#consider asking your doctor to order you a sleep study!

[autisticaradiamegido]

day 299

cha boy is starting on a cpap machine for the first time tonight

it turns out, that when i sleep, my cringe-ass larynx blocks itself up, and i STRAIGHT UP STOP BREATHING for up to 20 seconds at a time! of course i have always managed to start back up again, but as u might imagine this doesn't lead to great sleep quality

so wish me luck on getting that Good Sleep for once. god gives his toughest battles to his sleepiest warriors and all that.

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Where Will All The Martyrs Go [Epilogue: It’s Not Over ‘Til You’re Underground]

A/N: We've finally reached the end of the Oregon Trail, besties!!! Enjoy this one last treat to celebrate the conclusion of Martyrs 🥰

Series summary: In the midst of the zombie apocalypse, both you and Aemond (and your respective travel companions) find yourselves headed for the West Coast. It’s the 2024 version of the Oregon Trail, but with less dysentery and more undead antagonists. Watch out for snakes! 😉🐍

Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, med school Aemond, character deaths, nature, drinking, smoking, drugs, Adventures With Aegon™️, pregnancy and childbirth, the U.S. Navy, road trip vibes.

Both the series title and epilogue title are lyrics from: “Letterbomb” by Green Day.

Word count: 4.1k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Autumn is the harvest, ripping up roots, preparing for the starving time of winter, and so you step through the threshold of your new life as the world is ending again.

“I knew the chances,” Sophie says when you tell her what happened; but she can’t look at you, because of course she wishes it was Rio who made it to Odessa instead, and you don’t blame her. She breaks down and leaves the house, and you sit there—silent, sorry, self-loathing—for a long time with Rio’s weeping parents and Aegon���s arm draped across the back of your chair. But then Sophie comes back inside, and through tears she says it’s nice to meet you in person at last, and then she asks if you’d like to hold Rio’s son.

Here it is commonplace to see M16s and AR-15s, marijuana growing in gardens, a myriad of flags flying from homes—Don’t Tread On Me, Trump 2024, American flags, rainbow flags, porcupines of the Libertarian Party—and order is maintained by an elected council of longtime Odessa residents. For anyone to be allowed into the community, somebody already here must take responsibility for them, and so the seven of you—eight, counting Ice—spend the first few months sleeping on Rio’s parents’ living room floor and eating meals out of their cellar, enough self-stable food to last for years. You join the construction crew and help build houses, Cregan cuts down trees and fishes and hunts, Helaena shows Aegon how to garden and Sophie teaches Luke to bake bread. There are no doctors here, but there are several unlicensed midwives and a veterinarian named Ian Whitted. Rhaena studies under him—attending every appointment and taking copious notes in the spider notebook Helaena gifts her, sharing what she learned from Aemond—and before long her sutures are quicker and cleaner than Ian’s. Daeron, considered too young and inexperienced for the most dangerous work, is posted with his compound bow inside the village to serve as a guard. He resents this until he realizes there are far more women to flirt with here than out in the forest where wolves and bears prowl and the dead rove with incurable hunger.

You work from dawn to sunset; you work so you have no time to think. The baby doesn’t feel real, and neither does Aemond being gone, and the future is so unimaginable you’d rather not try to imagine it at all. Because you’re a good shot, they want you for patrols and raids of nearby towns to search for supplies, and you take every shift you’re offered until Rhaena says you have to stop. She tells you that each time you leave, Aegon watches the door until you walk through it again, that it’s not good for him, that it’s not good for you either. She says you can’t keep running from what’s happened.

“I’m not trying to run away,” you tell her where she’s cornered you by one of the wells, lilac twilight sky and glimmers of stars, hoots of owls and children laughing as they roast marshmallows over crackling fires. “I’m trying to find my way through.”

“Fine,” Rhaena replies firmly, no room for argument. “But you’re going to do that in here where it’s safe.”

The new houses have wooden walls and kitchen fireplaces made of stones, beds with feather mattresses, plots for gardens and pens for ducks, chickens, pigs, sheep, goats, turkeys, cattle. Helaena and Cregan move into one cabin, Rhaena and Luke share another, and you have the last to yourself, the first time you’ve ever lived alone. Aegon and Daeron float around between the houses, more often than not ending up in yours as the sun is dipping below the tree line into the west, Daeron carving wooden cutlery with a hunting knife, Aegon cuddling with Ice on the deerskin rug, luring you into disastrous baking attempts and games of Uno and telling stories about Washington D.C., Djibouti, Key West, Corpus Christi, Chinhae, Diego Garcia, Saratoga Springs before the dead began to walk.

Thanksgiving dinner is at Rio’s parents’ house, Sophie’s baby sound asleep in his blue sling, candles flickering and Ice lying beneath the table to gulp down scraps that fall to the floor: roasted turkey, hazelnut stuffing, buttered carrots, mashed potatoes, pickled beets, salad with homemade ranch dressing, pumpkin pie for dessert.

“God, I miss chilidogs,” Aegon mutters beside you, and you laugh—a real laugh, loud and helpless, a lightness flooding into your arteries and the marrow of your bones—for the first time since Aemond died.

“You have to try this,” Sophie says, pouring you a small glass of moonshine distilled with apples and cherries and cinnamon. Everybody else has already had a taste except Aegon. He doesn’t drink anymore, doesn’t smoke the weed people grow here, only keeps a few tobacco plants in your garden to enjoy on rare occasions.

“I can’t,” you tell Sophie, staring at the amber-colored moonshine. You are over three months along and will be showing soon. It materializes all at once, shifts from a hazy apparition to something in full focus: next Thanksgiving you will have a fatherless infant of your own.

Sophie is puzzled. The glass of moonshine waits untouched on the table. “Why not?”

“Because I’m pregnant,” you say.

Aegon chokes on his pumpkin pie. “You’re what?!”

And everyone except Helaena drops their forks and leaps up to engulf you: How long have you known? How far along are you? Why didn’t you tell us? How can we help?

You stop lifting heavy things and stay off of ladders. Helaena brings you kale and mushrooms, Sophie knits you baby clothes, Rio’s mom makes you candles infused with essential oils, lavender, chamomile, ginger, and you lie and say they make a difference. Aegon helps you build a crib; you don’t need his help, but still, he insists. Smiling to himself, he etches two words into the headboard: Mini Chips. Wheat is planted in the fields to the north of the village. Scrap metal is scavenged for the blacksmiths to melt down to make nails and bullets. You learn to sweeten desserts with honey instead of sugar and to hold your hand flat when you feed the baby goats so they won’t nibble your fingers. You wait for winter to thaw and summer to come back around again.

It is what people would call a bad birth: hemorrhaging and lots of stitches, Rhaena squinting in the glow of the flashlights trying to piece you back together, rain outside and no lidocaine. You can’t stop crying. You feel like you’re going to die, and you’re shaking too badly to hold your own child, and you want Aemond. He would know what to do, he would know how to make the world go quiet. And the truth that he will never meet his daughter hits you over and over again like cold lethal waves, like bullets that pierce the heart.

Aegon is here instead, and you want to cling to him but you can’t; if all the others could die, so can he. But even when you look away from him to stare at the wall he stays, his hand clutching yours and never complaining even when you squeeze it hard enough to leave bruises that paint him maroon and indigo, tilting glasses filled with fresh pomegranate juice against your lips, asking Rhaena and Ian what you will need from him as you recover. Slowly the house empties and everyone goes home, but Aegon stays through the night and never leaves again.

Harmony cries a lot, as if she already knows she’s lost someone. She has trouble nursing and only sleeps for a few hours at a time. People are always coming in and out of the house: Sophie with handknit clothes and blankets for the baby, Helaena with flowers and fruit and vegetables, Rhaena with loaves of Luke’s fresh-baked bread, Cregan with firewood. At first Aegon is better with Harmony than you are. You love her, of course, and you mourn for the life you cannot give her; but you can’t shake the feeling that someone left her on your doorstep, this fragile bewildering creature you are so unequipped to soothe. Yet Aegon picks her up and she stops crying. He carries her around the house and murmurs nonsense—rules of golf, sailing knots—and she gazes up at him mesmerized; and in the peace that grows from him like weeds, wild and inevitable, you can heal.

Aegon helps you walk for the first week after the birth. He brings you meals, overflowing plates you can never finish. He respectfully averts his eyes when you nurse the baby and when he passes the bedroom as you’re changing clothes, slowly and inelegantly, every muscle feeling shredded. He falls exhausted into bed beside you with his arms crossed over his chest so he won’t reach for you in his sleep. You keep waiting for him to start craving marijuana and moonshine, to meet someone who makes him wayward again while you are left here alone, morose and unglamorous and bleeding. You care about Aegon—entirely, violently—but you are convinced you’ll never love a man again. Perhaps love is something that is always doomed to be broken, ruinous, poisoned.

When Harmony is about four months old, you begin to see Aegon differently. You can’t stop staring at the way his hair shags over his eyes when he’s bent low in the garden, you hide behind walls and listen each time you catch him singing to himself, you feel a dark desperate sense of loss when other women flirt with him, though Aegon is never more than polite in return. You find excuses to touch him, and he always acquiesces: Let me bandage the cuts on your hands, let me dab honey on your sunburn.

One night you wake to find Aegon with Harmony in the kitchen, humming and rocking her in his arms as he paces back and forth across the wood floor in his bare feet, the full moon radiant through the window, the fireplace crackling. He glances over when he notices you standing in the doorway and says: “I think this is the only thing I’ve ever been good at.”

“Aegon?”

“Yeah, Chips.”

“I’m in love with you.”

At first he is startled, and then he smiles in the firelight, a slow mischievous curve of the lips that puts stars in his eyes and shows his teeth. “Took you long enough.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Nearly ten years ago, you were learning how to be a builder at Class A Technical School in Gulfport, Mississippi, salt and sun and sweet tea and humidity that lies heavy like a second skin you can’t shed. Today you are hammering nails into boards that will be a wall of the new meeting house, twice the square footage of the old one. The community here keeps growing.

“Watch out for your fingers, Zack Attack.”

 Zack looks over at you. He’s a kid, nineteen, and he’s only been here a week. He left Beaumont, Texas with a group of thirty people, one of them the cousin of a council member here. Twelve were left when they arrived. “Huh?”

“You’re holding the nail too close to the bottom,” you say. “If you swing the hammer and miss—and you will miss, everyone does sometimes, even me—you’ll crush your fingers against the wood. But if you hold the nail up near the top, the hammer will kind of knock them out of the way as it comes down, and you won’t have to worry about Rhaena or Ian popping your bones back into place.”

“Oh, cool! Thanks!” Zack readjusts his hands. “Where’d you learn to do all this?”

“The Navy.”

“Right. That makes sense.” He gives you a crooked, conspiratorial grin. “I heard you’re a good shot.”

“I am, I guess.” You don’t do patrols anymore, but you’re on the list of people to call when there’s a security breach, and you go because you have to. If Odessa is ever overrun, that will be the end of the life you’ve made here. The last scare was two months ago, a hoard that wandered up from the south, probably out of Klamath Falls. Someone knocked and you answered, leaving Aegon standing in the doorway with troubled eyes, Noah in his arms asking: Where Mama go? And Aegon had told him She’ll be back soon, buddy, but of course no one had known if that was true.

Now Zack says admiringly: “A real killer.”

You smile and give him a slap on the shoulder as you start climbing down the ladder. “I’d rather be a builder.”

“You heading out?”

“Yeah, my kids probably miss me.”

“See ya tomorrow. Bring more of Aegon’s raspberry crumb muffins.”

You laugh. “If there are any left.”

Down on the ground, bumblebees orbit tufts of wildflowers and cats prowl for mice. Sitting cross-legged on the grass are kids rubbing nails against bars of goat milk soap; it makes them go into the wood easier. They play the same way you did as a child: in the dirt, in the wild, tracking animals and building dams in the creek. They wave as you pass by. Everyone knows each other here. Everyone knows what you can do with the Beretta M9 in your holster.

Beside one of the wells, Daeron is helping a flock of tittering, blushing women pull up their buckets and plucking stray blades of grass and pine needles out of their hair. He is easily the most eligible bachelor in Odessa, and in no hurry to take himself off the market. By the schoolhouse, two teenagers are petting Ice as they listen to Aegon’s pink Sony Walkman and rap along to Gold Digger: “You will see him on tv, any given Sunday, win the Super Bowl and drive off in a Hyundai…”

But at Sophie’s house, the song you hear is Darius Rucker’s Wagon Wheel, drifting from a battery-powered boombox containing one of Rio’s dad’s cassette tapes. Aegon is already here and dusted with earth, your children clamoring around his legs as he chats with Sophie at the edge of the garden: zucchini, snap peas, tomatoes, strawberries, spinach, potatoes, cucumbers, carrots, kale. When Aegon sees you, he lights up and says to the kids: “Look! Look who’s here!” And you crouch down and open your arms so you can catch all three of them as they barrel into you on small, wobbly legs.

The second birth was much easier, the third only lasted an afternoon. Opal, three years old, is named after a gemstone that Sophie told you symbolizes hope and clarity; Noah, two and with unruly blonde hair like Aegon’s, shares a name with the man who started over when the world flooded and all the generations before were lost. You pick him up before he can trip over his own feet.

“Mama, come see!” Harmony shouts, grabbing your free hand and dragging you to a hutch full of fluffy, multicolored rabbits. Aegon is walking over to join you, his hands in his pockets and a soft smile on his lips, long blonde hair and stubbled cheeks.

“Are these the new meat rabbits?” you say without thinking, and Aegon widens his eyes at you.

Harmony peers up with a worried frown. She’s getting too smart to be shielded from such harsh realities. “Why did you call them meat rabbits?”

Aegon swoops Harmony off the ground to distract her. “Because they’re so excited to meet you!” he says as she giggles and kicks through open air.

“What are their names?” you ask to change the subject.

“Arrax,” Opal says in her toddler lisp, pointing to a grey one. And then, indicating a rabbit with long, reddish-tan fur: “Morning.”

“Those are such nice names!” you gush, a bit perplexed. Children have a certain mystery to them, one foot still in the Great Beyond, wherever souls wait to be born and reunited.

“And this one is Sunfyre,” Harmony announces proudly, reaching through the wire to scratch its straw-colored coat.

“Sunfyre?!” Aegon says. “Well now you’re just making shit up.” A pause. “Stuff. You’re making stuff up.”

“And Sunfyre is married to Dreamfyre.”

“Cute,” Aegon says. “Incestuous, but cute.”

“The post-apocalypse dating pool is limited,” you remind him.

“Have you met the Texas people yet?” Sophie asks you as she wanders over to the hutch in a handknit yellow dress, wearing elephant earrings that Rio once mailed home to her from Djibouti.

“Yeah, some of them are working on the meeting house. They seem really nice. And apparently they know how to barbeque, so that’s exciting. New recipes!”

Sophie smirks. “When they dropped by to introduce themselves, I had to have the whole conversation again.”

“Well…you did name your kid Otter.”

“Wait, wait, hold on,” Sophie says, chuckling, showing her palms. “I did not name him Otter.”

“You named him Bryan Otter Osorio. And you call him Otter.”

“Because he’s a little kid and it’s a perfectly fine nickname for now! And then when he’s older…you know…he can decide who he wants to be.”

You smile. “Sure.”

“I think it’s great, personally,” Aegon says. “I’m hoping I’ll get to name my next one Softshell Turtle.”

“Absolutely,” you deadpan. “And what if it’s a girl?”

“Softshell Turtle is obviously unisex.”

Sophie is laughing and shaking her head. “I hate you guys.”

Helaena and Cregan arrive to pick up their children, two sets of twins, all named after species of butterflies: Skipper, Adonis, Tiger, Sara. Rio’s parents bring them outside to the garden to be collected. They and Sophie like to keep the house full of children, especially now that Otter is getting older. And when they need meat or firewood or their roof patched, they know who to ask.

“I’m so sorry,” Sophie tells Helaena and Cregan as they wrangle their brood. “I’m mortified. Adonis ate Harmony’s oatmeal raisin cookie and made her cry, so Otter smacked him in the head with his golf club.” Aegon has carved miniature, lightweight clubs out of pine wood for each of the children; they zip around putting acorns and walnuts. “Adonis was freaked out but I think he’s fine now. I couldn’t find a bruise or anything. Again, I’m so, so, so sorry.”

“You okay, buckaroo?” Cregan asks, and his oldest son—brunette man bun, already pestering his dad to take him hunting—nods adamantly.

“Duh. It didn’t even hurt.”

Cregan guffaws and turns back to Sophie. “See? No harm done.”

Otter trots out of the house, rubbing his eyes like he just woke up from a nap. Harmony immediately runs over to hug him. He’s already six inches taller than her and is always giving her gifts that end up on the fireplace mantle at your house: flecks of quartz, pinecones, bracelets woven from buttercups.

Sophie asks Otter: “Did you think about what you did earlier?”

“Yeah,” he replies cavalierly.

“Would you do it again?”

“Probably.”

“Oh dear,” Sophie exhales, exasperated.

You beam down at Otter. “He’s exactly like Rio.”

“Yeah,” Sophie says wistfully, combing her fingers through his dark curly hair. “He really is.”

Rhaena and Luke happen to be strolling by and stop to say hello. Luke teaches English classes at the schoolhouse, founded the Cultural Preservation Committee, and writes and directs a new play each month. When he is in the lull between original ideas, he draws from pre-zombie pop culture. The June production is Free Britney.

“Hi!” Rhaena says, waving. “Are we still on for dinner tonight?” All the adults offer greetings and confirm they’ll swing by her and Luke’s cabin in a few hours. Then Rhaena shields her eyes from the sun as she sighs incredulously. “Do you realize there are ten women due in the next two weeks? I spend all day rushing around because they’re panicking about Braxton Hicks contractions. If I get one full night’s sleep between now and mid-July, it’ll be a miracle. Am I the only human alive who knows how to use the rhythm method? I explain it! I give lessons!”

You laugh and say: “I think people just really want babies, Rhaena.”

“They’re so sweet,” Helaena coos as she snuggles Sara against her chest.

“Gotta repopulate the planet,” Cregan adds.

Rhaena is disturbed. “I don’t feel ready for that.”

“Totally cool,” you assure her. “Helaena and I are keeping the average up.”

That night, logs pop and hiss in the fireplace and wind howls outside through the forest. On the walls are photographs of Aemond and Helaena and Daeron, drawings that the children have scribbled of you and Aegon. Propped in one corner of the living room is Aegon’s acoustic guitar; Harmony’s current favorite song for him to play is Big Girls Don’t Cry, though a slightly censored version of Fergalicious is a close second. Tomorrow is Aegon’s birthday. You have a cake hidden in one of the kitchen cabinets—cinnamon, honey, buttercream frosting—that you baked this morning before leaving for the construction site, along with 35 small homemade candles dyed green with chamomile. Every year he assumes you’ve forgotten, but you never do. You’re so thankful he was born. You are eternally finding new ways to convince him of this.

All five of you cuddle up in the big bed for story time. You begin as you always do, struggling to capture the kids’ attention as they crawl around giggling and rolling on top of each other: “Hey, hey, everyone look at me. You remember what we say.” Harmony knows this part my heart, Opal has the words mostly right, Noah gives it a solid effort as he mauls on a teddy bear Sophie knitted for him. “You’re beautiful. I love you. You’re doing the right thing.”

“What story should Mama tell tonight, huh?” Aegon asks as you open the book of fairytales borrowed from the makeshift community library, another one of Luke’s projects. “The Little Mermaid, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Beauty and the Beast…oh wait, I think I might be in that one…”

Harmony says to you: “Tell the story about how Aemond saved us from the tower.”

Children understand death here. People get infections, people succumb to cancer or heart attacks or strokes or diabetes, people go out on raids or patrols and never come back, one man contracted rabies from a bat bite and was—at his request—euthanized via gunshot. Harmony is aware she had a father before Aegon, but that he had to go to heaven early, and so Aegon is her father now and loves her completely. She knows Aemond’s face from the photographs Helaena took from the beach house on the Pacific Ocean. She knows the kind of person he was from the stories she’s been told. Harmony envisions a fantastical castle keep instead of a stark metal transmission tower draped in dead wires, and she’s a bit unclear on the chronology of when she entered the picture, but she has heard about the journey to Odessa. Aegon’s map, annotated with glittery green gel pen ink, hangs on the kitchen wall.

You close the book, looking at Harmony: your hair, Aemond’s eyes. “Okay. I can tell that one.”

“Mama…” Her little forehead crinkles, questions she is at last getting old enough to start asking. “Why do some people have to go to heaven before they’re old?”

You hesitate, trying to decide how to explain; and now embers are glowing hot and scarring in your throat. It’s a fire that cools and rekindles but never burns out. Aegon speaks instead. “Because they’re heroes, Mini Chips,” he says gently. “They go to heaven so other people get to stay here longer. Aemond went to heaven so you and your mom could live here in Odessa with me.”

“So Otter’s daddy was a hero too?”

Aegon leans down to kiss the top of her head, his eyes shining. “Yeah. Exactly.”

Not just a hero, you think. A martyr. Someone who dies for a cause.

Harmony is patting your arm with her tiny outstretched hand. “The tower, Mama. Tell us about the tower.”

Now you are there again with Rio: sixty feet off the ground and clinging to metal beams hot enough to put blisters on your palms, cascading June sunlight and wild emerald fields, blood and madness behind you, the mirage of Oregon ahead, believing without reason that someone out there will save you.

And they will; they will.

[hvnnibalecter]

PUMPKINS AND CHOCOLATE. | S.R

surprise gift for my dear friend zo, @rhaerhaenyra.

PAIRING : Spencer Reid x GN!Reader.

RATING : FLUFF. PURE FLUFF.

A/N : English isn't my first language, so it is possible that there is some grammatical errors along the way.

summary : maybe you should have told Spencer that you were planning a movie night for halloween, with your favorite movie on the subject, and you probably should have told him it wasn't really considered as the most typical halloween movie ever made in the industry.

𖹭 Some people become incredibly gloomy as soon as the temperatures drop, winter depression according to specialists. However, autumn was your favourite season, the changing colours, the long days under the covers drinking hot chocolate.

Of course, it wasn't necessarily pleasant to have to put away summer clothes at the back of the closet to swap them for jackets and sweatshirts. However, you preferred sweatshirts to swimsuits, the sun was becoming far too aggressive to be appreciated anymore, no one wants to have sunburn that prevents you from sleeping properly.

So in itself, you were rather delighted with this change of season. A cup of hot chocolate in your hands, you ate marshmallows directly from the package, the promotion on the second package purchased had been too tempting for you to go home without it.

So that's how two hours later, you found yourself in the kitchen eating marshmallows with hot chocolate. Spencer was supposed to be home in ten minutes, you pulled your phone out of your sweatpants pocket to text him, asking if he had any plans for tonight. When he answered no, you felt a smile creep onto your lips, maybe it was time to educate Doctor Spencer Reid on Halloween movies.

Spencer had come back grimacing, you had raised your head from your sketchbook before frowning while he took his things out before understanding where his grimace came from, he had ink on his favorite shirt.

Spencer had started his first year at Quantico University, of course the former profiler had decided to be a criminology professor and you had pointed out to him, that ninety percent of the students, female -of course-, were only there for his pretty eyes.

He had raised his head and frowned, refuting that his students were in his class to study. Of course Spencer didn't realize that his students were too busy looking at him to take real notes on the subject. After eating a home-cooked meal, a roast chicken with seasonal vegetables -carrots, pumpkin, potatoes and green beans-, you had prepared yourself for the evening movie, putting on a sweatshirt ordered on Etsy with black cats and pumpkins.

Spencer had put his plate in the sink before approaching the couch, he put an arm around your shoulders while you launched the Disney+ app on the TV, Spencer frowned.

"Since my husband seems to be unfamiliar with the most famous Halloween movie, I think it's time you savor the experience properly, you smiled while looking at Spencer, let's educate you, my dear doctor."

"I don't think Friday the 13th is really considered a Halloween movie, Spencer replied with an innocent look. I thought you couldn't stand seeing blood in movies?" he added with a lifted eyebrown.

It was more fun than you expected it to be.

"Come on, I'm not talking about Friday the 13th, Spencer, you replied with a laugh."

Oh, Spencer seemed to be at a loss for words, he just watched the TV while you pressed the button to start the movie, he looked back at you when the opening credits announced the movie.

"The Nightmare Before Christmas? he asked in surprise. Isn't that a movie for kids?"

"Oh, Spencer! This is one of the most wonderful movies, Zero is absolutely adorable." you whined while looking at him, Zero was truly the sweetest thing in your opinion

"Zero?" Spencer replied, the genus was definetly confused now.

Of course, the scene that was playing on the screen was with Zero, so you motioned for Spencer to watch the TV, he bit his lower lip before deciding to watch the movie without making any comments, after all who could make any scientific comments or data, variables etc on a Tim Burton movie? You glanced at Spencer after settling down against him, hugging a cushion against you, Spencer Reid seemed to be absolutely enchanted by the movie. It was a memorable fall evening, maybe you'll remember to buy him a Pumpkin King mug when you stop by Target to do some shopping.

[kalifornia1025]

The Three Students Pt. 2 (SPOILERS)

Pt. 2 notes, let’s go!!

Starting off with John being the disaster drunk that he is…I’m not surprised John would be the ‘I lOvE yOu GuYs So MuCh” drunk

I forget John is a snorer (worth noting that Sherlock HATES people making noises in their sleep INCLUDING snorers, but somehow doesn’t have any problem with John’s snoring)

Mariana and Kayleigh bonding over Taylor Swift was sweet (not a Swiftie myself, but still sweet)

At least John isn’t the only one that ‘overdid it’ while at Oxford. Sherlock honey you were up until 5am, GO TO SLEEP!

‘Sleeping Beauty’ - hehe John’s our Sleeping Beauty (as he looks like shit, I imagine)

Poor John is gonna be SUFFERING through that hangover

Oh?? John’s drunken adventures gave them a clue? Good for him, I suppose?

Oh God, I just KNOW the speech is gonna SUCK

John, stop losing your shoes!! 

‘A very particular shoe’…hmm 

Prometheus mention? Must be to make up for them changing from the original Greek exam in the og story! Really good connection between the myth and the current case

Ew shut up Miles, that isn’t ‘speaking your mind’, that’s just being an arrogant prick. Humble this piece of shit, Sherlock!

Sherlock: “Oopsy, there’s a lie”, YES SHERLOCK get his ass!

It’s the moment we’ve all been expected: the big speech! Poor Sherlock, he’s so nervous

Good on him for switching over to something he’s more confident in: the current case!

Yes Sherlock, get in your element! It’s so sweet hearing him get so into the case and explaining his deductions, and I LOVE all Sherlock Holmes deduction scenes where he explains his thinking!

Personally I think Sherlock would also make for a GREAT professor (ironic considering a certain professor becomes a problem later on…)

Sherlock: “Oh deary deary”, stop being so cute, Sherlock!

Hehe yes Sherlock, make that SMALL MAN admit his real height! (He’s not even that short, but he deserves to be bullied)

Nice callback to Sherlock looking for ‘a very particular shoe’ while getting shoes for John! Knew that was gonna come back up later

Kayleigh, You did all this in order to go to a TAYLOR SWIFT CONCERT?! I will say, Swifties are committed

“Only through a Doctor from Swindon and an Accountant from Sociedad have my studies in the human condition had become all the more enlightening” d’awwww Sherlock you love them!!

Oh God oh no Sherlock no don’t read that IT’S THE BAD SPEECH AHHHH THE SECONDHAND EMBARRASSMENT

HA Sherlock still being the snack thief he is!

Aaaaand that’s it for the Three Students case! This was a fun one. Not in my top three for the podcast’s cases, but definitely a fun one. 

I don’t know if alcoholism is thought of differently in the UK (especially when it comes to UK university norms) but even as an American I can tell that alcohol is becoming far more relevant to John than him just ‘partying like a student’. Reminder that he was drinking a beer in the middle of the day during pt. 1, and this was BEFORE they stepped foot at Oxford! Personally…I hope the podcast recognizes this as a real problem; same goes for Sherlock’s drug addiction. I really don’t want these things to just be running jokes. I’m not asking for full episodes of rehab or whatever, I just want them to ACKNOWLEDGE that these are problems. 

Anyway, great case and now it’s just waiting for the next one. Fingers crossed we start getting to the meatier cases soon!

[lisbeth-kk]

May Prompts (19) Weather

The Luckiest Girl in the World (chapter 19)

Summary: Rosie is heartbroken. Sherlock and John are furious and sad. An invitation from the elderly Holmes couple, brings back sweet memories, and might be just what the doctor ordered.

Nineteen Years Old

I was devastated and utterly heartbroken when David ended it with me. We’d been a couple for almost a year, and I was still so in love with him. I had failed to observe, had let sentiment cloud my mind, lulling me into a fantasy coated in pink and gold.

I wasn’t the only one affected by this. Dad muttered curses under his breath, while Papa alternated between fury and sorrow. He blamed himself for not seeing who David really was; a young man, too insecure about himself, needing female attention around the clock, which I was unwilling to give. I had my studies, homework, jiu jitsu, family, and my friends to consider as well, and I hadn’t wanted to spend every spare minute with David no matter how much I loved him. In my opinion, I couldn’t be blamed for needing to see other people, whom I also loved, and to maintain my interests. It was part of who I was. Nevertheless, I cried myself to sleep every night to the tones of Papa’s soothing violin.

***

The next weeks went by in a daze, though I managed to study for my upcoming exams, much thanks to the sessions in the dojo, which helped clear my mind of the fog. Finally, the last exam was history and the summer lay ahead of me like a blank canvas. Me and David’s plans for going to Dublin, were obviously abandoned. Luckily, our flight tickets and hotel reservations were refundable.

Congratulations with finishing your exam, love! Are you free to have dinner at home tonight?

Dad’s request piqued my interest, as he most likely knew it would. I had no plans and answered in the affirmative. 

The day was sunny and pleasantly warm, which I felt always was the case when I had to sit inside a poorly ventilated classroom to pour all my wisdom into the exam forms.

“Let’s go to get ice cream,” I proposed to Liwia and Leyla who accompanied me out of the old school building.

“Covent Garden?” Leyla asked.

“Covent Garden,” Liwia and I agreed.

***

“How are you, Bee?” Papa asked when I returned home a few hours later. 

“Not that bad actually. Glad to get the exams over with,” I said.

“Chocolate chips and raspberry,” Papa stated out of nowhere.

“You just can’t help yourself, can you?” I muttered fondly.

“I guess not,” he admitted a bit sheepishly. “Sorry, if that…”

“It’s fine, Papa,” I assured him and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Is Dad cooking or is it takeaway tonight?”

“Neither. I am cooking,” he informed me, cupped my face and kissed my forehead.

“Oh! Must be a special occasion, then,” I teased.

He huffed and told me I could help instead of being sassy. I laughed, went upstairs with my school bag and changed into a pastel green dress. When I came back, Papa ordered me to make a vinaigrette and the salad. We worked in companionable silence, while classical music streamed out of the speakers.

***

“My compliments to the chefs,” Dad sighed contentedly when he’d all but licked his plate.

Papa and I stood and bowed, making lavish and silly gestures. The white wine made us pliant and relaxed. I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed sharing a lovely meal with my parents. In the last months, David had always been a part of it, or at least occupied a fair amount of my thoughts. And in that moment, I felt something heavy fall from my chest. I was free and had a whole summer ahead of me to do with as I pleased without having to consult David if he approved, wanted to be a part of my plans and what not.

“So, what’s all this about?” I asked.

Papa smirked, seemingly satisfied that I hadn’t been fooled about the intent of this dinner. 

“As clever as your Papa, aren’t you?” Dad praised. “I would expect no less.”

He straightened in his seat and leant forward to catch Papa’s hand. Papa nodded and turned to face me properly.

“Granny and Pops have invited us to France next week. They obviously didn’t include you because of your initial plans with…”

Papa clenched his teeth and gripped Dad’s hand tighter.

“It’s fine, Papa. I’m getting there. No need to call in the cavalry,” I assured him and stroked his arm. “Tell me more. I haven’t been there in ages.”

“When you were eleven, I think,” Dad mused.

“Twelve,” Papa corrected him, which earned him a kiss to the back of his hand from Dad and a giggle from me.

***

The house Papa’s Grand-Mère originally owned, had been inherited by Granny. A small villa close to Cannes. Théoule-sur-Mer was secluded and far less crowded than the more famous sites of the French Riviera. 

Being back brought treasured memories to mind. The warm and sunny weather, how Dad taught me to swim, Papa taking me snorkelling looking for exotic sea species, Pops reading The Little Prince in French, while simultaneously translating each paragraph, Granny’s coq-au-vin, quiche Lorraine and bouillabaisse. If there was any hint left of my heartbreak, it evaporated the second I dived into the crystal-clear water.

Also available on AO3

@calaisreno @totallysilvergirl @keirgreeneyes @helloliriels @raina-at

More tags in the replies

[mavrintarou]

Lord Sakusa Kiyoomi [2]

A little belated but I owed Sakusa a second part.

Warning: clingy Sakusa; mild smut (is that even a thing lol)

Note: if you’re new, welcome, Kiyoomi was my first HQ Lord series kick off, check out my masterlist for some of the other characters :)

First part

.

You let out a hesitant sigh, noticing the second servant stationed at the gates casting you a desperate gaze.  “I must go,” you say to Lady Kudoh, gently returning the infant to their mother’s embrace. “I shall return before my husband sends a third messenger to fetch me, or worst… he decides to come himself.”

Lady Kudoh nods her head with a smile, “understandable. Please come revisit us.”

You have become friends with the neighboring Lady as you helped her deliver her baby a few weeks ago. The village doctor could not make it in time, and the Kudoh servant had rushed over, pounding on the Sakusa’s gates, pleading for your help.

Smoothing your kimono over your bulging belly, you rise to your feet and make your way toward the gates. Yui, a Sakusa servant, looks visibly relieved, exhaling, and trails behind you.

Returning to your chambers, you are informed, “Lord Sakusa is currently taking his evening bath.”

You nod and announce your presence outside before sliding the bathroom door.

Kiyoomi’s well-defined back greets your gaze as he sits in the expansive tub. The room's moisture-laden steam accentuates his hair's curliness, making his locks even more pronounced.

“I’ve returned, my love,” you chirped, sliding the door closed behind you. Moving towards him, you approached with curiosity, leaning to steal a glance at his face.  

He was clearly upset.

Though unspoken, you could discern from Kiyoomi’s demeanor that he disapproved of your absence upon his return from a weary day of toil. His body language conveyed his discomfort, reinforcing the fact that he preferred your presence upon his arrival.

Firstly, his concern stemmed from not wanting you to venture outside as your due date for childbirth was only a few weeks away.

Secondly, after enduring a day filled with meetings he considered boring, he desired to savor the remaining hours in solitude with you. This could entail relishing the afternoon over tea and engaging in meaningful conversations or finding solace in his study as he penned poems. At the same time, you immerse yourself in reading books on medical cases.

Or that it could just be cuddling… that would result in passionate sex.

In general, he didn’t like being apart from you at any time of the day.

What made him paranoid about your absence was when you had gotten up in the middle of the night to find something salty to eat. Kiyoomi awoke, finding you absent from his embrace, triggering a heightened worry within him.  

You found some dry squid and were munching on it when the commotion outside the central kitchenette caught your attention.

“Find her!” You hear Kiyoomi’s voice roar. His servants scramble to search the compound, but none are headed your way.

“Find who?” You asked, chewing a mouth full of squid.  

Kiyoomi only narrowed his eyes at you and inhaled sharply.

Since then, you were ordered not to leave the chambers in the middle of the night without him.

“My Lord… er… Ki – yoomi…” you hesitated, noticing his continued glare as you addressed him by his title or full name. “Omi,” you quickly corrected, “I won’t leave without your company or acknowledgment. You were sleeping peacefully, and I didn’t want to disturb you … don’t be mad, please?” You accompanied your words with a pleading look, knowing full well that Kiyoomi was susceptible to your puppy eyes, causing him to relent each time.

He lets out a defeated sigh, his tone softening. “I don’t like being separated from you; please wake me up next time. I will fetch…” his face scrunches at the squid in your hand, “whatever it is you are craving for.” He pats your head, which he often does when he realizes he’s been overly dramatic with you. “I love you.”

Of course, you have to say it in return. “I love you too.”

Kiyoomi finally looked up at you, and the frown on his forehead disappeared.  He splashed his face with water before asking, “what took you so long?”

You slowly crouch down, and Kiyoomi scowled at you, “don’t – “

You ignored him and got to his eye level. “I was only there for a little bit?” You were only there for no more than an hour before the first servant came over to call for you, and you assured them you’d return in a bit, and less than ten minutes later, the second servant came to fetch you. “I just went next door to visit Lady Kudoh and her baby.”

Kiyoomi looked away, sulking and mumbling something under his breath.

“What was that?” You leaned closer into his face.

“I’m your baby.” He muttered, cheeks flushing.

Only after your intimate wedding did you realize the extent of his possessiveness and clinginess. While you didn’t mind those behaviors, you had no issue reminding him that it was all right to have moments apart; Kiyoomi still grappled with comprehending that boundary.

He was a work in progress, and you attributed this particular behavior to his upbringing. Growing up, he was accustomed to being granted anything and everything he desired.

“You are my baby,” you cooed, rubbing his ear lobe. “For now.”

Considering his possessiveness towards you, you often wonder what he would be like when the baby arrived. While his enthusiasm for your pregnancy and the baby’s impending arrival was evident, you couldn’t help but question whether his possessiveness would persist once the baby was born.

“Come bathe with me.”

You nodded your head at his request and stood up, groaning.

Kiyoomi stood up abruptly and helped you stand, “I told you…” he mumbled under his breath. He quickly turns you around to undo the knot of your Obi belt, tugging and pulling the material loose before letting it fall to the floor. He pulls off your kimono, dropping it on the floor. Holding his hand out, “hurry before the water gets cold.”

He helps you carefully step into the tub and begins to wash your body and hair.

Afterward, you squeeze the water and twist your long hair into a bun at the top of your head before turning around to sit in between his long legs as you both relax.

Kiyoomi rubs your belly under the water, and you feel the fluttering movements from your baby against his palm.

Resting your head against his shoulder, you sigh. “I’m ready to give birth.”

“Any day now, right?”

“Yes, any day now.” You answered. You didn’t tell him about your minor contractions this morning or even last night.

There was no need to alert him, but your belly has been fluttering with constriction tightness that you believe that your baby may arrive earlier than expected.

An unexpected pain pierces your lower abdomen, but you bite your lip to muffle your groan.

Or had you meant to moan as Kiyoomi’s fingers danced between your legs, faintly circling your clit.

And that’s when you remember earlier when he stood; his cock was already semi-hard.

And now it was hard, pressing against your back.

A low moan escapes your lips, “Omi….”

His finger presses further, giving you the right amount of bliss.

Suddenly, he swishes from behind you and lifts you out of the tub to sit on the ledge. He grabs his kimono and drapes it over your shoulders. He gives you a wicked smile before widening your leg and kissing your inner thigh.

Your legs are hooked over his shoulder as he continues to nip and leave red marks along your inner thighs until he reaches your core.

As soon as his mouth touched your core, Kiyoomi feasted as if it was his last meal.

When he added his fingers, gently sliding them in and out along with the work of his lips and tongue, you were sure you had gone to heaven and back.

Your high was suddenly a mixture of pleasure and pain, and you squirmed under his mouth.

“Omi…” you whimper, pushing his head from between your legs, but he only digs his fingers deeper into your thighs, holding you still. “Omi… Omi wait… stop…”

You pushed his head away, and he glared at you as you disrupted his meal.

Something didn’t feel right…

You gasped as you heard a pop and a gush of water squirt from between your leg, barely missing his face as he flinched backward just in time.

Immediately, you cried out in pain instead of pleasure.

.

Each time you heard the soft cries of your baby, you would open your eyes to see Kiyoomi cuddling his son and cooing him so he wouldn’t disturb you as you tried to get the rest you needed.

After hours of being in labor, your son finally entered the world.

Even in your exhausted state, you wanted to see him.

After cleaning him, the midwife wrapped him in a blanket, passing him to you.

His cute little cry made you cry, “it’s okay, it’s okay…” you cooed, kissing his forehead. His dark hair, curling in different directions, tickled your nose like his father’s.

Kiyoomi barged in immediately, still upset that he had to wait outside as you suffered the pain without him. The midwife wanted him out. His eyes burned with tears as they landed on you and the bundle in your arms.

The moment he held his infant, Kiyoomi fell in love a second time.

As you tried to recover, Kiyoomi never left his son’s side, shooing the nurses away.

Except…

“He… he might be hungry.” Kiyoomi swallowed nervously.

Sitting up carefully, you smiled and held your hands out to him. “Bring him over here.”

Very carefully, Kiyoomi kneels and passes his utterly small son to you. Like a child, he watches with curious eyes as you pull your yukata open and brings your infant to your pucker-leaking nipple. Naturally, like his father, he latches on and starts to suckle.

“He’s just like you.” You teased, looking at Kiyoomi. “What should we name him?”

Kiyoomi’s large hand brushes his son’s curly hair, “Seichi, Sakusa Seichi.”

.

“Kiyoomi…” you moaned as he was buried between your legs.

Three months later, Kiyoomi needed you.

When your son was put down for the night, he pounced on you like a starving beast.

Memories of the night you gave birth came flooding back, and you burst out laughing, immediately covering your laughter.

“What’s amusing?” he inquires, raising his head, his lips and cheeks still bearing traces of your wetness.

You shake your head, choosing not to remind him of that night, unwilling to revisit the memories it holds.

You yelp as he nips your inner thigh.

“Tell me,” he ordered softly, tongue soothing out the sting of the red mark he had just added to your skin.

Pushing yourself up on your elbow, you look at him, “remember the last time…”

As if the light bulb went off in his head, “oh gosh, yes….”

“After you got kicked out, I remember the midwife asking, ‘My Lady! What are these markings on your thigh?’.”

. . .

E/n: I giggled writing about the water bursting...

>>> @queenelleee @mfreedomstuff @erintaro @callmeraider @chaotic-fangirl-blog @wolffmaiden @cloud-lyy

[vaguely-concerned]

Garashir ficlet, PG, context is that Garak is about to go do… Something on his own (specifics very much ????? but probably something foolhardy and secretive and doomed ala Improbable Cause) and Julian is Not Having It this time. Probably fits into some of the later seasons vibes-wise. 

Julian said tightly: “My Kardasi might still need some work, but — ”

“Oh, no at all, considering how recently you started your studies your efforts are downright impressive, if, ah — charmingly archaic at times. If that’s to be laid at anyone’s feet it should be mine, probably, remind me to recommend you something written within the last few centuries sometime soon.” 

Giving this attempt at diversion exactly as much consideration as it deserved, Julian completely ignored him and finished his own line of thought: “ — but at this point I have a veritable doctorate in Garakese. There’s something you’re not telling me.” 

“Many things, I’m sure. If I’d known you had any interest in the optimal soil composition in which to grow Lovalan roses, I would have gladly shared my insight. All you had to do is ask, my dear. In the spirit of cross-cultural knowledge exchange, I always stand ready to chip in and do my par — ”

“Elim.” 

That made Garak blink, just that split second too long, even as his face remained perfectly still and smiling around it. It was subtle enough that an unaugmented eye might not have caught it, but Julian’s did.

No longer bothering to hide his own desperation, Julian pressed on: “Elim, please. You’ve got me worried with this. I want to help in any way I can, and — and I don’t like to think about what might happen if I can’t.”

There was a moment of silence between them in which Julian could hear his own quickened breathing too loudly in his ears. 

“That’s… characteristically kind of you, Doctor,” Garak said eventually, voice slightly hushed, like someone trying not to wake a sleeping child in another room. “But there is nothing to worry about. Really.” 

“Brush me off if you really feel like you have to, but please, at least do me the courtesy of not going out of your way to insult my intelligence while you’re at it,” Julian snapped. “How stupid do you think I am? How do you expect me to just close my eyes and sit back like nothing’s wrong while you — ”

Garak sighed. “You’re right, that was unworthy of me. Please, put it down to old habit, not a lack of respect. Very well, then let me rephrase what I was trying to say slightly, in order to be more precise — whatever might or might not be going on, there’s absolutely nothing you can do, and I really would rather you stayed out of it. Knowing you to be safely out of the line of fire would provide me with infinitely more comfort and utility than anything you could actively do to help. Which, again, is nothing.”

“But — ”

“Julian. Please.” 

Julian would have been thrown less off-balance if Garak had punched him square in the jaw. “Oh, that’s a dirty trick,” he said, unsteadily. 

“And here I thought ‘turnabout is fair play’ was a guiding Human principle,” Garak said, and his tone was light but his eyes were soft and very sad. “I see I have been misinformed.”    

The idea that Julian’s initial exposure to the Cardassian language leaves him speaking it like the equivalent of a Regency era novel or something to contemporary Cardassian ears in the beginning is a headcanon that is so dear to me  

[syngrafaes09]

I Can Help With That | Dr Strange x Y/N

“That is definitely a new strategy to pick up guys.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Never seen someone studying Fitzgerald’s neuroanatomy in a bar unless you have developed some new strategy to pick up brainy guys with that.”

Masterlist

Warnings: Little smutty

“I’m buying this place,” Tony announced as he drained another glass of whisky.

“You can’t,” Natasha hissed from his side. “You’ll only piss off Pepper more.”

Tony groaned and looked at Stephen, “Does this mean I can’t party at the tower nor buy myself a bar?”

Stephen smiled and nodded, sipping his martini. 

“Can’t you do something to change her mind?”

“My god, Tony,” he exclaimed indignantly, “I can’t believe you want to use me for such petty purposes.”

“You are no fun doctor,” he mumbled and ordered another drink then glanced at the crowd. “How about I find someone to get you laid, and you help a little in return?”

Stephen shook his head. “I can get laid without your help. Besides I agree with Pepper, you indeed need to party less.”

“Oo look at them,” Tony discreetly pointed to a group sitting a little away from them, “those two are totally eye-fucking you.”

Stephen sighed and turned a bit to give them a quick glance. Not my type, he thought and finished his martini. 

“Anyone thinking of hitting the dance floor? Thor asked, sliding off his stool, to no one in particular.

“I’m,” Tony and Natasha answered in unison, following suit.

“You are acting all grumpy today,” Tony complained before leaving, “just get laid, get things off your head and you’ll be fine as fuck. Oh look, one of them just left for the washroom.”

Tony wasn’t wrong. The recent attacks had left him spent. But he still wasn’t interested in sleeping with someone, not yet. After two shots of tequila, he handed over his card, waited a moment and walked towards the smaller section of the bar, the one with less loud music and small round tables.

That was when he noticed her. Technically, he noticed the book first. 

“That is definitely a new strategy to pick up guys.”

She looked up from her reading. The perfect doe eyes. A beautiful dark shade of chocolate, swirling to blend into caramel at the iris. He suddenly forgot what he was supposed to do here.

“I’m sorry?”

It took him a second to say, “Never seen someone studying Fitzgerald’s neuroanatomy in a bar unless you have developed some new strategy to pick up brainy guys with that.”

“Not interested,” she frowned and continued reading from her book.

Had she outright rejected him? That too him?

Breathe, Y/N. breathe. She reminded herself as she tried to focus on the pathway of the spinothalamic tract. He might be all sexy with that voice and looks but that’s not going to help you pass the exam.

She sensed the chair beside her move, and soon he was staring at her like the tempting Lucifer.

“So you aren’t trying to pick up anyone?”

“No,” she replied, not daring to look at him. “I have lost my keys to my apartment. And my roommate is supposed to be here. So, here I’m waiting.”

“Why not enjoy yourself while you wait?”

She marked the page and put the book down, finally looking at him- she forgot what she was supposed to say. He was totally gorgeous and, as he had said, seemed ‘brainy’ with those white streaks. He raised one perfect thick eyebrow at her. What had he said? Something along the lines of enjoying,  she guessed.

“I have got exams in a few weeks. So trying to make up for the knowledge I haven’t gained.”

Having got her attention he smiled at her. And she loved the way his orbicularis oculi produced those radiating lines at the lateral angle of his eyes, “And in what subjects are you lagging?”

Y/N reprimanded herself. She was going crazy. Nevertheless, she answered him, “Biochemistry and neurology.”

He nodded and glanced at her book. “I can help with that.”

“Excuse me?”

“I can help you with neurology,” he said, then added, “Only if you would like that.”

“Why? Are you the ‘brainy’ professor?”

“Not exactly, unless you consider a former neurosurgeon ‘brainy’ enough.”

Her jaw dropped. “I, uh,” she struggled to string her thoughts together. Great. He was not only gorgeous and sexy but also super intelligent. And she had fucked up well.

“I’m sorry. You’re absolutely ‘brainy’.”

He grinned. She felt her heart doing an erratic happy dance, “I would be more than grateful for your help, but I’m sure you are not here to pick up a student to tutor.”

“I wasn’t, sweetheart. What’s your name?”

Sweetheart? If she was going crazy then, now she would be certifiably insane. “Y/N L/N. And you might be - doctor?”

“Stephen Strange,” he replied and watched her eyes going as wide as they could.

“The Doctor strange?”

“Yes,” he laughed, “I’m the Dr Strange. So, would you like some help?”

She nodded.

“My place is nearby,” he tilted his head, “And this is hardly any place to study. Shall we?”

“Sure,” she murmured and stuffed the notes and book into her backpack.

“Do you fancy a walk? A cab? Or just a portal?”

“We can walk.” He nodded and held out a hand to her, which she took.

The walk was brisk and quiet as they hurried, heads down against the wind of the late night. She looked around the neighbourhood, realising she had passed them quite a handful of times while taking the late-night walks.

“My apartment is another few blocks away,” she said, after they settled on a couch beside the staircase, in front of a fireplace.

She watched him snap his fingers, and embers erupted in the fireplace. Showy, she thought as he settled next to her.

“Well, that sounds great, doesn’t it? You can visit me anytime you need my help.”

“There would be a next time?”

“Don’t you think there will be?” He asked, slightly disappointed. “Is this a one-night stand?” Common. Don’t be so desperate. Get a grip!

“I don’t know,” she shrugged her shoulders, “In time you’ll realise I’m not your type,” she gave out a nervous chuckle.

Cute. “And what do you think is my type?”

“Bold, sexy, graceful and… experienced?”

“I like cute, shy and naive as well.”

She was pretty sure her cheeks were red, and in no time her body was spontaneously going to combust into flames. 

He reached out a hand and pushed her curly brown hair behind her ears. His hand skimmed across her neck, pausing at her pulse point, which had been going crazy ever since she met him. “Why don’t we get started? Weren’t you doing the tracts?” 

Back to earth, Y/N. 

He grinned, and his hand dropped. Her skin burned everywhere he had touched. 

“Yeah,” she was immensely proud to conjure a reply.

By the end of the third hour, she was considerably tired. 

He was explaining various cases of misdiagnosis of Parkinson’s he had seen when felt she couldn’t take any new information anymore. But she waited with forced patience for him to finish.

“Stephen, I don’t think I can study anymore.”

“I know,” he said, taking the book from her hand, and placing it on the coffee table. His coat jacket was long gone, and every flex of muscle under the fabric of his white shirt tossed her in a puddle of embarrassment and arousal.  “Tea? Coffee or hot chocolate?”

Definitely coffee. She needed the caffeine to walk back- Her thoughts were lost as he rolled up his sleeves. Oh, those veins… those long, long fingers. She could feel her hormones having quite clearly their night out.

After he conjured them two cups of coffee, he heard a sharp intake of breath followed by an ‘Oh my God’. 

“You know, you can stay the night here.”

Y/N gripped her cup tighter. What an attractive way to embarrass oneself in every possible way in a few hours! The sorcerer and mind-reader fact had completely slipped out of her mind.

“Just like a one-night stand?”

Stephen hummed. “Minus the sex part, if you wish.”

When she didn’t speak anything for a long minute, he spoke, “I wasn’t reading your mind the entire night, if that’s what you are upset about.”

“Very gentlemanly of you,” she said, sagging in relief. 

Then he turned down the lights. It was dark with just the light from the fireplace. They talked about trivial matters, getting acquainted a little, her minor routine and his sorcerer duties.

“You��re a great teacher, you know?” she said, fishing her things into the bag.

“Really?” He grinned and she felt it shoot right into her stomach. Get a grip, she reminded herself.

“Yeah. you explained things in a better and easier way. I don’t think I would have been able to cover half of the topics-”

“Y/N,” he interrupted her, “I wasn’t looking for you to shower me with compliments. It’s just that I never thought of myself as much of a teacher in any field of work. I can teach myself but others - I'm not any good at that.”

“You underestimate yourself.”.

“Everyone who knows me a little would beg to differ.”

Sitting still for a minute, she watched him sip from his cup, she didn’t know what to say to that. “I should get going,” she said, finally getting up.

He frowned. Looked at his watch. And she noticed a flicker of disappointment in his features.

“It’s too late. But if you insist, I’ll walk you home.”

Y/N didn’t like the juxtaposition of reason and passion in her situation. She swallowed her nerves. “I guess I’ll stay then.”

He smiled, took her hand, and pressed his lips against the inside of her wrist. Her whole body shuddered. He pulled her back to the couch, then closer, until she was pressed against him.  She felt all her organs dropping right on top of her uterus like all their supports were lost.

She looked at his lips. Tread lightly, he reminded his desires. “It could always be a one-night stand minus the sex,” he assured her.

She chuckled and rested her head on his shoulder, “I don’t mind the sex part.”

His eyelids fluttered when her hand came up close to his face. Hot fingers pressed into his burning skin as traced his jaw before settling on his chest. Oh god, he had forgotten what a touch could do.

“Besides, I ought to make it up to you to ruin your evening.”

Stephen’s eyes had darkened as he stared at her. Her breath hitched. Have I done something wrong?

“You didn’t ruin my evening. I was looking for a distraction.”

“I was certainly not the sort of distraction you were looking for.”

“You were definitely the distraction I didn’t know I needed. Talking about things that my life used to revolve around wasn’t morbid. It was refreshing. You don’t have to do this because you-”

He was cut short as she closed her mouth over his.

Stephen held her close with his free hand when she pulled away from the kiss. He carefully placed his cup down. Then kissed her again, slowly, deeply and tantalisingly. At that moment she felt the geometric sum of all her nerve endings going crazy. 

He pulled away, ducked his head, and placed a hot kiss on her neck.

“Let’s go upstairs,” he stood and offered her his hand like before.

Y/N examined the bookshelves flanking the bed as Stephen peppered kisses on her neck. There were a few volumes of classical literature, few books of modern literature, some medical books and the rest -  the bulk -  of them, she guessed, were of sorcery.

His hands slipped under the sides of her shirt. Her back arched in response, however, he pulled her back to him, until they were plastered. She could feel every ripple of muscle even through the fabrics.

You are awesome, she reminded herself.  Not insecure. A bit shy and inexperienced maybe. He had said he liked that. So no big deal.

But when his hands slid forward and downwards, she was super conscious of the little pudge that sat above her jeans. The dimpled flesh on her thighs. Work out regularly right from tomorrow. 

Dying… Dying to taste every inch of her skin. He never thought he would get this desperate. He had wanted to take off their clothes slowly, dramatically, however, he snapped his fingers getting rid of them at once.

Y/N grasped at the sudden assault of cold air.

“I’m sorry,” Stephen said, whirling her around, “I’m a little too eager.” His hand reached up and weaved through her subtle curls as his lips moved hers.

Feeling the hard length of him poking her stomach, she moaned, giving him the perfect opportunity to slide his tongue and deepen the kiss. 

She pulled away for a breath and he trained soft, wet kisses across her jaw, neck and chest before gently nibbling at her nipple. Her fingers tugged at his hair, a contented sigh escaping her lips.

Then they heard a noise. Three steady knocks on the bedroom door. “Strange,” the man bellowed. Another two knocks.

“What is it, Wong?” Stephen groaned. “Don’t come in.”

“Get in the bed,” he instructed her as he conjured a pair of sweatpants.

“I have been trying to reach you for the last twenty minutes. Why aren’t you answering the phone?”

“Because I haven’t heard it ring.”

She watched in frustration as he slid out of the room, closing the door behind him. Their voices grew dull.

Y/N waited. Ten minutes. Thirty. Then another hour. She glanced at the clock on the nightstand and sighed. It’s three in the morning. Maybe he’s not coming back.

Getting out of bed, she looked around for her clothes. She peeped into the foyer. Dead silence. Great! She was in a perfect stranger’s house all alone without clothes.

Continuum: Pivot

[tropes-and-tales-archives]

More Precious Than Rubies: Part 4b

This is an alternate timeline story that has a Rafael Barba track and a Sonny Carisi track. The two paths split off in part 3.

WC: 3390

TW: Angst; end of relationship drama.

AN: The prompt was "I miss her so damn much, and it’s killing me that she’s gone!"

Sonny wasn’t sure that there was anything more he could do, but he thought about you all the time.  As a public defender, there was always a good chance that you’d drift through the precinct, your heels clicking on the tiled floor and your jaw set and ready to brawl with Barba.  When it happened, Sonny could only watch in admiration at how relentless you were. 

And if he enjoyed the way your various twill or Italian wool skirts fit you like a glove, no one needed to know about that other than god and the priest who heard his confession.

He didn’t have anyone to talk to, really.  Amanda was a lost cause, too wrapped up in her own issues.  And Sonny wondered if she’d ever really loved anyone or been in a real relationship.  She seemed to go through men – no shame – but there was no common ground between that and a committed relationship.

The best support he had was Bella and, god help him, her fiancée Tommy.  Sonny had never been much of a fan of Tommy’s, but the man had gotten his life in order after a stint in jail for drug charges.  He worked hard and loved Bella, which was the best Sonny could hope for his sister.  And now that she was pregnant, he hoped it would be enough.

Sonny went over to the couple’s place one Saturday night to cook for them.  Tommy was a lost cause in the kitchen, and Bella was well into the third trimester – complete with swollen feet and a ravenous appetite for their ma’s chicken marsala recipe.  Sonny was only too happy to oblige.

After dinner (said chicken marsala, a mixed green salad, and crusty rolls – all wolfed down by Bella with an appetite that made Sonny smile), the trio sat in the tiny living room and sipped the rest of the red wine that Sonny had brought.  Bella helped herself to half a glass; Sonny had objected, but Bella had given him an earful about how her doctor said that half a glass of red had heart benefits that outweighed the negligible potential bad side effects, and furthermore, if he was such a fucking expert on pregnancy, he was more than welcome to carry the future Baby Sullivan for the next month and a half.  Sonny had looked to Tommy for support halfway through her tirade, but the man wisely averted his eyes and carefully studied the label of the wine bottle until Bella was spent.

There was a heavy silence for a moment, then Sonny’s younger sister asked, as if she hadn’t just yelled at him, how Sonny was doing.  Just like when they were kids:  screaming and pinching each other one minute, friends the next.

“I’m fine,” he replied, but Bella saw right through it.

“Liar.  You look tired.  You sleeping?”

Sonny shrugged.  “Usually.  Some of the stuff I see at work makes it hard.”

Tommy made a sympathetic noise – he had been assaulted repeatedly by his own parole officer and was in therapy as a result, so he knew at least a taste of what SVU dealt with.

“You need someone to go home to,” Bella declared with authority. 

Sonny winced and tried to hide it behind a sip of wine, but his sister caught it. 

“You seeing anyone?” she asked.  “It’s been a while since you got dumped.”

He ducked his head and considered not telling Bella about your recent reappearance in his life but decided to go ahead and tell her.  She’d find out anyway, and maybe she could offer some insight from the female perspective.  When you’d broken up with him over a year ago, Sonny had leaned heavily on his younger sister, crying to her about the loss of you.

So he told her all the news:  how you marched into the precinct one day as a public defender, how you went to lunch with him and accused him of emotionally cheating with Amanda, how you made polite small talk with him and sometimes looked sad when you saw him.  How he didn’t know what to do now.

“She probably still has my number blocked,” he finished.  “And I doubt she’ll go to another lunch with me.  I see her all the time now but can’t get through to her.  I wish…I wish I could just let her know how I really feel.”  He sighed and scrubbed his hands down across his face.  “I miss her so damn much, and it’s killing me that she’s gone!”

Tommy made that sympathetic clucking again, and Bella looked sad too.  You had only met Sonny’s entire family once, but you’d spent time with Bella a handful of times after the two of you clicked instantly.  Sonny had pictured a future where the two of you were married, and Bella and Tommy were married, and your respective children could grow up together, cousins as close as siblings. 

“Well, if you can’t talk to her or call her, you could always write her a letter,” Tommy offered.  He rarely spoke up at Carisi gatherings, and both Sonny and Bella looked at him in surprise.  Tommy shrugged.  “You know, at least you can get your feelings out on paper.  You don’t have to send the letter.  But if you do….” He trailed off, uncomfortable.

Bella cocked her head at her fiancée.  “That’s actually a good idea,” she said, and Tommy beamed.  They both turned and looked at Sonny expectantly.

“Maybe,” he conceded. 

“C’mon,” Bella wheedled.  She punched him lightly in the arm.  “Girls love romantic gestures like that.  And who writes love letters anymore?”

“Maybe,” he repeated, but he was already composing the opening lines.

-----

He typed out all of the drafts on his personal laptop, revising and rewriting and sometimes deleting and starting over entirely.  It took him a week to get a final version ready.

He thought about Bella’s line about romantic gestures and stopped at a stationary store.  He bought some nice, heavy paper edged in a dark blue that reminded him of the sweater you were wearing when he first met you.  He bought a nice pen too, and then he got to work.

If you hadn’t gone to that lunch with him and opened up a bit about where you had been when you broke up with him, Sonny would never even consider writing you a letter.  But you had, and it had given him a slender bit of hope that you’d be open to hearing more from him.

It took a few tries.  His cursive was out of practice, and the first few attempts resulted in misspellings and ink blots.  He kept writing it out until it was perfect though, even if his hand was cramped and aching from writing so much.  Bella was right – who wrote love letters anymore?  If he couldn’t give you anything else, he could at least give you one, perfect love letter.  You deserved that much, at least.

*******

You were feeling great – you had spent the morning at a sexual cybercrimes conference.  You had seen Barba, implied that his coworker O’Dwyer was smarter than him, and then delighted at how offended he looked.  Of all the ADAs you had to deal with on a regular basis, Barba was your favorite to wind up.  You practically skipped back to your office, where a mountain of new cases waited for you.

You shut the door to your office and shed your suit jacket in the airless little room.  You kicked off your heels and slipped into a pair of sandals and settled into your chair. 

You started with the interoffice mail:  standard memos and policy changes and an updated public defender contact list.  There was a retirement card being passed around for an older paralegal who was ready to hang it all up and move to Boca Raton. 

You moved on to your regular mail.  There was the usual junk that slipped past your admin.  A plea for a donation from Fordham.  Some letters from past clients. 

At the bottom of the stack was a manila envelope with your name printed carefully across the front.  No return address – another client, probably.  You opened it and slid out another envelope of heavy, creamy paper.  Your name was written across the face in familiar handwriting.  Your stomach dipped when you recognized it.  Sonny.

You thought about tearing it open then and there, but you got a call to go to the 5th precinct, so you tucked it into your satchel.  It was probably safer to read it at home anyway.

-----

The letter sat in your bag like unexploded ordinance, but you got through the day.  You rushed home, skipped dinner, and poured yourself a tumbler of wine to the brim.  You settled onto your couch, took a deep breath, and opened the letter. 

The paper was heavy stock and gorgeous.  The handwriting was careful – nicer than Sonny’s usual scrawled signature or block printed notes from college.  He’d obviously put time and thought into whatever he wanted to say.  So you took another breath, took a few deep swallows of wine, and read it.  It said:

You probably think that we first met when we both went bowling with our mutual friends, but that wasn’t the first time I’d ever seen you.  The first time I saw you, we were in the same class a semester earlier – Investigative Criminal Procedures.  It was a huge lecture hall, and you always sat about five rows ahead of me.  Of course I noticed you, because you are beautiful, but it was a fight you had with the professor that made me realize how much of that beauty came from deep within you.  Maybe you remember?  Professor Graham had some controversial thoughts about search and seizure, and you shot your hand up, didn’t bother to wait for him to call on you, and then you launched into an impassioned tirade that tore every one of his points apart.

My first thought after that class was that if I ever was in trouble with the law, I was going to hire you as my lawyer.  My second thought was that I was certain that I loved you.

When I finally met you that night at bowling, you see, I already was in love with you.  And you were so friendly and happy, laughing at your own terrible score – I only fell harder.  When I went home that night, I made a vow that I’d make you mine, and for a blessed while, I had.  But I lost my way, and I lost you in the process.

I don’t want to dwell on what I did wrong because I replay it every day of my life.  I just want you to know that I regret, every day, how I neglected you.  How I took you for granted.  How I assumed that you’d wait around for me to get my act together.  How I didn’t put you first or make you feel how special you are to me.  I’ll always regret how I failed you.

But I want to say all the things now that I should have told you when we were together. 

You are, as I said, beautiful, both inside and out.  You always manage to make my heart stop every time I see you, whether you’re in your work suits or in your comfortable pajamas.

You have so many amazing things going for you.  You’re easily the smartest person I know, and you have both book smarts and common sense.  You’re always able to get to the easiest solution to a problem.  You’re abilities in the courtroom as a public defender just proves this.

You have an amazing sense of humor.  You always seem to be able to find the humor in the situation, and you always made me laugh.  And you manage to tease people in a way that builds them up and doesn’t tear them down.  It’s a gift.

You have an amazing heart.  You always show care for your clients, and before that, care for your friends, for me, and even for the strangers who cross your path.  You never seem to judge – you give the homeless man money with the same love you give to your friends when they need you.  I love that about you.  You don’t make people work for your love:  you just give it freely, even when they don’t deserve it.  You certainly gave it to me far longer than I deserved it.

If I had to describe you in a single word, it’d be “rock.”  You were always my steady foundation, my touchstone for when things seemed too hard.  You supported me when I wanted to give up on law school.  You supported me when the NYPD was moving me from precinct to precinct and I wanted to give up on being a detective.  You saw me at my worst moments and kept me grounded and gave me hope.  Sometimes I felt my faith failing me, but I never stopped believing in you.  And no matter what happens, I never will.  

More than anything, I want to you know – really know – that I loved you then and I love you still.  I know why you probably won’t believe that, but it is true.  I know I didn’t give you enough proof of that fact, and I regret it.  I know that you think there was another woman with a place in my heart, but that wasn’t the case and still isn’t the case.  How could there be room for anyone else there, when you took it so utterly and completely?  And when you have it still?

I hope this letter did not upset you.  It was not my intention if it did.  These are all things I should have said a long time ago, when I still had you, and it’s no one’s fault but my own that I have to write them down and send them to you now. 

If nothing else, I want you to know that I loved you completely then, that I love you completely now, and for the rest of my life, I’ll love you just as much.  And as such, I want you to be happy, no matter what that looks like. 

It was signed, “love always, Sonny.”  But you could barely read it through the tears streaming down your face.

You probably read it twelve more times before you went to bed, and since you were unable to sleep, you read it twelve times more.

-----

You saw Sonny across the courtroom a week later, but he just nodded at you and gave you a small smile that didn’t reach his bright blue eyes.  You nodded back and smiled. 

You were working on your own response, in letter form to keep it true to his own letter.  You approached it a lot like your law work – you wrote out an outline and built it from there.

It took you a few weeks to craft the perfect response, and you carried it in your bag for another week.  You didn’t want to mail it to him.  You figured, after the way you’d dumped him, you owed him a hand-delivered letter.  It was the least you could do, especially after he made the ballsy move of even reaching out at all.  And you had to admit that there was something romantic about getting a love letter.  It was a stark contrast to your last attempt at dating, when a guy you’d gone on a first date with texted you a week later with an unimpressive dick pic.

Then you got a call about a client in the 16th who was arrested and about to face arraignment in a day.  You checked your bag and made sure the letter was there.  If you saw Sonny, you vowed to hand it to him then and there.

********

Sonny was tortured by that stupid letter.  You never responded.  He knew deep-down that you might ignore it, but he had some stubborn hope that you’d reach out to him.  He had a stupid, recurring fantasy where you rushed over to his apartment in the middle of the night after reading his letter, tearfully admitting that you still loved him too. 

He saw you once in court, and you nodded at him in greeting but didn’t say anything.  He resigned himself to finally admitting that it was over.  But at least you knew how he felt.  Maybe it gave you some comfort or closure.

-----

It was another grey day in Manhattan.  Well, it was July and sunny, but Sonny didn’t feel particularly up to his nickname.  Amanda was just starting to show in her surprise pregnancy, and she was an irritable, nauseous mess.  Fin and Liv had collared a potential serial date rapist who was preying on Hudson University students, and he sat in the interrogation room after asking for a lawyer.

The elevator dinged, and Sonny heard the familiar click of heels.  He felt his stomach drop while his heart soared, an uncomfortable feeling.  The feeling of possibility that would probably just disappoint him.

You breezed past him and Amanda and strode into the interrogation room where Barba was waiting.  Sonny heard first some low voices, then louder ones as you and Barba got warmed up and then traded snappy retorts as you tried to find a compromise.  Everyone, including Sonny, knew how to read the situation now:  if you marched out with your head tilted and Barba strolled out scowling, it was no deal.  If you marched out with a smile and Barba strolled out scowling, there was a deal.

Today?  You marched out with your head tilted in defiance, and Barba fell in step with you for a few strides, trying to salvage some deal.  Sonny smiled to see it.  Barba never seemed flustered by anything, but you had a way of making the ADA seem rattled.  You just shook your head at him….until your eyes fell on Sonny.

You started to smile, but your eyes slid over to Amanda and Sonny saw it all in slow motion.  He saw your smile falter as you took in his partner’s pregnant belly, and he saw you make a giant assumption about who made it that way. 

“Shit,” he muttered, and he watched you practically sprint out of the bullpen.  Barba, for his part, looked confused and started to follow but stopped.  Sonny went after you and nearly caught up thanks to his long legs, and even though you kept jamming the elevator button, he managed to get his hand in and stop the doors.

He called your name, but you shot him an angry look through tears that were welling in your eyes.

“Let go of the door,” you said through gritted teeth.  Your voice had a shaky quality as you fought the urge to cry.  “Just let me go.”

“No,” he replied.  “I know what you’re thinking….”

“You have no idea what I’m thinking,” you retorted.  You punched the button on the elevator a few more times for good measure, then you reached into your bag.  “I’m thinking that I’m a fucking idiot.  That’s what I’m thinking.”

“It’s not like that,” he pleaded, and he felt his own eyes fill with tears.  You were so distressed; he just wanted to reach out and hold you, but when he extended a hand, you visibly flinched from it.

“I don’t care what it’s like!” you wailed, and you pulled a folded piece of paper – no, pieces of paper – out of your bag.  You tore them in half, and then again and again and again until you couldn’t tear anymore.  Then you threw them at him, and Sonny realized that the confetti was your reply to him.  Or had been.  He knelt to pick up the pieces of torn paper, and the elevator, finally released, closed its doors and carried you out of the building.

He couldn’t chase after you.  You were too hurt by what you saw – or thought you’d seen – and he was on such thin ice anyway.  All he could do was gather up the tiny pieces of paper from the dirty precinct floor.

And take them back to his desk.  And start to put them back together.

[mostly-hannibal-memes]

Hannibal Fic Recommendation List - Hurt/Comfort

Hurt/Comfort fics

Back to Overview

Never Conquered, Rarely Came by thisisthefamilybusiness Will is in an abusive relationship but can't see a way out - he's tried to leave before, but his partner is in law enforcement and always manages to track him down while pretending to be the understanding, forgiving, loving type. One day, Will stumbles across an ad in the Classifieds of the cleverly worded cannibal-seeking-fresh-meat-but-veiled-as-private-cooking-classes type, and decides to answer. Hannibal is pleased when his ad bears fruit, then surprised when his intended dinner apparently knows exactly what he's in for." Words: 3,242 Chapters: 2/2 Rating: Mature Warnings: Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings

And So I Raise Me Up From Sleep by bendingsignpost Will should call Hannibal and ask for the last time Hannibal saw him. Except that isn’t exactly a landmine Will’s ready to walk over just yet. No, he should call Alana, but nothing says I want to be your stable boyfriend like I’m either hallucinating or sleeping with someone else. Words: 10,941 Chapters: 1/1 Rating: Explicit Warnings: Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings

we rise in the dying by euphrasie “Sexual assault was just something that happened to the victims I studied. It was never personal,” Will said, walking over to his makeshift evidence board. He touched the thin red string and followed the length of it; from his decision to stop off on the way home, to the sad box of a room he had woken up in, covered in the marks of men he couldn’t remember. “Sometimes I think maybe it didn’t happen, maybe I’m making this shit up.” It was a week before Hannibal’s trial when Will awoke from an attack he couldn't remember. Words: 63,374 Chapters: 9/9 Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con

Even Through The Pouring Rain by Redlineriot Hannibal comes home after a late night at the office to find Will sitting on his porch in the rain. Words: 2,793 Chapters: 1/1 Rating: Not Rated Warnings: Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Assiette by coffeeandcas When Will finds nothing but exhaustion in the world, Hannibal is there to provide all the comfort he needs - in all the ways he's never considered before. Words: 3,086 Chapters: 1/1 Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

in a mirror, darkly by LadyMerlin “I wasn’t expecting you,” Will says, moving to the small kitchen that has become familiar to Hannibal. “I’m afraid I don’t have much in the house. Can I get you a coffee? Or perhaps, I could order a pizza?” Hannibal wrinkles his nose at the suggestion, and is almost surprised by Will’s ensuing laughter. It’s increasingly rare these days, and all the more endearing for it. “Yeah, I thought that’d be your reaction. Sorry, Doctor Lecter, I don’t have anything else to eat.” Oh, Hannibal thinks, the irony. Words: 2394 Chapters: 1/1 Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Absolution by raiast When Will wakes up from a surprisingly unsettling dream, there's only one place he can go to ease the ache inside him. Or the one where Will stops being a dumbass and starts being honest with himself. Words: 1613 Chapters: 1/1 Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

The House Call by orphan_account Answering this prompt on the kink meme: Will calls Hannibal in the middle of the night in a complete panic. Hannibal keeps him on the phone as he drives out to his house. Bonus for Hannibal still being in his pyjamas & is just wearing a coat over the top. Can be Will/Hannibal if you want. Words: 1820 Chapters: 1/1 Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

[phoenix-d-shunko]

Whispering Inferno, Part 8

Zeke rn :

Zeke's insides twisted with realization. His actions as the Cimmerian had finally caught up with him, and he felt the guilt tearing him apart as he glanced at Kai—her form beaten up, pale, and broken, all because of him. The calls from Mei barely registered until she placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Zeke? What's wrong?" Mei asked, concern etched on her face.

"Are you sure she said the Cimmerian?" Zeke hoped against hope that Mei had misheard, that there was some mistake, anything to absolve him.

"Yes. Those are the only legible words I remember her saying tonight. Why? Is something wrong?" Mei had no idea what was wrong. Kaida ended up as collateral in Zeke's fight, a realization that made him sick to the stomach.

"It's just... it's the Cimmerian. That man is a living horror. I can't believe what Kai has gone through." Zeke lied to Mei, concealing the full extent of his connection to the Cimmerian. There had been reminders that his deeds had consequences, but this was too much.

Suddenly, something snapped inside him. He pushed the pain aside, focusing on one emotion – anger. He needed to get Mei out of there.

"Mei, you need to go sleep. Go back to your dorm. I'll stay with Kai." Zeke found himself giving orders, trying to protect Mei.

"What?! No! I'm not going back to sleep. I'm staying here! Gosh, Zeke! My sister almost died! I know you're looking out for me, but I'm not 15 anymore, okay?! I-" Mei stopped mid-rant when she saw Zeke shaking, literally trembling with fury. Maybe all Zeke needed right now was some space.

Mei knew Zeke cared for Kai, though she wasn't sure in what way. She hadn't considered the impact of seeing Kai in such a state on Zeke. As far as Mei could think, she had just painted a target by revealing the Cimmerian was behind the attack. Of course, Zeke was going to seethe.

"Okay!" she exclaimed, understanding, but not willing to back down. "I'll go to the fricking dorms." Zeke had already begun to reprimand her for her language, but before he could say anything, she interjected again, "But I'm coming back in an hour. I'll bring some stuff I had of Kaida's from when we were kids, and I'm gonna make this sad room look a little bit better for her when she wakes up. Until then, take care of her! There's no way I'm going to the damned dorm. Heck, I'll even study here for my finals."

With zeal, Mei stepped out of the clinic, leaving Zeke alone with his overflowing rage. He headed to the doctor's area, cordoned off with curtains in the room, where Kai's ragged breaths were still audible. "Only if Mai knew," Zeke thought as he headed to the scrubbing station, letting the water run. He needed to cool off, or he would end up expressing his anger in the wrong way.

Glancing up in the mirror, Zeke saw a husk of a man that the two girls had known. Things had changed. He wasn't the same person. Before he could control himself, Zeke's iron-laden fist crashed into the mirror, shattering it into a hundred tiny pieces. So much for control. Zeke conjured his iron mask, reached for his comms, and Grant answered on the other side.

"Yes, My lord?"

"I told you idiots to keep a perimeter." Grant gulped as he heard the Cimmerian's voice booming with fury.

"But Sire, you commanded them to leave as soon as you reached." Grant presented facts, hoping the Cimmerian would see reason.

"I want footage from last night. Everything."

"As you like it, My lord."

"And I want a hunt on Incendra. I want her to be brought to me."

Zeke was beside himself. The revelation about Incendra left him seething with anger. Not only had she failed to use her healing abilities on Kai, which could have prevented this entire ordeal, but if the footage revealed what he suspected, there would be consequences far beyond mere sparring.

In the midst of his fight with Incendra, Zeke had been so engrossed, enjoying the battle's intensity, that he hadn't noticed her underhanded move until the last second. His attention had been consumed, and he hadn't registered Kai's predicament until much later. The realization hit him like a freight train—Incendra had not only bested him but left Kai to suffer and potentially die.

His thoughts drifted back to Kai, lying in the clinic bed, her body battered and broken. His blood ran cold as he heard her delirious muttering. It was a stark reminder of the consequences of his actions, the collateral damage incurred by those caught in the crossfire of his alter ego, the Cimmerian.

In the chaotic ecstasy of battle, he hadn't even noticed Kai's distress. The darkness enveloping the scene, though a contributing factor, wasn't solely to blame. Zeke couldn't escape the guilt that clawed at him—how he had become so absorbed in his own enjoyment that he had failed to see the peril Kai faced.

"The Cimmerian...did he get me... untie..me untie...me," Kai muttered, her voice a desperate plea for release. Zeke was jolted back to the present, his heart aching at the sound of her pain. The weight of his failure settled heavily on his shoulders as he vowed to do everything in his power to make amends and ensure Kai's safety.

[clementinesandwine]

Sick Day

✧˖° includes~ fluff Gyutaro x Fem Reader; modern au

While you had spent your day cuddled up in the house, movies on and food delivered, Gyutaro went to class. Now, you didnt actually want to stay home and were actually very anxious, as missing class meant missing important material. And what if Gyutaro didnt get all the side notes discussed in class? How would you be able to study efficiently? In all honesty, you couldnt remember the last time you skipped class, but when Gyutaro came to pick you up this morning, he was adamant that you stay home. 

“You look like shit,” he said, as you opened the door. 

“You look lovely, too,” you state with a smile. Gyutaro smirks and pats your head. 

“Really though,” he starts. “You don’t look well.”

“Yeah, that would be because I’m sick. I just can’t miss class, you never know whats gonna happ-“

Gyutaro put his hand on the center of your chest and pushed you back inside. He was instantly anxious, knowing your weak, little body was fighting off some illness. And he didn’t want you to work yourself up in class when you weren’t feeling well because you might just die. So, with little effort, he picked you up and brought you back to your bed. 

“Gyutaro, I’m fine, seriously. I can go to class,” you said. You were getting frustrated because you knew this whole scene would make you late, which stresses you out more than missing class all together. Walking in and everyone staring? Absolutely not. 

“Sorry, weakling, but I can’t let you go to class. If I learned anything from human health class, its that humans need to rest when sick.” Gyutaro really didn’t understand why humans get sick, and considered it to be more of a character flaw than anything. He watches as you try to stand, but places his hand on your shoulder and pushes you down again. 

“Gyutaro, please?” you ask, looking up at him with the biggest puppy eyes you could muster. 

“Y/N,” he says sternly. 

“Gyutaro,” you say with a cheesy grin. 

You know you won’t win this argument, especially when he raises his eyebrows at you. “Stop treating me like a child,” you say sternly. 

“I will. When you stop acting like one.” You lay down. “Fine! But I’m not staying home because you said so, I’m staying home because I want to!” He smirks at your announcement and leaves the room. In the kitchen, Gyutaro is putting the teapot on the stove. He heard it helps this kind of situation. He begins to look around for something to eat, that way you dont feel sick on an empty stomach, but remembers he doesn’t really know how to cook. Ultimately, he decides to order in some food. The tea finishes and he brings it to you. 

“Here, drink this. Google says it will make you feel better. And take this.” 

He hands you a box of medicine he had taken from your bathroom. You slowly grabbed the items, still mad that he was making you stay home, but appreciative that he cared this much for you. He proceeded to grab your laptop and put your favorite show on before kissing your forehead and heading out the door. 

“I’ll go to class for you and get you some notes so you dont go crazy,” he says, looking at you with a smirk. You smile back and he leaves. 

Not even 20 minutes later you get a text from him. 

G: Are you dying? I looked up your symptoms and one of the causes says cancer. Have you been to the doctors recently?

You giggle to yourself and respond, reassuring him that you would be fine and it was just a little cold. That didn’t stop his worrying, though, and you received plenty more texts with the same sentiment. You also kept getting deliveries, whether it be food or hot chocolate or even blankets. 

Y/N: You can stop door dashing/insta carting me. I’ll be alright. 

This got you no response, and you decided to take a nap. 

𓂂𓂂𓂂

Gyutaro opened the door slowly. He hadn’t gotten a response from you in maybe two hours, so he assumed you were sleeping. His assumptions were confirmed when he peaked through your bedroom door. A blush crossed his cheeks. You looked so cute all cuddled with the blanket he sent over. There were candy wrappers, cups, and to go bags all over, making him smile. He knew you would need all that. Gyutaro quietly cleaned the room and climbed into bed with you, moving your hair from your face and kissing your cheek. 

You rolled over to snuggle into his chest and he swears he would do anything to protect you, even if you were just a weak, little human. He is unbelievably grateful that you chose to be with him. You are so gorgeous. Since the day you met, you had shown him nothing but kindness, always complimenting and sticking up for him. You are the reason he had become so confident in himself. He had become the luckiest guy in the world when you gave your heart to him, so of course he is going to make sure you are well taken care of.

[husbandhannie]

sticky notes

how they interact with your post-its

pairing: vocal unit (seventeen) x reader

genre: fluff

warnings: mentions of minor medical issues in joshua's part, sleep issues in seungkwan's

words: 930

a/n: these are getting longer with every unit reaction. oops? and yes, i'm pushing the fwb!jeonghan agenda here too. also, the joshua and seungkwan post-it uses are based on my own experiences - they're not meant to offend anyone who suffers from these issues.

taglist: @itsveronicaxxx @zurikyo @husbandhoshi

hip-hop unit performance unit

JEONGHAN

you're somewhat fluent in korean (you can easily converse with fwb!jeonghan), but you still come across a lot of unfamiliar words in the language - you specially struggle with different forms of the same word, not having encountered similar forms in the other languages you know. every time you come across something unfamiliar, you write it down on a note that sticks to your desk - looking all the words up when you have the time and energy (which is not often, considering you're busy with work and studying). one day when you left your room to take a call, jeonghan read the notes and found himself smiling at how adorable and committed you were. picking up a pen from your desk, he answered your questions in the simplest words he could, stopping when he heard you come in. you read his additions later that week, feeling your heart flutter and wondering - not for the first time - if there was more between the two of you than you had decided.

JOSHUA

you've always been particularly prone to having medical issues - nothing too serious or too unmanageable, just too frequent. vitamin deficiencies and muscle pain in different parts of your body visit you like a cycle. to manage appointments and treatments, you write them down on post-its - scribbling symptoms, appointment times, prescribed treatment, doctor's advice and so on. the first time joshua reads one of these, he has no idea he's looking at something private - it was right there on your desk in your bedroom, where you had invited him. he quickly stops when he realizes what he's reading, apologizing to you for crossing a line. you wave him off - it's not like you keep this a secret, this is just a part of your life. since then, joshua reads them whenever he gets the chance, trying to remember the medicines you're prescribed (so he can make sure you take them when he's there), and specific doctor's notes (so he can help you follow them; like ordering more protein for dinner if your doctor asked you to increase your intake). you're fairly responsible and don't need him to help you, but it warms your heart that he cares.

WOOZI

you like trying your hand at different hobbies - knitting, baking, digital poster making, calligraphy, and so on. you don't aim at being very good at them, you just like the process of learning something where you can create something at the end of it. your post-its reflect these hobbies, they change every couple of months - baking recipes adorning your desk one month, and calligraphy samples the next. recently, you've gotten into learning guitar - and you've done alright so far, having gotten the basic chords down. woozi only got to know when he saw the guitar in your room - the two of you hadn't spent a lot of time together recently because he had been busy with a comeback. he saw your notes when he came to your room to pick up his phone from the nightstand, smiling at your half-technical questions, and focusing on a particular note. when you get ready for bed later than night, a note catches your eye; below your scribbles of "chords for hug chorus??" were some letters written neatly in woozi's handwriting, followed by "i know a producer who can help you with this :)".

DOKYEOM

you've always struggled with working out. every time you start a new routine, you struggle to keep it up after a couple of weeks, and just end up dropping it. this time, you've decided to start small (sticking to just jumping rope and few crunches), and to keep a log of how much you work out on post-its next to your bed. it seems to have worked so far - you're almost two months in and haven't skipped many days. you suspect that your boyfriend's encouragement has a lot to do with it too, especially the scribbles he pencils in next to your entries - a "wow baby 3 weeks!!!!" when you hit three weeks of skipping, a "hi hottie" when you hit a week of crunches, and a "hey love, take it easy a little" when the number of crunches you do increases drastically suddenly.

SEUNGKWAN

you've been struggling with sleep lately. not just one problem, you've been facing a whole host of issues - like not being able to fall asleep, waking up at odd times when you do manage to sleep, and nightmares or very vivid dreams that make you wake up dizzy and tired. you don't know what to do to solve your problems - so you start by just keeping a record of them, hoping to see positive changes as you try different things to sleep better. your nightstand now has an array of post-its that contain your sleep log in tiny scribble. you've mentioned what you're doing to seungkwan in passing, you don't think he pays it much attention. but ofcourse he does. he tries to come home earlier when he sees you've been getting less sleep (you've told him you sleep better when you can feel his warmth), he tries to get you to talk about what's stressing you out when he sees you're having nightmares, and tries to get you tired when he sees that you've been waking up at odd times (like encouraging you to join him and his members on a hiking trip). when your sleeping habits start coming back to normal and he mentions the improvement in the logs, you're surprised because you didn't think he paid attention to it. almost offended, he says, "ofcourse i pay attention. i pay attention to everything that's about you".

[hercleverboy]

stars

spencer reid x fem!reader

summary ↠ spencer and the reader watch the stars and talk about their future.

category ↠ fluff

warnings/includes ↠ none

word count ↠ 1.7k

dedicating this fluff fest to my wifey, @alltooreid thank you for not only your creative input on this, but also for being there for me when i needed someone. much love <333

“And so I named the stars one by one, after every favourite memory of you.” — Stephen Stilwell

“Isn’t it beautiful?” She whispered, eyes staring up into the night, drawn to the little specks of light dotted in the clear sky. They were laid on the soft grass, blanket beneath them as they looked up together, beaming smiles on both their faces.

He grinned down at the woman who rested her head on his chest, his arms wound tightly around her. “It certainly is. I’m surprised the sky is so clear tonight, I really didn’t think we were going to be able to see much.” He admitted with a little laugh.

She chuckled at that. “You didn’t think we’d see much, and yet you still let me drag you out here at an ungodly hour so we could watch the stars?” She asked, shuffling slightly so she could look up at him.

“Of course. You’re cute when you’re excited, I didn’t have the heart to tell you that the probability of the sky being clear enough for us to see anything was only around 37%.” He explained, intertwining their hands together. “But there you go again, proving me wrong.”

“Hm. Aren’t you supposed to be a genius or something?” She joked, making him roll his eyes.

“I am! Unless you too can recite the Bible from memory? Or the manual for our microwave?” He joked, causing Y/N to give him a gentle shove.

“Can I ask you something?” She whispered, looking up at him.

He breathed out. “Anything.”

They were quiet for a little while before she spoke again. “Do you ever think about our future?”

Spencer’s breath hitched at the question.

Of course, he thought about their future. All the time. Marriage, kids, a big house with a white picket fence, perhaps even a dog. It was the ‘apple-pie’ life he’d dreamt of, more than he’d like to admit.

He gave her a squeeze, one of reassurance.

They’d been together for two years. Two years that had simultaneously been the best and worst of his life. In those years he’d nearly died after being shot in the neck, he’d lost Alex, Kate, Gideon, and the team was still under immense threat from Mr. Scratch. And somehow, admist all the chaos, he’d met this incredible woman who had helped him through it all. The last few months in particular had been rough for him. With Morgan leaving the team and his mother’s condition worsening, it had certainly made him reconsider everything he had in his life and also reminded him of not only what he’d lost, but what he’d gained. 

Y/N sighed, but still gave Spencer a smile. “It’s ok. We don’t have to talk about it, I was only wondering.”

“No, no. It’s ok. I’m just trying to gather my thoughts, is all.” He assured her, moving to sit up straight. Y/N sat up too, Spencer reaching out and grabbing one of her hands to hold tightly in his. “I think about it all the time, truthfully.” He mumbled.

“You do?”

“Of course, I do. You’re it for me, Y/N.” He gave a small smile, his gaze dropping to their intertwined fingers. “It’s just, I’ve been thinking a lot lately.”

Y/N nodded, urging him to continue.

“I’ve been thinking about my position at the BAU.” He stated firmly. Y/N’s eyes widened slightly in shock, surprised at the confession. The way he said it was so sure, so certain. He’d evidently been thinking about it for quite some time.

“Ever since Morgan left, I’ve been going over it again and again in my head. I understand why he left. His family needed him and it’s honestly the most admirable thing I’ve ever seen him do. I just wonder,” He paused, biting down on his lip in thought. “Would it be wise for me to make the same decision he did?” 

Y/N frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I just mean— Y/N I love you. I want us to get married, have children, I want us to have a life together. And after watching Morgan, seeing how he gave up the job for his family, don’t you think I should do that too? For you, for us?” He explained, eyes finally meeting her worried ones.

“Woah, woah Spence. Are you saying you’re thinking of leaving the BAU?” She clarified, moving a little closer to him.

Spencer nodded. “I know, it seems crazy right? At first I couldn’t believe that I was even considering it but I’ve thought about it a lot and it just, it seems like the right thing to do.” He gave a small shrug. “If we’re going to have a life together I want our family to be my priority, and I just don’t think I can do that while I’m still doing this job. I’ve seen it all first hand. I watched Hotch lose Haley, I watched Morgan nearly lose Savannah, all because of this job.” 

Y/N shook her head slowly, much to Spencer’s surprise. “Spencer... I won’t be the reason that you leave a job that you worked so hard for, a job that you love so much. What about the team? They’re your family- “

It was Spencer’s turn to shake his head, cutting her off mid-sentence. “You’re right. The team are my family, but so are you. And if they care about me like I know they do, they’ll support me with this. And as for jobs? There are plenty out there that I’ll enjoy. I’ve actually been thinking of getting in contact with Alex, maybe asking about teaching opportunities at Georgetown.”

Y/N looked up at him, eyebrows furrowing as she studied his face intently. He avoided her eyes, small smile pulling at his lips.

She smiled back, a knowing look on her face. “You’ve already spoken to Alex about it, haven’t you?”

Spencer chuckled with a nod. “You know me too well. I spoke to her last week. She said there’s an open spot as the head of the Criminal Psychology department. The job is mine if I want it.”

Y/N gave him a grin, squeezing his hands. “Are you sure this is what you want?” He nodded, but that wasn’t enough for her. “No, I need to hear you say it. I need to know that you’re not going to resent me in a few years because of this.”

He was quick to shake his head, pulling her toward him as one of his hands came up to cup her face. “I would never resent you.”

“So, this is what you want?” She asked once more, just so she knew he was absolutely sure. 

He nodded adamantly. “I want you. I’m only ever going to want you.” He murmured the words so softly that it made Y/N’s heart ache. “Now, and for the rest of my days.”

With joyful tears building in her eyes she nodded, enveloping him in a hug as he kissed the side of her forehead.

Spencer let out a sigh accompanied by a teary smile. He gave her a squeeze, his hands soothing along her back as he looked up at the stars. “Did you know, there’s an old Buddhist saying that when you meet your soulmate, remember that the act to bring you together was 500 years in the making. We’re supposedly, quite literally, bound together through space and time. Isn’t that cool?” He rambled, earning a chuckle from Y/N.

“That is really cool.” She agreed. 

“You know I’m a man of science, but how else is it possible that you came into my life at a time where I needed you the most?” He whispered the last part, as though he was afraid to be so vulnerable as to let the words leave his lips. “Do you- do you think it’s possible that the stars brought us together?” 

She grinned, tilting back her head slightly to look up at the stars with him. “Yeah, I think so.” 

*

Spencer looked down in awe at the baby girl pressed against his bare chest. Josephine June Reid, barely three days old and already she had her father wrapped right around her tiny finger. Nothing he’d ever felt before compared to the feeling he had when he looked down at her, his little girl, his daughter. She slept peacefully against him, her little chest rising and falling rhythmically as his hands soothed over her back, gently rocking her. 

There was a soft knock on the nursery door, his tired-looking wife pushing it open. “Spence?”

He looked up, and offered her a warm smile. “Hey, you’re supposed to be resting.”

Y/N gave a sleepy grin, moving toward them. “You know that we’re supposed to sleep when she does, right?”

He snickered at that, raising an eyebrow at her. “You only gave birth three days ago. You know I’m going to tell you to get back into bed, right? Doctor’s orders.”

She held her hands up in a mock surrender, placing a kiss on the side of Spencer’s head. “I know.” 

It was silent for a moment, the new parents just staring down at the little life they’d created, filled with such a warmth, such a happiness that they’d never felt before. 

“I can’t put her down, not yet. I don’t want to let her go.” Spencer whispered, bringing up a finger to soothe over his daughter’s cheek. “I love her so much.”

“I know. She loves you too.” Y/N assured, watching with joy at how Spencer was with their daughter. He really was a natural with kids.

“You really should go back to bed, love. You need all the rest you can get.” He warned in a playful tone.

Y/N chuckled a little with a nod, bending down to press a gentle kiss to her daughter’s forehead. “I’m not going to fight you on that one Doc, I’m exhausted.” She ruffled the curls on her husband’s head, offering him a warm smile. “Love you. Come back to bed soon, yeah?”

Spencer nodded, promising he would.  

Before Y/N left the nursery, she turned back to her husband, calling his name softly. “Spence?”

“Yeah, love?”

“Do you regret it now?” She whispered, her fingers fumbling together as though she was afraid she wouldn’t like his answer. “Do you regret leaving the BAU?”

The question made him frown, it made him think. Did he regret leaving? 

His eyes flickered between his wife and the beautiful little girl against his chest and he smiled slightly at the realisation. This was everything he’d ever wanted, here, right in front of him. Every decision he’d made, every moment of heartache, every person he’d lost, they had all lead him there. To that very moment. 

And for that, he was so incredibly grateful. 

“No.” He replied, his voice as sure as the day he first mentioned leaving. “Not even for a second.”

He supposed he had the stars to thank for that. 

[strawberry--bride]

DIABOLIK LOVERS Haunted Dark Bridal ー Sharon’s Route [PROLOGUE]

Monologue

The most painful thing in this world,

is losing your home. Your place-to-be.

No matter how dire the situation,

if you are surrounded by people who love and care for you.

No obstacle is invincible. 

Then ーー Where do I belong?

Having long lost the place I once considered home.

I spent many years in a place which would provide for me. 

I had food, a roof above my head, a warm bed to sleep in at night.

But could I truly call this my home? 

Those doubts would lurk in the back of my mind, keeping me up at night.

Until one day, I was made a special offer. 

If I complied, I would be given the thing my heart longs for the most.

ーー A new home.

Location: Sakamaki Manor ;; Outside

Sharon: This is the place, right...?

( Woah...Amazing. I’ve never seen a house quite this big. They even have a garden! )

*Knock knock*

Sharon: Excuse meー! My name’s Sharon. I’m supposed to move in here today! 

...

...

( No response...? How strange. They should have been informed through the Church. )

*Knock knock*

Sharon: Hello...? Anybody home...!?

Sharon: ( What to do...? There doesn’t seem to be anyone home right now. It’s already getting dark. I can’t just stand here all night either. )

*Creaaaaak*

Sharon: ...Huh? Did the...door just open by itself?

( Does that mean I can go inside? I feel a little hesitant just entering someone else’s home butーー I was told I could live here so it should be fine, right? )

She enters the manor.

 Location: Sakamaki Manor ;; Entrance Hall

Sharon: Just as I thought, the inside is equally spacious. I can’t imagine just one person living in such a large house all by themselves. Cleaning must take quite some time as well.

She puts down her suitcase.

*Thud*

Sharon: Phew...

( ...It’s so quiet. Almost as if the house is deserted. I wonder if the owner is out at the moment? In that case, I should probably wait in the living room. )

Sharon looks around.

Sharon: I guess it’s...that way?

*Rustle*

Sharon: ...!!

( I...Did I just...step on something? It felt...strangely soft and... )

???: ーー Oi.

Sharon: ...Kyah!

Sharon: ( A person...!? Oh my gosh. I just arrived here and the first thing I do is step on someone! )

???: ...

Sharon: I’m terribly sorry! I didn’t think there would be someone lying on the floor and...!

( ...Speaking of which, what were they doing down there anyway!? ...Sleeping? No way, right? When you have a house this large, you definitely don’t need to use the floor as a bed... )

???: Haah...

Sharon: Oh no! Are you feeling ill, perhaps? In that case, I shall call a doctor right away!

???: ...You’re loud. How am I supposed to enjoy my Rachmaninov when you’re screaming the place down? 

Sharon: Rach...mani...? ...E-Either way, if you’re not feeling sick, then what were you doing on the floor?

???: Wasting his time away listening to music rather than making himself useful, per usual, I would assume. Well, I suppose it is best not to have any expectations of this man in the first place, as he will only let you down in the end.

Sharon: ...!? 

( A voice...? Out of nowhere...!? )

Sharon: ...Wah!!

( Where did he come from...? )

???: Now, who might you be?

Sharon: Ah...I’m sorry! My name’s Sharon. I’m an orphan at the Catholic orphanage downtown. I was told by our related Church that the resident of this manor has been so kind to take me in. Are you...perhaps the owner?

???: ...I see. It seems you are the next...sacrifice.

Sharon: Excuse me?

???: Nothing. I was simply talking to myself. ...Ahem. My name is Sakamaki Reiji. The second eldest son of this family and one of the residents here. ...The man you had the ‘honor’ of meeting earlier is Shuu. While you may not suspect so given his deplorable behavior, he is - quite unfortunately - my elder brother.

Sharon: Reiji-san...and Shuu-san, was it? It’s a pleasure meeting you both!

Shuu: ...

Reiji: I assume that is your luggage over there? A room has been prepared for you. We will have one of our servants bring everything upstairs.

Sharon: Thank you very much!

( Thank god...So there wasn’t any mistake after all. )

Sharon: Oh! Right! I actually brought a little gift with me! They’re homemade muffins I made this morーー

*CRASH*

Sharon: ーー ning...!?

Startled by the loud noise, she drops the box with muffins.

*Thud*

???: YOU FUCKIN’ BASTARD!! I swear once I get my hands on youーー! 

???: Ahaha! I can’t believe you actually fell for that one! Lame-o!

Reiji: ...

Shuu: Haah...

Sharon: ( H-Hold on, hold on, hold on! Eh? Eeeeh!? I’m not dreaming, right!? That person just punched a hole through the wall!? )

Reiji: Ahem. ...Allow me to introduce. The one who destroyed the wall is the youngest son, Sakamaki Subaru. Next to him is Sakamaki Ayato, the eldest of the triplets. 

ーー You two, explain this situation at once!

Ayato: ...Che. Reiji. I didn’t do anythin’! Not my fault that Subaru ate those prank chocolates I left out on the kitchen counter.

Subaru: Fuck off! You definitely did that on purpose! ...I can still feel my mouth burnin’...!!

Sharon: ( ...Prank chocolates? I guess he means those filled with mustard and other spicy condiments, right? I didn’t know people actually bought those. )

Ayato: Of course! I was hopin’ to catch Kanato. Can you imagine what kinda face he would make when poppin’ one of those bad boys in his mouth?

???: ...Say, did you hear that, Teddy? ...I hope Ayato sleeps with one eye open tonight. He might just run into...unfortunate accident.

Sharon: ...Eh!?

( Another person just appeared out of thin air!? )

Ayato: Keh. The lunatic’s here.

Reiji: Sakamaki Kanato, the middle triplet. 

...Kanato, If you wish to commit a homicide, please do so outside of the walls of this manor. It takes forever to remove blood stains from the carpet.

Kanato: I don’t recall having to take orders from you.

ーー However, you’re lucky as I happen to be in a good mood right now. I believe I heard someone mention muffins? 

Sharon: ...Ah, yes! I made these myse...Huh? ...Oh.

Shuu: It’s not blood, but I think the carpet will need some cleaning regardless.

Reiji: Good grief...

Sharon: Oh no...! The box must have slipped from my fingertips when I heard the sudden crash and...

Ayato: Ah-ahー Look what you did, Subaru. It’s always the youngest child causin’ trouble.

Subaru: HAAH!? All of this started ‘cause you left those stupid chocolates out!

Sharon: ...They turned out really good too. What a shame.

Subaru: ...!! ...O-Oi...You...Um...My bad.

Kanato: ...Unforgivable. 

Sharon: Eh?

Kanato: ...HOW WILL YOU MAKE THIS UP TO ME!?

Sharon: ( W-Why is he getting upset at me all of a sudden!? It was obviously just an accident!? )

Um...I’m not sure...I could make some new ones later?

???: There, there, Kanato-kun~ Relax! Even if the muffins were wasted, there’s a delicious snack just waiting to be devoured...

*Rustle*

Sharon: ...!

( Someone wrapped their arms around me from behind!? )

???: ...Right here~ ...Nfu~

Sharon: ...Eh!?

( I-Is he talking about me!? )

Reiji: ...And finally, the youngest triplet, Sakamaki Laito. 

Ayato: Oi, Laito! No way you’re gettin’ the first taste again! I still haven’t forgotten last time!

Laito: Eeeh~? It’s not my fault you’re so slow, Ayato-kun~ However, if you’re so insistent on taking a bite out of her, I wouldn’t mind sharing, you know? I’m sure it’d make for a refreshing and thrilling experience~

Ayato: Geh! In your dreams, you perv!

Sharon: ( Taste? Bite...? Why are they talking as if I’m their food!? )

Excusーー

Shuu: ...Strawberries.

Sharon: Eh?

Kanato: What are you talking about? I don’t see any strawberries around.

Reiji: Shuu. Explain yourself.

Shuu: Your panties. They had strawberries on them.

Sharon: ...!!

( When did he...!? Ah! When I stepped on him...! )

Ayato: Pfftー!! Strawberries! How old are you, five? That’s hella lame!

Laito: Hm...~ Strawberries are not bad but with such a lovely body, I’m sure you could pull off something a little more erotic~

Subaru: ...

Laito: Oh, my bad~ I forgot baby bro was in the room. I suppose talking about a woman’s underwear is still a little too much for him to handle.

Subaru: S-Shut up...!!

Reiji: ...Enough! No more on this topic! ...Haah. Is it really that much to ask for you lot to behave? Just for one day?

Ayato: ーー Anyway, Reiji. Who’s this chick anyway? Tonight’s dinner?

Sharon: D-Dinner...!? I’m sorry but...Why are you all talking as if I’m food or something!?

Ayato: Shut it! Nobody asked for your opinion, Ichigo Pantsu.

Sharon: I-Ichigo paーー!? I have a name...! ...It’s Sharon.

Ayato: Yeah, yeah. I-chi-go Pa-n-tsu.

Laito: Hm~ This Bitch-chan does smell sweet just like strawberries. Perhaps I should call you ‘Ichigo-chan’ instead~?

Kanato: She really does. I’m sure her blood would taste just as sweet...Oh? What’s that, Teddy? You’d like to have a taste? Fufu...Good idea. I was just feeling a little peckish myself.

Reiji: Haah...I shall be in my study room. ...Ayato, Kanato, Laito. Please treat our new resident with some respect. It would be a shame to lose another one so soon.

Sharon: ...Wait, please! I’m afraid I don’t quite grasp the situation yet!

Reiji: Haah...Good grief. You must not be very smart, are you? Did you truly believe you would be allowed to stay here for free?

Sharon: ...Eh?

Laito: Nfu~ He’s right, Ichigo-chan. Everything in this world comes at a price. In your case...That would be the delicious blood pumping through your veins...

Sharon: M-My blood...? 

Ayato: Heh. You seriously haven’t realized?

Kanato: Teddy...Humans are truly so foolish, aren’t they?

Subaru: Che...Stop beatin’ ‘round the bush already and just tell her.

Shuu: We are Vampires. So the only thing a human such as yourself would have to offer, is your blood.

Reiji: In return, you will be allowed to stay here in this manor. Food, clothes and all other daily necessities willl be provided as well.

Sharon: Vam...pires? That must be some sort of joke, right? It was the Church who arranged this place for me! They would neverーー! 

Besides...Vampires only exist in fairytales!

Reiji: Good grief. This is why I simply cannot deal with humans. Not only are they incredibly foolish, they are horribly naive and trusting as well.

Subaru: In other words, you were set up. Just deal with it.

Sharon: ...

( No way, right...? This has to be some sort of mistake? Or a bad dream...? )

Shuu: Pwaah...Anyway, you guys do as you please. I’m going to my room to nap.

Subaru: I’m leaving too.

Reiji: Well then, if you’d excuse me now.

The three of them leave.

Sharon: ...

Laito: Oh dear~? Is that despair I see in your eyes? You poor little thing! Don’t worry, Laito-kun wil make sure to comfort you. After all, there is no better cure for betrayal than pleasure.

Ayato: Don’t be so down, Ichigo Pantsu! It’s not that bad of a deal! You get to offer your blood to Yours Truly after all!

Kanato: Fufu...I’m sure we’ll get along just fine. If you’re lucky, you might even make it into my precious collection one day~

Sharon: ...!!

She suddenly pushes them away.

*THUD*

Ayato: ...Woah!?

Laito: ...Aah~ Not bad, Ichigo-chan! I like myself a feisty girl at times!

Kanato: Ugh! ...What are you doing!? I nearly dropped Teddy just now.

Sharon: ...

She runs upstairs.

Location: Sakamaki Manor ;; Hallway

Sharon: Haah, haah, haah...

( Say, God...? )

( Is this my penalty...? )

( Are you punishing me for my crimes of the past...? )

Monologue

I just kept on running and running.

As said question repeated itself inside my head.

That must be it.

Those guys were exactly right. 

Humans are foolish. I was foolish. 

Foolish to believe I would be given a new home.

After all, people like me.

ーー They don’t deserve a happy ending.

ーー PROLOGUE: END ーー

[ Dark Prologue ] ->

[argylemikewheeler]

July 1st, 1985

what the first ep of (my) s3 would look like if the main concept was: both Steve and Will are gay in 1985’s Summer of Love and the town’s enemy is a little more human; loving friendships, very confused adults, and Will Byers Actually Getting Help

“Harrington!”

“Yes, sir.” Steve looked up from his desk. He dropped his crossword and looked to be at attention; the police station’s phone wasn’t ringing, though, so there wasn’t really anything he should have been doing. Hopper stepped out of his office, angling himself toward the door rather than Steve’s desk island.

“Do you think you’ll be able to-- Harrington, what are you doing?” Hopper caught sight of the pocket thesaurus sitting on his desk (the last name written on the inside cover not belonging to Steve, of course). Hopper fixed his sunglasses on the edge of his nose, looking over them and down at Steve.

“I’m just, uh, working on my vocabulary.” Steve said. Hopper blinked twice, waiting. Steve wasn’t going to say the truth: he was dating-- well seeing someone-- way smarter than him. This wasn’t for joy or boredom. He was studying to impress. “It’s college prep, sir.”

“The crossword?” The chief evened his stare. “This your old man’s suggestion?” Of all the things Steve’s father was telling him to do with himself, he  wished  some of it was simply pecking at a crossword over a twelve hour shift.  Fucking off  and  being a better piece of shit son  just wasn’t feasible to accomplish in one summer.

“He swears by it.”

“Okay, well. Uh, moving on from that,” Hopper grabbed his hat from the coat rack. The topic of Steve’s father always made Hopper stiffen up; it was definitely the main reason Hopper gave Steve his job at the station, but it still created more questions. Steve knew Hopper and his father went to high school together, but he never asked his father about those years-- beyond his baseball glory stories. “I’ve got plans tonight and I need to head out early. Can you handle things on your own for a while. At least until the night shift comes in?”

“I’ll be fine.” Steve made sure not to acknowledge the crossword on his desk as he nodded. He was really good at his job, he was. He was also just, unfortunately, still a pretty shitty boyfriend and needed all the vocab help he could get. “What’s the pressing story?”

“I have dinner.” Hopper was already trying to walk out the door. “So  don’t  call me. For the love of God.”

“Oh, don’t worry, Chief. I--” Steve was sure it was the cool July wind that slammed the door on the last half of his sentence. Not Hopper. “won’t... Have a good time, I guess.”

The police station was empty: it was another boring and wonderfully quiet Monday in Hawkins. There’d been some calls to break up disturbances at city hall in the past few days, but somehow everyone just seemed to agree that Mondays-- the longest shift of Steve's whole week-- was the day everyone went about their quietest day.

There were a few officers milling in and out of the back lounge and front door, casting a quick glance to Steve as he muttered and threatened fourteen down and six across. Nancy had been helping close the gaps of his post-high school education-- without knowing just what for-- but had been picking up most hours at the Post to try and elbow her way into their good graces; it put his tutoring on hold. So here he was, groaning at some clues about classical artists he’d never heard of.

There were other reasons Steve was sure the other officers thought he was odd-- things he was  sure  his father had passed along in spitting rants-- but Steve didn’t mind. No one said anything to his face.

“Hey Flo! Is, uh, is Steve here?” The question was asked with the answer already in mind.

Steve sat up in his chair, twisting around to see down the hall to the back entrance to the station. There weren’t many parking spots to fill, but he knew a certain someone who preferred it to street parking.

“Jonathan?”

“Oh, I hear him. Thanks-- hey!” Jonathan hurried out from the hall, his camera bumping against his stomach and bag slapping against his leg in the same rhythm. He’d gotten a new haircut recently: semi-wonky bangs and a closer cut in the back. All thanks to Steve’s peer pressure and Mrs. Byers’s kitchen shears.

“What are you doing here?”

“Sorry to stop by your work like this--” he lowered his voice as he stopped at the corner of Steve’s desk. “I know we said we wouldn’t do that, but we got an extra muffin in the lunch order and I know you’re always starving after a Monday shift so.” Jonathan produced a folded brown paper bag from his satchel. “Here.”

“Oh, thanks.” Steve wanted to say so much more, but had to settle. No more. None of what they’d decided they wouldn’t say. Not until the summer had ended. They wanted to see if they lasted longer than the convenience of loose summer schedules.

“Won’t I see you, uh, later, though?” At eight, when Steve got sent home he always drove straight to Jonathan’s. Jonathan started late on Tuesdays and Steve had off; they had the time to waste. “Or is this your way of telling me to stay home?”

“No! No we’re still... hanging out.” Jonathan had gotten really good at cooking and treated Steve to weekly dinner. It was a nice gesture at first, but Steve started growing fond of the company. They both did around mid-June. “But, I think Mike’s going to be over so. Be  cool , alright? Keep it cool.”

“Cool, got it.” Steve leaned back in his chair. He moved his papers to leave a corner of his desk for Jonathan to sit on. No one was in the main office; it was a harmless invitation.

“I have to get going...” It sounded like an excuse, a dive for safety. “And I’m sure you have, um,  puzzles  to do?” Jonathan pretended not to be endeared. He tried, he really did. He  failed , but Steve pretended he didn’t notice.

“Don’t want to sit and help me figure out the title of Mozart’s last opera?” He patted the desk, daring to be more direct.

“I really have to go.” Jonathan was genuine, looking at his watch. “The Post only let me out early today because I have to go pick up Will from his doctor’s appointment.”

“Wait.” Steve put the cap back on his pen. “Isn’t Will’s therapy on Wednesday?”

“Yeah, but with Mom’s schedule and the store being all weird-- we had to move it to today. And you know we typically have a family night after-- so he feels okay, you know-- but we  can’t  . So,  that’s why Mike’s coming over. Hopefully they’ll be idiots and tire Will out and he’ll sleep okay.” Tension rose in Jonathan’s voice quickly, explaining his day as if going over a laundry list; never rehearsing it but having it memorized.

“I can stay home if you need time, Jonathan.”

“No, really. I want you to come over.” Jonathan sighed and placed his hand on the emptied spot on Steve’s desk. “Besides, you can’t break tradition after a little over  one month , then it was just a weird habit.”

Steve Harrington did not consider his summer fling a w  eird habit . If anything, it was the most sensical thing he’d done in a very long time. Even after getting rejected from all his colleges, and never hearing the end of his father’s lectures, 1985 had been very kind to him. And that was mostly due to Jonathan’s inherent nature to be the same.

“I’ll see you after eight.” Steve smiled and reached for his hand-- but averted to grab a piece of memo paper by the phone.

“I’m sorry to leave in a rush.” Jonathan hitched his bag up, checking his watch again. “I just, I really need to get going.”

“Don’t worry. The muffin is  more  than enough.” Steve said. “And seeing you wasn’t too bad either.”

“Slow day, huh?” Jonathan said. The corner of his mouth quirked with a flattered, embarrassed smile. Steve tried to act nonchalant, like he wasn’t so goddamn relieved to see a familiar and happy face. Especially  his  familiar and happy face. “Well, good thing I have another surprise for you.”

“You can barely fit your camera in that bag, what could you possibly-- hey!” Steve missed grabbing Jonathan’s arm as he walked away, heading for the front door. “Where are you going?” Jonathan kept walking, checking his watch the whole way. “Hello?”

“Delivered right on time.” Jonathan pushed the front door open to the station-- but was nearly knocked over as a green  dash  barreled through it.

"Steve! Steve! Steve!” The dash was suddenly grabbing him by the shoulders. “You got the job!”

“Henderson! Oh my god! You’re back!” In an unlikely impulse, Steve grabbed Dustin in a hug, taking advantage of the change of height. “Holy shit, I nearly forgot! First of the month!”

“See you, Steve.” Jonathan walked across the room to the back entrance again. His hand braced the back of Steve’s chair, brushing across his shoulders.

“O-Okay! Yeah, see you!” Steve sputtered, losing his reminded  cool  in an instant. “Bye.”

Dustin pulled away slowly. “What was that?” It looked like  everyone  was too smart for Steve.

“Nothing. He brought me a surprise lunch-- which was an  obvious decoy to the main event! You! How are you, buddy? How was camp?”

“Oh, it was fantastic. Steve, I  have  to show you all my inventions! Camp was the  best  four weeks  of  my  life .” Dustin hopped up onto the corner of his desk. His heels tapped against the empty metal drawers. He was jittery, nearly uncontainable, but still so composed-- if only to be focused all on Steve.

Steve held his hands out, letting him start. “Lay it on me, Henderson! I want to hear everything. I missed you like crazy.”

“Well, first, obviously. I have to tell you about my girlfriend--”

“Whoa! Whoa!  Girlfriend  ? That fast?” Steve hadn’t been expecting any of his dating advice to work. It had been coming from such a poor and confused part of himself, Steve figured it was destined to fail. Apparently, it was just  Steve  that was-- when flirting with women at least. “Damn, there’s something in you after all!”

“She’s  super  smart, Steve. I’ve never met any girl like her. She’s a genius and she’s so pretty. God, I miss her already-- and I  just  saw her.”

Steve looked over his shoulder. He knew the feeling. “That’s great, man. I mean, I’m super happy for you. Like, that’s  crazy . That’s freaking awesome.”

“So what about you? How are the ladies? I mean, you work for the  Chief  now. All the ladies you could need and more, am I right?”

Steve used to be really good at this part of the lie, but with Dustin it felt cheap. He didn’t need to lie to him, but that was the deal; no matter how much that person was Steve’s best and most beloved friend, their secret was a dead-bolt, vaulted secret.

“Eh, not too great. Only girl my own age I see-- besides Nancy, really-- is the night-shift girl, Robin. But she’s not really-- we’re just friends. She’s alright. Leaves me weird drawings in the memo pad.”

“Ooo, she sounds cool.” Dustin raised his eyebrows. “Do you know her from school?”

“Yeah, we didn’t really run in the same crowds but-- it’s not like that, man. It’s really not.” Steve started unwrapping his lunch. “It’s so not like that with Robin.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I’m not...  looking  at the moment.”

Steve had originally decided to not go looking for trouble. After he and Nancy split in the beginning of his senior year, he didn’t start looking for an immediate replacement. The illusion of thinking he was in love with Nancy-- capable of being in love with Nancy-- was a hard thing to have come crumbling down. Steve needed time to get his own bearings, to put his feet firmly on the ground, and have them lifted off when his father grabbed him by the lapels and--

Steve hadn’t gone looking for trouble. Hadn’t gone looking for love either. But somehow, both seemed to find him.

Jonathan was late. He usually wasn’t but Will was trying not to be worried. It was a different day than usual and he knew how awful Jonathan’s boss and co-workers were. Will tried not to be worried-- he wasn't. It was just that he had spent an hour talking about the night his father left their family; standing outside the doctor’s office was a bit nerve-wracking. It felt too familiar, even with all the talking and note-scribbling.

Finally, Jonathan’s car pulled into the lot. He was speeding, as much as his car  could  speed: he knew he was late, which made Will feel a little bit better. No one had forgotten him. It was just traffic or his bosses or maybe just hitting all the red lights. As Jonathan stopped in front of the curb and waved Will in, Will could see he was jittery-- he was  upset  that he was late. Will felt bad for counting the minutes.

Not that he did it out of impatience or anything. Will just formed the habit after getting his new watch. It matched Mike’s. Completely on accident, of course.

“Hey, buddy! Sorry I’m late. I was-- I had to run an errand really fast. How long were you waiting.” He moved his bag and threw it onto the backseat. Will would’ve held it on his lap.

“I wasn’t keeping track.” Will said, climbing into the passenger seat. Will wanted to ask if his bag had Jonathan’s camera in it. If everything was okay. He didn’t. It seemed like Jonathan had been in his therapy with Will, just as shaken up. “It’s okay. Thanks for getting me.”

Jonathan waited until Will put on his seat belt. “Of course. We’re always here to pick you up. Therapy is important; you have to go.”

Will laughed before he could stop himself. “You sound like Mom.”  Why?

“Because she’s right.” Therapy was still kind of weird to Will-- since  no one else  in his grade had to do it-- but he humored his family. It was helping, if he had to admit it. But it was still embarrassing sometimes.

His therapist, Dr. Bright--  Rose Marie, as she insisted on being called-- was a send-out from the Lab, but disguised within a private practice just outside of town. She was able to listen to Will talk about what he saw and felt during his time with the Mind Flayer without trying to commit him. Almost nothing was off limits. Almost nothing.

Will checked his watch again.

“Are you excited to see Mike tonight?” The question was pointed, but Will wasn’t sure why it made him nervous. “I mean, I feel like I haven’t seen him in a bit.”

“Oh, yeah. He’s always with El.”

Will was sure they  weren’t  dating. El was just on a year-long stint of self-discovery and, besides Max, Mike was the person she trusted the most to help make as many helpful mistakes as possible. He bought her books to read and new music to try. It was really sweet, seeing Mike take such big strides toward helping their friend. But there was also a part of Will that felt dejected:  his  sort of help had to be prescribed and couldn’t be replaced with a warm laugh from one Mike Wheeler.

Will was sick while his friends were growing.

“Is there something wrong?” Jonathan used to ask the question like Will was one trembling lip away from crying-- but this time, he asked it like Will had his hand on the door, seconds from jumping out. “Will, are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Will nodded. “I’m fine. Just-- I talked a lot today and I’m tired.”

“Do you want to cancel with Mike--”

“No.” Will had been looking forward to having time with Mike--  just  Mike-- for a whole week. He wanted to sit on his floor with his best friend and be a kid again. Just for the night-- maybe draw some of Mike’s old campaigns or sketch out an idea for his own. He just wanted to remember something good about the past four years. After his hour with Dr. Bright, it all felt painful. Like his childhood naivety had been broken and every conversation he overheard in his house dripped with venom and disdain.

Will didn’t like picturing his house that way. It was a place that loved and raised him, a place he felt safe. He didn’t like thinking the conversations he heard being screamed through the walls were trapped in the drywall.

His arms felt heavy and his chest felt like it was made of metal-- he kept tasting it in his mouth. Will leaned back against the seat and reached for the radio. Jonathan turned it down before Will had even changed the station.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I just want to see Mike.” Will said, his mouth too honest and his mind shrouded in guilt. “I just want to see my friend.”

“Okay. Okay.” Jonathan nodded somewhat somberly. “I understand. Let’s go pick him up. He’s at his house right? Not El’s-- o-or The Sinclair’s or anything?”

“No. He’s at his.” Will crossed his arms and tried to find the loose string-- the thing that could uncoil Jonathan’s still-tightening anxiety. “Are you still dating Nancy?”

Jonathan turned to look at Will, nearly crashing the car. That was the wrong string. “What?”

“Nancy? Are you still dating her?”

“I was never dating Nancy.” Jonathan laughed, shaking his head. “I’m not dating Mike’s sister, don’t worry.” The clarification was strange and felt off-topic. Like Jonathan was trying to talk about something else.

“I thought you were. You guys hung out a lot during school.” Will heard her voice through the walls too. Always gentle, never yelling. Except when she was losing at playing cards. Then she shouted.

“She was helping me pass chemistry. That’s all.” Jonathan turned the radio up a little. Will checked his watch. “And then she helped me apply to the Post internship-- she’s great at writing papers, did you know that? A real wordsmith. Is Mike a writer too?”

He was, he  really  was. Grammatically, Will ran out of red pens trying to help, but creatively? Will envied Mike’s ability. “I don’t know. We don’t really talk about that kind of stuff like you two do… Since you two are dating.”

“We’re  not .” Jonathan laughed. Will took advantage of an upcoming stop sign to lean forward and look at his brother’s crimson face. “We’re not, Will, okay? We’re really not. I’d tell you.”

“You’d tell me?”

“Of course! I’d tell you if I… I had a girlfriend. Which I don’t!” He stayed at the stop sign for a bit too long. “Do you?”

There was an option to play dumb, to make Jonathan ask more directly:  do you have a girlfriend, Will ? but it sounded far more painful than being honest, than being as lonely as he was.

“No. I don’t.”

“And you’d tell me. If you were dating someone?” Jonathan looked at Will, hopeful but scarcely so. “You’ll tell me if anything big happens in your life?”

“Yeah.” There wouldn’t be anything happening at all that summer, that was for  damn sure . “Absolutely.”

Steve had about seventy percent of his puzzle done-- fifty of which was because Dustin was an unstoppable genius with no tolerance for Steve’s careful pace. It was just about quarter past seven, and Steve’s back was getting sore from sitting in his chair all day. He only liked sitting when it was in his car, on his way to the Byers's House, careful, of course, to obey all traffic laws.

Steve was packing his crosswords and pens up in the top drawer of his desk when something clattered the back door open. Steve grabbed a pen and whipped around in his seat, as if to wield it like a weapon.

“Hello? Who’s there?”

“Hey dingus.” Luckily, Steve couldn’t even see Robin yet-- or rather, she couldn’t see him or his emphasized eye roll. She could hear him groan though. “Hey, shut up and quit whining. I’m sending you home early.”

Her head popped out from the hallway. Robin’s ponytail was high on her head, the hair flopping over and getting caught in her stringy bangs. She flung her backpack out from behind her and tossed it toward Steve. She wasn’t in her uniform yet, only wearing the buttoned up shirt-- unbuttoned and showing her torn and dyed shirt underneath. She was wearing jogging shorts, her knees torn up and covered with Band-Aids. They reminded Steve of the ones taped to his face after getting a plate smashed into his forehead. Deceivingly cheerful.

“What are you doing here early?” Steve stood and followed her, holding her backpack awkwardly in his hands. “You’re  never  early.” Eight on the dot. Every time.

“I figure you want to get out of here tonight.” She didn’t even stop to look at Steve as they walked into the back room. “Probably want to see your boyfriend.”

Her words weren’t sharp, but Steve still recoiled. He let his arms, and her bag, hang by his sides.

“Who? Jonathan?” The only way Jonathan and Robin had ever met was in the hallways of Hawkins High. She definitely never saw them interact at the station-- or on any of their nights together: they were always indoors. “He’s  not my boyfriend.”

“First off, I didn't even say a name." Shit. "Second, he came in the other day looking for you.” Robin started buttoning her shirt up, fixing the collar as she finally turned to see Steve. “He was really upset-- didn’t even know what time it was to know you weren’t working.”

“Upset?” Technically, it wasn’t Steve’s problem. It was the deal; they didn’t  have  to care about each other’s lives. It was just summer. It was just like any other summer.

“Yeah. Crying, sniffling, snot-- the whole nine, man.” Robin sounded extremely sympathetic despite beginning to change her pants. Steve whipped around, covering his face. “You should go see him. Make sure he’s okay. Be a good boyfriend... shithead.”

“He’s  not--”

“Steve, I’m the last person you should be arguing with.” Robin laughed-- and it was only momentarily threatening. Until, of course, Steve realized what she meant.

Like all good secrets kept at Hawkins PD, Steve kept his mouth shut and nodded even if she wasn’t looking.

“Yes, sir--ma'am-- Robin.”

“So, are you going to go or what, dingus?” She tapped him on the shoulder. “Get out of here-- and tell me all about it Wednesday.”

Steve blinked at her, holding out her bag. As if it was enough thanks to give her back her own property. “Are we… friends, or something?”

“No, of course not.” She winked, slapping his arm. “Just looking out for one of my own.”

After picking Mike up from his house, they drove home in uncharacteristic chatter. Jonathan was the only one speaking, humming along to the radio. Will was exhausted beyond performative small talk; the type that had to be done between two best friends when a third party was present. Mike was great at just sitting with Will in silence, but Jonathan didn’t know that. Instead, the three of them passed around quiet jokes and laughter, answering questions about their friends for Jonathan’s upkeep of information.

Once they got in the house, Jonathan let them wander off into Will’s room as he started pulling pots out of the kitchen cabinets. He wouldn’t bother or pester them about any summer work, either. They would be left alone in their own coupled silence.

Mike was sitting cross-legged on Will’s floor, twisting one of Will's crayons between his fingers. Will needed new ones but he felt funny asking for them as a near-freshman in high school. He liked the glide of wax on paper compared to the scrape of colored pencils. Well, that and the fact he ruined half of his crayons the year prior making a full map of Hawkins in a fugue state and only had two crayons able to be used normally.

“You had doctor stuff today, right?”

Will was digging under his bed for his emptier sketch book. “Yeah. Therapy.  Doctor  doctor stuff was two weeks ago.”

“How was it?” Mike let his hand still and rest in his lap. “Like, what do you do in therapy? Just start talking?”

“Yeah, but it’s more than that. You have to think about stuff too. Doctors ask you questions, sometimes.” Will pulled back and drug his old drawing supplies along the carpet. He sat back on his heels and was able to see Mike over the top of the bed. He didn’t know Will was looking. “You have to have answers.”

“What do they ask about?” Mike kept looking at his hands, unaware of Will. “Upside down stuff?”

“Sometimes.” Will shuffled back around to Mike's side of the bed. He could feel the tiniest bit of rug burn starting. “She asked me about my dad today.”

Mike looked up, almost immediately. “Can she do that?”

“Why can’t she?” Will popped the lid on the retired Tupperware, now his art bin. “I talked about it.”

“I thought you didn’t like to.” Will had never said those words which meant Mike had gathered it from just observing him. “Did you… like talking about it?”

“Not really.” Will laughed. He found a few extra crayons, but of all the wrong colors. “She had this big speech afterward about learned helplessness that I… really didn’t like.” Will tried to keep laughing.

Mike put the crayon back in the bin. “Are you okay, Will?”

“Yeah. It’s just… the same old stuff.” Will shrugged. “Sometimes it just bothers me more than other days.”

Mike bit the inside of his cheek, picking at his words carefully. “You never talk about your dad, Will.”

“Why would I?”

“Because it bothers you. You can talk about anything you want-- I… I would listen.”

“You don’t have to listen to it just because it happened to me, you know. My therapist says you don’t have to experience things with me for them to be real.”

“But I want to know.” Mike looked insulted, almost crushed and collapsed as he sat back on his hands. “That’s your dad,” he said. “And you’re my friend.”

They sat in silence for a while. Mike went back to studying a new crayon, picking at the wrapper. Will felt something forming in his throat. A bubble that was hot, thick and sticky. Not vomit, but not impending tears either.

“I don’t get why he left.” Will said. “I don’t know what happened to our family.”

“Nothing happened. Maybe he just… wasn’t good at being your dad anymore.”

“But then why? What did I do?” Will didn’t want to ask Mike, make him feel responsible for answering, but Will was desperate to ask the universe again.

“Nothing.” Mike said. “I just think he…”

“He what? My dad got tired of me? Didn’t want to raise me?”

“Maybe he actually learned how to take a hint and knew he wasn’t good enough for you and Jonathan-- or your mom.” Mike wanted to be hopeful, to be positive, so badly. He ached, his smile tight and weak. He didn't have the answers, and who was Will to put him in the position to come up with them.

“So he gave up.” Will said.

“That’s not what I meant--”

“I know. I know… That’s just how it feels.” Will shrugged. He smiled at Mike, accepting his help and his warmth. It hurt knowing that Mike was wrong, but still. Will could always pretend a little longer. Anything for Mike.

“Hey! You monsters hungry?” Steve clapped his hands together before gently tapping the door. “Jonathan’s got dinner on the table.”

The door was open. Steve didn’t have to knock. He wanted to, just to prove he wasn’t  too  comfortable, but he also knew Mike was over. And knocking would announce his entrance rather than letting it just be something that just  was  . Rather than being  cool .

Awkwardly and with a lot of weird, throat-clearing fanfare, Steve opened the Byers’s front door and poked his head inside. Jonathan called him in from the kitchen without even needing to say hello, or being surprised by his walking in:  In here, Steve! Dinner’s almost done .

Steve walked through the living room carefully, as if he’d disturb it. There was a tape playing softly-- some band Steve’s never heard of, but didn’t hate. He’d grown to like the way that every song played in the Byers house was always moody and melancholy. The music was always the opposite of how he felt stepping into the kitchen.

Jonathan was at the stove, stirring a pot of something that smelled delicious. He had what looked to be tomato sauce stains on the front of his shirt-- where he wrapped his hand up to open the sauce jar. Steve was able to hide his smile as he shouldered off his uniform jacket and toed off his shoes, claiming a chair at the kitchen table.

“How was work?” Jonathan didn’t stop stirring. He moved like the stove was turned all the way up and he was afraid of burning the food. He spoke that way too.

“It was fine. Not a whole lot.” Steve didn’t want to have anything seem bigger than whatever upset Jonathan-- and seemed to still be upsetting him now. “How was your day?”

“Fine. Will and Mike are in the other room.” He was checking things off his list. Steve stepped up to Jonathan and stood even with him at the stove. He was making one-pot pasta. It really did smell fantastic. Steve was so hungry, even after his lunch.

“How was… the other things in your day? Develop any good pictures?” Steve covered how stupid he sounded by placing his hand on Jonathan’s lower back.

Jonathan stopped stirring and looked at him. Steve tried to keep cool, tried not to show his motives-- his attempt to calm something he couldn’t believe he’d missed spinning out of control, even if he didn’t know what it was. “Nancy walked into the dark room today-- she’s actually the one who gave me the muffin-- and she exposed the photos to light too early. So no, actually.”

Steve really was a bad boyfriend. Even when he wasn’t one yet-- or at all.

“Okay… how was. Everything else?”

“You don’t have to ask about my day, Steve. It’s okay.” Jonathan sighed and spoke evenly. “I’m just a little tired. Really. We don’t have to do the whole…  thing .”

The whole thing where Steve was explicit about how much he really cared about Jonathan and admitted he was sincerely and terrifyingly in love with Jonathan.

“I was asking because I was curious. Not out of obligation.” Steve clarified. His hand slid to rest on Jonathan’s hip. He moved closer, lips aiming to place a commitment-less kiss on his cheek.

“Steve! I said to keep it  cool .” Jonathan ducked back, placing a hand on Steve’s chest. “I don’t want Will to see us.”

“Your brother?” Steve was surprised; of all people Jonathan explicitly wanted to hide from Will seemed kind and forgiving-- not that there was anything  to  forgive, but it was something Steve often checked for. Steve was sure that one of Dustin’s friends would be… like Steve. Or like Jonathan-- maybe. All of them seemed prepared to deal with any of their friends suddenly being different. Far more prepared than Steve ever was.

“Yes. My brother.” Jonathan snapped, banging the spoon against the edge of the pot. “I don’t want him to learn I’m not dating Nancy but  instead  seeing her ex-boyfriend in the same day.” he whispered.

“Wait, what? He thinks you’re with Nancy?” Steve wasn’t sure where they went wrong. They were trying to  obscure  the truth, not lead everyone to a different reality. “D-Do you think Mike does too?”

“I don’t know! I didn’t want to ask and seem weird.” Jonathan sighed again. He sounded tense again. “I told Will I’d tell him if I was seeing anyone… And he promised me the same.”

Steve knew not to press the obvious question-- well   are  you seeing someone, Jonathan?  -- but also didn’t want to touch the obvious implication that Will  needed  to share a secret with Jonathan. Instead, he placed his hands into his pockets and turned to lean against the counter.

“Dinner smells really good, Byers.” There was another name that began with “B” that Steve wasn’t allowed to use, but always wanted to. Byers Byers Byers. Baby baby baby. “Thank you, again, for cooking for me-- for us.”

“You think I’m going to let you starve?” His stirring slowed; the stove cooled down. He nudged Steve’s arm with the spoon. “You coming home late and trying to cook? You mean half-drinking a beer and falling asleep face down on your bed in your uniform, half unbuttoned.”

“You picture that often, Byers?” Steve lifted an eyebrow. “Hm?”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” Jonathan’s lips quirked into a smile again. “But, if you’d like a beer, I think there’s one in the fridge. No one in the house is going to touch it.”

“I can go ask Will if he wants it.”

“Shut up-- do you want it or not?”

“No.” Steve didn’t like drinking when they were together. He’d never really heard the full story about where Mr. Byers went, but he had a father of his own to make those blank spaces fill pretty fast. “But thanks. Don’t want the habit of needing a beer to forget how boring my job is.”

“I thought you liked your job?” Jonathan took a piece of pasta out of the pot and held it out for Steve to test.

He chewed and answered. “I do! It’s nice to have normal hours-- and I’m happy to help have replacements as Flo gets ready to retire but… I don’t know. Sometimes it feels  boring .”

“Would you rather be chasing down a four-legged monster without a face?” Jonathan let out a bubble of genuine laughter, playfully glaring at Steve.

“Frankly, yes! At least we’d all have something to do. I feel like I don’t see everyone anymore.”

“Then throw a party. Don’t wish for anything bad to happen.” Jonathan said firmly. “Let the record show my brother is a very strange magnet for all this… weird shit.”

“You’re right, I’m sorry.” Steve said solemnly. He put his hand on Jonathan’s forearm. “I wish we were all safely doing something exciting. It felt nice to be needed, even if no one knew it was us.”

Jonathan put the spoon down on the counter and pivoted to be looking only at Steve. There was something resting just on the tip of his tongue, just under the surface of their conversation. It would’ve been a digression-- Steve could tell by Jonathan’s tense and furrowed brow-- but he would’ve listened.

“Jonathan?” Steve squeezed his arm, lifting his eyebrows. “What is it?”

“I--” He clenched his jaw, trying to swallow his words. “I think--” Steve knew there was no end to Jonathan’s sentence; merely starting it meant there was trust between them. A careful admission through omission. Steve knew Jonathan was looking at his shoes and wouldn’t be seen as he took in the secret flinches of Jonathan’s face. The crinkle by his left eye, the twitch of his mouth, double blinking--

They both jumped apart as the phone started ringing, practically shaking on the wall. Jonathan stepped away from Steve and left everything unsaid. Again.

Jonathan tucked the phone between his ear and shoulder as he turned to lean against the wall.

“Hello? This is--” His face changed sharply, his eyebrows furrowing. “I told you to stop bothering us. You’re lucky she’s not here to pick up the phone-- I don’t  care !” Jonathan cleared his throat and looked at Steve in a flash of uncertainty and anxiety. “I have the police here right now and if you don’t stop calling me I will send them to your house-- it’s not a threat if you’re the one bothering us. Stop. Calling.” He slammed the phone down and braced his weight against the wall with his other hand.

“Am I considered ‘the police’ now?” Steve said lightly. It was his way of letting Jonathan know he was listening, but not asking direct questions. “I’m not even allowed to have a badge.”

“It counts.” Jonathan said, letting his arms fall down by his sides. Steve stepped over and kept stirring dinner.

“Who was that?”

“No one. Can you go get the boys in the other room? Dinner’s ready.” Jonathan pushed Steve aside to hunch over the stove again.

“Sure.” Steve nodded, knowing he wasn’t seen. “Hey! You monsters hungry? Jonathan’s got dinner on the table.”

Dinner felt weird.

Will couldn’t help but feel like he and Mike had gotten into a fight. Talking about his dad made anything feel sticky, feel like it was violent or volatile. A second from snapping or tearing off, bouncing around the walls and echoing in Will's body. A small conversation between friends-- actually a little  understanding  between  best  friends-- felt like it had been a screaming match, all because it was cut off. There was no apology from Will. He didn't have the chance to tie it all up with an  I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, forget I said anything.

His plea sat heavy on his tongue as he talked to Steve-- who had arrived without notice-- and let Mike make him laugh so hard he nearly shot water out his nose. Will let it all happen under the tremor, the ache, of an apology. And maybe, if he was the best brother and friend he should’ve been, no problems or therapy, it would be enough of an apology.

He wasn't hungry and only ate half his serving of pasta, even though it was usually his favorite of Jonathan's recipes. He did apologize for that though, and it felt right to say aloud. Even if it was misdirected and no one heard it.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm so so sorry. Please come back--

Mike wasn’t tired, Will knew, but he still wanted to go to bed right after their horror movie ended. It was clear Mike hadn't been paying attention to the movie; the entire plot was that dreams were a new horror-scape for monsters to get teenagers. It wasn't too scary to Will; it just felt familiar. The villain looked different, more human, but Will knew what it felt like to dream while wide awake. To watch and be unable to do anything but scratch at the surface--

Convincing Will to get ready for bed, Mike said they’d have all day in the morning. He said that maybe he could convince his mom to let him stay over again if they don’t get all their fun in. Will knew Mike's mom probably would, if only because she felt bad for Will. But he would take the pity. A sleepover wasn't the worst thing to get from pity.

Will could still hear Mike fidgeting in his sleeping bag. He was rubbing his feet together like a cricket and twisting his wristwatch. The plastic scratched the sheer material of his sleeping bag rhythmically: back and forth. back and forth. backandforthbackandforth. It was like Mike was counting the ticks of his silent digital watch. Will began to play with his own watch, keeping it on in bed only because he'd noticed Mike hadn't removed it when they were brushing their teeth that night; apparently the watch was too good to part with.

Time though, was something Will wished he could separate himself from. He could hear the seconds scraping by now. Every moment he kept his friend awake and bored because Will was too weak or (rather and) too  everything  to stay up late again.

Therapy hadn’t even been that bad. Not really. Maybe it could be exhausting but it didn’t count because Will sat in the same spot for an hour. It wasn’t real work. It shouldn’t have counted. Will should’ve been able to hang out with his friend until sunrise, getting in trouble with his mom for being up so late. He should’ve still been a stupid, carefree kid, not a by-gone troubled teenager.

Maybe his dad had seen that from the beginning. Will's dad was always gambling, betting on baseball games he had these incredible "feelings" on. Sometimes he was wrong, but when he was right it was an amazing prediction; having the foresight no one else had. And maybe that was what it was, leaving them when he did. Maybe he saw Will wouldn’t be the second son he wanted after all. Maybe he knew of all the damage that would be done to him, the damage he would cause. Probably saw it from miles-- years-- away. And he left without a single warning to any of it.

What if his father had known? Could've known where he was when he came back into town two years ago? Not gone forever just in the lights. Just out of reach, just through the wall, Dad. What if he had known, been able to see, able to know, but wanted to leave Will Down there being possessed and enveloped and consumed and--

Will felt a chill scurry down his back. The feeling almost had legs. Too many. He felt ice cold, his body going blank-- not numb, but  blank -- for a second. He couldn’t feel his fingers, but could still feel every inch of his body, suddenly pulsing and seizing.

"Will?" Mike asked, sitting up. He gripped the end of the bed and pulled his face closer to Will's. He squinted in the darkness, feeling for Will’s hand. Will couldn’t answer, his jaw tense and breath rattling out of him. "Will, what’s wrong?"

After a (thankfully) non-awkward dinner, Steve and Jonathan washed all the dishes and let the boys watch whatever movie they wanted. Steve didn’t pay attention to what tape he put in the VRC. He was too busy thinking about the hands hidden in the warm soapy water in the kitchen sink. Neither Mike nor Will seemed too bothered by the  disgusting  amount of blood or the scary blade man on the TV. He felt no regret letting them go to bed right after the credits rolled. Jonathan had looked exhausted after putting the last dish away, and dozed off during the climax of the movie-- even slept through the high-pitched screaming.

They waited for the sound of Will’s door closing over before they got into bed.

Jonathan flopped onto his back, a pillow resting between his chest and crossed arms. Steve laid on his side, bracing his weight on his elbow. He poked at Jonathan's furrowed eyebrow lightly.

"What's the problem, Byers?"

"Nothing."

"You are not a really great liar, you do know that right?" That and Steve could still hear Robin's blasé recounting of Jonathan's distress.  Yeah. Crying, sniffling, snot-- the whole nine, man.

Jonathan sighed and turned to look at Steve. He hated being called out. "It's about Will."

"What's wrong with Will? He seemed alright at dinner."

"Yeah, but," Another sigh. "Steve, I think my brother’s gay."

Steve's first response was swallowed and he nodded. "Okay. Okay. And, um, what's the issue with that?" He adjusted himself on the bed, hoping there was more subtlety in that.

"I can't talk to him about it. I mean," Jonathan smiled and reached to touch his face. "This is a very different thing than being fourteen and confused."

"Who says he's confused?"

"I don't mean with himself-- the rest of the world is so confusing, Steve. You see the news... I can't talk to him. I didn't grow up like that. And being with you is... Different. We dated girls before. Will... I don't know. I think he knows already."

"You think he's got feelings for--"

"Oh absolutely." Jonathan nodded, closing his eyes. "Oh, I'm so glad it's not just me who sees it."

"Hopefully Wheeler does too."

"Hey, keep your voice down, he's only a few rooms over ."

"Sorry. Sorry. Me and my big mouth " Steve rested his head on Jonathan's shoulder. "Shut me up, maybe."

"Not until my mom gets back." Jonathan said, rolling up onto his side too. "If I catch her when she comes in the door, she won't come into my room to say good night. I can't have you distracting me until then."

"Your mom is on a date. She's an adult and so are you." Steve kissed Jonathan's shoulder. "You are a working man who just finished a long day at work-- I think you can cuddle up with your boyf--" Steve choked on his own stupidity, feeling his face go red and charisma die on impact. "With me."

"I will. Once my mom is back." Jonathan kissed Steve, as if a parting promise. Only to backtrack on his words immediately. He tucked Steve’s hair back behind his ear, his hands trying not to hold his face. “No--  no . Steve, not until my mom gets back.”

“I can keep an ear out--” As Steve spoke, the power in his bedside lamp dimmed. The power hummed quietly before flickering back up. Jonathan tensed and pushed himself up in bed.

“Did you see that?”

“Yeah, it was just the light, Byers. It’s windy out tonight, maybe a tree brushed a powerline.” Steve pushed Jonathan back down to his pillow-- and back into his own skin again. “It’s  nothing  . What if I turn out the light? Your mom won’t even  see  us in here.”

“No. No, I have to wait for her.”

“What if she doesn’t come back?”

“What!” Jonathan jerked upright again.

“I  meant  what if she’s at Hopper’s or something?” Steve shrugged. “She’s an adult.”

“Steve, that’s my  mom .” Jonathan hissed, swatting at the hand resting on his shoulder.

“I  meant  because she drove there on her own. If she had some wine, maybe she stayed somewhere and is being a smart, responsible parent.” Steve soothed. “Something you don’t have to be right now. You’re not Will’s parent and you aren’t your own. Lay down, will you?”

Jonathan was reluctant, but let Steve ease him back down again. He pulled the pillow tighter to his chest and sighed, his crossed arms sinking deeper. Steve laid down beside him, nose gently touching the end of his shoulder. As he breathed, his short exhales tickled Jonathan’s skin and got him giggling. It was Steve’s secret trick; something that always worked because Jonathan didn’t know it was a pattern-- didn’t know he was ticklish.

“Sorry I was weird today.” Jonathan said suddenly. He wasn’t even grinning.

“What?” They didn’t apologize. There was no need. “You’re worried about stuff-- it’s okay.”

“No, I like our dinners. And I was so uptight. I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“Okay.” Steve didn’t know what to do with the sentiment. “Apology accepted?”

Jonathan sighed again, blowing it out slowly between his pressed lips. “Lonnie called today.”

“L- your  dad ? Is that who was on the phone?” Steve wasn’t sure what came over him-- or his body-- as he placed an arm over Jonathan’s waist and pulled them together. There was something unspokenly intimate talking about abusive fathers while being nearly sutured together in bed, but Steve pretended he was just having problems hearing Jonathan correctly.

“Yeah.” Jonathan turned, his nose brushing Steve’s. “Said he wants custody of Will. He doesn’t trust Mom, he said.”

“How is he-- He can’t do that.”

“He’s going to try. I don't know where it came from. He still thinks he can win a case because the news says Will just  disappeared into the woods . Like he ran away from us or something.”

“Everyone knows that’s not true.”

“A court might not.” Jonathan sighed, ducking his head down. Steve resisted lifting his chin to hook it over Jonathan’s head, nestling him into his neck. He laid still, listening to his breathing and the gentle creaking of the house--

Jonathan's door was thrown open, both men sitting up quickly, ready to defend themselves and their actions. It was Mike, in his pajamas with his hair sticking out in wild curls. Will stood just behind him in the hallway looking far more awake. Stilted and untousled.

"Mike?"

"Jonathan, quick!"

"What is it?" Jonathan swung his legs around and motioned both boys to come in. "Will?" Mike pushed him into the center of the door frame, although he remained in the hallway, in the light. Will’s hand grabbed at the back of his neck. His face was blank and his eyes were distant.

"Something's wrong." Will said slowly, blinking to focus. "I feel him."

"Feel who?" Jonathan kneeled in front of Will, holding his shoulders. "Feel who, Will?"

"Dad."