#crypto is very not my jam

[sainz100]

Daniel Ricciardo at the 2023 Token2049 event

[eazy-peazy54]

EVERY. DAMN. PASSCODE. FOR THISISNOTAWEBSITEDOTCOM.COM:

Will update when i find more!! (updates VERY frequently)

everything in bold+italics needs to be spammed for the full effect

Dipper  Mabel Wendy Soos Bill Cipher Bill cipher Pacifica Gravity Falls Robbie GideonStanley Stan Stanford Ford Sixer Mcgucket Hectoring Pinata Rat Divorce Breakup Weird  Alex Hirsch Matpat Giffany  Pines Sorry Skeleton Math Mystery shack Mystery Lies Tad strange Book of bill God One eyed king Blanchin Boyfriend Curse Wittebane Euclid Euclydia Peak  Platinum Paz Fuck  Shit Glass Shard Beach Theory Cray cray Ad Astra Per Aspera Im still on your mind Vallis Cineris  Help me Theraprism Triangle Weirdmageddon Blind eye Dorito Deer teeth Baby bill Baby LALALALALA Journal 1 Journal 2 Journal 3 Blendin History Filbrick Love FBI Waddles Reality Universe Portal T J Eckleburg Season 1 Season 2 Season 3 Cursed Scary Abuelita Gun Disney Mickey Mouse Caryn Cryptogram codex Ducktective Toby Determined Irregular Booberry Horror Creepypasta Seven eyes Yes Trigonometry Torture mentally Xyler Craz Tantrum Justblendin Black sheep Baaaa Monster Titans blood Life Death Skibidi Fortnite Gyatt Who are you Fixinit1 R34lity Love ya bro Conspiracy Dippy Fresh Disco girl Liar Lyre Harold's Ramblings Union Made 29121239168518 Grebley hemberdreck 3466554 Tinsel snake XGQRTHX 333 sundapple lane cozy creek IL 60714-94611 naitsuaf mountain don't axolotl morality well well well being Burnside Creepypasta Family matters Forget the past Nothing Something Hey nerd Even his lies are lies Riddle No LLIB When will I die Elon Clone Multilevel mark Goodnight Sally Paper jam Tyrone Fordtramarine Tourist trap Mason The duchess approves shape Scalene Scientology Meow Shave Your Grandma Nacho Rizz Crypto Sevral times Easter Egg Oh yes they both Oroborous Suck it Merlin Just fit in Daddy Mommy Burned Inside Kings of new jersey Destruction is a form of creation They'll see They'll all see I see Unreality Rubberhose You can't kill an idea Card Scrimbles Am i blanchin Fuck Alex Fuck you Alex Fuck you (im not cursing out alex i prommy, these are deadass codes) Hotxolotl Bye gold Ciphertology NSA Globnar Disneyland Rehpic Kook Kubrick Not a phase Paper is book skin Virus Spookemups That's just a You're insane Owl trowel L is real 2401 NFT Question Answer  Occurremus iterum Frilliam Butternubbins Dispense My Treat Dionarap Stod eht tcennoc History Hologram The gun Marry me

Which religion is right

[wolsalwastaken]

So, as you do, I was on the new version of thisisnotawebsitedotcom.com and I’ve figured out every. Single. Secret. Code. I. Could.

Now with the help of the community, I am expanding this list! Please post passwords in the comments sections or reblog if I have not yet mentioned them! You will, of course, receive credit for your discoveries! Nerds unite! At the very bottom, you will find a full list of citations I used for the passwords. Any password that is un-cited is one I found myself :)

Spoilers for this version of the website, but I’m mainly posting this as I know it’ll be gone soon. Keep reading at your own discretion, as these are spoilers if you wanted to solve it yourself.

This post will continually be updated as I find new codes and ciphers to solve and new passwords, stay tuned as this is a masterpost of this iteration of the website!

So, here’s all the places to click on screen for Easter eggs:

And here’s a list of all the different passcodes I’ve found to work on the computer. If multiple words are listed it’s because they activate the same thing. Brackets are not part of the pswd. (c) means that the person I learnt it from is listed below. If there is no (c), then I found it.

Cipher

Triangle (click 3 times)

Bill/Bill Cipher

Stanford/Ford/Sixer

Fiddleford/McGucket

Filbrick

Mason

Dipper (click 5 times)

Mabel (click 12 times)

Wendy

Robbie

Gideon (2 possible results)

The Book Of Bill

Alex Hirsch/Hirsch

Monster

Mystery Shack

TJ Eckleburg

Hey nerd

Divorce/breakup

Theraprism

Soos

Disney/mickey mouse/disneyland (c)

Hectoring

Axolotl

Stanley/Stan (click 8 times)

Gravity Falls

Pines

Geometry/algebra/math/greek/greece/trigonometry/shape (c)

Conspiracy

God/help me/frlliam (c)

Triangle

Ducktective

Waddles

Morality

Portal

Love/boyfriend

(Literally any word of profanity, i.e sex or fuck)/Ted Cruz (c)

Death

Dorito/chip/nacho (c)

Skeleton

Life

Weird

Reality

The universe

Baby/baby bill/lalalalala/mommy/daddy (c)

Rat

Urban legends/horror/creepypasta (c)

Blind eye

Crypto/NFT/gyatt/skibidi/fortnite/Elon/rizz (c)

Journal 3

Journal 2

Journal 1

Theory/that’s just a/matpat (c)

Question

Answer

Piñata

FBI/NSA

Blendin Blandin

Abuelita

Weirdmageddon

Toby Determined

History

Sorry

Cursed

They’ll see/they’ll all see/I see

Cryptogram codex

Curse wittebane

Fordtramarine

Disco girl

Ad astra per aspera

Forget the past

Torture mentally

Hotxolotl

Scrimbles

Lies

Paper is book skin

Euclid

Dionarap (c)

Booberry (c)

Unreality (c)

Vallis cineris (c)

Caryn

Euclydia (c)

Scalene (c)

Even his lies are lies (c)

Stodehttcennoc (c)

Emmalinebutternubbins (c)

Dispense my treat

Just fit in (c)

Nothing

Something

Ciphertology (click 2 times)

Well well well being (c) (click 4 times)

One eyed king (c)

Titans blood (c)

Blanchin (c)

Suck it merlin (c)

Tantrum (c)

You can’t kill an idea (c)

Kook (c)

Naitsuaf (c)

Oroborous (c)

Giffany (click 6 times)

Who are you (c)

R34lity

Fixinit1

Love ya bro (c)

Tad strange (c)

Liar lyre (c)

Xgqrthx (c)

Peak (c)

Platinum peak (c)

Glass shard beach (c)

Cray cray (c)

Deer teeth (c)

Season 1 (c)

Season 2 (c)

Season 3 (c)

Gun (c)

Irregular (c)

Seven eyes (c)

Xyler/Craz (c)

Yes (c)

Justblendin (c)

Black sheep (c)

Baaaa (c)

Union made (c)

29121239168518 (c)

Grebley hemberdreck (c)

3466554 (c)

Tinsel snake (c)

333 sun dapple lane cozy creek IL 60714-94611 (c)

Mountain don't (c)

Riddle (c)

Burnside (c)

No (c)

Llib (c)

When will I die (c) (click once a day)

Clone/paper jam/Tyrone (c)

Multilevel Mark (c)

Goodnight Sally (c)

Tourist trap (c)

The duchess approves (c)

Scientology (c)

Meow (c)

Shave your grandma (c)

Burned inside (c)

Sevral times (c)

Easter egg (c)

Oh yes they both (c)

Kings of new jersey (c)

Destruction is a form of creation (c)

Fuck you Alex/fuck Alex (c)

Rubberhose (c)

Am I blanchin (c)

Card (c)

Bye gold (c)

Globnar (c)

Kubrick (c)

Not a phase (c)

Virus (c)

Spookemups (c)

You're insane (c)

Owl trowl (c)

L is real 2401 (c)

Occurremus iterum (c)

Family matters (c)

Harold’s ramblings (c)

Is hell real (c)

Is there an afterlife (c)

Dippy Fresh (c)

Justblendin (c)

Here’s a link to the entire 15 minute video of me going over all the Easter eggs and codes, so if you don’t wanna bother doing it (fair) then here ya go! Had to post via Instagram because no other social media lets me post long videos, oh well. (As I find more codes, I may make a part 2 video of me solving those on video)

Link here (part 1)

Credits/sources:

@sage-nebula (Dionarap, vallis cineris)

@dottyistired (Booberry, unreality)

@vlada-elya (Ted Cruz)

@cloudofcaffeine (Euclydia, Scalene)

@putadapower (Even his lies are lies, oroborous)

@dippers101 (Stodehttcennoc, emmalinebutternubbins)

@ren-is-real (Just fit in)

@hopefully-maybe-abby (I see)

@towacletruck (Well well well being, one eyed king, titans blood, blanchin, suck it merlin, tantrum, you can’t kill an idea, kook)

@cskv11 (Naitsuaf)

@eazy-peazy54 (Breakup, gyatt, who are you, r34lity, fixinit1, love ya bro, tad strange, liar lyre, xgqrthx, giffany, peak, platinum pas, glass shard beach, cray cray, help me, deer teeth, lalalalala, season 1, season 2, season 3, Mickey Mouse, gun, irregular, horror, creepy pasta, seven eyes, yes, trigonometry, xyler, craz, justblendin, black sheep, baaaa, skibidi, Fortnite, union made, 29121239168518, grebley hemberdreck, 3466554, tinsel snake, 333 sun dapple lane cozy creek IL 60714-94611, mountain don't, burnside, riddle, no, llib, when will I die, Elon, clone, multilevel mark, goodnight sally, paper jam, tyrone, tourist trap, the duchess approves, shape, meow, scientology, shave your grandma, nacho, rizz, daddy, mommy, burned inside, sevral times, easter egg, oh yes they both, kings of new jersey, destruction is a form of creation, rubber hose, card, am I blanchin, fuck you Alex, fuck Alex, fuck you, bye gold, nsa, globnar, Disneyland, Kubrick, not a phase, virus, spookemups, that's just a, you're insane, owl trowel, L is real 2401, occurremus iterum, frilliam, family matters, Matpat, Harold’s ramblings)

@delusionalpaper (Is hell real, is there an afterlife)

@thisisnotawebsitedotcom-com (Dippy fresh)

@/soldofficialyt on YouTube, Justblendin

HUGE shoutout to @eazy-peazy54 for providing so many codes! Seriously, thank you so much for your amazing post compiling them!

[sorenblr]

Prepare those calzones rojos and don't choke til you swallow that twelfth grape.

Any "best of '23" lists you wanna expose to this here tumblr audience?

I've waited until the very end to answer this, since my yearly vacation lines up with the last week of December, allowing maximum time to devote to "gaming like a monster". I still didn't play shit for new games this year, but I am confident that every title on this list makes Baldur's Gate 3 and Tears of the Kingdom look like a bunch of muddy, wet shit:

Heart of the Killer

The 8th and penultimate episode in thecatamites' Anthology of the Killer series, which in aggregate is the most compelling project to come out of the medium in recent memory. Follow zinester and aspiring murder victim BB as she navigates a strange world of maniac killers and maniac killer paraphernalia. Combines the warm trappings of pulp horror and associated genre schlock with the profound literary sense and humor of the author. Boasts the rare perfect art design.

This one features 'liminal spaces' and is about the regulation and dictation of desire. Oh shit!

Varney Lake

Another 'pixel-pulp' title by the Argentine LCB Studio, this time a King or Bradbury-esque portrait of mournful childhood nostalgia set in the summer of 1954. Three friends find a dracula in the woods and he turns out to be basically just a stand-up kind of guy. Sincere, intelligent writing and gorgeous CGA-inspired art that transcends mere imitation of that style.

Pseudo-sequel to the fantastic Mothmen 1966 and best enjoyed in sequence with that game.

Stomp Plonk

It's just good old-fashioned fun to stomp and plonk around in Marek Kapolka's wordless fantasy world. The character designs and animation here bring me a lot of joy. Sometimes a game just needs to be a collection of little cretins.

Pseudoregalia

Sharply designed 3D metroidvania based on an earlier game jam project. Strangely melancholic tone and a nice, expressive moveset. One of the more engaging translations of the genre to 3D.

You can tell the developer didn't expect so many eyes on this because the protagonist has her big goat ass hanging all the way out and they had to include a toggle for pants in the options menu.

Honorable Mentions:

Shards of God: point-and-click agatha christie murder mystery set on a dune-esque desert planet. good

Orbo's Odyssey: kinetic 3d platformer. movement funny... but good?? slay 4 golden draculas

Kowloon's Curse: Lost Report: any game with an explorable desktop w/ fake sites and shit is good

Tommy Gun Witches: if you haven't seen the main promo screen for this game, there's still time for you to correct that

DOCTRINESPACE: cool twine game about a future where crypto bullshit is king, and the doctrines are hotter than ever

Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days: mostly about killing chinese police officers and any civilians foolish enough to enter your line of sight. kane and lynch are craaaaazy!

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

2023 games that I would like to have played but couldn't squeeze in: Blasphemous 2, Crypt Underworld, Bahnsen Knights, Knuckle Sandwich, 24 Killers etc.

[thegravityblog]

Monday: 19-06-2023 - Work!

Monday’s are always so jammed up. Started my day by picking up my dad from the diagnostic center. Unfortunately, he’s got a stone in his gall bladder which is 30mm in size, hence he has to undergo either a surgery or a laparoscopy operation. Anyway, then dived into reading news, looking up to what’s going on in the tech industry, world economy and markets.  Logged into zerodha, checked how the companies are performing and then dived into Dexa. In talks with a couple of angel investors to raise our seed round. Will pitch an angel in-person this Friday, hoping to crack it. After the calls, had another internal team call, assigning my team their weekly tasks. Building Dexa’s notification center that’ll trigger once you purchase/mint a ticket. Ticket minting works like charm, and you can also try by minting a ticket for the Web3 Meetup Chandigarh.  Post lunch I practiced Javascript till now. Revising is very important, and I solved problems starting from loops, conditions, if/else, Booleans, statements etc. Programming is best learned while doing. You can cram up all the concepts theoretically but it all boils down to execution. I also practice a lot of LeetCode problems. Also, I am participating in a data science competition at Numerai.   Numerai is a data science competition where you build machine learning models to predict the stock market. 

I am also betting big on CRISPR. I have read around 70 hours of books, research papers and medical apprehensions. I am sure I will make a hell lot of money through this. It’ll take time, but that’s certain.  Also: Live below your means. I hardly spend now. My CA has blocked all my shopping expenses for this month because last month I already have for my birthday. By 2024 I’ll hit 1.5 crores in revenue (projected) and till then, living like a student. Stashing the bank and a lil lifestyle upgrade that’s not even noticeable. 

Post tea in the evening, checked my NASDAQ portfolio. Eager for the next quarter as NVIDIA is a bold bet I have got my hands into. I’ve put a huge chunk on NVIDIA, and I will pull out and neutralize before the bubble bursts. I’ll write about the market cycles once the next quarter results are out.  Spoke to the lady, I am dating for a while. We both are busy professionals so there’s no “Nibba Nibbi” shit going on here. :D We just check up on each other, see if both of us are doing well, ask how our day was, if we need help, and motivate each other. She’s ambitious too, as I have mentioned earlier as well, so our wavelengths match. We don’t argue on how we are so busy, yes we are because we strive to make it big, and it’s normal. Both of us are around the same age, and its normal that we have other shit to do, apart from each other. 

Pre-tea lifted weights. 10 kg, 60 60 sets each. Arms are like jacked up but used to it. I’ll gain weight soon, once my treatment is over. Still recovering from the years of abuse I did to my body. Will code for a while, check up on the markets, listen to updates, check the crypto portfolio, read the book I have been reading (Peter Lynch’s Beating the Street) and then sleep. For me a 6-7 hour sleep works to stay laser focused and work like hell. And that bitch wants attention, well I am so done with her that I won’t even write more than this. I now entertain people who are equal to me, in class or if they have a good character and are good human beings otherwise, nope. That is why I am very selective about people. I don’t entertain crass anymore. These type of idiots are living in their hypocritical imaginative life, where they talk so big, but are exactly the opposite. They live in this la la land of success but are not even real. I don’t take them seriously, in fact anyone with values and principles would ignore their existence completely. What work have they done, that’s noticeable? Appreciated? What are they contributing to the society? How much are they contributing to our economy? What change are they bringing to this world? NOTHING. Hence, I have no space for these people. Ignore.  Well, that’s pretty much it. Let’s get back to work, read and then sleep! 

[zer0desu-writes]

0. Prologue - Taejoon

I created a character based of off my favourite Apex Legends character, Crypto! I’m using his character lore as a starting point for this playthrough. 

Some preliminary info:

Assets: Tech path, Fugitive path, Survey Bot companion, Ghost Starship

Starting sector: unnamed, begins on his home planet Gaea

Cataclysm: Escaped catastrophic war due to self-replicating nanos

Exodus: Fleet took millennia to reach the Forge

Communities: Ships/settlements under Founders (in this case, The Syndicate is one of them)

Iron: Vow on blades

Laws: Bounty hunters are above the law, law varies from place to place

Religion: Our gods failed us

Magic: Supernatural powers wielded by paragons. Powers from magitech (building off of Wraith’s Void powers in game)

Comms: The Weave allows near-instant data transfer

Medicine: Sworn healers (Wifeline duh)

AI: Sentient machines live among humans (Pathfinder!)

War: Mercenaries protect those who are able to pay

Lifeforms: Life finds a way

Precursors: Biomechanical Remnants survived the death of their creators

Horrors: Horrors aren’t real, but spacers know the truth

Starting off, he’ll have his nerdy office worker look like below haha. Things will be very loosely based on the Apex characters, since I want this game to run wild. Let’s get into it!

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

“There he is!” 

Park Taejoon ran as fast as he could, Syndicate agents hot on his heels. He had just found out that his adopted sister, Mila, had disappeared and the authorities believed that he was the one who did it. 

Taejoon managed to get to the launch bay and commandeered a starship. He jammed his PC cord into the data slot in the control panel, overriding the built-in navigation system with his own AI. The engines whirred to life and he floored it, ignoring the pings of bullets ricocheting off the hull.

“Hack, get us out of here.” Taejoon yelled. Hack beeped in response and the engines roared. The ship accelerated out of the launch bay, but there was no time to celebrate. The Syndicate was still on him. 

He had to get away. Create a new identity. Get off the grid. And most of all, find out the truth.

[ Background Vow: I swear to find out the truth about Mila ]

[lone-wolf-no-more]

That Light at the End May be Further Than You Think...That's Okay

Monday, February 6th, 2023

Man, today was a bit more tricky. I’ve come to realize that I need to double down on understanding and properly executing (in a mechanical, non-emotional) my trading plan. Can’t leave things up to chance, I must plan and engage like a patient hunter, and once 11:30 AM is here, call it a day, no matter how it played out.

This next part is essentially verbatim what I messaged Eissac:

Yeah, it's official. I'm starting over at Day 1 again tomorrow. It may sound a bit silly, but a certain movie scene comes to mind right now. Firstly, the restart is due to the stupid TV, yet again. This whole challenge is very much about my ability to completely ignore distractions that are RIGHT there in front of me, and I can't take it easy on myself. If I have to keep telling myself to keep my eyes down whenever I leave the room or pass the TV, so be it. I'm not going to give myself slack because "I won't get to the end if I don't show 'mercy' with myself", or whatever. Here's the deal. I have been in this cycle of dependence and starting over for several years now, and it's time to frickin ENGAGE and break out of it. No more screwing around, no more wasting a "few moments" here and there with watching a random video while I take a dump, (or even checking the weather. Like, why do I need to always know that? The weather's going to do whatever it's going to do!) while time passes me by. Seconds add up into minutes, minutes into hours, into days, into months, into years.

Oh, the movie scene? Near the beginning of Chicken Run (which is inspired by The Great Escape, by the way), the main character gets caught trying to escape over, and over, and over...and over, and each time is put into solitary confinement. But that doesn't stop her from losing sight of her goal: freedom, no matter what she has to do to make it happen. I loved that movie as a kid, and I still do. Interesting how you can get more out of something as you get older.

Anyways, gotta push through this short-term pain (but is it really pain, or just my awkward, self-sabotaging self dying inside and trying to hold on?) and get to where I really want to be.

So, each evening before I get off my computer, I'll send screenshots of the time-logging apps on my computer, along with my journal entries (as before). Then, I'll send the ones from my phones the next morning, since the day isn't over until I'm in bed, and it hits midnight, essentially.

I'm putting thoughts down in my journal throughout the day now, and going back to it before bed, so that I both have the benefit of re-visiting those thoughts then, and also not trying to think of everything I want to say and jam it in before getting off my computer.

So, right now it’s 2:14 PM. Sleep wasn’t fantastic last night, but I’m still very grateful that I appear to be doing better mentally and physically with each passing day.

As I stated above, the morning’s trading session was incredibly intense. The irony is that I did better on those two other days when we had major news releases. Chat was saying it’s because NAS doesn’t mess around, and makes it move more quickly on those days. I’m seeing that more clearly now.

I’m SO close to turning my love-hate relationship with arguably the most volatile trading instrument (definitely not the most crazy, that goes to Bitcoin and crypto in general lol. That has more sudden volatility than consistent volatility) into one of obsessive...love? Nah, I won’t say that.

No matter how well I do with trading Nasdaq, I’m not sure if I’ll use the world love to describe it. It’s more like, Nasdaq is a huge wave, and I’m the surfer. I have absolutely no say in what the wave is going to do, I can only do the best I can in trying to predict where the wave will go, and for how long, and try to ride it. Ride it too long, I crash. Get on too late, I crash. Get on too early...well, you get the idea. But if I catch the wave correctly...COWBUNGA baby!

I of course am not saying a word in our trading Discord of my present circumstances, and how much is riding on my ability to catch those waves. I would hear a chorus of something along the lines of “Get a job on the side to avoid emotions screwing you up”, and “This is a marathon, not a sprint.” And they’d be right...and wrong. Because this isn’t the be-all, end-all. 2023 ITSELF is another major wave, and day trading isn’t going to enable me to catch it entirely. It’s utilizing the money gained from day trading, and making the shift over to TikTok drop shipping (where teenagers are making more in one day than people in my Discord are in a week trading), and in other business models that will give me sustainable, less pulse-pounding sources of income.

I mean, I’ll go out and surf (or should I say, hunt wild animals; another good comparison) if I have to, but in order to take less pressure off myself in that area, I need to also start some farms and gardens, as it were.

Alright. Got 2 hours until I’m off my computer. I believe I may actually have my one trading bot issue under control, and it looks like the updated Forex bot is doing its thing.

Once I get Nasdaq trading down pat, that one will be good for making a bit of extra money on non-news days.

Listened just to music today, and to ASMR audios while I did my mindfulness stuff. Really focused in on the training affirmations. Let me tell ya, when the news is going in the background, while a cat is meowing loudly for attention, THAT is a real test of your patience and empathy! This was going on while trying to do mindfulness. Fun times.

Pretty uneventful day otherwise. Read some 20,000 Leagues under the Sea while I was testing a scheduler program for the bot. It gave my brain a much needed mental break, to be sure.

Take note: reading is yet another tool in helping to refocus your mind, so that you can go back to demanding tasks later in a better headspace. Yes, these seem to be literally demanding tasks in my head at times lol. Kinda like an inner voice going, “DON’T IGNORE ME! I MUST BE SOLVED NOW, you don’t have time for mindfulness or reading! ANY time whatsoever not done in learning about trading, taking notes about trading, or doing trading itself is wasted time!”

All of this is complete and utter nonsense, of course. Unless my mindset is in proper alignment, I.e, I’m in the headspace of a “professional trader”, I can’t get the most out of those times. So 30 to 40ish minutes a day is part of the very work of stepping into that identity of a disciplined, level-headed, empathetic entrepreneur and trader.

Skin of a rhino, heart of a baby. That’s the key. That’s the key. Remember those words, and stick with them, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2...ahem, don’t know what came over me.

Alrightly, beginning tomorrow, my blogs will essentially just be basically the gist of my journal text, and like before, screenshots of my time and habit trackers, along with any other useful links related to what I’m talking about.

Oh, and about that “surviving sleeping outside in the polar vortex video”? Well, I worked on one that was more important for today. My friend who does ASMR is going through a bit of a rough patch, and I really wanted to throw something together to cheer her up. I basically made a short music video (of me playing piano, combined with my own b-roll) hinting at a tune that her character sings in her Southern Charmer role play video.

I’m not going to link it out here, because it was meant mainly for her. It’s the same girl as the video that “accidentally” showed up in the previous post two days agao.

But rest assured, that other video will be coming shortly. And you will see a great chronicle of man versus nature, of great coura...ahem. It’ll be coming soon.

Thanks as always for being awesome and reading this to the end. Remember, you got this!

Music I listened to today:

Chopin Ballade No. 1 in G Minor. Quite possibly in my Top 10 favorite piano pieces. This particular recording came from an album I discovered when I was around 15 years old, at my local library. Whoever curated their Classical albums did a great job.

The entirety of the Album ("Mad About Piano") has many beautiful interpretations of pieces that are among my favorites to this day. Basically, it's hard to go wrong with the Deutsche Gramophone label. Alright, I'm done gushing about music (for now hehe).

Tudaloo.

[demon-dance-club]

About the goddam WW Crypto thing

I really should have known by now wildworks was unable to do anything right...If they go through with this shit I'm gonna riot fr, gimme my fucking 8$ back lmao.

Anyway, here are some of my concerns:

1. Where is all this money/staff coming from, and why can't it go towards games that are already in development??

WW can barely hold 3 games (or two and a half, let's be honest...feral is STILL IN BETA NEED I REMIND YOU) together right now, from what I know there's very little staff and not much money to go around. Feral was taking staff from AJ for a while, and now that they've been sent back to AJ there's supposedly no replacements being hired. That may be because there's no money, but also it's likely that they've been planning this for a while...still you'd think that Feral is a number one priority. Are they *trying* to kill it or what? Once Fer.al is more finished, they should be able to rake in more sweet sweet cash (cuz spoiler alert, many people like to play games that aren't broken), so why hold it back in favour of a new project?

2. The hypocrisy of making Animal Jam and then THIS???

This needs no explanation.

3. This was so obviously the wrong move?

If anyone at the top tier of WW knew SHIT about their demographic, which is honestly probably the exact opposite of crypto bros, they would know that literally no one wants this. This company is so shockingly out of touch, how could this possibly happen?? Massive boomer energy lmao, they really don't have a single person in a leadership role who could have said "yeah idk how that's gonna be received bestie" Also HELLO DID Y'ALL NOT SEE THE MASSIVE BACKLASH FROM THE COOKIE RUN FANDOM WHEN DEVSISTERS STARTED TALKING NFTS???

Aight that's all I got for now, we better fuck this company up until they back down.

[kittymsmithwritesstuff]

Other than Seer/Wraith, what other Apex ships are your jam? I'm very curious!

Seer/Wraith is fun but tbh not a “jam” persay, but flattered you asked! Big Jams incoming~

(these are in no order whatsoever, I like some more than others, some barely qualified as a jam but you know, jam is jam)

-Mirage/Hound, Miragehound, is an OG fave of mine, I think I was (am?) one of the more prolific miragehound writers. Love them still. Like many, big factor is the seen/unseen aspect and that they each fill holes the other has. 

-Horizon/Bangalore, Horizonlore, came to me in S7 with help of my friend and is one of my more active ships I fuckin' love. Mary deserves love and so does GrumpyLore.

-Horizon/Bloodhound, Horizonhound, it’s good shit. Gay as fuck. Valid as hell. I have a very long fanfiction that is ALMOST done but I kinda had to abandon it a-while back. Might try and finish it up and publish it though it’d be out of date with the seasons we’re in lmao. 

-Crypto/Wraith, Cryptaith, this ship is like my main underground jam. I love it, I think it has a lot of potential and is a far “quieter” ship than a lot of the other ones. Two melancholy people trying their best to become themselves again who are also huge meganerds There is basically zero content for this besides a one-shot I made for it last I checked, which is personally a shame. But they live in my head rent free.

-Loba/Octane, Lobatane, this isn’t as big for me as it used to be but I find it fun, basically a crackship. The fact they canonly work together/are friends (lorebook) helped lmao. I like the opposites attract dynamic. And I like the idea of making fun of Loba for liking twinks. 

-Lifeline/Rampart, Rampline, lookit these lil’ lesbians. I love them. Soft. Chaotic. Dangerous. I think Lifeline needs someone a little chaotic like Octane but unlike Octane, Rampart is actually pretty chill off-field. I just feel they really match each other’s energy, just at different angles. 

-Wattson/Mirage, Wattage, my friend got me into this one. They both like puns. Massive dorks. Might have a rocky start but I think as they get into it they’d grow together. 

-Loba/Bangalore, Lobalore, I didn’t really like them until more recently. They’re my go-to “if they’re gonna actually put a canon relationship in Apex, this is the best one they could do”, and honestly I mostly like them in art and canon, but they are really fucking good. I think they have good chemistry, and obviously there is interest on Loba’s part, and this is my personal musing regarding canon, I think Bangalore is also interested, but not immediately. She has her brother to find; Loba has issues with Rev but she’s found him and exacted most of her revenge, so she’s ready to move on where Bangalore can’t yet. Once that changes, I think they could meld well. 

-Fuse/Bloodhound, Fusehound, yeah I’ve fallen down the same hill everyone else has. Truthfully I think BH just needs a friend, but like Lobalore they have really good chemistry because of this. Fuse pulls them out of their shell, BH makes him realize/confront that he has his own issues (ex. Maggie’s suicide) and I think they both like to party. 

Also, Fuse is a DILF and BH has a type don’t @ me.

[unholyplumpprincess]

For the Valentine asks could you do 17, 24, and 35 for Crypto and 30 and 41 for yourself? Happy heart day, I love your work 💕

ABSOLUTELY!!!!!

Notice: These Valentine’s day prompts are closed now! Tysm for joining me on Valentine’s day for some cute prompts :D

Reblogs > Likes

Warnings: Sfw, a LIL suggestive if u squint

-

17. What's the most attractive thing a person could wear? Tae Joon isn't too picky about what revs his engine. But, small peeks of skin are his thing. Like wearing thigh highs + a skirt/shorts so you can see that patch of their thighs or a keyhole sweater with a small cut out on the chest? Or one of those shirts that just show a lil midriff? His jam absolutely.

Also he's a huge fan of lipstick. Huge fan.

-

24. What makes you blush? Oh it's easy as hell to make him blush. That lil 'Crypto' persona he puts on for the arena and the other legends? That hard ass stoic bitch? Just that. A persona. He'll still blush when you say something sweet, and he'll burn red to his ears if it's anything saucy.

Easiest way to make him burn? Let your lips caress the shell of his ear, whisper sweet nothings or filth. Feel how hot his ears get against your lips. V fun.

-

35. Would you prefer to propose or be proposed to? What’s your dream proposal? He's never thought of getting married and his paranoia would probably prevent him from considering it as an option!

-

~FOR PEACH SECTION~

30. Do you prefer to charm, or be charmed? MMMH. See. Okay. I exude dom energy. I'm VERY good at flirting and I'm VERY good at finding out what you like/how to get someone's attention. I've NEVER been asked out first, I've NEVER been flirted with first- u get the idea!

So would I say I prefer to be the charmer? Not really. Once you do it a million times you just wonder what else there is! But I don't know if I'd prefer to be Charmed either. It'll have to be tested I think! But I think I WOULD prefer to be the Charmed one! I wanna feel worth it and desired!

-

41. Favorite soda? Oh my gosh. Hm. Pop. Okay. HMMM. Not to sound like a Gamer but probs mtn dew. But I'm a whore for cherry flavored things, doesn't matter the brand. I also LOVE any sort of grape pop!!!! But so rare to find >:0

[maeryn-liones]

The legends as types of ASMR they might listen to

[I came up with this idea at 2AM and couldn’t sleep. Shhh]

Bangalore

Believe it or not, most of the ASMR she listens to is to relive her trauma. Years of experience in battle can scar a person and being in the IMC??? She’s seen a whole lot, most of it not good. She’ll listen/watch videos that are helpful for people who have experienced trauma. That may include videos that help her try to forget or maybe a few videos trying to help her move on.

Bloodhound

Camping ASMR. Listening to the crackle of the fires or rain always reminds them of home. They can almost feel the late nights in the wilderness on their own again. During very sleepless nights, they’ll open Arthur’s cage and have the bird curl up in the corner of the room and try to mimic sounds that nature makes (look it up, crows can and will mimic the sounds of other creatures)

Caustic

Generally, he won’t listen to ASMR. If he ever has trouble sleeping, he’ll usually take melatonin or drink some tea. But on the rare occasions he does, he’ll try to find carving ASMR. Maybe it’s wood carving or soap carving. The sounds just feel calming and relax him, the sounds can ease his mind. On very super rare occasions, he’ll listen to Mad Scientist ASMR to either make him laugh or just see how some people view him since fan or other legends will joke about that.

Crypto

Anxiety Relief ASMR up the ass my dude. Hacking or spending extended times on his computer will cause him to put on headphones to listen to background ASMR. During the night, it’s sometimes insanely difficult to sleep so he tries to calm himself down. He deep down knows none of the legends would try to hurt him (except for Revanant, that rat bastard that climbs on the ceiling like a fucking creep) so he feels much calmer and safer than he has in a long time

Gibraltar

Not gonna lie, I struggled so much to try and find something he’d listen to. I eventually came up with the conclusion that he listens to nice positive vibes ASMR. Any video that has negative vibes or a weird RP? Begone thot! This man cares about one thing and one thing alone: Trying to stay positive. The original reason he joined the games was to protect those around him and literally all of his lines are along the lines of staying positive and happier. It’s better to keep your head held up high than to put yourself down.

Lifeline

Tapping. As somebody to loves to jam out with her drumsticks, she enjoys tapping on things. This includes when she tries to sleep. She enjoys listening to the sounds late at night as it remind her of her favorite hobby. Anybody who has watched her sleep as she listens to ASMR might notice how she lightly tries to sleepily tap along what she’s hearing.

Loba

Ngl, at the time I’m making this post, Loba hasn’t been out for too long. My personal view of her character may not really be good enough for me to get an accurate viewpoint for this post. Just throwing that out there before I state anything😅

Loba enjoys mic brushing/mic pulling. The sound just feels soothing to her. It drowns out all the background noise that scares her or just makes her feel unsettled at night. Revenant has caused many many many sleepless nights for her so she prefers something to drown out whatever insecurities or fear she might be feeling internally.

Mirage

Positive. Affirmations. Ya’ll. Mirage is so fucking worried all the damn time about everything. He often finds it difficult to sleep because he just worries about a lot. Do the other legends find him annoying??? Do they talk shit behind his back??? Do they hate talking with him??? Do fans only like him for his looks??? He especially struggles after having phone calls with his mom or the anniversary of his brothers disappearing. Those nights are the worst and the hardest for him. He stumbled onto ASMR by total accident and has not stopped using it each and every night since.

Octane

I originally was going to kinda brush this off and say he doesn’t really listen to ASMR and then my brain was like, “You’re a fucking idiot.”

It’s kinda rare to find them (at least in my experience) but Octane listens to ADHD asmr. It is just so fucking difficult to sleep when you can’t turn your fucking brain off. It also doesn’t help when you play video games all night. Octane doesn’t usually listen to ASMR, he’ll try to roll around in his bed for a couple hours before looking up old videos Lifeline showed him when they were kids. He never ever tells her this.

Pathfinder

Doesn’t really listen to ASMR because robot who literally can’t sleep. But, if he finds any of the other legends struggling to sleep, he’ll look up all their favorite ASMR videos and send them to their phones to remind them, “Hey! You use these to sleep friend! You should use them now!” 😁

Revenant

Doesn’t use ASMR to sleep, but will browse old memories or horror movies to hear people screaming. Everybody sleeps super far away from him for a reason

Wattson

Very very gentle and quiet videos. Loud noises bother her so very much that she enjoys very gentle, very soft videos. She enjoys the ones with inaudible whispering so she doesn’t have to focus too hard on what people are saying or doing. No crazy role plays, no doctors appointment role plays, just very very soft and sweet videos.

(I repeated very a lot in this description but shhhh it’s fine)

Wraith

Wraith was one of the hardest to decide because she listens to every kind of ASMR if you want to get technical with dimensional travel. Whispers are definitely a no go, the voices in her head late at night are no fun at fucking all. Doctor ASMR triggers her PTSD at the IMC facility so fuck that. I eventually came to the conclusion that it’s either hair brushing or listening to rain. The hair brushing gives her a sense of peace and eases her mind by quite a bit. At some points, she’ll feel an odd sense of familiarity with those videos. The rain calms almost everybody enough for sleep and Wraith is no exception.

[mozambique-and-a-dream]

Day 30: Trust

Wrote this one in a waiting room on my phone so bear with the typos 😅

~~~~~~~~

“Don’t worry, I got you friend!” Pathfinder exclaimed as he jammed a revive needle into the chest of his teammate. He offered a hand and helped Crypto get back onto his feet. “There you go! All better!”

The hacker simply nodded in response, pulling a syringe out of his backpack.

“Unfortunately Wraith didn’t make it,” Pathfinder went on, a sad face shining on his screen. “It’s just you and me friend! We can do it!”

“Putting an eye in the sky,” Crypto said, ignoring the high five that was now being offered to him. He flew his drone out of the small building they were taking cover in. There were six squads left and with them being down a player, the odds of a win were looking grim.

“What would you like to do, friend?” Pathfinder asked, peering over Crypto’s shoulder as if to try and get a look at what his drone saw.

“We need to get some high ground,” the hacker said, eyeing the two squads that were in the area.

“I can do that! I’m very good at getting into high ground!” Pathfinder chirped, feeling excited that he was going to be able to help his team.

“We both need to get onto the high ground,” Crypto reminded him. “I don’t have a grapple.”

“And my next zip line isn’t ready yet!” At this Crypto frowned, he didn’t like the idea of staying where they were. “I have an idea!” the robot interrupted his thoughts. “Follow me!”

Pathfinder trotted outside of the building. He looked around at their surroundings, trying to decide the best cliff to get them onto. Once he found the location he put an arm around Crypto’s waist.

“Hey!” he exclaimed, jumping out of the robots grasp. “What are you doing?!” Pathfinder screen displayed a question mark.

“Getting us to high ground!” he exclaimed, offering his arm back to Crypto. “Friend, do you trust me?”

“Uh,” Crypto bit his bottom lip, unsure of the answer to that question. He didn’t trust anyone. Everyone knew that. This robot wasn’t any different. He was about to share that thought with Pathfinder when they could hear another squad approaching them. “Okay, fine. Whatever.”

“You trust me?”

“Yes,” Crypto sighed. “I trust you.”

“Great!” Pathfinder wrapped one of his arms around Crypto again and with his other arm he reached up his grapple, sending both him and Crypto soaring to the high ground. “Wasn’t that fun?!” Crypto rolled his eyes, not wanting to admit that it was sort of fun.

“Sure,” he muttered. “I’m not trusting you again though.”

[seerofmike]

cryptane cryptane cryptane i wanna hear everything about them go WILD

CRYPTANE. I LOVE CRYPTANEEEE

okay i will list the reasons i love them

1. im not good at conflict so i dont rly incorporate this into my writing BUT i think they would have a rly interesting potential dynamic as someone who joined the games for selfish reasons and someone who joined for personal reasons. octane being very pro game because he likes the rush and crypto being very anti game because the gamerunners killed his fucking sister man. theres some spice there. i'd like to see how they interact

2. sunshiney / loud / extrovert character x darker / quiet / introvert character has always been my fucking JAM

3. they are trans men thank u. i mostly do trans octane but thats because i headcanon him to be in a situation much closer to my own whereas i hc crypto as fully transitioned

4. i think they are gamer boyfriends and could share some interests canonically (seeing as crypto went into pc cafés and octane plays like 4 video games at a time)

5. i think even if it turns out crypto doesnt care for octane because of their conflicting interests octane would be VERY interested in crypto (as he would wraith and bangalore) because theyre "exciting" people. theyre mysteries and he cant wait to unravel them. octane is tired of boring rich people from psamathe; crypto is hiding something and that shit interests him

6. i personally think if apex goes down the route of pro-syndicate legends vs anti-syndicate i think octane would be on crypto's side of anti-syndicate not for any deep reasons? but simply because its just rebellion. theres a theory that silva pharma is associated with the syndicate and provides medkits and stuff so if octane can view it as rebelling against his dad then he would. it'd be yet another interesting dynamic of "both are anti-syndicate but have very different outlooks on the games"

okay im cutting this short but i love them a lot

[spaceskam]

Make All The Madness Go Away (a buffy au)

Day 1 of Michael Guerin Week: Welcome to the party

Special thanks to @tempest-nova for giving me the idea of Michael as Spike and @michaels-blackhat for listening to me ramble for hours about it before i never brought it up again because i didn’t want to be annoying 

ao3

“I didn’t say it was bad, I said it wasn’t my type of thing.”

“What do you mean? You’re the Slayer! Xena should be your queen! Oh my god, I feel like I don’t even know you!”

Liz snorted as she let Maria continue to ramble on about the cultural significance of Xena: The Warrior Princess. She could understand that having strong, powerful women in media was important, but Liz was already living that life. She didn’t want to go home and watch more of it.

Somewhere during Maria’s empowering and distracting speech, a car sped right past them and almost hit them. Liz scoffed and prepared to yell after it, but she was stopped when it slammed right into a tree. Her eyes widened.

“Shit,” Maria breathed and they shared a single look before running towards the smoking wreckage. So much for patrolling.

Liz and Maria checked the window of the backseat first, making sure there were no children before they moved to the front. The driver seemed to be conscious, haphazardly pawing at the door handle. When she tried the door, it was jammed closed, so she used a little bit of Slayer strength to rip it open. The driver spilled out and Liz caught him. He gave a bloody smile.

“Slayer, my hero,” he said, “Long time no see.”

Liz let him fall to the pavement.

“Maria,” she called, double-checking to make sure she was okay. She came around the car to stand beside her, both women staring at the laughing figure on the ground. He had long, unruly curls that were splayed around his head on the ground and was wearing all black head to toe, even down to the leather duster and combat boots. “Who are you?” Liz demanded.

He rolled over, still laughing as he dragged himself to his feet. Liz instinctively pushed Maria behind her, putting space between her and whatever this thing was who knew her.

“Oh, don’t you remember me? Wait, wait, wrong species, Slayers don’t pass on their memories. Whoops,” he chuckled, spitting blood on the ground and dusting himself off, “Oh well, perfect timing. I was indeed looking for you and your rag-tag team of hooligans.”

Liz narrowed her eyes at him. “Why would you be looking for me?”

He blinked all innocently and gave a smile. He pushed his hair to the side before gesturing to himself then doing a little twirl whenever she still didn’t seem to recognize him.

“Do they teach you anything? I would’ve thought you’d at least hear about me. Michael the Brilliant?” he asked wistfully. She still didn’t know “I know at least one book said I was possessed by the most wrathful demon God ever banished so they called me Rath. Does that ring a bell?”

“No.”

“Oh, come on!” Michael, apparently, whined, “I killed four Slayers and I don’t even get credit?”

Liz slowly felt for the stake in her back pocket. He didn’t seem to notice.

“Why are you in Roswell?” Liz demanded. She didn’t need to know any more about this vampire. He clearly was overconfident and that meant he needed to go. But she also needed to make sure he didn’t have others like him just floating around Roswell.

“Funnily enough, I need your assistance. Since you’re so kind to Maxwell, I figured you might extend that kindness,” he said, that charming smile on display. Liz furrowed her eyebrows even more and felt Maria grab her arm.

“You know Max?” Liz asked, refusing to show any weakness even if she was curious.

“Oh, Slayer,” Michael laughed, “I just told you I’ve killed four of you! Do you think I did that with no research? I’m almost flattered,” he hummed. However, when she didn’t respond, he grew a bit more serious. “We have been laying low for nearly five decades. I never intended to have to even go out again, but my sister is ill. The last Slayer I killed poisoned her and she has been slowly deteriorating. The only way to heal her is with the assistance of someone who has access to the Watcher’s Council. I would never seek you out otherwise, Slayer.” Oddly enough, he sounded sincere.

“And why would I help you?” she asked, looking him up and down. She gripped the stake. Sincere or not, she didn’t trust him. Especially not to do something as stupid as saving another vampire.

“Ask your boyfriend.”

In that moment, Liz quickly pulled the stake out and went to bury it in his chest. Except it didn’t. Instead, with the flick of his wrist, he had it flying across the parking lot. Liz blinked a few times and for the first time in a long time, she was scared.

“Did I forget to mention I dabble in the arts? You really should never mix the two forces. But you should've seen their faces when they tried to hang me during the trails,” Michael laughed all over again. Liz was brought a little comfort when Maria started murmuring in Latin.

Within a few minutes, Michael’s body slammed against the smoking car. He smiled. Even though Maria was holding in place, Liz made sure to keep firmly between them.

“Mm, another witch. We share blood, don’t we?” Michael said, humming as he happily relaxed in the hold Maria had on him, “I feel you, Enchantress. Your Slayers feeds you well. And how does that feel? To be more powerful than a Slayer. The Slayer. The legendary Elizabeth. The one to close the Hellmouth. You make her weak in comparison. You… Your power,” Michael let out a low chuckle, his eyes falling closed and Liz’s nose began to scrunch up in disgust, “My God, your power.”

Maria thankfully let him go before it got too weird, but he didn’t move from his place against the car.

“I’m not that powerful,” Maria said and Liz put her arm in front of her so she wouldn’t get closer.

Michael smiled, staring at her with half-lidded eyes. “But you are. I could teach you how to find it, but I’m sure you’re aware. You already hide it so well‒I couldn’t even feel it until you let me. Fuck…”

Liz looked over at Maria who seemed unsettlingly neutral about the way the demon was acting. When she looked back at him, he’d lulled his head to the side and was staring at her with those same eyes. It made her far more uncomfortable than it made Maria.

“Poor little Slayer,” he sang, letting out a teasing laugh. But then he shook it away, standing straighter. “We’re staying at an abandoned house on the outskirts of town. All the windows are blacked out, you can’t miss it. Goodbye, Slayer. Enchantress.”

With a dramatic twirl of his coat, Michael the Brilliant disappeared into the night.

-

“He called himself Michael the Brilliant. He said a few books refer to him as Rath, though. Have you ever heard of him?”

Liz watched as Mimi DeLuca’s face hardened. Bingo.

“Stay away from him,” Mimi said simply. Times like these, when Liz agreed full-heartedly, she actually enjoyed having a Watcher. “He’s bad news.”

“He didn’t seem that bad,” Maria said absentmindedly, clearly embarrassed by her opinion on the man. Liz honestly agreed that she should be embarrassed. Michael was sketchy at best, genuinely terrifying at worst. she didn't want any of her friends around him or his supposed sister.

"Crypto-pedia says his estimated rebirth was 1690 and his standard M.O. is luring young witches by telling them he can train them. Ironically, I think feeding on them helps him develop more powers that help him feel the power that witches radiate," Alex recited. Mimi scoffed as she leaned over his shoulder.

"They have a whole page on him? I really wish I had the internet when I was doing Watcher's schooling," she mused. However, when she turned back to them, she was serious once again. "Like I said-Maria, stay away from him. He's got over three decades of experience seducing witches."

"Also a big history of killing Slayers. Killed his first one in 1691. He was a baby when he took her down," Alex scoffed, shaking his head, "Be careful, Liz."

"We're just going to stay away from him. We'll deal with him if he approaches us but we're not going to seek him out," Mimi insisted. Liz chewed on her lip as she debated telling them what he'd said about Max. She was going to just wait and talk to Max about it first, but it was important information.

"Oh, shit," Alex cursed and for a moment she thought it was because Kyle was drooling on his textbook, but soon saw an old painting displayed on the computer screen. It was of three figures covered in blood.

The one in the front and on his knees was Michael, managing to look seductive even with his face contorted and his teeth bared. Over his shoulder stood Max so very clearly, his teeth just as on display and pure violence in his eyes despite the fact he was covered in less blood than the other two. Above both men was a nearly blindingly gorgeous woman. she was in all white, unlike Max and Michael, and blood was covering the entire front of her dress. Her face was relaxed completely, her eyes half-lidded. Just staring at a painting felt intoxicating.

And that must be his allegedly ill sister.

"Man, this Michael guy really is hot. In like a kill-me-in-my-sleep, rip-my-throat-out kinda way," Alex commented.

"Sweetie, none of what you just said is hot," Mimi said, shaking her head as she stared at the painting in distaste, "This is the Regency of the Restoration. Basically, they were so prolific in the late 1600s/early 1700s that they have paintings and songs about them. Most of them were lost. This painting... I actually think Isobel stole it."

"She did."

Everyone in the room turned to see Max standing in the doorway. His lips were pressed together in a thin line, something between dread and embarrassment scrawled across his features.

"Why are you looking into Michael and Isobel?" he asked quietly, not moving from where he was as if he was scared to get too close.

After seeing that painting, Liz was glad he kept his distance.

She knew of his past, of how he was before he got cursed with a soul. He was vile, vicious, and idolized for it. Liz would never be over the way books constantly spoke of him and said they were demonizing him while glorifying it. It was like Michael‒they did horrible things to be known. Why would you grant them that?

"Michael approached me," Liz said firmly, eying him as he neared her. She couldn't see it like Alex saw it as much as she wished she could. The idea of him covered in someone's blood made her stomach turn.

Max scowled harshly. "He did what?"

"What?" Kyle echoed as he chose now to wake up. Alex shushed him softly, but Liz never took her eyes off of Max and he never looked away from her either.

"He's in Roswell?" Max asked, seeming oblivious. Liz clenched her jaw and took a slow breath. "Why did he approach you? What did he say? Did he hurt y‒Maria, did he hurt you?" Liz was brought a little comfort by how concerned he seemed. It reminded her that he wasn't like that anymore. He had morals.

"No, he didn't. Honestly, he didn't even try," Maria informed him. Max's eyebrows pulled together in confusion. "He said his sister is sick and needs the assistance of a Slayer. Well, actually just someone who can get him the antidote for whatever the Watchers poisoned her with."

Max nodded slowly, bracing himself against the wall and his eyes turning to the floor. Liz waited patiently for him to decide what to say because she didn't really have many questions. She only had one: how did they get him to leave Roswell. She had no intention to help.

"She's sick?" Max asked, pain lacing his tone and Liz felt a bit of panic rise in her, "Sick enough that he'd approach a Slayer? No, okay, I need to go see her, did he say where they were?"

"Max, seriously? Who are these people to you? Why do you care if she's sick? It looks like you knew them back when you were... not yourself, why do you care about them no?" Liz demanded. Apparently, she had more questions than she realized.

Max squeezed his eyes shut, rubbing his hand over his face. She waited. They all waited.

"They're my family," Max said simply even though there was nothing simple about what he'd just said. No one spoke. They could've heard a pin drop. "Stop looking at me like that, just... just give me a moment."

"A moment? Every other vampire that we've come across that you knew in the past, you've grown to hate them. Now these two, these vampires who were clearly the worst of them all, come back and you say they're your family?" Liz insisted. It would've been different if maybe he'd mentioned them, but he hadn't. They had never been around and Michael had said they were flying under the radar for decades. This didn't make any sense.

"Isobel was my actual, biological sister," he said, annoyance written across his face, "Our mother died during childbirth and we were basically on our own after that. Because of that, we got affiliated with the wrong people and started going to feeder's dens by the time we were 16. Obviously, that's a slippery slope and we both got turned within a few years."

Max crossed the room, slumping in a chair in the middle of everyone since he knew he was clearly telling a tale they all were eager to hear.

"We were... angry, I guess. Maybe it was from when we were human and it carried over, but we felt entitled. For years we had been denied everything because of our status, but we now had something where they couldn't tell us no. We attacked many people that had wronged us in life or even just seemed the type who would have. Isobel was really good at luring disgusting men in with her beauty and she'd rip them apart as payback for what they'd done to her when she was a little girl."

"If you're trying to make us think that what you two did wasn't all that bad, you're wasting your time," Liz said curtly. He looked up at her like a wounded puppy, but she wasn't going to let that face affect her this time. She'd done so far too many times before.

"That's not what I'm trying to do, Liz," he sighed, shaking his head, "I'm just saying... We were close. We always had been, she's apart of me and I'm apart of her."

"Okay, where does Michael come into this?" Maria asked. Mimi was standing off on the side, her face hardened as if she already knew everything. That was only slightly annoying.

"I was given my soul in 1688 and Isobel and I moved to a small town in Masechuttseus. She wasn't a fan of me being, well, more human, but she put up with it because we're all we had. And we met Michael in that town. He reminded me of myself, just a kid who was abandoned and struggling to survive. So we took him in."

"Two vampires took in a human? How quaint," Kyle snorted. Max seemed to fight the urge to be annoyed. He didn't really have the right to do that right now.

"He needed shelter and I wanted to do better, so I gave it to him and tried to protect him from a life like mine. I wanted to help, not hurt. Only, Isobel didn't trust him. She became so paranoid that he was going to betray us and get us killed or something no matter how hard he tried to please her. And he did try hard to please her. He saw her as something of a mother figure he never had and spent day in and day out catering to her, but she took it as him having devious intentions. Then, in 1690, when the Slayer of that time had been making noise around our town, she was convinced he had sent for her to kill us. So she turned him because then he could no longer out us without outing himself," Max explained. Liz could feel her face being taken over with disgust at this woman that Max clearly seemed to care about. How could he still care for someone who murdered a boy you took in to protect?

"Jesus," Alex cursed, the only one who had it in him to say anything.

"I-I don't actually know what happened to him after that," Max sighed, rubbing his hand over his face, "I obviously know that he lost his soul, but I didn't expect him to... Basically, his already unhealthy obsession with pleasing Isobel was heightened. His loyalty to her is something I've never seen before. He was barely fully turned when he went after the Slayer for her. I wish I could tell you how he did it, but I don't know. I just know he managed to kill her and brought her body to Isobel as a present.

"I didn't know what to do about it. They're my family, they're important to me, but they were becoming calculated killers and I just couldn't take being around that. I tried to explain to them that it wasn't okay, that I couldn't be around it. And... they tried to stop. Sort of. Michael started specifically targeting witches and he'd bring them back to Isobel to drain together, but it wasn't as common as before so I tried to take it as a step in the right direction. Eventually, though, they started gaining powers that they got from the witches. I guess I shouldn't have stuck around once it got to that point, but I was stuck. It took me a century before I finally realized they weren't going to stop. The guilt of standing by as they lured girls in was rivaling how much I love them, so I left. I've tried to keep tabs on them, but they'd been hard to find for the last few decades. I don't even think they're really killing much anymore, but I'm not sure. I haven't seen them since the turn of the 20th century."

Everyone was silent as they tried to make what they could from the story, but Liz focused hard on Max. He took a slow, almost pained breath as he dared to look up at her.

"But she's really sick?"

Liz hated herself for a moment, hated how she resigned to desperately wanting to make him look less broken. She was so desperate that she was actually considering helping a vampire who was known for being horrifically violent and apparently manipulative. No matter how hard she tried to shake away that feeling, she was confronted with an overwhelming need to make him feel better. She hated how pained he looked.

"Michael said the last Slayer he killed poisoned Isobel with something the Watcher's Council made and that she's been slowly deteriorating since," Liz said softly. Max scoffed, shaking his head before he dropped it into his palms.

"That was 50 years ago. She's been sick for half a century and they haven't tried to reach out to me," Max said. Liz gravitated towards him, her hand touching his shoulder as she looked up to the rest of the people in the room. They clearly didn't feel as sympathetic as she did, but why should they? “I understand if you don’t want to help them, but I have to. No matter what, they’re my family.”

"So are we,” Liz stated firmly, “What should we do?" Alex and Kyle shared a look not too unlike the look Mimi and Maria shared. She knew that they didn't really want to do anything, thinking it was too dangerous. "It's his family. That makes it a little different than just some random vampires."

"They're dangerous, Liz," Kyle said carefully, "Maybe he was civil when he came to ask you for help, but that doesn't mean it's going to stay that way."

"We could go meet them, like, all of us. Somewhere on even ground so we can feel out the situation and see if she's actually sick and if they're actually that dangerous," Alex suggested, though even he sounded hesitant, "If he says they've dialed down their killings, it's worth a shot to check it out. If it's bad, then we figure out how to run them out of town."

"I don't want Maria anywhere near him," Mimi said firmly, shaking her head, "You all can go if you want, but not her."

Maria didn't argue.

"How does that sound, Max?" Liz asked him softly. He looked torn as he looked around the room.

"I'll protect you all if he gets out of hand," he said firmly, "But I would appreciate your help."

"Okay then," Liz said even though she felt this was the beginning to a very risky situation, "Let's do this."

-

The first thing Alex saw when they walked into the demon bar was Michael.

And apparently, the first thing Michael saw was Alex.

"And who is this?" Michael said the moment they walked up. The way he was staring at Alex had him feeling insecure in a way he hated and desperately tried to push away. He kept his face firm as Michael stood up, circling him like prey. "What are you?"

"Human," Alex said, eyeing Max and Liz who seemed to be watching Michael with nothing but annoyance.

"No," Michael whispered, his breath hot on Alex's neck which sent shivers down his spine and a million waves of confusion to his mind. He didn't know vampires had breath, much less hot breath. "What are you?"

"I told you," Alex said sternly, "Human."

Michael paused in front of him, letting out a huffed laugh. "There's no way. That energy you give off..."

"Michael, stop it," Max sighed. Michael looked to him with furrowed brows.

"I'm serious, you don't feel that? What is that? How are you human?" Michael said, moving closer to Alex once again. He felt predatory in a way that had Alex feeling a little more into it than he wanted to admit. Why did he have to be so damn hot? "I don't understand how you can be human and yet make me feel so‒"

"Michael," Max snapped, "Stop trying that shit on him."

"I'm not!" Michael responded defensively, though a small smirk played on his lips as he leaned back against the bar. "Though I definitely want to. It's not my fault your entire Slayer’s Brigade is gorgeous."

"Alex," Liz ordered, gesturing for him to go stand behind her. He obliged, although requiring a bit of tugging from Kyle to make it all the way. He couldn't take his eyes off of Michael.

"Where is Isobel?" Max demanded eventually and Michael managed to look away from Alex which only had him feeling slightly upset. It was like he just then registered that Max was actually there. He blinked at him a few times and his cocky smirk was all but completely gone.

“She can’t leave the house. She’s too weak,” Michael answered, “Where you been, Maxwell? I know you have been with this Slayer lately, but what about before?”

“You knew I was around.”

“Isobel needed you and you weren’t there,” Michael scoffed, shaking his head, “You’re a shit brother.”

“Why did you seek our help if you were just going to be a complete asshole to us?” Max demanded. Alex tried to care, he really did, but he really wanted to focus on what Michael meant. What feeling to he give off? He wanted to know.

“I don’t want your help. I have no choice. And I need the Slayer’s help, not yours,” he spat, shaking his head. Alex felt an inexplicable need to make him stop looking so irritated. It was more uncomfortable than the smirking. “I don’t know why we even met here. We can’t fucking help Isobel here.”

“We’re here because they aren’t sure if we should help you. You have no proof that Isobel is actually sick,” Max said, though they all knew Max believed she was. They had prepared before meeting him, pouring over every little detail they could find about the Watchers as well as what Mimi knew herself. None of them could find even a mention of a serum, not even something that was in the works to be tested. Not even Alex, who was very good at hacking into all the systems the Watchers had, couldn’t find a damn thing.

“Why the fuck would I be here if she wasn’t?” Michael snapped, looking angry and desperate. He had to reel himself back in, taking a deep breath and through gritted teeth. “Listen, I just need whatever fancy antidote they have.”

“There isn’t one,” Alex said simply. Michael shot his gaze back to him, his jaw clenched as he waited for Alex to keep talking. For some stupid reason, Alex didn’t find him that scary. He reminded him of just a big dog who needed a little more friendship. “Are you sure it was the Watchers who poisoned her?”

“Who else would it be?” he asked, “No offense, but the typical Slayer is all brawn and no brain.”

“Well, I’m not your typical Slayer,” Liz shot back. Michael smiled tightly, hardly taking his eyes off of Alex again.

“We know that.”

“Alright, I’m going to come and see what I can find out,” Liz decided firmly. Max looked at her like she’d lost it.

“If you go in there, she’ll kill you,” Max told her.

“No she won’t, she can’t,” Michael argued.

“Have her mental abilities lessened?” Max asked. Michael didn’t say anything. “See? No, you’re not going there, Liz. She can and will do something to you, especially if it was a Slayer that harmed her.”

“Well, I don’t want you going by yourself there, you’re too emotion I don’t trust them,” Liz argued, “Someone else from our team needs to go and the only person I trust not to get killed is myself.”

“Little Alex can come too,” Michael suggested, grinning slowly. Which, honestly, sounded like a good idea to him even if Liz and Kyle immediately jumped in to protest. Alex had spent the last two days researching the two of them endlessly. He’d known everything they’d done that had ever been recorded‒and most of their movements had been recorded. They were infamous.

“Max and I can go,” Alex agreed, “I make sure he isn’t in cahoots with them and he can make sure they don’t kill me.” Michael broke out into a smile.

“Cahoots,” he repeated softly, his tongue dragging his bottom lip in between his teeth as he shook his head and chuckled to himself.

“And if he is in cahoots with them, you will be murdered by three vampires,” Kyle pointed out.

“Yeah, but what a way to go,” Michael laughed. No one else found that funny, so he held up his hands in defense. “Look, not gonna let anyone lay a finger or fang on his pretty little body. Too intrigued by his whole vibe to let that happen.”

“What vibe?” Alex asked before he could stop himself. Michael shrugged and shook his head.

“If I knew I’d tell you.”

“So, that’s the plan then? We’re trusting three vampires with Alex?” Kyle sighed softly. Alex and Michael nodded at the same time which caused the vampire to smile.

Alex would be lying if he said he wasn’t eager to go.

-

“Isobel’s in the back room.”

Max immediately followed the instruction which led to Alex being left all alone with Michael. He watched the vampire make himself at home, seeming weirdly human as he took off the steam-punk boots to reveal colorful socks. Alex smiled mockingly at them, one bright orange with cats and the other a baby blue with a cartoon whale saying ‘having a whale of a time’. Michael flopped himself onto the couch, wiggling his toes as he grinned Alex’s way.

“Come here,” Michael urged. Alex shook his head with the same smile as he began to look around the room. It was pretty modern for a vampire den: working electricity, a kitchen, a TV, and even a laptop in the corner.

Alex kept himself aware even when he wasn’t directly looking at him. While he wasn’t scared of him, he also wasn’t about to be caught off guard. That had happened one too many times before. Since he was aware, he didn’t even flinch at the animalistic movements Michael made as he crawled to the other side of the couch and climbed skillfully to the recliner, leaning over the back to intrude on Alex’s space.

“Can I taste you?” he suddenly requested. Alex furrowed his eyebrows and leaned away to get a good look at his face.

“No,” Alex said, “Literally why would I say yes to that?”

“I want to know what you are,” he said, tilting his head to the side, “It’s driving me mad. I just know if I taste you I’ll understand more.”

“Yeah, well, you can’t bite me,” Alex said, walking towards the couch, “And if you do anyway, I will kill you.”

“Why would I do it anyway? That takes the fun out of it, I like when people want it,” he said softly, still eyeing Alex like he was so fucking confused. Alex was torn between loving it and hating it.

“How do you somehow have better morals than some people who have souls?”

“Good question.”

Alex peered towards the door that Max had gone through. It was shut tight. Clearly, they weren’t watching each other like Liz had insisted. Oh well. They could lie.

“Put your blood in a cup so I can taste. No biting involved,” Michael suggested, suddenly in front of him again.

“Good suggestion, but no,” Alex said, circling to the front of the couch. Michael’s gaze stayed firmly on him, following each and every movement.

“You can do it when I’m not in the room so there’s no temptation.”

“Why do you care so much?” Alex asked. While he was slightly curious as to what Michael meant by everything, he wasn’t stupid enough to fall for it when it was probably an elaborate excuse to get him to agree to being bitten. Michael huffed an annoyed breath, but never gave an answer.

They walked around in silence for a moment, still eyeing each other despite the distance between them. Michael was annoyingly attractive and, even in the light, could easily be mistaken for human. The longer they stared, the more comfortable he got with it. He knew the staring likely would’ve pissed off Liz and Kyle and Maria and Mimi. Honestly, probably Max too. He wasn’t so negative.

“I got it,” Michael suddenly said, jumping over the couch and grabbing Alex’s hand. He pulled him quickly through the door to the room Max and Isobel were in, throwing him in front of him the moment they got through. “Izzy! What is he?”

Alex felt the floor drop from beneath him as he became the sole focus of Isobel. Her paintings and descriptions did her no justice. She was nothing short of ethereal. It was impossible not to look at her and let her engulf you with her wide eyes and penetrating gaze.

She wore a long, deep red robe tied around an equally as red slip and her hair seemed skillfully unkempt. While Michael seemed human on some level, Isobel didn’t seem to share that. She was purely otherworldly, but not quite animalistic. She neared Alex with deliberate movements, slow and inhuman. She touched Alex’s cheek and if she asked him anything in the world, he would have surrendered.

“Human,” she decided in a careful voice, pushing on his jaw to face Michael, “He’s human.”

“What?” Michael demanded, sounding more than a little annoyed, “That doesn’t make any sense, he‒”

“Michael,” Max said firmly, “You and Alex need to go, we were speaking.” Michael’s eyebrows slowly pulled together in a level of hurt he couldn’t hide.

“This is my house, I can‒”

“Michael,” Max said, louder this time. Alex found it quite interesting how different Michael became when he was in the same room with both Max and Isobel. He wasn’t the powerful, power-reading, telekinetic vampire. He was suddenly just a boy who had been on the receiving end of a neverending Us vs. You situation.

“You can go,” Isobel said, lightly pushing his jaw towards Michael.

Once they were back into the main room, Alex had to give himself a moment to readjust. All the research he’d done made it clear that, due to the way he was feeling, Isobel had probably just gotten into his mind. Which was terrifying. It made Michael cornering him against the wall much less terrifying in comparison.

“You can’t be human,” Michael accused, breathing heavy in residual anger, “I swear to fuck, I can feel you. I feel you.”

Alex couldn’t find it in him to be scared as Michael pushed further into his space. He knew he should be. He wasn’t. But it was a distraction for the fuzziness in his mind and that made it easy to play along.

“Maybe all you feel is that I’m the only one who isn’t scared of you,” Alex said back. Michael took a deep, grounding breath and that easy, suave smile found its place outside of his anger.

“Is that so?”

“I’ve done my research on you. I know everything there is to know about you,” Alex admitted. Michael’s eyes flickered across his face and lingered on his lips just long enough to have Alex’s mind wandering a bit too much.

“Everything?”

“Everything,” Alex confirmed, his voice matching Michael’s low pitch. The smirk and the half-lidded eyes on the vampire’s face was something out of a wet dream he didn’t know he’d have. “Which means I know how your powers work, I know how quick your reaction time is, and I know I’m quicker.” Michael leaned closer, their chests meeting.

“Yeah?”

“I could kill you if I really wanted. It’d be easy,” Alex told him though he knew he was probably lying. While he was indeed quick, vampires much less dangerous than him had put Alex in the hospital. But, honestly, he wasn’t Michael’s type of victim and he wasn’t one to expand. He’d had a type since he turned.

“We should spar sometime and put your money where your pretty little mouth is,” Michael suggested.

“Maybe we should.”

“Will you get away from him,” Max snapped out of nowhere, grabbing Michael by the neck and physically pulling Michael off him.

“Get the fuck off me!” Michael shouted, twisting out of Max’s hold and glaring at him. Alex watched the metaphorical pissing contest unfold between them.

“Liz is going to kill you if you get that close to him again,” Max threatened, eyeing Michael like he was nothing more than scum, “And I’ll be happy when she does.”

Michael stared at him for a minute before swiftly turning and stalking away. Alex looked at Max with furrowed brows. He hadn’t really seen an inherently aggressive side to the man. Something about Michael and Isobel must have brought it out of him. He still had the audacity to look apologetic about Michael’s actions.

Oddly enough, Alex left that day feeling bad for him.

-

“We’re doing what?”

Alex rolled his eyes at Max’s tone. He was becoming more and more annoyed with him by the day. It didn’t help that Michael was around more to help find the antidote to whatever that one particular Watcher had conjured up along with helping both Alex and Kyle get better at fighting against vampires. The more Alex warmed to Michael, the more Max irritated him.

“It’s a good idea,” Michael chimed in. He was sprawled on the couch in the back of the magic shop, his feet firmly in Alex’s lap. Mimi had Maria as far away from him as possible, but even she had warmed to him a bit. Max was the only one left with a major problem.

“There is nothing good about it.”

“Max,” Liz said firmly, “We are breaking into a paranoid ex-Watcher’s house that is vamp-proofed. The only reason you’re coming is to stand guard with Kyle. Mimi and Maria can’t stay because they have to charm the Watcher. I need both Alex and Michael here because Alex is the only one who can even hack into his security system and he’s the one in control of the camera that Michael will be using as eyes to get the serum without disturbing the literal spikes around it. Do you hear a way there would be anyone else to babysit Michael and Alex?”

Max looked very annoyed he wasn’t getting his way. He glared at Michael which obviously made him tense. Alex mindlessly rubbed his ankle.

“Listen,” Michael said, that cocky little smirk on his face as he tried not to get angry, “I am the first person to agree that I’m dangerous and probably shouldn’t be trusted with certain people, but my little Alex here is not one of them. I wouldn’t lay a fang on him.” Max looked like he was going to kill him.

“I don’t like this.”

“Why are you so protective of Alex all of the sudden?” Liz demanded, turning to him completely.

“It’s not just of Alex, I don’t trust him around any of you, but he’s taken a liking to Alex which is not okay,” Max accused.

“Alex can handle himself,” Kyle jumped in.

“Alex can speak for himself,” Alex sighed, trying hard not to roll his eyes, “Listen, he hasn’t hurt any of us yet, why are you so certain that’ll change when we’re alone?”

“Because I know him. He’s manipulative and selfish. We’re giving him what he wants!”

“It’s also what you want, Max,” Liz said, crossing her arms over her chest, “We gave you a chance and you’ve done worse than him.”

Max didn’t have an answer. Alex squeezed Michael’s ankle.

“Right. Everyone meet back here at 10 PM to put the plan into action.”

The room quickly cleared out, leaving Michael and Alex alone as if they weren’t just arguing about it. Alex turned to face the vampire.

“You were awfully quiet during that,” he pointed out. Michael breathed in slow, a smirk forming on his face.

“You don’t like when I get into it, so I’m trying to do better,” he answered. Alex snorted.

“You didn’t get in a fight just because I don’t like it?” Alex clarified. Michael shrugged his shoulders, eyeing him. “Man, you keep doing stuff like that and I’m gonna start thinking you like me.”

Michael grunted softly in amusement, a predatory look taking over his face before it transformed into that of a vampire. His teeth were bared and he was sitting so close, but Alex just smiled at him.

“Gonna go kill some shit before 10, gotta make sure Isobel’s fed. See you then,” Michael spoke easily, getting up and leaving without another word.

Alex shook his head with a smile before getting up and preparing the camera and microphone he’d be hooking up to Liz.

-

“Okay, be careful.”

“I am being careful.”

“I literally don’t think you’re ever careful.”

Michael chuckled lowly as he listened to Alex and Liz argue while she walked through the Watcher’s weird lab. The man was almost 95 years old, but apparently, he was still batshit crazy enough to have a fully functioning chem lab where he brewed serums to kill vampires. Isobel had just gotten a very early version of it and it was the only reason she’d made it 50 years.

“Okay, disable this,” Liz said softly. Michael watched as Alex did some fancy, smart shit that went over his head. Alex was impressive.

Michael leaned closer to him, eyes drifting from Alex’s work on the computer to his collarbone. His skin was tan and seemingly flawless, every curve of his body just as perfect. It was hard to stay away, even harder the more he stared.

He had no intention to bite him and he had no desire to either. Occasionally Maria would catch his eye and Kyle would annoy him to the point that he considered it, but the Slayer, the Watcher, and Alex were all tolerable. Alex was more than tolerable. Alex was one of a kind, literally. In all his years alive, he’d never met someone as intoxicating as Alex. The only exception was Isobel, but he was drawn to them in very different ways.

“Stop,” Alex whispered, nudging Michael away as his nose grazed the hacker’s jaw. Michael blinked a few times, moving away just a little bit and just enough to see Alex’s sweet smile. “You’re up.”

Michael shook himself out of the trance he’d been in, looking towards the screen. The camera was pretty shitty quality, but it was enough that he could see what he was supposed to do. He focused as well as he could on the image of the little vile surrounded in complex spikes, watching it slowly be lifted and weaved through them like he wanted.

“Yes, you’re doing great,” Alex said softly, continuing to pour words of encouragement over him in a way he wasn’t used to. Though, everything Alex did were things he wasn’t used to.

The vile landed in Liz’s hand and Michael fell back in his chair, exhaustion overcoming him. He hated using his powers for that long because of how it made him feel, but it was so fucking worth it for Isobel’s safety and the proud smile Alex gave him.

“You did it,” Alex breathed out, mindlessly putting his hand on Michael’s thigh and squeezing. Michael smiled. Honest to god smiled. “Now get out of there, Liz.”

Alex turned off the camera and microphone once everyone made it safely into the car and started making the two-hour drive home. He leaned back with a satisfied little grin, letting his head drift to face Michael. He looked so stunning.

“So, you gonna kill me now?” Alex asked playfully. Michael snorted.

“Why would I do that?”

“You’re getting what you want. In a few hours, Isobel’s gonna be okay. You don’t have to stick around, much less leave us alive. Leave me alive,” Alex said, though this time he seemed a little more serious. “Are you going to leave?”

“Would you be upset if I did?” Michael asked. Alex chewed on his lip and Michael really wanted to do that himself.

“Depends, are you gonna kill me?” Alex asked. Michael shook his head.

“What would I get out of killing you before they hand over the serum?” he asked. Alex scoffed, laughing slightly.

“Jeez, you got a point, I guess,” he said, “Just thought we were friends.”

“You like being my friend?”

“Dude,” Alex laughed, “You’re here aren’t you?” Michael took in his pretty face and thought about what it would be like to stay. He had never really had friends before. He had Max and Isobel and Max didn’t really like him all that much. Here, he had Liz who willingly spoke to him about a bunch of different weapons and took his advice seriously. He had Mimi who, while still being wary of him with her daughter, still liked to hear how he melded witchcraft with the abilities that came with being a vampire. He had Kyle who was annoying as all hell, but who made for a fun sparring partner.

And he had Alex.

“So, tell me, if you stay, are you going to go after Maria?” Alex asked after a moment. Michael furrowed his eyebrows. “I mean, she’s your type. You gonna try to seduce her, drink her blood to power you up?”

“Yeah and have Mimi kill me? No,” Michael said simply, “Mimi is a whole lot more powerful than me and she’s a lot more trained than Maria. Maria has untapped power, but Mimi’s is like an open faucet. She could snap her fingers and snap my neck if she wanted to.”

“So you really can feel people’s powers like that?” Alex clarified. Michael nodded, still not being able to look away. Not that he wanted to. “So, what happens when you would seduce those girls back then? You’d just tell them they were powerful, sleep with them, eat them? Actually, can you even sleep with people? Does your heart even beat to make blood flow?”

Michael smirked, “Are you asking me if my dick works?” Alex paused and his cheeks turned pink before he just went with it and nodded. “Yeah, it does. But I usually didn’t sleep I’d lure in. It’s weird to have sex with your food.”

“Oh my god,” Alex laughed, shaking his head with a smile that was brighter than the sun. Maybe it would’ve burned if it didn’t feel so good. “You know, you’re a lot less crazy than you tried to seem like you were.”

“Sorry to let you down.”

“No, no, I like it. I like you like this.”

“You like me?”

“I like you,” Alex said firmly, “Why doesn’t Max?”

“I don’t know,” Michael shrugged. He hated that Max hated him. He’d spent so long trying to please both him and Isobel only to be shunned away by him. It was easier to just stop trying to please him. Alex smiled comfortingly.

“I think he’s jealous.”

“Jealous of what?” he snorted.

“That you don’t need a soul to be good.”

Michael couldn’t remember the last time some had thought he was good.

He moved forward without too much of a thought and grabbed Alex’s neck, pressing a kiss to his lips. It didn’t last long and he pulled away, preparing for Alex to tell him off or get awkward. Instead, Alex smiled and moved forward again.

It had been a really long time since he kissed anyone, at least 50 years. He was admitted rusty, but Alex didn’t seem to mind as he pulled him closer until they were both sitting on the edge of their chairs. Alex’s tongue slipped into his mouth without any hesitation and the level of trust he must’ve had in Michael didn’t go unnoticed. He felt like he was 17 and stupid again, desperately trying to move closer and trying to touch every inch he could.

Michael tugged on Alex’s waist in an attempt to get him closer and Alex chuckled into his mouth before just moving to straddle his lap. Michael moved back and pulled Alex with him, splaying his hands on the man’s back to hold him through the never-ending kisses. He didn’t want them to end. He wanted them forever.

“You taste so good,” Michael said before he could even control himself and Alex smirked, weaving his fingers through Michael’s hair.

“You didn’t even bite me.”

“I don’t need to.”

Michael dragged sloppy kisses across his jaw and then down his neck. He waited for Alex to deny him, to push him away in panic. He just knew that, while Alex seemed to trust him, there was no way he trusted him to be this close, to be able to feel his pulse against his teeth, and not throw him off. Except Alex, like always, subverted expectations and held him closer with a moan. He left soft bites between kisses, trailing his way back up to Alex’s lips with extra care that he didn’t puncture his flawless skin.

He left one last kiss to Alex’s lips before pulling away, keeping his forehead against the other man’s as he caught his breath.

“Why’d you stop?” Alex asked after a moment and Michael looked at him to see a level of mischief in his eyes that had him reeling. That vibe that he always got from Alex amplified in that moment, warm and encompassing that jumped from just his regular level of no fear to just overwhelming trust and desire. “We have an hour before we won’t get another moment alone for who knows how long. We should make the most of it.”

Michael agreed so easily and they made their way to the couch.

By the time the rest of the group got back, they had managed to look normal and like nothing had happened. Well, as normal as possible.

“Why are you smiling like that? You look insane,” Max scolded the minute he walked in and saw Michael. He was still fidgety with excitement from his afternoon, but he managed to taper it down so Max wouldn’t dig. He didn’t want to deal with the backlash without having a proper conversation.

“Sorry for being excited that my sister isn’t going to die,” Michael said, though his eyes drifted to Alex who was sitting in front of the computer. His thumb was lodged between his teeth, hiding his own smile. He shot a wink Michael’s way before standing up.

It became so clear to him at that moment that there was no way he could leave Roswell now.

“Alright, let’s go heal a murderous mind-controlling vampire.”

[rattlung]

i wanted to get this out for halloween but then it ended up getting (and taking) too long so i was like aight whatever i’ll split it and post the first bit so i know at least some of it will be in time for the spooky scary. not that it’s really spooky scary, but yknow

anyway the second i saw cowboy mirage and vampire crypto i knew i had to write a wild west au with them. if any of you knew me from my glory ovw days, you know wth im talkin about. 

so anyway, slooow burn, animal death, blood, blood drinking, and possible ooc-ness because i couldn’t decide on whether i wanted mirage to have a very thick southern accent or not so his dialogue may be a bit whack. also with it being an au, characterization probably got skewed to shit. sorry about that :^(

cross posting fucks up formatting, so to be safe here’s the ao3 link but if that’s not the jam for your bread, it’s all under the read more

=======

The sun had set hours ago, but Elliott remained at his post.

Crickets and grass were his only companions on his porch, not even a candle was lit to keep him company. He didn’t want anyone to know he was out there and the little flame would have given him away. Besides, the moon was high that night and the stars glittered from behind it thanks to the cloudless sky. His eyes had adjusted well enough, and the open fields of the farm didn’t provide enough shadows to cause much concern.

No, Elliott was confident he’d catch who he wanted tonight, it was only a matter of whether or not the little bastard would show up.

He sighed and leaned forward in his chair to rest his crossed arms on the railing of the porch, then placed his chin on them. He hoped whoever it was would show. He couldn’t afford another big hit to the stock again. In the last week, he’d lost three chickens - one of them was the hen he’d sank three dollars into earlier in the month. It’d been a good one, too, healthy eggs up until she went missing with two of her sisters.

It was like nothing Elliott had ever seen before. There were never any carcasses left in the coop or on the land, no blood and maybe only a few stripped feathers. Coyotes were never that clean - not in Elliott’s experience anyway. And to take so many at a time?

Then the marks started showing up on the cattle. Two clean little holes at their shoulders that Elliott would have missed had it not been for the blood that oozed out of them, staining their fur a rusted brownish red.

That changed things. The body-less crimes started making sense, because they weren’t being killed - they were being stolen. Chickens were easy to make off with. Just toss a few in a bag and be on your way. Cows, though, they were marking those. Maybe one man was sent to scope out the pens to pick out the healthiest ones, then send off a crew to look for the marks and round them up to bring them home.

Elliott fought off a yawn and the on coming sense of second guessing himself. They would be coming with a group. He hadn’t thought of that before. If they did show up tonight and they were armed, there would be very little he could do with his mother’s old rifle. Quickly he decided he wouldn’t leave the porch if he saw anything. Just fire off a few shots and hopefully scare them off.

All of the Witts had met unfortunate ends. Two Witt sons died in the war, one to the flu soon after his third birthday, their mother to the plague - and the last Witt, dead to a bullet wound received while defending the cow that sneezed on him that very morning?

Yeah, no thank you, he’d stay right there on the porch, yes, ma’am.

So sit he did, scanning the horizon, the treeline, the pens, and tried not to fall asleep. He wondered if Ms. Williams had any hounds she’d be willing to part with to do this kind of stuff for him. Growing up, he’d always wanted a farm dog and Anita Williams trained some of the best he’d ever seen. Elliott would be able to leave it outside to patrol the land, sleep out on the porch, and chase off any predators or thieves that might be lurking while Elliott was in bed. That would be better than suffering through the brutality of waiting for the sun to rise himself.

Elliott didn’t notice his eyes had closed until they snapped open at the sound of sudden rattling in the hen house. He waited a moment, wondering if he imagined it, but soon there was a murmur of cluckings and Elliott got to his feet. He picked up the hat he’d hung on the back of his chair and placed it on top of his head before grabbing the rifle, standing at the very edge of his porch.

Surely they wouldn’t be going for more chickens, would they? When the cows they had marked were out roaming?

Elliott stepped off the stairs and onto the dirt pathway. If it was chickens being targeted tonight, that means there was likely only one of them. He checked the chamber of his gun before heading off, getting onto the grass as soon as he could in order to dampen the sound of his approaching footsteps. By the time he’s at the fence, the clucking had shifted and grew into something louder, the few hens he had left squawking at whatever was in there with them.

And maybe it was because their din was too loud, but Elliott couldn’t hear anything else. Nothing but feathered ruffling and the scrape of chicken feet.

A chill raised the hair on the back of his neck but he crept forward anyway. He wiped the palm of his hand off on his jeans and pushed open the gate, wincing hard when one of the hens in the coop got louder. The rest were a bit hysterical in their noise making, but this one’s panic was visceral. This wasn’t just someone walking through their nests and aggravating them out of sleep - these chickens were scared for their lives.

Elliott crept up to the wired entrance of the shed and peeked around. Small shadows flicked back an forth on the hay-filled floor in a frenzy. Hoarse, creaking noises spilled from their beaks and wings fluttered as they battled each other in their panic to press to the corners of the shed, close to the walls to get away from -

Now, Elliott wasn’t a religious man - which was an odd thing, when one lived in a small town like he did, where the person he bought canned goods from was the pastor’s brother, and the biggest building was the church which was always filled on Sunday. He never went to mass, not even for the holidays, and the Witt Family’s bible had been left in the bedside table’s drawer since he was a boy.

But he didn’t have to crack apart the thin pages of God’s Word to determine that whatever the thing was in front of him was bad.

Especially when it turned, a chicken limp and unmoving in its hands, and stared Elliott down with eyes that burned like indigo flames.

This isn’t a coyote, his mind helpfully informed him just as his mouth spit out, “Oh, fuck.”

The creature stood up fully and despite all its human-like qualities, there was still that electric energy that was just not right, uncanny and out of place. It showed off a human face, but its skin was so white it almost glinted blue when it passed through the moonlight that bled through the shed’s wooden panels.

Which is how Elliott noticed it was moving toward him. He raised the rifle up and pointed it square at the thing’s chest. If froze in its step, still as stone in half a second, but above the crying of his birds Elliott could hear the trill of something moving in its throat.

“Dro - Drop the chicken,” Elliott ordered, the stillness in his limbs compensating for his trembling voice.

To his surprise the creature listened to him. Its trill from before burst from its throat and its frown opened to let out a hiss, pitched low and piercing. The teeth it bared to him had a pink sheen, wet with blood, and its canines ended in vicious points - points Elliott was sure would match with the ones marking his cattle out on the fields.

“Oh, shit, okay - “ Elliott muttered, too panicked to remember that the creature could hear him.

It hunched down suddenly, dropping into a stance that made Elliott think it was going to lunge for him. Before he could really process that information, could even think to fire a shot at it to knock it down, to kill it, the creature spun around and crashed through the other side of the coop. Elliott blinked at the wire it split through like paper then hurried around the house. It was fast, already having leaped over the fence, a black shape that moved without sound, whispering over the grass in one, two seconds before it disappeared into the trees.

“That’s not a fuckin’ coyote,” Elliott said over the thundering of his heartbeat and the screaming of his chickens.

----=----

For a whole entire day, Elliott allowed himself to think that it was over. He let himself think that that was the last he’d see of the thing, that he’d scared it enough to retreat just from pointing a gun at it. Maybe the fear of Elliott actually using it would keep it away, whatever it was.

Truth be told, he didn’t really want to find out what it was. From the look he got out of it from the shadows, it looked human enough. A man as tall as him, dressed to the nines in black and red silks, slim with features Elliott might have tipped a hat at had he not been terrified the time he saw them. Human features. It looked human.

And yet, the bloodless chicken he’d been forced to get rid of proved otherwise. Once he’d been able to move, he’d wandered back in to examine it and found that it was little more than a husk, dried out and useless. It’s carcass was clean, feathers mostly untouched with no red soaked into them. On its breast were two, neat puncture holes.

The next day, one he’d used to catch up on sleep, he started feeling watched.

As he left the stables after shoveling out the floors, a familiar chill walked along his shoulders like icy fingers, eliciting a shiver from him. It lingered for a moment and slowly dissipated when he searched his surroundings, forcing himself to outwardly appear calm when he found nothing.

It would happen again - and often - in the following weeks. When he left the stables after milking, he’d feel it then. When he fed the chickens, when he lead the two horses out onto the pasture, checked on the hogs - someone was watching him. Waiting. And yet, as each night passed and he’d wake up, Elliott would set out to work and find that none of the livestock had been touched. The hens didn’t go missing. The puncture marks on the cows had scabbed over, and no new ones appeared.

Worriedly, Elliott wondered if he were next, that he was the one being stalked - but why wait so long? He lived alone on the Witt farm, and no one had visited him in the time between then and the encounter.

The idea of a peace offering came to him when he had to put one of the roosters down. It was the older one of the three, the one that was always more aggressive and tried to start fights with the others. Apparently, it had to learn the hard way that all fights it started were not always ones it could win. Elliott should have separated it sooner, or maybe had done something, but his mind had been in other places as of late. He’d felt terrible - for the cockerel, for himself. For his family. The only thing they’d left behind was this farm, and he was making a mess of it.

So, out he marched at the first sign of dusk, right to the edge of the trees where he’d seen the creature dart off all those days ago. He planned on calling out to it until it showed, dropping the rooster at its feet and declaring, There, see? I’m doing just fine on ruining everything on my own, so why don’t you just take the damn bird and go?

He didn’t do any such thing. He just stood there for a long moment, listened to the robins in the woods and the huffing of cattle behind him, and stared down at the rooster in his hands. Eventually, the watched feeling came. Elliott was so used to it that the chill hardly even registered. It was just eyes on him, now, no longer threatening or frightening.

For a moment, neither of them did anything. Nothing jumped out to attack him, and Elliott didn’t say a word. He never actually did. Eventually, he dropped the rooster onto the grass and turned back to the house, not even waiting to see if the creature would show itself.

The sun was finally wishing the horizon a farewell, sinking just under the trees as he’s finishing up the last of his rounds. Elliott tested the locks on the doors of the stalls to make sure they wouldn’t swing open and cast a long look at a cow sitting on the other side of one. She stared back at him. The scabs on her shoulders were just about gone, now, and her fur had grown over the little pink marks that’d been left behind. The rest of the cattle’s marks were just about the same. Nothing fresh.

Inside the Witt home, it was dark. There was still washing up he had to do in the big metal basin sat underneath the kitchen’s window. He probably wouldn’t get to until the next morning, so he pointedly kept his gaze away from there. He moved passed the old dining table that hadn’t seen use in years - mostly it was just full of tools he hadn’t moved back into the shed yet - and made his way toward the fireplace. Soon, the cold blue glow of the darkening sky was warmed by the slow starting flame. Elliott poked at it until he was thoroughly bored of watching sticks crumble into ash and was sure it wouldn’t smother itself.

With a heaving sigh he got back to his feet but didn’t go far, falling onto a wooden bench close to the fireplace. There were bigger and more comfortable places to sit, like the large wicker chair right beside him or the stool that had a pillow sewn onto it haphazardly, but Elliott had always sat on the bench. Maybe tomorrow, after he was done the cleaning, he’d move all the extra furniture out into the shed along with the tools on the dining room table. No use in having so many if he wasn’t using it. He didn’t get much company - none at all, really.

Elliott found himself staring at the book left on the seat of the wicker chair and doubted he’d even get around to doing the washing up.

Over the crackle of the fire, something thumped right outside the front door. Elliott straightened, twisted around to look toward the noise, and thought how weird it was to be thinking about never getting any visitors only to have one stop by. Or maybe the word was ironic.

But then he remembered the time and he held his breath to listen. There was no shuffling of someone on his porch and no knocking on his door. If someone rode all the way out to the Witt’s Farm after sundown it’d be for an emergency, so there was no real good reason for the stranger to be quiet.

Slowly, Elliott stood. Avoiding the floorboards that creaked, he crossed the room toward the door and picked up the rifle he’d left there. The silence was deafening and ringing with the dreadful thought of how he might actually be going crazy. Then, the idea of Elliott opening the door and finding nothing at all was almost as terrifying as opening it and revealing the shadow from the hen house. Had he actually heard something? Was there really something in his woods? What if he went outside to the coop and all of the lost chickens would be accounted for? What if the marks on the cows had healed so fast because they’d never been marked in the first place?

Elliott put his hand on the doorknob, sucked in a breath, held it, then twisted it and pulled it open. The door’s creak seemed like a wail in the empty night - because that’s what it was. Empty. No one standing at his stoop, no shadow perched on his railing ready to strike.

Nothing but the rooster he’d left at the trees, untouched and dropped carelessly at his door.

And for reasons he couldn’t explain, Elliott narrowed his eyes down at it and felt angry. Maybe it was the sleep he was losing, the constant worrying, the loneliness - or maybe he actually was losing his mind. Whatever it was, it was enough to have him bend over, snatch up the bird, and stomp down onto the path toward the trees. When he got there, he still said nothing, but that time he didn’t even wait around. Elliott just tossed the bird back onto the grass where he’d left it the first time and turned to storm away, ignoring the petulant feeling that rose at the display.

He made it about four yards before something hit the dirt behind him. He froze without looking back and grit his teeth.

“Alright, you sumbitch.”

Annoyed, he faced the trees again, passing the bird on the road. That chill was back. Instead of stopping him, have him think twice, it only achieved in making the anger thrumming around in his chest burn defiantly brighter.

Two indigo flames held his gaze when Elliott noticed them, dimmer than the last time he saw them. They regarded him with disinterest and that alone had him nearly seething.

“I’m tired of playing this game you’re havin’ with me,” he snapped. The shadow might have raised a brow at him, but with how dark it was Elliott couldn’t be sure. It didn’t say anything, so the question - the one he’d been wondering since that night - burst out of him. “Why haven’t you just killed me yet?”

Now the eyes moved, turning in a way that told Elliott that the creature had tilted its head. But still, the silence. Slowly, it looked down at the rifle Elliott had nearly forgotten about, pointedly, then back up at him. Elliott heard it hit the ground in the next second, which is how he learned that he himself tossed it aside.

Something that was smothered by the heat of the moment whispered to him, You sleep deprived idiot, just what in the hell are you doing?

What he said out loud was, “Do it, then. Nothin’s stopping you, so do it.”

The shadow did nothing; not a sound, not a movement.

Elliott heard his own breathing over the gentle breeze and wondered why it was so slow. He’d seen the speed the creature had moved at and his only protection was too many paces away. If it wasn’t planning on killing him, the anticipation should have been. But he was calm, staring demise dead in its lightning blue eyes, fists clenched at his sides.

The thought of it being incapable of speech occurred to him, but with the way it watched him, Elliott didn’t find it likely. Despite how inhuman they were, there was sentience behind the shadow’s gaze. Maybe too much for something that fed on blood. It looked at Elliott and he felt that it was capable of telling him exactly what it wanted to with a stare alone - all that and more. It was a heavy kind of thing to know. Elliott realized he had a hard time looking away, so when he managed it he didn’t dare look again.

“Just, get - get out of here.” He started making his way back - and didn’t look at the damned rooster again, either. “Leave me alone and terrorize some other poor bastard’s chickens.”

Coward, he thought, but didn’t know who it was directed to.

----=----

The next morning, Elliott woke up to one less crowing and his rifle propped up on the porch railing outside.

Something in the woods still watched him.

----=----

A few days passed until he saw the shadow again. Elliott was leaving the hen house and had thrown a look up at the sky to gauge the time, sighed at the moon, and turned to shut the wired gate behind him. When he turned around, a figure that definitely had not been there before stood in the path in front of him.

He gasped and sent himself back in a fit of shock, back slamming up against the shed. He scowled once he realized what - or, rather, who it was, but that was gone in the next second, too. The shadow’s posture was still one of casual disinterest; hands in pockets, shoulders relaxed, and expression blank if not aloof. But it was different, Elliott was sure. The skin, while always having been pallid, took a different tone, now, one that was qualmish and almost sickly. And the eyes - the eyes hardly even glowed.

It looked more like a ghost than a shadow.

“What’s wrong?” He asked - and why was he even concerned? It hadn’t tried to kill him yet, sure, but it was responsible for taking out almost a quarter of his chickens.

True to a pattern, the creature said nothing, however, it did give a meaningful look into the shed behind Elliott. When its gaze returned, he could see how its throat worked around a swallow.

“Are - “ Elliott looked back at the hen house as if to check to make sure that was what the shadow had looked at. “Are you asking me to - “ He cut himself off again, but pointed into the house.

It narrowed its eyes at the incredulous inflection in Elliott’s voice but did not say no.

The whistling of grass is the only sound for a long moment as a cool night’s breeze moved over the fields, Elliott at a loss for words. As the wind washed over him, chilling him that much further, he could see the creature’s nostrils flare minutely, and this time when its throat moved it was around a rumbling noise. From the base of its chest it traveled up and out as that familiar trill. It filled Elliott with a sense of urgency, one he couldn’t really explain.

He was torn. It was strange to be asked such a thing, but he supposed he should be grateful of the fact that it was asking at all. But how was he even supposed to answer? As far as Elliott knew, none of his chickens survived. He’d never found markings on them, they would just disappear. With the colder seasons approaching, he really couldn’t afford to lose any more of his livestock.

The cows, though, they’d apparently survived a few run-ins with the shadow.

Elliott looked over to the stables and felt shameful the second he did. Was he really considering it? Other than the fast healing punctures on their necks or shoulders, there had been no real changes in their behavior or health. The morning he’d find the marks on them, they’d appear nonplussed. But what if it hurt them? What if the experience was traumatic in a way Elliott couldn’t see?

Then again, could he really afford to deliberate on this? In that moment, with the shadow looking at him expectantly, it seemed to be between Elliott and the cows. Really, the choice was an easy one, but he was still allowed to feel guilty.

“Follow me,” he told the shadow.

As the temperature steadily declined throughout the days, Elliott had started rounding the cows up into the stables more often. It got too cold at night , and he didn’t want to give the cows a chance to catch an illness. It meant waking up earlier to give them more time to graze but it was safer. While he was unlocking the paneled door to the stables Elliott thought that maybe that was the reason he was losing more chickens. It was harder to get through a locked door without raising suspicion than it was kidnapping a few birds and letting the farmer’s blame fall onto coyotes.

The shadow didn’t make a noise but when Elliott turned, it was standing right behind him, nose wrinkled a little at the intense smell of animal and dirt. He didn’t jump that time. He picked up the unlit lantern he’d left behind on the stacked bales of hay, lighting it fast and hung it on the rung in between two of the stall doors. Inside one of them, the dull eyes of a cow shimmered and regarded him blankly. Elliott drug the door open and stepped inside next to her, touching at the glittering wet nose and felt her hot breath huff against his hand in recognition.

“It doesn’t - there’s no - it - it’s not gonna hurt her too much, is it?” Elliott couldn’t help but ask. Now, he expected a nonverbal answer so he looked back to shadow for it, finding more whites in its eyes and the stoic expression looking cheaper. It wasn’t watching him anymore, purely focused on the cow Elliott was petting at nervously.

It stepped closer, into the stall, and Elliott watched as the cow’s head tipped up apprehensively. The huffing of her breathing got a little bit faster and Elliott heard himself shushing her lowly, scratching around the longer scruff by her ears. He couldn’t imagine he was helping too much, but the only thing she did when he saw the shadow disappear around her other side was let out a small grunt of displeasure.

Time passed; the only sound came from his and the cow’s breathing and the brisk wind rattling the wood of the barn. Elliott kept up his attempt at comfort, watching her face intently, and was surprised to find her calm once again. Slowly, he stepped away, gauging her reaction at the movement but didn’t get one.

He moved back into the base of the barn and heaved up one of the metal buckets he’d filled with grain. It was a favor he’d done for himself that night to save himself some time when he woke up to feed them, but he figured that the cow deserved some special treatment. Elliot brought it over to her front and held it right under her nose for her to sniff out, knocking the handle out of her way and hugging it to his stomach due to the weight of it.

The cow’s ears twitched back and forth in contentment, dipping her snout into the grain and eating it by the mouthful. Relief coursed through him like the blood in his veins and Elliott felt himself smiling a little.

“Good girl,” he told her, to which he got very little in the way of a response.

The shadow straightened in a fluid movement, one Elliott watched with rapt attention. Even in just the few short minutes, there was an excruciatingly apparent change in the creature. The intensity of its eyes returned, their brightness amplifying its now fuller features and adding more color to the porcelain-looking skin - it was the most human Elliott had seen him.

“You were starving,” Elliott muttered with a voice awed in his realization. He thought back to the look the shadow had given the cow before and identified it now as a pained and feral sort of hunger. “Why didn’t you just take the damned rooster?”

The creature wiped the cow blood off of wet lips and had the audacity to look at Elliott like he was the disgusting one. Before he could remark on that, prove to the other how backwards that was, the shadow’s mouth opened and for the first time, he spoke. In a voice that was low and smooth, with layers upon layers of something deep and new to Elliott threading through the syllables, he simply stated, “It was dead.”

Elliott sputtered, a little dumbstruck. “So?”

The shadow’s eyes narrowed into a disbelieving glare. “It was dead for a long time.”

“You’re gettin’ partipu - pertil - picky about what blood you’re drinking, now?”

If he were being frank, Elliott wasn’t sure why he was antagonizing the shadow. He’d been merciful so far in not maiming him. And Elliott couldn’t exactly say that if he’d left something out for the hours the rooster had been sitting, he would drink it, either.

But surely drinking blood wasn’t enjoyable in any sense.

Elliott pulled the bucket out from under the cow. Some feed stuck to the wetness of her nose which she cleaned off with a few swipes of her tongue. “I guess we’re done here,” Elliott said to her, but mostly to the shadow.

The shadow that had since disappeared from the stables.

Sighing, Elliott replaced the now three quarters filled bucket with the others as he shook his head. “Guess we are.”

----=----

They weren’t, but Elliott had expected that much.

Every other night, now, when Elliott was finishing his rounds he caught sight of the shadow leaning against the barn doors like it was an arrangement they’d agreed on. He’d finish locking up and meet him there where he’d open the doors and wave the shadow inside, direct him to one of the seven cows, and pretended it wasn’t abnormal. Every farmer had an odd case; a pair of horses that only fed at a specific time of day, cattle that grazed exclusively on the left side of the pasture, a herding dog that befriended and mothered ill lambs.

Elliott’s odd case was a vampire, but it was fine. Every farmer had an odd case. Some odder than others.

Things started to change on the evening Elliott had just left the stables unlocked. One of the pen’s posts had crumbled from age and the fences around it sagged too close to the dirt. It was a reminder that he’d have to put work into replacing them before the winter, or else he’d have a lot more work come spring. Like the dishes in the basin and the extra furniture still in the front of his house, that was a problem for tomorrow’s Elliott. He’d just repair the broken one for now.

He was just testing out the sturdiness of the new post when he noticed that the shadow was standing behind him. By then he was so used to the minor jump scares that he only just barely lost the hammer in his grip. It thumped onto the old, rotten fence post he’d left laying there and landed quietly in the grass.

“Lord - Jesus - Chri - you gotta stop doing that,” he told the shadow, hand over his heart.

Silence from the shadow. He’d gone back to his quiet pledge, not having spoken since their very short conversation in the stables.

Elliott was used to that, too, so shook his head and leaned down to pick up the hammer and the post. He could leave it to dry out on his porch, break it apart further and use it for tinder later. “I left the barn open,” he said when he saw that the shadow was still standing there.

“I know,” the shadow responded. Something flashed in his eyes, probably on account of how fast Elliott snapped up to look at him, not having expected an answer. It was some kind of struggle, Elliott imagined, because his mouth opened a second before he said anything. “Thank you.”

Elliott’s eyes widened. “I - uh. Y-yeah, you’re welcome. It’s fine. It’s - y’know, it’s better than you killing my chickens.”

That flash of something struck again. Elliott wanted to apologize. He genuinely didn’t want to offend the shadow, and he might have actually done it if he didn’t speak before him. “Why haven’t you told anyone?”

And that would have been smart, wouldn’t it? Letting the town know about the blood drinker in their woods. They could have helped Elliott a few dead birds earlier, rounded up enough of them for a search party - if they even believed him in the first place. But that would have involved killing the shadow, or running him off, and Elliott didn’t really enjoy the idea of that. In some kind of morbid way, through all of the heart-pounding meetings and stress-induced nightmares, he kind of liked the company. He’d probably miss it if it were gone.

Besides, the nightmares were really nothing new.

Still, he decided he wasn’t going to tell the other that. He just grinned, leaned up against the freshly repaired fence - very sturdy -  and said, “I think I’ve got you handled.”

The shadow’s brow rose and he looked Elliott up and down, then finally back up again. “No,” is all he said.

The smile dropped from Elliott’s face but he didn’t say anything more on that, because, unfortunately, the shadow was being very fair. “Right, well,” he muttered, pushing off the fence. He was ready for bed. “Have a good night, then.”

“Are you Witt?” He was asked after a few paces.

Elliott paused, turned around slowly. “How’d you know about that?”

“I listen,” the shadow stated simply.

Looking around acres of empty land, Elliott wondered, to who? “Yeah, I - well, I’m one of them. Witt’s my last name, so there’s… Well, there’s been a few Witts.”

The other’s head cocked to one side. “Which Witt are you?”

The only one, really. “I’m Elliott.”

The shadow nodded, looking him over once more. “Good night, Elliott.”

All he did was stand there for a moment, blinking, too caught up on how his name sounded in the smooth whisper of the other’s voice. He’d never heard it be said like that before.

Then, finally, his brain caught up.

“Hey, wait,” he called, despite the shadow not having moved an inch. “That’s not very fair, now is it? I don’t get to know your name?”

He wouldn’t exactly say that the shadow was the teasing sort, but it did take numerous weeks to get a decent two-sided conversation out of him. Mostly, Elliott expected the same response from before. Another ‘no’ before he disappeared for a few nights again.

“Tae Joon,” was what he got, though.

Elliott tried it out for himself. “Tae Joon.”

The shadow’s head tilted further.

Elliott smiled, tipped his hat. “You have a good night, Tae Joon.”

He shifted the wooden post around for easier carrying and put his back to the shadow, knowing that if he turned around now he probably would find empty air. It was fine. Elliott knew he’d see him soon.

=====

yyyyeaahh this is what i’ve been putting off prompts for BIG oof :^(((( 

not sure when i’ll finish the rest of it tbh but here’s this for now i guess