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dancingamongstdust · 3 years ago

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Creepypasta Scenarios - First Meeting (Part 1)

Ben Drowned

You had promised, sworn on your very life, that you wouldn’t laugh. It was an oath. One to be taken very seriously.

“Using your hand to muffle the sound still counts as laughing.”

Part of you felt really bad but that made you snicker even harder. Your best friend, at the very least, did appear extremely shaken about the entire thing. She sat on the edge of the couch with her arms crossed. Dark bags had formed beneath her eyes and her attention seemed unable to stray from the Nintendo 64 that sat between you.

“I’m sorry,” you said. “But you have to understand how this sounds. You’re telling me that you’re being haunted by a literal video game.”

She pulled her legs to her chest. The amount of weight that she had lost recently couldn’t possibly be healthy. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Have you considered talking to a psychiatrist?” you offered. “Or perhaps selling this game?”

“He would kill me.”

You picked up the Nintendo 64 and stared at the main menu of the game. It looked pretty normal to you. You fiddled around with the settings to turn the music down. “I really think that talking to somebody about this would help.”

“That’s what you don’t understand,” she said. “I want to stop playing. I want to speak to people but all that he wants is for me to continue trying to beat the game. There’s no way to win! The entire thing is rigged!”

“Have you looked up a guide?”

She groaned. “Nobody’s going to listen to me.”

An awkward silence fell over the room and you shifted around in your seat before offering some coffee. She accepted but the kettle had barely been boiling for a few seconds when her phone chimed happily.

“Oh look, he wants to play now,” she muttered. She thrust the device to you. “Take a look for yourself.”

The notification had come through an app called CleverBot. It was a very simple ‘hi’ message that didn’t really seem all too haunting. You opened it up and clicked around the app for a little. “Looks like just a chatroom,” you said. “Why’d you download this?”

“I didn’t. I just woke up the one day and it was on my phone.”

You closed the app and returned to the home screen. It immediately reopened and the same message popped up again. An identical thing happened the second time. And then again.

“This looks like a virus,” you said. “It’s probably best to uninstall.”

Clicking on the button made the icon disappear for a short while but it was quick to reappear. This time, when the chatroom opened itself, the message had changed to simply say ‘rude’.

You pursed your lips. That was suspicious enough for you to understand her potential worries. “I don’t think that it’s haunted but you should probably take it to a professional to have it wiped or something. And maybe consider less porn in the future?”

Your joke fell flat but it died when the chatbot began typing. Not too long after, another message had come through.

‘I don’t hang out in such places.’

“Can…” you trailed off. “No, there’s no way that they’ve hacked the microphone, right?”

‘Don’t need to hack in to hear what you’re saying.’

The colour drained from your face and you quickly glanced towards your friend. She didn’t seem panicked, even when you showed her the message. If anything, her expression was resigned as though this was a regular occurrence.

You didn’t get too much time to respond when a horrible static sound came through her phone. The screen began flashing and blurry images raced across it. A distorted version of the Majora’s Mask theme song started playing. It felt like your ears were bleeding. Scared, you threw the phone to the floor and, with a shattering crack, everything stopped.

For a while, you stared at it but then she said, “He’s going to be pissed with that.”

There was a chime from somewhere on your right. Your own phone’s screen lit up. Nervously, you reached over to check on it.

A single notification stood there, from an app called CleverBot.

‘You Shouldn’t Have Done That.”

Bloody Painter

The park was busy this time of day and filled with an awaiting audience – whether they were interested in watching the performance or not. Many seemed to appreciate it though, taking the flyers handed out by your group.

It was nearing midday when you ran out of pamphlets. You stretched and pushed your hair away from your face, relishing in the feeling of sun against skin.

Your gaze drifted across the park’s patrons before settling on one that you had been watching since the beginning of your performance. He didn’t look up much. A sketchpad sat on his lap and tousled brown hair hung over his face. You hadn’t caught his attention once but he had certainly kept yours.

“Can you hand me another lot of flyers?” you asked one of the other girls with her.

She handed them over and you put on your best grin before making your way to the tree he was sitting under.

He looked up when your shadow fell over his sketchbook. His work was considerably abstract and nothing that you could identify with ease. There weren’t too many colors though.

“Hello!” you greeted cheerily. “I don’t mean to bother but what did you think of the show?”

He blinked up at you. “I didn’t see it.”

The man was a master of deadpan but you didn’t allow your smile to drop. You lowered the flyer and sighed, “That’s a shame. It’s so rare that we have attractive people at our shows… you should consider coming to our actual performances sometime. Everybody loves musicals.”

He didn’t even react to the compliment. No smirk or even a blush. It was as though you hadn’t spoken one word.

“I’ve seen your face before,” he said. “You do this kind of thing quite often. Don’t you get tired of people staring at you?”

You chuckled. “I wouldn’t be in this line of business if I was too self-conscious. When they stare for too long, I like to imagine that it’s because I’m the most beautiful person they’ve ever seen.” Running your fingers through your hair, you offered him your most dazzling smile. “And if you remember me, that’s a certain compliment.”

“You can take it whatever way you want but it doesn’t mean anything.”

It was tempting to give up. Flirting with cute boys was only entertaining when they responded with… something. This boy just stared.

“So you’re an artist, right? You’d have a good point of view on whether or not I’m actually pretty.”

“My opinions on people are rarely accurate.”

His response made you uncomfortable, though you couldn’t quite put your finger on why. Something of a warning twisted in your stomach. A light had lit behind his eyes but it didn’t seem like something you wanted to tie yourself to.

It appeared it was time to give up your pursuit. “Well, I really should get going. Perhaps I’ll see you at the next performance.”

His eyes drifted to the pamphlet that you held. “Were you planning on giving me that?”

“Offering it but you don’t have to –“

“I’ll take it,” he said, putting down his pencil and holding out his hand. “Your show wasn’t too entertaining but I enjoyed watching the performance you just put on. Rather like a peacock strutting its feathers.”

So he wasn’t oblivious then… just teasing. You had no idea if it showed his genuine interest or if he was merely taunting now.

With a slight scowl, you passed it over. He tucked it into his sketchbook and then closed it, standing up. He was scrawnier than you had anticipated but he still had a considerable height – holding at least a few inches over you.

“Thank you,” you said.

He left without another word. You rolled your eyes and made a point to ignore any thoughts about him for the rest of the day. Perhaps you shouldn’t have given him your information… after all, that flyer had your full name and everything.

And you knew absolutely nothing about him.

Candy Pop

Hospitals were the worst places in the world.

They smelled too clean and looked too false. You generally avoided them as much as possible unless it was absolutely necessary. When a close family member found themselves locked within the walls, unfortunately, it wasn’t possible to stay away.

You wrinkled your nose as you walked into the room. The sterilized smell burnt you.

Most of it was what you had expected but the young, child-like scream made you jump and nearly drop every gift you were holding.

Your aunt jumped up from her chair beside the hospital bed. “What’s wrong?!” she asked, fussing over your cousin.

She was barely over eleven and had badly injured her leg during a biking competition. Your mom had told you that everybody in the family was going to visit her, encouraging you to go together in order to drop off some gifts.

“I’m sorry,” the little girl said quickly. “I don’t like balloons and I thought… it doesn’t matter. Sorry.”

You moved them behind you a little, trying to block her line of sight. “No, no, I should have asked first. You could have been allergic to latex or something and then I’d be feeling really bad about it.”

“She’s been particularly on edge thanks to these awful nightmares,” your aunt explained.

“Nightmares?” you asked.

The little girl seemed pale at its mention, pulling her blanket up to her nose and watching everybody wearily. “They’re just bad dreams,” she said. “You said that they couldn’t hurt me.”

Her mother hurriedly rubbed her shoulder and offered a warm smile. “They definitely can’t,” she reassured.

“Are they about the fall?” you asked.

“Sometimes.”

You settled down in one of the chairs as your own mother began speaking to her sister. They were able to discuss everything from the colour of grass to what they thought would be the best country to live in. You weren’t particularly interested in what they were saying and, after a while of trying to chirp in, you just let the lack of sleep catch up to you.

Your dreams came to you quickly, faster than usual and sharp in an uncomfortable sort of way.

You found yourself standing in a large field. The sky was grey and the grass tall enough to reach your knees. Everything felt bright. It hurt your eyes to stare at anything for too long.

Normally, dreams didn’t feel as such, but you were certain that this was one. There was no purpose to where you were. No inclination to walk in a specific direction or try to understand what was happening.

Just confusion.

You took a step forward and a soft wind wrapped around you. It brushed through the grass, dancing around the trees. Something was watching.

You turned and two, glowing lights floated above the ground.

Slowly, mist gathered around the two spots. As you stepped back, it began to solidify – quickly forming a more recognisable shape. The figure tilted its head to the side and a slight jingling sound filled the air. It stepped forward then and the glow faded from its eyes, revealing just what stood before you.

He was a jester, though certainly more modern than the old king’s versions. Blue hair hung around his shoulders and his entire outfit jingled with hundreds of bells. A smile graced his face and he stepped forward.

You moved away.

His smile disappeared and his eyes narrowed. The mist appeared again and he vanished into it.

You looked around frantically. He was gone. The wind picked up unexpectedly, howling in your ears. You raised your hands to shield your face and something grabbed your wrist. Before you could turn to see, you hurdled away from the meadow and awoke spluttering for air.

“Are you alright?” your aunt asked.

In the corner of your eye, you swore you saw a blue jester but, when you turned to look, he was gone. “Yeah,” you said, rubbing your chest. “Yeah, I’m good.”

Your made eye contact with your cousin and swallowed thickly. The look on her face said it all.

Clockwork

Every night, without fail, you saw her sitting there when you arrived home from work.

She always wore the same thing and, initially, you had thought that she would play on her phone for hours at a time. It didn’t appear that she had a phone, however, as you came to realise. Whatever she was holding was circular and fit perfectly within the palm of her hand.

You mentioned it to the building manager the second time she was there until like two in the morning. He had said that they thought she was homeless but, as far as they could tell, she wasn’t dangerous. You reassured him that your worries weren’t about her presence due to any perceived problem but he had just nodded.

She never moved while she was waiting. Not even to adjust her weight or brush the hair from her face.

A few of your neighbours used the very eloquent reasoning that she was merely crazy.

Occasionally, you heard children from the area parroting their parents. Rumours abound that she was a ghost who would attack anybody if they spoke to her. You scoffed each time it was said but many believed the stories.

You were arriving home late one night when you spotted her sitting in the usual spot. It was strange for you to feel anything beyond exhaustion on the nights when hospital jobs ran too long but this time, a strange anticipation settled itself in your stomach.

“I’m sorry,” you said. “Are you okay?”

Her hair was dirty and her coat looked as though it hadn’t been washed for years. Now that you were close, you could make out what appeared to be dried blood on her shirt.

“Go away,” she said, shaking her head from side to side.

“I have medical experience,” you responded. “And I know some good places to stay in the area. I can –“

“Good for you,” she sneered. “Leave me alone. You’re going to make me miss it.”

The object she was holding was an old pocket watch. It looked like something you would find in an antique store and pay insane amounts of money for. Though, it didn’t appear to be working. The clock hands sat at a set time and didn’t move in the slightest.

“I want to help you if that’s okay,” you said.

She forced out a laugh that sounded as though it physically pained her. “You want to help me?!” she cackled, throwing her hair over her shoulder. “Isn’t that sweet.”

You stumbled away from her and clasped a hand over your mouth. Her face…

Her mouth was torn to pieces, jagged cuts that ripped through the skin there and had been crudely stitched back together. But that wasn’t the worst. No, the worst part of it was her left eye that had a pocket watch shoved into the socket and forcefully stitched there. The injury flared red with infection and pain.

“What’s wrong little doctor?!” she cawed. “No longer feeling like saving the poor girl you found on the side of the road?”

You steeled your resolve and straightened. “I’m still willing to offer help if you need it,” you said in your strongest voice. “That injury is severe and needs attending to if you want to save the eye.”

The eye was definitely gone and she knew it as well, scoffing at your offer. “No chance of that. Why do you people like pretending that you care?”

“I do care.”

She responded with a mocking expression and stood unexpectedly. “Sure you do.” She tapped the front of the pocket watch with her nail. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to get to work. I nearly missed it thanks to your nagging. I’ll see you tomorrow, doctor.”

And she marched off into the night.

Dark Link

The vase that you were holding was beautifully polished and almost brand new. As you lifted it, something rattled around within.

“Why are you selling this for such a low price?” you asked.

The woman was middle-aged with a falsely high voice and bright, darting eyes. “It was a gift,” she said. “But I decided against keeping it. I wasn’t sure how low the price should be but it’s not like I’m losing any money.”

You decided against buying it, thanking her and walking away quickly. While you were looking through a few pieces of jewelry, your arm was grabbed and a small object pushed into your chest.

“Here you go!” you friend chimed. “Consider it to be a late birthday present!”

You took the game cartridge and examined it closely. “Zelda, again?” you asked. “I’ve already tell you that –“

“Yes, yes, I know that they’re not your thing but if you haven’t tried all the games then how are you meant to know there isn’t just one that you like?”

Sighing, you took the game and dropped it into your purse. It was dirty and definitely well used. A bit of black paint flaked off on your fingers.

Another game for you to keep in your cupboard and not look at again until months later when you were asked about your opinion on it. It wasn’t your fault that you didn’t have the console you needed and the simple answer of ‘just buy one for cheap’ wasn’t always available.

But in the coming weeks, you quickly realised that this wasn’t just another game.

At first, the things that went wrong were too minor to even pay attention to. Electronics started breaking frequently until the point where you had replaced your stereo twice in a week and no longer had a television. After that, you started feeling sickly and uncomfortable whenever you were in the house. A feeling of imposing nature settled upon your shoulders.

You spent more time away from home, staying away for as long as you could. When you tried to dogsit for your brother, the pup wouldn’t even enter the house.

It was late at night when you woke up in a cold sweat. Nausea coiled in your stomach and your heart was beating at the speed of light.

At first, you had no idea what had woken you.

And then you heard the rattling.

It was coming from the next room over. As though somebody had taken hold of your desk and was shaking it as roughly as they could.

You scrambled for your phone but it wasn’t there. It was sitting in your office.

You took a deep breath and slowly stepped from your bed. Your head felt fuzzy, as though you weren’t able to wake up properly. Every step was slow and lethargic.

Stumbling toward the door, you gingerly grabbed the handle. As you opened it, your mind caught up with your body and you remembered that you shouldn’t just burst in on a potential invader.

But it was too late.

The person, for it had to be a person, stood in the middle of the room. Its body was so dark that it blended in with the shadows surrounding it. Two bright red eyes shone, illuminating enough that it showed some of the creatures ashen features. It had sharp features that were definitely human. Though as you stared at it, you knew that it was anything but.

It smiled and began turning into small squares, pixelating into the air and disappearing into something behind it.

You flicked on the light as fast as you could but it was gone. Sitting in the middle of the desk, the black cartridge seemed to emit its own darkness.

Dr. Smiley

The building was beyond restoration, crumbling and derelict. You were sure that it hadn’t been occupied for at least a decade. Perhaps even longer.

For months now, you had been going through the motions to have everything approved and organised. You had gotten clearance, hired the workers, discussed things with any neighbours, and even paid extra for the best machinery to get everything done quicker.

And now they were refusing to do anything.

“I’m sorry, and I will compensate for the time wasted, but my men are saying no,” the on-site manager said. “I know you’re not from these parts but we’ve always known there’s something wrong with this building. Rumours and superstitions abound and I wouldn’t blame my men for not wanting to anger a ghost.”

“They’ll be pissing off something far worse than a ‘ghost’ if they continue refusing to even go in there,” you snapped.

He glanced towards his workers and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Once he left, you turned your attention to the house. Why anybody would have wanted a house in this location was beyond you but now that you had inherited it, you could see potential.

Although the entire place was probably crawling with all manners of disgusting flora.

Perhaps you could use that to get the health counsel to do the job for you.

They will still talking and you could see the weariness on their faces. Sighing, you stalked your way to the front door and pushed it open with one hand. It creaked with the effort.

You stood with your hands out towards the men. “I’m going to walk this entire house!” you called. “And if your ghost doesn’t accost me while I’m there, then I’m going to be expecting you to all get on with it, alright?”

Nothing immediately jumped at you when you entered. The door struggled to open and it swung shut on its own accord. If that was the haunting that they were talking about…

A roach skittered along the floor in front of you, darting under a derelict sofa stained with an unknown substance. Several of the windows had been broken so it wasn’t surprising to find that graffiti and markers had been used to etch various names into the walls.

You walked through a destroyed kitchen, passed a bedroom with a smashed crib, and even kicked open a door that led to a filthy storage room.

No ghost jumped out at you.

Problems started presenting themselves when you walked down one of the hallways and pushed open a bedroom door. The entire room felt set apart from the rest of the place with almost-new curtains that had been drawn shut. Blankets covered the bed, dirty but still there. You immediately thought somebody may be squatting there but your concerns changed when you noticed the wall.

Black mold. It crawled its way up the side, covering most of what had once been white wallpaper. You brought one hand up to shield your mouth and stepped out, slamming the door closed.

If there was an infestation then you had to get the health department immediately. This was –

Your thoughts were interrupted by something grabbing you. Panic filled your mind as a sharp weapon was pressed against your throat.

“Well now, I just know that you don’t have an appointment,” a voice said close to your ear. “I don’t like trespassers.”

Thinking on instinct, you threw your head backwards as hard as you could. There was a satisfying impact followed by a loud yelp of pain. The weapon around your throat moved away so you kicked the guy in the shin and bolted for it.

The house felt bigger while you were running but nobody came after you. You didn’t hear any footsteps or other sounds of a chase.

Bursting through the front door, you winced at the bright light. The house hadn’t seemed nearly that dark until compared to the outside.

You collided with one of the workers in your rush and nearly knocked everybody to the ground.

“What’s happened?”

“It was that ghost, I’m telling you.”

“We warned her, boss.”

You cleared your throat and straightened up, making eye contact with each man individually. “There is no ghost,” you said. “Only a squatter who I shall deal with using police force if needed. However, I do believe any construction will have to wait because I saw an excessive spread of black mold within the house.”

They all spoke amongst themselves, discussing options. You glanced back to the house and allowed your attention to find its way to the bedroom window. Though fleeting, a masked face peered out at you from within.

Eyeless Jack

In many ways, what happened that night was your boss’ fault.

Having just finished working a double shift that ended at almost 1 in the morning, you were exhausted upon returning home. You walked past the neighbouring apartment with only one thought on your mind – sleep.

It was then that you heard a thump coming from within the house, followed shortly by a muffled scream.

Tired, you had to pause to register what was happening and, by the time your brain caught up, your heart was in full-on panic mode. You slowly reached into your pocket and dialed the emergency number as slowly as you dared, whispering into the phone and being reassured that a police presence would be arriving shortly.

Your neighbour was a young man though, just out of rehab and beginning to make his way through life. The longer you stood and waited for the police, the guiltier you felt.

So you reached into the pot plant and pulled out his spare key. After a short while of building yourself up, you unlocked the door and crept inside.

It was dark with the outside world shrouded via heavy curtains. You could barely make your way through the unfamiliar apartment and you didn’t dare turn on the light. Damn, you were extremely tired.

Part of your brain suggested that you had imagined the whole thing. It was a byproduct of a sleep-addled mind or something. That would be embarrassing to explain to the police and to your neighbour. Would you get charged for breaking and entering or could you blame it on your tiredness?

Your doubts didn’t get much further than that because somebody grabbed you from within the room.

A horrible iron-filled scent attacked your senses as you took in the bedroom. It looked like your neighbour was tied to the bed though he wasn’t moving. Somebody stood behind you, their breathing heavy and their grip strong.

They pushed your wrist closer to your back, preventing you from wriggling free of their grip. A blade, small and yet sharp, pressed against the side of your throat.

“Trying to play the hero, are we?” snarled a voice. “Have you called the cops?”

The blade pressed against your skin and you quickly spat out a yes.

“Probably right before you came in, if not earlier… I’d have enough time to kill you but then you’d be an absolute waste. Nowhere to stash a body around here and they’d comb the entire area if you were missing…”

“I didn’t mean –“

You were shoved forward before you had a chance to react. In the dark, you couldn’t make anything out and you hit the wall unexpectedly. Now, far enough away, you turned and tried to make out the face of your assailant. He melded in with the shadows and you ran your fingers along the wall until you found a light switch.

The lights flickered on and you gasped.

He wore a dark blue mask, a black ooze dripping from the eye sockets and onto his hoodie. There was no reaction to the lights. Not even a blink.

“Don’t you want to beg for your life?” he asked. “The other one pleaded nearly constantly until I shut him up.”

“You killed him…”

“He isn’t dead, just unconscious,” the man scoffed. “I try to avoid killing them, if I’m able to.”

“The police will be here soon,” you warned.

“Oh I know. That’s the only reason that I’m leaving this very minute.” He made his way over to the window, never turning to stop facing you. The bedroom window slipped open without a sound and he began climbing out. “I’d keep my doors locked if I was you. Plenty of unsavory characters live in these parts.”

And just like that, he was gone.

Glitchy Red

Your younger cousin squealed excitedly, holding the game to her chest in joy. “I love it so much!” she said. “I can’t believe I used to think Pokémon was for babies. At first when the music randomly cut out, I did think it was super weird but I’ve gotten used to it now.”

“I don’t think it’s meant to do that,” you chuckled. “But cheap versions, you know?”

It was good to see that your last-minute gift hadn’t gone to waste. You had been worried that the present’s fun would be lost on your video game-hating cousin but she had actually decided to give the game a shot. Now you had somebody in the family to speak to which was extraordinarily exciting.

“What are you meant to say to Red when he asks you whether or not he’s a joke?” she aske unexpectedly. “I know that if you say no, he goes away, and I’ve been too scared to try the other option.”

You frowned. “I don’t actually remember that part of the game.”

“Really? But it happens so often.”

When she realised that you really hadn’t encountered anything like that in the game before, she told you to wait a minute and came back with her game.

“There was one around here,” she said, loading in. “Just give me a second and I’ll find it.”

You stayed much later than you had originally intended to that night. The two of you played through a lot of the game, waiting for the moment when Red would break the fourth wall and demand to know about your opinions on him.

It never came.

The game ran incredibly smoothly. It was quite odd. There weren’t any hiccups along the way nor horror-style glitches. The music didn’t even cut off which was apparently rare accourding to your cousin.

After a while, she sighed and handed it to you. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why it’s not breaking. I’ll go make us some food.”

You continued playing while she was gone, enjoying the memories that came with the game. It was as fun as you remembered until about five minutes after she left. The music just shut off unexpectedly and, no matter what you did, it refused to come back at all. Any other sound effects worked fine though.

“So you’re just programed to break when only one person’s in the room?” you joked.

Perhaps that was a bad choice.

Unexpectedly, a loud static erupted from the console, so ear-aching that it felt like your ears began to bleed. The game took on a horrible red tint and Red appeared on the screen, a dialogue box appearing beneath his blackened form.

AM I A JOKE TO YOU?

Horrified, you immediately shut down the game and threw the cartridge as far away from you as possible. You raced at full speed into the kitchen, nearly knocking several things over along the way.

“You have got to throw that game,” you wheezed.

“What? Why?” she asked.

“There is something really fucked up with that game…” you said. “That thing with Red is absolutely not meant to happen. It felt like he was staring into my soul. You have to throw it out the moment you can. I will buy you another one but do not keep that.”

“Oh, alright,” she said, seemingly confused but nowhere as shaken as you were.

A faint static came from the living room, sending shivers down your spine.

Hobo Heart

Tears flowed down your face despite your best attempts to remain composed. “I’ve known for a while now,” you managed to say.

Your ex-boyfriend seemed shocked, though not entirely upset about your admission. “How long –“

“Since last week,” you said. “Though I’ve heard it’s been going on for considerably longer.”

He shifted his weight and took a deep breath. You recognised this behavior from the past, already hearing the words you knew were coming. The apologies and the false regret, the promises about not doing it again, and then the eventual guilt-tripping. If you heard the latter, you weren’t sure your resolve would hold.

“Goodbye,” you said firmly.

“Wait!”

You ignored the calls, making your way home at a steady place. A few people offered you concerned looks so you rubbed away the tears and took a few deep breaths.

Several months of your life had been completely wasted. You had put so much time and energy into a person who didn’t care one ounce about you.

Just great.

You turned onto your street and made your way to the house across from your own. The woman who lived there was always busy and she only came home to feed her dog before disappearing again. Thankfully, she trusted you to spend time with Bruno.

Bruno came racing over to the gate and jumped up for head scratches. He was a beautiful Afghan Hound with a dark coat and bright eyes.

“At least I know that you’ll always be by my side,” you said, running his fingers through the dog’s fur.

A tear slipped out and you quickly rubbed it away. You dug around in your bag and took out a couple treats, offering him.

A second bark brought your attention to the street.

Standing there, a small white dog with a scruffy coat stared up at you. It looked friendly enough and, after cautiously checking it out, you crouched down and gave it a treat.

“Hello,” you cooed. You gave the pup a few scratches and smiled. “How are you doing, hm? No collar? But you must have an owner because your coat is all groomed and soft. Did you get out or slip your leash?”

You looked around the streets to see if anybody. Nobody jumped out so you gave the dog another treat and brought it into the garden with Bruno to protect it from cars.

The two barked and played with little issue and you messages friends and family about the events of the day.

It was about half an hour later when the air was starting to get chilly. You stood and the small scruffy dog began barking excitedly. Its tail whipped through the air and it jumped up against the fence. A man wearing a white hoodie was standing down the street. You glanced at the dog, scooped it up and made your way to where he was.

“Excuse me,” you said. “I think that I found your dog.”

He turned to look at you and you startled slightly at his rather unusual face paint. A white skull was painted onto his face, similar to something you would see at a college convention.

He glanced down at the happy dog and sighed. “So that’s where he got to.”

“I’m sorry if you were looking for him. I took him off the street to protect him from any cars or anything.”

“It’s fine. He always shows up eventually,” the guy said. “You can just put him down. He’ll follow me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

Then he turned and started walking away. You hurriedly put the dog down and it immediately bounded after him, falling into step directly beside him. They disappeared around a corner and you returned to your own house.

The day had gotten much warmer suddenly.

#creepypasta #scenarios #ben drowned x y/n #bloody painter #clockwork #dr smiley #eyeless jack x reader #hobo heart #dark link

233 notes · View notes

extremelyblackandwhite · 4 years ago

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innocence - 22

PAIRING: bodyguard!bucky barnes x innocent actress!reader

WARNINGS: age gap

A/N: i’m so sorry this one took a bit longer, i literally panicked and rewrote it several times and had to stop myself from rewriting this section. hope you enjoy xxx

NEXT CHAPTER

The things drained out slowly, the sounds of the coffee machine buzzing warm liquid into brown stained porcelain cups, the meshed chatter of those surrounding her, the bell ringing once anyone came into the coffee shop. Things dripped like honey from a wooden spoon yet everything registered as messy, scream-ish sounds with images of beige bleak environments. Her hands were folded over each other, resting under her chin, lips slightly open and eyes looking at the fading wood of her table. Her breathe condensed as it hit the cold air, vanishing like time itself as she waited for Chuck to arrive.

The bell rang once again, this time calling for her attention. Chuck stepped inside the coffee shop wearing a long brown trench coat and oversized black sunglasses like some contemporary Humphrey Bogart. He sat in front of her, tense expression.

- Are you sure you want to do this, Y/N?

- Yes. - her voice wavered as she slide a white envelope towards him yet it remained in the middle of the table.

- You’re gonna regret it. - he took the envelope, putting it on the pocket of his trench coat. - Does Bucky know?

- No. - her fingers were tangled in her hair, pulling it ever so slightly as she looked to the side.

- Don’t you think you should know before you make this decision?

- I know what I’m doing, Chuck. - every breathe seemed to exit her lungs as she got up from the sit, pulling her bag over her shoulder. - I have to go, Bucky’s expecting me. I’ll see you on set.

- You can change your mind.

- I won’t. - she put on her dark rimmed sunglasses, turning on her heels to exit the coffee shop.

The surroundings were different; that of a coffee house and of Brooklyn streets but everything still ran painfully slow, like a deteriorating movie shoot. The weather was cloudy, foggy, not allowing for anything but the lights of the Christmas decorations wrapped around the light posts and the traffic lights to be seen in the horizon. The cold wetted her lashes and lips as she strode through the ends of Brooklyn’s autumn. She didn’t know how far she was from James’ yet all she wanted to do was walk and hear nothing but the sound of her heels clicking against the sidewalk.

Y/N knew an abstract way of getting to his flat yet all she wanted to do was let the cold hit her face and hair, swallow her whole and leave her stuck. Maybe Chuck was right but she couldn’t tell him, she shouldn’t tell him. Maybe she was a coward yet that was something she surely had heard before.

The young actress allowed the wind to move her down the street until she mindlessly ended up in front of Bucky’s apartment. Her head moved to look up to the top of the building, observing every single window decorated with Christmas lights except for Bucky’s. Her breathe once again condensed, flying high in the air as she scavenged her pockets for her keys. Once in hand, she exited the cold into the warmness of the building he lived in, her once strong convictions melted as she felt she walked on glass as she approached the door she had left early this morning. Maybe she shouldn’t have left, what if she had stayed with Bucky, cuddling, coffee and granola breakfast. As she twisted the key opening the door, her eyes focused on the mirror which laid as mere decor on his living room. Her brain played tricks on her, showing the same red lipstick word only to fade away leaving her holding the key on the door and staring at nothing but clear mirror.

- Princess? - Bucky appeared from the other side of the living room, dressed in loose clothing. - Hypnotised by your own reflection?

- Yeah. - she snapped out of her own cage of memories, closing the door with her feet all with a little smile on her face. - I’m sorry, the meeting was ... long.

- How was it? - he paced to her, arms wrapping loosely around her waist, pulling her close to him. - I hope it wasn’t too bad.

- It was fine. - she lied, leaning against his chest. - Nothing too different from the rest. Same old.

- You’re freezing. - he kissed the top of her head. - You need warmer clothing.

- Cold is psychological.

- Sure it is, princess. Why don’t you go grab something to eat while I set you a nice warm bath so you don’t get sick?

She merely nodded, not exactly knowing how to react as guilt started to weight on the bottom of her throat. Even if she tried to tell him not to, to just rest himself which he deserved much more than her, her own guilt kept her shut and staring at the inside of his fridge while he disappeared into the bathroom. He had a fully stocked fridge, probably had gone shopping while gone, as she couldn’t pin point a single thing missing. Yet, she didn’t feel like eating and instead poured herself a glass of unsweetened cranberry juice. Chuck was right, she knew he was right and she knew she should tell him yet she also knew she shouldn’t. Her eyes didn’t focus on anything, instead she was lost in her own mind as she drank the red juice from the beautifully crafted glass.

She knew it would be out tomorrow, it would be out tomorrow and he would see it and so would everyone. Her bag was standing on the counter, she could call Chuck and just go back on it yet she couldn’t. She wanted to regret it, but she could only feel guilty about blindsiding Bucky.

- Hey princess, you ready? - his voice echoed from the bathroom. She felt even guiltier as she stepped inside the bathroom wrapped in his robe to see the low dimmed light courtesy of some tea lights accompanied by a bubble filled bath. - I had these from when the light went off the compound. I don’t think they smell like anything.

- Bucky ...

- I also didn’t know if you were allergic to my shower gel so I used soap to make bubbly water.

- Bucky, you shouldn’t have.

- You’ve been through some past bad days, you deserve a treat. Get in before it gets cold.

She wanted to cry. As she felt the water warm her skin she wanted to cry, the guilt bubbling up to the surface. Laying under the bubbles, neck and head only visible she couldn’t help but feel awful that she didn’t regret it. Looking into his blue eyes she felt awful but she still didn’t, she couldn’t say she would’ve done things differently but she felt guilty, guilty it was the wrong thing to do. It was the wrong thing to do and he did not deserve it. Bucky did not deserve this and as she looked back at him she couldn’t stop silent tears from rolling down her face.

Bucky frowned, looking around and wondering if something had made her upset. The mirror. He should’ve covered the mirror.

- Princess, I’m so sorry about the mirror. I’ll have it taken away tomorrow.

- No. - she cleaned her cheeks with the back of her hand. - I did something terrible, James.

- No, you didn’t.

- I did and I don’t even regret it. - she looked at the bubbles covering the palms of her hands. - I can stop it and I ... I don’t want to.

- You can’t do bad things, princess. You’re too good.

- I’m not.

- Maybe it’s not a bad thing ... morally ambiguous? - his finger caressed her cheekbone, moving from the very end of her bone to her hair, pushing it behind her ear. - Whatever it is princess, it’ll be alright.

He leaned to kiss her, cupping her face in his hands. It was sweet, soft, full of emotion and she would rather lose herself in his kiss than her guilt. Her hand bunched the fabric of his white jumper pulling him closer enough that had it not been for his perfect balance, he would’ve fallen inside the bath tube. They broke the kiss once the oxygen ran out and she could only think of how sinful he looked with his cherry red wet lips open.

- Get inside the tub, please. - she pleased with those eyes which Bucky couldn’t deny. He quickly got rid of his clothes, submerging himself in the bath with her.

Bucky pulled her on top of him, resting his chin on top of her shoulder, feeling her soft skin against his scruff. She turned her head kissing his cheek before learning against his chest.

- You’re gonna hate me tomorrow. - she mumbled, eyes fixated on the tiles of the bathroom.

- We’ll see what happens tomorrow but I can assure you I’ll never hate you,

She didn’t believe him and instead let herself sink against his skin, hoping she could remember what he felt like, remember his breathe hitting the top of her head or his hand intertwined with hers. The water got cold and both of them exited the bathroom to go to sleep yet she couldn’t. The only time she could close her eyes was when the daylight painted both of them golden once her lids were to heavy for her to remain awake. However, both of them wouldn’t be asleep for longer as when silent settled on the room it was rudely interrupted by Bucky’s phone ringing. Bucky groaned grabbing it from his side table before exiting the room. Sam.

- What’s wrong?

- You need to turn your TV on. - he said in a stern voice. - Channel one.

Bucky rolled his eyes, probably another video of him looking great during a press or some kitten stuck on a tree. Turning off the television and switching to channel one, it quickly dawned on him that it was none of those things as blasted on his television was a slightly blurry yet very recognised photo of him and Y/N. He dropped his phone on the couch, eyes glued onto the screen.

- So ... do you hate me now?

taglist: @disasterbii @lookiamtrying @buckysteveloki-me @americasass81 @jamesbarnesappreciationclub @lostinthebeans @mariahthelioness29 @buckyandsebastian @peaches-roses-sins @theadorasabditory @sipsteacasually @saiyanprincessswanie @booktease21 @noiralei @learisa @everythingisoverratedbutgreat @uglipotata72829 @naturalthrone22 @husherstan @mandiiblanche @vicmc624 @newyorkgoddess @itsallyscorner @chipilerendi @emzd34 @writerwrites @bluevxnus @that-girl-named-alex @captnrogers @nsfwsebbie @sarge-barnes-sir

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dancing-the-hellfire-rumba · 4 years ago

Text

I’ll Tell You My Sins (So You Can Sharpen Your Knife)

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Fem!Reader

Warnings: angst! A lot! (ends in fluff tho), canon typical violence, briefly mentioned and very vaguely descried torture, blackmailing.

Word Count: eight fucking thousand words what the fuck

Summary: Reader hides important information about her past from both Steve and Bucky, causing serious damage to their relationships with her. When Bucky’s severely (likely fatally) hurt, the Reader tries to finally do what’s right.

Beta: @walkingaline and I genuinely couldn’t have done it without her. She’s the sweetest fuckin person.

A/N: I’ve dedicated my life to this for two weeks, and it’s positively the longest one-shot I’ve ever written. I’m rather proud of how it turned out, and the feelings I got to explore. Would really love to know what you think!

It’s- vines, climbing up her organs, endless, crawling, and overflowing, thorns stuck inside her skin, digging in, and the breaths come shorter, clipped, chest weighted. There’s no alleviating this pressure, this overwhelming whirlwind of emotions, chaotic, heavy and filthy, slimy and awful.

The rumble of her engine, a loud interruption to her vicious thoughts, digging their claws inside her eyes, filling them with tears. The world is blurry, but the vibration- it's a welcome distraction. Familiar and strong, her motorcycle drives her at this point, muscle memory leading to the Compound, tears flying off her face by the whipping wind.

She’s booking it. Time barely registers. It’s somewhere between lashing thoughts and trembling fingers that the off-white building rises between the trees, overwhelming and tall, glinting lights always on, no matter the time of night. Somewhere between gasping, fast breaths and stuttering heartbeats that she throws the bike to park and runs, fast passes every lock with her ID and forgoes the elevator, knowing full well that the adrenaline thrumming in her veins will carry her up the stairs faster.

Shoes as if weighed by rocks, she feels slow, stuck in mud almost, liquid cement, sinking, drowning in quicksand as she rounds the corner and- Steve’s there, arms crossed over his chest, busted bottom lip pursed with his top one, a deep sigh swelling his chest. His hair is longer than the last time she saw him, he looks battered and bruised, and she’s known him for years- she can read his face clear as day. And as situations like this always have him, she knows, in the clench of his jaw, the statue-still set of his eyebrows, in his stony posture; he’s as worried as he is determined.

The phone call had been rushed.

She shouldn’t have heard it, about to jump in her shower, had she not forgotten her towel on her bed. Naked, feet padding on her plush rug, she digs in her bedside table for her usually silent device. It’s Steve, and she hasn’t heard from him in nearly a month and a half. Instantly she knows something isn’t right.

There’s only so many seconds it takes for the words to sink in, words like “mission went wrong”, and “hurt”, and “won’t make it”, and “Bucky”. Soon she’s pulling on clothes at lightning speed like the universe depends on it, shower be damned. Keys, jacket, helmet forgone, tears stream down her face as if she’s already lost him, bike kick-started because what else is there to do but be there.

And now? She’s here. And she feels foreign and bizarre, stepping in a space that she barely belongs in anymore. It’s sorta how she imagines entering an old house that’s now inhabited by new residents feels like- it feels the same, but in the same way it feels all too different, strange and foreign; revisiting an old life that’s been made into a new one for someone else.

It really doesn’t matter though, does it? Because she’s not here for herself- not for Fury, not Steve, not for the Avengers, or the missions. She’s here- she’s here for him.

Steps even slower now, approaching the Captain himself, very much aware of her knotted shoulders, her shaking hands. It’s evident, suddenly, in his posture that he knows she’s there. His shoulders stiffen just this bit more, and with a breath with which his chin raises a notch, he turns to see her. One foot behind the other, and he moves out the way, letting her in his spot in front of the window of the room Bucky is in-

A gasp.

Time finally stops.

Unrecognizable. Buried under wounds and bruises, endless tubes- her lost boy, James, Bucky. Tears fall at a new speed, and she allows this moment of vulnerability in front of Steve, allows herself to cover her mouth, her expression crumples, her tears flow freely, and- despite being mad at her, despite having patches to mend (if they can even be mended anymore), Steve is there, solid as always, with a hand on her shoulder, urging her in his arms. Old friendships die slowly, she thinks bitterly, and sinks in the comfort, eyes unable to be torn from the sight before her.

It takes some time, a good chunk of it, to compose herself, to part from Steve’s warmth and wipe the wetness off her cheeks. She wraps her arms around her front and shakes.

“We got ambushed,” he murmurs, and the statement is heavy. There’s guilt, sorrow, she’s sure it’s not fun to recall. “My fault. Didn’t know they were that many, must’ve had false info. Barely got to get him out of there.” She shudders. The image is loud and clear in her mind; Steve limping with the leg he’s currently not leaning on, busted and bleeding, carrying an unconscious Bucky, blood dripping from his mouth. She flinches.

“Can I-“ hesitation. A deep breath, shoulders squaring, remembering she no longer asks, she states. “I want to go in.” Steve stares for a second, calculating, thinking, looks back at Bucky, limp on the bed. He nods.

“Go.”

Before she knows it, the door shuts behind her slowly, an industrial, metal click, signifying a sealed door, nearly impenetrable if it was locked. She tries to be calm, but there’s no way, no reason to look composed either, so she flings herself to Bucky’s side, fingers twitching, hands hovering over him, afraid to touch him in case he frails like a burnt paper, in case he turns to dust and disappears before her very eyes.

Tears, once again, fall freely on her cheeks, tracing paths already carved by the previous breakdown, and the prospect of never seeing his wonderful crystal eyes, blue and loving, tears her apart. Worse so, the idea that the last time she saw them, they were red, hateful, betrayed, staring at her as if she was a monster, nothing more than the true scum of the earth, and he was right, and she will likely never be able to make everything right again.

It feels like claws are tearing at her chest like it’s low quality linen, destroying every tiny piece of her into infinitesimal other pieces and then tearing those too. There she is, now, nothing but rubble and ash, on the floor, limp and bleeding. Heart far too heavy for her chest, breaking again and again, her temples feel like they’re about to burst from the pressure.

Sitting on the chair next to his hospital bed, her fingers tremble, carefully sliding under Bucky’s still ones, holding his hand between hers gently, like a lifeline, leaning her forehead on it. She sits there, folded, crumpled, and she cries.

Y/n’s palms are red and kind of stingy, but she pulls her sleeves over them and keeps holding the scalding cup of coffee between her hands anyways. Eyes closed, she lets the steam warm her nose, lets the scent comfort her, and she imagines, with her headphones plugged in her ears, that she is elsewhere, in her apartment with Bucky, on the fire escape, watching the sun descend beneath the skyline of New York City. She imagines his arms around her waist, sitting between his legs with her own dangling off the metal landing and over the street. His voice, vibrating through his chest, onto her back, murmuring teasingly in her ear, nose buried in her hair and his warmth all around her. It’s peaceful, it’s soft and warm and everything she has ever wanted.

When her eyes open, she’s met with sky blue ones, not the ones she was just dreaming of, and she flinches, suddenly very happy her coffee cup has a lid over it.

Steve.

With a sigh, she takes a calming breath, and pulls her headphones out of her ears, tugged by the wire pinched between her fingers. She places them gently on the table in the cafeteria for guests and low-level agents in the compound. It’s nighttime, and the lights in the cafe make Steve’s hair look golden and glimmering.

“How’re you holding up?” She’s not sure how much he means that, and she knows he’s still very much mad at her for everything that’s happened between them. She knows, however, he’s also the one that called her to let her know about Bucky. She feels heavy.

“I can’t stop fuckin’ crying, if that’s what you’re asking,” she tells him, no care to maintain a strong persona, not in front of the person she used to consider her best friend until not so long ago. She flicks the edge of the lid of her beverage with the tip of her nail and looks up at him. Steve looks better than she does for sure. Not because he cares less, or because he’s slept at all, but because the serum gives him more stamina than her. He’s not as tired as she is, despite the hours he’s been awake for. Still, despite his enhanced powers, there’s purple bags under his eyes. “You?”

He doesn’t say anything, just looks at her with a small shake of his head, sighing deeply. She takes that as her answer. Despite wanting to fiddle with something, a way to prevent her hands from shaking, a nervous habit, she pushes her coffee cup towards him, a peace offering, something to hopefully bring him the comfort it brings her. Steve doesn’t touch it. She fiddles with her sleeves instead.

The cafeteria, despite being open twenty-four seven, is quiet. A blanket of silence falls over them and Y/n crosses one leg under the other just to have something to do, something instead of opening her mouth and ruining the temporary civility between them. The words bubble, climb over one another like beasts, up her throat, and threaten to spill- and there’s just so much of them. So many apologies to make, so many explanations to offer, so many please let’s just go back to how we were ’s, so many this is killing me ’s, so many I can’t bear the thought of losing him without at least saying I’m sorry one last time. I don’t want that to happen with you too ’s. It’s all clogging the back of her throat like a spoonful of thick syrup that just won’t go down.

The idea that this might happen with Steve one day too overwhelms her. Two of the people she had found family in now hate her. She can’t let this happen with him, can’t lose him without telling him all of it. The realization; it’s the drop that makes the glass overflow. What if- what if tomorrow, or a month from now it’s Steve on that bed, Steve dying, what if she doesn’t get to tell him all of it? Never gets to apologize? How will she ever forgive herself for the things she didn’t say?

Her eyes well again. Her tongue feels like lead. It’s time.

“I…” She can’t bear to look at him. “Steve, I’m…” a shiver runs violently through her spine. “I’m so sorry. For all of it. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not Bucky, Y/n.” It’s like a kick in the stomach. She hears what he’s saying. I can’t forgive you for both of us. It almost sounds like your apology is useless.

“Well it’s not just Bucky I need to apologize to.” She looks up at him, and she wills the tears to be held at bay, matching his intensity with her gaze. She clenches her fists, fingernails digging in her skin just to distract part of her brain, to feel less numb. “Do you want to hear the truth?” Steve watches her. His irises bounce between hers, they do a once over of her stance, and she knows how small she looks in her seat, in contrast to him, who, despite his frame of mind, always makes a room smaller just by being in it.

His expression is grim, as he nods seriously. She takes a deep breath.

“This is the truth.”

The older she grows, Y/n keeps thinking that she’s experienced everything there is to. But it truly feels to her like she’s never experienced this kind of cold before. And it’s not- it’s not just external temperature. It’s icicles, lodged under her skin, brutally freezing, causing her to endlessly shudder, tremble like a leaf out in the winter, causing her jaw to lock, her limbs to knot up.

She walks and walks, a woman with a purpose, head held high, as high as a prisoner can hold it and- something really isn’t right with this morning. Something isn’t right, and she can tell because this morning she- she felt something she hasn’t felt in years, something she thought she’d never again feel, a bubble of emotion she truly believed they had snuffed out in her. But it becomes an itch, an itch she can’t seem to scratch, something she can’t exactly put words to, can’t name.

The more she walks, the more the feeling of dread climbs up her throat. This she’s familiar with; fear. Cold and fear, clouding her senses, paralyzing her, as Müller’s door raises in front of her, and she struggles to remind herself to keep walking, keep breathing, one foot in front of the other, inhale, exhale, calm down. There’s no way to escape this anyways.

Director Müller was as tall as his voice was shrill and loud. His features were sharp, glass-cutting cheekbones and dimples that showed far too often. His hair was strawberry blonde and his eyes sunken, as if he was seventy years old with one foot in his grave. His skin looked taught over his bones. Always sharply dressed and always hiding about a dozen knives and pistols somewhere in his office. He liked Japanese jazz, had an affinity for yelling, and drank his whiskey straight. The only affection he’d ever had was reserved for his two small birds, Friedrich and Brigitta, whose singing he adored and who roamed in his office freely.

When he’d first kidnapped her and her older brother, Y/n sat doe eyed and watched as they beat her only sibling, her last relative left alive, to a pulp right in front of her. They didn’t know she had things to offer then. They did it for fun, a show of their capabilities, power play. They did it to break her into submission. When they found out, though, about her knowledge of science, her love for technology… That’s when her life truly ended.

She walks, now, down the freezing corridors, and knocks on Müller’s door three times. Status report straight to me every four days, he’d muttered in sharp German way back when he’d first assigned her missions, back in the beginning, and true to his word, every four days, Y/n was forced to see the skin around his bony face tighten and stretch with another chilling smile.

“Come in,” he yells, and his awful voice bounces in the empty, concrete walls of the corridor. She hears his birds. The door creaks open loudly, metal as it is, and she quickly closes it behind her so that Friedrich and Brigitta won’t escape, something she’s learned to do over the years, after one particular incident no one likes to remember, never mind speak of. He calls her last name with lewd, slimy confidence, supposedly happy to see her, his rotten dimples making an appearance. She sits on one of his chairs, upon his prompting “How’s your assignment progressing?”

“Nicely, sir. I’ve reprogrammed the Chair and fixed previous faults.”

“See, Y/n…” He sits on the plush leather chair behind his desk, hands wringing together and as he says her name, he sits up, elbows on the arm rests. His long lashes and abyssal brown eyes examine her. “I think you’re not telling me the truth.”

“Uh…” Stance maintained, but lips pursed and hands just slightly trembling, she keeps his gaze. She can’t displease him. There’s no room for her failure. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about, sir. There’s… surely ways to improve, b-but the chair- it works well.”

“Ah, but that is not what I hear.” Müller stands up dramatically, rounds his desk with slow steps, and Friedrich starts chirping consistently, sensing the sudden tension in the room, loud, high pitch hurting her ears. She dares not flinch. The cold returns fiercely, heart climbing up to her throat, choking her. This won’t end well. “As a matter of fact,” he leans, rests on his desk, right in front of her, loving his height difference and accentuating it by standing while she sits, a reminder to both of them that he’s superior. Y/n wants to melt into a puddle on the floor, never to be seen again. “I hear that Smith, your test subject… he has almost already recovered.”

Referring, of course, to the poor boy whom they snatched and have provided her as a sick guinea pig, a way for her to test the torture chair they have forced her to make. It’s a requirement, of course, that she tests it on him herself.

“Sir, I don’t think-“

“DON’T LIE TO ME!” In the flash of a blink, he’s pulled a knife from his belt and he’s pushing her back in her seat, by pressing his blade on her throat. “You know what HAPPENS,” a tilt of his head, “when you LIE.” Friedrich is joined by Brigitta, as well as the echo of Müller’s voice, and Y/n’s heartbeat accelerates, her breath is caught in her throat. She feels like her ears are about to burst.

“He was unconscious when-“

“What did I just say?” Lips purse, scared of making any sound that’ll piss him off further. “Seems to me like you’ve forgotten,” he murmurs, flicking his knife shut and narrowing his eyes. He takes a deep breath, straightens up and she doesn’t dare to move an inch, but it feels like her heart has plummeted to the center of the earth, and she wishes it could drag her too, as far away from this as possible. She’s well aware of what’s to come.

A chilling half hour later she finds herself sucking up tears that’ll only make her situation worse if someone were to see them. The cold, plastic, remote controller is in her hands, and it’s heavy as it’s ever been. She deems herself desensitized of the emotional toll forcefully inflicting torture on innocent people used to take. However, nothing, nothing, could possibly prepare her for what it feels like watching two HYDRA soldiers dragging her bleeding, thrashing brother from his armpits, and forcefully shoving him into the chair Y/n’s made. Director Müller watches her press the appropriate buttons with a sickly smile on his face.

She begs. For the first time in years, she begs God, the universe, something, to save her, to make her disappear. When this doesn’t work, when pleading for somebody to take mercy goes unheard, when the remote feels like the heaviest thing she’s ever lifted, her eyes draw to Müller, who’s watching her intently, waiting for her to carry on with her new assignment.

The millimeters her thumb has to cross feel endless. The process takes eons. The button is nearly unmoving.

Y/n will never forget her brother’s screams.

In the hours that follow, she’s trapped inside her chamber, a tiny room of blank four walls with a hard bed and an open toilet, looking more like a prison cell than anything, the only difference being that in the daytime she’s allowed to come and go as she pleases within the unrestricted areas.

Tears streak her cheeks for yet another night, and the despair has never felt like this before. She thought she’d escape it one day, the guilt, the weight, but it seems she’s trapped, like an ant under a boot, seconds before she bursts to pieces, with the pressure of the entire world on her chest.

The itch grows louder. It’s right there, in the bottom of her heart, something to pay attention to, in her state of absolute isolation and despair. She’s alone, has been alone for so many years, and she wonders, still, why she hasn’t killed herself yet, but the idea that if she does, they’ll probably also kill her brother comes and slaps her in the face. However, what else is there to do? How much torture can she make her brother go through because of her mistakes, how much guilt can she shoulder?

She sits on the bed, counts the bolts that are screwing the vent door on the ceiling, listens to footsteps pass by every so often, and ponders. Silent tears crawl down the curves of her face. She’s lost so much. She hasn’t spoken her native language in years, and sometimes she wonders if she’s forgotten how to.

A pair of heavy duty boots leisurely walk down the hallway, and she recognizes the voices of two guards. Conversation easily flows between them, and Y/n has no choice but to listen.

“Did you hear about the new chair the American has made?” one of them says. Her ears perk.

“The American? No, what about it?”

“They say it’s one of the most painful things they’ve ever used in HYDRA.” Y/n winces.

“Are you serious?”

“It’s what I heard. Wouldn’t wanna find out myself.” The soldiers share a chuckle. “Müller made the American do it on her brother. I hear he died about twenty minutes later.”

Y/n’s heart drops.

He- he’s- he’s dead?

“No kidding. The bastard survived six years. ‘S a wonder he’s lived this long” And as the soldiers pass by, Y/n’s left in her chamber. The silence grows deafening, but the echo of her heart splitting and falling apart, shattering on the hard concrete floor is ear-splittingly loud. All that she’s done, all the sacrifices, all the sheer, iron will she’s had to muster to maintain her sanity, all the awful things she’s done, the blood on her hands, the guilt, the pain she’s caused and- and in the end… he died by her own hand.

Chaos and confusion, an ocean of lashing thoughts violently crashing and pulling her under. It feels like the crescendo of the longest song that’s ever been written, six years of constant playing, and the orchestra’s hands are bleeding on the strings and buttons, coating everything with their own pain, worked down to the bone, and this is it- the minutes before it’s finally over. The roof is about to be blown off its hinges.

The itch is no longer underlying. It consumes her, and she knows, finally. She recognizes it. Escapism. Revenge.

Steve’s silent. He hasn’t looked away from her, hasn’t changed stance, still with his arms crossed over his chest and bulging underneath his dark green sweater. He’s staring at her, patiently as ever, with a set to his jaw that she knows isn’t there out of anger, but because he, too, is overwhelmed with emotion. His shoulders are no longer stiff, and he now has a cup of coffee too, finished in front of him. The bags under both their eyes are darker.

“I didn’t get to kill Müller. But I managed to run away. Barely. I disappeared, travelled to the States. I found Fury and sold all the information I knew about HYDRA and the department I had been held in, in return for protection. Fury took me in.” It’s a lifeless shrug, weighted and tired, and it’s then that Steve glances at his feet, then back at her. “I trained, learned how to fight properly. Used my knowledge for good. Made it to the Avengers in a desperate attempt to make up for all that I had done. ‘S when I met you.”

Steve seems to remember. He recognizes himself entering the story. It’s almost like he’s reliving the time they first met, back on that Helicarrier. A good memory, all things considered.

“There’s little excuse for me lying to you. I know. But please, you have to understand. The burden of getting to know the best friend of the person you’d been forced to help torture for years… becoming close friends with you? How could I ever say anything about anything and have you actually trust me?” She shook her head.

“What do you mean…?”

“They forced me to make weapons, new torture methods, even tried to make me refine Zola’s formula. A way to get a better grip on Bucky’s mind. I didn’t know much about all of it, nor who it was for, wasn’t my field anyways, and Zola’s formula was successful as it was, there wasn’t much for me to add. They later left me to the torture part, not the brainwashing. Even if I had known, though, I wouldn’t really have had a choice in the matter. I did anything I had to do to protect the only family I had left.” He nods seriously.

“We grew closer and closer and I wanted to tell you, to share my guilt with someone finally, but… the prospect of losing you was… too much. I didn’t want to lose the person that had reminded me for the first time in decades what it was like to be cared for. You were-“ a gulp “are like a brother to me.” Steve looks down. “I couldn’t see the betrayal on your face. It- it paralyzed me.

“I didn’t think you’d ever find out, honestly, how was I supposed to know you’d find my file? But don’t think I never felt guilty. It was always there, like everything could crumble at any moment, like a cloud looming over my head, but… I guess I kind of learnt to ignore it. I had found a family, Steve. After years of pain, pain received and pain caused, after so much darkness, I had finally found people who understood what guilt felt like, what it meant to be composed on surface level. I found people that loved me for what I was then and there. The idea of losing that crushed me.

“I know I can’t take it back, but for whatever it’s worth, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry Steve.”

Steve stays tight-lipped, pondering, staring at the table, then at her, then at the table again. He’s carefully controlling his expressions, clearly analyzing the information he’s been given, and she holds her breath. Whatever his reaction is, she thinks, nothing compares to the breath of fresh air she can allow herself to take, free of this awful, lengthy story. Finally, clear honesty, a sort of vulnerability with her best friend that’s different and new. True, down to its core.

It’s the sigh that does it for her. Resigned. Her eyes snap up at him. “You should’ve told me” He shuts his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose before looking up at her, and shaking his head. “I would’ve understood. Nothing would’ve changed.” He looks right at her, very much like a discouraged parent. “What am I gonna do with you?”

And it’s- it’s the way he says it, as if everything makes sense now, shoulders dropping all the way down. The way he just- like he says you absolute moron, but in their own, loving, sibling-like way. As if he can’t stay mad for too long. Looking at her with the tiniest sympathetic curl of his lip.

It’s relief, because it’s in that half a smile that she sees it all. She sees the forgiveness, the understanding. She sees the love. It’s as if he’s looking at her, saying family, am I right? Despite her situation, for the first time in years, so, so many years, she breathes deeply, breathes oxygen that feels nurturing to her lungs, that makes her think she’s floating, and smiles, apologetically, trying to telepathically communicate I’m sorry for being an idiot. Sorry for not trusting you. Sorry for fucking up this badly. I promise to be better.

She knows, he’ll always be there to give her another chance.

It’s moments, a handful of them, in which time and space seem to stop existing, to warp into something else entirely, a world that’s so confused, nobody knows how to put it back. It seems, in those moments, one forgets where they are, how they got there, their brain has not yet escaped from the liquefied dreamland it’s manifested, can’t seem to fit in the strict, square rigidness of reality.

Bucky finds himself in that place. His eyelids seem to weigh about twelve tons, barely feeling his fingertips. It takes a great deal of effort to have thoughts, to- to maintain them, and as his mind slowly starts running a little faster, he remembers faintly, cloudy memories barely registering, that the last thing he saw was three soldiers, that had sneaked up on him, he remembers the gun being aimed at him, instinctively moving and getting nailed in the stomach multiple times.

Wherever he is now, it’s quiet. He worries for a second that he’s been left for dead in the HYDRA base, worries that he’s either dying on the floor or a vague prison cell, resembling something he’s been in already, but he’s comforted by the fact that the surface he’s on seems soft, the lights behind his eyes bright. Whatever the case, he should wake up now, he might need to get up and defend himself.

And as his eyes open, heavy and tired, he meets another pair of gorgeous ones, familiar and soft, and he feels warm all over. He’s- he’s safe. He’s safe because she’s here, and he loves her, with all of his being he loves her, and she’s holding his right hand close to her chest, he feels everything, her warmth, and he knows it’ll all be okay, it’ll all fix itself. He doesn’t have to try.

There’s something lingering just beneath his skin though, a need to recoil. Like a small bucket of icy water thrown over him, because, yes, he loves her, but she betrayed him. She could be out to get him right now, could be working with HYDRA still, and he might be trapped somewhere, and his heartbeat accelerates, because he has to escape and he can’t trust her anymore- until he sees the tears. The tears streaking her cheeks, over old salty marks, and a smile, broken but whole. This isn’t the behavior of a captor, he decides, deems himself, if not safe, then entirely incapable of fighting back, should he need to anyways. Why worry now? Let his future self do the work.

His eyes move around the room, blue-ish gray walls vaguely familiar, and- there’s another figure, another pair of eyes- blue, happy. It’s Steve.

Bucky feels safe. He knows he’s alive. He knows he’s home.

Like any other free afternoon, Y/n finds herself on her couch, curled up as much as she can with a book in her lap. There’s a short lamp on the side table, and she leans on the armrest comfortably with her toes curled, flying through pages and pages of words. Her hair is down, she wears comfortable clothes, and has a blanket over her legs. The weather’s been getting colder lately.

A warm sound, four soft knocks on her wooden door, are enough to pull her out of her novel, enough to make her eyebrows stitch together. She’s not expecting anyone.

Her feet are bare and she’s well aware of how close her knives are to the front door, just in case she has to fling herself over and grab one. She presses her eye against the little peephole, but it’s old and foggy and the workers who had once repainted the building managed to cover part of it with small drops of paint and she hasn’t gotten around to trying cleaning it. Doorknob cold under her palm, she tilts and-

Oh.

The first thing she notices is his shirt, a maroon Henley, buried under two more layers of clothes, a brown hoodie and a darker brown leather winter jacket. The buttons on the collar of his Henley are open, giving her a cheeky peak of the skin of his chest. She loves this shirt on him. It feels like someone tugged at her heart from every direction. Longing.

The second thing she notices is that this- it’s Bucky. Bucky standing in front of her door with an expression she’s rarely, if ever, seen on his face before. Her favorite, gorgeous light blue eyes staring straight at her after briefly scanning her down, as if he, too, is making sure she’s actually there. She is. And so is he. Here. Now. In front of her. Looking at her. Her feet are on the floor, she’s not dreaming, the world is round and Bucky is here.

Oh God. He’s really at her door.

“James…”

He seems to shiver. A shake of his head, something she recognizes as him convincing himself this is happening, then eyes meeting hers again. He shoves his hands deeper in his pockets. She holds the door less tensely.

“I think…” squeezing his eyes shut for a moment, looking at the floor. “Steve said to talk to you.” A heavy breath. Shoulders awkwardly, tensely shrugging, sorta like a kid forced to apologize by their parent. She doesn’t know how, but her head manages a nod, gulping. She pulls away from the doorframe, makes way for him to pass.

“Come in.”

New York sounds as alive as it ever does, even at eleven at night, and Y/n wishes she was sitting, because her legs are unsteady. It makes tears well in her eyes, seeing him here again, in her kitchen, looking around absently. The world feels different, much like it did in the Compound when she’d gone to visit him, even if nothing has changed in it apart from them.

Despite the passing cars outside, and people yelling, heard through the open window, it feels quiet. As if they’re the only ones in the world, being here with him feels like a cosmic event. She remembers what it was like sitting here and being so overwhelmed by the love in her heart, remembers what it was like to be surrounded by his arms and held so impossibly close to his chest. She remembers what it was like to look in his eyes and see them so affectionately looking at her, as if she’s everything he could ever ask for, as if she’s the light in his world. The cold of the night and of the space between them feels very much like a slap in the face.

“I know you no longer work for them,” and it truly breaks her heart how part of that statement feels like he’s trying to convince himself, or as if it’s difficult for him to process. How awful, the shift between being someone’s favorite person and being someone who’s trustworthiness is little over questionable. The weight of being responsible for fucking up the most important relationships in her life suffocates her. “Steve told me.”

There’s nothing to do but nod numbly. She looks at him, watches the warm, glimmering lights of her kitchen fall on the curves and edges of his face, admires the yellow-ish hue outlining his features, making his eyes look iridescent.

She mustn’t cry.

“He told me everything, actually.”

She must not cry.

Bucky doesn’t say a lot of words, but they’re there, at the tip of his tongue, floating in the air like dust particles. In this, there’s a lingering question, a large Why. Why didn’t you say anything? Why did you hide all this from me? Why did it have to be this way?

Y/n looks down. What to say, really?

“I just- I can’t believe-“ she jumps at his loud tone, Bucky never one to have vocal outbursts. She sees the tears in his eyes, gaze lingering away from her, towards the living room for a second before looking up at the ceiling momentarily, then straight at her. His hands are shaking, and she sees it all then. The betrayal, the hurt, despair, the- the loss. There’s no alleviating this pain that overwhelms both of them. She hates herself for this, can’t believe she caused all of it.

“I- I did what I thought would be best for us-“

“No, don’t pull that shit with me.” He glares now and points at her, and she never, ever wanted to be in the receiving end of such an intimidating look. Venom is laced in his tone, harsh and biting, and it feels like the temperature in the room dropped below zero, her spine rigid. “You did what you thought was best for you,” said as calmly as the tears that slowly leak from the corners of his eyes and over the apples of his cheeks are. “In fact, I doubt you thought at all”

That’s not true though. The amount of times she’d sit in her bed, with his arms around her while he slept, weighed down by the lies and the guilt; the guilt of all the terrible things she’d done, and the guilt of hiding them from the most important people in her life. She’d scale the pros and cons of confessing everything, for hours she’d make lists in her head, extensively long, but the cons were always destructively larger and would always win. She’d choose to stay as she was, with them oblivious and happy, until they would finally see her for what she truly was, and she’d convince herself, it would all be worth it for the time spent with them.

“I couldn’t tell you- I couldn’t face the idea of losing you I-“

“So you’d rather lie to me? You’d rather hide your past from me? I trusted you, Y/n.” He hasn’t called her by her first name in so long, and it feels like he just took one of her knives on her kitchen counter and stabbed her straight in her chest with it. “I gave you all of me, I told you every single little thing about myself, everything I hated, everything I’ve done, and I trusted you to have it and- and you couldn’t even trust me to listen to you? To- to understand you?”

She deserves this, she does, but she can’t- can’t deal with him yelling at her and, reflexively, she lashes out- “I was scared, Buck,” –and it’s a pitiful excuse, she knows, but it’s the bitter truth and the reason behind everything. “You have to understand- this isn’t some black and white situation, I thought you’d hate me for everything, I didn’t wanna lose you, or Steve!”

“Scared?” he seethes, walking towards her with angry steps, and she starts stepping back too, entering the living room. She realizes how large he looks, how his anger fills every corner of the room. “You were scared?!” She can practically taste the condescension on her tongue. “And you think I wasn’t?! You think I wasn’t paralyzed you’d run away after everything I’d done? You think I wasn’t terrified of my feelings for you and how fast they came to be?” She wishes she could answer that, but part of her is terrified to know what he used to feel for her and how much of it she actually ruined.

“But I’m a fucking adult, and I dealt with it. You… you lied about everything. Did you even give a shit about how badly you were gonna fuck me over, if I ever found out?”

“Does it look like I fucking like it? You know how sorry I am, how much I hate myself for everything I’ve done to ruin both yours and Steve’s trust in me!”

“I don’t know shit,” her legs bump on the back of her navy couch. “You hurt me- hurt us. We gave you everything, I put my heart on the line for you, and you couldn’t even have a little faith in me to believe in you, and what you truly are.” A monster rings in Y/n’s brain. Nothing but a monster.

“Please, stop.” Submission. That’s all she has left, by now, because his words ring nothing but true. Because she can’t bear to hear everything she feels about herself being told back to her in his voice, it would literally be a nightmare come true. Everything drains in her body, and it all comes down to this. She just wants all of this to stop, the pain in both of them to stop.

“No,” he hisses, and she can’t really blame him. He’s close to her, about two feet away, and she’s trapped between him and the couch. “I’m not gonna stop just because things got uncomfortable for you, just because you had to come back because I was dying in a gurney. You barely tried to make everything right before that. Do you even care?”

“Don’t you see that I did everything because I love you?!”

Silence. Bucky nearly staggers back, as if the words that have never, before, been said came out and punched him in the face.

“Why the fuck do you think I didn’t tell you anything? Because I wanted to break your heart? No, you clueless asshole, I’m in fucking love with you!” His expression is stunned, eyes wide at her outburst, watching as she takes the steps she needs to close the gap between them. Her finger is jabbing at his chest, which is raising and falling with panted breaths. “I couldn’t stand the thought of losing you, couldn’t take to watch your trust break, couldn’t bear the thought of you finally seeing I’m a monster!” And she breaks down, a sobbing mess now, the tears that once trailed down her face, now endless. She covers her mouth, face crumpled and red.

“I j-j-just wanted us t-to be okay, bec-cause I love you t-too much to fuck-king lose y-you”, As her eyes shut, crying relentlessly in her hand, throat feeling like it’s gonna burst, she feels so eternally cold, as if showered by a bucket of icy water. The idea that she might once again be left alone in the world while someone she loves is taken away, all because of her actions- it’s too much. It takes her back to the worst day of her life, brings back a kind of cold so furious, it knots her joints and sends shudders down her spine- her hands tremble at the thought. She can’t believe how colossally she’s managed to screw things up with him, how much he hates her and genuinely believes she did anything less than care about him. .

Like a tidal wave, the emotions overwhelm her, the self-hate like a boulder that smacked her in the face and threw her down a cliff and now everything hurts, and her stomach feels like it’s climbing up her throat. Her heart tears through her chest, painful and slow, and it’s all her fault, everything, and there’s nothing there to fix it all, to make it better- except, all of a sudden, warm, strong arms curl around her. She breaks down harder, curling in his chest because she fucking missed this, missed his affection, his protective embrace, his comforting smell.

Fists clutching his shirt, she sobs, acutely aware of her tears wetting the material of that maroon Henley she loves so much. The arms around her curl tighter, one hand dipping under her hair to hold the nape of her neck gingerly, keeping her against him, thumb rubbing gentle circles. And it’s then that she hears it, his own sniffling, his chest shaking. He’s crying too. The need to provide the comfort she seeks is overwhelming, and she lets his shirt go, wrapping her arms around his waist and holding him together too. “I’m so sorry,” she cries, shoulders shaking, and Bucky shushes her, shaking his head slightly. His arms tighten briefly.

In her crying, she vaguely registers him moving them to the couch, both sitting down, and her curling up into him instinctively. For a while, until she calms down slightly, she lets herself be held and holds him back just as fiercely. It feels like she’s finally letting go, an outburst that frees her of part of the weight she’d been shouldering for years on end. It feels like release, a dam that broke and is spilling every last drop of water that’s been pushing at it for so long.

When she quiets down, when her sobs no longer hurt, no longer feel like they’ll split her ribcage to splinters, when her breathing sort of evens out, she pulls one of her hands to rest on Bucky’s chest, and pulls away to look at him. Bucky’s arms tighten to keep her close.

She’s well aware she must look like a mess, what with all the crying, but this is Bucky after all, her James, the love of her life. He’s seen her under all kinds of light now, and there’s no need to hide. Like he wants, if he is to care for her, after all this, he should care for her for all the things she is, not the things she pretends to be.

Bucky’s eyes are a little less bloodshot than hers. She cups his chin gently and watches his eyelashes flutter, his eyelids softly shut. With her thumb she gently strokes his cheek and notices the way he seems to lean into her palm, lips parting with heavy breaths. He missed her too.

He opens his eyes again to look at her and leans his forehead down to touch hers, holds her closely and brushes the tip of his nose on the bridge of hers so lightly she almost misses it. She sighs. “You have every right to be angry at me,” she whispers to him, pulling her hand back and tucking it in her chest. “I lied, and I didn’t trust you, and I acted the complete opposite way of how I should have. For all of that,” a breath sucked, almost clogged at the center of her chest, “for all of that, I’m sorry.”

Bucky, still infinitely close to her, shakes his head gently. He takes one arm from around her, and she thinks this is it; this is where he says goodbye-

But, gentle as always, he places his right hand on the side of her neck, softly nudges her head up to his and drops his lips on her own, a ghost of a kiss, short and unexpected, before he pulls back and looks at her. “I love you.” He whispers, breath hitting her lips, and her eyes well with tears once again, as she looks up at him. She never thought she’d hear those words, not after everything. Bucky kisses her single fallen tear away, noses at her temple.

“I don’t think you’re a monster, the same way you didn’t think I am one. You helped me heal, helped me learn that those things I did, they weren’t me. I didn’t have a choice.”

“B-but-“

“No, you listen to me.” He tells her, his grip around her body tightening, giving emphasis to his words. “You did what you had to do to protect your brother. What you did… The blood isn’t on your hands.” He has not let her gaze go for a second, and she’s transfixed, tears still overflowing- she wonders when she’ll finally run out of them. “I love you.” Her bottom lip trembles. “I love you more than I thought I was ever capable of. Thinking you betrayed me completely incapacitated me, but I understand you. I see you. I forgive you.”

She gasps, shudders, and in the spur of a single waking moment, lunges at him, kisses him fiercely, holds him tightly. Their lips mold together, and the last pieces of the universal puzzle of the cosmos click to place. Everything settles, mouths moving in sync, desperate, hungry, all the emotions tumbling out all at once, and it’s like the slingshot snapped, and the missile hit the target. She bites his bottom lip, and the groan he lets out comes from deep within his chest, tongues tangling together. His metal arm crushes her against him, hand buries in his hair, their noses smush together, breaths strangled, air shared, and…This- this feels like belonging. No- more like, this feels like coming home.

Inevitably, they part, trying to suck in much needed air, foreheads knocking together gently and chests heaving. It seems like they feed off each other’s personal space, like they hold each other in one piece, while also completing one another. To Y/n it feels like a breath of fresh air.

“This doesn’t mean we’re perfect yet,” Bucky utters gently, not in a menacing way, but as a soft clarification, a request even. “I- I’m gonna need some time.” She’s grateful he even chose to give her a chance at all. Y/n smiles up at him affectionately and nods.

“Of course, Buck. All the time you need.” She caresses the side of his face with gentle fingers, traces his features with a feather-light touch, then cups his jaw. “Thank you.” And it’s weighted, hangs low in the air. She looks at him intensely to make sure he knows she means it. Bucky closes his eyes and leans into her touch, then blinks them open, brilliant, sky blue irises staring right at her. “I love you so much.” He breathes out heavily.

“Say that again,” he whispers. She grins at him as if he’s all good things in the world, because he is.

“I love you, Sergeant Barnes.” A kiss pressed to his cheek. “I love you with all of my being.” A kiss gently tucked on each of his eyelids. “I love you for all that you are.” And she kisses him on his lips sweetly, and he responds like she’s made out of glass, like she’s fragile. He sighs out. They breathe close to each other for a while.

“I know you said you need some time. Do you… wanna go out with me? Coffee? At Michelle’s?” Bucky grins. Their spot. He nods.

“I’d really love that.”

It’s not much, but it’s something. An olive branch. The first step to gain his trust back. There’s nothing Y/n deems more important. With a deep breath, she knows. She’s ready to do anything, to work her hardest to earn a place in his life, the one he’s so graciously offered her. To get to build a future with him, on steady foundation this time.

Their life begins now. Y/n can’t wait to live it. With him.

A/N 2: please tell me what you thought!

#mcu #marvel #bucky #bucky barnes #bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x fem!reader #bucky x fem!reader #steve rogers #sebastian stan #chris evans #bucky fluff #bucky angst #bucky fanfiction #bucky fanfic #mcu fanfiction

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jamestrmtx · 4 years ago

Text

Fairytale Complex - [Undertale | Sans x Reader]

[Gender Neutral, Frisk's Parent Reader | Slow Burn]

Chapter Twenty | Ooo I Ooo I Ooo I Ooo I (Part 2 of 2 | His POV) [First] | [Previous] | [Next]

Song Referenced

• • •

did he give you an exact date?

Unfortunately, no.

At first, I had at least until the end of the year, but…

CPS wants this resolved quicker than he thought.

guessin' you need to finish tourin' the underground first then, right?

Yes.

Would it be possible the day after tomorrow?

Or just… sometime this weekend?

I can go by myself, but…

Asgore won't allow that unless I'm with someone else.

Says I shouldn't be walking so far and so long alone if I haven't recovered yet.

you don't need to go alone, either way.

be it my job or not, I still wanna help out.

so the day after tomorrow's fine with me, bud.

we can discuss those details better when we drive over to tori's school tomorrow.

Are you sure?

And…

Does that 'we' imply you'll be picking us up?

100%

but yeah, i'll drive you guys there.

and pick up paps on the way, too.

it's easier for all four of us.

Mhm.

don't believe me?

Oh, I believe you.

I just don't think that's the only reason why you're picking us up, when I already have the address.

so what's the other one?

Don't get cocky, Serif.

I'm not gonna type that out.

It's a godsend Frisk will be with us, too.

'Cause I sure don't trust being alone with you anymore.

inna bad way?

Nah.

niiice.

pick you guys up tomorrow, then?

Yes.

We'll see you tomorrow.

And thank you in advance.

∆ Sticker | Happy Cartoon Bunny™ waving goodbye ∆

"You've changed, Sans."

He ignores that comment to view (Y/N)'s last two messages again.

While he doesn't know why that particular sticker bothers his mind so much, a few scrolls up to revise his chat history with the human reveal this is the first time they've shown any sort of informality or spontaneity in their typing. (Y/N) came off cold in their texts, though -- based on how they acted outside of a chat app -- that wasn't their intention, but more of an automatic way for them to talk with someone they didn't exactly deem trustworthy enough yet. He grins at that thought and feels his face warm up, something he confirms when touching his cheekbone, cold palm contrasting with that heat.

"You're wasting your time with that human," Drunk Bun says, snapping him out of his daydreaming.

They've sat themselves on the bar stool next to him and slam what looks like their tenth can of cheap, off-brand beer against the counter, crunching it down into more than half its size. He doesn't know how long they've stood there or why he's lost this much awareness of his surroundings. The bar's practically empty and calm now compared to before, though there's loud music blaring from the jukebox, playing an already overplayed song on repeat. There's no excuse for his distracted mind other than having lost himself while texting with the human, so he admits that fault with partial sourness, against accepting he's that smitten with them.

"You're changing for the worse," his company adds, narrowing their eyes at him. "Every time we come here to catch up, you mention something stupid about that (L/N) person, or just text the whole evening away with them. I... I've never seen you worry so much about someone so inconsequential." They scoff and cross their arms tight. "I may understand you caring after Frisk as a way to repay them for rescuing us, but (L/N) is completely useless. They've done absolutely nothing remarkable beyond creating a huge scene at that bus you were both on."

"Being harassed by a rando and faintin' after's them causin' a scene?" Sans asks, quirking an eye socket.

"Oh, screw off, bone boy -- You know what I mean. They've brought you nothing but trouble and needless responsibilities!" The bunny grits their teeth and slams their hand over the table, dragging eyes to their side. "I'm betting you can't go a day without texting them or without you doing something for them."

"You need to-"

Beep-beep.

The phone is snatched from his hands just as quick as that noise rings.

"Give that back."

"No." They keep the phone right above him, taking advantage of his shorter height. "Your fault for not putting a lock on it."

Drunk Bun scoots away and holds the phone tight as they fumble with it. Then, they stop to look at what he assumes is another text message from the human. A grimace shows on their face and they grasp the device tight, enough to make the screen complain and warn them over the pressure they're exerting against it. "Now this is beyond pathetic, Sans," they comment, letting out a loud, burst laugh. "Is this seriously the one you're sacrificing your entire personality for?" They give him his phone back, though not before hesitating when it's time to let go. "That human is-"

"Gimme a sec."

His attention falls on the picture displayed on screen, revealing (Y/N) and Frisk posing in it. The adult wears a suit and tie while the child has Toriel's school uniform on. The former's pose appears forced and awkward while the latter seems to be the reason the picture was taken with how excited they seem about their outfit.

Frisk wanted me to show you this.

It's what we'll be wearing for tomorrow!

There's a three-minute interval between that and the next message.

I know classes still haven't started there, but… They wanted to wear it, so I joined them by trying on something special for, well…

That job offer you told me about.

I don't know if I'll accept or not yet, but…

Thank you for the opportunity, and for believing in me.

∆ Sticker | Happy Cartoon Bunny™ giving a thumbs-up ∆

"You're grossing me out, honestly. What kind of look is that?"

It takes him a while to react, focus glued on (Y/N)'s messages.

"What look?"

"That lovesick look on your face." Tears form on their eyes -- almost abruptly, hadn't their voice shaken right before that. "I- I've been flirting with you for years, and yet you've never once looked at me like that before." They stand up straight, stare down at him, and rest their hands on the table, blinking their tears away throughout. "I've known you for so damn long, and yet you fall for the first human you see up here? I-"

"So that's what this's about," he says, chuckling. "You're-"

"Don't you dare brush everything off as me having a crush on you, Sans." They hiss. "You're not the same as before, and that's as clear as day. You worry a lot more now, and… And you actually seem to care more about other stuff beyond your job and sleeping on it. Y- You-"

"Aren't those good things?"

"Maybe, but your entire personality changing isn't. I liked you better when you were less worked up with stuff that's none of your business." They stop to grab his phone again; a grin breaks the sorrow on their face. "But hey, y- you're just doing your job, aren't you? You should set things straight with that human and remind them you're only with them because Asgore told you to in that agreement letter you gave them."

"Won't work if I flirted with 'em first. Pretty sure they'll see right through my lies."

"Y- You flirted with them first?!"

"Yeah."

He dodges a punch aimed right at his face.

"Wait-"

They throw a second punch -- this one turning out to be a spoof -- and laugh at the sight of him falling for it; they then toss the phone high over his head after he's finished dodging that fake attack, and aim yet another punch right after.

He salvages the device, though at the cost of taking the blow right on his left eye socket.

"How can you admit that so easily? You're awful!"

"'Cause you're only a close friend. I don't owe you an explanation about who I'm dating, and even less if you're gonna be actin' this way."

Drunk Bun springs at him, only to be held back by the rest of the regulars sitting near the scene, sufficiently fast enough for them not to wrangle Sans in anything major. They struggle and thrash at everyone around, trying to break free, but failing each time. It takes a fully-armored guard dog and a buff bear for them to be fought back into their rightful place, and yet another strong monster for them to let go of a wine bottle they insist on downing when seated.

Grillby intervenes as well by warning them to calm down, unless they want to be kicked out. Meanwhile, Sans turns on the camera and looks at his reflection through it, revealing a faint soreness already forming around his eye socket -- right where his companion had punched at. Being primarily made out of bones brought advantages, but having magical properties often led to him bruising easily.

Another regular approaches him and offers him a first aid kit, one he brings back to his seat to heal himself there.

While he takes out an antibiotic and some cotton pads with one hand, he uses the other to busy himself with (L/N)'s messages, against leaving them on read for so long.

no probs.

here at your service.

frisk looks great, btw.

and you? hot. 😘🔥

awkwardly hot.

hotwkward.

Frisk is reading the replies, you know?

damn.

i mean…

darn.

don't tell 'em i said that.

∆ Audio | 0:46 ∆

He clicks on it to hear Frisk giggling along with (Y/N) commenting they won't. It later continues with them asking if he's alright, specifying what they mean by highlighting a picture, this one sent by him. Blurriness makes up most of it when he clicks on it and zooms in, yet he can identify what looks like his companion from earlier, who'd apparently snapped and sent the human a photo by accident.

that's a friend o' mine.

they're, uh, kinda tipsy, so they got inna fight with me.

Really?

Are you okay?

yeah, just a lil' sore where they punched at.

What?!

i'm fine, puddin'.

dw about it.

Where's that bar at?

I'm near the mall, so I can drop by if you need anything.

aren't you still shoppin'?

take it easy.

I'm almost done.

Just trying out one more outfit.

can I see?

👀

Sure.

∆ Attachment | 2 images ∆

To his surprise, they're not only posing much more freely now, but they've also made the effort to strike another pose from a different angle. The human's outfit is composed of a dark green, semi-formal (suit/dress), fit for a night out. They've gone as far as to edit a wink emoji and some hearts at the corner of one -- the most flirty of the two.

So...

What do you think?

*jaw drops to floor, irises pop out of sockets accompanied by trumpets, soul beats out of rib cage, awooga awooga sound effect, pulls chain on train whistle that has appeared next to head as steam blows out, slams fists on table, rattling any plates, bowls or silverware, whistles loudly, fireworks shoot from top of head, pants loudly as tongue hangs out of teeth, wipes comically large bead of sweat from forehead, clears throat, straightens jacket, combs skull* ahem, you look real lovely.

*bwushes* Thank uwu kindwy, handswome. I'm vewy fwattewed.

...frisk ain't there anymore, right?

If they wewe, duwu uwu twhink I'd be twyping wike thiws?

faiw poiwnt.

Anyway…

I noticed the changes you made in that copy-paste, and…

You didn't edit the tongue part out.

So…

What that tongue do, baby?

😳

…lick…

...ice cream.

🔥🔥🔥

Ah, that's hot.

Or should I say cold?

And speaking of cold…

I'm gonna get you an ice pack or something.

You should take care of where it's sore, if you don't want it to bruise more.

whatta way to change the subject away from our moment, puddin'.

but uh, thanks in advance.

Anytime, teddy bear.

uwu

owo

• • •

"Am I really changin', Grillbs?" Sans asks, emptying his beer in three long gulps. "Be honest with me."

The one questioned takes the empty can from his hands and shakes his head in what looks more like disapproval rather than him answering that question. He first warns the skeleton about getting drunk, and reminds him to stay sober if he wants an answer as well as prevent himself from drunk-texting the source of his lovelorn self. When receiving a promise from him in response, he later answers with a 'no' and that he's still the same whenever he came to visit the bar.

"So I'm only different when I'm talkin' about 'em?"

Grillby nods.

"Inna bad way?"

He shakes his head.

"Then…"

Sans is stopped with a hand over his and faced with a stern look, despite the owner of it having no eyes or mouth.

"If they make you happy, then it's alright for you to show it," a regular states, intervening in the conversation. "You're not a lifeless machine. And nobody's one-dimensional either, so you shouldn't force yourself to act the same, strict way all the time. If you want to be all mushy with that human, then so be it. Aren't you the one who always says stuff like 'nothing really matters; in the end, we'll all die'? What's stopping you now of all times? Where's that hardcore nihilist I've known since years ago?

Sans rubs the back of his neck and huffs.

Clearly, neither the regular nor Grillby understood what he truly meant to say with his questions. He didn't mind his relationship with the human, but he also didn't want his old self to be replaced by someone he wasn't, as a result. There were things he didn't want to change about his old self -- things he feared would fade away now that he seemed to be getting into something as complex as a romantic relationship. There were parts of him he needed to keep in case the world were to start over again -- in case something went wrong. He couldn't allow himself to grow soft.

A pat on his shoulder lets him know he's lost himself in those thoughts.

"It's alright to fear change, but don't let that hold you back. If you like that human and they do, too -- Then what's there keeping you from going for it?"

It's not that easy.

Still, he keeps that thought quiet and replies with, "Thanks, but I'll probably have to give that more ti-"

The door of the bar opens to reveal someone new to it, but not so much unknown to Sans, who already finds himself distracted by them. (Y/N) stands in front of the entrance, looking this way and that. Frisk holds on to their hand, while a reusable shopping bag's hung over their parent's arm; a pharmacy's logo and name can be seen stamped on it. The eldest human approaches the area with caution, until their child assures them -- once, twice, and then thrice -- they've been to this place before and that it serves other purposes beyond that of providing alcohol and provoking fights. When they look forward, he meets their eyes and tries to glance away quickly, only to be called out by them soon after. They don't take long to smile wide and bright, wave, and -- finally -- approach his side after he waves back at them.

Rather than giving him whatever's in the bag, they instead let go of Frisk's hand, ask them if they want anything to eat, and give them some money when they sign the word 'fries'. Then, they sit on the stool next to his and settle the bag on their lap. "Come closer, and close your eye sockets," they say, still smiling. "It's your left one, right? It looks really sore already."

He nods and tries to ignore the warmth in his soul when they place a hand over his.

In his favour, they let go of him not long after to disinfect their hands and slip some gloves on when these dry out.

"I-"

"Shh."

(Y/N) holds his chin with their hand and grazes their fingers against his injury, their touch slow and careful as they apply some antibiotic over and around it. They then slide an eye patch on him and assumedly check around for any more bruises, based on the feeling of their hands grazing against his torso, arms, and neck. "The ice pack's in the bag -- Remember to throw it in the freezer when you get home." They touch his chest again, even more gentle this time. "So..." He notices some hesitance when they pull their hand back. "You're not hurt anywhere else?"

He shakes his head, words caught in his throat.

"Alright, but don't look yet."

Doing as told, Sans waits for whatever comes next. He stays still and stiff, until he feels their lips brush close to his eye socket, where they lay a soft, ticklish kiss at. They do the same with his other one and finish it off by kissing his nose cavity.

"Now you can."

[First] | [Previous] | [Next]

• • •

...

......

🌋🔥💥 ANNOYING NOTICE TIME 💥🔥🌋

So, here's a summary of all the events happening this month, which will affect Fairytale Complex's update schedule in various ways:

1. I will be rewriting all my other fics that aren't FaiCom, since I'm pretty darn happy and proud of the new writing style I've developed with this fanfic, and so I want to implement it into my older stories (with the exception of the Tom Nook x Reader one -- I'm rewriting that one despite being recent because it started off as a wild, 3 am energy project after finishing with finals, but then I actually had way more fun than I originally anticipated, so I'll be turning it into a long fic just like this one, lol). This means FaiCom will be taking a short, 1 to 2 week break after Arc 2 (Chapter 25) ends, to dedicate some time to all 4 of these stories.

2. I'm taking extracurricular classes/hobby workshops this summer, so I need to tweak my schedule again. This means FaiCom will be changing its schedule back to the old one, composed of weekly updates on Mondays, Wednesdays, and/or Fridays.

3. As mentioned previously, Pride Month is here, so I'll be making some one-shots and drabbles related to it, meaning updates might be slightly less frequent this month. BUT, a good majority of them are FaiCom related ones (and they will be posted on a different book to avoid conflicting with regular updates, too). More on that later on!

• • •

Tag List (Comment or message me if you want to be added to [or removed from] it!)

@the-simp-express

@nektotersh

@disastrous-l0vebug

@therealchickenjoe

@mintyflakes025

@pandaquick

@timelock97

@candle-creeps

@paperb9gs

@merak0

#sans x reader #undertale x reader #lgbt #lgbt themes #gender neutral reader #male reader #female reader #mother reader #father reader #parent reader #chubby reader #long fic #romcom #adventure #mystery #platonic relationships #slow burn

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gates-keeper · 4 years ago

Text

Famous Last Words - Destiel Soulmate AU

The first two times his cousin’s ringtone had gone off, Castiel ignored it. After all, it was rare for him to have his dorm room to himself, and he had been looking forward to using the peace and quiet to finally get some writing done. But then, less than a minute later, “The Candy Man can ‘cause he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good…” filled the room, causing him to punch the “accept” button so hard, he felt it in his elbow.

“What do you want, Gabriel?” Castiel growled.

His cousin clucked his tongue, “Is that any way to talk to your family?”

“Yes,” he responded vehemently—even if Gabriel was, by far, his favorite relative.

“Touché. Is that any way to talk to the person who just discovered the love of your life?”

Castiel looked back at his laptop screen—at the judgmental blinking of the cursor only one sentence into his fifth chapter. “I don’t have time for this.”

Gabriel’s sigh was long-suffering. “Look, this isn’t a joke, Cassie,” he said, dropping his voice. “I’m pretty sure I found your soulmate.”

Castiel’s stomach flipped like an undercooked pancake.

“I sent you a link,” Gabriel told him, still sounding far too serious.

Castiel switched his phone to his other hand since his right had suddenly become sweaty, but he made no move to check his email.

“How would you even know what my soulmark looks like?” he demanded, already suspecting it was a feeble argument at best. The only person he was sure had seen the tattoo over his heart was his mother—who spent the first two weeks after his sixteenth birthday demanding to know what it was before eventually barging in on him while he was in the shower, explaining it was her “parental right.” But this was Gabriel. Of course, he would have found out somehow.

“So, you really did blackout that night, huh?” Gabriel laughed, causing Castiel to grimace. One time…. He’d tried alcohol one time. And while it turned out he had a high tolerance, everything after Gabe brought out the second bottle of vodka had gone blurry.

Biting his lip, he opened the correct tab in his computer, but couldn’t make himself go any further. A soulmate….

It wasn’t that he didn’t want one, per se. He just didn’t think they were everything people said they were. The divorce rate among marked couples was only 12%, yes, but if those pairings were cosmically meant to be, shouldn’t it be zero? Shouldn’t things like abuse be impossible if you really, truly loved the other person?

And then there were Castiel’s…personal issues.

As socially isolated as he had been most of his life, he still knew it was strange to have never experienced physical attraction before. He might find curves on a woman—or the play of muscle on a man—gratifying to look at—but in the same way that he thought a painting or a sunset beautiful. A rough hand to his morning erection was occasionally necessary—the resulting orgasm pleasant and relaxing, but not the all-consuming rush of sensations that society proclaimed it to be.

And while that didn’t bother him so much on a personal level—just like he didn’t care if he forgot to take a shower or brush his hair so long as he was home alone—it was hard not to feel self-conscious once someone else was involved.

Dimly, he heard Gabriel start humming the song from Jeopardy.

“Assbutt,” he grumbled. Knowing he couldn’t put off the inevitable forever, Castiel closed his eyes and clicked on the only unread email.

When he opened them again, his first thought was that Gabriel was pulling a prank after all.

He may not know many celebrities—but you would be hard-pressed to find anyone who didn’t recognize Dean Winchester. Castiel had never seen any of his movies, but he had seen trailers—had spotted the actor’s face on magazines when he went to check out groceries. Beyond that, the man was handsome in a way that demanded he had to be something—if not an actor than a singer or a model.

The photo at the top of the article looked like it had been taken in the midst of a family vacation to the beach—and it was clear by Dean’s completely un-staged smile that the man didn’t know it was being taken. Castiel immediately felt bad for spying on such a private moment—however unintentionally—when his gaze finally drifted to the star’s bare chest.

Though the camera wasn’t at a perfect angle to see Dean’s soulmark, it did look remarkably like…

“I’ll call you back,” Castiel shouted to Gabriel as he unbuttoned his shirt.

Holding his phone out as far as he could, he tried to take a picture of his own chest. However, he’d never used the camera setting before and winded up with one of his door instead. Switching it to “selfie” mode helped immensely. He zoomed in on the photo to get a closer look.

During the occasional moments he’d thought about it, Castiel had to admit he liked his phoenix tattoo. While it was mostly black, its wings were tipped blue, green, and purple—the colors of an oil slick—its tail surrounded by licking green flames. However, he’d never taken the time to really study the details of it before—like the way the sharp lines of its open beak contrasted the ribbon-like fluidity of the feathers, giving it the impression of motion.

And yet, in spite of the illusion that the bird changed position from one moment to the next, when comparing his picture to the one on his computer screen, the two images mirrored each other exactly.

Castiel pressed #2 on his speed dial.

“Dean Winchester’s my soulmate,” he informed Gabriel.

This story is now complete. If you’re interested, you can read more here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25074931/chapters/60737890

#destiel #destiel fanfic #soulmate au #celebrity au #fanfic

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organabanana · 4 years ago

Text

you're not saved until you leave this place | harley/ivy

Chapters: 1/1

Fandom: DCU (Comics)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence

Relationships: Pamela Isley & Harleen Quinzel

Characters: Pamela Isley, Harleen Quinzel

Additional Tags: Past Joker (DCU)/Harleen Quinzel, Abusive Joker (DCU)/Harleen Quinzel, Mild Blood

Series: Part 1 of the 2021 Writing Challenge series

Summary: Harley Quinn - she's not Harleen Quinzel anymore - has just been saved by Poison Ivy. The problem is Poison Ivy doesn't think Harley can really be saved. I just finished reading Harleen by Stjepan Sejic and I'm feeling A Certain Way. Reading it first is encouraged (and recommended because it's amazing) but not necessary to know what's going on.

Notes: This is not meant to be particularly true to any canonical storyline beyond using Harleen (the comic) as a starting point. I took the liberty of taking bits and pieces from different storylines because I could.Written for the prompt "I should be in pain . . . . . why am I not in pain?” for week 4 of the 2021 writing challenge made by @butterbee-writes.

[ao3 link]

Harley regains her consciousness slowly, as if she was struggling to emerge from an ocean of molasses. What a strange image, an ocean of molasses. That’s what it feels like, though. Thick and sticky and dark. As her senses begin to work once again, though, Harley realizes wherever she is smells nothing like molasses at all. It smells both fresh and damp somehow. Like she imagines a rainforest might smell like. Green and thick with life. And then there’s something else. Lighter. Floral, even. Jasmine, maybe?

“Doctor Quinzel.”

The woman’s voice doesn’t immediately ring a bell, but it feels familiar somehow. Under different circumstances, she’s sure she could figure it out. But Harley’s tired of fighting the not-really-molasses threatening to swallow her brain whole. She can’t play detective right now.

“Doctor Quinz—“

“It’s Harley,” she interrupts, her voice hoarse like she’s using it for the first time after a night of hard liquor. This doesn’t feel like a hangover, though. And she doesn’t feel like Doctor Quinzel anymore.

“Open your eyes.”

“Thanks, but I’ll pass.” This may not be a hangover, but her head still feels like it’s balancing precariously on the edge of the kind of headache that drives people to insanity.

Heh.

Like she needs a headache for that.

“Your eyes might be damaged. I don’t have all day.”

The woman’s tone is hard to read. Somewhere between annoyed and caring, somehow. Like she wishes she didn’t care, but she does anyway. Harley can sympathize.

“Damaged by what?” Harley asks, already opening her eyes and struggling to focus. All she sees is varying shades of green. “What happened?”

The woman doesn’t speak. Harley sees a blurred light among the greens and feels that flowery smell grow stronger when the woman leans closer to her face. It reminds her of her time as Arkham’s psychiatrist, asking questions and being ignored. And that’s when it clicks. Arkham. Of course.

“Ms. Isley?”

“Ivy.”

Under different circumstances, Harley might have taken offense at the sharp tone of Pamela Isley’s correction. But she’s not exactly in a position to pick a fight with a supervillain, and - if she’s being perfectly honest - this may be the third or fourth time Ivy’s corrected her since they first met. No wonder she’s annoyed.

“What happened?”

“Your eyes are fine. Your vision may be blurry for a while. I assume your glasses are still in the acid. What’s left of them, anyway.”

“Acid? What aci—“

Harley’s eyes widen even if she still can’t quite see. The acid. The vat of acid, and Jay’s hands around Harley’s wrists, and his smile… and then the searing pain. She brings her hands up with some effort, and even with her limited vision she can see they look bleached white. And yet…

“I should be in pain… Why am I not in pain?” She should also be in some major emotional distress, given the circumstances, but she’s more or less given up on her own mental stability these days.

“My abilities aren’t limited to toxins, Harley. You’re enjoying a very good, very potent, all-natural anesthetic.”

“You saved me?” Harley wonders, briefly, whether she has any right to sound this surprised when this is the second time Pamela Isley has done just that. Save her. “Thank you.”

“Like I told you last time, don’t thank me yet,” Ivy says, and there’s a certain emotion in her tone (Dr. Quinzel might have been able to define it, but she’s not around anymore) that makes her sound nearly human, “you’re only truly saved—“

“If I leave Arkham. I remember.” Those words haunted Harley’s nightmares for weeks. “But I left. This isn’t Arkham, is it?”

There’s a moment of silence that stretches for longer than it should, somehow. Like Ivy’s having to really think to figure out whether they are in Arkham or they aren’t.

“This isn’t Arkham,” Ivy finally says, “but you haven’t left.”

“What do you mean, I haven’t le—“

“I really don’t have all day, Harley.” That emotion — that near humanity — is completely gone from Ivy’s voice now. “Do you have a place to stay while you recover?”

“Yeah. I can- I can stay at Jay’s.” What does it say about her, that she doesn’t even hesitate to name the man who threw her in a vat of acid as her emergency contact of sorts?

If she was still working, she’d write a thesis on herself.

Pamela Isley doesn’t say anything else, and for a moment Harley wonders if she’s been alone all this time and her admittedly off-kilter brain simply hallucinated a beautiful, jasmine-scented supervillain for her to talk to. It wouldn’t surprise her. Nothing does anymore.

With some effort, Harley sits up and notices where she’s been laying all this time. It’s not a bed — not a normal one, anyway — but it’s soft and comfortable. It’s somehow both cool and cozy, and… alive, somehow. Like moss, but not quite. Which fits, because Pamela Isley happens to be human, almost, but not quite.

Harley doesn’t necessarily mean that in a bad way.

“What did you mean?” Harley says, looking at the blurry outline of Ms. Isley’s — Ivy’s — back. Her eyes are getting used to the light, and she’s pretty sure the current lack of focus is mostly due to her glasses being gone. “When you said I haven’t left?”

“You shouldn’t get up yet. You’ll faint, and pheromones won’t fix a cracked skull.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Do you want to call him to come pick you up?” Ivy pauses for a second, like she’s reconsidering her own words. “Does he even have a phone?”

“I—“

Harley clamps her mouth shut. She doesn’t know if Jay has a phone. She knows the exact location of every scar on his body. She knows exactly what to say and do to make him smile. She knows she can help him — fix him doesn’t sound nearly as good — and she knows she belongs with him. In his world. But she doesn’t know if he has a phone.

The giggles come before she can stop them. It’s not funny, but she’s laughing. She can’t stop. It feels almost like… like in a different life she’d be sobbing instead, but all she can do is laugh.

And it’s cathartic. Like a good, loud, heart-shattering crying session. Like a night of binge-drinking to quiet her thoughts. The laughter grows louder, shriller and more unhinged as she thinks about Dr. Harleen Quinzel no longer existing. Not just because Harley says so, but because she melted along with her glasses when Mr. Jay shoved Harley into that vat. She thinks about a job and a life she’ll never go back to. About the fact that she doesn’t know if Jay has a phone, but she knows the exact sound a skull makes when a mallet cracks it open.

It’s not funny, but she’s laughing. And when she stops, she feels different somehow. Like she’s laughed whatever was left of Harleen Quinzel away.

“Are you done?”

Pamela Isley isn’t laughing. She’s not even smiling. She’s just staring, in silence, like she either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that being in silence is a recipe for thinking. And thinking… well. There’s nothing fun about that. Can you blame her for trying to entertain herself somehow?

“So. Pam.”

“What did you just call me?”

Pamela Isley is suddenly dangerously close. It may not be jasmine after all. It’s something… earthier. She’s so close Harley doesn’t need her glasses to see the dangerous glint in bright green eyes.

Harley could push it. She tilts her head to one side, smiling faintly as she ponders what would happen if she said it again. Would Pamela Isley kill her, if Harley called her Pam again? And, more importantly, would that be so bad, all things considered?

“Sorry,” she finally says, making sure the mocking tone is audible in her voice, “I figured saving my life twice would’ve kinda put us on a first name basis.”

“Not quite.”

“Right. Well, Ms. Isley—”

“It’s Ivy!”

Pamela Isley — Poison Ivy — raises her voice. Harley swears the plants around them grow, like they’re getting ready to attack her the second Ivy orders them to.

Except she doesn’t.

Does this count as saving Harley’s life a third time? Choosing not to off her when she could’ve?

“Why do you keep saving me?”

“Excuse me?” Ivy takes one step back, and it’s like the greenery deflates just so. Like it’s all lost steam all of a sudden.

“You heard me,” Harley shrugs, carefully standing up and noticing the oversized t-shirt she’s wearing for the first time, “why do you keep doing it? Not too super-villainy of you, if you ask me.”

The more time she spends with her eyes open, the better she seems to see. Can acid burn somehow fix someone’s vision? She’ll have to tell Mr. Jay about the potential untapped marked in back-alley lasik surgery.

“I wouldn’t call myself a super-villain.”

“Your file at Arkham sure would.”

“Would it? And what does his file say?”

Harley stops staring at an exotic-looking flower to glare at Ivy instead. His file is wrong. His file is the result of a series of biased psychiatrists with questionable methods. They didn’t know him like she does. Nobody does. She’s the only one who understands.

He needs her. She can help.

“And what will yours say, Harley Quinzel?”

“I don’t have a—“

“Oh,” Ivy lets out a chuckle and it kind of feels like Harley figures being hit with her mallet might, “but you will.”

Harley licks her lips. Will she? Will she have a file at Arkham? Have a shrink sit across from her, on the other side of a bulletproof glass, and ask her what went wrong and when? Will she have to talk about Jay’s smile and his scars and the way he pressed her up against the padded wall of the interrogation room?

Will they call her call her a sociopath, too?

Probably. They’ll be wrong, though. She does feel remorse when she kills. It’s just she’d rather feel that than the absence of him.

“So don’t thank me, Harley. I never saved you.”

~*~

Harley doesn’t remember what she used to look like anymore. Harleen Quinzel may as well have never existed. It’s been three years since she fell into that vat of acid — it sounds better than saying someone threw her in, doesn’t it? — and so much has happened in her life that she can’t remember anything from before she was Harley Quinn anymore.

She’s been in Arkham… a number of times. Let’s leave it at that. She’s still with Jay. Mostly. On and off. Mostly on, though, other than that nine-month break she took for personal reasons when she went to stay with her sister Delia.

Mostly, though. Mostly, they’re on. And they’re so good when they are. Mostly. Mostly good.

You wouldn’t get it. Only she gets it. Only she gets him.

“Hey, Red?”

Ivy doesn’t even look up from whatever science-y stuff she’s working on, and Harley doesn’t really mind. They’re best pals. They don’t need eye contact to communicate.

“Why d’ya hate him?” Jay finds her new accent cute, like her higher-pitched voice and her red-and-black leotard.

“Huh?” Harley can feel Ivy’s frown even if she’s currently looking at the back of her head. “Who are we talking about?”

“Mistah Jay.”

She can feel the sour expression on Ivy’s face without seeing it, too.

“I don’t remember having said I hate him.”

“Ya don’t need to. I can just tell, y’know.”

“Can you.” Sometimes Ivy does that thing when she asks a question but her tone isn’t really question-y. Kinda cute, if you ask Harley. Over the years she’s grown to see many of the things about Ivy most people find intimidating are actually pretty dang cute.

“Yeah,” Harley stands up from her favorite moss-covered pouf (Ivy took offense last time Harley called it a beanbag chair) and sits on the edge of Ivy’s desk instead, “kinda like how ya don’t have to say it for me to know ya love me, Red.”

Ivy doesn’t smile, but her skin does. It turns this vibrant green and Harley knows it means Ivy’s smiling on the inside. It’s a whole thing. Just trust her, all right? She knows her Red.

“So. Why d’ya hate him?”

Ivy looks up from whatever botanical gibberish she’s been writing and stares into Harley’s eyes like she’s trying to read her mind.

Good thing her Puddin’s right when he says it’s mostly empty space in there, right?

Heh.

“You should’ve paid more attention when you worked at Arkham, Harley.”

Ivy stands up and leaves Harley there, dumbfounded and confused, because what does that even mean? She doesn’t even remember those months. She didn’t even think Ivy remembered. Had they ever even interacted back then? All she remembers are her… sessions, with Jay.

“Hey, wait! Come on, don’t be mean!”

Ivy rolls her eyes at Harley like she’s being overly dramatic (she isn’t), and starts collecting samples from this pots and plants.

“Why won’t you just tell me? Come on, it’s been forever, I don’t rem—“

The happy sound of a circus fanfare comes from outside Ivy’s lair, and Harley knows exactly what it means.

“Saved by the… honk, Red.” Harley winks, grabbing her mallet and putting on her hat. She can drop the subject for now. There’ll be more times. “I’ll bring ya somethin’ pretty from the heist, yeah?”

“Be safe.”

Harley’s already skipping towards the exit, but she turns around just to blow Ivy a kiss. “See? I knew ya loved me, Red.”

Ivy doesn’t just smile with her skin this time.

~*~

Harley watches the trial from the couch in the apartment she shares with Ivy and their (Ivy will deny it, but Harley knows she loves them) hyenas. It’s a happy little life. After so many years of super-villainy, switching sides has been kind of weird.

Well.

They haven’t switched completely. Just ask Batman. But they’re cool with the Batfolk now. Mostly. They promise to keep casualties to a minimum (she vaguely remembers Batman insisting on zero, but that’s a ballpark number, she’s sure) and help them catch the really bad guys, and in exchange they’re mostly free to do as they please.

It’s kind of weird, watching a trial on TV. A real trial, she means. But she figures when the person being judged is famous enough — and hated enough — it makes sense. And Gotham doesn’t hate anyone as much as they hate Jay.

He doesn’t look scared or nervous at all. Maybe he figures he’ll get out again whenever he pleases. But Bats said that’s not happening this time. Not with all the evidence Harley provided. Having bested it a dozen times herself, Harley can’t say she trusts Arkham’s security system that much. But it doesn’t really matter. She doesn’t really care.

“Ugh, commercial break. Can ya believe it?” Harley scritches Lou’s ear and nudges Bud off the couch so she can stand up. “They can call it a recess all they like, we all know the judge needed to pee.”

She chuckles to herself on the way to the kitchen for a glass of water, and on her way back her gaze lands on the carton box Bats gave her when they made their deal. The one full to the brim with everything that used to be in her and Ivy’s files at Arkham.

And she’s about to flop back onto the couch when a little tape recorder catches her attention instead. Her old tape recorder, from about two lifetimes ago, when she still wore a white coat and was called Dr. Quinzel.

“Let’s see who’s in this tape,” she says out loud as she presses the rewind button, and the two hyenas sit at her feet like they’re waiting for the best kind of treat, “maybe it’ll be Uncle Swamp Thing!”

But when the tape begins to play, the voice that fills the room is Ivy’s instead.

“Oh, jackpot!” Harley grins, muting the television to put her full focus on the preserved moment from over ten years ago. She kinda knows how the trial ends, anyway. Bats spoilered her.

“I do appreciate it, you know… the fact that you’re using a recorder instead of paper.”

Ivy sounds so different. Harley wishes she could remember the conversation, but all she has from those months are snippets of moments with him.

“Others before you had different methods. One of my previous doctors, he brought a potted plant.”

“Well, that’s nice of him, right boys? Mama loves a plant.”

“Watered it with bleach in front of me.”

Harley gasps, both at the cruelty of what she’s hearing and the fact that she suddenly has the answer to the question she asked so many times over the years. Why did Ivy hate Jay so much?

Harley looks at her bleached skin and can’t help but grin. She’s the one thing Pam loves as much as she loves her plants.

“…Doctor, your hormones are elevated. Every time you smile, you blush. Usually, I have to kiss a person to elicit such a response…”

If she could still blush, she would. She feels her cheeks burn anyway, because back then it wasn’t her girlfriend making her hormones get elevated (or whatever the Ivy from the past just said) but now… well. Now she elevates them plenty.

But more than that, she realizes, suddenly, exactly what Ivy meant when she insisted Harley could not be saved until she left Arkham. How could she really leave when Jay still owned most of her heart?

“They didn’t have double decker poptarts, Peanut. Are you sure they even exist?” Ivy interrupts Harley’s moment of reflection by walking into the apartment carrying several grocery bags and sending the boys into a flurry of excitement. “The lady at the register looked at me like I’d just asked for dragon eggs, so— wait. What are you listening to? Is that me?”

Harley nods, even if she knows Ivy can’t see her while she’s bent over leaving all the grocery bags on the counter.

“What is it? Is that from— oh.”

“Mhmm,” Harley grins, stopping the recording for now. She has the real life version of Ivy right here, so she doesn’t need the past at all. “Ya liked me already back then, huh, Pammy?”

Ivy rolls her eyes, but Harley knows. She knows she did.

“Where’d you get the tape?”

“Bats brought all that over,” Harley points in the general direction of the box, “said we can have it since we’re no longer the baddies.”

Ivy looks in the box and seems genuinely surprised when her gaze returns to Harley once again. “Our files?”

“Mhmm. All of it. Gone.”

It’s only when she tells Ivy that it fully registers for Harley, too. Their files are gone. No more Arkham.

Somewhere in her peripheral vision, she can see the trial’s back on the air. He’s going back in, and she… she wouldn’t say she doesn’t care at all. But she’s not going in with him. Her heart’s not his anymore.

She’s left.

“Pammy?”

Pam doesn’t look up from her hands as they rummage through the contents of the box, but she doesn’t need to. Harley knows she’s listening.

“Thank you.”

“Why?” Ivy looks at Harley then, frowning slightly in confusion. “I wasn’t the one who negotiated with Wayne.”

“No, I know.” Harley smiles and walks over, just to be closer. To smell the jasmine on her girlfriend’s skin. “But you saved me. A couple times. So thank you.”

And for the very first time, Harley’s pretty sure she’s figured something out before her (very smart, super quick-on-her-feet) girlfriend. Because Ivy looks at the box again, and at the muted TV where the trial is still happening, and then at Harley… and she smiles.

“You’re welcome, Harls.”

#fic #harlivy #harley x ivy #fanfic #2021 writing challenge

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allie1804-fan · 4 years ago

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Please Assist Me (Chapter 18)

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Ch6apter 10 , Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15 , Chapter 16, Chapter 17

Warnings: Explicit Content

He Said

At last in January of 2021, the schools opened and we felt like there was more every day normal going on. There were a few more restaurants open with outdoor service too so Sophia and I had the occasional lunch out together when he had free time. I was training hard though so I didn’t have much free time which meant we tended to need to stick to Hollywood rather than driving out to the coast off the beaten track and that was our first mistake. Sophia had been my assistant for almost 2 years now so it wasn’t odd for us to be seen together but as there was almost never any other women seen with me, Cheryl alerted me that pictures started appearing in gossip rags, putting 2 and 2 together based on their (correct!) reading of intimate gazes and body language.

She Said

In the new year, a few photos started to come out of me with Keanu online and in gossip rags. The publicity wasn’t hugely invasive and I wasn’t too bothered by it - my family and friends knew the truth so this only really attracted random contact on social media from acquaintances being nosy rather than any real invasion at first.

My first direct experience that the attention was getting invasive came one day at the school pick up. I had noticed a man hovering at a distance from the gates who I was pretty sure wasn’t a parent. My attention was torn away when my kids came out but as I turned to take them to the car, I saw a teacher cautiously approach him and after a brief exchange he turned on his heal and left. That’s when I spotted the camera slung over his shoulder. A couple of days later, pictures of me and the kids were published on-line on a gossip site. The kids’ images were a little blurry but still, I was furious.

He Said

“Fuck!”

I’d just clicked on my phone on a link Sophia had sent to me for a photo news site showing pictures of her and the kids at their school gate. Some low life pap had tracked them down and deemed them newsworthy because of her link to me that had been emerging more and more frequently of late.

I forwarded it to Cheryl and asked her to arrange an urgent call with her and my lawyer to work out an action plan. Then I called Sophia, nervous that I might be in for a tirade of Spanish insults.

“Hun, you OK?”

“No, I’m not OK. Que pendejo insoportable!”

Here we go, I thought!

“who me?!”

“No, no, the photographer, this isn’t your fault!”

“kind of is though isn’t it?”

“No, I won’t let you take the blame – but we have to stop them. The kids need to be kept out of this right?”

“Yeah, I’m waiting to hear back from Cheryl. I asked her to arrange a call with the lawyers. I’ll let you know when they can set it up OK? And I’m sorry, even if you say it isn’t my fault, it wouldn’t be happening if we weren’t in a relationship.”

She sighed.

“We’ll figure it out, OK, I just, I need to keep them safe”

“I know, I know sweetheart”

We managed to issue a cease and desist order on that particular photographer to not take further photographs of the children and put out a general statement asking the press to respect their privacy but that did seem to have the effect of making them more thirsty for pictures of Sophia and I – we were still game. As pictures circulated of us eating out or on bike rides, this apparently spawned a trend of what I understand are called “Trolls” seeking out Sophia on social media to send her hateful messages to ‘leave me alone’ and to stop ‘trying to wheedle her way into my life’ and ‘get her grubby Latino hands on my money’. And, she said, if they didn’t do it directly, there would be comments underneath her photo on fan sites with people expressing their disgust at my choice of romantic partner. On top of that, there was a lot of denial - people saying that Sophia was and could only ever be my PA – just like Janey they said. Good grief the world really had gone to hell - why did who I was dating even matter?

Apparently there were many people being kind and saying it was nice that I’d found love and that she was beautiful, might give me the babies I’d missed out on etc etc but I could see the comments of the trolls weighed on her mind and lodged there far more than anything positive. Eventually I said she should really just follow me into the social media free wilderness. She could keep an active messenger service for group chats with friends and use a cloud service to share photos of the kids with our parents but for her sanity, she needed to drop Facebook, Instagram and Twitter before she went insane!

She Said

I knew I shouldn’t get drawn into looking at what Keanu’s fan base were saying online but the curiosity was hard to control. I actually only started getting drawn in after the trolls started tracking my down and sending me abusive DMs. That made me want to know if there were any positive voices or if these nasty people basically spoke for the whole of his fandom. I found myself wasting so much time going down rabbit holes trying to find out who these people were but there was no way to do that really.

When my general tetchiness finally got too much and Keanu said I should join him in the 1990s and get off social media, I knew he was right but at the same time it was infuriating as I had got so used to using it for sharing news, family photos, jokes etc as well as using all the messenger tools to connect with my friends. After all the isolation of 2020, this new isolation felt like a kick in the teeth but I felt so childish to think that way and didn’t dare say anything to Keanu. Having never been on social media, he just wouldn’t get it! After about a week though, I had to admit I felt better and admitted that his way was probably the sane option – after weeks of anxiety, I finally felt free from the worry of silly people out there who didn’t know us personally having an opinion about whether we ‘should’ be dating.

Happily, we also had a trip to New York to look forward to - Keanu would be starting filming on John Wick 4 and we were heading there as a family with around a week free to enjoy the city together before he would start on set.

The kids were beyond excited to be flying, not ever having done so before. They each had a little pull-along case and we booked first class so we would have as little time as possible milling around in the public spaces at the airport. I was sure there’d be paps about - we couldn’t ban them from taking our photo altogether even though we’d asked for their privacy to be respected so I was desperate to minimise their chances.

When we got to LAX, it was literally minutes after we’d got into the building when a fan approached asking for a photo. Keanu started to try and explain that he was on his down time with his family and would they mind if he didn’t take one today but he hated the crestfallen look on their face and he quickly suggested that we split up and meet up in the lounge. I rummaged through my bag to get his ticket out and handed it to him with a pointed look at the woman before heading off to check in with the kids, not caring that my silent displeasure might make it online somewhere to be used as evidence of what a bitch I was!

We went on through to departures and waited a good half hour before he showed up.

“Hey Keanu why did you take so long” Eva whined.

He chuckled.

“Sorry honey, but I guess it’s because ‘I’m Duke Caboom, Canada’s greatest stuntman’ he boomed, tickling her sides “and sometimes that means people want to say hi and take a photo so it took a while to catch you up.

“Oh OK” she said matter of factly not at all phased by that idea. I guess she knew how excited Julie and Miranda’s kids had been when they zoomed with him when he was in Berlin so it made sense to her even though Toy Story 4 was the only thing she’d ever seen with him in so she had no idea just how truly famous he was!

“You’re too good to them” I said, still a bit put out that we’d already been separated for a while right at the beginning of our trip.

“Yeah, but it never ends well if I’m an ass…. I mean not nice and you’ve got to remember that I’m usually ‘so high’ on a screen and seeing me in real life is exciting …. to them at least” he said cocking an eyebrow at me as if to say that I no longer saw him as special.

“You’re exciting to me too silly!” I said, relenting a bit from my sulk.

He squeezed my hand.

“Don’t worry, I’ll try to give off some ‘stay away’ vibes in New York so we can all hang out like real people.

“I know, I’m being a bitch, I just wanted this to be, you know, normal”

When we arrived in New York, we had a car waiting so were quickly away from the airport and managed to pass through it without being bothered. On the journey, the kids were pressing their faces against the car windows to see the famous sky-scrapers and there was much anticipation of getting to his apartment to see how their bedrooms looked. We’d arranged to have them decorated and bought new duvets and drapes which Keanu’s maid service had taken care of putting up for them. We got take out pizza for the first night and once again I felt safe and cocooned from the outside world of fans and paparazzi.

He Said

It was strange that Sophia and I had been together for not much short of a year before the public interest in me, and its impact on living our lives, really became a pain in the ass and the source of some conflict between us. I had to remind myself that I’d been living this way for about 20 years and had learned to just allow a little extra time in my day for stopping for a photo. It only affected me when I was on my own so I had to learn to see if from her point of view - it was a shock to her system basically. She’d been my PA for 2 years but we had rarely needed to conduct our business in the public eye so she hadn’t even experienced the attention when we weren’t dating – it was all happening in the context of her being my significant other and with the backdrop of the online trolls and the need to protect her kids.

I guess it would have happened much sooner if I hadn’t been away filming for almost 5 months shortly after we started dating so we’d had an extended time of being together but with no-one outside of friends and family knowing. I tried to tell her we should be grateful all this hadn’t started sooner. I’m not sure that was the right thing to say!

My celebrity did have some advantages though and in New York I’d managed to arrange a private tour of the Empire State Building and rink side seats at a Rangers game. Those earned me points but we weren’t so lucky in Central Park. My apartment isn’t far from there so we headed out for a walk one afternoon, ending up in in the Conservatory Garden figuring that this would be a nice place to be by some water but not where most people would be like Bethesda or the model boat pond.

We’d bought some sandwiches on our way (my time to enjoy the pastrami, pickle and Russian salad I so love) and settled on a bench to chill and rest the kids’ legs when I saw a guy across the other side of the pond raising his camera. It was clearly a Pap with a long lens. I’m normally not a hot head but it was such an intrusion to our pleasant afternoon that I handed Sophia my sandwich and marched up to him.

I was striding fast, not caring much that my stance was clearly threatening and some people idling by the pond scuttled out of my way. The Pap, surprisingly stood his ground until I reached him, squaring up to him.

“Just what in the hell do you think you’re doing? We’re just having some private time as a family and you come along determined to ruin it!”

I was yelling and drawing the attention of others by the pond but I didn’t care.

“hey man, you’re fair game” he responded brazenly.

“Yeah that’s right, I, me, I’m fair game, me not them ,now get the hell out of here”

He was a short weasel of a guy and I was towering above him. He soon thought better of trying to take a picture and scurried away. A woman a few feet away spontaneously clapped!

“Good for you Keanu” she said.

I blushed, coming down suddenly from the adrenaline of the confrontation. It has been a long time since I’d even spoken to a Pap. I usually just ignored them, occasionally putting my hand in front of my face to ruin the shot. It generally wasn’t worth antagonising them but this dude had pushed it too far.

I thanked her and returned to the bench. Sophia handed me back my sandwich while the kids eagerly asked why I’d been shouting at the man. I explained as best I could and I think they were grateful that I just wanted their mom and them to enjoy their time without strangers photographing them.

A couple of days later, Cheryl let me know that the guy made a claim on-line that I’d assaulted him – no actual legal claim was made, I guess because he knew it was bullshit. That was quickly proven when people quickly came forward that they had witnessed it and no such thing had happened. I wondered if the lady clapping was one of them.

She Said

After the Central Park incident, I was so proud of how Keanu had stood up to the paparazzo but we still made a decision to do most of the tourist things without him after that. I couldn’t see us being in Time Square, The Lego Store or the M&M store with him alongside us comfortably. And that was strange and a little sad for me to be back to the single parent feeling, having experienced some very cherished family days.

Our time to go home was fast approaching and I was keen to get one day just for the two of us. Luckily I have a cousin in New York who wanted to spend time with the kids and they offered to take them on the boat trip to the Statue of Liberty for the day. We made the kids breakfast and handed them over to my cousin with backpacks, ready for their adventure.

We just had coffee ourselves as we were planning on a brunch out for ourselves later after some us time between the sheets!

The minute the door was shut, Keanu was pulling me by the hand back to bed.

We quickly shed our pjs, climbed under the covers and started to kiss

Keanu soon reached down and started to gently tease my folds. I moaned into his mouth thrusting myself against his fingers.

A thought came to me and I pulled back and asked

“Can we um, try something today ?”

“Mmmm - what?”

“Well you know your movie, Siberia? “

He nodded

“Well, I watched it while you were away and, um that thing with your thumb ....”

“Oh you want that do you?” - a wicked grin spread across his face

“Well we can try that lots of ways ….. so, we can try that from behind. Get on all fours for me”

I obliged and I felt him slip his stiff cock into me, my folds parting with a pop. He was moving very slowly, then after a few thrusts as I was moaning softly, I felt his wet fingers reach around to gently tease my clit. He did it just enough to make me moan louder but not enough to make me cum. Then he pulled out leaving me bereft

“What?” I cried out

Then he rolled over on his back and pulled me onto him.

“And then there’s lady on top”

I happily sank down on his cock and started to ride him. I was groaning but at the same time I could hear my voice quavering as I neared orgasm once more. He licked his thumb, this time, re-enacting the Siberia moment making me throw my head back in pleasure. I was about to lift off, my voice raised in pitch but again he stopped me before I could, holding my hips to stop my movement.

The he flipped me over onto my back and straddled me, making me wait a few moments as he played with my breasts and smoothed his hands down my sides .

“And finally we can try man on top”

“Will you do that thing ?” I asked

“What the thumb ?”

“No, well yes, but first the thing where you lift me onto you”

“Oh like our first time?”

I nodded, glad he remembered.

He obliged lifting me onto him, pulling me up, ensheathing him slowly so I could feel every vein of his rigid cock and he could feel every ridge of my tunnel.

I was wailing by now each time he pulled me up then released me – I could feel his cock getting even harder when he asked simply

“Ready?”

I just whimpered and nodded my agreement.

He Said

I was so close to coming, I needed to really focus to give her everything she deserved.

I manoeuvred her fully onto her back and encouraged her to lift her legs up over my shoulders.

This allowed me maximum access to thrust in all the way to her cervix and pump in and out.

I could already feel the beginnings of her orgasm, her pussy pulsating around me. It was as if she was a beautiful flower, attracting me with her petals then sucking me in, holding me there in a vice like grip to take what she needed from me. It was primal and all encompassing

As I felt the ripples get more intense, I managed to balance on my left hand and free my right hand, lick my thumb and circle it over her clit.

That was it, it was all over for both of us. She clamped around me, her legs quivering and I shot my hot load inside shouting out as she screamed “yes, yes oh god, yes”

My thrusts gradually slowed, I was still moaning and fighting to catch my breath. I eased her legs down and lay on her just holding my weight off her by resting on my elbows. I gave her a sloppy kiss before easing off her onto my back. I still couldn’t speak. and just squeezed her hand. Tears leaked out of my eyes and I gulped, looking across, I found her in a similar emotional state.

“Wow that was - god I don’t think I’ve ever, ever come so hard”

“Me neither - love you so much Mr Reeves”

“Why do you always call me that after really great sex?”

“Dunno” she chuckled “maybe to give you the respect you deserve for making love to me so, so ….”

“What?”

“So masterfully, so beautifully”

“Mmmmmmm”

“Let’s have a snooze before brunch yeah?”

“Mmmm”

I think she was almost asleep already as she turned away and I spooned behind her, holding her warm breast in the palm of my hand.

@fortheloveoffanfic @kindainlovewithk’eanu @omg-imagine @iworshipkeanureeves @fics-not-tragedies @ficsnroses @keanureevesisbae @penwieldingdreamer @witty-wallflower @paperplanesandwallflowers @bitchyslut99 @ladyreapermc @toomanystoriessolittletime @fanficsrusz @keanuficfiles @bitchyslut99

#keanu reeves fanfic #keanu reeves fanfiction #keanu #keanu reeves #romance with boss

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dvp95 · 5 years ago

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quiet on widow’s peak (9)

pairing: dan howell/phil lester, pj liguori/sophie newton/chris kendall rating: teen & up tags: paranormal investigator, mystery, online friendship, slow burn, strangers to lovers, nonbinary character, trans character, background poly, phil does some buzzfeed unsolved shit and dan is a fan word count: 3.1k (this chapter), 29.6k (total) summary: Phil’s got a list of paranormal experiences a mile long that he likes to share with the world. Abandoned buildings, cemeteries, and ghost stories have always called his name, and a particular fan of his has a really, really good ghost story.

read this chapter on ao3 or here!

The sleep Phil has is restless and patchy. He wakes up so many times, spikes of panic cutting through the calm as he tries to remember where he is and who's breathing next to him. Dan is either a very heavy sleeper or very good at pretending to sleep, because Phil jerking awake never makes them stir.

It's a comfort, to look at Dan and see their blurry face slack with a peacefulness that wasn't there all night, but Phil doesn't do it for too long. Watching someone sleep is the pinnacle of creepiness. He just looks for a couple of seconds until his heart rate slows back down and he can roll onto his side. He faces away from Dan so he isn't tempted to keep looking at them, staring at the boring wall instead and waiting for sleep to momentarily take him again.

He's still tired when he wakes up properly to Dan tossing and turning, but he decides that's his cue to be awake.

"Hey," he murmurs, reaching for Dan's hand. He squints, but he can't tell if Dan is having a nightmare or if they're awake without getting even closer to their face. "It's okay. You're okay."

Dan takes a deep, shuddering sort of breath and cradles Phil's hand in both of their own. It's like they're afraid he's going to let go. "Sorry, fuck."

"You've got nothing to be sorry for," says Phil. His stomach is doing a weird twisty thing at the sound of Dan's voice all husky with sleep. As long as he acts normal, it's fine, right? It's hard to convince himself of that when Dan's hands are pressed to his own and making him feel impossibly small. "How did you sleep?"

"I mostly slept fine," Dan says, and Phil nods like he didn't already know that.

"Good. You needed it."

For a moment, Dan is quiet. Then, they shuffle onto their side so they can properly face Phil, who has to fight the urge to hide away from their gaze. It's a good thing that he can't see the depth and warmth and sparkle of Dan's eyes without his glasses on.

"You didn't sleep very well," they say like it's a fact. Phil doesn't bother trying to deny it, he just shrugs. "You could have woken me up."

"Why would I do that?" Phil asks, puzzled by the offer.

Dan smiles, and Phil reaches for his glasses. He feels so vulnerable without them, and the sensation of not being able to see the way Dan is smiling while Dan can probably read every tiny emotion on his face is anxiety-inducing.

He leaves his other hand in Dan's. Maybe it would be easier if he just let go, but he finds that he doesn't want to.

The world comes into focus, and Phil blinks over at Dan like it's his first time seeing them. They look so different with their lashes clumped together and lines creased into their soft cheeks by the pillow. Curls are in complete disarray, and Phil presses his fingers into his palm so he doesn't try to brush the frizzy, unruly mess off Dan's forehead. Their smile doesn't fade when Phil just kind of stares - if anything, it gets even wider.

"You stayed with me all night," says Dan. Their tone is dry, but Phil imagines there's not a small amount of sincerity behind it. "You didn't have to, like, be alone."

Alone isn't something Phil had felt at all. Dan's steady breathing and the warmth of them emanating from their core even when they weren't touching were the only things keeping Phil grounded every time he woke with a start. He doesn't know how to say that to this person he barely knows, though, wouldn't know how to say something so open to most of the people in his life, so he just chuckles.

"No use in neither of us getting any sleep," he points out.

Dan is very warm, and Phil can feel his palm starting to get sweaty where it's trapped between both of theirs. He makes an apologetic face and pulls his hand back, patting it on his flannel pyjamas. Dan doesn't seem bothered by the lack of contact, but they also don't seem relieved - Phil can't tell what they're thinking at all, if he's honest.

"So," says Dan. "Where do we go from here?"

Before Phil can even think about it, he echoes the question in falsetto. It's louder and more obnoxious than he intends it to be. He swings his legs out of bed and reaches for his phone on the nightstand to try and hide a blush. "Uh, we go eat breakfast. Lunch, I guess."

"You lied," Dan says to his back. "You are always thinking about Buffy."

"Not always," Phil says weakly.

"Often enough."

"Once More With Feeling bypasses my brain entirely. It's just a primal call and response to anyone as obsessed with the show as teenage me was."

"I've never seen the show the whole way through," says Dan. "But Buffy is a style icon of mine."

Phil's tired brain offers him a half dozen mental images of Dan in various Buffy outfits before he shakes his head to try and clear it. He's never been particularly interested in boys wearing girls' clothes, but the concepts of gender identity and presentation are so blurry when it comes to Dan that he's going to have to rethink that position. They're not 'girls' clothes' on Dan. Maybe there's no such thing as 'girls' clothes' at all.

It's too early in the day for a deep dive on his own perceptions of gender, though. He thinks that sort of existentialism can wait until after his second or third coffee.

Phil's parents eat lunch with them and do their best to make small talk, but only Chris is On enough to properly converse with them. At Phil's umpteenth 'huh' of the early afternoon, they give up entirely and migrate to the lounge to watch tv.

For a long few seconds, the kitchen table is quiet. Then, Dan stands and starts to clear everyone's plates.

"You don't have to do that," Phil says, feeling a bit embarrassed.

"I need to do something with my hands or I'll lose the plot," says Dan. They dump the dishes carefully in the sink and start running water. Having their back to the group seems to give them the courage to add, "I don't have all my meds with me. I didn't exactly expect to be out all night."

"What d'you take?" Chris asks.

"Little fucking nosy of you," says PJ.

"Well, one of us might have what he needs, love. I'm not just asking for the hell of it."

Phil feels a bit like his mum has possessed him when he clicks his tongue disapprovingly. "You really shouldn't share medication," he says when Chris gives him a look.

It makes Dan laugh, anyway, so Phil feels like he's done something right. They still don't turn around, just washing everybody's dishes and looking so weirdly at home in Phil's clothes, Phil's old kitchen. Phil doesn't realise he's staring at their back until someone kicks him under the table.

"Earth to Phil," Chris murmurs. He's resting his chin on a hand and smirking, but his eyes are too sharp for how little sleep he must have gotten. Phil feels heat rise to his cheeks and pulls his coffee closer to use the steam as an excuse.

"I don't need anything, really," Dan hums. "Thanks for asking. My brain just struggles a bit."

"A big mood, as the kids say," Chris says sagely.

Dan laughs again. It isn't as loud as Phil knows it can get, but it still fills the room and makes everything seem a bit brighter. "Do the kids say that?" they ask. "Is that what they say?"

"I believe it is," says Chris.

There is another stretch of silence. Phil watches his friends' faces as the elephant in the room weighs on them all. He's making a bet in his own mind about who will be the first to break when Dan turns around and bluntly says, "I still don't think that was a ghost, but I really fucking hated it."

"Sorry," says PJ, "but what else could it have possibly been?"

"I dunno," says Dan. They cross their arms over their waist, holding onto their own elbows. Phil is beginning to recognise the position as a protective one for them. "But I'm sure there's an explanation. Sleep paralysis is normal."

"The way it happened was not normal."

"What do you think it was, Dan?" Sophie asks. Her tone is much kinder than PJ's, but she seems just as skeptical.

Dan's dimple is pulling downwards in unhappiness or discomfort, so Phil waves a hand to get everyone's attention on himself instead.

"Why don't you guys tell us what exactly happened to you," he suggests, meeting Dan's eyes almost apologetically. He knows that none of them want to relive it, but it's easier if they're all on the same page here. "And we can toss around theories later."

PJ says, "It was a demon. I could see it. It was tall and humanoid-ish and had a Cheshire Cat smile and it kept going closer to Chris and Soph just to watch me panic. Then it would laugh and sharpen its claws on the wall. It felt like hatred and fear in a physical being. I really don't think our protection sigils did fuck all, but it didn't actually touch any of us, so maybe they helped a bit?"

Dan says, "It was nothing of the sort. I saw the same shit you did, Peej, but that doesn't mean anything. Haven't you ever heard of mass hysteria? Folie à deux - not the album - isn't unheard of. Maybe there's a high level of carbon monoxide. Maybe the asbestos got to us. I don't fucking know, but there's a hundred explanations before you hit demon. But, yeah. It looked like what PJ says. It felt like I was frozen for a fucking week, not just a few hours, it was awful. Zero out of ten, would not do again."

Sophie says, "It smiled at me and I felt cold."

They pile into the basement to recuperate so they aren't bothering Phil's parents. Or, more accurately, so Phil's parents aren't bothering them. Most of the games are packed up, but Phil finds the Wii and its small collection of disks in a box under the stairs. He sets it up, hands his friends the controllers, and sits back to zone out while they tear each other apart at Mario Kart.

Phil doesn't consider himself a skeptic. He knows that his threshold of belief is a lot lower than he makes it appear to be in his videos, but he'd never call himself a Scully. He always thinks about the supernatural aspects of any case he's looking into, even if he doesn't commit a hundred percent to the mentality that it must be something weird. He usually just prefers the weird option to the more common and boring reality of things.

So this thing with the Wilkins place is downright terrifying. Not only is it in Phil's proverbial backyard, too close for comfort in a lot of ways, but he hasn't had an experience quite so chilling since he was sixteen and dipping his toe into this hobby at Martyn's side.

He and Martyn still aren't sure what exactly left those finger-shaped bruises on Phil's ankles, but it's become a funny story in the years since.

Maybe this will be something to laugh at in a few years, too. Phil hopes so.

"You sure you don't want to play?" Dan asks, breaking into Phil's reverie. They're in first place and not even looking at the screen, their concerned brown eyes focused on Phil. Phil gives them a small smile and shakes his head.

"No, I'm alright."

"Phil, please take the controller from him," says Chris. He seems annoyed, but Phil can never tell how much of that is a show. It's possible that Chris isn't actually competitive at all and just likes to work Phil and PJ up by acting like he, too, would rather eat a whole head of lettuce than lose. It's also possible that Chris genuinely feels that way. "He's not even fucking trying and he's kicking our asses."

"Maybe you deserve to have your ass kicked a bit," Phil says, watching the screen to see how easily Dan ducks around various obstacles.

It still jolts a bit, hearing the people around him make an assumption - however logical it is - about how Dan wants to be addressed. Phil knows it isn't his place to correct them, especially since it seems like they're not using any less correct terms than he is, but it still rankles a bit.

"Fuck's sake!" PJ exclaims, looking like he's a hair away from throwing the Wiimote at something. He's never actually hit that level of gamer rage, but getting lapped by someone who keeps checking their phone during a race seems to be getting on his nerves. Phil reaches out and pats at PJ's mess of curls.

"You'll be okay," he says, dry. "They're just better than you, you'll live."

Maybe the pronoun use is a little more pointed than it needs to be, but Dan gives him such an exasperatedly fond grin that Phil can't bring himself to regret it. There is a brief beat of quiet, and then PJ groans again.

"It's not fair," says PJ, gesturing dramatically with the Wiimote. Sophie leans out of the line of fire. "This is unacceptable. We have to play a game they're bad at, now."

"I don't care what you call me," says Dan. They sound more amused than anything else. "As long as you know I'm winning anything we play."

"That's why they call him Winnie," Chris says in that very mild voice he uses for absolute nonsense. He puts his own controller aside and flops onto his back on the basement floor, stretching. "I can't do it, I can't play another round of this farce. I'm going upstairs to let my future mum-in-law dote on me."

Phil sighs. He can feel Dan's eyes on him again, and he shrugs helplessly in their general direction. He does not control the Chris. "Please stop saying things like that. Dan is going to think I'm mixed up in… this."

He gestures vaguely at the three of them, and Chris' eyes sharpen like he's spotted prey.

"Oh, so you want Dan to know you're horrendously single, then?" Chris gives Dan a wide, conspiratorial sort of grin. "He's useless at this, you know."

"Me rejecting you doesn't make me useless," Phil huffs. He can feel a flush creeping up his neck, because Chris is more right than he wants to admit, and Dan is smiling back at Chris like they're in on the joke.

"I think it demonstrates a lack of taste," Chris sniffs.

"You know what I think?" Sophie asks, stretching her arms above her head. "I think I need a shower."

"Me too," Dan says with an unnecessary little sigh. Phil pinches his own thigh to circumvent the mental images before they start. It's annoying to have such a good imagination, sometimes. "And I need to take my meds. Is there a bus that runs around here or something?"

"Don't worry about taking the bus," says PJ. "I'll drive you."

"I don't mind," says Dan.

"I mind," says PJ, more firmly. He stands like he's planning on dragging Dan to the car himself if Dan tries to say no again.

Dan's shoulders relax forward. Phil knows the anxiety of riding unfamiliar public transit all too well, and he definitely wouldn't make Dan do something so harrowing after they got roped into ghosthunting. He's glad that PJ is on the same page again, keeping Dan in that sense of protection that being a team gives them.

It's only been a weekend, but Phil is already reluctant to let Dan go home and leave the team bubble. He wants to insist on coming along, but he knows PJ probably wants solitude on the drive back.

Still. Phil chews his lip and looks down at his phone so he doesn't have to see the looks on his friends' faces when he says, "You can keep the pyjamas. If you want them."

"Okay," Dan says softly. "I will, thanks."

He knows that he should look up, should smile at Dan or stand and hug them before they leave his life, but that all feels so big at this moment. Phil's anxiety lets him wave and murmur a goodbye before he's left alone in the basement. At least, he thinks he's alone, until he sighs heavily and Chris responds from the floor. "Oh, you're fucking mooning over him, aren't you? This is awful. I preferred the ghost."

Phil takes a shower after his friends have, to be polite, and it feels incredible to wash off the dirt and dust from the attic. It feels less incredible when the door opens.

He hadn't bothered locking it, because his parents' shower is loud and it should be obvious that he's in there. At least the curtain isn't see-through. He takes a moment to just stand under the spray, bewildered, before it occurs to him that he can ask what's going on. It probably isn't a serial killer. "Er, hello?"

"Hi," Chris' voice comes, tense. "We've got a problem."

"I'm a little busy," Phil says pointedly.

"Well, get your hand off your knob and get out here," says Chris. "We need to figure this out before Peej gets back."

Phil rolls his eyes, but doesn't bother arguing about why exactly he's busy. He rinses the last of his mum's conditioner out of his hair and squints at the unfocused, opaque shower curtain like he'll be able to see Chris if he just tries hard enough. "Figure what out, mate?"

"All of the footage is fucked," Chris says, blunt. "It's corrupted to high hell. Every single second. There's no evidence we were even there at all."

#quiet on widow's peak #words words words

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post-itpenny · 5 years ago

Text

Sleepwalker

Some angsty Vampire AU, lets see what Magpie gets up to at night.

Vespers was at his aunt’s bedroom door, it was like clockwork.

He’d knock politely to wish her good morning or goodnight. Tell her he saved some dinner for her in the fridge if she wanted it. He’d leave at sunset and only then would she come out. She slept most of the day anyways.

Magpie was aware this was her home but she felt a stranger in it. These were not the same photos on the walls she remembered, some of the furniture was different. She did not understand how to work the coffee pot in the kitchen, it was so much more high-tech then what she recalled. She did not understand why she had photos of a little boy she recognized as her nephew but then there were more of him older and older, and she looked older and older. She did not recognize the red headed girl that lived in the house but felt she should, though…. the redhead was almost never home now. Magpie knew what she did, she was one of them now….but instead of anger she felt… sad, like she had lost something. But another part of her… understood.

Who was she?

And she realized the grown boy who called himself her nephew was slipping in that direction too…. how should she feel? What about his oaths as a hunter? What about her own?

But then again, Magpie’s own brother had not come to see her once. Even when she begged for him over the phone. What had happened? What had she forgotten? Where did they grow so apart?

Magpie ate the dinner set aside for her cold. She didn’t trust a microwave with that many buttons and didn’t have the energy to use the stove. Her world was fragmented, confusing, and exhausting. All she wanted to do was go back to sleep.

So, she did.

Magpie’s dreams were a mess of memories trying to resurface. Sometimes they made sense- snapshots for her to admire. Sometimes a blurry mess of sound and image. For the first time in a long time, she dreamt about a song. She knew this one, a comfort from similar dreams of her childhood. But she never slept deeply with dreams like this and soon became aware her bare foot had stepped on a twig.

Magpie’s eyes flashed open.

She knew that she had done some sleepwalking lately. More than once she woke up by the back door with her feet covered in mud and too tired to care. For some reason she never cared. Tonight however was the first time she had woken up while sleepwalking. She was in the woods behind her house, a flick of something in her mind asking her to come forward.

To Magpie’s surprise, her feet obeyed.

Despite her exhaustion and confusion, old instincts kicked in. She imagined a brick wall around her head. Fighting hard against the invisible pull on her body. She fell backwards with a shout-

And looked up at Jack.

It wasn’t fully him, the wound in his head where she had shot him was still gaping wide, she could see right through it.

Jack gave a dark chuckle, “well Starshine I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you caught onto my game eventually. Even when you’re down you still won’t give up a fight”

Magpie scrambled back, eyes locked hard in the vampire while hands searched blindly for anything that could serve as a weapon.

Jack laughed again and held his hands up in a mock truce. “Come now sweetheart there isn’t any need for that. Our little midnight rendezvous have been going on for a while and you haven’t minded. Granted, I didn’t let you mind but that’s just a slight detail.”

Magpie blinked, his words clicking as she slapped a hand over her neck and felt the pinpricks of where he had bitten her. There were several actually, no wonder she had been so exhausted.

“Now darling,” Jack continued, “I want to make an offer. You’re alone and you know it. Family ditched you and all. Hell, the only two that did care about you are off canoodling with a couple bloodsuckers of their own. One even is like me now. You chose to separate yourself, I just saw an opportunity when I was in need of a little TLC if you know what I mean.”

Magpie snarled, grabbing a fallen branch and swiping at the vampire. Jack doged easily however, grabbing the branch and yanking it out of her hand.

“I just wanna talk Love. No tricks, no nothing. Come with me, I messed up your memory and I’m the only one that can fix it. All I ask is is you-“

“Off with you.” Magpie hissed.

“And what are you going to do all alone Starshine huh? You have no one and nothing. I’m the only one that can help you-“

“You did this to me to start with!”

“Well you set me on bloody fire!”

“You killed half the town of course I did!” Magpie screamed, “and I would do it again and again!”

Jack gave a twisted grin, “and what about old Red huh? She’s like me now, will you go after her? What about your nephew’s beau? Will you stake him?”

Magpie paused, a flood of emotions she couldn’t even begin to process hitting her.

Jack grinned and held out his hand, “they abandoned you anyways. Why stay?”

But every morning the boy who called himself her nephew knocked on her door to wish her good morning…..

Jack took a step closer, “you rather be in the past like me, it’s part of why you can’t regain what you lost. You’re just like me.”

But the redhead was someone she knew was important to her…

“So Starshine, do we have a-“

Magpie walked away.

He screamed her name over and over, unable to cross the boundary line on the house. The one she had originally made, the one both her nephew and the redhead had maintained when she could not.

Vespers came home at sunrise to find his aunt struggling with the Keurig.

“H-here that’s set to an individual cup, let’s make a whole pot.” He suggested.

They made coffee and sat down together, neither talking. Magpie studied his face closely, occasionally looking down at the photographs she had laid out on the table.

“Where were you in this one?” She finally asked.

Vespers’ mouth opened in surprise, for a moment he looked as if he might cry before leaning over to examine the photo.

“You took that at the movie theater, it was my birthday and we went to see a movie together.”

“What about this one?” Magpie questioned as she pointed at another photo.

They continued like this all morning, and not once was Magpie tired.

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egopocalypse · 6 years ago

Text

Return Home

This is one of, if not the longest piece I have posted on this site. As such, most of it will be under the cut.

Also, some parts of it may seem… familiar. I published the original draft of this about two months ago, but have since revised and edited it for class. And as most things have recently, it turned into Domino Effect. What else did I expect.

TW: Suicide

“Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice messaging system. Stacy Danvers is not available. At the tone, please record your message. When you are finished recording, you may hang up, or press one for more op-” Click.

Chase sighs, flinging his phone onto the bed beside him. His eyes slip shut as his thumb digs into the scarred flesh on his temple, the circular motion working to loosen the muscle and tendons underneath his skin.

“Great,” he mutters. “Just great. Can she just pick up the phone and answer me for once?”

His hand stretches out, fingers curling tight around the cold glass as he raises it, damp condensation leaving a ring on the wooden nightstand. Water rolls down the sides, dripping on his jeans as he toasts the air, staring at the bland, off-white of the ceiling. “To a happy marriage,” he huffs. “And an even happier divorce.”

The whiskey burns the back of his throat. He grimaces at the taste, tipping the glass back to swallow it all in a single gulp. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and glances at the contents of the bottle gleaming in the lamplight. Only half-empty. Not bad for a bottle he picked up yesterday.

He bounces his leg. How long has it been since he called? Maybe she’s busy, or she’s eating dinner with the kids. Those are valid reasons to ignore him, right? They have to be. He twists around and grabs his phone, the bright light burning his eyes as he checks the time. 7:36 PM. And the call was made… not even five minutes ago. Great.

He pours another drink. It’s going to be a long night waiting for her to call back- that is, if she decides to call him back. At this point, he doesn’t know whether or not he can even expect a call. She might’ve just seen his number and ignored it. He wouldn’t put it past her.

What would they even talk about? Would she finally apologize for the shit she put him through? Would she let him see the kids?

He snorts. Yeah, right, like that’s going to happen. Ever since she dropped off the signed divorce papers two months ago, he hasn’t seen Sam and Emma except for a few hours every other weekend. If the court hadn’t ordered Stacy to give him partial custody, he wouldn’t even have that. She didn’t want anything to do with him. Changing her last name so soon was proof of that.

He can’t remember filling the glass the next time, or the time after that, or the time after that, but by the time he puts the glass down for the last time, it’s 4:30 A.M. The bottle’s empty, shattered pieces scattered across the carpeted floor. He doesn’t remember throwing it, but there’s a dent in wall that wasn’t there a few hours ago. The largest shard spins in his hand, the light reflecting off the sides as he stares at the foot of his bed, elbows on knees and a bored frown on his face.

She still hasn’t responded.

It shouldn’t bother him. It’s not like she hasn’t blown him off before. But something about this is different. Maybe it’s just the alcohol, but something gnaws at him- a monster lurking out of sight, ready to pounce on him and rip him open for the world to see.

A sudden thud catches him off guard, the glass slipping through his fingers as he loses his grip, hitting the floor with a tiny thump. He freezes, his heart pounding furiously as a slow, disordered realization crosses his face.

There’s someone else in the house.

Chase clambers to his feet, clammy hands clutching at the covers as he staggers forward, stumbling through the glass maze. The hall beckons to him, spinning out of proportion and the door dancing out of view, but he trudges forward, stubby nails dragging along the wall as he leans against it.

“Hello?” His voice slurs, dragging the word from his tongue. “Anyone there?”

Silence.

He groans. Of course, no one was going to answer. Anyone in their right mind would be asleep, just like he should be if he has any hope of waking up without a hangover.

“Oh, who am I kidding?” he grumbles, holding the wall for support as he turns back to his room. “Tomorrow’s already gonna suck.”

Crunch.

He pauses, his eyebrows scrunched together as he turns back towards the kitchen. “What the hell?”

There’s that feeling again- that insatiable need itching at the back of his skull. He needs to know if someone’s there. He needs to know that his mind isn’t playing tricks on him.

A hand clamps his shoulder and shoves him against the wall, cold metal pressed against his throat. His head hits the edge of a frame, a searing pain flaring behind dull blue eyes and he blinks, his blurry vision refusing to clear.

“Wh-Who are you?”

“Forgotten me already, Chase?” The figure clicks his tongue and he’s paralyzed, frozen from head to toe. “We’ll just have to fix that, won’t we?”

“N-no, wait-” Fuck, why can’t he think? The knife’s cold steel seeps through his skin and he shivers, goosebumps prickling on his skin. “I-I just- I thought our meeting was next week?”

“Is that so?” Oh god, he can just imagine the smirk lurking in that damn voice. “Tell me, Chase, what else have you forgotten?”

He blinks again, the haze finally clearing from his eyes, and the figure’s exposed in full glory- pearlescent white teeth bared in a sharp grin, short brown hair combed back into a quiff, and beady black eyes staring deep into his soul.

A perfect copy of his own image, except for the eyes and a bloody gash ripped across his throat.

It sickens him to look at it, but he just can’t stop. He’s mesmerized, falling in line with cheap words and empty promises. The memories are faded, dim and just out of view. Something about the kids? Maybe?

“I…” He wets his lips, running his tongue over chapped and split skin. “I don’t know.”

Anti scowls, his eyes boring into Chase’s soul. “Have you forgotten? Or are you just too afraid to remember?” He reaches up and presses a thumb over his scar, digging it into his temple as Chase winces, pain shooting through his skull. “Maybe this will help.”

Anti murmurs something he can’t understand as the memories shove back into place. He staggers, grabbing at the demon to hold himself upright. “I remember!” he gasps. “I remember.”

Anti’s smile stretches, growing into a ghastly grin. “Go on.”

He swallows. “I remember the red seeping into my skin, the sirens blaring in the distance, and screams- screams calling out my…”

Oh.

“My name.”

“Very good.” The knife pulls back from his throat and he retreats, tucking into himself as he distances himself from it.

“I- I killed them, didn’t I?” He accuses, glaring at the figure. “All of them. Stacy, Sam, Emma- they’re gone.”

“You did what had to be done, Chase,” Anti smirks, his hand tilting up Chase’s chin. “I’m just returning the favor.”

He snarls, balling his hands into fists. “Why are you here?”

“What do you think the cops will do when they find you, Brody?” The knife flips in his hand, Chase’s eyes following the path up and down. “Do you think they’ll let you off easy? You shot your own children. You slit your ex-wife’s throat. They’ll charge you with murder and lock you up for good- if they don’t put you right on Death Row.”

Anti catches the knife by the blade and holds the handle out to him. “Better to get it done yourself than wait for the cops to do it for you.”

Chase tries to swallow past the thick lump in his throat. “I can’t-”

“Of course you can,” Anti cocks his head to the side, black eyes glittering in the flickering light. “You’re already a murderer, Brody. Suicide isn’t that different when you think about it. The only difference is whose blood is spilled.”

Chase slumps over, arms curling into his chest as he shudders, icy goosebumps racing along his skin. “I didn’t want this,” he mutters, his voice strained and weak.

“But it’s yours all the same.” The voice grates against his ears, a mockery of his shame, yet he can’t help but fall into it. He’s a wilted corpse; all the fight and anger dissolving into pure exhaustion, and he almost collapses into the other’s waiting arms, burying his head into the crook of his neck. A hand rakes through his hair, sharp nails scraping against his tingling scalp, and he barely resists the urge to sigh, leaning in closer despite his agitation.

He doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want to see himself like this. He doesn’t want his family to see him like this.

But what’s the point of living if they’re dead? Killed by his own hand, no less.

He’s missed this. He’s missed the touch of another person that he’s ready to cling onto the first thing- figment, demon, hallucination, whatever it is- that gives him even the slightest bit of attention, and he hates it. He can’t stand it.

And yet, he can’t get himself to let go.

“There we go,” Anti croons, caressing his hand through Chase’s hair. He melts into the touch as Anti chuckles, the low rumble of his chest a contrast to Chase’s racing heart. “A single slice and you won’t have to worry anymore.”

“What about you?” He asks, the words muffled by the other’s shoulder.

“Me?” Anti pulls back, a wicked grin splitting his face. “I’ll be right there with you, Chaser. When you go, I will too.” He stifles a laugh. “Hah- In a way, I’ll be the only thing you take with you.”

Chase glances to the side and reaches for the knife, gripping the handle in his clammy palm. “Will it hurt?”

There’s a scoff. “It’s a slit throat, Brody, not a papercut. Of course, it’s going to hurt.”

Chase swallows, staring at the blade in his hand. It wasn’t anything special, just a kitchen knife Anti had probably pilfered from a drawer, yet he can’t suppress the chill that raises the hair on the nape of his neck. One slice and it’d be over. Forever.

Sunlight filters in through the window and he squints, peeking at the colors poking from behind the trees. It’s a thing of beauty, and he appreciates the scenery for his death.

The steel drags across his throat, tearing through flesh and veins. Crimson blood flows from the jagged cut, spilling down his neck and staining his shirt collar a dull red.

The corpse falls forward, a small puddle spreading on the floor, and from his pocket, his phone buzzes. Anti takes it as his form shudders, stripping away his guise. The blood on his neck disappears. Black eyes turn silver. The brown hair becomes dark green, just long enough to tie back. Marvin slips several rings on his fingers and paints a smile on his lips as he looks at the caller ID. A picture of a blond woman with a bright smile lights up the screen, with a name flashing across the top.

Stacy Brody.

“Hey Stacy, Chase can’t pick up the phone right now. He’s a little… preoccupied at the moment. But don’t worry, I’ll make sure he calls you right back when he gets the chance…”

@ill-spink @abouttobesilenced @kisstheashes @lostinegomayhem @sylver-striings @here-be-becquerel @assbutt-of-the-readers @dakotathewhale @acuaticamber06 @spicy-spedicey @superbanananinja234 @imallwaysconfused @cest-mellow @starlightxnightmare @help-trashbin @epicfangirl01 @clownoutofdarkness @mihaela-tbg @iris-the-asparagus @cutewarmachine @sqxxddygremlin @nextstep17 @bunchofdoodlesinspace @dreamsoffallingstars @redangel201 @abyssshifter @eridangan @jaysflight @skyewardlight @wildhorsewolf @metautske @allons-ychey @stuck-in-a-l-o-o-p @kyerrio @unadventurousjulie @lunatrixyl @oliveroxenfree3 @kairomancerr @kitnkas @gray-avidan @dorito-with-no-weakness @lildevyl @glixbitch @spontaneoustornadoes @littleluversblog @hexatrash @paperhatcollection @bookwormscififan @novelistgeek @worm-does-shit @taikeero-lecoredier @mad-men-inc @seannbean

#jacksepticeye #antisepticeye #chase brody #marvin the magnificent #jacksepticeye fanfiction #writersofjack #river's writing #Domino Effect #Don't worry.#Chase will be back.#He trusts his necromancer after all ;)#Ink =)

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mimik-u · 7 years ago

Text

Flower Child (Chapter 3)

Title: Texts

Summary:

Garnet, Pearl, Amethyst, Greg, Yellow, and Blue—they've all lost someone. Lovers and daughters and friends and family, and that's not a wound you easily come back from.

If at all.

But this isn't an 'if at all' kind of story.

It's a story about a sickly, little kid named Steven and his ever-growing surrogate family.

It's a story about the kind of boy who'd extend a flower and a smile to a sad stranger he meets at a cemetery. Human AU.

AO3 Link

Sunday, 9:43 PM

Pearl: You’re really going to let him go see the Diamonds?

Pearl: After all they’ve done?

Pearl: After all WE’VE done to stand against them?

Greg: Its what he wants Pearl. who are we to deny him that?

Pearl: He didn’t want her to know about his condition.

Greg: That was different!

Pearl: Sure, Greg.

The three dots of impending doom jumped onto her screen within an instant, but Pearl didn’t wait for what was surely another half-assed justification from a man who seemed to half-ass anything that could be half-assed. (Which was neither fair nor right, but God, she was livid.) She shut her phone down, placed it on the nightstand, and rolled back onto her pillow with an aggressive thump.

Which, of course, did nothing to alleviate the headache that had been beating against the back of her skull all day.

Rose… Rose wouldn’t have wanted this, would she?

Her son fraternizing with the enemy.

With Yellow Diamond.

Even the mere thought of the woman was enough to conjure a clear image of the imposing CEO in Pearl’s mind-eye. She had golden eyes and a hard heart, and her practices—from her exploitation of workers to the conditions of her factories—were far from ethical. She was a tyrant, a monster, a despot.

And Steven was set to enter her lair.

(An extravagant penthouse suite that had reportedly cost over 200 million dollars.)

Her little boy, swallowed up by the yellow beast.

Rose… Rose wouldn’t have permitted this…

… Right?

Right?

It was a single instant of hesitation, but it was enough, and her mistrust and anger and irritation at Yellow, at Greg, at the world, soon gave away to another emotion, one that had been swelling up in Pearl’s chest all day. She rolled over to her side and plucked her phone up once more, clearing Greg’s response away with a furious swipe so she could type in her password.

It was 7673.

It was Rose.

She clicked the little photo icon and scrolled.

Scrolled past pictures of Steven as he slept during one of his dialysis treatments.

Past twenty Amethyst selfies that had been taken while Pearl wasn’t looking.

Past the family’s vacation to a cabin in the vast, snowy mountains.

And then she abruptly stopped, tapping once to expand the only image she wanted to see.

It was a picture of a picture, of a polaroid Garnet had taken approximately a year before Rose had met Greg, and everything had gone to—

Rose’s arm was wrapped around Pearl’s shoulders, and her pink lips were pressed against her cheek, and they were laughing.

Laughing!

And Pearl was in love.

Even in the blurry polaroid, she could see the faint blush that had traced itself across the bridge of her pointed nose like a messy pink scribble, could see the admiration that had made her eyes shine so bright once upon a time.

And she could feel the phantoms of warmth.

The warmth of Rose’s big, encompassing arms.

The warmth that had spread across Pearl’s entire body, that had electrified her veins.

A hot, itchy sensation climbed and climbed her throat until it welled up in her eyes. The phone went slack in her hand, tumbling to the bed.

Who was she kidding?

She didn’t know what Rose would have wanted.

After all, once upon a time, Pearl had thought that she wanted her.

She would have turned forty today had she not chosen… She bit her lip. She didn’t want to admit it, not even to herself.

It did not compute.

She would have turned forty, she tried again. The tears dripped down her beaky nose. And she would have been radiant.

Monday, 7:02 AM

Garnet: safe drive steven. <3

Steven: Thanks, boo. <3

Steven: And just so you know… I did think about what you told me last night.

Steven: And, like, I really thank you for being upfront with me about how you felt. Pearl just straight up told me that I shouldn’t go, and you took the time to tell me why I shouldn’t go, but this is just something I have to do Garnet.

Garnet: have to?

Steven: I guess I don’t have to, but I want to.

Steven: She’s really nice, and she’s really sad, and I want to be her friend.

Around her, the gym’s locker room was coming to life. Fellow trainers changing into exercise gear for appointments with clients. Early gym comers heading off to the showers for a rinse off. People talking and sipping coffee and slamming locker doors with aplomb. But Garnet was immobile on the bench, her entire world contained in the little screen sitting in the palm of her hand.

She was conflicted, and conflicted wasn’t exactly a feeling she experienced very often.

It was unpleasant to say the least.

Like a fist nurtured into her stomach over and over and over again.

On one hand—one of the fists churning her stomach in nauseating ways—the memories and the rage and the rage those memories roared into existence tore through her overwhelmed head like fire in a forest. She saw Rose Quartz standing on a box in front of the D.E. building, the force and passion in her words inspiring disgruntled workers to join her in protest. Saw her own hands wrapped around a sign that screamed for FAIR WAGES as her hoarse voice did the same. Garnet’s own mothers, Ruby and Sapphire, had worked in one of D.E.’s factories overseas before they’d come to America.

They were the reasons she had taken up Rose’s banner in the first place.

Ruby’s calloused hands testified to cruel work—the kind of stuff that may have broken a lesser person—and Sapphire’s strained silence about those years spoke volumes where she could not.

Whenever they saw Yellow Diamond on TV, they would immediately blanch and grasp hands, as though they were afraid that she would reach through the screen and wrench them apart.

On the other hand—Garnet gritted her teeth to make this concession—Yellow Diamond was her demon. Hers and her parents’ and Rose’s and Amethyst’s and Pearl’s.

Not Steven’s.

She wanted him to inherit so many things from her—some wondrous and some wise.

Love and light and patience and perseverance.

But not hate.

Never hate.

Garnet threw her towel around her neck and stood up with a sigh that reached into her bones and shook them for good measure.

Garnet: okay… i love you steven. <3

Steven: I love you too Garnet. <3

Monday, 9:12 AM

Amethyst:

Pearl: You’re not driving, correct?! If so, please put your phone down immediately!

Pearl: If not, very cute.

Amethyst: chillllllllax P

Amethyst: ste-man is getting a snack from the gas station. we’re about an hr out from empire city

Garnet: :)

Pearl: Excellent timing, Amethyst!

Pearl: Remember, his appointment starts at 12, so that should give you plenty enough time to check into the hotel and get situated there.

Pearl: I’ve put the reservations under your name.

Pearl: You have the debit card, right?

Pearl: Oh, goodness. I think I forgot to pack M.C. Bear Bear.

Garnet: i handled it.

Amethyst: haha - nice save G

Garnet: B)

Garnet: i’m psychic

One of the double doors leading out from the gas station was pushed open with a lethargic kind of energy, and Amethyst, who had been leaning against the hood of her car, looked up from her phone to see that the wimpy gesture belonged to none other than her little buddy, her Steven. He closed the door carefully with his weak hand, nurturing a bag of Chaps in the other, and then, without so much as glancing her way, trudged right past her to the passenger side of the car, pulled the door open, and barreled in.

The door didn’t slam to a close so much as it did feebly stutter to one.

Well, that was a huge yikes.

Not waiting to give him time to stew in his feelings, Amethyst pocketed her phone and proceeded to the driver’s side, pulling her seatbelt across her chest and cranking the ignition to her little Honda Civic in one, fluid motion.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that Steven was looking at the bag of chips clenched in his hand, but there was something in his expression—something unfocused, something glazed—that told her that he wasn’t quite seeing what he was seeing.

She pulled out of the parking lot and tried to keep her voice as casual as possible. “You okay, little dude?”

He wasn’t. Obviously. But it didn’t hurt to ask.

She knew Steven well enough to know that he’d rather drown in the ocean ten times over rather than share his feelings.

But she also knew that once he started talking through them, like the ocean, they’d flow.

“Yeah… just got a little dizzy when I was standing in line for the register.” He laughed humorlessly, the bag in his hand crinkling in a way that told her that he’d squeezed it tightly. “But I guess that’s just a occupational hazard of this whole dying business.”

They were on the highway now, Jersey speeding past them in a blur of green and gray and black. Amethyst’s fingers choked the wheel.

“You’re not dying, Steven,” she gritted out, trying to see straight. The edges of her vision bursted with red, and all she wanted to do was pull over and slam the kid into a freaking hug. “Get that outta your head.”

“I know, I know.” He rested his elbow on the door’s control panel and leaned his head against the window. She couldn’t see his eyes, but their reflections were dark with trees. Perhaps they were just dark all over. “Just joking.”

Amethyst took one hand off the wheel and squeezed his free one. His skin was clammy and cold to touch.

“You’re not, but that was a good try, Ste-man.”

“What can I say?” He laughed again, and at least this one had a little more body to it. “I’m a virtuoso at using dark humor to cope with my crippling depression.”

And he meant it to be funny.

Meant it to be ironic.

But she wasn’t having it.

“You don’t have to be, though,” she told him, as serious as she could be. “Not with me anyway”

And he turned to look at her, his dark eyes widening in something that may have have just been awe.

She blushed furiously but blustered on anyway because dammit, this kid needed this talk, like, yesterday.

“I mean, I know you front with everyone else, but, like, you don’t have to do that when you’re around me, okay?” Amethyst’s grip tightened on his hand. “I get not wanting to talk about it. I get desperately needing to talk about it. I get you, Steven.”

Because they were alike, him and her.

They had issues, and they tried not to think about those issues and only ended up thinking about them all the more.

It was a cycle she knew well.

She wished Steven didn’t have to.

He didn’t answer immediately. Amethyst withdrew her hand and replaced it on the wheel, driving in silence for as long as the silence stretched thin between them.

She felt his gaze upon her.

Felt the intensity of it, the sadness.

“I just… I just feel so bad, Amethyst,” he whispered. “All the time.”

Amethyst wanted to melt into her seat. A lump rose to her throat.

“I know, buddy.”

“I’ve forgotten what it feels like to feel good.” His voice was fragile—not in the way glass was fragile, but in the way a dandelion was. One puff, and then it was gone.

“I know.”

She heard a sniffing sound.

A surreptitious swipe of the nose.

Amethyst knew better than to look his way.

Monday, 11:31 AM

Amethyst: heyyyy greg. steven and i made it to e city. bout to drive to the hospital.

Greg: Thanks for the update!

Amethyst: yah. np.

Greg: uh, what does that mean ??

Amethyst: no problem

Greg: i didn’t thank you for anything?? ?

Monday, 4:38 PM

Amethyst: sorry for not answering ur calls. just got back to the hotel. steven’s asleep. gonna have to text.

Greg: He’s asleep? already?

Pearl: What did Dr. Maheswaran say?

Amethyst: yeah poor kid’s worn out

Amethyst: she’s not happy w/ his blood count. she says his hemoglobin is low. if it doesn’t get better by the end of the week she might do a blood transfusion

Amethyst: 4 days of dialysis this week instead of 3

Amethyst: steven’s not happy :/

Pearl: That’s it. We’re coming up there immediately.

Amethyst: no!

Amethyst: i mean, not that i don’t want you guys to be here, but u guys can’t afford to take any more time off work

Amethyst: and we’ve got bills ’n stuff to pay

Amethyst: not 2 mention the new iron pill dr. m prescribed

Amethyst: like - i’ve got this

Pearl: Garnet? Greg? What do you think?

Garnet: amethyst is right.

Greg: i mean yeah… I’m not happy about it, but she’s got a point.

Pearl: Okay… but if things get worse, we’re coming up there. Alright?

Amethyst: k

She’d drawn the curtains to make it darker in the room, but even still, a crack of blue light slipped in through the gap, illuminating Steven’s sleeping form. He was curled up under the blankets, which obscured most of his face.

His little button nose poked out.

His closed eyes fluttered restlessly.

Amethyst wondered if he was dreaming.

And if he was, she hoped that it was a good one.

Because frankly, reality sucked.

While Steven had been changing from the hospital gown to his regular clothes, Dr. Maheswaran had pulled her aside and given her a haughty once over that let Amethyst know at once that the doctor wished she were Pearl, who, out of Steven’s four parental figures had the best grasp of all the medical jargon.

“He’s needs a new kidney, and he needs it soon,” Dr. Maheswaran said. No sugarcoating. No bull. She didn’t have the best bedside manners per say, but the nephrologist would tell it to you straight, and that was what mattered most to Amethyst.

“Then find him one, Doc.”

“I’m trying,” she frowned, and the lines under her brown eyes became all the more pronounced. “But kidneys are a tall, damn order.”

Monday, 4:48 PM:

Greg: love ya champ

Greg: i’m so proud of you

Monday, 5:01 PM:

Pearl: Call me when you get up! Love you, Steven. <3

Monday, 5:09 PM:

Garnet: <3

Tuesday, 10:32 AM:

Amethyst: picked up steven’s prescription

Amethyst: we’re @ breakfast

Pearl: How much was the copay?

Amethyst: only like $10

Pearl: :) I’ll add that to my ledger.

Amethyst: neeeeeeerdddd alert

Pearl: This ‘nerd’ does your taxes for you every year.

Amethyst: and i appreciate tht but that doesn’t make u any less of a nerd

“Gosh, I was hungry,” Steven said around a mouthful of waffles. He already had his next bite queued up on his fork, and a trace of syrup dripped down the corner of his mouth.

Amethyst was hella relieved to see that his appetite had returned; last night, he’d stayed passed out until 3AM, and when he woke up, she could only get him to nibble on a couple of crackers.

“Bet,” she replied, chomping down hard on a piece of syrup covered bacon, savoring more than just its taste. The sweetness was good, but seeing Steven in a good mood made it even sweeter.

“Who were ya texting?”

“Pearl. She was being lame and trying to talk to me about math.”

Steven chuckled. “You should try being homeschooled by her.”

He squared his blocky shoulders and clasped his hands behind his back, two actions which resulted in an uncanny physical impression of their dear Pearl.

“Now Steven,” he mimicked in a high, lofty voice, “you can’t just move the x around like that. There’s a certain finesse to it. A technique. Here, let me do it.” He lowered his voice back to its normal pitch. “And then she starts talking about how my mom was great at solving division problems or something like that.”

Amethyst’s eyes were streaming. She banged her fists on the table, drawing a nasty look from a passing waitress.

“You’re a riot, Steven.”

“Thank ya!” He grinned.

When their meal came to a close—and it only did after they’d each slammed a couple of more waffles—Steven swirled the quarter of orange juice he had left in his glass, and Amethyst pulled out his ever-expanding pillbox from her bag.

Red pills.

Blue pills.

Iron pills.

Diuretics.

And by God, they were all big enough to be choking hazards.

“Ugh, Steven,” she muttered, her nose wrinkling in disgust. “I dunno how you do this everyday.”

“Oh, that’s an easy one,” he replied cheerfully, accepting her offering of his Tuesday pills. “I totally dissociate.”

“Solid, dude.”

Steven downed the pills one by one, chasing them with vigorous swills of juice.

“Tell me about it,” he gasped when he was done, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

They had another hour or so to kill before Steven had to return to the hospital for his treatment, so they took to walking down one of Empire City’s lesser known shopping districts. From time to time, they’d rest on a bench until Steven could catch his shortened breath.

It was during one of these breaks when the little bugger finally breached the topic of conversation she’d been crossing her fingers to avoid.

“If I don’t end up having to get a transfusion,” he began thoughtfully, head angled backwards so he could stare up at all the high rises poking into the sky, “I think I wanna text Blue Diamond soon. Visit her while I’m here, maybe.”

“Maybe…” She hesitated, and Steven was quick to snap up on it.

“Amethyst, I love you, but if you give me the same, old spiel on why I shouldn’t visit Blue, I’m gonna walk away.” She couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not. His voice was playful, but his eyes were grim, and his mouth was pressed into a thin, determined line.

“You’re sure bent on doing this, huh?”

“Very bent,” he agreed succinctly, nodding with dramatic precision before adding, “Super bent.”

Because there was obviously a discernible difference between super bent and very bent.

Amethyst scratched her neck and sighed.

“If the doc gives you the go ahead, then text her,” she told him grudgingly. “I wasn’t a part of the team when all the big protests against Yellow D were going on, so I can’t tell you why you shouldn’t go.”

Pearl and Garnet seemed to have plenty of reasons, though.

“Thanks, Amethyst!”

“No big deal, dude.”

Their little bench was an island in the stream—solitary, stable, even with so many people flooding around it. Amethyst did as Steven was doing and tilted her head back to drink in the panorama from above, appreciative of the cool breeze that slid across her face and stirred her long hair. Her eyes closed against the bright, golden sun.

“I was doing some research,” Steven said, and he was very quiet. Melancholy.

Amethyst opened one eye to look at him, but he wasn’t looking at her. His hands were clasped neatly on his lap, his solemn gaze still offered to the heavens.

“A couple of years back, there was an awful murder that took place outside of a bar somewhere in this city.” He paused. “The details were too… gruesome, I guess, for the article to talk about. She was only twenty-one.”

She raised a questioning eyebrow at him. “Dark stuff you’re reading there, kid.”

His shoulder rose and fell in a half-shrug.

“It was a dark thing that happened.”

Tuesday, 4:29 PM

Steven: Hey guys! Just got out of treatment.

Greg: how was it kiddo?

Steven: Better than yesterday. We’re heading to the hotel.

Pearl: I’m so glad, Steven!

Garnet: !!!

Steven: Thanks! Love you all.

Amethyst read the texts in the group chat while Steven was hung over the toilet, puking his little guts out.

Insistent that Amethyst stay out of the bathroom until he was done.

She rapped on the door anyway, unsure if he heard her over the sound of his own violent retching.

Dialysis naturally had the effect of making him nauseous, but nausea was also a side effect of the new iron pills he was taking, so really, the odds were just not in Steven’s favor today.

“You okay in there?”

“I feel like the answer to that question”—he paused to gag—“is very obvious.”

Asshole, she thought fondly and barged into the bathroom. Kid needed a Sprite, a cold rag to the forehead, and a nice, little trip to bed.

“Amethyst—“ He whined, lifting his head feebly from the commode. The traces of throw up were edged along the corner of his mouth.

“Shut up, Steven, and let me love you.”

She grabbed a washcloth from the counter and turned on the faucet, the loud hissing noise just not loud enough to mask what was surely another round of vomit.

Wednesday, 3:22 PM

Amethyst: STEEEEVEEENNNN’S GOT A GIRLFRIEND

Pearl: What?!?!

Garnet: nice.

Greg: way 2 go champ!

Amethyst: asgdshafl

Amethyst: so dr. m’s daughter came in today to read to patients and like she and steven rlly hit it off

Amethyst: her name is Connie

Amethyst: and i’m calling it now. their ship name is stevonnie

Pearl: I think I’m experiencing premature empty nest syndrome.

Amethyst: ya’ve got the nose for it

Pearl: Rude.

Amethyst: but anyway his treatment’s almost done and dr. m says his blood count’s looking better

Amethyst: no transfusion!

Pearl: Thank goodness.

Greg: ugh I agree

Garnet: Woo.

Amethyst: and he’s happy today

Amethyst glanced up from her phone to confirm what she was telling the others.

“Buuuuuuut Connnnnnnie, you can’t just leave it on a cliffhanger!” Steven was pleading, fingers mussed through his dark, curly hair in exasperation. “Like, Lisa is literally hanging from a cliff. I need to know what happens!”

“Okay, okay!” The dark-skinned girl pushed her wire-rimmed glasses up on the bridge of her nose. “One more paragraph… Mom’s about to unhook you from the machine, though.”

Dr. Maheswaran waved her off with a dismissive flick of the hand. “One more paragraph would be fine.”

“Yes ma’am!” She re-buried her nose into the thick book. “Lisa’s hand was slick with sweat as Archimedes…”

Steven leaned forward expectantly, hand tucked under his chin, M.C. Bear Bear clutched tightly to his chest right next to his dialysis catheter and all of the tubing involved.

And he was smiling like a fool.

Like a kid.

Amethyst: he’s rlly happy

Wednesday, 7:41 PM

Steven: Hi Blue… this is Steven.

Steven: That cute kid from the cemetery. :)

Blue: Hello, Steven. It’s so very nice to hear from you. How are you?

Steven: Could be better. Could be worse. You?

Blue: Ah, likewise.

Steven: I was texting to say that I’ll be in Empire City for the better part of the week, and I was wondering if I could take you up on that offer of coming to visit, maybe?

Blue: Of course—I would love that.

Blue: When would be the best day for you?

Steven: Friday would be great if that’s ok with you.

Blue: Friday would be perfect. 1:00? We could do tea and cakes.

Steven: Now that’s what I’m talking about!

Blue: Friday it is then. I can’t wait to see you again, Steven.

Steven: I can’t wait to see you too.

Blue set her phone down on the bathroom counter, and twenty sleeping pills slipped between her tall fingers and back into the bottle.

It’d been a bad day.

She wouldn’t have done it…

She hadn’t been going to…

She had just been thinking.

It had been a bad day, and then Steven had texted.

“Well, I’m home for the night.” Startled, Blue looked up in the mirror to see her wife leaning in the doorframe—arms crossed, a permanent frown carved into her striking face. “Stocks are down, and my investors are running for the hills. It’s a hellhole. I’m in literal hell.”

Yellow detached herself from the door and drew closer. The tips of their fingers brushed ever so slightly, ever so softly.

And that was about as physically affectionate as they got nowadays.

“How was your day?” Her voice sharpened at the end. “I see you’re still in your nightgown.”

“It was fine, Yellow.” It absolutely was not.

Blue gripped the edge of the sink to keep her hands from shaking, determined not to glance at the pill bottle she’d been holding just moments before.

“Are you sure? I could call the doctor right now. Check the dosage on your antidepressant, perhaps?”

“Oh, yes,” she muttered venomously, more to herself than Yellow, but she supposed she didn’t care enough if Yellow heard it, too, “because that’s exactly what I need. An upped dosage.”

That seemed to be Yellow’s only reliable solution when it came to fixing her.

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing,” Blue bit out. “Nothing at all.”

And she pushed off from the sink, impelled by dull anger, her shoulder roughly knocking against Yellow’s as she went.

Her hand slammed against the light switch before she exited the doorway, and it did her a great deal of good to submerge Yellow Diamond into total darkness.

#steven universe #blue diamond #pearl #amethyst #garnet #yellow diamond #a little bit of #bellow diamond #flower child #s: steven universe #mimik-u #reginianwrites

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itbeatsbookmarks · 4 years ago

Link

(Via: Hacker News)

Act 1: Sunday afternoon

So you know when you’re flopping about at home, minding your own business, drinking from your water bottle in a way that does not possess any intent to subvert the Commonwealth of Australia?

It’s a feeling I know all too well, and in which I was vigorously partaking when I got this message in “the group chat”.

A nice message from my friend, with a photo of a boarding pass 🙂 A good thing about messages from your friends is that they do not have any rippling consequences 🙂🙂🙂

The man in question is Tony Abbott, one of Australia’s many former Prime Ministers.

That’s him, officer

For security reasons, we try to change our Prime Minister every six months, and to never use the same Prime Minister on multiple websites.

The boarding pass photo

This particular former PM had just posted a picture of his boarding pass on Instagram (Instagram, in case you don’t know it, is an app you can open up on your phone any time to look at ads).

The since-deleted Instagram post showing the boarding pass and baggage receipt. The caption reads “coming back home from japan 😍😍 looking forward to seeing everyone! climate change isn’t real 😌 ok byeee”

“Can you hack this man?”

My friend (who we will refer to by their group chat name, 𝖍𝖔𝖌𝖌𝖊 𝖒𝖔𝖆𝖉𝖊) is asking whether I can “hack this man” not because I am the kind of person who regularly commits 𝒄𝒚𝒃𝒆𝒓 𝒕𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒐𝒏 on a whim, but because we’d recently been talking about boarding passes.

I’d said that people post pictures of their boarding passes all the time, not knowing that it can sometimes be used to get their passport number and stuff. They just post it being like “omg going on holidayyyy 😍😍😍”, unaware that they’re posting cringe.

People post their boarding passes all the time, because it’s not clear that they’re meant to be secret

Meanwhile, some hacker is rubbing their hands together, being all “yumyum identity fraud 👀” in their dark web Discord, because this happens a lot.

So there I was, making intense and meaningful eye contact with this chat bubble, asking me if I could “hack this man”.

Surely you wouldn’t

Of course, my friend wasn’t actually asking me to hack the former Prime Minister.

However.

You gotta.

I mean… what are you gonna do, not click it? Are you gonna let a link that’s like 50% advertising tracking ID tell you what to do? Wouldn’t you be curious?

The former Prime Minister had just posted his boarding pass. Was that bad? Was someone in danger? I didn’t know.

What I did know was: the least I could do for my country would be to have a casual browse 👀

Investigating the boarding pass photo

Step 1: Hubris

So I had a bit of a casual browse, and got the picture of the boarding pass, and then…. I didn’t know what was supposed to happen after that.

Well, I’d heard that it’s bad to post your boarding pass online, because if you do, a bored 17 year-old Russian boy called “Katie-senpai” might somehow use it to commit identity fraud. But I don’t know anyone like that, so I just clumsily googled some stuff.

Googling how 2 hakc boarding pass

Eventually I found a blog post explaining that yes, pictures of boarding passes can indeed be used for Crimes. The part you wanna be looking at for all your criming needs is the barcode, because it’s got the “Booking Reference” (e.g. H8JA2A) in it.

Why do you want the booking reference? It’s one of the two things you need to log in to the airline website to manage your flight.

The second one is your… last name. I was really hoping the second one would be like a password or something. But, no, it’s the booking reference the airline emails you and prints on your boarding pass. And it also lets you log in to the airline website?

That sounds suspiciously like a password to me, but like I’m still fine to pretend it’s not if you are.

Step 2: Scan the barcode

I’ve been practicing every morning at sunrise, but still can’t scan barcodes with my eyes. I had to settle for a barcode scanner app on my phone, but when I tried to scan the picture in the Instagram post, it didn’t work :((

Maybe I shouldn’t have blurred out the barcode first

Step 2: Scan the barcode, but more

Well, maybe it wasn’t scanning because the picture was too blurry.

I spent around 15 minutes in an “enhance, ENHANCE” montage, fiddling around with the image, increasing the contrast, and so on. Despite the montage taking up way too much of the 22 minute episode, I couldn’t even get the barcode to scan.

Step 2: Notice that the Booking Reference is printed right there on the paper

After staring at this image for 15 minutes, I noticed the Booking Reference is just… printed on the baggage receipt.

I graduated university.

But it did not prepare me for this.

askdjhaflajkshdflkh

Step 3: Visit the airline’s website

After recovering from that emotional rollercoaster, I went to qantas.com.au, and clicked “Manage Booking”. In case you don’t know it because you live in a country with fast internet, Qantas is the main airline here in Australia.

(I also very conveniently started recording my screen, which is gonna pay off big time in just a moment.)

Step 4: Type in the Booking Reference

Well, the login form was just… there, and it was asking for a Booking Reference and a last name. I had just flawlessly read the Booking Reference from the boarding pass picture, and, well… I knew the last name.

I did hesitate for a split-second, but… no, I had to know.

Step 5: Crimes(?)

youngman.mp4

The “Manage Booking” page, logged in as some guy called Anthony Abbott

Can I get a YIKES in the chat

Leave a comment if you really felt that.

I guess I was now logged the heck in as Tony Abbott? And for all I know, everyone else who saw his Instagram post was right there with me. It’s kinda wholesome, to imagine us all there together. But also probably suboptimal in a governmental sense.

Was there anything secret in here?

I then just incredibly browsed the page, browsed it so hard.

I saw Tony Abbott’s name, flight times, and Frequent Flyer number, but not really anything super secret-looking. Not gonna be committing any cyber treason with a Frequent Flyer number. The flight was in the past, so I couldn’t change anything, either.

The page said the flight had been booked by a travel agent, so I guessed some information would be missing because of that.

I clicked around and scrolled a considerable length, but still didn’t find any government secrets.

Some people might give up here. But I, the Icarus of computers, was simply too dumb to know when to stop.

We’re not done just because a web page says we’re done

I wanted to see if there were juicy things hidden inside the page. To do it, I had to use the only hacker tool I know.

Right click > Inspect Element, all you need to subvert the Commonwealth of Australia

Listen. This is the only part of the story that might be confused for highly elite computer skill. It’s not, though. Maybe later someone will show you this same thing to try and flex, acting like only they know how to do it. You will not go gently into that good night. You will refuse to acknowledge their flex, killing them instantly.

How does “Inspect Element” work?

“Inspect Element”, as it’s called, is a feature of Google Chrome that lets you see the computer’s internal representation (HTML) of the page you’re looking at. Kinda like opening up a clock and looking at the cool cog party inside.

Yeahhh go little cogs, look at ‘em absolutely going off. Now imagine this but with like, JavaScript

Everything you see when you use “Inspect Element” was already downloaded to your computer, you just hadn’t asked Chrome to show it to you yet. Just like how the cogs were already in the watch, you just hadn’t opened it up to look.

But let us dispense with frivolous cog talk. Cheap tricks such as “Inspect Element” are used by programmers to try and understand how the website works. This is ultimately futile: Nobody can understand how websites work. Unfortunately, it kinda looks like hacking the first time you see it.

If you’d like to know more about it, I’ve prepared a short video.

Browsing the “Manage Booking” page’s HTML

I scrolled around the page’s HTML, not really knowing what it meant, furiously trying to find anything that looked out of place or secret.

I eventually realised that manually reading HTML with my eyes was not an efficient way of defending my country, and Ctrl + F’d the HTML for “passport”.

oh no

Oh yes

It’s just there.

At this point I was fairly sure I was looking at the extremely secret government-issued ID of the 28th Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia, servant to her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and I was kinda worried that I was somehow doing something wrong, but like, not enough to stop.

….anything else in this page?

Well damn, if Tony Abbott’s passport number is in this treasure trove of computer spaghetti, maybe there’s wayyyyy more. Perhaps this HTML contains the lost launch codes to the Sydney Opera House, or Harold Holt.

Maybe there’s a phone number?

Searching for phone and number didn’t get anywhere, so I searched for 614, the first 3 digits of an Australian phone number, using my colossal and highly celestial galaxy brain.

Weird uppercase letters

A weird pile of what I could only describe as extremely uppercase letters came up. It looked like this:

RQST QF HK1 HNDSYD/03EN|FQTV QF HK1|CTCM QF HK1 614[phone number]|CKIN QF HN1 DO NOT SEAT ROW [row number] PLS SEAT LAST ROW OF [row letter] WINDOW

So, there’s a lot going on here. There is indeed a phone number in here. But what the heck is all this other stuff?

I realised this was like… Qantas staff talking to eachother about Tony Abbott, but not to him?

In what is surely the subtweeting of the century, it has a section saying HITOMI CALLED RQSTING FASTTRACK FOR MR. ABBOTT. Hitomi must be requesting a “fasttrack” (I thought that was only a thing in movies???) from another Qantas employee.

This is messed up for many reasons

What is even going on here? Why do Qantas flight staff talk to eachother via this passenger information field? Why do they send these messages, and your passport number to you when you log in to their website? I’ll never know because I suddenly got distracted with

Forbidden airline code

I realised the allcaps museli I saw must be some airline code for something. Furious and intense googling led me to several ancient forbidden PDFs that explained some of the codes.

Apparently, they’re called “SSR codes” (Special Service Request). There are codes for things like “Vegetarian lacto-ovo meal” (VLML), “Vegetarian oriental meal” (VOML), and even “Vegetarian vegan meal” (VGML). Because I was curious about these codes, here’s some for you to be curious about too (tag urself, I’m UMNR):

RFTV Reason for Travel UMNR Unaccompanied minor PDCO Carbon Offset (chargeable) WEAP Weapon DEPA Deportee—accompanied by an escort ESAN Passenger with Emotional Support Animal in Cabin

The phone number I found looked like this: CTCM QF HK1 [phone number]. Googling “SSR CTCM” led me to the developer guide for some kind of airline association, which I assume I am basically a member of now.

CTCM QF HK1 translates as “Contact phone number of passenger 1”

Is the phone number actually his?

I thought maybe the phone number belonged to the travel agency, but I checked and it has to be the passenger’s real phone number. That would be, if my calculations are correct,,,, *steeples fingers* Tony Abbott’s phone number.

what have i done

I’d now found Tony Abbott’s:

Passport details

Phone number

Weird Qantas staff comments.

My friend who messaged me had no idea.

Tony Abbott’s passport is probably a Diplomatic passport, which is used to “represent the Australian Government overseas in an official capacity”.

what have i done

By this point I’d had enough defending my country, and had recently noticed some new thoughts in my brain, which were:

oh jeez oh boy oh jeez

i gotta get someone, somehow, to reset tony abbott’s passport number

can you even reset passport numbers

is it possible that i’ve done a crime

Intermission

Act 2: Do not get arrested challenge 2020

In this act, I, your well-meaning but ultimately incompetent protagonist, attempt to do the following things:

⬜ figure out whether i have done a crime

⬜ notify someone (tony abbott?) that this happened

⬜ get permission to publish this here blog post

⬜ tell qantas about the security issue so they can fix it

Spoilers: This takes almost six months.

Let’s skip the boring bits

I contacted a lot of people about this. If my calculations are correct, I called at least 30 phone numbers, to say nothing of The Emails. If you laid all the people I contacted end to end along the equator, they would die, and you would be arrested. Eventually I started keeping track of who I talked to in a note I now refer to as “the hashtag struggle”.

I’m gonna skip a considerable volume of tedious and ultimately unsatisfying telephony, because it’s been a long day of scrolling already, and you need to save your strength.

Alright strap yourself in and enjoy as I am drop-kicked through the goal posts of life.

Part 1: is it possible that i’ve done a crime

I didn’t think anything I did sounded like a crime, but I knew that sometimes when the other person is rich or famous, things can suddenly become crimes. Like, was there going to be some Monarch Law or something? Was Queen Elizabeth II gonna be mad about this?

My usual defence against being arrested for hacking is making sure the person being hacked is okay with it. You heard me, it’s the power of ✨consent✨. But this time I could uh only get it in retrospect, which is a bit yikes.

So I was wondering like… was logging in with someone else’s booking reference a crime? Was having someone else’s passport number a crime? What if they were, say, the former Prime Minister? Would I get in trouble for publishing a blog post about it? I mean you’re reading the blog post right now so obviousl

Update: I have been arrested.

Just straight up Reading The Law

It turned out I could just google these things, and before I knew it I was reading “the legislation”. It’s the rules of the law, just written down.

Look, reading pages of HTML? No worries. Especially if it’s to defend my country. But whoever wrote the legislation was just making up words.

Eventually, I was able to divine the following wisdoms from the Times New Roman tea leaves:

Defamation is where you get in trouble for publishing something that makes someone look bad.

But, it’s fine for me to blog about it, since it’s not defamation if you can prove it’s true

Having Tony Abbott’s passport number isn’t a crime

But using it to commit identity fraud would be

There are laws about what it’s okay to do on a computer

The things it’s okay to do are: If u EVER even LOOK at a computer the wrong way, the FBI will instantly slam dunk you in a legal fashion dependent on the legislation in your area

I am possibly the furthest thing you can be from a lawyer. So, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you not to take this as legal advice. But, if you are the kind of person who takes legal advice from mango blog posts, who am I to stand in your way? Not a lawyer, that’s who. Don’t do it.

You know what, maybe I needed help. From an adult. Someone whose 3-year old kid has been buying iPad apps for months because their parents can’t figure out how to turn it off.

“Yeah, maybe I should get some of that free government legal advice”, I thought to myself, legally. That seemed like a pretty common thing, so I thought it should be easy to do. I took a big sip of water and googled “free legal advice”.

trying to ask a lawyer if i gone and done a crime

Before I went and told everyone about my HTML frolicking, I spent a week calling legal aid numbers, lawyers, and otherwise trying to figure out if I’d done a crime.

During this time, I didn’t tell anyone what I’d done. I asked if any laws would be broken if “someone” had “logged into a website with someone’s publicly-posted password and found the personal information of a former politician”. Do you see how that’s not even a lie? I’m starting to see how lawyers do it.

Calling Legal Aid places

First I call the state government’s Legal Aid number. They tell me they don’t do that here, and I should call another Legal Aid place named something slightly different.

The second place tells me they don’t do that either, and I should call the First Place and “hopefully you get someone more senior”.

I call the First Place again, and they say “oh you’ve been given the run around!”. You see where this is going.

Let’s skip a lot of phone calls. Take my hand as I whisk you towards the slightly-more-recent past. Based on advice I got from two independent lawyers that was definitely not legal advice: I haven’t done a crime.

Helllllll yeah. But I mean it’s a little late because I forgot to mention that by this point I had already emailed explicit details of my activities to the Australian Government.

☑️ figure out whether i have done a crime

⬜ notify someone (tony abbott?) that this happened

⬜ get permission to publish this here blog post

⬜ tell qantas about the security issue so they can fix it

Part 2: trying to report the problem to someone, anyone, please

I had Tony Abbott’s passport number, phone number, and weird Qantas messages about him. I was the only one who knew I had these.

Anyone who saw that Instagram post could also have them. I felt like I had to like, tell someone about this. Someone with like, responsibilities. Someone with an email signature.

wait but do u see the irony in this, u have his phone number right there so u could just-

Yes I see it thank u for pointing this out, wise, astute, and ultimately self-imposed heading. I knew I could just call the number any time and hear a “G’day” I’d never be able to forget. I knew I had a rare opportunity to call someone and have them ask “how did you get this number!?”.

But you can’t just do that.

You can’t just call someone’s phone number that you got by rummaging around in the HTML ball pit. Tony Abbott didn’t want me to have his phone number, because he didn’t give it to me. Maybe if it was urgent, or I had no other option, sure. But I was pretty sure I should do this the Nice way, and show that I come in peace.

I wanted to show that I come in peace because there’s also this pretty yikes thing that happens where you email someone being all like “henlo ur website let me log in with username admin and password admin, maybe u wanna change that??? could just be me but let me kno what u think xoxo alex” and then they reply being like “oh so you’re a HACKER and a CRIMINAL and you’ve HACKED ME AND MY FAMILY TOO and this is a RANSOM and ur from the DARK WEB i know what that is i’ve seen several episodes of mr robot WELL watch out kiddO bc me and my lawyers are bulk-installing tens of thousands of copies of McAfee® Gamer Security as we speak, so i’d like 2 see u try”

I googled “tony abbott contact”, but there’s only his official website. There’s no phone number on it, only a “contact me” form.

I imagine there have been some passionate opinions typed into this form at 9pm on a Tuesday

Yeah right, have you seen the incredible volume of #content people want to say at politicians? No way anyone’s reading that form.

I later decided to try anyway, using the same Inspect Element ritual from earlier. Looking at the network requests the page makes, I divined that the “Contact me” form just straight up does not work. When you click “submit”, you get an error, and nothing gets sent.

This is an excellent way of using computers to solve the problem of “random people keep sending me angry letters”

Well rip I guess. I eventually realised the people to talk to were probably the government.

The government

It’s a big place.

In the beginning, humans developed the concept of language by banging rocks together and saying “oof, oog, and so on”. Then something went horribly wrong, and now people unironically begin every sentence with “in regards to”. Our story begins here.

The government has like fifty thousand million different departments, and they all know which acronyms to call each other, but you don’t. If you EVER call it DMP&C instead of DPM&C you are gonna be express email forwarded into a nightmare realm the likes of which cannot be expressed in any number of spreadsheet cells, in spite of all the good people they’ve lost trying.

I didn’t even know where to begin with this. Desperately, I called Tony Abbott’s former political party, who were all like

Skip skip skip a few more calls like this.

Maybe I knew someone who knew someone

That’s right, the true government channels were the friends we made along the way.

I asked hacker friends who seemed like they might know government security people. “Where do I report a security issue with like…. a person, not a website?”

They told me to call… 1300 CYBER1?

1300 CYBER1

I don’t really have a good explanation for this so I’m just gonna post the screenshots.

My friend showing me where to report a security issue with the government. I’m gonna need you to not ask any questions about the profile pictures.

Uhhh no wait I don’t wanna click any of these

The planet may be dying, but we live in a truly unparalleled age of content.

You know I smashed that call button on 1300 CYBER1. Did they just make it 1300 CYBER then realise you need one more digit for a phone number? Incredible.

Calling 1300 c y b e r o n e

“Yes yes hello, ring ring, is this 1300 cyber one”? They have to say yes if you ask that. They’re legally obligated.

The person who picked up gave me an email address for ASD (the Australian flavour of America’s NSA), and told me to email them the details.

Emailing the government my crimes

Feeling like the digital equivalent of three kids in a trenchcoat, I broke out my best Government Email dialect and emailed ASD, asking for them to call me if they were the right place to tell about this.

Sorry for the clickbait subject but well that’s what happened???

Fooled by my flawless disguise, they replied instantly (in a relative sense) asking for more details.

“Potential” exposure, yeah okay. At least the subject line had “[SEC=Sensitive]” in it so I _knew_ I’d made it big

I absolutely could provide them with more information, so I did, because I love to cooperate with the Australian government.

I also asked whether they could give me permission to publish this blog post, and they were all like “Seen 2:35pm”. Eventually, after another big day of getting left on read by the government, they replied, being all like “thanks kiddO, we’re doing like, an investigation and stuff, so we’ll take it from here”.

Overall, ASD were really nice to me about it and happy that I’d helped. They encouraged me to report this kind of thing to them if it happened again, but I’m not really in the business of uhhhhhhhh whatever the heck this is.

By the way, at this point in the story (chronologically) I had no idea if what I was emailing the government was actually the confession to a crime, since I hadn’t talked to a lawyer yet. This is widely regarded as a bad move. I do not recommend anyone else use “but I’m being so helpful and earnest!!!” as a legal defence. But also I’m not a lawyer, so idk, maybe it works?

Wholesomely emailing the government

At one point in what was surely an unforgettable email chain, the person I was emailing added a P.S. containing…. the answer to the puzzle hidden on this website. The one you’re reading this blog on right now. Hello. I guess they must have found this website (hi asd) by stalking the email address I was sending from. This is unprecedented and everything, but:

The puzzle says to tweet the answer at me, not email me

The prize for doing the puzzle is me tweeting this gif of a shakas to you

yeahhhhhhhhhh, nice

So I guess I emailed the shakas gif to the government??? Yeah, I guess I did.

Please find attached

Can I write about this?

I asked them if they could give me permission to write this blog post, or who to ask, and they were like “uhhhhhhhhhhh” and gave me two government media email addresses to try. Listen I don’t wanna be an “ummm they didn’t reply to my emAiLs” kinda person buT they simply left me no choice.

Still, defending the Commonwealth was in ASD’s hands now, and that’s a win for me at this point.

☑️ figure out whether i have done a crime

☑️ notify someone (The Government) that this happened

⬜ get permission to publish this here blog post

⬜ tell qantas about the security issue so they can fix it

Part 3: Telling Qantas the bad news

The security issue

Hey remember like fifteen minutes ago when this post was about webpages?

I’m guessing Qantas didn’t want to send the customer their passport number, phone number, and staff comments about them, so I wanted to let them know their website was doing that. Maybe the website was well meaning, but ultimately caused more harm than good, like how that time the bike path railings on the Golden Gate Bridge accidentally turned it into the world’s largest harmonica.

Unblending the smoothie

But why does the website even send you all that stuff in the first place? I don’t know, but to speculate wildly: Maybe the website just sends you all the data it knows about you, and then only shows you your name, flight times, etc, while leaving the passport number etc. still in the page.

If that were true, then Qantas would want to unblend the digital smoothie they’ve sent you, if you will. They’d want to change it so that they only send you your name and flight times and stuff (which are a key ingredient of the smoothie to be sure), not the whole identity fraud smoothie.

Smoothie evangelism

I wanted to tell them the smoothie thing, but how do I contact them?

The first place to check is usually company.com/security, maybe that’ll w-

Okay nevermind

Okay fine maybe I should just email [email protected] surely that’s it? I could only find a phone number to report security problems to, and I wasn’t sure if it was like…. airport security?

So I just… called the number and was like “heyyyy uhhhh I’d like to report a cyber security issue?”, and the person was like “yyyyya just email [email protected]” and i was like “ok sorrY”.

Time to email Qantas I guess

I emailed Qantas, being like “beep boop here is how the computer problem works”.

(Have you been wondering about the little dots in this post? Click this one for the rest of the email .)

A few days later, I got this reply.

And then I never heard from this person again

Airlines were going through kinda a struggle at the time, so I guess that’s what happened?

if ur still out there Shr Security i miss u

Struggles

After filling up my “get left on read” combo meter, I desperately resorted to calling Qantas’ secret media hotline number.

They said the issue was being fixed by Amadeus, the company who makes their booking software, rather than with Qantas itself. I’m not sure if that means other Amadeus customers were also affected, or if it was just the way Qantas was using their software, or what.

It’s common to give companies 90 days to fix the bug, before you publicly disclose it. It’s a tradeoff between giving them enough time to fix it, and people being hacked because of the bug as long as it’s out there.

But, well, this was kinda a special case. Qantas was going through some #struggles, so it was taking longer. Lots of their staff were stood down, and the world was just generally more cooked. At the same time, hardly anybody was flying at the time, due to see above re: #struggles. So, I gave Qantas as much time as they needed.

Five months later

The world is a completely different place, and Qantas replies to me, saying they fixed the bug. It did take five months, which is why it took so long for you and I to be having this weird textual interaction right now.

I don’t have a valid Booking Reference, so I can’t actually check what’s changed. I asked a friend to check (with an expired Booking Reference), and they said they didn’t see a mention of “documentNumber” anymore, which sounds like the passport number is no longer there. But That’s Not Science, so I don’t know for sure.

I originally found the bug in March, which was about 60 years ago. BUT we got there baybee, Qantas emailed me saying the bug had been fixed on August 21. They later told me they actually fixed the bug in July, but the person I was talking too didn’t know about it until August.

Qantas also said this when I asked them to review this post:

Thanks again for letting us have the opportunity to review and again for refraining from posting until the fix was in place for vulnerability.

Our standard advice to customers is not to post pictures of the boarding pass, or to at least obscure the key personal information if they do, because of the detail it contains.

We appreciate you bringing it to our attention in such a responsible way, so we could fix the issue, which we did a few months ago now.

I couldn’t find any advice on their website about not posting pictures of customer boarding passes, only news articles about how Qantas stopped printing the Frequent Flyer number on the boarding pass last year, because… well, you can see why.

I also asked Qantas what they did to fix the bug, and they said:

Unfortunately we’re not able to provide the details of fix as it is part of the protection of personal information.

:((

☑️ figure out whether i have done a crime

☑️ notify someone (The Government) that this happened

⬜ get permission to publish this here blog post

☑️ tell qantas about the security issue so they can fix it

Part 4: Finding Tony Abbott

Like 2003’s Finding Nemo, this section was an emotional rollercoaster.

The government was presumably helping Tony Abbott reset his passport number, and making sure his current one wasn’t being used for any of that yucky identity fraud.

But, much like Shannon Noll’s 2004 What About Me?, what about me? I really wanted to write a blog post about it, you know? So I could warn people about the non-obvious risk of sharing their boarding passes, and also make dumb and inaccessible references to the early 2000s.

The government people I talked to couldn’t give me permission to write this post, so rather than willingly wandering deeper into the procedurally generated labyrinth of government department email addresses (it’s dark in there), I tried to find Tony Abbott or his staff directly.

Calling everybody in Australia one by one

I called Tony Abbott’s former political party again, and asked them how to contact him, or his office, or something I’m really having a moment rn. They said they weren’t associated with him anymore, and suggested I call Parliament House, like I was the Queen or something.

In case you don’t know it, Parliament House is sorta like the White House, I think? The Prime Minister lives there and has a nice little garden out the back with a macadamia tree that never runs out, and everyone works in different colourful sections like “Making it so Everyone Gets a Fair Shake of the Sauce Bottle R&D” and “Mateship” and they all wear matching uniforms with lil kangaroo and emu hats, and they all do a little dance every hour on the hour to celebrate another accident-free day in the Prime Minister’s chocolate factory.

calling parliament house i guess

Not really sure what to expect, I called up and was all like “yeah bloody g’day, day for it ay, hot enough for ya?”. Once the formalities were out of the way, I skipped my usual explanation of why I was calling and just asked point-blank if they had Tony Abbott’s contact details.

The person on the phone was casually like “Oh, no, but I can put you through to the Serjeant-at-arms, who can give you the contact details of former members”. I was like “…..okay?????”. Was I supposed to know who that was? Isn’t a Serjeant like an army thing?

But no, the Serjeant-at-arms was just a nice lady who told me “he’s in a temporary office right now, and so doesn’t have a phone number. I can give you an email address or a P.O. box?”. I was like “ok th-thank you your majesty”.

It felt a bit weird just…. emailing the former PM being like “boy do i have bad news for you”, but I figured he probably wouldn’t read it anyway. If it was that easy to get this email address, everyone had it, and so nobody was likely to be reading the inbox.

Spoilers: It didn’t work.

Finding Tony Abbott’s staff

I roll out of bed and stare bleary-eyed into the morning sun, my ultimate nemesis, as Day 40 of not having found Tony Abbott’s staff begins.

This time for sure.

Retinas burning, in a moment of determination/desperation/hubris, I went and asked even more people that might know how to contact Tony Abbott’s staff.

I asked a journalist friend, who had the kind of ruthlessly efficient ideas that come from, like, being a professional journalist. They suggested I find Tony Abbott’s former staff from when he was PM, and contact their offices and see if they have his contact details.

It was a strange sounding plan to me, which I thought meant it would definitely work.

Wikipedia stalking

Apparently Prime Ministers themselves have “ministers” (not prime), and those are their staff. That’s who I was looking for.

Big “me and the boys” energy

Okay but, the problem was that most of these people are retired now, and the glory days of 2013 are over. Each time I hover over one of their names, I see “so-and-so is a former politician and….” and discard their Wikipedia page like a LeSnak wrapper into the wind.

Eventually though, I saw this minister.

Oh he definitely has an office.

That’s the current Prime Minister of Australia (at the time of writing, that is, for all I know we’re three Prime-Ministers deep into 2020 by the time you read this), you know he’s definitely gonna be easier to find.

Let’s call the Prime Minister’s office I guess?

Easy google of the number, absolutely no emotional journey resulting in my growth as a person this time.

When I call, I hear what sounds like two women laughing in the background? One of them answers the phone, slightly out of breath, and says “Hello, Prime Minister’s office?”. I’m like “….hello? Am I interrupting something???”.

I clumsily explain that I know this is Scott Morrison’s office, but I actually was wondering if they had Tony Abbott’s contact details, because it’s for “a time-sensitive media enquiry”, and I j- She interrupts to explain “so Tony Abbott isn’t Prime Minister anymore, this is Scott Morrison’s office” and I’m like “yA I know please I am desperate for these contact details”.

She says “We wouldn’t have that information but I’ll just check for you” and then pauses for like, a long time? Like 15 seconds? I can only wonder what was happening on the other end. Then she says “Oh actually I can give you Tony Abbott’s personal assistant’s number? Is that good?”.

Ummmm YES thanks that’s what I’ve been looking for this whole time? Anyway brb i gotta go be uh a journalist or something.

Calling Tony Abbott’s personal assistant’s personal assistant

I fumble with my phone, furiously trying to dial the number.

I ask if I’m speaking to Tony Abbott’s personal assistant. The person on the other end says no, but he is one of Tony Abbott’s staff. It has been a long several months of calling people. The cold ice is starting to thaw. One day, with enough therapy, I may be able to gather the emotional resources necessary to call another government phone number.

I explain the security issue I want to report, and midway through he interrupts with “sorry…. who are you and what’s the organisation you’re calling from?” and I’m like “uhhhh I mean my name is Alex and uhh I’m not calling from any organisation I’m just like a person?? I just found this thing and…”.

The person is mercifully forgiving, and says that he’ll have to call me back. I stress once again that I’m calling to help them, happy to wait to publish until they feel comfortable, and definitely do not warrant the bulk-installation of antivirus products.

Calling Tony Abbott’s personal assistant

An hour later, I get a call from a number I don’t recognise.

He explains that the guy I talked to earlier was his assistant, and he’s Tony Abbott’s PA. Folks, we made it. It’s as easy as that.

He says he knows what I’m talking about. He’s got the emails. He’s already in the process of getting Tony Abbott a new passport number. This is the stuff. It’s all coming together.

I ask if I can publish a blog post about it, and we agree I’ll send a draft for him to review.

And then he says

“These things do interest him - he’s quite keen to talk to you”

I was like exCUSE me? Tony Abbott, Leader of the 69th Ministry of Australia, wants to call me on the phone? I suppose I owe this service to my country?

This story was already completely cooked so sure, whatever. I’d already declared emotional bankruptcy, so nothing was coming as a surprise at this point.

I asked what he wanted to talk about. “Just to pick your brain on these things”. We scheduled a call for 3:30 on Monday.

And then Tony Abbott just… calls me on the phone?

Mostly, he wanted to check whether his understanding of how I’d found his passport number was correct (it was). He also wanted to ask me how to learn about “the IT”.

He asked some intelligent questions, like “how much information is in a boarding pass, and what do people like me need to know to be safe?”, and “why can you get a passport number from a boarding pass, but not from a bus ticket?”.

The answer is that boarding passes have your password printed on them, and bus tickets don’t. You can use that password to log in to a website (widely regarded as a bad move), and at that point all bets are off, websites can just do whatever they want.

He was vulnerable, too, about how computers are harder for him to understand.

“It’s a funny old world, today I tried to log in to a [Microsoft] Teams meeting (Teams is one of those apps), and the fire brigade uses a Teams meeting. Anyway I got fairly bamboozled, and I can now log in to a Teams meeting in a way I couldn’t before.

It’s, I suppose, a terrible confession of how people my age feel about this stuff.”

Then the Earth stopped spinning on its axis.

For an instant, time stood still.

Then he said it:

“You could drop me in the bush and I’d feel perfectly confident navigating my way out, looking at the sun and direction of rivers and figuring out where to go, but this! Hah!”

This was possibly the most pure and powerful Australian energy a human can possess, and explains how we elected our strongest as our leader. The raw energy did in fact travel through the phone speaker and directly into my brain, killing me instantly.

When I’d collected myself from various corners of the room, he asked if there was a book about the basics of IT, since he wanted to learn about it. That was kinda humanising, since it made me realise that even famous people are just people too.

Anyway I hadn’t heard of a book that was any good, so I told a story about my mum instead.

A story about my mum instead

I said there probably was a book out there about “the basics of IT”, but it wouldn’t help much. I didn’t learn from a book. 13 year old TikTok influencers don’t learn from a book. They just vibe.

My mum always said when I was growing up that:

There were “too many buttons”

She was afraid to press the buttons, because she didn’t know what they did

I can understand that, since grown ups don’t have the sheer dumb hubris of a child, and that’s what makes them afraid of the buttons.

Like, when a toddler uses a spoon for the first time, they don’t know what a spoon is, where they are, or who the current Prime Minister is. But they see the spoon, and they see the cereal, and their dumb baby brain is just like “yeA” and they have a red hot go. And like, they get it wrong the first few times, but it doesn’t matter, because they don’t know to be afraid of getting it wrong. So eventually, they get it right.

leaked footage of me learning how to hack

Okay so I didn’t tell the spoon thing to Tony Abbott, but I did tell him what I always told my mum, which was: “Mum you just gotta press all the buttons, to find out what they do”.

He was like “Oh, you just learn by trial and error”. Exactly! Now that I think about it, it’s a bit scary. We are dumb babies learning to use a spoon for the first time, except if you do it wrong some clown writes a blog post about you. Anyway good luck out there to all you big babies.

Asking to publish this blog post

When I asked Tony Abbott for permission to publish the post you are reading right now while neglecting your responsibilities, he said “well look Alex, I don’t have a problem with it, you’ve alerted me to something I probably should have known about, so if you wanna do that, go for it”.

At the end of the call, he said “If there’s ever anything you think I need to know, give us a shout”.

Look you gotta hand it to him. That’s exactly the right way to respond when someone tells you about a security problem. Back at the beginning, I was kinda worried that he might misunderstand, and think I was trying to hack him or something, and that I’d be instantly slam dunked into jail. But nope, he was fine with it. And now you, a sweet and honourable blog post browser, get to learn the dangers of posting your boarding pass by the realest of real-world examples.

During the call, I was completely in shock from the lost in the bush thing killing me instantly, and so on. But afterwards, when I looked at the quotes, I realised he just wanted to understand what had happened to him, and more about how technology works. That’s the same kind of curiosity I had, that started this whole surrealist three-act drama. That… wasn’t really what I was expecting from Tony Abbott, but it’s what I found.

The point of this story isn’t to say “wow Tony Abbott got hacked, what a dummy”. The point is that if someone famous can unknowingly post their boarding pass, anyone can.

Anyway that’s why I vote right wing now baybeeeee.

☑️ figure out whether i have done a crime

☑️ notify someone (The Government) that this happened

☑️ get permission to publish this here blog post

☑️ tell qantas about the security issue so they can fix it

Act 3: Closing credits

Wait no what the heck did I just read

Yeah look, reasonable.

tl; dr

Your boarding pass for a flight can sometimes be used to get your passport number. Don’t post your boarding pass or baggage receipt online, keep it as secret as your passport.

How it works

The Booking Reference on the boarding pass can be used to log in to the airline’s “Manage Booking” page, which sometimes contains the passport number, depending on the airline. I saw that Tony Abbott had posted a photo of his boarding pass on Instagram, and used it to get his passport details, phone number, and internal messages between Qantas flight staff about his flight booking.

Why did you do this?

One day, my friend who was also in “the group chat” said “I was thinking…. why didn’t I hack Tony Abbott? And I realised I guess it’s because you have more hubris”.

I was deeply complimented by this, but that’s not the point. The point is that you, too, can have hubris.

You know how they say to commit a crime (which once again I insist did not happen in my case) you need means, motive, and opportunity? Means is the ability to use right click > Inspect Element, motive is hubris, and opportunity is the dumb luck of having my friend message me the Instagram post.

I know, I’ve been saying “hubris” a lot. I mean “the willingness to risk breaking the rules”. Now hold up, don’t go outside and do crimes (unless it’s really funny). I’m not talking about breaking the law, I’m talking about rules we just follow without realising, like social rules and conventions.

Here’s a simple example. You’re at a sufficiently fancy restaurant, like I dunno, with white tablecloths or something? The waiter asks if you’d like “still or sparkling water?”

If you say “still”, it costs Eleven Dollars. If you say “sparkling”, it costs Eleven Dollars and tastes all gross and fizzy. But if you say “tap water, please”, you just get tap water, what you wanted in the first place?

When I first saw someone do this I was like “you can do that? I just thought you had to pay Eleven Dollars extra at fancy restaurants!”.

It’s not written down anywhere that you can ask for tap water. But when I found out you could do that, and like, nothing bad happens, I could suddenly do it too. Miss me with that Eleven Dollars fizzy water.

Basically, until you’ve broken the rules, the idea that the rules can be broken might just not occur to you. That’s how it felt for me, at least.

In conclusion, to be a hacker u ask for tap water.

FAQ

Why is it bad for someone else to have your passport number?

Hey crime gang, welcome back to Identity Fraud tips and tricks with Alex.

A passport is government-issued ID. It’s how you prove you’re you. The fact that you have your passport and I don’t is how you prevent me from convincing the government that I’m you and doing crimes in your name.

Just having the information on the passport is not quite as powerful as a photo of the full physical passport, with your photo and everything.

With your passport number, someone could:

Book an international flight as you.

Apply for anything that requires proof of identity documentation with the government, e.g. Working with children check

Activate a SIM card (and so get an internet connection that’s traceable to you, not them, hiding them from the government)

Create a fake physical passport from a template, with the correct passport number (which they then use to cross a border, open a bank account, or anything)

who knows what else, not me, bc i have never done a crime

Am I a big bozo, a big honking goose, if I post my boarding pass on Instagram?

Nah, it’s an easy mistake to make. How are you supposed to know not to? It’s not obvious that your boarding pass is secret, like a password. I think it’s on the airline to inform you on the risks you’re taking when you use their stuff.

But now that you’ve read this blog post, I regret to inform you that you will in fact be an entire sack of geese if you go and post your boarding pass now.

When did all of this happen?

March 22 - @hontonyabbott posts a picture of a boarding pass and baggage receipt. I log in to the website and get the passport number, phone number, and internal Qantas comments.

March 24 - I contact the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) and let them know what happened.

March 27 - ASD tells me their investigation is complete, I send them a shakas gif, and they thank me for being a good citizen.

March 29 - I learn from lawyers that I have not done a crime 💯

March 30 - I contact Qantas and tell them about the vulnerability.

May 1 - Tony Abbott calls me, we chat about being dropped in the middle of the bush.

July 17 - Paper Mario: The Origami King is released for Nintendo Switch.

August 21 - Qantas emails me saying the security problem has been fixed.

September 13 - Various friends finish reviewing this post <3

September 15 - Tony Abbott and Qantas review this post.

Today - You read this post instead of letting it read you, nice job you.

I’m bored and tired

Let me answer that question,,, with a question.

Maybe try drinking some water you big goose. Honk honk, I’m so dehydrated lol. That’s you.

honk honk honk honl

Yeah, exactly.

I wrote this because I can’t go back to the Catholic church ever since they excommunicated me in 1633 for insisting the Earth revolves around the sun.

You can talk to me about it by sliding into my DMs in the tweet zone or, if you must, email.

#IFTTT #Feedly

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bettybettycooper · 8 years ago

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Black Coffee (Chapter Two)

This chapter is PG-13!! Also I promise I’ll update sooner next time, I’ve had exams :)

Click here to read chapter 1 if you haven’t done that yet.

The morning, as always, comes too soon. Betty fights back the urge to hit snooze and gets up out of bed in one fluid motion, goes to the bathroom to brush her teeth, and grabs her already packed cheer bag on her way to the gym.

She gets to practice the same time as Cheryl. They chat in the change room, mostly about cheerleading but also about Cheryl’s fucked up parents and a girl she met in her chemistry lecture. (“I swear, Betty, that girl is gay. You should have seen her hat. It was BACKWARDS! Oh and did you hear about Ronnie? She met the HOTTEST GINGER EVER at the football party. But I’ll let her tell you about that.”)

By the time they’ve changed, the rest of the team has arrived, and the change room is full of tired voices and blurry eyes.

Cheer practice always wakes Betty up.

When Cheryl finally says, “that’s a wrap girls, I’ll see you bright and early Wednesday morning!” Betty makes a beeline for Veronica.

“So, Ronnie,” she says, as they’re heading back to the change room, “heard you, ahh, met someone at the party.”

Veronica’s eyes light up and she grabs Betty enthusiastically by the shoulders.

“I met the hottest ginger on the face of this earth. He’s on Varsity, and he’s like, an 11/10. And he is a great kisser. Seriously.”

“Oooh, do you have a picture?”

“Yeah, he’s been snapchatting me! I’ll show you – or wait, do you want to grab coffee later this week? We could invite Cheryl, too.”

“Yeah, absolutely. I have some free time on Thursday?”

“You’re booking three days ahead now?”

Jughead wakes up while Betty is in her fourth class of the day. He’s only missed one so far, and he really was planning on going to English, but… His bed is so warm, and the room is so quiet without Archie, and he really, really wants to watch Trainspotting again.

So that’s what he does. There’s a blonde girl in the movie, just for one fleeting moment, and she reminds him so much of his barista. It’s completely coincidental, he tells himself, that this is the point where he realizes his morning erection is still pressing insistently into his thigh.

When the movie’s over, he reaches into his boxers, admitting defeat and letting the shame wash over him, and does not think of anyone or anything in particular while he gets himself off. No, all he thinks about is sex, about how it would feel if a small wet mouth were wrapped around him instead of his too-familiar hand, about how he would hold back a handful of blonde hair so he could see her face better –

It’s at that point that he comes, feeling dirty and gross and immediately regretting letting himself entertain that image. Nobody’s ever going to have sex with him, anyway. It’s been 18 years. It’ll be at least another 18 more. Maybe he should just hire a prostitute and get it over with.

No, that’s not what he wants to do. It’s not really the physical aspect he craves anyway. It’s more just the connection – he’s never even had a best friend, let alone someone who feels so comfortable and safe around him that they invite him into their body. God, what a thought.

He should probably go to class now. He only has one left today, and it’s in 20 minutes, which gives him just enough time to clean up, get dressed, and put on a pot of coffee. There’s a condom wrapper in the garbage can, and despite all of Archie’s faults and utter lack of a personality, he’s jealous that sex is such an easy thing for him. Maybe if he’d played football in high school, that could be him now, too.

He sees her once, on Wednesday, when he makes his now-daily stop at The Littlest Bean. She doesn’t take his order though, she’s stocking cups in the back (his stomach still jolts).

As he collects his coffee and gets ready to leave, they make eye contact. She smiles (he melts) and then goes back to work. This shouldn’t make his whole day, but it does.

Betty catches sight of him just as he’s leaving the store. He’s wearing a grey beanie today, covering most of his mess of black hair. He catches her looking, and she smiles, embarrassed. She can’t help it that he’s so goddamn attractive.

In Photojournalism class on Thursday, Betty gets a text. It’s from Veronica, and it says “meet us at the littlest bean xoxo.” As if Betty would forget. The location, though, she hadn’t been consulted about. She spends more than enough time within the pink walls of The Littlest Bean every week, she doesn’t need to go their on her own time too. But it sounds like they’re already there, and Betty knows how much Cheryl likes their macchiatos, and well, she does have a staff discount.

They’re both poring over Veronica’s phone, presumably giggling over the mystery ginger, when Betty enters the shop. She waves to her coworkers behind the counter and takes a seat at the sturdy white table next to Cheryl.

“Betty! Oh my God. Look. He’s basically Justin Timberlake, but ginger. He’s Justin Gingerlake.”

“You think Justin Timberlake is hot?”

“Yeah?” Veronica says, then thrusts her phone in Betty’s face.

“Oh, I – oh wow,” she says. This ginger boy is much hotter than Justin Timberlake.

“Right?” Cheryl says. “You should’ve seen Ronnie at the party, she just grabbed that ginger bull by the horns and-”

“What’s his name, V?” Betty asks.

“Oh, his name is really dumb. It’s Archie.”

“Archie? As in, short for Archibald?”

“Unfortunately,” Veronica says. “But his abs make up for it. You should see them, they’re incredible.”

“Oh, I bet.”

“He’s going to be at the party this weekend too, he said he can’t wait to see me again.”

“Oh girl,” Cheryl says with a grin, “you are so in.”

“Which party?” Betty asks, and is met with shocked looks from Veronica and Cheryl.

“You don’t know about the party?”

“No, I mean, I probably won’t be able to go anyway –“

“You’re going,” Cheryl says. “We’re going to drag you there if we have to. You can’t have two weekends off in a row.”

“I didn’t have the weekend off! I was at a Model UN conference! I got assassinated, for God’s sake.”

“You need to get laid, Betty,” Veronica says. “How long has it been?”

“What’s the party for, anyway?”

“How long, Betty?”

“I’ve been to enough football parties to know that none of the varsity players are interested in me. I’ll come, MAYBE, but I’m NOT looking to get laid.”

“It’s not an official football party. Lots of other people will be there. HOW. LONG.”

Betty takes a deep breath. Veronica and Cheryl are laughing.

“There was the one guy, in frosh week…”

“That was two months ago!” Veronica’s mouth almost hits the table.

“You are coming to the party, and we are going to get you laid,” Cheryl says.

“In fact, if everything goes according to plan, all of us are going to get laid.”

Betty jumps in, desperate to change the subject.

“Ooh, Cheryl, anyone in particular?”

Cheryl blushes beside Betty, and tries in vain to suppress a grin. “The girl from chem class. I got her number, and her name, and I invited her to the party. We’re gonna hookup. Or date. Either or.”

Betty gives her an enthusiastic high five. Cheryl, a serial monogamist, has had trouble finding gay girls who want to commit to anything more than a casual fuck. Most of them, Betty suspects, are just straight girls looking to experiment. Ah, college.

“So will you come?” Veronica asks, leaning forward over the table towards Betty. “It’s not really a question, but you should say yes anyway.”

“I’ll come, I’ll come.” Betty says “But next weekend is for studying.”

“Deal,” Veronica says.

“We can get ready in my room,” Cheryl says.

Ten minutes after the girls leave for class, Jughead, diverted once again from Coffee Planet by the sign on the door, walks through the spotless glass doors of The Littlest Bean and orders a coffee.

He’s more disappointed that his barista isn’t behind the counter than he’s willing to admit. The coffee, though, is as god as ever.

He sits for a minute to check his phone before he walks home, in a comfy metal seat that’s still warm. He will never know that just a couple minutes earlier, the girl he can’t stop thinking about was sitting, talking about sex, even, in the exact same spot.

Archie is taking pictures of himself shirtless when Jughead gets back to the room.

“New girl?”

“Yeah, but this one I really actually like.” He’s flexing in their half-length mirror, hair wet from the shower.

“What are the other girls then, sex toys?”

“It goes both ways, Jug. It’s not taking advantage if you’re on the same page.”

Archie is right, and maybe Jughead’s just jealous, but he almost wants to rip into him for being such a player.

“True. Another volleyball girl?”

“Nah, cheerleader. I met her at the football party last weekend.”

“Cool, cool.”

“There’s another party this weekend, a bit more casual, wanna come?” Archie asks. This isn’t the first time Archie’s invited Jughead to a party, but it still feels nice.

“Yeah, actually.” Jughead says. “Thanks man.”

Archie really isn’t too bad, he’s just the lovable dumb sidekick in the depressing movie that is Jughead’s life. He just needs to get rid of all his resentment and jealousy, and then maybe they can be best friends. Or at least friends. Friends would be nice.

Cheryl’s room is HUGE. Her incredibly rich parents had wanted her to room with her twin brother, and upon realizing that coed roommates were Not An Option, bought out double rooms for both of them, for “sleepovers.”

(Jason had stayed in Cheryl’s room only once, and he had passed out on the other bed while Cheryl wiped the vomit off his face and poured his vodka down the bathroom sink.)

It’s convenient, though, for parties. Or even just getting ready for parties, like right now.

They do their makeup first. Cheryl does hers light and natural, while Veronica does not. Betty’s opening a pink eyeshadow palette when Veronica says “absolutely not,” and snatches it away.

“You’re going full smoky eye tonight.”

Betty rolls her eyes. There’s no fighting her on this one.

Veronica makes quick work of Betty’s makeup, and Betty has to admit it actually looks pretty good. She usually never wears eyeliner, mostly because she’s awful at applying it, but Veronica’s given her perfect black wings and a dramatic shimmering eyeshadow.

Hair is next (this is just a house party, no time for anything fancy), then Cheryl hands Betty a black crop top/mini skirt combo that probably costs more than Betty makes in a month.

“I brought my own clothes, Cheryl.”

“Cool, I don’t care.”

“I’m going to wear these pants, and –“

“You are not wearing pants on my watch. Girl, show off those beautiful legs.”

Again, there’s no point in fighting.

After a couple quick tequila shots, the girls are off towards the student housing district, buzzed and giggly and excited. Betty’s not sure where the thought comes from, but she wonders if the hot “black coffee” guy will be there. Probably not. He seems way too cool for this kind of party.

He really, really did intend to go. As Archie leaves for the party, freshly showered and smelling amazing, Jughead almost regrets his decision. Almost.

But he only has four beers left and he’s really tired and he probably won’t know anyone there other than Archie anyway. He can go out with his film friends tomorrow, maybe get one of the older ones to buy him some more beer.

It will probably be a lot more fun than some football party anyway.

So, comforted with this knowledge and full of exhaustion, Jughead spends a couple minutes doing homework after Archie leaves, then crawls in to bed, knowing he’ll be woken up in a couple hours when Archie comes home.

By tomorrow morning, he’ll know exactly what he missed, and his feelings about skipping the party will be drastically different.

#bughead #bughead fanfiction #bughead fanfic #bughead coffeeshop au #bughead college au #riverdale fanfiction #riverdale fanfic #betty cooper #jughead jones #jughead #jughead fanfiction #riverdale #my fic #mine #black coffee #multichapter

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jonmccaw · 7 years ago

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15+ Free Image Website Resources For Your Blog

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15+ Free Image Website Resources For Your Blog

If you are a blogger or you have a photography business, you know that stock photos are important to your livelihood. This is why I put together a list of free image website resources for you to refer back to when you are just having a tough time finding the right photo.

I know as a blogger you don’t want to be caught using a photo that is not public domain or wasn’t created by you. That’s why having free image website resources is very integral to a blogger.

Starting out as a blogger, you need to have these resources until you can either get your own camera or have the funds to hire someone to take photos for you. In that spirit, I’m going to give you 15+ top free image website resources.

15+ Free Image Website Resources

Pixabay

Pixabay is one of my favorite places to get photos. As you browse through my site, you will see many photos that have come from this site. Combine Pixabay with Canva and you have a blog masterpiece.

Not only can you get free images, but you can search vectors (mathematically generated images that never get blurry when resized), and video.

Click Here to Learn More About Pixabay

Pexels

Pexels is one of those newly discovered sites that I am really loving. It’s one of those sites that I check right after Pixabay (my favorite so far).

This site is a definite bookmark for those that do their own images for blogs, or social media.

Click here to learn more about Pexels

Life of Pix

Life of pix is a free resource that I have really overlooked but when I write posts like this, I’m reminded that I should be checking in on this site more often. They have some great resources for bloggers that other sites do not have.

One thing you’ll notice is that if you type in the same terms on different sites, you’ll start to see the same photos pop up. This seems to be the case here as well, but they offer more images that other sites do not have.

Click here to learn more about Life Of Pix

Death To The Stock Photo

A site that touts death to anything is usually not worth taking a look at. However, I found this one a bit off the board. It’s not stock photography in the sense of the word. it’s really a site all about the non-standard photo.

Photos with models that may have signed their name saying that you can use their image from this website.

Click here to learn more about Death To The Stock Photo

Canva

Canva is yet another resource that most people do not think about using. Yes, this is a place to create your images for your blog posts, and social media. Yes, this is also a stock photography site that has many FREE images, vectors, etc. However, they also have a paid option. If the photo is worth it to you, you can pay $1 for the photo. Do as many edits to the photo for 24hrs and then your access is shut off.

I get around this 24 hr bit by downloading a copy of that photo to my hard drive in a Canva folder. I see no reason to pay for an image 2 or more times. You shouldn’t either.

Click here to learn more about Canva

Adobe Stock Photos

I’ve found this one intriguing. However, the only reason for this intrigue is the mere fact that the free photos are there to entice you to sign up for there service. All of these photos after your free 10 pack allotment are on a paid basis.

Sure, I would trust them that they would have great photos to use. Just remember, whatever you do, it’s going to be free at first. But then…

Click here to learn more about Adobe Stock Photos

123RF

This site is one of those paid subscription sites that will give you rights to the photos you download. it’s a one time fee and you buy your photos by purchasing packs of 10, 150, 200, 780 or more. These are allotted to you in a one time fashion or on a monthly basis. The monthly plans start out at $39/mo and go up to $229/month for the 780 plan.

They give you a pretty good discount for purchasing the plan on a yearly basis. For instance, you can get the 10 plan for $25 instead of the regular $39.

Click here to learn more about 123RF

Jay Mantri

This site is also in the other post that I wrote about free images. I chose this again because the site is not as robust but it has so many different images to choose from. I would recommend using the search function if you’re short on time though. The way its setup you can really spend some time on this site searching for your photo.

The only downfall to this site is that Tumblr is the system of choice. I’m sure the reasoning is due to the cost (free). I also presume this is why the site is not very friendly in searching for the photos.

The site is completely free, which is why I’m including it here for your reference.

Click here to learn more about Jay Mantri

StockPholio

FINALLY! I found this one recently and love the design and the content. Photos are crisp, colorful and just what you need.

Click here to learn more about StockPholio

Pixel Perfect Digital

To round off the top 10 is a site that has photos in categories for you. Both free and paid photo categories show up in very obvious places. However, they are presented to you up front before clicking on the image, then being notified it’s a paid or free image.

Click here to learn more about Pixel Perfect Digital

KaboomPics

As I go through some of the photo sites that I see on other blogs, I want to get a good feel for them.

One thing that I am almost always never going to promote is another blog on a free site such as blogger, Tumblr with free photos of them. Long story short, they need to be self-hosted sites. To me, that shows they are truly providing value and aren’t bound by the T’s & C’s of the site that’s hosting them.

Click here to learn more about KaboomPics

Morguefile

As you can see in the photo below, this is another site that promotes free creatives by creatives. In my book, it’s always great to see people in the same niche supporting each other.

Click here to learn more about MorgueFile

Dreamstime

Free pictures for your website can be tough if you’re looking for the photo for free. Dreamstime is a site that covers a vast amount of subjects and you could very well find the perfect photo here.

As you can see, there are free photos to be searched here as well.

Click here to learn more about Dreamstime

500PX

Originally, I found this photo site as a top professional site for photo enthusiasts only. However, upon review, you definitely can search this site for the perfect photo for your next social media or blog post.

I think the trend (as of Jan 2018) in this world of stock photos is to have a site that has a section of free photos – if you sign up for an account. Then offer you photos that are just too good to pass up but they are not free.

Now, I haven’t done much searching on this site, but one thing that I took note to was that my firewall blocked this site on my home network. I checked it out on my phone and everything seems to be all in the clear. The error that shows up on the block page says…

“This site is blocked due to content filtering.”

So I unblocked it.

Click here to learn more about 500PX

Wylio

Based upon a few characteristics of the website, I found Wylio to be aesthetically pleasing to the eye, the functionality looks like a winner as well.

Click here to learn more about Wylio

These are the top 15 that I have full confidence in. Most of these are free to start out and have premium features if you choose to go that far. Some, have premiums right out of the gate. That said, if you’re on a budget, I think it’s a no-brainer to do all you can and stick with the freebie photos until you have a budget to spend on photos. Some bloggers never do any spending on photos. it’s all a matter of your photo taking skill set. Which really isn’t tough these days with a selfie iPhone / Android available at a moments notice.

I will be adding to this list as I get more resources for you to check out. Side note: each link will open in a new tab/window. Remember to please bookmark this post and share it around.

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The Rest of The Free Image Website Resources

Albumarium

Ancestry Images

BigFoto

Compfight

CreativeCommons.Photos

DesignersPics

Every Stock Photo

FindA.Photo

Foodies Feed

Foter

`Free Images

Free Media Goo

`Free Nature Stock

Free Range Stock

`Free Stock Image Point

FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Unsplash

FreePhotosBank

GetRefe

Good Free Photos

Gratisography

Image Finder

iStock Photo

ISO Republic

Jeshoots

Little Visuals

Lock & Stock Photography

Magdeleine

MMT.li

Moveast

New Old Stock

Photo Everywhere

Photo Pin

Photober

PicJumbo

Picography

Public Domain Archive

Re: Splashed

RGBStock

Skitter Photo

Smithsonian on Flickr

splash base

SplitShire

Startup Stock Photos

StockPhotos.io

Stockvault

Stokpic

Travel Coffee Book

Unsplash

UPICM

Wikimedia Commons

That’s the end of this list of free image website resources. keep checking back, as I will be adding more after I have vetted them.

My hope is that you have all the resources to put together a beautiful and very easy to read a blog post.

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#Blog image resources #Free image resources #Royalty free image resources #Blogging #Photography #Social Media

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