadn’t “talked” in decades. 

          “Hey guess who?” you scribbled and instantly dunked your arm under the water like one would toss away a phone after sending a risqué text. 

           “I was starting to think that you’d disappeared until it felt like someone was trying to rip off my fingernails today. Are you okay?” 

          Your heart soared and you let out a breath you’ve been holding since the marker first touched your skin. 

           You washed off his black ink and wrote in place: “I’m fine, just stressed. Since I have you “talking” I have a question for you actually.” 

          "Shoot," He wrote 

          “I know you wouldn’t tell me when we were kids because you said it was dangerous but we’ve both gotta be adults now, right? I mean you wouldn’t even want to get close to me as we grew up because apparently any connection at all could be dangerous. I kinda want to know who on earth my soulmate is yknow. All I know is that you’re an adult male who has a habit of getting the shit beat out of them. I want to meet you one day, hopefully soon?”

          It takes him much longer to respond this time and the letters appear haltingly, without the usual ‘no looking back’ penmanship that you were used to. “Listen meeting my soulmate sounds great but look at the hell I’m putting you through without even meeting you. I could never put you through what I have to do every day and people who I talk to have a habit of getting hurt.” 

          Your heart clenches for him but you must resist the urge to roll your eyes. “I already go through everything you go through if that hasn’t toughened me up then my job certainly has. If what you go through is hell than what kind of soulmate am I to just stand here and live in blissful ignorance?” 

          You can feel that he’s pressing the pen harder into his skin as he rushes to finish his statement in his annoyance “It’s complicated, what do you think this is a fairy tale? You can’t just rush into my life like a knight in shining armour and expect to come out in one piece.” 

          Your phone pings and you check it one-handed as you run your other arm under the tap. The stakeout crew that you had stationed by Vicci’s with Tasha had just texted you about a suspicious car that had parked across the street behind the diner but stayed stationary with the engine idling and no one entering or exiting. 

           “Haha, yes!!” You exclaim out loud at the news of a concrete lead and possible suspects. 

          You quickly text the team to take photo evidence but not to engage until you got there and end the unfulfilling conversation with your still nameless soulmate: “I’m still here aren’t I? Trust me when I say I do have field experience with getting near-fatal injuries. Speaking of my job, duty calls but please consider trusting me. We are soulmates and I’d hate for you to actually die one day without me even knowing your name.”

          “Who said anything about me dying?” 

          “Call it gut instinct.” 

          Under a shadowed overpass you tap on the window of the stakeout car and it whirs down to reveal Tasha’s always grinning face. “You took long enough, (Y/N).” She whispers. 

           “Sorry.” You apologize glancing around for eavesdroppers before continuing: “ So what’s the deal?” 

          “Well, they know what they’re doing.” Tasha says with an edge to her whispers “They parked somewhere dark so we couldn’t really get their profiles or see what kind of guns they pulled out of their trunk. But it looked like this wasn’t their first time going into a dinner heavily armed.”

           “Good to know.” You say, eyeing the suddenly sinister diner “Tasha vest on and with me. We’ll go in and split up and you two be ready to call for backup on my call.” You order the team in the car. 

           You slip on the familiar weight of your Kevlar vest and draw your firearm. Tasha grins at you and gives you a manicured thumbs up and you smile tensely and nod. 

          This could be the day you make the biggest break of your career, but despite this, you think back to your soulmate. You think of the hell he refuses to put you through, wherever he is right now, while you’re hunting down a pair of potential serial killers, and you change your mind. This could be the day you prove to your soulmate that you have the balls to walk through hell with him. 

          It’s now or never; You quietly push aside the yellow tape barring off the retro diner door and step into the dark reception area. You almost gasp when your eyes adjust to the dark and see an enormous silhouette no more than a few feet from the nearest booth. You barely have time to load your gun when: 

          “SAM DOWN!” 

          A click, a flash and a bang and you’re blown off your feet as the shot hits you square in the chest.

[illfoandillfie]

alright, let’s go: smut 5, 20 & 33

5. “No panties?” + 20. “You look so hot I could fuck you senseless right now.” + 33. “Can I at least shut the door before you decide to pounce on me the moment I come home,”

~~~~

You leaned in the doorway, watching Roger as he finished getting ready. He caught your eye in the mirror, grinning at you as he fiddled with his hair, running his hands through it until he’d achieved the dishevelled look he wanted. You wolf whistled as he turned around. “Like what you see?” “Rog, you look so hot I could fuck you senseless right now.” You moved to stand in front of him, wrapping your arms around his waist and he automatically reciprocated. “Don’t tempt me love, car’ll be here soon.” “Surely you can be a little late?” “To our own show? Not really.” He laughed, pressing a kiss to the top of your head. “But I’ve missed you,” “I’ve missed you too. But this leg of the tour is almost over, I’ll be home proper before Christmas. And then we don’t head off to Japan ‘til Feb.” “I know. But I’ve missed you.” You whispered, pushing yourself up onto your toes, lips hovering millimetres from his. A car horn sounded outside, and Roger groaned, kissing you once much too briefly as he moved to leave. “I’ll skip the after party, come straight home instead.” “I’ll be waiting,” you dropped onto the bed, “right here.” “You’re diabolical,” “You haven’t even seen what I’ll be wearing. Want a hint?” His eyes darted towards the window, the sound of a car engine drifting through it, and then back to you. “Yeah,” he was trying to sound casual but there was a hitch to his voice that gave him away. “No panties.” “No panties?” This time all pretence was gone, his voice was pure desire, almost whiny with want. He was gripping the doorway like it was the only thing stopping him from rushing over and pinning you down. “Car’s waiting, Rog.” There was another beep from outside. He groaned again, letting go of the doorway and taking a backwards step out of the room, eyes locked on you like he was still weighing up how much trouble he’d be in if he just stayed. “Think of me while you play,” you called after him as he finally blinked and turned away. “As if I could fucking think of anything else,” he called back.

When you heard the car pull up outside the house you ran downstairs. You’d changed into a skimpy little number, all straps and sheer fabric that showed more than it covered, as well as some fishnet stockings just for fun. As Roger wrenched the door open you rushed at him, throwing your arms around his neck. He let out a surprised noise as you crashed your lips to his. “Jesus, love.” He said between kisses, teetering in the doorway, “thought you said you’d be on the bed.” “Couldn’t wait,” He slammed the door shut as he pressed you backwards down the hall. “Thought about you all fucking night.” You hummed against his lips as you took another step backwards letting him guide you towards the stairs, “Anything specific?” “Have to get on the bed to find that out,” He turned you around so you could hurry up the stairs, giving your arse a small slap. He followed you a few steps behind and you heard a whine deep in his throat. “Like what you see?” You were true to your word, not wearing any panties, and you were sure the combination of the scrap of fabric that was passing for a skirt and being a few steps higher than Roger was giving him an eyeful. “Mmhmm, so much,” His hands were back on you before you’d even reached the bedroom, tugging at what little you were wearing as you pushed his already unbuttoned shirt off his shoulders. “Christ Rog, did you not get changed after you left the stage? So fucking sweaty.” “Nah, left as soon as I could. Was half hard from thinking about you, just wanted to get home.” “How romantic,” you teased, fumbling with the button on Roger’s pants as he threw your lingerie to the floor. He pushed your hands away, taking over the arduous task of getting his pants off, leaving you to scramble onto the bed. You made to roll the fishnets down your legs, but he stopped you. “Do you have any idea how fucking gorgeous you look in nothing but fishnets?” You giggled, reaching out for Roger as he finally got rid of his remaining clothing. Instead he grabbed your waist, flipping you onto your front. You felt his hands grab your stockings right where they met your cunt and the next thing you heard was a ripping noise as he tore them in half. “Fuck,” you whimpered as he grabbed your hips again, lining up his cock at your entrance. Anything else you wanted to say was lost as he pressed into you, sending all the breath from your lungs. He paused, letting you adjust, squeezing your arse while he waited for your signal. “Fuck me Rog,” you whined when his stillness became too much to bear. And then he was snapping his hips, pushing his cock further into you before drawing back again, making you whine and moan into the sheets with every thrust. “Feel so fucking good, Y/N. So. Fucking. Good.” Each word was accompanied by another thrust that had you seeing stars, “Wanna feel you cum while I’m deep inside you.” You whined again, the noise extended as he found his way to your clit, rubbing it in slow circles. “So close, so so close,” you babbled, feeling your impending orgasm right in front of you. And then he switched everything, slowing his hips, pausing when he bottomed out, but speeding up his fingers, rubbing your clit frantically. You clenched around his cock as you came with his name on your lips. A few more thrusts and he reached his peak too, leaning over your back as he grunted through his release.

As soon as he pulled out, you fell onto your stomach. The bed bounced slightly as Roger collapsed next to you, still breathing hard. He leaned close to give you a soft chaste kiss, his hair dripping sweat. “You need a shower,” you laughed softly. “Wanna join me?” “Not sure I can stand up just yet, someone just fucked me senseless.” “Hey, you’re the one who ambushed me at the front door wearing next to nothing. I had a whole plan. A much slower plan, that started with my mouth on your delicious cunt and ended with your third orgasm and a long cuddle. But you ruined it.” “Didn’t ruin it, just changed it. I’m holding you to that three orgasms thing.” ”Okay but can I at least shut the door before you decide to pounce on me the moment I come home next time?” “Sorry, Rog, that’s not a promise I can make.”

[fatandnerdy30]

The Itsy Bitsy Spider 24

I meant to put this up yesterday in honor of National Fanfic Writer's day, but the day got away from me with being sick and everything. But, I figured you all deserve another chapter, so here it is! And remember to water and feed your favorite fanfic writers with comments telling them how much they're work means to you!!

"Hey!" Nat's voice came over the com as Clint made his way down the highway on his bike, wind rushing through his hair. "How about a little company?" The roar of another bike made the archer look to his side and he smiled. "Hey, what took you so long?" "Oh, you know, my hair was a mess and I couldn't find anything to wear." She pulled up to the side of her friend and smiled, revving her engine. "You didn't have to follow me," Clint said, turning around a bend. "I would have been fine on my own." "Oh, I know. But I haven't seen my niece and nephews in so long, so I thought it was time." Clint gave her a side smirk. "Don't use my kids as an excuse. You're just worried about Peter, just like the rest of us. Come on, I know you." The woman snorted. "Look, just because he hasn't done anything doesn't mean he won't. I still don't trust him fully." Until he was out of the facility and away from Tony's work. "Yeah, yeah, tell me another one. Just, don't be too hard on the kid, okay? I'm sure he feels like this whole thing is his fault." When he had talked with him the other day, he'd gotten to know him, taking subtle hints from the way he acted, so he could take a knowing guess to how the boy was feeling. "I'm not blaming him for anything. I just don't trust him, that's all." And she hadn't since the day he was brought to the compound. The archer stayed silent after that, just letting the wind blow over his helmet. He heard a strange noise and looked up to see a private plane go overhead heading straight for his home. Being that his area was a no fly zone, he got nervous and picked up the speed, Natasha on his heels as they rounded the last bend before they veered off a dirt road that led to his home. He had to get there soon and make sure Laura was all right. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ How long would it take to blast a freaking hole in a building!? Hammer was loosing his patience. "Come on guys, let's make it efficient here!" he complained from the car window, watching as droid after droid crashed into the Avengers facility. And every time, when the smoke cleared, there wasn't even a dent in polished white outside. "Dammit!" he pounded the inside of the car. "Please calm down, Mr. Hammer," Mr. Ward's tone of voice was bored. "You've obviously underestimated Mr. Stark's defenses." "Never tell me that again!" Justin seethed. "I am superior to Tony Stark in every way!" Ward held up his hands in a placating manner. "Okay, just calm down and gather your bots. There has to be a weak spot. A way in." "I can't scan the building for anything because of the fucking AI Stark built! It has ti have a weakness!" He hit the seat again and again like a child who didn't get his way. "Hammer," Ward said in a dangerously calm voice. "I will not listen to your screaming like a petulant child." Justin took a moment to calm himself, taking a deep breath. "I apologize. I'm not used to loosing so easily." "Everyone loses at one time or another in their lives." Ward raised an eyebrow as if to enunciate his point. "Yes...I suppose they do." Justin tapped his small tablet. "And I know when I'm beat, and-" he was cut off by his phone ringing. Confused, he answered the unknown number. "Hammer here." "I know where the kid will be," Toomes' voice rang from the other end. "I know where they're going. Phineas is tracking the car the boy's mother is in as we speak." "And how are you doing this?" Justin was very cautious with this, being as Toomes had shunted him in the past. And he didn't like being two timed. "How do I know I can trust you right now?" Sure he had Toomes' family, but he had to know that the man wasn't leading him into a trap. "Herman put a locator onto the woman's clothing that was built by Phineas. They're heading towards where the boy is now, I know it." Toomes didn't sound like he liked asking for help very much, which delighted Justin immensely. "Okay, I'll bite. Send me the coordinates of the tracker. I'll go quietly this time to make sure I get the item." He gave Ward a thumbs up who nodded and got on the phone himself. "I'll tell you where your family is after I have the kid." With that he hung up and a second later, his phone rang and he pulled up a mini-map of the area where the locator was headed. "Perfect." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Placed on the arm of the couch, Peter was left there while Pepper went over to where Laura was already chopping up greens for a salad. "Is there anything I can do to help?" "How are you at making burgers?" Laura pointed to a large bowl full of ground beef. "I can do that." Pepper made sure Peter was still on the couch and set to forming the patties. In the meantime, the small boy felt useless as he stood watching from the couch. He'd never really voiced his opinion about not being able to help, but this was his mess too. It all happened because of him, so he at least wanted to help make dinner. Slowly making his way to the edge of the couch, he used his sticky abilities to get himself to the floor, grateful the couch was low. Once he was on the wooden boards, he started running over to the counter, wincing when his gait had pulled the wound on his side. He stared up at the adults towering at least eighty feet over him, knowing full well that they didn't know about him being on the floor, so he had to be careful around them. "Pepper!?" he shouted, standing close to the woman's shoe, keeping an eye on its movements. "Pepper!?" he shouted again and the woman glanced up, her line of vision going to the couch and she automatically stopped what she was doing. "Peter?" she called and looked down at the floor around them, stopping when she spotted him. "Oh my god! Peter, you know you shouldn't be on the floor! What if I had hurt you?" She crouched down and went to grab him, but her hands were full of meat. "Up here, now," she ordered in a serious tone. "I'm sorry," Peter grunted as he started to climb the up the counter, glad they were polished wood, because he would have had so many splinters by the time he reached the top. "I just wanted to help, and I knew you wouldn't be able to hear me from the couch, so I came to you." He stood by the half full bowl of ground beef, the top of his head not even coming to half the height of said bowl. Laura smiled at the picture the two made. Yeah, it was a little weird to have a boy the size of a mouse standing on her counter, but at the same time she found him endearing. "You know what," she said before Pepper could speak. "I know something you can do. Just give me a second." She nodded at the woman who frowned at her and walked from the room to give them a minute. The blonde waited until they were alone before she started berating the teen. "Peter, you know how dangerous it is for you right now. What if you had gotten hurt? Or worse?" She shook her head, a disappointed look on her face. "I heard you'd made a promise to Tony that if you needed help with anything you would ask. Why didn't you ask for help getting here?" The teen scowled at the counter top, his fists curling halfway. "Because all I do is make things worse! I want to help make something nice at least." He couldn't look up at her face with the guilt of knowing that he couldn't do anything. "Peter, that is not true. Nothing is your fault." Pepper leaned down to look at him at his level, which had the boy looking straight at her. "You are a victim of unfortunate circumstances that made you this way." She gave him a small smile. "And if you hadn't come into our lives to shake things up, we'd just be boring anyway." The teen let out a small laugh at that, then the discussion stopped when Laura sauntered back into the kitchen. "Here you go." She handed the small boy something, smiling knowingly at Pepper. "It doesn't hurt to have a man around the house who knows his way around some tools. And has glue and tape on hand." Peter smiled brightly when he saw the box cutting blade sticking out of the green handle like a pieces that were taped together. "You can help chop." She placed the peppers she'd already sliced up in front of the boy in a large pile. Still smiling, Peter grabbed one of the slices that were as tall as he was and started making little cubes. The 'knife' was too big for him to hold in one hand, so he had to use both, but he was glad to be helping. Next to him, Pepper placed down the burger patties until there were only scraps of meat in the bowl and started shaping little hamburgers for Peter. It was then her bracelets lit up and Tony's voice came from the small speaker. "Pep? You there?" "Tony! Oh god, I was so worried about you! Are you all right?" Pepper immediately put the knife down. "Friday, transfer to a video source. You don't mind, do you, Laura?" The brown haired woman shook her head, watching Peter to make sure he didn't hurt himself.A second later the television in the family room lit up and Tony's smiling face took up the screen. "Hey Pepper. Long time no see." "Yes, you jerk. Where are you?" "Actually, I'm on my way to the farm...with a couple of surprise visitors." The screen suddenly shifted and a smiling Morgan was seen sitting the back of the car, playing a hand game with Bruce. "I hope they're not too much of an opposition." Laura smiled. "It'll be a regular party here. Just let me know when you're in the state ad I'll have something for dinner waiting." "No, don't worry about it. I'll have some delivered." Tony really felt bad about putting all this on the woman and wanted to make up for it. He couldn't do much, but there was so much money could buy. "Mr. Stark?" Peter called, gripping the knife close to him, pressing it against his chest. "I am so sorry about this...I know it wasn't my fault, but I still feel like it is, and I put your family in danger...and I'm sorry." Tony sighed and the women heard Happy snort in the background. "Pete, this is not your fault, really. Unfortunately my company hired idiots for guards. But, I'm not mad, I promise. I'm just thankful you're safe." Morgan chose that moment to look into the screen. "Peter? Is that you?" "Hi, Morgan," the tiny teen said with a shy little wave. "Don't you worry about anymore bad guys coming to steal you away form us! We're a family full of bad-asses!" the girl said proudly. "Morgan!" Pepper gasped. "Where did you hear that?" She scowled at her husband who looked a little too sheepish. "Remember what daddy said about adult words, Morgan? Seriously, she's like a little sponge! But, we'll be there by the morning. Keep the grill hot for us." He smiled and the screen went blank. "That man, I swear.." Pepper sighed with a smile, turning to the sink to wash her hands. "Keep chopping, Peter. We're gonna have a lot of people to feed." At that moment, they heard what sounded like a plane coming in for a landing, skidding on the pavement of the long driveway. Laura wiped her hands on a towel and peeked out the window to see a white haired man getting out alone. "Is he a friend?" she asked Pepper who came up behind her. "Oh my goodness.....that's Hank Pym." "Seriously? The guy who can fix me!?" Peter sounded too excited as he ran to the end of the counter, trying to figure out a way to see out the window, but it was way too far to jump it. "Calm down, Peter. We don't know if he can fix you right now." Pepper didn't like saying those words, but she didn't want Peter to feel horrible if they found out his situation was permanent. Of course, if that was the case, she would definitely talk to May Parker about adopting the teen, letting him live with them full time. So, in a way, as horrible as it was, she hoped Pym wasn't able to fix the boy, but for his sake, she hoped the man could. They watched the white haired man walk down the driveway and he started up the steps when Laura shook herself out of her daze. "I guess I better go invite him in," she said, awe in her voice. Never would she have guessed that the infamous Dr. Hank Pym would be coming up to her door, or that she would have met the great Tony Stark so many years ago...but this was all happening in her life, and she couldn't be more grateful. The woman got to the door just as Dr. Pym was about to knock, his hand in the air when she threw the door open. "Welcome, Dr. Pym!" God, she sounded like a starstruck teenager. "Why don't you come in? I'm sure your travels must have been so tiring." She stepped back and allowed the man to walk through the front door, closing it behind him. "Thank you, Ms....?" "Oh, it's Mrs. Mrs. Barton, but you can call me Laura." "Ah, well it's nice to meet you, Laura. And Pepper, always a pleasure to see you." He started walking towards the woman when something caught his eye and he stopped. "My god..." Hank had never seen anything like the boy standing on the table, holding a blade that was small, but obviously too big for him. For decades he'd been trying to do what he thought was impossible, but here was the proof right before his eyes. Scott had done what he couldn't, and now the man was gone, as well as his research. The only living thing left of him in this world, was this tiny miracle. "Hello there," he whispered, afraid to say anything too loud just in case this boy's hearing was too acute to bigger sounds. "Hello," the tiny teen said back, nervously switching from foot to foot, clutching his knife to his chest, almost as if it were a barrier. "I'm Peter Parker." "It's nice to meet you, Peter. I'm Hank Pym." Slowly, he brought his pinky finger out to shake the teen's hand, a wondrous expression on his face when Peter grabbed his finger. Instantly he felt the dash sized digits sticking to his skin and had to cock his head in confusion. "You stuck to me," he whispered, wanting to get every bit of information from this experience. "Oh...sorry about that. I tend to do that when I'm nervous, and then I talk way too much. Mr. Stark calls it my 'nervous babble', which I know is his way of saying he notices, so I'm cool with how he words it..and I now noticed I'm doing it again." Peter blushed and looked down, his fingers still gripping the man's pinky. "It's okay, Peter. There's nothing to be nervous about." He tended to stay away from children, besides his own and Scott, but this boy seemed to pull Hank in to his demeanor. Made him want to protect him. It was astonishing. "Dr. Pym," Pepper said, getting the man's attention. "I was wondering if maybe I can talk to you?" The man nodded and pulled his hand away, but stopped when he realized Peter was still stuck to his hand. "How is he doing that?" "That's what I wanted to talk to you about," the woman stated. "Peter, it's okay. We'll be right back, okay?" "Right, sorry, sorry." Peter took a deep breath and the man felt the boy physically pull away from his skin. It was absolutely amazing. "Don't worry about us, we'll keep busy, right Peter?" Laura smiled at the boy who nodded and went back to chopping. Hank was unable to take his eyes off the small teen until they turned the corner. "Dr. Pym, Peter is...well, he's a special case, I guess you can say. Tony or Bruce would be able to explain it better, but I'm here right now, so I'll have to do. When this happened to Peter, apparently Hydra injected him with what Bruce explained to be...radioactive spider venom or DNA, I don't remember all the specifics. But, when they did that, Peter..changed. He went from being a normal, every day boy to someone with abilities." She rubbed her temple, strain on her face. "Just, know that he'll ask if you can fix that, too, so he can go back to his normal life. But, Bruce told us all that it would be impossible without killing Peter. And I don't want that." She lowered her hands. The thought of Peter in any danger was enough to make her want to collapse. "No, I don't want him hurt, or dead." "So you love him." Hank kept his face neutral, his tone was straight to the point and Pepper had to laugh as she nodded her head. "Yes....yes, and yes," she affirmed. "I love that boy like he's my own...he's only been around two months, and I would do anything to keep him safe. He's a member of the family, and if he didn't already have his aunt, I would adopt him no matter what Tony said. But, I'm sure he would agree in a heartbeat. He feels the same way about Peter, if not stronger. Morgan even loves him. It's impossible not to." Pym smiled softly. "I understand, Pepper. But, this information of his DNA being restructured, does complicate things everything. I'll have to get a blood sample, run some DNA diagnostics on him, and test his abilities, all before we can talk about getting him fixed, if that's even possible. Sean's work was all in the files he destroyed, so the only thing I have would be Peter." He felt his heart drop to the bottom of his stomach at the thought of his friend, but he shook it away. This was no time to be sentimental. "Please know, that I will do everything possible to fix your son-Peter. To fix Peter. But, it will be dangerous, especially if we don't have any of the files that Sean had." Pepper nodded, but her face relayed her fright. "I understand, Hank. Thank you." He simply nodded and walked back into the room to see Peter again.

@sparrowrider @letsbeinspiredby @6inchicon @ixlovexirondad @carttorchdeatth

[endthisfool]

Dirge Eater

Summary: Getting his claws on one of Brainstorm's untested inventions leads to Whirl being flung into an universe that isn't quite ready for someone like him. Back in Jasper, Nevada Team Prime is faced with the task of reeling in the wayward whirlybird, but it won't be pleasant ride for anyone.

Chapter 1: Death Bringer

An iridescent tear eats at a storm ridden sky, bleeding the taste of a distant universe like an infection. Out it spits a being of that unknown, chaotic and ruthless. He doesn’t belong here. As if knowing that, the sky seems to rumble its distaste of the rapidly descending figure. Far below, a young boy by the name of Rafael Esquivel sits idly on the front steps of his school building. He’s content to wait outside for his friends, despite the swirling clouds above. However, a storm isn’t the only thing brewing over head, and it certainly isn’t the most worrisome. An odd sound reaches Raf’s ears. He looks about himself, furrowing his brows at the relatively empty area. It’s not empty for long. There’s a wicked crack of concrete as something huge lands in an impact that lances through the ground, sending debris and dust flying outward from its epicenter. Cars wail their distress, joined by a smattering of shocked shouts. Raf’s up on his feet and down the rest of the steps before he can even process what he’s running toward. Due to his short stride, by the time he gets there there’s already a growing crowd of students, teachers, and passerby’s alike. They peter about uncertainly, low mummers of confusion drifting between them. Raf finds himself having to push past a woman taking pictures to get a closer look. The crater cuts a deep hole into the concrete, thin trails of black smoke whisking up from the crumpled heap of metal within. A sluggish flow of fluorescent pink liquid seeps from the mass. The scent of ozone lies thick in the air. His knees feel weak, a thrill races up his spine, and the hairs on the back of his neck stand at attention. The gangly mess of strange parts and twisted blue metal, rises up from its grave with a horrific spat of clattering. In turn the previously gawking crowd scatters haphazardly, screaming all the while. The source of their fear moves like an old windup toy missing a few gears. Jittering and loud. No longer an unidentifiable pile of scrap, the thing reveals itself to be some sort of mech. All thin plating and abnormal-near insect like limbs- it appears nothing like the Cybertronian’s on Earth. ‘Nothing like the autobots at least, this has to be a decepticon.’ Worse, it had no face, just a telescopic-esq head and a single burning gold optic. It brings up an eerie recollection of the xenomorphs from Alien. Certainly not a pleasant comparison. The creature gives a small shake, then a full body shudder, its dented blue plating flaring wildly. It topples over. Its huge pair of pincers dig rivets into the concrete, and the air fills with that terrifying clattering once more. There comes the realization that it’s cackling. Rafael backpedals, which is apparently the wrong thing to do because suddenly that big yellow optic is trained directly on him. He freezes, blood running cold in face of that spotlight-like gaze. His throat constricts, gulping audibly around the fear lodged there. Automatically the boy raises his hands-empty palms outward hovering over his chest-in a placating gesture. The mech lurches forward, pistons screeching, and brings up one claw to point straight between his eyes. “ Ha! You look like Rung’s holomatter avatar had a baby with a gremlin.” Its optic contorts into a squint from what can only be unaltered glee, at the bewildered expression on the boy’s face. “Don’t take it personally, lotta you organics have that-“ There’s a vague gesture that spans the entirety of Raf’s person. “-nasty little flesh-bag look going on.” Raf’s mouth opens and closes, but he can’t seem to find any words. His awareness that he- and the entire human race- was just insulted only dimly registers considering the razor sharp claws only inches from his face. “No argument there, huh?” Those claws open and snap shut, clacking together, akin to a crab. Upon the resulting flinch from the human, they retreat back to supporting the mech’s frame. It regards him with a slightly more wary glint to its optic. “...Did I break you, Squishy? I told you not to take it personally, jeez.” The mech heaves itself upward once more, balancing precariously on its thin legs. Distantly Raf notes the school doors opening as people rush past him to safety. “ Fun chat , but I’m gonna go.” It scratches idly at the jutting plating serving as its chest, dislodging some dirt there. In the process it uncovers a much too familiar emblem beneath the grime. Rafael blinks rapidly at the sight of it, shock blooming through his fear in some sort of messy tandem, giving way to conflict. “W-wait! You- you’re a,” Suddenly the blue mech crouches low as if readying to spring, giving Raf a clear view of the twin gun barrels under its chest. At that the blurted words die before they can become a coherent sentence. “I’m a what?” It challenges with the hum of its weapons. Danger evident in its tense frame. Raf squeaks, tripping onto his rear in his haste to put space between himself and those barrels. There’s a chuffing sound above, and it seems the mech is now laughing at his misfortune. He can’t find it in himself to be embarrassed, much too relieved to be free of the mech’s ire. However, despite the mood change the bot doesn’t relax from its crouch. The blades above its claws spin lazily, and it shutters its gold optic a few times. The sound of police sirens wail in the distance, apparently someone had half a mind to call the authorities on the giant robot. Not that that would do any good. “This was a real riveting experience, really, good times with my old pal, Squishy-Four-Eyes,” Mock sincerity coats the words in a growing dirge. Its blades- no rotors begin to spin faster. “Sadly, I’ve got more important things to do, which would be literally anything else. So I’m gonna go do those things.” The mech uncoils from its crouch with enough force to launch itself upward into the air. Its frame contorts, folding mid-air to transform into something strikingly similar to an Earth helicopter. There’s a disconcerting whine to its engine, as if it’s protesting its injuries. Then it’s gone. Veering up and away without a speck of hesitation. Raf remains seated on the ground, even as frantic footsteps sound behind him. His friend Jack Darby nearly tumbles to the ground himself when he skids to a halt beside his younger friend. Their mutual friend Miko Nakadai, however, does trip, and plows straight into Jack. They land in a sprawled heap, but Raf pays them no heed. The older boy attempts to draw his attention with a cry of: “What was that!?” Mystified Rafael stares at the rapidly vanishing helicopter in the sky. “I think...it was an autobot.” A hand snatching his glasses off his face knocks him out of his stupor. “Hey-“ “Hello? Are these working, Raf? That dude is flying, only ‘cons fly.” Miko points upward with the stolen glasses a bit more forcefully than needed. Miffed she hadn’t gotten to take a picture of the weird mech. “Autobots: roll out! That’s not rolling, that’s, like, the opposite of rolling. Bam. ‘Con. End of story.” “No I-,” He struggles to reach his glasses from the taller girl, and she relents returning them with a snort. “I saw it, he had an autobot symbol on.” Jack squints at him, sharing an incredulous glance with Miko. “Are you sure, Raf? That guy didn’t really seem like autobot material.” “Yeah, besides the whole flying thing, none of the autobots have big claws like that.” She mimics the mech’s claws snapping with her hands. Raf averts his gaze, gnawing at his lip. He doesn’t point out the fact that he had been mere feet away from the bot, whereas they had only managed to catch a glimpse of him from inside the school. He saw it, bright red on the mech’s cockpit, he’d recognize it anywhere. Nevertheless, he shrugs slightly, shaken up and adverse to continuing an argument with his friends. Miko seems to notice his dejection and gives him a pat on the back that’s only kinda condescending.

------ So maybe ‘borrowing’ a few of Brainstorm’s inventions hadn’t been his best idea. Then again maybe Brainstorm shouldn’t make his experiments look like guns, because of course Whirl would be obligated to shoot them. He couldn’t just, not shoot them. Not shooting guns went against his morals. And well, maybe if he hadn’t been shooting at random in an enclosed area he wouldn’t have accidentally shot himself. But that’s enough maybes for now. Result is he doesn’t know where he is, and he managed to get smashed up while landing. Nothing too out of the ordinary. Though usually he’d be getting yelled at by now. Strangely enough his comm hasn’t said a peep since he woke up. In a crater. Surrounded by squealing organics. That was pretty weird. Whirl’s HUD blinks red, damage reports rolling across his vision groggily. Urgent: primary energon line severed. Stabilizing gyros functioning at 65%. Spinal strut fractured. GPS System Offline. Energon levels lo- He dismisses the alerts easily, they were no use to him, the level of first aid he was capable of performing with his claws was quite limited. His auto-repair would have to pick up the slack. Even so, leaking to death on a foreign planet wasn’t really the blaze of glory type ending he was looking for. So he needs to clamp off that energon line before he offlines. Simple enough for a pair of pincers. The landscape beneath him blends into an endless stream of indistinguishable shapes and colors. At this point he was fairly far from that organic settlement. The scenery below was now writhe with greenery. Proximity sensors ping a sudden alert. Whirl banks to the left, something bright whizzing past him into the clouds. He slows his flight, enough to detect the frames on the ground aiming at him. Outnumbered, he halts, hovering in place. They’re all dark colored mechs, near identical beyond a few variations. Behind them, similar looking mechs mill about the wide entrance of a mine. When they notice him they take hold of their carts, and retreat into the mine. A few return, training their weapons on him as well. Staring him down uncertainly one guard begins to shout. “Land a-and don’t move! Servos in the air!” The mech’s voice trembles slightly. He doesn’t give much thought to it. They shot first. Allowing his rotors to still in place, he drops out of the air like a dead seeker. Yelps of surprise and several attempts to shoot him follow. A blast glances off his chassis, but if the goal was to slow him down it does nothing. Whirl crashes down onto the mech that had spoken, transforming into his root mode during the impact. His frame is lightweight, but his momentum is more than enough to crumple the mech into the ground. The ‘copter’s HUD informs him of the consequences of using himself as a battering ram. As if the singeing pain didn’t make it obvious enough. He revels in it, all of it. The ruined frame under him shudders and sparks. Dark plating leaks blue over his claws in spurts while he works his grip onto weak neck cabling. The mech sputters feebly. A grotesque gurgling comes from his opponent, spinal strut following his helm free from his frame. Whirl straightens, towering over the graying mech. He holds the mech’s decapitated helm aloft between his claws, gleefully observing the fear take hold in the surrounding mechs. “I did what he asked, didn’t I?” He nails the nearest guard with the offlined mech’s helm, and they go down like a brick. Claws back in the air he gives them a wiggle to emphasize their position. “See? I can follow orders.” They don’t respond. Verbally at least, the sound of their blasters charging up is enough of an answer in itself. Whirl concedes, “OK, so three out of two isn’t bad, I mean, I had to move to get my servos in the air didn’t I?” They let their blasters do the talking once again, opening fire upon the autobot. He lets his own weapons join the conversation. Whirl heaves his offline opponent up to shield his taller frame, twin guns mowing down a row of mechs in front of him. They fall one after another, as if they weren’t built to last in a fight. ‘Kinda pathetic.’ Blaster fire licking at his chassis draws his attention to an unfortunate mech who tries to backpedal. The ‘copter forgoes his guns, bodily throwing himself at the shorter mech. He butts his helm against the other’s visor, shattering it, and carelessly damaging his own optic in the process. It doesn’t affect his pace. He latches on the dazed mech’s shoulders, and gives them a sharp tug. The intention was to tear his arms off, however his opponent ends up completely bisected lengthways. Whirl’s golden optic shutters in a surprised blink. Blue liquid soaks his cockpit, dribbling into his seams, mixing with the pink energon he leaked. The pincers holding the two halves of the other mech clench involuntarily. Something about this wasn’t quite right. His momentary pause gives the other mechs an opportunity to attack. Something in his leg gives way, the damaged armor there failing to protect it. The autobot turns on his attackers, confusion forgotten. “Is everyone on this dust bowl planet huge afts? Quit shooting me while I’m trying to think!”

------------- “ Prime! ” Disgruntled would perhaps be too weak a word to describe Agent Fowler’s demeanor right now. He’s furious, pacing up and down the walk way, his hands balled into fists. The addressed autobot regards him calmly, a slight frown on his handsome faceplate. His medic at the base’s computer terminal quirks an eyebrow ridge at the infuriated human. Leading Optimus to silently will the other to not say anything that would fuel the Agent’s bad mood. Thankfully Ratchet just snorts, resuming his work. Relieved the taller ‘bot patiently waits for the man to voice his complaints. It takes several more moments of huffing and puffing. Then Fowler finally halts his pacing, coming to stand in front of Optimus, his hands gripping at the railing. His glare is met with the autobot leader’s slightly confused, perhaps even concerned optics. For whatever reason this deepens the human’s scowl. “You wanna tell me what one of your guys was doing prancing around a school in broad daylight!?” That garners Ratchet’s attention, and this time the medic turns from his terminal fully, crossing his arms over his chassis. Optimus sighs quietly through his vents. “Agent Fowler, I understand you are displeased with our presence here on Earth, however you have met all the autobot’s stationed on this planet.” Fowler glares harder, Prime presses on before the human could interrupt. “No one was patrolling in town today, in fact Bumblebee, Arcee, and Bulkhead have only left recently to pick up their charges.” “Oh yeah? Then how do you explain the huge robotic blue bozo my men have been working to scrub off the World Wide Web?” He jabs a finger at Optimus’ frowning faceplate. “Do you know how many phones we’ve had to confiscate? This is a huge mess, Prime! And I’m holding you accountable.” Optimus opens his mouth to respond, but the sound of his comm crackling to life in his audial has him ignoring Fowler. The man sputters indignantly when the autobot holds up a servo to silence him. Over the comm Bee’s clicks and whirls sound off an excited babble. :: Raf says he met a new autobot at his school! :: Arcee’s voice joins the call, :: Jack and Miko both say he didn’t.:: Optimus considers the conflicting information, and gives the order to his soldiers to return to base with their charges promptly. Fowler stares at him expectantly. “It would appear that the children have some information on our unknown mech.” “That’s it? That’s all you have to say? There’s a dangerous mech out there who clearly didn’t get the robots in disguise memo!” Fowler bashes a fist against the railing, rattling it. “You can’t just let this guy go wandering through towns willy-nilly!” “Agent Fowler, I assure you once we take stock of the situation we won’t allow this mech to continue roaming in this manner.” Whether or not this mech was an autobot or not would really be the deciding factor in that. Neither a Decepticon or a Neutral would be all too willing to take orders from him. “Until then we will provide assistance in covering up this incident.” Fowler seethes. The screech of tires alerts the base’s occupants of the arrival of the remaining autobots. The young scout tears into the room, flashing his headlights. His charge can be heard laughing through the open windows. Arcee rolls up next, Bulkhead close behind. “Optimus!” Rafael peeks out Bee’s window, a faltering smile on his face. He glances toward his friends who’ve already crossed the base floor toward the couch. “I uh-“ Bumblebee beeps encouragingly at his nervous charge, the boy responds with another weak smile, and exits the scout. Rafael describes what he encountered at his school. The injured blue mech he found in the crater. His crass personality, and strange appearance. The autobots tense when the boy mentions the mech’s lack of servos, lack of a face . The tank churning signs of an empurata victim. “...then I think he called me ugly, or really just organics in general-“ Ratchet snorts. “-he got up to leave, and that’s when I saw the autobot symbol on his chest.” “Then he flew away!” Miko pipes up from the couch, Jack bobbing his head in a nod. Optimus doesn’t acknowledge the interruption, opting to lower himself closer to eye-level with Rafael. “Can you describe his alt mode for us?” Raf relaxes, clearly having been expecting some sort of dismissal. “It looked like some sort of helicopter...with a pair of big guns under its cockpit.” “I see,” There’s an uncomfortable niggling at the back of his processor. He raises to optics to address his team. “Do any of you recognize a mech of that description?” They each shake their helms, Raf’s expression falls, dismayed. Miko rolls her eyes. “Told you it wasn’t an autobot, autobots don’t fly.” Ratchet spares her a look, “There are fliers in the autobots, the aerialbots for one, it’s just not common.” Rafael perks up, nearing the medic. “You think this mech could be one of the aerialbots?” His big hopeful eyes has the gruff medic averting his gaze with a shrug. “If he is, I’ve never heard of him.”

---------

A few more dents mar his frame, and a few more errors crowd his HUD. At some point his rotors began smoking, but they’d stop soon enough. Sticky blue energon covers his plating like a second coat of paint. Limping into another chamber of the mine Whirl subspaces another cube of that weird blue energon. Not what he was looking for. A quiet clank of metal far too soft to be his own, has him squinting in an imitation of a smile. “Peek-a-boo!” Pincers snap shut over his advisory’s leg, wrenching the mech from its hiding place, and onto the floor. It immediately begins begging, which was funny the first dozen times, but now Whirl’s over it. “Please, don’t kill me! I jus-just work the mines! I don’t-I dont-“ “I don’t care.” To emphasize his point the ‘copter lashes out with his claws, impaling the mech through its neck, and successfully destroying its vocoder. The mech writhes, grasping at the claw pinning it to the ground. “Ya know, I didn’t even realize you guys were ‘cons until I had already deactivated most of you.” That single golden optic burns uncaring holes into the helpless mech at his pedes. It’s void of any sort of empathy, just watching the other with the same level of detachment as a human regarding an ant. “I think Eyebrows would say that’s concerning .” A sharp kick drives his pede into the miner’s abdominal plating. The mech curls inward on itself in silent pain. “He’d also ask me how I feel, or some slag like that. What about you, how are you feeling?” Whirl peers down at the miner, standing his other pede on top the other’s helm. He leans his weight into it, humming as the mech’s faceplate began to split. “Speechless huh? That good? You’re a weirdo.” “No judgement here, I’m not gonna tattle to anyone about what gets you revved,” Perhaps he presses too hard, because he finds his pede touching the floor, having gone straight through the mech’s helm. The crushed pieces of the miner’s brain module fizz against his pede forlornly. “Whoops. Guess you’re taking your kinks to the grave.” He yanks both his claws and his pede from the greying frame, losing his balance in the process. Whirl’s back hits the far wall with a painful crack. The blue mech allows himself to slide down to the floor as if strutless. His damage report begins to ping at him again, he dismisses it as usual, retrieving one of the blue energon cubes from his subspace. He eyes it thoughtfully with his single optic, turning it around in the mine’s dim lighting as if the angle would change it somehow. “You think this’ll give me some weird organic disease?” The cooling corpse remains considerably quiet. “Yeah, me too.” Whirl clinks the cube against the miner’s chassis then empties the entire cube into his intake. He doesn’t taste it, he hasn’t been able to taste anything in a long time. Nevertheless, he makes the sound of smacking lips he doesn’t have, along with a hum, as if contemplating the flavor. ‘Grinning’ down at the mech he nudges the cold frame with one of his sharp elbows. “Better than the sludge Swerve serves.” He laughs enough for both of them.

[maryjeanstar]

Karkov Goes Klubbing

Karkov was his name. His favorite thing to eat for lunch was green pepper roasted in olive oil. He had a chainsaw for a neck, and when he laughed, the chains would rattle and the engine would stutter.

He lived alone in a studio apartment, and most nights he ate frozen pizza. But on Fridays, he got to go out to the club.

Today was another Friday night, and after a long day at the carpentry shop, Karkov was eager to let loose and party. He’d saved a few scraps of roast green pepper to munch on his way to the bus stop, and skipped over the sidewalk tiles with a light hearted gait.

He was almost there when the bus showed up and zoomed right by it.

Hot damn! That means he has to wait for ten whole minutes. That’s ten minutes of his dance time taken by an early bus. Karkov was furious. His chain neck roared and he bent down to sever a tree. Sawdust coated the bus stop, flying into the one-way street in a storm. The tree came down, all twenty feet of it, its bare branches hitting a car on their way down. The car screeched to a halt, skidding on the wet asphalt and ramming into the bus stop pole. The driver rolled her window down. “Oi what the fudgesicles I’m gonna be late to the club because of this!”

It was Chessa. She was a red haired bazookateer, and she had the bazooka to prove it. It was fully armed, and she propped it on the roof of her car to aim at the sonofabitch who just hit her car with a tree.

Karkov faced the bazooka with fear in his eyes, but the flame in his heart could not be squelched by even the deepest of pits. He was gonna dance, damn it. He opened his mouth and a roar of chainsaw came out because that was his throat.

Chessa heard and understood. “You. You’re going my way, aren’t you?” She put her bazooka in the backseat and beckoned the carpenter. “Get in stud.”

Karkov sat in the car with his head hanging out the window because it wouldn’t fit. Chessa buckled him in for him, and told him to try not to laugh. She backed out of the bus pole and gunned it down the street. “I’m just gonna say,” she said without taking her eyes off the road, “I need you to know, that although I’m mad at you for stopping me, I’m not gonna spend a minute of my friday being upset at you because that is NOT how I wanna spend my friday, not this friday, not ANY friday. You run into me any other day of the week though bub, I will see to it personally you feel my wrath you goddamn tree-hating freakazoid.”

Karkov laughed so hard his chainsaw went full-power and cut the front passenger door clean off the car. It fell onto the road, cutting off a cement truck and forcing it to stop.

Chessa screamed in rage. It was all she could do to keep from shoving Karkov out and pulling over to blast him with her bazooka. Her screaming was so angry Karkov found himself laughing again, and he buzzed his way into the roof so he could sit straight up, his head sticking out the top of the car like a domino’s pizza delivery logo.

Finally they arrived. Chessa got out, grabbed her bazooka, and gave Karkov one last dirty look. “I hate you,” she said. “I hate you so much. But damn you’re hot, c’mon let’s dance.”

At the club Chessa danced with Karkov, she used her bazooka as like a makeshift cane to tap dance around, and Karkov roared his neck as he danced, and it got everyone to stay clear. Except the planet Jupiter, which bumbled over to ask Karkov if he’d like to dance with it instead. Karkov was swept up into the gas giant’s atmosphere, his body pulverized to microscopic shreds by the exponentially devastating air pressure.

Chessa slapped her hands against her thighs and scoffed. “Man Jupiter what gives, I was just having fun with him and you had to go and show up what the fudgesicles man.”

Jupiter spun on its axis at about a twelfth a rotation per hour, then said “oh sorry, heh, I uh, guess I just really wanted to dance with someone as beefy and ripped as me.”

“You don’t have a muscle in you you big ball of gas, quit flattering yourself there is literally nothing I find attractive about you.”

“How about my gravity?”

“OH ha ha! Fuck you Jupiter.” Chessa launched a missile at Jupiter. The missile exploded long before reaching jupiter’s liquid hydrogen surface, torn apart by the sheer density of its atmosphere. Nonetheless, Jupiter backed away, lowering its magnetic pole.

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry Chessa, I’ll leave you alone.” It went to dance up on the balcony.

A beam of blue light zipped down to the floor by Chessa, materializing as Karkov, the chainsaw-for-a-neck guy who’s a carpenter and who now no longer has a continue saved up. He and Chessa ended up tango-dancing the rest of the night together, and by the end Chessa gave him a peck on the nipple.

The club’s many members started home with bags beneath their eyes. Jupiter’s red spot was looking drained, it had danced so hard it shook the heavens, but lost a few moons. Metis had landed on the bar, and would have crushed it and the entire state county if not for the clubhouse’s particular lax on spacial existentialism.

“Kar,” Chessa said as she carried Karkov to her car. “I’ve changed my mind. If I happen to see you any time of the week... well...” she started to blush.

Karkov laughed, roaring his chainsaw right in Chessa’s shoulder and causing her to fall over. Chessa laughed too, then stopped laughing as she realized Karkov’s neck had dug a red canyon into her flesh, and it was pouring blood onto the deserted dance floor. She fell, dropping Karkov. “Oh god, ah! Kar I’m— FUDGESICLES this hurts!”

Karkov stood up, looking around for help. An orange hedgehog stood leaning against a wall talking to a white jerboa. Karkov roared his throat to get their attention, but it was no use; they’d been ignoring him all night because of how loud his neck was.

Chessa screamed “HELP I’m BLEEDING call an ambulance!”

The orange hedgehog who’s name was B’juh perked his ears at Chessa’s pleas and leaped forward. “Making the call to answer the call for help is the greatest heroic deed of all!” He started running very slowly towards the clubhouse phone. His friend ended up getting there first and bringing the phone to him. B’juh dialed an ambulance. “Hello? This is B’juh the hedgehog! I’m calling for an ambulance!” He hung up. “Even if your best is not enough, it’s the effort that matters most in the end!”

“Jesus god damn!” Chessa cried out. She’d cupped her hand on the wound, but it was no clean cut, and pressure was doing little to stop the bleeding. Karkov would have offered to tie a tourniquet with his shirt sleeve but he had no shirt. He couldn’t phone an ambulance himself because he had no voice. He didn’t know what to do. Karkov stood over Chessa, watching her face turn pale. He lifted and lowered his hands, unsure if anything he did would worsen the situation, or simply be a waste of time.

Chessa’s right hand was numb. She bit her lip and ground her teeth against the burning pain in her shoulder. She screamed against it to stay awake, but the world outside her body was turning gray. She looked into Karkov’s helpless face watching her die. He was terrified and devastated.

“Kar,” she said, her own voice a mile away. “Kar it’s gonna be okay. It’s not your fault, I’ll be just fine... just a flesh wound, heh.” Chessa wanted to smile, to show Karkov she was okay, to tell him she didn’t hate him anymore, but her face muscles wouldn’t register anymore. An orange hedgehog’s face appeared over her, and she heard the words Remember, never give up! Nothing is impossible! Then a warm tingling feeling encompassed her and she drifted into darkness.

Karkov’s eyes were leaking. He was on his knees in the puddle of Chessa’s blood, watching the light in her eyes grow dim. The hedgehog had come over to offer some advice, but the carpenter did not hear it. Gently, he closed Chessa’s eyes, and he placed her bazooka beside her.

Then he stood. He turned away. He stumbled to the doors, his heart crumbling. Her blood dripped off his bladed neck onto the nipple she had kissed. Karkov slammed his fist into the doorway and screamed. His scream sent flecks of blood all over the entrance as the chains spun madly beneath his head.

“Expressing yourself honestly is the first step in emotional recovery!” B’juh the Hedgehog said. He was then lacerated to bits by the carpenter’s honest feelings.

The jerboa gave an ironic smile. “Hey, someone actually took your advice,” he said to what was left of B’juh.

B’juh’s corpse said nothing.

[burkedeboer]

Wanting, Before the Storm

1 F, 2 M. 

Stranded on a Colorado mountain pass is a beautiful car that is broken on the inside. Its frantic riders are two beautiful people who are broken on the inside. After a one night stand, the coke-addled pair of lovers ripped off the St. Louis mob and hit the highway for California. Now the mob comes from the east. A blizzard comes from the west.

This is a story of bad decisions.

First read at the Oregon Playwrights Society, February 2016. First staged at Western Oregon University, February 2017. Full text below the break.

Along the highway. VALENTINA CAVALLARO stands in the cold. She wears a Halloween costume, the sort that is bought on the cheap and shows a lot of leg. HORSE is in the car grinding the starter. He wears a helmet that would announce him as a centurion legionnaire, were it not for the fact that, like his arms bracers, it is plastic. They are that reckless age that allows one to behave as they do.

Evening is settling. A storm’s coming.

VALENTINA God damn it, Val.

HORSE Huh?

VALENTINA How in the fuck… (She sighs, looks around. A pause. And then - )

HORSE What?!

VALENTINA I wasn’t talking to you! (She produces her cell phone, looks at it.) Fuck.

HORSE (Hops out of the car, but knocks his head against the doorframe. He nearly sprawls out on the ground but catches himself. He flings the helmet.) This goddamn thing!

VALENTINA One bar. Come on, just gimme one bar…

HORSE I think there was one in Wanting.

VALENTINA What?

HORSE That town we went through? I think there was a bar in that town back there.

VALENTINA What the fuck are you talking about?

HORSE I don’t know. (He goes to the hood of the car, opens it.) You know anything about motors?

VALENTINA Horse, I don’t even know what this car is.

HORSE Really?

VALENTINA Don’t say shit.

HORSE Huh?

VALENTINA I see it in your eyes, you were gonna say some shit. Just don’t.

HORSE Maybe I wasn’t!

VALENTINA Then it’ll be easy for you.

HORSE These cocksuckin’... (Rips the plastic Roman arm bracers off.) Why are we still in our costumes?

VALENTINA It’s not like you gave us time to change.

HORSE You got any cell service?

VALENTINA No! I don’t! Cars don't break down: your car breaks down. I always have service: now I don't have service. And everyone in the world owns a cell phone, except for your broke ass. That’s just the way it works, isn’t it?

HORSE (Putting his arms around her.) Yeah, but you know what babe?

VALENTINA What’s that.

HORSE Your luck can only change if you keep playing.

VALENTINA Did that philosophy work for you in Kansas City?

HORSE (Breaking – back to the engine.) Yeah, yeah. Kansas City was an anomaly. (He fights and rips a part out from the engine. He looks at it. He’s not sure what it is.)

VALENTINA It’s not even luck at this point, it’s fate. Destiny. I’m going to die. And if it doesn’t happen in Chicago, or St. Louis, it’ll happen here. Buttfuck Nowhere, Colorado.

HORSE If that’s what this place is called maybe we should stay here a while.

VALENTINA Horse.

HORSE Ah, it’s not that serious anyway.

VALENTINA It’s not? You went a hundred all across Kansas because it’s not that serious?

HORSE I only hit a hundred a couple times!

VALENTINA Talking the whole time about “beating the snow.” “Gotta beat the snow.”

HORSE Well she’s a Mustang, babe.

VALENTINA …Okay?

HORSE Don’t worry about it, I’m gonna head back into town and sniff out a mechanic.

VALENTINA What, you’re gonna leave me here?

HORSE Someone needs to stay. Just to watch the car.

VALENTINA Stay here, watch the car, freeze to death. I got it.

HORSE You can wait inside, can’t ya? Turn on the heater.

VALENTINA …Oh my God.

HORSE Huh?

VALENTINA Don’t worry about it.

HORSE That’s what I’m saying! It won’t be long, beautiful. Two shakes. (exits)

VALENTINA (Watches him go with lustful appreciation. After he’s significantly gone, she shakes her head.) God damn it, Val. That’s how the fuck you got here. (Pulls off the veil and tosses it with the other Halloween scraps.) I’m an embarrassment. Left St. Louis, left the casino, left Stephen, all for fucking California? Not even California, because I’m going to die on this mountain pass. So it’s all for… Some country bumpkin talking about California. (She checks her phone again – a gasp of pleasant surprise. She quickly dials, then speaks into it.) …Hey, Stevie baby. I know, I know-… I’m in Colorado. …Yeah, well. …I want to come home. …Good! Then come get me. …Along the highway, straight through Kansas, and, uh, what was that? …What? I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that… Yeah. Yeah, I’m with Horse so what. …Yeah, we got all the coke, but we’re broke down outside of fucking “Wanting.” That’s the name of the town. Wanting, Colorado. As in “I’m not Wanting to be in Colorado.” …I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. …No, the-… What? (She listens a bit to the utter nothingness on the line. Looks at her phone. Rages at it. Sighs.) Okay. This is fine. Horse is right, I just need to, ah… Need to relax. (From the backseat of the car she produces a duffel bag. From this she begins to knuckle up a bump of coke.) Just a bump. Just taking the edge off. For clarity! (Does the bump.) Okay!! For clarity… I completely lack self-control, that’s clear. Because evidently I’m ruled by my vagina. That is clear. That tight butt of his, those arms. And that smile. That’s really all it took? Damn it, Drunk Valentina. Okay. Past Me is an asshole. Present Me is paying the price for it. And unless Present Me makes some better decisions, Future Me is totally fucked. (Does another bump.) Now things are twice as clear. If I get back to St. Louis, I can go back to The Sundowner. They can’t fire me. I’m Valentina fucking Cavallaro, they can’t fire me! So I go back to work, and Stephen will take me back. He always does. Sweet Stephen. As well he should though, ‘cause it’s his fucking fault, moving to St. Louis. Wouldn’t have happened if we stayed in Chicago. But okay, there we go. Right? Just get a motel, and wait for Stephen. It’s not the worst plan. There have probably been worse plans. Like going to California with someone you’ve only known for four hours. That was pretty fucking stupid. This dumbass cowpuncher. Well, he’s not so dumb. He cleaned house in that basement game after all, and Fat Daniel was playing in that. Fat Daniel never loses, especially at Texas Hold ‘Em. The family always makes sure of that. You’d have to be a halfway genius to pull that off. So you got to admit, he’s pretty sharp. And he’s pretty fine. But for fuck’s sake. What do I care about a tight ass? Why is that so important? What am I gonna do, am I gonna fuck that ass? … I could. I mean if he wants to stay in Buttfuck Nowhere a while. Christ. Don’t even know anything about the son of a bitch. I know he’s from Omaha. Or at least that’s what he said. Might as well believe him, at this point. I know he calls himself “Horse.” Jesus. That’s real classy, you know, a man calling himself “Horse.” At least the name fits or I’d really be mad. And that’s how you let yourself get suckered. …But then again… Why is that a bad thing? That’s something else I don’t know. What’s so bad about feeling good? That’s why you work in the first place: to have money, to buy things, to feel good. So what the fuck, why are you beating yourself up? It’s all going to be okay. (After a moment, a realization.) He is going to kill him though. Stephen is going to kill him. He’s going to walk Horse out into the woods, and he’s going to shoot him in the head. (Horse enters with TRAVIS.)

HORSE But if you could do it without having to tow her I’d really appreciate it.

TRAVIS I’m sure you would.

VALENTINA He’s going to make me watch too.

TRAVIS ’68 Fastback! I think I might have to tow this after all.

HORSE Oh?

TRAVIS To my house. Park it in the car port.

HORSE Oh yeah. (Climbs into the car and begins to dig through the back seat.)

TRAVIS I’ve got a 2007 GT, this would look real good right next to it, the classic and the current. (Sees engine) Jesus H. W. Bush.

HORSE Uh, there’s – baby, can you hand him that thing? On the ground out there?

VALENTINA The helmet?

HORSE The what? The… No, that thing.

VALENTINA Right. Here, he took this out. (She hands him the part. He looks at it. Sighs and nods.)

HORSE (Emerges, holding a pool cue case.) Yeah, that didn’t look right to me.

TRAVIS Well it shouldn’t have looked wrong. (Goes to work.)

HORSE (Sees duffel bag.) Whoa. Yeah, let’s put that away. (He does, and then sits in the driver’s seat to screw the two-piece cue together.)

VALENTINA Just trying to stay warm.

HORSE It is a bit chilly, huh? I might have to warm up myself in a bit.

TRAVIS Where you kids from anyhow?

HORSE Huh?

TRAVIS Would you quit grunting so much? “Huh.” You kick a pig on the butt and it says “Huh.”

HORSE What?

TRAVIS That’s better.

HORSE …What?! (Goes to hop out of the car. Hits his head on the frame again, and this time he does lay himself out.)

VALENTINA How do those clouds look to you?

HORSE (Sits up) I’m not a fuckin’ weather man.

TRAVIS Where’d you learn to talk like that in front of a lady?

HORSE Could you-

VALENTINA Yeah, why do you cuss so much? (Horse scowls. She laughs.)

HORSE (Gathers up himself and his cue.) Could you just… Could you just fix the motor?

TRAVIS I’m trying. It’s a process.

HORSE Yeah, I’m sure. Well, I’m off again.

VALENTINA What?

HORSE I was right, they do have a bar in town. With four pool tables. I’ve got some money to make.

VALENTINA Horse.

HORSE Yeah, babe.

VALENTINA I’m gonna need you to not. Right now. Okay?

HORSE Wh-... Aw, shit, you don’t gotta worry about Travis, he’s just fixing the motor.

VALENTINA I’m talking about this. (Gestures at the cue.) This was why you had to leave St. Louis. This was why you said we couldn’t stop in Kansas City.

HORSE Uh, no it’s not.

VALENTINA No?

HORSE This is not why I had to leave Kansas City and St. Louis.

VALENTINA Really.

HORSE That was because of poker, horse racing, and sports bets. This is pool!

VALENTINA Well when you put it like that.

HORSE How about I put it like this: that redneck bar was full of cowboys and oilers. It was like Texas football in there. They got all that cattle and oil money and if it’s not burning holes in their pockets yet, all I’ve gotta do is strike the match.

VALENTINA You just threw like three metaphors and a simile at me, give me a second to digest that.

TRAVIS I wouldn’t try to hustle any of those roughnecks.

HORSE Aw, I’m not worried about bravado, Trav. Everywhere you go thinks it’s the toughest place in the world. (to Valentina) And I’ll tell ya something else. St. Louis, Kansas City, Omaha, there was all organization there. The Sons of Silence, the Irish mob, and the folks you work for. The Italian folks. This outfit is just some working stiffs.

VALENTINA “Folks.” “Outfit.” Who the fuck are you?

HORSE I’m your man.

TRAVIS All right, now, I got after him for swearing in front of you. You don’t get off the hook.

VALENTINA If I wanted any shit from you I’d scrape it off your teeth. (to Horse) Wait, Omaha?

HORSE …Omaha. It’s where I’m from.

VALENTINA Right. You said that. But you never said that you were run out of Omaha.

HORSE …Well. I was.

VALENTINA What happened in Omaha?

HORSE Don’t worry about Omaha.

TRAVIS You guys sound like Peyton Manning before the snap.

HORSE (processes this, then laughs) “Omaha! Hut hut!” Yeah, this is Broncos country, huh? Better get outta here.

TRAVIS You a Chiefs fan?

HORSE Naw, Vikings. I look too good in purple.

VALENTINA Oh no, it’s not gonna work out.

HORSE What?

VALENTINA I’m a Bears fan. Obviously.

HORSE Hey, I can be a Bears fan. You saying I can’t be a Bears fan? Well I’m a Bears fan now, who gives a shit.

VALENTINA Is switching teams that easy?

HORSE For you, beautiful, anything’s easy.

VALENTINA Horse… (They make out.)

TRAVIS Not to interrupt anything but…

HORSE Yeah?

TRAVIS But I will anyway. I do have to haul this into the shop.

HORSE No, please, no you fuckin’ don’t.

TRAVIS You’re right, I don’t. I could just leave you stranded here.

HORSE You haven’t even tried to start it again. (He runs to the car. The cue doesn’t fit through the door and he bounces off and goes rolling.)

TRAVIS Well your starter’s wore down so I don’t really need to. That’s just one of the problems.

HORSE Fine! You know what. Fine. Guess we’ll stay the night here.

TRAVIS Probably gonna stay a couple.

VALENTINA Oh no.

HORSE (Pops trunk, begins unloading bags) Don’t worry, baby, that just means we get to see all the sights of Wanting. Almost seven thousand people here, something’s got to entertain them.

VALENTINA What about… I thought we needed to beat the snow?

TRAVIS You’ll definitely need to beat the snow. This rig will not handle in it at all.

VALENTINA And what about those clouds? Just look out there, the snow’s coming.

HORSE That’s one possibility.

TRAVIS Those clouds do look pretty rank.

HORSE They might not even start dumping until they’re on the other side of us.

TRAVIS No, son, just look out there, over the foothills. Look, come over here and look.

HORSE (Now getting bags from the backseat.) I don’t need to look! I don’t need to look.

TRAVIS You can see it down over the foothills. It’s already snowing, and it’s coming this way.

HORSE Then let it snow. Let it dump everything it’s got on the foothills, and we’ll just go south. Go around it. Take the long way to California. Hell, it might even quit at any moment.

TRAVIS I doubt the odds of that one.

HORSE The smallest odds have the biggest payouts.

TRAVIS So am I towing your car or not?

VALENTINA We need to get out of here, babe.

HORSE Aw... Aw man.

VALENTINA What?

HORSE You never called me “babe” before.

VALENTINA That wasn’t the important part of that sentence.

HORSE It was a pretty great part though.

VALENTINA Okay, babe, listen to me.

HORSE Listening.

VALENTINA We need to leave.

HORSE I don’t see why. We’re already not beating the snow, supposedly. You’ve got to play the hand you’re dealt; all there is to it.

VALENTINA I think we need to get this snow between us and…

HORSE And what? St. Louis? They’re not that sore over me.

VALENTINA You’d be surprised.

HORSE Would I?

VALENTINA My fiancé’s coming.

HORSE Huh?

VALENTINA My fiancé. I told him where we were.

HORSE Well why’d you do that?

VALENTINA I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking clearly. But I am now, and-

HORSE You can whip this into shape at your shop, Trav?

TRAVIS I can get it going again.

HORSE Tonight?

TRAVIS No not tonight. It’s past five, my shop’s closed.

HORSE Can’t ya open it?

TRAVIS I can. I won’t.

HORSE Well aren’t you a lotta help. How long’ll this take?

TRAVIS Couple days, I said.

HORSE Couple days, he said. Then I guess I get to meet this chump. You’re really engaged?

VALENTINA Technically, yes.

HORSE What’s “technically” mean?

VALENTINA He asked me to marry him and I said yes.

HORSE When was this?

VALENTINA June.

HORSE June? And you’re not married by October?

TRAVIS It’s November now.

HORSE It’s November now! Even worse.

VALENTINA We were planning for spring.

HORSE Well ain’t that just fucking typical. I wouldn’t marry you in spring. I wouldn’t be so typical. You’re not a typical girl.

VALENTINA We’re engaged. And he’s coming after us.

HORSE “Engaged.” You sign anything?

VALENTINA No.

HORSE You shake on it?

VALENTINA No.

HORSE

Then what the hell.

TRAVIS You generally don’t shake on engagements.

HORSE Stay outta this, Travis. (to Valentina) So how ‘bout it?

VALENTINA How ‘bout what?

HORSE It’s not spring right now. I’m ready to go. Dump the chump, trade your draft pick.

VALENTINA You’re asking me to marry you?

HORSE Yeah. Look. (Takes the ring off her finger. Gets on his knee.) Valentina-… Uh… Valentina. Would you make me the happiest man in the world?

VALENTINA Oh my fucking God.

HORSE I’ve never been with anyone as good as you. I bust four nuts last night.

VALENTINA You really wanna get married, Horse?

HORSE Only if you’d have me.

VALENTINA You fucking know it, baby. (He rises, picking her up. They kiss. Travis slow claps.)

HORSE Let’s stop in Vegas. Find us an Elvis.

TRAVIS You don’t even need to go to Vegas.

HORSE Nuh uh?

TRAVIS No. Colorado doesn’t have a waiting period for marriage licenses either.

HORSE Well… Well what do you think, beautiful?

VALENTINA Get married here?

HORSE Go find the justice of the peace of Wanting, Colorado. It’s the American thing to do.

VALENTINA Sure. And the car is old. All that poker money is new.

HORSE Yeah yeah yeah, there you go. And all the coke is “borrowed.”

VALENTINA That’s right, it is.

HORSE What’s next?

VALENTINA Uhh...

TRAVIS Something blue.

VALENTINA Oh yeah!

HORSE How about my Levis?

VALENTINA I think I need to be wearing the blue thing.

HORSE (Sets to kicking off his boots.) Well we can take care of that quick enough.

VALENTINA We’ve got everything we need right here! Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s fucking do it. (They make out, Horse pulling off his pants.)

TRAVIS I for one am very happy for you. I’m gonna go get that tow truck now. (exits)

HORSE All right. (Hands Valentina his pants. Peers out to the west as he puts his boots back on and she puts on the jeans.) Damn, that is a storm. I told you though, didn’t I? I told you Halloween was the shift. It’s like flipping a switch, it’s autumn one day, then November starts and suddenly everything freezes over. Suddenly there’s frost on the pumpkin.

VALENTINA You sound like a farmer.

HORSE Yeah, huh? The weather is serious conversation for my people.

VALENTINA I’m a little scared, Horse.

HORSE You don’t gotta be scared, it’s just some snow.

VALENTINA He knows where we are. He’s coming after us.

HORSE Who? Your ex?

VALENTINA Yeah.

HORSE Well, from what I know about him he sure likes to take his time. Let him come. And let the snows come too. The micks, the Omaha bail bondsmen, those Sons of Silence sonsabitches, let ‘em come. Bring ‘em all on. Who is this chump anyway? Your ex, what’s his story?

VALENTINA He works for the family. He works with me.

HORSE What, at The Sundowner?

VALENTINA Yeah. All of our St. Louis operations are through the casino.

HORSE What was his name?

VALENTINA Stephen.

HORSE Stephen at The Sundowner? One of the bouncers?

VALENTINA That’s one of his jobs.

HORSE Yeah it is, isn’t it. Stephen Vacchese?

VALENTINA You know him.

HORSE Sure. He’s weak. Not physically, of course. But emotionally.

VALENTINA You’re totally right. I could never put it into words.

HORSE I could kick his ass. Emotionally.

VALENTINA You’re so right.

HORSE You’re too much woman for a guy like that. You can see it in his eyes, how nice he is.

VALENTINA I mean… He has killed people before.

HORSE Oh. Has he really?

VALENTINA Two guys. That I know of.

HORSE Why’d he kill ‘em?

VALENTINA I don’t know. We told him to, I guess.

HORSE “We?”

VALENTINA Yeah, you know. The Cavallaros.

HORSE Oh. You’re a Cavallaro. Right.

VALENTINA Yeah.

HORSE Your last name’s Cavallaro.

VALENTINA Did you not know that?

HORSE

You don’t just “work at The Sundowner.”

VALENTINA I’m not cooking the books or anything. But yeah. I’m a Cavallaro.

HORSE Okay. Okay. (He goes to the duffel bag.) See, but that’s just what I was saying, isn’t it? He’s weak. Just because he’s told to kill someone, he does it. Not because he wants to, just because he’s told. See, I’m an asshole like that, I’ve never killed anybody. (He palms a handful of coke.) Ain’t a man on the goddamn planet can make me kill someone. Call me an asshole. I accept it.

VALENTINA What’s the matter?

HORSE Nothing’s the matter. I just need to clear my head.

VALENTINA For clarity.

HORSE For clarity! (Snorts the coke in a wild rip, dusting his entire face.)

VALENTINA Horse…

HORSE Yeah baby!

VALENTINA It’s starting to snow.

HORSE You’re telling me! (Rubs his gums. He looks to the sky.) Ah. Huh. Okay. You know what. This actually solves all our problems.

VALENTINA I thought we were trying to avoid the snow.

HORSE See, if you’re a Cavallaro and we get married, then the Cavallaros won’t want to kill me. They can’t kill me. I’ll be in the family.

VALENTINA Just like they can’t fire me.

HORSE Yeah. What? Yeah! They can’t fire this beautiful woman, and that’s exactly who’s vouching for me. If this beautiful woman vouches for me.

VALENTINA I’ll vouch for you.

HORSE Aw, babe. You got my back.

VALENTINA Of course! It’s the best part of you. (She twirls her hand and at the command he spins around for a booty dance. She squeals with glee.)

HORSE And Kansas City won’t be able to touch me either or they’d be starting a war with Chicago.

VALENTINA They probably wouldn’t go to war over you.

HORSE Huh?

VALENTINA Chicago. My dad. Probably wouldn’t go to war if you got killed.

HORSE Well, I know that, I just mean, fuckin’… Kansas City don’t know that! It’s like the Cold War, baby, the Cuban Missile Crisis. The fear of bombs being dropped is enough to stop the bombs from dropping.

VALENTINA Yeah, okay!

HORSE So Chicago can’t touch me, Kansas City won’t touch me, St. Louis is smoothed over… Hell, I don’t need to go to California. And since I don’t need to live off these winnings in California, I can use them to pay off Omaha. Hot damn. I fuckin’ love you babe.

VALENTINA I love you.

HORSE You’re saving my skin right now in a million ways. We just need to seal the deal. Which means – (He offers his hand. She shakes it.) Babe.

VALENTINA I love you too.

HORSE Remember what I was saying earlier, about luck changing? I think our luck has changed, don’t you? (He climbs into the car, this time without incident.) And when your luck is good you’ve got to ride that luck. As long as luck is giving, you’ve got to keep on taking. (The starter grinds and then FIRES UP! Cheers from the two and HORSE bolts from the car. He slams the hood. They run , gathering all their bags and pitching them frantically into the trunk. Each with bags in hand, they collide, but don’t quite go tumbling. They laugh, they kiss. Then the car gurgles and dies.) Well I'll be a son of a bitch.

VALENTINA ...You’re a wanted felon, right?

HORSE Huh?

VALENTINA If there are bail bondsmen after you. You’re a felon. For jumping bail? If we go to the justice of the peace, that'll come up.

HORSE Oh. Oh yeah. Odds are they would. (At this, his eyes light up.) Odds are!

VALENTINA The odds are against us.

HORSE Just where we want 'em. Come on babe, let’s get back to town before we’re totally froze!

The storm is swelling. He crouches, offering his back. She jumps onto him, pool cue in hand as a lance. Their laughter is drowned out by the howling wind. It comes in fierce and freezing. They gallop off, unaware that the storm has set upon them.

[redditnosleep]

Has Anyone Heard of The Left/Right Game?

by NeonTempo

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 (Final)

Well then… here we are.

I have to be honest; when I posted the first of these logs from my bedroom in North London, I didn’t think it would go very far. After all, why would it? I wasn’t a regular contributor to this site, nor a seasoned veteran of the paranormal. I was just a man who missed his friend, seeking a few words of wisdom from an online message board, open to the idea that it wouldn’t lead anywhere.

Suffice to say I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Over the past two months, the incredible advice I’ve received from this forum, and the amazing leads you’ve sent my way, have opened up entire worlds of possibility. It’s thanks to all of you that I’m where I am now; sitting in a rental car on a quiet street in Phoenix, Arizona, posting the last of Alice’s records.

I realise I’ve written more than usual for my part. Apologies for this. If you want to skip straight to Alice’s section, that’s fine.

Otherwise, please consider this the prologue to the epilogue.

It’s very, very early in the morning over here, with only the gravest of the graveyard shift out on the streets. By all rights I should be in bed, and not wasting petrol on an aimless drive through the city. The ritual helps me think however, and I’d recently been given a lot to think about, courtesy of a young woman at a local bar.

She was a forum member, who’d contacted me over Direct Message. When we met up earlier in the night, it was clear she’d done a great deal of research; charting every mirror shop in Phoenix in an attempt to reconstruct the route Alice took on February 7th 2017.

We spoke for quite a while; about the game, about Alice, and about life in general. Once closing time rolled around, she handed me a printout of the most likely route, with all the key locations circled. Then, in the final minutes before we parted ways, she nervously asked me two questions. The first put me in a rather sour mood. The second provided the fuel for my 3am drive.

Question One; Are you sure she wants you to find her?

I’ve been hearing the same query from a few of you recently, especially since Part 9 was posted. People commenting that Alice made a clear choice when she left Rob behind in the silent city. That I was searching for someone who wasn’t seeking return.

I’d like to take a moment to respond to this, as I responded to it earlier tonight. To be clear, the Alice I know wouldn't do that. She was planning to come back, she’d told us as much. I’m not going to waste your time with my theories, but we’ve seen what the road can do to people's minds, how it can carry them away against their better judgement. I understand why it's being asked but if those sorts of questions are all you have to offer, I’d kindly ask you find another way to help.

Question Two was less clear cut; what are you going to do now?

It’s something you guys have also been asking me, but that was the first time I’d heard the question out loud. In the awkward silence that followed it became obvious to her, and in some ways to me, that I didn’t yet have an answer.

I decided to take a drive while I figured it out… I’ve been in my car for the rest of the night,

After an hour of aimless meandering, I realised I was close to one of the marked locations; the alleyway where Alice first entered the underpass, the point at which she first disappeared into the road. Turning into the side street, just after a large intersection, I was briefly relieved to see no sign of the tunnel. The part of me that still hoped this game was a fiction swelled at the sudden lack of evidence. My reaction was short lived of course, as I quickly realised that the tunnel wouldn't have shown itself to me anyway. Even if the game were real, I’d hardly been sticking to the rules on my way here.

There was no denying that the place resembled Alice’s descriptions however, and with a long time to go until I’d feel remotely tired, I decided to work my way back along the route, retracing Alice’s steps towards Rob Guthard’s street.

OK so I have to admit at this point, I suffered from a momentary lapse in intelligence. In a fog of distraction, residual jetlag and general dullardry, I drove for longer than I’d care to admit under the misconception that I wasn’t playing the game. I thought this because I was heading in the opposite direction, and had started my run with a right hand turn, when the rules explicitly state that you begin by turning left. Of course, as I’m sure all of you would have realised immediately, that didn’t mean I was out of the game, it just meant I started playing with my first left turn, one road later.

Alice was always the smart one.

What I’m trying to say is that, due to this fairly mindless oversight, I wasn’t exactly looking out for the Woman in Grey as I drove past what should have been her corner. There wasn’t a mirror shop this time of course, that’s only the 34th turn when you’re coming the other way, in fact I’m not sure which of the many passing streets it was. It is strange though, as I think back through my journey, I feel like I would have noticed her. The streets were practically deserted, so much so that any pedestrians stood out immediately. I know I should’ve been looking more closely but, if you asked my honest opinion… I don't think she was there at all.

The moment I realised this, I felt it again; the faint perverse, hope that I’d been misled, that the entire story was nothing more than a twisted, elaborate fabrication.

It wasn’t long until I passed an old mirror shop and, 34 turns later, arrived on what must have been Alice’s starting street. It was an inner-city neighbourhood whose residents were all fast asleep. From the moment I realised that the game was in play, I’d been thinking less and less about this particular road, and more about the one directly after it, resting just beyond the crossroads. I’d come halfway across the world on the strength of Alice’s account, but I’d seen no first hand proof of the Left/Right Game. If the whole thing was a hoax, then the next road should just be another street. If it was real, then I’d know soon enough.

I crawled up to the junction with my heart in my throat. With every inch of road that passed under my tyres, I found myself hoping more and more that it wouldn’t be true. Let someone be playing a prank on me, let the logs be counterfeit... let Alice be anywhere else but on that road.

I took the corner in a wide arc, parking myself in the centre of the crossroads, my headlights facing down the next turn.

Ahead of me was a quiet residential street; lines of neatly parked cars, rows of well-kept yards and squarely drawn windows. Yet at its centre, in utter defiance of the modest surroundings, the road sank into a deep and dimly lit corridor, cutting beneath the street, and disappearing into complete darkness.

I’d always known it was true.

In the presence of grim confirmation, the question I was asked earlier that night started to ring in my ears, as if echoing out of the tunnel itself. After an entire night’s driving, after two full months of searching, I still didn’t have a response.

In the end I just left the engine running, as if turning it off would somehow be a sign of retreat, and decided to type up the notes you’re reading now. I thought maybe the process of putting it all down on paper would bring me clarity, and leave me with either a note of farewell or a note of apology to Alice, for not having what it took to find her.

And now… here I am; still undecided, still writing, still sitting in this rental car on a quiet street in Phoenix, Arizona.

Though perhaps the street’s not as quiet as I thought.

I’ve just looked back to the previous road, down the street where Alice began her journey. As I type this very paragraph, I can see a figure standing on the sidewalk, just outside one of the houses. It isn’t the woman in grey this time.

Though it’s almost too dark to make out, I can tell the figure is an older male, well built and imposing, the rugged features of his weathered face half lit by moonlight. I’ve never seen this person before, yet he bears a striking resemblance to another man; a man whose description has been well recorded within the pages of Alice’s logs.

He watches me in silence, staring through the window of my still running car.

I wonder if he can help.

The Left/Right Game [DRAFT 1] 20/02/2017

The Left/Right Game was once nothing more than a 9-page document, peeking out of a yellow envelope, resting quietly on my desk.

I remember reading it on my lunch break.

I remember it made me laugh.

The submission had arrived with the first post, quietly making its way around the office, treated by everyone as a short-lived novelty of little journalistic value. The story was easy to dismiss, appearing all too similar to the rambling ghost stories and blurry UFO sightings that filled our mailbox on a daily basis, and which most of the senior staff had learned to instinctively ignore. Doomed by association, the document was quickly passed over, my desk merely a pit stop on its way to the rejection pile.

I was curious however and, after an uneventful few months in my new role, I had no compunctions about fishing from the scrap heap. Placing the envelope in my satchel, alongside a misfit crowd of similar rejects, I slipped away to a local coffee shop, reading it in an armchair by the window.

Somewhere around page three, between the description of the game’s rules and the exhaustive list of “Required Skills”, my mouth started to curl into an irrepressible smile.

They’d been gloriously wrong about this one. It wasn’t some paranoid diatribe, nor a sensationalist plea for attention. Within those pages lay an introductory glimpse of a man’s passionate obsession. As I read on, something about his earnest eccentricity, incredible thoroughness, and unquestioning confidence made it impossible to put down. When I turned the final page, reading the last of Rob Guthard’s charming and refreshingly well formatted submission, I knew that this was the story I wanted to tell.

Later that day, I found myself in the editor’s office making a case for it. They didn’t quite see what I saw, but I was intent to win them over regardless. I told them the story would be characterful, colourful, thought-provoking and, at the very least, that I wouldn’t be gone long.

It’s been twelve days since then; ten since I first entered the Wrangler in Phoenix, Arizona, five since I commandeered it myself, leaving Rob behind in the silent city. I haven’t updated much recently, save for a regular set of notes made for my own benefit. In all honesty, after I finished writing up my account of the city, I was struck by an overpowering sense of needlessness. There was no one left to receive these logs, no friends to proofread, no editor to hand them to. It seemed pointless to maintain the same prosaic format as before.

I still largely agree with this assessment. It’s only due to a set of exceptional circumstances that I’ve chosen to type up the following account in full.

Whoever this reaches, I want to thank you for reading up to now.

I’m quite sure this will be my final instalment.

The moon has broken, and in my entire life, I’ve never witnessed an evening so still.

The air is cool and quiet, and the Wrangler cuts cleanly through it as I glide down a stretch of even tarmac. The scene is defined by calm and absence. Not a cloud in the sky, not a solitary whisper of breeze, not a single blade of grass stirring on the dark green banks beside me.

Yet even on a night as peaceful as this, I can’t help but feel far away from home. The city had served as a turning point in that regard. Before we reached those titanic monoliths, the landscapes we passed through generally resembled the world I once knew. A few obvious exceptions aside, there was nothing about the environments that looked truly divorced from reality. That’s all changed now. The aberrant aspects of this new world are unignorable, constantly hanging at the corner of my eye, passively injecting a sense of wonder and disconcertion into the otherwise silent night.

A few days ago the moon started to crack like old porcelain. I hardly noticed at first, my eyes fixed on the road as it loomed above me, quietly splintering into three jagged pieces. As of tonight, the empty space between each fragment has significantly increased. If I focus on the sky for a little while, I can almost see them falling away from each other, charting infinite and lonesome trajectories through a barren cosmos, against a backdrop of foreign constellations.

The stars themselves fall further than they should. The night sky travels down past the horizon and continues below it, wrapping underneath the grassy bank. It’s as if the road, and the narrow plains on either side, are suspended in the middle of a vast abyss; a platform in the middle of open space.

At least that’s what I thought it was at first. It didn’t take long before I noticed the broken moon was appearing twice in the sky, both above and below me. A pair of orbiting satellites; identical and in perfect alignment. That’s when I realised that there were no stars below me. I was merely staring across a flat surface so flawlessly mirror-like as to cast a perfect reflection of the heavens above.

I was driving through the centre of a lake.

The water is impossibly still. Since leaving the shoreline proper yesterday night, I’ve seen neither a wave, nor a ripple across its placid surface. It’s also undeniably vast, reaching beyond the horizon in every direction and continuing further still. Without being sure how I know, I’m aware that the waters carry on for an unspeakable distance, that I would sooner reach the stars themselves before setting foot on its opposite shore.

I lean over and switch gears. The act of driving the Wrangler was a daunting one at first, but after the first two days I’ve managed to make do. An old scarf wrapped tightly around the steering wheel serves as a makeshift handle, allowing me to navigate corners one handed. I don’t have an elegant solution for the gearshift, but I’ve quickly grown used to the process. If I’ve learned anything from the road, it’s that grace is the first casualty in the fight for survival. Adaptability, no matter how clumsy, outlasts it at every turn.

A few minutes later, the Wrangler pulls up to a spacious verge. A large circle of land surrounded entirely by dark waters. At the far end, the grass seems to fall away, dropping sharply into the lake with a dead stop. The road continues of course, but it's the only thing that does. With nothing on either side, it forms a narrow bridge of perfectly flat asphalt, raised on a bed of mud and rock.

I press my boot onto the brake pedal, easing the Wrangler to a steady halt at the centre of the clearing. For the first time today, I open the car door and climb out of my seat. The dull tap of asphalt shifts to a soft rustling as I make my way over to the lakeside.

There’s something on the shore, a barely discernible object, almost entirely concealed by a shock of verdant undergrowth. It’s a miracle I’d managed to spy it from the road, though perhaps something about the stark uniformity of the landscape had made it stand out.

As I advance towards the water, and the object draws near, its indeterminate form solidifies in my mind.

It’s a human arm, reaching out from the water and onto the bank. I crouch down to examine the few pertinent details. The fingers are still embedded firmly into the soil. The thumbnail is broken, coloured by a peeling coat of faded varnish. There’s a pallid, emaciated quality to the skin, spreading down the arm until it disappears beneath a thick, woollen sleeve. At the point it meets the surface, the water soaks into the fabric, turning it black from the original grey.

With a sad exhalation, I rise to my feet and lean over the water’s edge.

The body of Marjorie Guthard lies against the silt, her cheek resting on the lake bed, her wide bewildered eyes staring out into the open lake. She’s been almost perfectly preserved. Save for the striking tautness of her skin and its mottled, grey pallor, she looks exactly like the woman I saw on the 34th turn, who’d tried to repel me from the road, who’d spoken of a lake drinking her wounds clean.

It seems her ramblings weren’t completely void of fact. It’s clear to see that Marjorie has been exsanguinated, so completely in fact that the only evidence that blood ever flowed through her veins, is a large dark stain across her shredded blouse.

It doesn’t take long before the perpetrator makes itself known.

As I stare into the water, a steady stream of formless whispers sink up through the depths of the lake. The softly spoken murmurings drift up to my ears, taking root in the back of my mind and instantly blooming into a flurry of deeply persuasive promises.

I find myself entirely transfixed by the still water, as a myriad of generous offerings unfold in throughout my consciousness. The whispers suggest an end to the phantom pains in my absent arm, perhaps even a completely restored limb, stronger than it had been before. Furthermore, it shows me a glimpse of its incomprehensible span, its furthest bank reaching across countless worlds, its deepest point lying below everything. I’m offered total knowledge of every league, every fathom, every inconceivable shore.

My hand reaches down as the whispers continue, every bargain steeped in sweet beneficence. A moment later, my outstretched fingers brush against the soft grass, and wrap around Marjorie’s exposed arm.

Digging my heels into the ground, I lean myself backwards and pull. The water ripples and splashes as I drag Marjorie’s lifeless body slowly onto the bank. I feel the voices in my mind grow louder, erupting in anger as I back away from the lake.

The promises had been convincing, each quiet solicitation undeniably persuasive. But after seeing Marjorie’s wretched fate and the look of eternal betrayal in her vacant eyes, I found myself aware of a subtle undercurrent behind every syllable, a sense of desperation and timeless hunger emanating from beneath the lake’s surface. I already have a clear understanding of what would have happened if I’d lost myself to those waters. I suspect it’s no coincidence, that of the countless shores it showed me, all of them appeared to be deserted.

Marjorie wouldn’t have stood a chance. She’d left the forest alone, grievously wounded and without a vehicle. She’d walked the whole way here, bleeding endlessly, the road’s rejuvenating power battling every moment against her body’s natural inclination to die. I suspect the road’s influence wasn’t strong enough, and when a whispering voice promised, ever so sweetly to mend her, she would have been in no position to refuse.

Her other sleeve brushes against dry land, her body leaving the water for the first time in decades. I keep pulling until my boots hit asphalt, laying her down on the grass just beside the Wrangler.

After a moment of sober vigil, I walk to the back of the car and fetch Rob’s foldable spade.

A long few hours follow. I’ve never dug someone’s grave before, and my injury is hardly conducive to the task. My fleece tied around my waist, pearls of sweat running down my brow, I manage to slowly chip away at the damp earth. Five hours later, my back cramping, my hand raw from gripping the shovel, I attempt to lower Marjorie into the rough pit with some semblance of grace, her legs dropping limply into the soft soil despite my best efforts.

It takes over an hour to shovel the soil back. It’s a sobering and ugly task. As a layer of dirt covers her face, I realise this will be the last time a living person lays their eyes on Marjorie Guthard. Burying her suddenly feels disrespectful, as if it’s an act I don’t have the right to perform.

Once it’s done, I drop onto my knees, a dull ache in my muscles as I smooth out the disturbed ground with the back of the shovel.

MARJORIE: You.

Even before I turn to face her, I can hear a scowl in her voice. There’s an odious depth to that one acrid syllable, a potent witch’s brew of contempt and accusation that feels like it’s been festering in her drowned lungs for decades.

Reluctantly, I rise to my feet and turn around, finding myself face to face with the woman I just buried. She looks different now, her clothes are dry, her skin clear, with nothing to be seen of the deep, dark gash in her blouse.

AS: Marjorie.

Unlike the empty vessel below us, the woman in front of me is by no means at peace. She shakes and wretches with the same indignant fury I witnessed when we first met. When she speaks, her words shudder under the weight of her own turbulent emotions.

MARJORIE: I chased you. I ran to you. I… I gave him up for you.

AS: I’m… I’m sorry Marjorie, I don’t know what you mean. Tell me what you mean.

MARJOIRE The things I saw, things so beautiful. And I saw her, walking alone through the new worlds. I gave everything up for you!!

I don’t know quite what to say. It’s pointless to ask her what she means, to try and understand her frenetic ramblings. In the end, I can only try to speak her language.

AS: Marjorie I… I didn’t mean you to.

Marjorie’s trembling breaths burst into a despairing fit of laughter.

MARJORIE: Oh… oh yes you did. Yes you did. And now… now you’re here.

Marjorie’s wild and volatile demeanour shifts once more, her laughter degrading further into a desperate crying panic.

MARJORIE: And what do I do now? What- What do I do?!

Marjorie cringes with the terror of the self-imposed question, placing her head in her hands and repeating it over and over again. As I watch her wrestle with despair, I’m struck by an idea I’ve never before considered. The disconcerting notion that, in death, we are not transported to a set destination by some ethereal attendant. That in fact, nothing is decided for us. Perhaps the manner in which we spend our afterlife is down to us, a decision we have to make ourselves.

Marjorie is standing over her own lifeless body, still lost, still entirely unmoored.

There's no sign of boundless paradise, inescapable damnation or everlasting nothingness, and the common thread they share, a final release from the weight of our own agency, is similarly absent. Perhaps we never get that freedom, perhaps we continue like we always do, accompanied by all our imperfections, uncertainty and discontent.

Perhaps we must choose our eternity.

After all my time on the road, that’s possibly the most terrifying notion I’ve encountered.

AS: He never stopped looking you know.

Marjorie snaps out of her wretched despair, instantly aware of who I’m referring to, staring up at me with an expression I’ve never seen her wear before.

AS: I saw him, walking on the road. He didn’t stop. He was never going to stop. I think he was looking for you Marjorie, he still is.

Marjorie stares through me. For the first time since we met on that quiet Phoenician corner, I can see the faint spark of something other than misery and rage across her tear stained face.

I hold her gaze for a moment more, before pulling my phone from my pocket. In a single sweep of my contacts, I delete every number except for one. A number I pulled from the Nokia during our second night on the road. A number that connects to a lost wanderer of the road.

AS: I don’t know if this can help but… stranger things have happened.

As she stares up into my eyes, I feel like we’re finally meeting for the first time. Without a word, Marjorie reaches out a quivering hand and takes the phone from my outstretched fingers.

Before I can say anything more, Marjorie Guthard is gone.

A few moments later, a refreshing breeze lands against my cheek, a soft zephyr, cooling my still warm face. It’s a welcome sensation, and the first movement I’ve witnessed in the air since I set out onto the lake. Wiping the sweat from my forehead, I stare quietly along the bridge, the breeze picking up around me.

It’s a subtle wind at first, brushing stray hairs across my forehead, chilling the perspiration on my neck. Yet as I reach my hand out, and feel the air slip between my fingers, I’m witness to a steady rise in both strength and magnitude.

The sound of the wind grows from a whisper to a howl, Seconds later, the hanging sleeves of my fleece begin to stream sideways. My hair lifts from my back, billowing in the throes of a developing gale.

I back up against the Wrangler’s hood as the air finally erupts into a roaring, cacophonous cyclone. My hand reflexively seeks the sturdy frame of the Wrangler, my fingers wrapping around the grille, my arm tensing as the unrelenting wind threatens to drag me from the road.

Squinting through the violent tempest, I focus on a single point in space, just above the threshold of the bridge. In the midst of the storm, a jagged line of white hot light bursts out of the ether, tearing through the night’s fabric, a crackling fissure that widens and yawns, forcing apart the curtains of reality as they frenetically struggle to recombine.

Staring through the shuddering fracture, I’m subjected to the briefest glimpse of a boundless, and impossible vista. It is a faraway place in both distance and time. An achingly beautiful and gloriously terrifying dreamscape, enduring on the majestic shores of infinity. Every moment there spans a millennium and unfolds in countless directions at once. Every passing shadow holds a darkness beyond measure, their edges burned by the glare of a waking sun which looks across every conceivable world with a hollow, rancorous intent.

In the midst of this maddening landscape, a singular entity approaches, gliding towards the portal with the clear intent to pass through. As it breaches the shuddering gateway, and the wind dies down around it, I stare up at its grand celestial form.

The being is unlike anything I’ve ever seen; composed entirely from electric arcs of brilliant, magnesic light which burst from a volatile and blinding central core. It sounds like a lightning storm, its plasmatic tendrils snapping and crackling, bursting chaotically through the night air before collapsing in on themselves. As they fall back into the creature’s centre, they emit pale clouds of vaporous fractals that fade softly into the air.

Somehow, even as my eyes barely adjust to the stark light, I realise that the entity usually burns much brighter. It's dampened its glow for my benefit, so that it can appear before me without scorching my eyes from their sockets.

AS: It’s you… isn’t it. You’re the voice I’ve been hearing. You’re the one who brought me here.

The bristling maelstrom of light hangs in the air, crackling and shifting, its transient limbs strobing with chaotic incandescence. Part of me wants to hide, part of me wants to run, but neither are an option anymore. Releasing my hand from the Wrangler’s grille I take a single step forward, standing on my own and staring up into the entity’s smouldering core.

AS: Can I get an interview?

The creature doesn’t react. In the following silence, I feel it observing me. When it finally responds, its voice ruptures the night, echoing through my skull.

VOICE: There is little time, but you may ask what questions you have.

Each reverberating syllable forms a string of literal shockwaves in the surrounding lake, emanating outwards from the being in a perfect circle. I watch the waves roll into the distance, showing no sign of ever diminishing, and I think about what question to ask first.

In the end, it comes to me quickly; a promise is a promise after all.

AS: What happened to Marjorie? Why did she do what she did?

The being pauses, as if considering its response. When it does reply, it speaks with a calm sobriety.

VOICE: She glimpsed an echo of the future, dreamed of the road, of the things that it passes through.

AS: Like whatever’s through there?

I gesture through the gateway, which is now almost entirely blocked from view by the creature’s spiralling form.

VOICE: She dreamed of untold frontiers. She saw a lone woman walking them. Over time, the fulfilment of that vision became everything to her.

AS: But it wasn’t her… she thought she was seeing her own future… but it was-

VOICE: It was you.

Those three words, as they burst into the open air, casting three narrow waves across the boundless water, hit me with a deep and heavy force. Unbeknownst to myself, decades before I was even born, Marjorie had been driven insane by dreams of maddening grandeur, of a life of boundless possibility and true significance. She had given everything up to chase a shadow… a shadow that eventually turned out to be mine.

I hadn’t just pulled Rob into this game, I was the reason for everything. I was the cause for the tragedy that befell his entire family,

AS: She didn’t just dream those sights. You influenced her. You let her see them… the same way you made Rob see me in Aokigahara. You pushed and you prodded wherever you needed so that I’d end up here. Are you the reason Bobby got the rules in the first place?

VOICE: Yes.

AS: But… why? You toyed with so many lives across… across decades. Why me? Why does it matter that I travel the road?

VOICE: Because across all humanity, across every conceivable permutation, you are the one who makes it the furthest.

It speaks plainly, as if the statement were a foregone conclusion. Yet its words strike me into silence.

The creature continues.

VOICE: I’ve watched you work your way here, through skill and through tenacity… and undeniably through luck. You were brought here because of these qualities, and they will carry you further along the road than any other.

AS: Then why didn’t you just bring me here? All that influence and you didn’t lift a finger… after everything that happened-

VOICE: Events transpired as they needed to.

AS: As they… needed to?! People died! Marjorie. Bobby. Ace. Apollo. Eve. Lilith. Everyone. They’re all gone. Do you not care at all?

In response to my words, the entity remains silent for longer than usual.

VOICE: I care more than you know. There are things greater than your understanding, forces that exist beyond the realms of your comprehension that you would consider a threat to everything you hold dear. My actions were guided by a higher standard of knowledge. Your protests are predicated on false understanding.

AS: You’re saying I don’t understand death?

VOICE: You don’t.

AS: ... That still doesn’t make it right.

VOICE: Regardless, my influence is necessary. That which is necessary must be.

AS: What even are you?

VOICE:: I cannot answer that question in any way you’d understand.

AS: That's not good enough.

The creature doesn’t respond, as if it doesn’t feel it needs to. So far it’s returned my every argument with impenetrable certainty. From the domain it occupies, knowing what it knows, my arguments must seem entirely facile. Even if it did feel the need to justify itself, after seeing the place it hails from, I wonder if there’s any way I could ever comprehend its motives.

Still, that doesn’t mean my arguments are invalid, and the creature’s lofty dispassion does little more than stoke my desire to oppose it.

AS: And what if I don’t want any part of this?

VOICE: You are travelling the aberrant strand; a singularly stable flaw in the fabric of reality. As it carries you further from the world you know, you will be freed from the influence of the old laws. You have already noticed the effects in those who settled the road, those who were lost to it and in yourself; energy without consumption, knowledge without requisite experience. You are shedding entropy, and causality and in time you will reach realms of understanding you cannot currently fathom. You will find answers to questions you never thought to ask. You will discover absolute truth. For this reason, you will carry on.

AS: That’s the only reason?

VOICE: Do you need another?

It doesn’t come across as a question, but rather another blunt statement of fact. I understand the effect it’s speaking of. Ever since the city, I’ve been encountering vague notions and fragmented ideas that occur to me randomly and without announcement. New avenues of thought leading to revelations that would otherwise lie beyond my mortal reach.

I’ve started to comprehend things I could barely have conceived of back home, and though the onset of these notions had been terrifying at first, they grow less so with every passing day.

AS: No… no, I don’t trust you. I don’t-

VOICE: Your trust is immaterial. You will travel the road regardless.

The creature’s already stark glow starts to intensify.

VOICE: I’ve watched you, on every turn … across every moment of your journey.

One of the creature’s countless protrusions lashes out at the empty air, forming another harsh, glowing fissure. It wrenches itself open in a few stilted jolts, a transparent, almost crystalline membrane stretched across the gap. Through it, I can see myself, in the centre of a cornfield, examining a block of C4 explosive.

It’s as if I’m staring into the past through a jagged shard of one-way glass.

VOICE: I’ve watched you questioning.

Though we can’t be seen through the aperture, I see the glasslike membrane shake with the force of the creature’s voice. As the window collapses, I can see the rows of corn thrown into a frenzy.

A second arc lashes out at the sky, forming a second aperture. This time I’m expecting the sight before me. I see myself, crying in the forest… a silent radio by my side.

VOICE: I’ve watched you struggle.

The second window closes. The creature has made its point.

VOICE: I’ve watched you fight… to make your way here.

VOICE: You will not turn around.

AS: You make it sound like I don’t have a choice.

VOICE: You do have a choice Alice, but you have already made it.

As much as I’ve grown to detest the creature’s presumption, in that moment, I know it’s right.

What it’s saying is true. I’ve done things I never would have imagined in order to get where I am now. In fact, if this being hadn’t arrived at all, I’d already be heading out over the bridge.

I’m not proud of what drives me; that same, ugly impulse that led me to refuse Rob’s offer of return, that made it so easy to leave him behind in the silent city. But there’s no denying the impulse is there. It’s been with me the whole time, long before I ever arrived in Phoenix, Arizona… and it’s buried deeper than I’ve ever wanted to admit.

AS: Can I… do I get to say goodbye?

The entity says nothing. It hangs in the air, flickering and coursing with rupturing bolts of light. The next thing I hear is a faint mechanical hum emanating from the Wrangler behind me. Turning around, I pace briskly back to the car, opening the door and reaching into the passenger seat. My notebook is booting up, seemingly of its own accord.

Picking up the laptop, I lift the lid as I march back towards the bridge. I stare up at the silent being before me. When I look down to the laptop, my email client is already displayed on the screen.

AS: How… how long do I have?

VOICE: Long enough.

The entity begins to regress, its arcs diminishing as the being at its core turns away. Its message has been delivered. There is nothing more to discuss.

As it passes through the gateway, into an unknowable world far removed from my own, I call out after it.

AS: I’m still not certain I trust you.

The being focusses on me once more, as the fracture begins to close. A final set of waves pass across the surface of the lake as it solemnly replies.

VOICE: … I remember.

A moment later, the being is gone.

I stand motionless in the middle of the road, the entity’s final remarks washing over me, its curious choice of words echoing in my head. In the renewed silence, the faint stirrings of an overwhelming and terrible revelation start to form in my mind.

It could have simply said that it knew of my mistrust, that it heard the overtones in my voice, saw the disdain across my face or otherwise sensed it in the space between us. Instead, the being spoke as if my current feelings were a memory, dwelling somewhere within its depths.

It was undeniable that my time on the road was changing me, but in all this time I’d never truly considered how those changes might evolve as my journey continues.

I’d never thought about what I might gain, what I might lose… or about what I might inevitably become.

A short while passes before I lower my eyes from the empty space above the bridge, to the screen of my notebook. Lowering myself down, I cross my legs and rest my back against the Wrangler.

If you’ve been reading from the beginning, you’ve finally caught up with me.

I hope you’ll allow me a few personal messages.

To Rob. I hope you’re able to read this someday, and I am so, so sorry for everything I’ve done; for everything I may do. I hope you understand that I didn’t know, and that none of this was your fault. You did the best you could, and the days I spent with you were the most significant of my life. It was an honour to know you and I hope that, among these pages, you find the answers, and the peace, that you deserve.

To my mum and dad, I’m sorry I won’t be sending this to you. In the end, I was carried along this road by a profound selfishness, and I just can’t bring myself to face you. I can’t imagine the pain I’ll be putting you through, and I won't try to justify my actions. All I can say is that I love you and I’m sorry that my last act towards you was one of cowardice.

And finally to you; the person to whom this message will be addressed. I’m sorry. I always thought I’d see you again someday, that the roads I took would eventually lead me home. That doesn’t look so likely now. Though I could say a lot to you, I’m not going to.

But I wish we could have been friends for longer.

It feels like a lifetime since I first arrived at Rob Guthard’s quiet street. I remember the uncertainty as I waited for him to open his door, with no concievable idea what was about to transpire.

Like so many other things, that’s now changed. Despite being in an entirely new world, further from home than anyone’s ever been, I know exactly what’s going to happen next.

I’m going to take a drive. Take a left, then the next possible road on the right, then the next possible left. I will repeat the process ad infinitum, until I wind up somewhere new.

And from there I’ll keep driving, beyond worlds, beyond time, beyond the bounds of my imagining. To a place where the lake runs dry, where the broken moon drifts away, and the stars disappear in the rear view.

To a place where everything has fallen away, and the road is all there is.

[pilindiel]

The Promise of the World Pt. 5 |AO3|

Pairing: Victuuri

Rating: T

Word Count: 6567

Excerpt:

Kingsbury is bustling.

The roars of car engines, motorcycles and the whirring engines of flying bicycles is only matched by the hum of people, going about their daily business in the country's capital city.  The buildings are high and made of stone and brick with smoke stacks and chimneys pointing towards the clouds, spewing into the air.  A clock tower chimes in the distance and the marble of its face can be seen even from Yuuri's spot in the square.  Among the domed and mansard roofs there are sloped, upturned ones, and though they differ in colours and style, it fits the thrumming heartbeat of the city – busy, diverse, and all-embracing.

Victor's room is eclectic.  The colours are vibrant but dark – purples, reds, greens – and it takes several long moments for Yuuri to even realize there's a window on the opposite side with how dark it is.  Green dominates the pallet, saturating everything like a forest, and the bookshelves wind themselves around the room like gnarled tree branches.  Countless jewels and runes hang precariously from the ceiling,mobiles twirl and chime with an unseen wind, and Victor's emerald desk is littered with potted plants and sprigs of flowers.  A bushel of lilacs is proudly displayed on Victor's bedside table and Yuuri is surprised that the scent doesn't overwhelm him despite the abundance of petals.  It's a light, comforting smell, and the vase the flowers sit in is full of swirling silver and blue water.

Even with the busy room, Victor stands out.  His bed is actually tame in comparison: his pillows are a light tan with printed faded flowers and bed sheets to match.  Victor sits up immediately when he sees Yuuri enter, but Yuuri can't quite meet his gaze, nor can he seem to force his stubborn voice to speak as he sits stiffly in the available chair.

The teacup he has in his hands is hot, and he molds his knobby fingers around the handle before handing it to Victor's waiting grasp.

Victor stares at the cup blankly. Yuuri swallows.

“T-Tea,” he stammers.  Victor looks lost.  Yuuri clears his throat, neck flushing.  He gestures wildly between them and tries to remedy his statement before pointedly sticking his hands in his lap.  It doesn't stop his fidgeting. “I...I thought you m-might want some t-tea.”

Yuuri can't stop staring at his twitching fingers.

“Oh,” Victor exclaims, surprised. His legs shuffle a little under the blankets. “Uh, thanks.”

There's silence as Victor takes a sip and Yuuri glances up at him before hastily looking away, ears burning.  He picks at one of the fraying threads near the pocket of his black trousers, wrapping it around his finger.  Yuuri's chest is tight.  He wants to talk about what happened, wants to apologize for his outburst and his crying and his awkwardness, but his lips are pressed together and the words die in his throat, stomach in knots.

“Good,” Victor says.

Yuuri's heart flutters and he glances up, the thread around his finger snapping.  “Wh-what?”

“The tea!”  Victor rectifies quickly, looking between Yuuri and the mug.  The embarrassed flush to his cheeks is endearing, but Yuuri doesn't stare for long.  “It's uh...It's good.”

“Oh.  Uh.  Good,” Yuuri murmurs, “I'm glad.  Th-that's uh...That's – ”

“Good?” Victor finishes.  Yuuri's heart nervously flits in his chest, but the tease makes him gasp out a short laugh and he feels the snake in his stomach uncoil at Victor's smile.  It's warm, but there's a fragility to it that reminds him he may not be the only one who feels bad about what happened.

“Right,” Yuuri replies, looking down at his hands again.  His cheeks burn pleasantly, and Victor takes another sip of his tea, humming.

One of the mobiles hanging from the ceiling tingles, like the bell a fairy would ring, and both Yuuri and Victor stare up at it as the gold fan attached to it spins, a ruby swinging from side to side.

“Someone's trying to find my castle,” Victor explains, puzzled, “I wonder who it is?”

Yuuri sits up straighter, eyes wide in remembrance.  The dripping body by the sea, the heavy sound that echoed in his ears.  “I saw the henchmen of the Wizard of the Wastes in the harbour!” he blurts out, leaning forward.

Victor looks over at him, smile polite but confused.  He blinks.  Tilts his head to the side.  “Who?”

Yuuri stares back at him owlishly.  He furrows his brow, tries to grasp what he just heard.  “The Wizard of the Wastes?”

Victor's smile remains, but his confusion deepens.  “Okay?” he says, “Should I know who that is?”

Yuuri stares at him in disbelief.  He can't be serious.  So many thoughts swim through Yuuri's head at once, threatening to overflow him and his chest seizes, stomach churning.  What does he mean?  Does he not realize what's going on? That Yuuri has been cursed this whole time?  That the Wizard of the Wastes is one of the nastiest, most arrogant wizards of the age?

That he was the one to bend Yuuri's back and put the ache in his bones and shrivel his skin?

Does Victor know nothing of the problems outside his castle?

Yuuri wants to simultaneously scream at Victor and bury his face in his leathery hands.  Let the world swallow him.

The pieces slowly fall into place – the way the wizard had desperately tried to say his name as many times as possible so it would stick, the way he constantly played up his rivalry with Victor, the way the Wizard of the Wastes demanded Yuuri couldn't talk about the curse that had been bestowed upon him but to always remember who gave it to him.

Oh.  

No wonder he hates Victor.

“His name is J.J.?” Yuuri ventures, his voice rising hopefully.

Victor squints, stares out into the middle distance.  He chews his bottom lip between his teeth and he's trying, but the memory must be distant, if the pinch between his eyebrows is to be believed.  “The Leroy kid?”

Yuuri shrugs.  “All he sai– ” Yuuri's tongue suddenly sticks to the roof of his mouth, swelling, and Yuuri gags as his teeth clamp shut, mortar filling his gums.  He feels his throat close and for a moment he's terrified.  His body is not his own anymore and he feels heavy, like the air itself is weighing him down.

He's drowning on nothing, his throat filling with air that won't reach his lungs.

The gagging sound he makes scraps his throat.

It eases after several seconds, and he sucks in air so quickly it gets stuck in his chest and he coughs into his arm, tears pricking his eyes.

Right.  Curse.

“I have no idea,” Yuuri croaks, shifting his weight in the chair.  Victor's eyes narrow and there's a darkness there Yuuri doesn't recognize.  It gives him chills.

Victor, thankfully, sighs and flops back down onto the bed, draping an arm over his eyes dramatically. “I have to report to the palace as both Pendragon and Jenkins,” he whines.

Yuuri sinks back into his chair.  Takes a breath.  Steadies his nerves.  “How many aliases do you have anyway?” he wonders.

“As many as I need to keep my freedom,” Victor responds, tremulous, “That's all I want.”

Yuuri bites the inside of his cheek, plays with his fingers.

“Can you refuse the king's invitation?”

Victor shifts, shaking his head.  He points wordlessly to a signed parchment on the wall, stabbed with holes and frayed with burnt edges, but still entirely readable. Yuuri presses his lips together at the pair of golden, studded scissors embedded in it.

Not a treasured document, huh?

“I took an oath when I joined the Royal Academy,” Victor explains,  “I must report to the palace when summoned.”

Yuuri hums, thoughtfully, and Victor sighs in despondence.  “You know, maybe you should see the king.”

Victor sits up immediately, his silver hair swaying at his shoulders.  “What?!” he snaps.

Yuuri straightens holding up his hands in a placating motion.  “I'm n-not saying you fight in the war or anything,” Yuuri remedies, “Just...Give him a peace of your mind?”  Victor purses his lips but says nothing, and Yuuri takes that as a sign to continue.  “Tell him this war is pointless and that you refuse to take part.”

Victor rolls his eyes, but Yuuri can see a spark of thought in them as he stares.  Somehow, he's not comforted by it.

“Why don't you go to the palace for me?” Victor counters.

Yuuri splutters, mouth falling open. “Hah?”

Victor steeples his fingers, nodding as he thinks about it while completely ignoring Yuuri's mortified expression.  “Yeah, just say you're Pendragon's father...And your son is too afraid to show his face!”  He snaps his fingers triumphantly, poking Yuuri's wrinkled nose.  His smile crinkles the corners of his eyes and Yuuri's heart stutters.  “Maybe then Yakov will finally give up on me!”

Yuuri swallows hard and stares down the barrel of Victor's extended finger.

He can tell by the delight in Victor's voice that this is a bad idea.

And he knows he'll follow.

Damn.

“Wh-who's Yakov?” Yuuri squeaks.

Before Yuuri's mind can catch up to him, he's in the living room, stuffing his straw hat over the balding spot on the top of his head.  His deep blue shirt feels far too clean and Victor's unmistakable lilac smell is all around him as the wizard flits about, tugging at Yuuri's long sleeves and poking Yuuri's pudgy thighs through his black trousers.

Yuuri shoots him a glare and Victor shrinks under his scrutiny.

“Take care of him, Yurio,” Yuuri barks, trying to stand as straight as his hunched shoulders will allow.  The front door feels much more massive now that he stands before it, and he sucks in a slow breath through his nose, his knobbly hand gripping the heavy iron of the door handle.

Breathe, Yuuri.  Play the role.

Just don't be you and you'll be fine.

A presence at his back startles him and he goes stiff as one of Victor's long arms tenderly grabs his hand.

Yuuri's heart flutters as he catches Victor's expression out of the corner of his eye.  He seems peaceful, warm.  There's not enough space, not enough distance, and Yuuri tries in vain to keep his breathing level, no matter how impossible it is for him to look away.

Yuuri swallows, face burning, and stares pointedly at the door handle.

Victor's voice caresses Yuuri's ear, low and kind, and his hand is like a kiss to his cracked and leathery skin.  “This charm will guarantee your safe return,” he says barely louder than a whisper.  It takes Yuuri a moment to realize Victor has slipped something onto his finger, too lost in Victor's smile and the light in his eyes.  A band of dull silver with a glimmering jewel at its center, embossed with a language Yuuri can't read, and just like Victor it pulsates a warmth Yuuri is sure can't just be his imagination.  “Don't worry,” Victor continues, “I'll follow behind you in disguise.”

Victor removes himself from Yuuri's back and Yuuri isn't sure whether the loss is welcomed or not.

He swallows, straightens his glasses, turns the knob, and steps out onto the busy street.

Kingsbury is bustling.

The roars of car engines, motorcycles and the whirring engines of flying bicycles is only matched by the hum of people, going about their daily business in the country's capital city.  The buildings are high and made of stone and brick with smoke stacks and chimneys pointing towards the clouds, spewing into the air.  A clock tower chimes in the distance and the marble of its face can be seen even from Yuuri's spot in the square.  Among the domed and mansard roofs there are sloped, upturned ones, and though they differ in colours and style, it fits the thrumming heartbeat of the city – busy, diverse, and all-embracing.

A smog sits over the capital, but the humidity does little to still the life that seems to breathe right through the city's cobbled streets.  There are people laughing, flags waving.  A snake charmer is on the street corner, entertaining a diverse group who are completely entranced by the man's shaved head, his toothy grin, and the way the snake curls quietly around his arm. An old man in an elaborate headdress, large beads in his hands, is being pulled around by a rickshaw and his driver gives Yuuri a small bow as he races by.

Yuuri surveys the area, sees a massive, glittering Victorian roof in the distance and starts walking.

He passes many people on his way to the palace, but they pay him no mind despite his hard set stare and his clenched jaw.  Maybe he looks too severe to approach, but severe is something Yuuri can live with if it means no one notices how much his hands are shaking.

Yuuri tries to distract himself with other things, like the many wood and cloth signs that line the shopping district, and tries to make several of them out. Kingsbury's language is similar to his hometown – the sloping letters and calligraphy are close enough that Yuuri can make out simple things like “food” and “clothes” but there are so many that are lost on him that he doubts he could hold a decent conversation with anyone around.  Instead he continues to walk with purpose, trying to ignore the dull churning of his stomach and the waves of cold shivering through him.

As Yuuri rounds another corner a dog, brown fur curled and tongue out, ducks out from behind a food stall and begins trotting beside him, tail swishing.  It's a poodle, tall enough to be just below Yuuri's frail hip, and it dutifully sits down at his feet when Yuuri slows to a stop.

Yuuri glances at the dog, takes note of his carefully groomed fur and his wide-eyed, dopey expression, and raises an eyebrow.  The dog looks back up at him and his tail waggles back and forth furiously.  The dog opens his fluffy jowls and lets out a terribly pathetic sound, like a wheeze from an old pair of lungs.

Didn't Victor say he was going to follow him in disguise?

Yuuri's eyes narrow.  “Victor?” he whispers.  The dog's ears perk up and his tail is like a whirlwind, knocking over a terribly suspicious peony.  Yuuri groans and trudges on, the dog falling into step at his side.  “Couldn't you think of something more useful?”

But then, the rumbling starts.  Yuuri's blood turns glacial, the hairs rising on the back of his neck.  He doesn't need to guess what it belongs to, who it answers to.  It draws closer and it's like the earth shakes with hundreds of thundering hooves, the thumping deep and sonorous.  The dog at his side growls, but Yuuri keeps his stride even, though his heart is pounding.

A carriage – covered in black velvet and adorned with gold and silver tassels – sidles up beside Yuuri. The horses dragging it are huge, larger than they have any right to be, and their dripping, sopping, gooey bodies remind Yuuri of the bastard's henchmen, oozing and ceaselessly dark.  Sitting on the soft leather of the carriage is the Wizard of the Wastes in all his glory, jet black hair styled and perfect.  His long legs are crossed and his lavender suit and purple embellishments shimmer in the sunlight.

Even though he's sitting, Yuuri can tell he's still just as tall as he remembers, towering several feet over any normal person.

His grin, as always, is blinding.

Yuuri clenches his fists at his sides. Tries to steady his heart.

“Look who's here!” J.J. exclaims, his smirk sharp like a crocodiles, “The tacky little boy from the hat shop.  How's our dear Victor?”

“He's acting like a big baby,” Yuuri replies coolly, keeping his eyes front, “And he's working me to the bone as his housekeeper.”

J.J. barks out a laugh that bares his teeth.  “Incredible!  So tell me, what business do you have here at the palace?”

“Job hunting.  I'm tired of working for Vi – ”

“I received a royal invitation!” J.J. declares with a flourish, “Yakov must have finally realized how incredible my power is.”

Yuuri purses his lips.  “If you're so great why don't you break the spell you put on me?”  J.J. doesn't even look down at him as he gives a dismissive wave.

“I only know how to cast curses, not break them,” he replies, fixing the quaff in his hair, “Now, if you'll excuse me.”  His horses break into a gallop and deposit him elegantly in front of the large, glass and cedar doors of the palace, leaving Yuuri at least forty paces behind.

Yuuri puffs out his chest, gritting his teeth, and his nails cut into his palms.

What an asshole.

The palace, at least, is more reserved than he originally thought.  Despite the Victorian architecture and the terrace on the second floor, it looks more like a brick mansion from his hometown than the opulent palace of a royal high wizard.

J.J. ducks inside as Yuuri makes his way up the small flight of stairs to the landing, passing by a giant, fragrant magnolia tree.  The stone is oppressively hot, warmed by the sun, but Yuuri still hesitates as he reaches the top step, breathing in the sticky air.

He goes over what he planned to say in his head several more times.  The excuse he and Victor discussed.

Easy.  Simple.  Everything will be fine.

Just don't be you.

Yuuri forces air into his lungs and shoves the doors open, the dog close on his heels.

The main hall is much larger than it looked from the outside, stretched on both sides, and the checkered flooring is blindingly clean.  J.J. is standing just inside, towering high but nowhere close to the ceiling.  There are two doors on the opposite end of the hall, but no one else.

Nothing else.

The hall echoes with his footsteps and J.J. gives Yuuri a passing glance before peering at the distant doors.

“It's a puzzle,” J.J. says without prompting, “I've heard Yakov set up challenges for all his guests.” He shoots Yuuri a terribly broad smile.  His passivity makes the ice below Yuuri's skin warm to a simmer and he grows tense thinking about it.  It churns and churns, rising in his throat like bile.

“What happens if we chose wrong?” Yuuri wonders stiffly, crossing his arms to stop his hands from shaking.

“No idea,” J.J. says, scratching his chin, oblivious.

Yuuri sucks in a sharp breath through his nose.  “Maybe if I was younger I'd be able to help you out.”

“I told you,” J.J. says snootily, “I don't know how.”

Yuuri squares his shoulders.  “What do you mean you don't know how?” he snaps.

J.J. looks surprised by the outburst and it only makes the blood in Yuuri's veins run hotter.

“I just didn't bother learning it,” J.J. says, puzzled.

“Why?”

“Because why would I need to know how to reverse a curse?”

Yuuri wants to pull his hair out. “What if you get cursed?”

“But I won't,” J.J. replies confidently,  “I'm too good to get cursed.”

“What if you do, though?”

“But I won't.”

Yuuri is flabbergasted, annoyed.  He wants so badly to smack J.J. straight in the jaw, to jettison the frustration coiling in his gut out onto J.J.'s smirking, dumb face, but some quiet voice in the back of his mind pipes up and the flames in his chest dwindle.

“So you just never learned?” Yuuri starts slowly, “Not even to be prepared?”

“Of course!” J.J. replies emphatically, “Why worry about something that will never happen?” His smile is wide, foolhardy, and the fire in Yuuri's chest gets completely snuffed out.  “After all, who would curse me, The Magnificent Wizard of the Wastes?”  J.J. holds up three fingers on each hand, arms crisscrossed over his chest, and Yuuri realizes that J.J. may just be one of the dumbest people he has ever met.

Yuuri pinches the bridge of his nose. Uses his thumb and forefinger to rub his temple.  He takes a breath.

“So, the puzzle – ”

J.J. eagerly snaps to attention.  “So, there's two doors right?” he begins.  Yuuri nods.  He knows already where this is going, but J.J. is too excited to be deterred and Yuuri doesn't plan on stopping him.  “And there's two of us, right?  So, why don't we just go through the doors at the same time?”

Yuuri's breath is controlled, his smile strained.  “Incredible.  I can't believe you figured it out all on your own.”

J.J. scoffs with pride, a hand on his chest.  “It was simple, really – ”

Yuuri lets him continue on his tirade as they walk towards the doors, the air getting thicker as they approach.  J.J., unperturbed, takes a hold of his door handle and shoots Yuuri a foolhardy grin.  Yuuri rolls his eyes and they take the plunge in together, letting the darkness within engulf them.

Mirrors.  

Everywhere Yuuri looks there is another Yuuri looking back at him – a hunched over, wrinkled, husk of a human with crooked glasses and a large nose.  Who's clothes are ill-fitting and old like he is, frayed and torn.

Yuuri can hear his heartbeat, his breathing too, and a numbness settles in his fingers.

Breathe, Yuuri.  They're only mirrors.

Only a reminder of how ugly he is.  How worthless.

There's a lump in is throat he can't push back.

The dog whimpers at his side but no matter how far he walks, how many turns he takes, the mirrors are there, his face is there.  The walls are too close the ceiling is too low the light is too dim and the other Yuuri's are too close and Yuuri cant remember if he's still moving anymore.

Yuuri's vision swims.

I can't focus.

Yuuri inhales sharply, but the air doesn't reach his lungs.

My chest hurts.

Yuuri is paralyzed, his whole body shaking.  Why can't he stop shaking?

Can't breathe.

There's a pressure on his shoulder, warm and very real, and Yuuri swallows the gasp that crawls up his throat.

A woman, roughly taller than Yuuri with short auburn hair, squeezes his shoulder and her smile eases the flood of panic, at least momentarily.  “This way,” she says.

Everything is still blurred, still muddled and still feels a little distant, but the grip the stranger has around his wrist is something to focus on and Yuuri stares at her white gloves, the blue of her coat and its red trimmings.  Her red and gold doublet.  The white cravat around her neck.  She reminds him of a flickering, unwieldy fire or the precarious placing of an icicle – stunning, but deadly.  The hilt of the rapier on her hip is engraved with a name, Mila, and at least now Yuuri can thank her properly when he gets the chance.

She leads him through silently, one hand trailing along the glass to her left, and in no time at all she pushes one of the mirrors in.

Something quietly clicks and the glass swings away with ease, opening up to hot, sticky air and a sharp, earthy scent.

Yuuri blinks slowly, adjusting to the overwhelming light.  He realizes they are in a huge greenhouse, covered in gleaming glass and outlined with iron pillars and crosses. The domed ceiling is high above them and the sunlight is warm and inviting.

Plants of all shapes, colours and smells surround them, organized in neat lines, and Yuuri finally feels the shaking of his hands subside.

Mila leads him to a stool further in, positioned across from a old, severe looking man on a luxurious armchair. His arms are crossed and the hat pulled low over his brow draws fierce shadows across his already scowling face.

Mila shoots him an almost mocking salute before rushing off, but the old man barely acknowledges her, his grave frown focused on Yuuri.  The greenhouse doesn't feel as inviting when Yuuri meets his stony eyes and he quickly looks away.

“Have a seat,” he gravels, and Yuuri tries to swallow the lump in his throat as he obeys, fixing the front of his shirt.  “My name is Master Yakov.  I am the king's head sorcerer.”  The dog leaves Yuuri's side, practically skipping over to Yakov's chair and plopping down beside his feet.  He promptly falls asleep, quietly snoring.

Yuuri's throat constricts, but he forces a smile.  “Is that your dog?” he asks politely.

“He used to be Vitya's.  I had him escort you here.”

A heaviness settles in his stomach, but Yuuri flexes his hands on his trousers and forces a short laugh. “Oh.”  Of course.

“I take it Victor wont be joining us?” Yakov asks, getting straight to the point.

Yuuri sucks in a breath.  Tries to remember what excuse they had decided on.  His eyes flit between the flowers beyond Yakov's shoulder and the dog sleeping at his feet.

“H-He's such a lazy son he sent me instead!” Yuuri rushes out, voice creaking.  Yuuri wrings his fingers in his lap, picking at the skin near one of his nails. “The k-king would find him useless.”

Yakov's glare is palpable and Yuuri refuses to meet it.  “Victor was the last apprentice I ever took on,” Yakov says solemnly.  Yuuri smooths his hands over his knees, trying to control his heartbeat.  Trying to focus on Yakov's words. “I've never seen such a gifted student.  I thought I had found someone talented enough to replace me.  Then, his heart was stolen by a demon and he never returned to finish his apprenticeship.”  Yuuri clutches the fabric of his trousers, hoping it'll stop his hands from shaking.  “Mr. Pendragon?”

Yuuri jumps, eyes wide.  “Yes?”

Yakov's scowl is scorching but Yuuri is frozen by it, chilled by his words and his icy stare.  “That boy is extremely dangerous.  He is far too powerful for someone without a heart.  He uses his magic for entirely selfish reasons, and if he stays selfish – ” he waves his hand and Yuuri forgets to breathe, “ - then he'll end up just like the Wizard of the Wastes.”

Mila returns, dragging in a boy by his ear.  He's dressed in a fitted, glimmering purple suit and barely stands up to Yuuri's chest.  His arms are crossed and he huffs in frustration, shoving Mila off before she disappears back into the ether.

He plops petulantly onto the ground and rudely shows his back to both Yuuri and Yakov, though Yuuri definitely catches the pooling of tears in his eyes.

“I returned him to the age he really is,” Yakov explains.  J.J. curls in on himself, bringing his knobby knees up to his chest, and Yuuri wishes he could reach out and console his trembling shoulders.  

“He once was a promising study before he ran off with one of our most powerful spell-books, giving in to greed and selfishness.  Victor is the same.”  Yuuri's gaze snaps back at the mention of Victor's name and something in his stomach twists.  “Our kingdom can no longer afford to turn a blind eye to these disreputable witches and wizards.”  The words spit from Yakov's mouth like their taste is rotten, and Yuuri grips his knees tightly.  “If Victor returns to me and uses his magic to serve the kingdom I will show him how to break from his demon.  If not I'll strip him of all his powers, just like him.”

It's a punch to the gut.  The freeze melts and gives way to fire and Yuuri stands on shaky legs, fists tight.  Something snaps.  His voice wavers, his breath is a hiss and his pounding heart clogs his brain and drowns out his thoughts.  Acid slides up his throat. “That's enough!” he shouts, causing everyone but Yakov to jump,  “Now I know why Victor was so concerned about coming here.  It's a trap!”  

Yuuri's body is shivering, pulsing with anger.  His mind whirls and everything yells at him to stop, to sit down and take his place with the flowers on the wall, to fade, but there's a voice in him that's tired of fading, tired of sitting still.  

“You lure people here with an invitation from the king and then you strip them of all their powers!”  Yuuri stands straighter, feels the coal in his joints fuel him and he fixes his glasses.  “Victor would never be so heartless.  He may be selfish and overly dramatic, but his intentions are good.  He just wants to be free.”

Yuuri is overwhelmed with the memory of the gentle scent of lilacs, Victor's soft touches, his small encouragements and gentle teasings.  The warmth behind the coolness of his eyes, the crinkle of his smile.  Victor doesn't need to know how long Yuuri has wanted to be near him, but he will let Yakov know. There is someone out there who believes in Victor Nikiforov: believes in his childish ideals and his stupid plans and his selfish dreams.  

Yuuri's words can't be stopped; they demand to be heard just like his yearnings demand to be felt.  

“Victor won't come here,” Yuuri decides, “He doesn't need your help.”  Yuuri's voice trembles still but there's a strength to it now, a determination he can't hold back.  “He can fix his problems with his demons on his own.”

Yakov steeples his fingers and leans back.

“So then, you're in love with Victor.”

Yakov's words strike him to the core. Yuuri's heart stops.  His breath stills.  

He recoils.  

He retreats.

His resolve cools rapidly.

This is not how he wanted this to go.

This is not how this was supposed to go.

It was supposed to be simple and he was just supposed to walk out and –

And then you got caught up in yourself and messed things up why are you always messing up, Yuuri?

J.J. looks up suddenly, no longer lost in his thoughts.  “Is Victor here?” he chirps, face lighting up as he grabs onto the hem of Yuuri's shirt, “I'm going to beat him! Then he'll finally take me seriously.  Where is he?!”

Yuuri places a hand on J.J.'s shoulder, trying to calm the boy's overactive imagination.  “Victor isn't coming, okay?” he hushes.

“Don't be so sure,” Yakov murmurs, sitting back in his chair.  Yuuri turns to him, heart catching in his throat.  “We have you here, Mr. Pendragon.”

Yuuri's eyes widen, ears burning.

Part of him is certain Yakov must be joking.  Yuuri doesn't mean anything to anyone.  Yuuri is inconsequential, that's why Victor sent him here in the first place, right?  To take the fall for him?  To be a distraction while Victor escapes with the castle?  Yuuri knows he doesn't mean that much to Victor.  Yuuri is ugly.  Boring.  Good at cleaning and hats and nothing else.  He has nothing to offer someone like Victor.  Someone so beautiful and powerful and radiant.  Yuuri isn't good enough to be loved.

Right?

He thinks about Victor's smile before he left, about his closeness and his warmth.  About Victor's lingering touch and...and he knew exactly what that smile meant for a moment before the night of his thoughts eclipsed the light Victor cast.

This is a trap.

And Yakov was handed his bait on a silver platter.

Air refuses to reach Yuuri's lungs.

The whirring of an engine outside barely registers and it takes Yuuri several long moments to focus on the man who jumps off the flying machine, stomping the greenhouse door with great purpose.  His black hair is pushed back with a quiff and his expression is severe, despite his mostly lean build.

His black uniform is embellished with purples and blues, adorned with several medals and the unmistakable King's seal.

Yuuri is frozen.  The King gives him a cursory glance with his stony blue eyes before turning back to Yakov.

“How are you feeling?” he says, voice low and resonant.

“Fine, your majesty.”

The King places a hand on his hip casually, but the smile he gives doesn't suit the lines of his face. “I thought I'd drop by, rather than sit through a dull war meeting.”

“What an honor, King Georgi.”  The King's stare shifts to Yuuri and he shrinks beneath it, bowing his head politely to avert his gaze.

“Who are your guests?”

“This is Vitya's father,” Yakov clarifies, “Mr. Pendragon.”

He turns his attention to Yuuri completely and Yuuri is struck by his calm demeanor.  There's an ease that settles over him that is all too welcome.  “Thanks for coming,” Georgi says, taking a step closer, “But I've decided not to use magic to win this war.  We have tried using Yakov's magic to protect our palace from the enemies bombs, but the bombs fall on civilian homes instead.”  He chuckles, self-deprecatingly, “That's the problem with magic, right Yakov?”

Yakov smirks.  “Well put, your majesty.”

A door, palace side, swings open and the King, glaring, rushes into the room, quickly followed by Mila who looks amused but exhausted, like someone dealing with an overactive child.

Yuuri is bewildered.  Georgi looks the exact same – same uniform, same hair, same deep-set eyes – but his glare is deep and he stomps heavily in his leather boots.

“Yakov!” Georgi barks, stopping by the sorcerer's chair, “Have we heard anything from the neighboring Kingdom?”  His voice drops, but Yuuri can just make the words out. “Anything from Anya?”  Yakov shakes his head and the King sniffles loudly, snapping to attention.  “W-well, good!” he chokes out, turning on his heel.  “I didn't want to talk to her anyway...”

The King hurriedly wipes his eyes and Yuuri can't believe what he's seeing.  “Mila!” he shouts, voice penetrating.  He motions for her to follow and Yuuri can see her roll her eyes, flashing Yakov a smile before retreating with the King back into the palace.

The silence is heavy.  Yuuri can't stop the chill that crawls up his spine, the way the humid air sticks to his throat.

Yakov breaks the silence first, fixing his companion with an even glare.  “That's a weak disguise, Vitya. Didn't I teach you better?”

In the blink of an eye the King's visage is gone and Victor's silver hair, slender frame, and gentle voice emerges from where the King once stood.  He wraps an arm around Yuuri's shoulders and Yuuri's stomach flips at the gentle, reassuring squeeze he gives Yuuri's arm.  “I wasn't trying to outwit you,” Victor declares, “I just reported when summoned.  Now, my father and I will go.”

Yakov stomps his foot on the ground and it rings endlessly in Yuuri's ears.  The green fades from his vision and the air becomes oppressive, thick.  Heavy.  Cold.  At first Yuuri feels like he's sinking, but it becomes abundantly clear that there's something wrapped around his leg, dragging him further and further down.  It slides around his calf, up his chest, around his throat and there's flashes that light up like fireworks and smoke that burns his eyes and he can't breathe, he can't...

Maybe it'll be fine.  Maybe he'll fall back into his old home and his old life and everything will be simple.

He'll fade to black.  Disappear into the background.

He chokes on nothing, shakes.  No, no he's going to fall, he's going to get dragged down into whatever intolerable frozen wasteland is below them and there won't be any reprieve, there won't be anyone there for him he'll just –

“I'm here,” Victor whispers, and somehow Yuuri hears it over the ringing of the air and the pounding of his heart and it's solid, strong.  Victor's grip on his shoulder tightens and he pulls Yuuri into his chest, shielding him.  He's firm, tangible. “I've got you,” Victor breathes.  Yuuri fists his hands into Victor's shirt, buries his nose in the fabric, and the smell of lilacs shocks his system.  The world gradually slows to the sound of Victor's heartbeat, strong and steady, and it grounds him. Yuuri shudders and Victor waits for him to take a breath.

Yuuri opens his eyes.  They're floating in the air, hundreds of feet above the ground, and Yuuri's grip on Victor's shirt tightens.  A cloud passes through them, cool vapor chilling their skin.

There's a voice in the distance, floating on the wind, and it caresses them like a dead hand would; cold and numbing.  “It's time to show everyone what you really are, Vitya.”

Yuuri tries desperately to adjust to the wind whipping around him, to the height and the noise, but he can barely focus.  There's a distant hum, high-pitched and whining, and Yuuri can make out words but not what they mean.  The flashes continue all around, sporadic, and they shimmer in the air.  Yuuri swears he can see limbs, but they disappear just as quickly as they come.  Victor shifts under his hands, his chest heaving, and Yuuri's gaze flies to his face.

He's pinched his brows in concentration, blue eyes steely, and his smirk is strained.

Victor growls, low and venomous, and it sends a shock through Yuuri's system.  Victor clenches his jaw and Yuuri feels his nails slice through the fabric of his shirt, digging into his shoulder.

Something's wrong.

Victor cracks his neck and squeezes his eyes shut, body shivering under Yuuri's hands.  Yuuri can feel his muscles contract, his gasping breath, the snarl that crawls up Victor's throat and vibrates beneath his skin.

Something shoots out from Victor's back and he doubles over, letting out a violent howl.  Yuuri catches the sprouting of feathers on Victor's chest, dull and gray and not at all like the gloss of his hair, and dear God, those are wings sprouting from his back and –

Victor writhes, convulses, and Yuuri frantically tries to hold on to him, to keep him steady, to keep him here.

The humming is louder, pounding the air with its song, and Yuuri can't even hear himself as he calls out Victor's name.

Victor's eyes meet his.  Wide. Frightened.

Yuuri shakes his head.  This time, he doesn't break their contact.

His trembling fingers reach up to cup Victor's face, thumbs smoothing over the apples of his cheeks and Victor leans into the touch, breathing staggered.

“Let's go home,” Yuuri murmurs.

Everything that happens next is a blur: Victor's arms wrap tightly around Yuuri's small frame and when they soar it's like the air is being trapped behind them, sucked out of their lungs and plastered to the floor.  They slam hard onto Victor's flying bicycle and take off, but Yuuri can't quite comprehend it. It's like he's in a trance: he can hear his heart pounding, can hear Victor comment something to J.J. as he clambers into his chair and he catches Victor's squeal of delight as Makkachin licks his face, but the words sound so distant.

It's like he's floating, detached. Watching the group fly from above even though he can feel the freezing metal of his seat and Victor's calming hand on his arm.

Victor leans down, breath warm on his neck, and rests his chin on Yuuri's shoulder.  “It should wear off soon,” he says, as if he's reading Yuuri's mind.  All Yuuri does is hum lightly in response.  “You know, You really saved me, Yuuri.” he continues, smiling against Yuuri's cheek.  Yuuri's heart staccatos behind his ribs and it's the most he's felt since they crashed through the ceiling.

Victor whispers a thank you and when they part, when Yuuri flies back to the castle, when Yuuri is greeted by Yurio and Christophe with waiting arms, he holds onto Victor's words and wonders if his ears will ever stop burning from the praise.

[graysonpuzzle]

New Beginnings

Note: So this is something I wrote a long time ago and just edited. There is violence, bad language, mention of death, and some possibly upsetting things. If you choose to read it I hope you enjoy it! I also would really love some feed back! Thanks!

The Puzzle

CHAPTER ONE

__________________________

July 28th, 2000

“YOU ARE NOT LEAVING THIS HOUSE YOUNG LADY!” my grandfather yells from the end of the hallway.

“THE HELL I’M STAYING HERE!” I yell, packing my duffel with clothes and some of my favorite items.

I zip up the bag and throw on my brown leather jacket. My grandfather is too controlling, living and hunting wise. I throw the bag over my shoulder and speed walk down the hall. I’m 17 and I’ve been trapped hunting with this old man. Never having a good night sleep, rarely being home, having no friends and god, only ever talking to my grandpa and his creepy friends.

“Grayson Amorita, I’ll be damned if I let you out of my sight, especially after promising your mother and father-”

“Don’t you dare play that card, old man.” By now I can feel my cheeks heating up and my heart pumping faster. “Whenever I do something you don’t like, you bring them into it!”

“Grayson, I’m trying to do what they would have wanted” he says

“Oh yeah, I’m sure they wanted me out risking my life everyday hunting creatures that hide under kids beds!” I argue.

“Grayson I-”

“I’m sick and tired of this life! I want to be normal! For christs sake I’ve never even been to public school! I’ve never had any friends and forbid I even look at a boy!” I shout.

I march straight past him to the door and I swing it open a little too hard.

“Bye grandpa” I say, leaving him speechless and I walk out the front door.

November 2006

“So this is the part where you kill me?” the shapeshifter I’ve been hunting for the past 4 days asks.

“I’m afraid so,” I say. I lift my gun, finger on the trigger when he starts rambling.

“Haven’t you ever felt like a freak? I know I’m a monster in your eyes, but is it so bad that I want to try and be normal?” he asks.

“Well, for starters, normal people don’t shift their appearance and then murder families, ya know, because that’s sick,” I retort.

“Come on, that’s not as bad as what other people do,” he says.

“Well, here’s the thing, you’re not a person,” I say and shoot him, hitting him directly in the heart.

If only my grandpa could see me now, hunting by myself, HA! And he thought I wouldn’t be able to survive on my own. Just because he’s the master vampire slayer he thinks he’s the only one who can handle these supernatural sons of bitches. I mean sure, telling other hunters that I’m Daniel Elkins’ granddaughter does have a few perks, like they almost automatically are willing to help me. But, there’s always the downside. People will expect me to be as great as him. I’m still working on getting out of that shadow.

I pack everything up into the trunk of my giant scrap metal car. I don’t even know what kind of car this is, all I know is I got it from my grandpa’s friend out of his junkyard who said I could have it for free. I drive myself back to the motel I’ve been staying in and immediately throw myself on the bed.

I wake up the next morning with all my clothes on from last night. The clock on the nightstand says 1:00pm, great. I jump into the motel shower and get dressed for the day. I get my computer out and look for any possible hunts near by. One in particular stands out: “Four Teens Found Dead.” I read the whole article and it screams supernatural- vampires to be specific- all the kids were missing most of their blood, enough to kill them slowly. Well, if there’s one thing I know how to hunt, its bloodsuckers. Maybe my grandpa has worn off on me, but I think it might just be in my genes because I’ve loved hunting them since I can remember. Maybe because they’re sneaky bastards who kill people despite being people themselves once. I get my stuff together and drive to the town where the article originated, only a 45 minute drive.

I already have a plan: pretend to be a relative of one of the kids, get into the morgue and see the bodies, go to the scene where they were found, find a trail, follow it and kill the bitches.

I go to the only hospital in town and go straight to the morgue. I stop one of the doctors and give him my excuse.

“Well, I’m her cousin but I won’t be able to make it to the funeral.” I say

“Alright, just follow me, miss,” the doctor says. He takes me to the morgue and pulls out ‘my cousin's’ body.

“Do you mind if I have a moment alone with her?” I ask, faking borderline tears.

“Of course.” and he’s gone. I immediately pull the cover down to reveal her neck and there it is: two puncture wounds. I check the other three bodies and all the signs point to vampires.

I put on the best sad face I can muster up and walk out of the morgue and out of the hospital. I get in my car and the radio is blasting Kelly Clarkson’s Because of You. Not that it’s really a favorite, but I mean how can I not know the words? I sit in my car in the parking lot singing along.

“MY HEART CAN’T POSSIBLY BREAK WHEN IT WASN’T EVEN WHOLE TO START WITH!” I sing at the top of my lungs, well until two handsome fellows knock on my window, both trying to hold back smiles. Shit. Why are two guys knocking on my car in the first place?

I roll my window down and immediately put on a serious face, “can I help you?” I ask as if nothing happened 20 seconds ago.

“Yeah, we were wondering if you know anything about those four teenagers that died last night,” the one with long hair asks.

“No, not more than the news provided” I lie.

“Oh, ok thanks anyways” He says and they both walk into the hospital. Why do they care what happened? Hunters…nah.

I start the engine and make my way to the road the teenagers were found on. When I get there, the cops are blocking it off. ‘Don’t worry, Gray, just get in and get out’ I mentally prepare myself. The roads around here are surrounded by woods, so I adjust my gun in my belt and take off into the woods, far enough so I won’t be spotted, but close enough to see what’s going on. I make my way through to get close enough to the car, all windows are shattered and there’s no other evidence of vampires-at least not from here. I come out of the brush and hide behind the car, away from the cops who are by the caution tape about 20 feet away. I get in the backseat of the car and search for anything, then I spot it, a tooth, or a fang, or whatever the right term for a vampire’s second set of teeth is. I open the car door and dash back into the woods as fast as I can.

So, I don’t think the vampires would’ve followed the road, trying to be sneaky and all, so I double back down the road and go down one that parallels the one the cops are on. I pull over to the shoulder of the road, by some metal railings that block a slope down to the woods. I slide down that slope to find any tracks. I search for almost 30 minutes and find shit. No really, I stepped in deer poop. I decide to go to my car. I get back to the slope and I have to dig the toes of my shoes into the dirt so I can make it back up. As I climb over the railing I notice another set of holes in the dirt similar to mine. So they did go this way. I search the other side and there’s nothing. Guess they did use a road, but why walk through the woods then drive a car after a meal? A getaway plan or something? I get back in my car and get out the map of the town that I got earlier today. If I keep going down this road, it leads to a giant and abandoned farm. I guess I’m going there.

As I start my car, a sleek, black car pulls to the shoulder behind me. Damn. That really is a nice car. Chevelle? I guess I’ll ask when these two guys…these two guys, the same guys who knocked on my window at the hospital. Damn it, maybe the vamps found out I was following them and decided to switch it around. It’s so hard to find attractive guys that don’t have anything severely wrong with them. I get out of my car to meet them outside, gun ready in my belt.

I get out of my car and meet them halfway, and lean on the back of my car, “are you two following me?” I ask.

“No, we were heading this way and saw your car and didn’t know if you were having trouble” the one with short hair says.

“Well as sweet and creepy it is that you ‘happened’ to see me and offer me help, my car is perfectly fine, and no offense but I wouldn’t take car help from two sketchy guys who appear to be stalking me,” I say and rest my hands on my hips, closer to my gun.

“You know what’s funny is that we think you’re the sketchy one here” the tall one argues.

“Alright fine, let’s agree that we’re all sketchy and call it a night, huh?” I say and turn back to my car, then I heard a gun click. I turn back around to them to see both holding guns at me. I immediately pull out my gun and hold it to them in response.

“I didn’t know vampires were into carrying guns, did you Sammy?” the short one asks.

“Wait, what?” I ask, completely confused.

“We went to the hospital, they said a girl with your exact description went into the morgue, and you lied about knowing anything,” the short one explains.

I lower my gun, realizing instantly, “Oh god, I’m such an idiot. I’m a hunter, and apparently so are you two,” I say, “I’m working on the case with the four teenagers.”

They lower their guns as well and put them away. “So what do you have so far?” the short one asks.

“There’s tracks over there, but no sign of them on the other side of the road, so I think they took the road- it leads to a farm that nobody owns,” I say.

“Well, we’re going to look around in case you missed anything,” The short one says.

“Ok, good luck with that, I’ll be killing them while you search” I say.

“What? No, we should do this together, you can’t take out a whole nest by yourself” the big one says.

“I’m going to take your doubt in me as a challenge” I say and walk.

“Are you crazy? You’re going to get yourself killed,” the short one argues.

“If you want me to stay with you, just say so,” I say folding my arms across my chest, looking at them with raised eyebrows and a little smirk.

“Let us look for a few minutes and we can go, together,” the tall one says.

“So, do either of you have names or will I have to call you ‘big one’ and ‘little one’?” I ask sarcastically.

“I’m Sam, and this is my brother, Dean” Sam says.

“Grayson,” I reply.

10 minutes later they come up with nothing.

“I told you,” I tease.

“Are you always this cocky?” Dean asks.

“No, only when people think I can’t do as well as them, and they end up being wrong” I say with a fake grin, referring to them having to ‘check’ if I got everything.

“Well aren’t you sweet,” Dean replies, a fake smile on his face.

“Alright, let’s go” Sam directs and we head towards the farm. There’s barely any light because the sun is setting behind all the trees.

When we get to the farm we all get out and I walk to them, “Maybe we should wait until tomorrow when we have daylight,” I suggest.

“Were already here, were armed, it can’t hurt to check,” Dean says.

“I don’t know Dean, she has a point, they have the advantage,” Sam adds.

“Oh, c’mon, nothing three hunters can’t handle,” Dean says and it’s the last thing I hear before my lights go out.

I wake up on the floor with my hands chained behind my back, in what looks like a basement. Those nasty bloodsuckers. I knew we should’ve waited. Sam and Dean are also chained, but both still out cold. Sam is closest to me so I kick his leg and he stirs a little.

“Sam! Sam wake up!” I whisper yell.

“What-what the”

“They got us while we were distracted,” I say, “But don’t worry, I have a plan.”

“What?”

“Well since were not chained to anything,” I start and feel for my gun-HA they didn’t take it- “I’m going to get up, walk up the stairs to the door and kill all of them, which will give you two some time to find our weapons and free anyone they might be keeping” I say, literally thinking of the plan as it came out of my mouth.

“Maybe Dean was right,” Sam says.

“About what?”

“You being crazy.”

“I’m not crazy, I’m ambitious,” I say and I get a small laugh out of him.

“Well, usually people’s ambitions don’t include risking your life when you don’t know what you’re up against”

“Well, how will I figure out what I’m up against if I don’t go up there and see?” I ask and Dean starts to wake up.

“Oh good, you’re up!” I say and proceed to tell him the plan I told Sam.

“Are you crazy?” He asks, again with the crazy.

“God, why do you both think I’m crazy? Wouldn’t you be willing to do the same thing?”

“Yeah, but going straight at them?” Dean asks.

“Go big or go home, right?” I say.

I stand up and lower my arms so I can step between them to get my hands to the front of my body. I walk up the basement stairs and knock on the door with a happy rhythm. The door opens and a rather small vampire is there giving me a puzzled expression.

“Hi there,” I say and yank him by the shirt, throwing him down the stairs. He fell all the way to the bottom. I shoot him with my gun and he just laughs.

“So stupid, guns dont hurt me!” He laughs.

“Yeah, but I heard dead man’s blood is poison to you, and that’s what I soaked my bullets in this morning.” I say and head back up the stairs.

The door is barely open, I peek through seeing no more vampires. Sam and Dean are coming up the stairs.

“I’ll shoot all of them, don’t move until I say so,” I order.

I walk through the door and I’m immediately tacked to the ground. I fall on my stomach but I manage to get on my back and kick the vampire back and shoot her right in the stomach. “Dead man’s blood,” I say, answering the question before it’s asked. I stand up and another one jumps on my back. I slam her into a wall, leaving a huge dent. I can’t shake her off, so I feel for her stomach and shoot her there. 3 down. No more come at me, so I go get Sam and Dean in the stairwell.

“Sam, go look for any people, Dean, go look for weapons, I can hold off anymore that come, If they follow you, lead them to me,” I direct and they go. It feels nice to have somebody trust me.

They both go the same way, leaving me in the hallway by myself. I look around, and I feel arms wrap around my body, squeezing the air out of me. Two more vampires come at me at once and I flail my legs in attempt to keep them away. I kick both of them in the stomach, sending them back a few feet. I shoot at both, one hit in the chest, the other in the lower stomach. The one holding me doesn’t like this so he throws me to the ground, a mistake on his part, because I shoot him in the chest immediately. 6 down, hopefully not many more to go. I walk around the house, and I get towed down by a big vampire, I look and it’s just Dean.

“Here.” He says and cuts my chains with my machete, then hands it to me.

“thanks” I say, “where’s Sam?”

“Upstairs, looking for anyone”

���What? I haven’t checked upstairs yet!” I say loudly and run up the stairs as fast as I can, with Dean following behind me.

“I think I can get used to hunting with you” I barely hear him say from behind me. Wait, was that a reference to my ass? Did he just compliment my ass in the middle of a hunt? Screw it, I have shit to do.

I run to the first door and kick it open, empty. “SAM!” I yell and kick open two more doors.

He’s kneeling over vampire victims, but he doesn’t know there’s two vampires sneaking behind him. I lunge instantly, cutting of the man’s head, then everyone notices me and I stab the girl in her stomach, surprising her. Using the seconds she took to react, I behead her.

“Thanks,” Sam says.

“No problem, I think that’s all of them,” I say.

“There was 9 of them, I counted,” A woman on the floor says.

“Shit,” I say under my breath.

“What?” Sam asks.

“I missed one,” I say and take off to find Dean.

I don’t have to run far, because he’s being pinned to the wall by a male vampire.

“Aw are you sad were going to kill your family?” I mock and he comes straight at me. He jumps to tackle me, but I duck, letting him fall behind me. I turn around and chop his neck while he’s getting up.

“Thanks,” Dean says.

“Don’t mention it” I say and run down the stairs to finish off the vamps I poisoned. Theres three in the living room, two in the hallway and one in the basement. Just have to kill them while they’re down and you can leave, Grayson.

I get to the living room, and just as I remembered, there’s 3 bodies on the ground. I decapitate every one of them and head to the hallway. The two there are just starting to wake up, but are still weak. One is crawling and I do a low swing of the arm to get her, the other one is laying on his back, as if waiting for me. The only one I’m a little worried about is the one in the basement, he was the first one to get poisoned. I open the door and walk down, he’s nowhere in sight. I hear Sam and Dean in the hallway, “Grayson!” Sam yells, “Are you down there?”

“Yeah, I can’t find the-” I get cut off by the vampire putting me in a chokehold.

“Grayson?” Dean asks, and I hear a set of footsteps coming down the stairs.

“I can still kill her, let us go, and I won’t” He tries to bargain.

“They’re all dead, Elektra over there got every single member of your family,” Dean says, obviously trying to get the vamp to go after him, like I did earlier.

“You killed them?” He growls in my ear, “You killed my family?”

“Let her go,” Sam says, taking a step towards us.

“Don’t move, or I’ll bite her,” He threatens, “I guess that if you killed my family, you can start making up for it by joining me.” He puts his mouth to my neck. I try to wiggle away but he moves my head closer to him. It’s like in Charlie’s Angels when Madison Lee was almost kissing Natalie while putting a gun to her head, in other words, disgusting.

Dean tries to move closer and the vampire freaks out. “PUT THE BLADES DOWN!” he yells, “AND SLIDE THEM OVER HERE” at first Sam and Dean refuse but then I get an idea. I nod, telling them to agree with him. They slide the machetes to our feet and step back.

I take the machete that’s in my hand, and stab him in the stomach and reach down for Sam and Dean’s, picking one up in each hand. The vamp comes at me and I swing the machetes towards each other, cutting his neck from both sides fatally.

“Damn.” Dean says. I turn around and give each of them their machetes back with a huff of breath from the struggle.

“Where are the people?” I ask.

“I told them to wait outside by the cars,” Sam says.

We got the people to the hospital and made sure they didn’t mention us. One thing I never liked about this job, you rarely get credit. It’s 1 am when we drive to the nearest motel. I get out of my car, and they get out of theirs at the same time.

“Nice car, by the way,” I say and head to the office to buy a room.

“Thanks, she’s my pride and joy,” Dean says”

I get to the desk and ask for a one bedded room. She hands me the key and walk out the door and hear Sam and Dean asking for the closest two bedded room next to mine.

I unlock my door and go straight to the shower. I can smell my own sweat. I get out and go to my bag on the bed to look for clothes when there’s a knock at my door. Perfect timing, what if I have to fight some monster naked? I open the door to see Sam and Dean waiting.

“Uh, can I help you?” I ask as both of them try to pretend I’m not in only a towel.

“We just thought you might want to celebrate with us,” Dean says, holding up a pack of beer.

“Well, I don’t feel like drinking, but I’ll be happy to watch you two” I say “Just give me 5 to get dressed and I’ll be right over.”  I close my door and get dressed. I knock on the door and Sam answers, his arm gesturing for me to come in.

“So do you two celebrate after every hunt?” I ask.

“No, just the good ones.” Sam says.

“I see.”

“So,” Dean says.

“So, what?” I ask.

“How’d you learn to hunt like that?” He asks.

“I learned from my grandpa,” I say.

“Whos your grandpa?” Sam asks.

“You might not have heard of him, Daniel Elkins, he lives in Colorado,” I say and their faces kind of fall. “What? did I say something?”

“We knew your grandpa” Dean says, “well we knew who he was, we’re sorry”

“Sorry for what? I’m confused,” I say. What the hell is up with them?

“When was the last time you heard anything from your grandpa?” Sam asks.

“I talked to him a few months ago on the phone,” I say.

They exchange a glance.

“We were in Manning a month ago, your grandpa was in the news, he was attacked in his house and was killed,” Sam says, “I’m so sorry”

I sit there in silence, thinking about it. What? there’s no way, he knew how to defend himself. This is just a sick joke. Just a sick joke.

“Grayson?” Dean asks.

“You think thats funny?”

“What?”

“Telling me he’s dead, you think thats funny, cause its not,” I say.

“Were not joking, he was killed by vampires,” Sam says.

How ironic, the thing he hunted best came to hunt him. “Excuse me, I need to go,” I say and walk out the door. It usually takes a while for things to sink in. When a hunt went wrong and one of my friends died, it took me a while to actually process it. How could he do that? He didn’t even call me. He didn’t call for help. I could’ve helped him.

I could’ve helped him. I could’ve been there. I could’ve kept him alive. I turn out the lights and fall asleep.

In my nightmare my grandpa keeps dying in front of me, a different way each time. Stabbed in the chest, shot in the head, each time screaming for my help, but I just sit there and watch. In some I’m even the one doing the killing. I try to stop myself, but I can’t move my body and all I can do is yell “I’M SORRY” millions of times. I scream myself awake and I feel the need to let off steam.

I throw all my stuff against the walls, break anything that I can. “I’M SORRY” I yell, throwing the lamp on the nightstand at the wall. I barely notice it, but I’m crying while screaming. I step on some of the glass from the lamp, and my foot bleeds out. I get on my knees and just cry to myself, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” There’s a knock on my door, but I ignore it, still repeating the same words over and over again. I lay my hands on the ground, which cuts them too, so now my hands are also bleeding. I just look at my hands for a while. “Im sorry, Im sorry for everything” My door is slammed open and the water in my eyes makes everything blurry, but I can make out the figures of two people. They pull me out of the glass and put me on the bed. ” I didn’t mean to do it!” I say, “It should’ve been me!”

“GRAYSON, SNAP OUT OF IT!” I recognize Dean yelling.

“He shouldn’t have died, it should’ve been me, I’m the one that left him alone!” I cry.

“It’s not your fault, things happen,” Sam says and wraps his arm around my shoulders.

“Get off me!” I yell, “I don’t need your help, I never needed help, I should’ve been helping him!”

“Just calm down!” Dean yells.

“HOW ABOUT HAVING YOUR ONLY FAMILY DIE AND SEE HOW YOU FEEL!!” I scream.

“I DID!” he screams back.

“BUT YOU’RE NOT THE ONE THAT KILLED HIM!”

“HEY!” Sam shouts, “both of you yelling won’t help anyone.”

“I could’ve saved him” I whisper, “I left him alone, he needed me and I left him”

The next morning I wake up in a bed, it’s not mine because the room has two beds in it. The last thing I remember from last night was yelling at Sam and Dean. I look at my hands and they’re wrapped up, I move the covers to look at my feet and they’re wrapped up too. They’re worse than I remember them being, there’s blood soaking through the wraps.

“You wouldn’t let us stitch you up last night, so we just wrapped them up for the night” Sam says, walking in from the bathroom.

“Sorry” I say.

“Please, don’t say that, you’ve said it enough since last night,” he replies.

I look down at my hands in my lap. I let myself get out of control, and hurt myself, I don’t even know what I did to the boys.

“Did I hurt either of you?” I ask.

“No,” Dean answers, walking through the room door with bags of food in his hands, “Thank god, because after seeing you kill that nest, I was glad you kept the machete in the car.”

“Yeah…"

“I got you a burger” he says and tosses is to me. My hands sting a little and catching it burns even more.

“Dean, last night I told you to have your only family die, and you said you did, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to-” I start.

“Our dad. He almost a month after your grandpa died,” he says, his tone kind of irritated.

“I’m so sorry.”

“We should stitch you up now, the cuts are pretty bad,” Sam interrupts.

“Alright.”

We all sit in silence as Sam works on my hands. How the hell am I going to hunt if both my hands and feet have stitches. Sam finishes my hands and I ask for the supplies to stitch my feet but he refuses and stitches those up too.

“Thank you” I say, “well I guess I should get going”

“Do you have somewhere to stay?” Sam asks.

“No, but I want to go back to Manning, just see the house and everything” I answer.

“Want us to give you a ride there?” Dean asks.

“No, I’m fine” I say and get up, “where’s my stuff?”

“Over there” Dean says and points to the table across the room. I sling it over my shoulder and take it to the bathroom to get dressed.

Trying to get dressed was difficult, but I managed to do it in 10 minutes. I walked back into the room, “Well, bye guys” I say.

“Hey, what’s your number?” Sam asks.

“Why, think you’re going to need my help sometime?” I joke.

“Something like that” Dean replies, smirking. I give them my number and head for Manning.

[dahlgaarddahlgaard0-blog]

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