#danny's organs are placed inside of his family since they wanted to know what would happen if a ghost's organ would work on a human

[plush-rabbit]

The Start of a Family

Picture Perfect Series

Warnings: Sickness, Forced Pregnancy, Noncon

Word Count: 2.9K

A/N: I love being a degenerate with him

-

The sound of your door creaks, footsteps light as they make themselves to your bed. You let out a low whine, turning over onto your back, your hands loosely grasping at the sheets. The bed dips and you mumble your partner’s name. You believe it to be Danny, you're so sure of it, yet the hands that hold your face and they feel off. The skin is smooth, pressing into your cheeks without the press of nails. You feel off. It’s a slight feeling that twists at your stomach and you’re unable to figure out why. You open your eyes, your vision blurry and mind delirious with sleep, the only thing you’re able to make out is white, blurry at the edges and mixed with black and in your state, you think it's Danny coming home from work.

You whimper his name, closing your eyes and reaching your hands to grab at his face. However, instead of stubble that pricks your skin, it’s plastic, almost rubber in it’s feel and your hands edge towards the middle, meeting mesh. You open your eyes, blinking harshly in an effort to erase sleep from your eye but in that moment, a hand covers your mouth. It’s heavy and forceful, covering the lower half of your face, the body now above you, legs straddling you and the full body weight pressed onto you, digging into your hips. Your eyes widen, and beneath the hand, the name of your partner is muffled. You believe it to be a sick joke but when your lamp turns on, the glaring light shooting against your face, your blood turns into ice. You go rigid, your hands trying to pry off the one on your face, so desperate for air and yet, the force stays solid above you.

Terror spikes throughout your body, eyes wide and sickness thick on your tongue that you fear you’ll become sick against him and the thought of what he might do in that case terrifies you. His petrified look of a scream haunts you, mesh black that stares at you and with a body covered in black, he blends into the darkness, his body evaporating but weight still heavy on you. He wastes no time, removing your clothes and his, his body bare above yours and hands finally away from you but instead of hitting him, you lay there, with your hands over your eyes, as his mask brushes along your collarbone. You thought you were safe; you really thought that you were safe.

“Did you miss me?” Ghostface whispers, his breath nothing more than a wisp against your skin. “Because I missed you.” You let out an ugly wheeze in response, your palms wet with tears. “I miss you so much that it hurt.” His hands- covered by gloves- scratch against your skin, they squeeze against a breast, fingers pushing into your supple breast. “I couldn’t take it. I had to see you. I had to feel you under me, writhing and squirming-” his other hand cups at your sex, two digits pushing past your folds and teasing at your entrance- “feeling your cunt milk my cock.” His gloved fingers squirm inside of you, massaging at your walls, encouraging for the tight fit to become smoother. “Did you miss me?”

You take in a loud breath, peeking between the gaps in your fingers, looking to the door that remains open. “Danny,” you gasp, hoping that by saying his name, he’ll appear. The fingers inside of you stop inside of you. “I want Danny.” Tears slide down and wet at the crevices in your ear, and slip to the bed sheet beneath you.

“Danny, huh?” You look at him when he speaks, chills running across your body. “Is that your boyfriend’s name? The one with the camera at all my crime scenes?” Your mouth is stuffed with his gloved hand, the taste of your essence lingers against your tongue. “You know he’s a bit too involved, walking around, staining the soles of his shoes with blood.” His cock is erect, pressed harsh against the inside of your thigh, slipping past your folds and pressed against your entrance. “I wonder what he would do if he saw you getting fucked by the Ghostface?” He pushes himself inside of you, and you let out a wail muted by the hand that sickens you. “You’d think he’d join in?” He rocks inside of you, steady and hard, making sure to slam himself against your hips. “He could fuck your mouth with I fuck your pussy.” He lets out a breathless laugh, his mask closing in on you until you can smell the scent of alcohol on his breath. It’s intoxicating in all the wrong ways- thick and bitter, making your stomach churn and acid creep into your throat. “Fuck, that would be something, huh?” He slams himself back into you, grunting and letting out your name intermixed with his moans.

“Stop,” you cry, hiccupping and choking on your tears. Your hands clutch at your chest, stopping the bouncing motion from his roughness. “Please, just stop. I haven’t told anyone, please. You can go away,” you cry harder, wishing for death. “Just kill me,” you wheeze out, your chest stuttering with your heavy cries.

He pauses, stilling his movements for a moment, his head tilting. “Kill you?” He breathes out. He shakes his head. “No, no,” he repeats. “I could never kill you.” He resumes his thrusting, pushing himself deep inside of you. “I love you too much to ever do anything like that to you. Did you know that?” Despite his mask, you know that he’s staring into your eyes, watching for any reaction that you can give to him. “I love you so much. And when you get pregnant-” his hand curves over your belly- “you’ll never be able to escape me.” Your eyes go wide, and you suck in a deep breath. “You’ll look so cute with a round belly.” The mesh of his mask presses against your lips. His lips wet at the mask and his spit is on your lips. “You’ll be plump and begging for my cock, knowing that it was me who did that to your body.”

He’s ruthless. A true monster disguised as a human as he ravages your body. With every push inside of you, is a groan of despair from you, your cunt leaking with your arousal, slipping to the inside of your thighs and down his length. You lay beneath him, crying and holding onto him, feeling a pressure against your stomach when he releases inside of you. It’s thick and warm, burning your inside and it's pushed inside of you. You cry his name, “Ghostface,” begging for mercy as he continues his rutting, burying his cock inside of you until he’s drained and you’re full of seed.

-

Danny finds you in the morning, curled up with dried tear stains. Your clothes stick to you uncomfortably, your underwear feeling as if it were stuck to you, drenched with his semen that had spilled out. Danny walks to you, crouching to a squat as he brushes your hair away from your face.

“Nightmares again?” He asks in a low whisper, and you nod, your lips trembling as you go to hug him, sobbing against his shoulder and clinging to him like a child. “It’s okay,” he says gently, running his hand down your back, “it’s okay. I’m here now. It was just a bad dream.” He crawls into bed with you, pulling you close to him, his chin resting on the top of your head while you curl up on his lap, resting your head on his chest. “They’re just nightmares, they aren’t real.”

“It felt real,” you mumble, your head curving around his belly, letting your thumb arc over him. “I wished you were here last night.” A sob interrupts you and you’re soothed once again by Danny. “I wanted you here,” you cry, pressing yourself closer to him.

“I’m sorry,” he says earnestly. “I wish I was here. I know how bad your nightmares can get.” His hand stills for a moment, clenching the back of your shirt into his fist. “But you were the one who didn’t want to move in with me, remember?” You nod slowly. “You can’t just guilt trip me into this. I’m sorry and I wish I were here but-”

“Danny?” You whisper, clenching his shirt loosely. He hums in response. “Can I move in with you? Please?” You can hear his heartbeat quicken, the hand on your back coming loose and returning to the soothing touch. “I don’t want-” you pause and look at him- “I miss you too much.”

“Of course you can.” His hand manages to find a way to hold yours, bringing your knuckles up to his lips and kissing each gently. “I would love nothing more than to have you at home with me.” His lips trace up a finger, kissing the tip of your thumb. “I’ll keep you safe there. Away from this place with all those gross memories- you’ll be safe with me.”

-

You lay on his bed. It’s not the first time, it’s nothing more than a bed you’ve both shared in the past and yet, now as you sit on it, it’s foregien to you. It’s nothing more than a bed, a bed that you share now because his home is now your home. The comforter has loose threads that you wrap around your finger until it pales and turns dark at the skin that protrudes from it. Your stuff is organized, fixed and moved into a space that he has made for you. You’ve come into his space and he’s made sure to welcome you.

The door clicks and you can hear him, his heavy footsteps and the jingle of his keys. “Honey, I’m home!” He sings, followed by a laugh and he’s searching for you throughout the house. Your heartbeat quickens and the comforter is gripped in your hands. “Want to go out to eat?” His voice sounds far away and you’ve realized you’ve forgotten to make a meal for him. For the both of you. “We can order take-out or something.” His voice is growing closer and you stare out the window expecting to see Ghostface but there’s no one there. “You know, since it’s a special night.” His voice is close, and when you turn, he’s at the doorway, loosening his ties and running a hand through his hair. “You good?”

You nod. “Yeah,” you whisper out. “I’m just- I feel so out of place here, you know?” You give out a shaky laugh as tears threaten to form, a lump in your throat as you release your grip and hold out your arms.

He’s quick to hold you, his face pressed against your neck and arms wrapping tight around you. “You shouldn’t. This is your home now.” He pulls away and kisses your lips, his nose bumping against yours. “You’re allowed to be comfortable here.” He pulls away, his hands holding onto yours. “I didn’t want to ask yesterday because we were both tired and hungry, but do you want to go take a picture? Something to commemorate our living situation?”

You stare up at the man who has kept you safe and you pull him down, kissing his lip and gesturing for him to get on the bed with you. He must understand what you want, why you want him to get on the bed with you, because in the same moment, he unbuttons his shirt and teases at the hem of yours. His hands stop there, his knuckles brushing against your stomach and for a moment, he stops, he pulls away from the kiss and licks his lips. Your only response is to remove the shirt yourself, continuing until you’re naked in front of him.

His lips brush against yours, his breath warm and hands lingering on your bare sides. His eyes stay fixed on yours, his thumb arching on your body, a shiver running down your spine. Your heart is beating erratically, so loud that you think he might hear it. You hesitantly raise your hands to cup his face, licking your lips when you realize that your hands have started to become clammy. You pull away from him, enough to no longer fear that he might see how flushed that you’ve become.

“I- I wanna do something else to commemorate.” You roll your lips, nervously swallowing, your legs twitching and stomach churning. “If you don’t mind.”

He stares at you with blank eyes and a parted mouth for a second until his smile grows, pulling high on the corner of his lips. He nods, leaning towards you, your hands falling onto his chest when he kisses you. It’s a blur of the moment, feeling his fingers edge against your sex, brush so carefully against your clit, and you’re gasping for breath under him, hidden in the crook of his neck with tears in your eyes.

His fingers are coarse, touching your sensitive bud, rolling it under his fingertips and he tries to move you, to signal for you to show him your expressions as he touches you, but you can’t. You stay hidden, digging your nails into his back and shaking your head. With your eyes shut tight, with only darkness in your vision, you can picture someone other than your partner. You picture him. You swear that you can feel his hands on you, but instead of the roughness, it’s gentleness, it’s him being tender, focusing on your pleasure and making you gasp and whine under him. You’ve never taken a proper look at his hands, but they’re thick, spreading your cunt and massaging at your walls, while you buck against him, feeling the tip of his cock against your thigh.

You arch your back into his chest, hissing at the contact and clutching tighter to him, squeezing his fingers in your cunt. A hand slips between and palms at your breast. He’s eager and clumsy, grabbing at your roughly and you hold on tighter to him, whimpering under his touch and his only response to hold you tighter, to pinch at your skin and push himself knuckle deep inside of you, adding a third finger and then a fourth, your sex burning with the spread and you’re calling his name, pulling away with tearstained eyes only to be kissed roughly.

Tears catch on your lashes, your hands digging into him, wanting to draw blood and get him off but at the same time, wanting him to never stop, to continue until he’s the one who has touched your body to the full extent.

He pulls away, the hand on your breast going to wipe a tear away, his head tilting and smiling softly. He looks much younger and handsome with the gentleness on his features. “Condom?” He asks in a low whisper.

While maintaining eye contact, you shake your head. Your hands hold him, and you pull him for a kiss. When his lips are on yours, you leave him, your hand slipping between your bodies and going to grab at his erection. He moans against you, bucking his hips into your hand while his tongue slips into your mouth. It lasts for a moment, the intimacy of holding him, only to disappear when he’s inside of you, pushing past your already stretched hole and pushing himself deep inside of you. He pulls away, face above you while he grunts and holds your hand, calling you everything sugar and nice. He kisses you with a gentleness that you don’t remember ever feeling.

It isn’t long until you’re clenching around him, gasping his name out and arching your back. You plead to him- begging for him to not stop with tears in your eyes, to be a bit rougher and you allow for him to spill inside of you. He’s hot inside of you, spilling his seed deep into your womb and making you warm all over. He doesn’t stop pumping inside of you, the tenderness making you gasp out and hands clench into loose fists. He holds you close, his cock fully inside of you, not allowing a droplet of semen to be wasted and you hold him, crying and thanking him, kissing at his neck and holding him there with you.

-

You rest your hands in the sink, the small space of the bathroom putrid as the air reeks of acid. Your stomach swirls and your eyes are filled with tears. Your throat burns and the birds sing their morning song outside. You want to believe that you woke up sick; that whatever it is that made you throw up is nothing more than the stomach flu.

But you know better. You know that it isn’t the flu. It’s something worse, something much more than it could ever be. You wish it were the flu. The bathroom drawer scratches open, your hands reaching towards the back where you’ve hidden your box, and when you pull it out, the box rattles in your hand and your heart sinks.

It takes only a few minutes until your timer is beeping, and you’re quick to stop it. Your hands shake as you grab the pregnancy test. You pray and you aren’t sure for what, but when you look at the pregnancy test, two loans, a faint red, stare back at you and you let the plastic clatter against the sink as you sob.

[therenlover]

Would The Danny Bunch Survive A Holiday With My Family?

A/n: In the wake of recent life garbage, I have neglected to write a whole fic, and I’m sorry. In the interim, please enjoy this writing exercise I have put together in the hopes of nailing some characters I haven’t written for in the past in time for a larger project I’m working on! Cheers!

Characters: Laszlo Kreizler, Alex Kerner, Niki Lauda, Andrea Marowski, Ernst Schmidt, and Helmut Zemo

Rating: T

Warnings: Swearing, Mentions of Mild Misogyny, Mentions of Alcohol/Alcoholism, Mentions of Mental Illness, Non-Graphic Mentions of Death, Minor Spoilers for The Alienist Season One, Minor Spoilers for Goodbye, Lenin!, Spoilers for Rush (2013), Minor Spoilers for The Cloverfield Paradox maybe??? I haven’t actually seen the whole movie, blame Wikipedia if things are wrong. 

Laszlo Kreizler

NO

As the first of all of the Dannys to be put through the ringer, Laszlo Kreizler unfortunately would not survive a holiday with my family.

First of all, this man does not like massive huggy kissy crowds, so he’d already be off his game the second he walked into the packed house. That’s not why he’d die though, surprisingly.  

His downfall would be his status as an Alienist. 

There is simply so much mental illness and childhood trauma present at my family holidays that he would combust within 15 minutes of sitting in a room with all of my relatives.

Even if he were to somehow make it past the introductory phase, my family is nosey as hell, so they’d be grilling him about his arm and his own childhood trauma within the first hour. 

Laszlo, for all of his strength, simply wouldn’t be able to withstand it.

His death wouldn’t come from the initial combustion though. No, it’s not that simple. 

Knowing Laszlo, once he had combusted and entirely lost his composure the first time, he would become extremely intrigued about the interconnected nature of everyones issues with each other and he would start asking questions. 

That’s where the problems would begin. 

Because it’s one thing if my drunk great aunt starts badmouthing her sister at the table for abandoning her 90 year old mother for a lake house with her new boyfriend. That’s fine. 

But when Laszlo hops in and starts picking apart the mommy issues and underlying reasons for their decades long sibling rivalry? 

Oh it would be over for him. 

The yelling would never end. 

And, I have no doubt that Laszlo would start to psychoanalyze whoever started to yell at him, which would only lead to more yelling. 

In the end, someone would throw a probably full and probably fresh out of the oven casserole dish at his head and he’d be unable to defend himself because of his weak arm. 

We’d have to cart him out in a wheelchair and even if he were to technically survive, he’d never come back. 

Therefor, Laszlo Kreizler would fall victim to my family and die before we even got to dessert. 

Alex Kerner

YES

Ah, little baby Alex! A great contender here for holiday survival.

He seems relatively young in comparison to most of the Dannys on this list, though I don’t actually know how old he’s supposed to be. 

Based on his relative youth, he would automatically get points with the fam for not seeming like a creep or sugar daddy. Instead, he could be just about any dude I brought home from college. 

His skillset as a semi-skilled laborer would also earn him some points, seeing as several members of the family are in similar professions.

Alex might get lost in some of the more complex conversations about the local organic scene or the fine details of running a fine art gallery, but he would fit right in with the majority of the younger members of the family, smiling and nodding his way through the conversation. 

His enthusiasm and optimism would brighten the room and leave everyone excited to see him around again. 

There’s also the semi-small detail of him caring for his mother, which would earn sympathy from the older members of the family as they are in charge of caring for my deaf, blind great grandmother. 

Now, all of these aspects have already set Alex up for a successful survival of a holiday dinner with my family, but the real secret weapon he has up his sleeve is what really cements him in place as a survivor. 

What is his secret weapon, you may ask?

Lies.

Alex Kerner is really, really good at lying, and is even better at figuring out increasingly convoluted ways to keep his lies straight. 

If he managed to hide to fuckin’ Berlin Wall coming down from his mother for as long as he did, he could keep a couple of white lies up for appearances if he was asked any potentially embarrassing or weird questions that would make him look bad. 

He could also lie about enjoying my great aunt’s cooking, which is a vital skill for holiday survival in my family. 

Therefor, at the end of the day, Alex Kerner would not only survive a holiday with my family, but he’d probably enjoy it and get invited back for every subsequent holiday he could possibly attend. 

Niki Lauda

NO

Niki is another Danny that falls very firmly into the category of characters that would absolutely not survive a holiday with my family, for many, many reasons. 

First of all, just like Laszlo, Niki is not huge on going to big huggy kissy parties. 

Both adults and children would be all over him the second he walked in the door, which would probably make Niki get very uncomfortable and cagey. 

Little does he know at that point that people aren’t just all over you when you get in the door. 

No, no, no; from the moment you show up to the moment you leave, if you’re at a holiday with my family you are being basically accosted with questions and hugs and conversations that get weirdly personal. 

It doesn’t help that the whole entire house is packed and there are eyes on you at every moment, so he wouldn’t even be able to sneak in a break for air or a cigarette. 

If my own mother can’t sneak out for a smoke when she’s been going to these events her whole life, the new guy who’s still being vetted by the family sure as hell won’t be able to either.

Needless to say, Niki would start to get really, really tired of it all in an hour tops. I’ll give him until dinner at most. 

That’s where things would start getting really sticky.

See, a lovely little fact about the Niki Lauda that lives in my brain, as portrayed by Daniel Bruhl in Rush (2013), is that he’s just a little bit misogynistic. No more than would be period typical, but a little misogynistic.

Another fun little important thing to note is that my family is entirely matriarchal in nature. 

There are only 4 reoccurring male guests at family holidays out of about 20 to 25 guests at each event; My great aunt’s husband of many, many years, the two male siblings my mother has that live in the area, and the young son of one of those siblings. 

Men, specifically boyfriends, simply do not last in my family. They are considered pretty disposable and easily banned from family events after breakups or small mishaps. 

So, not only would Niki not have any other manly men there to chat about sports with over a scotch and a cigarette, he would be surrounded by so much estrogen that he would definitely struggle with his inner asshole even more than usual. 

In fact, we never have sports on, even on Thanksgiving. Poor Niki would be stuck hearing conversations about artisanal candlemakers and how to hand felt a woodland elf puppet.

Back to his downfall, the second he made a slightly sketchy joke about women in the kitchen at the dinner table to my great uncle, his fate would be sealed.

If you thought the yelling at Laszlo would have been bad, this yelling would be ten times worse, because he would be surrounded by like 20 very angry, very defensive, and very strong women waiting to beat the shit out of him and I would not be any help. 

He dug the hole, so he can climb out of it. 

In the end, his death would come when he tried to light a cigarette and calm himself down at the dinner table while trying to rescind his earlier statement, because smoking inside around all the precious textile art? Thats a big no no. 

My great aunt would grab the lighter right out of his hand, light up whatever cocktail she had at the moment, and throw it all directly into Niki’s face.

It would be like crashing his car all over again, only this time he would be surrounded by people who would rather he burn than try to get him out of the situation. 

Moral of the story, Niki would die within the first few hours of a holiday with my family because he made an asshole comment to a room full of women who don’t put up with that shit. Don’t be like Niki, even if you think you won’t get killed for it. 

Andrea Marowski

YES

Andrea is pretty much the polar opposite of Niki here, and I love him for it. 

He is very soft, very kind, very pure, and would never dare to say something rude at the dinner table like a certain racer we all know.

He couldn’t even say something rude if he tried to, because he probably wouldn’t have the English in his vocabulary to say the things he wanted to say even if he intended to say them out loud. 

But let’s be honest here, Andrea would never. 

Even with his limited English, Andrea would appreciate being surrounded by a whole bunch of people who think he’s the sweetest little thing since the invention of cake. 

My great grandmother, despite being almost entirely blind and deaf, would say he looked darling and he would immediately be a member of the family from the moment he stuttered out his thanks. 

Andrea, like Alex, is also relatively young, so he would get points for not being old enough to be my father. 

I feel like, because Andrea was shown living happily in a tiny village by the ocean with two old ladies, he would have an appreciation for craft, so he wouldn’t mind sitting quietly as my great aunt pawns off a handmade blanket from my great grandmother to him. 

He would also happily sit with the younger children and do whatever craft or simple game one of my aunts brought for them that time. 

The cherry on top with Andrea is his skill with the violin. 

My family is one that appreciates fine art a lot, but more than anything we appreciate music. 

I wouldn’t say that any of us are anywhere close to Andrea’s proficiency, but we definitely aren’t terrible, and we all can appreciate the effort, practice, and talent that goes into getting truly good on an instrument like Andrea is on his violin. 

He would be encouraged to play, of course, and he would happily oblige. 

If he felt comfortable enough, I could even see my great uncle grabbing his guitar, my cousin sitting at the piano, and my sister bringing out her own violin to do a little quartet with some simple song they knew as everybody else sang along. 

By the end of the holiday evening, once dinner was served and people were heading to the cars, Andrea would definitely be considered a member of the family. 

Needless to say, he’d survive and pass their tests with better than flying colors, even despite the language barrier. 

Ernst Schmidt

NO

Now, Ernst was probably the most difficult one on this entire list to put into the living or dying category. In the end, though, there were a few things that couldn’t be overlooked that send him into bad territory. 

To be fair, though, he would last the longest out of everyone who would die tragically at one of my family’s holiday gatherings. 

He, like the past two victims, would not be exactly suited for the mushy crowding that’s inevitable when it comes to my family. 

That being said, I think he would deal with it a little bit better than the other two did and would make polite conversation with the family when he could. 

The fact that he was trapped in a packed house filled with drunk people who have several generations worth of beef with each other, though, would start to get him eventually. 

If we consider all of the shit that happened while he was in space to be canonical minus, you know, the earth getting really fucked up, he would probably start to go a little bit nuts while packed together with that many passive aggressive people.

The second someone burst into tears on the way to the bathroom he would start to lose his shit. 

Still, I think Schmidt would probably be fine-ish until dessert was served, because that’s about the time where all the adults are absurdly drunk, so insanity ensues. 

They would start poking at him about his credentials and experiences as a physicist. 

He would answer their questions at first, but, unfortunately for him, the questions would turn more and more personal and uncomfortable as time went on. 

Did he ever still think about what happened up in space? Did he blame himself for not getting things to work correctly? How much did he miss his old world and old life? Did he ever have nightmares about what he saw? How much did it hurt to get shot?

They’d poke and poke and poke in their drunken state until poor Schmidt would snap at them, flying into a slight rage at their insistent probing. 

From there, he would be swiftly asked to leave and then “accidentally” run over while calling an Uber to take him to wherever he’s staying as my drunk great aunt tries to back out of the driveway to drive down the block to her house. 

In the end, Schmidt and his wit would be really close to surviving a holiday with my family , but he would, unfortunately, let his anger get the best of him, and it would be the last thing he ever did. Literally. 

Helmut Zemo

YES, BUT ONLY BARELY

Okay, so my earlier comment about Ernst being the most difficult out of everyone was incorrect. Zemo was, by far, the hardest to put into one category or the other. 

His wit and charm won out in the end, though, and I determined that he would survive one single holiday with my family. 

If he ever came back for a second he definitely wouldn’t make it, but he would succeed in living past the first one. 

Helmut’s problems start, surprisingly, not with the fact that he is a criminal. In fact that doesn’t even cause any problems for him. 

No, instead they start with the fact that he is 43.

I am 99% sure that my mother is 43, and I know for a definite fact that he’s older than one of my uncles who would be present. I, at the time of writing this, am 18. 

Needless to say, literally everyone would be massively suspicious of him and his intentions the second he walked through the door. The amount of money in his bank account definitely wouldn’t help in this situation either. 

The family would warm up to him eventually, though, because if there’s one thing Helmut is good at besides killing people, it’s making people like him even if they absolutely shouldn’t. 

With his expansive knowledge of what feels like literally everything rich and niche, he would slowly win over the older members of the family. Who knew the strange old man Jac brought home was so well versed in the American pottery scene, or that he could name specific jewelry artists from across the world that my family had done business with for years?

My family definitely wouldn’t. At least, not at first. 

Oh how they’d learn, though. 

Another nice thing about Zemo that would allow him to survive is his aggressive politeness.

No matter how many weird glances or dirty looks he got over the course of dinner, he would simply continue to be the best version of himself in the hopes of impressing everyone. 

He would even pretend to enjoy my great aunt’s cooking and get himself seconds, because I’m sure it would be easier to scarf down than whatever he and his EKO Scorpion squad had to eat while serving in the Sokovian special forces. 

On the tail end of reasons he would be accepted, Helmut Zemo drinks alcohol like it’s water, so he would fit right in drinking white wine and cocktails through the night with the rest of the adults. 

((I think he’d totally tease me about not being able to drink with him, but that’s a story for another time. Anyways...))

His slight downfall would come from something entirely uncontrollable by him or anybody else. 

And that something would be my flirty aunt. 

I love my aunt. She’s wonderful in her own special way. 

That being said, I know if a hot Sokovian baron with a nice smile and a fat pocketbook showed up to one of out holidays, even if he was introduced as my partner, she would be going for the kill all night long. 

This would make Helmut more and more uncomfortable as she got more and more drunk, because lets face it, he’s probably not very comfortable with being touched by near-strangers anyways, and being touched by a drunk member of his partners family who is very obviously coming on to him? 

That’s even more difficult to deal with. 

That being said, Helmut is a man who has been shown to be extremely in control of his emotions. 

He would swallow down whatever awkwardness he felt, make it to the end of the night, and, once he had escaped her clutches, he would politely say that he was never going back to another holiday function with my family again, though he would be happy to facilitate me still attending them. 

So, in the end, Helmut Zemo would survive one holiday with his sheer stubborn politeness alone. 

I will say that his patience would absolutely wear thin if he attended a couple more holidays and he would eventually die of a stress induced heart attack after being unable to politely decline my aunt’s advances. 

For now, though, he’s safe.

[datawyrms]

Happy DannyMay everyone! i say while dropping this. For day one, Memories. sorta kinda sequel to this Half a Decade Late

He said he’d never hate them. Back when he thought it would only be a matter of time until he found a weakness, a flaw and squirmed free. He always had before. He didn’t like being captured, and he certainly didn’t like getting shoved into cages, but it was always temporary. A terrifying inconvenience. Something he’d shrug off eventually and forget. Lately he was starting to realize he’d forget that he ever considered thinking charitably. Just like all the other things he couldn’t quite remember.

They took everything. His freedom, his limbs, his skin, his voice. So many things he had the misfortune of learning he could recover from with enough time. Really broke the idea that anything about you was special. Did it matter that they ripped him open when the green slime he was made of would eventually cover the hole without even a sign of the pain it caused him? He just stopped caring. Ghosts didn’t feel pain. Maybe if he believed that enough, he wouldn’t need to feel it. Hurt was just a matter of perspective.

He was changing, apparently. The spectral copies of his human organs they stole over and over again stopped being perfect copies. Sloppy. Apparently his body was forgetting what the real ones were like. He didn’t remember the last time he’d been human anyway. That was fine. It was the only real way he could bother them now, being ‘less useful’. Obviously he didn’t need them that badly. He envied some of his fellow prisoners. They were just green inside. Nothing the vultures wanted, nothing for them to mutter and prod at while he struggled uselessly.

He didn’t really know why he still bothered to do that. It never worked. Some impulse. Just better than keeping still. He never really was a human, was he? Humans didn’t treat other humans like this. So he wasn’t one. So why did he ever think he was?

Tie was weird. Maybe having a soul made you act all funny. He’d been tempted to change her name, to no-mask or just face, but the words didn’t feel right, sort of caught on his tongue. Even when he didn’t have one sometimes! Tie just slid off easily. Like he’d said it a lot, or something like it.

So the newbie remained Tie. And Tie was weird. A good kind of weird? She didn’t just tell him to shut up, anyway. Most of them were boring like that. Though not getting shocked into unconsciousness did make the days tend to drag a bit more. She did make his head hurt sometimes, with all the weird reactions Tie made. It always passed though.

He kept playing with the lights up there so they would flicker and crackle, just to check if it was a Tie day. Sure, that got a good amount of shocks when it wasn’t Tie, but they were always grumpy after he’d lost a limb or two. It was almost amusing again. That was the word. Maybe?

“You don’t remember Amity at all?”

Frustration and anger that was directed at him, but also not. Tie was super strange like that. “Why would I?” His response just made her eyes narrow more, but she didn’t do anything to take it out on him. It was hilarious. 

“That’s where you’re from.”

“News to me.” Might be a lie, might not. Gun grunts said lots of weird stuff. He shifted position, watching her while upside down didn’t make it easier to tell if humans were lying or not, but did make her scowling funnier. “That’s where you’re from then? Or that other name you keep using.”

“You can’t actually be him. Fuck.” She was rubbing at her forehead, looking away at nothing. “You remember ghost hunters but not Amity Park?”

“Hey! Names are hard, Tie. Isn’t like you know the name of every town you’ve ever been in.”

“No, but I remember the one I lived in most of my life!”

“Good for you! I’d clap but I’m kinda under armed for the task.” Under armed. He snickered as she only rolled her eyes at his joke, but it only made him think of another one. “Isn’t like a ghost lives anywhere.”

“You’re in here for hell knows how long and you can’t get better jokes?!”

Tie’s irritation just made it funnier. “These are gold! Way better than the stuff you guys laugh at.”

“Like what?”

“Oh you know.” The humour of the moment passed as he got back up, wondering if he should give the old ice trick another go. The noises were fun. “Like how the ghost won’t eat, but ghosts don’t breathe either. So the ghost can’t do much to stop ya.” As if Tie didn’t know. She still made the weird pinched expressions though. Why bother? It didn’t really matter if she actually had a soul still. Those ones just quit and then there’d be a new newbie. “Lots of you think that’s reaaaaal funny.” He stuck out his tongue, gagging. “Gross gun grunts.”

“That’s not funny either.”

“Try breaking your funny bone a few times. That’ll fix it. Or was that computers?” He frowned, rubbing his fingers against his chin. Computers. What was it about computers again? Re-re-something? Like with bones when you...did something…

“Phantom!”

That jerked him out of his considerations. “Still not him!” Now that he checked, Tie looked like she’d been trying to get his attention for awhile again. That, or she’d figured out how to teleport closer to his cage. Both were very possible. Probably. 

“You didn’t hear a word I said, did you.”

“You were talking?”

“For someone who says he isn’t Phantom, it sure gets your attention fast.”

He shrugged. What did Tie expect? So what if he noticed it? It didn’t mean anything to him, personally. It was like comp-whatevers. “You could say the coats were coming and I’d do the same thing.”

“Doubt it. You remember Jack and Maddie maybe?” Tie hesitated, as if saying something to him actually mattered. “Your parents?”

“I’m a ghost. And possibly a starfish. Since I do the whole regenerating thing.” He’s pretty sure it’s starfish that do that. “I don’t think they’re big on families.” He thought that was pretty amusing, having like. Little voiceless things that cling to rocks as parents. Actually had a bit in common if you thought of his cage as a rock? Tie didn’t agree, based on how he was biting at her lip and clenching her fists. Still no shooting. Still super weird.

“Be a mercy killing at this point…” Tie wasn’t actually speaking to him, but it was interesting. Killing what? One of the other ghosts maybe. “Sam, Tucker? Any of them ring a bell?”

He certainly didn’t have a bell in here. “Sam...and Tucker are names?” He guessed, shuddering a little. Weird names. Made the gooey mess of ectoplasm he was made of wriggle when he said it. Like when he was struggling to digest something, uncomfortable and heavy and just making him want to move when he couldn’t. Though he could this time. Zipping up to the top of his cage helped shake the feeling off, at least. He wasn’t saying those again, no thank you. “You have weird tricks, Tie”

“They’re just names. I didn’t do anything to make you fly up there. I half thought you couldn’t do that anymore.”

Tie did have a bit of a point. When was the last time he’d flown up here? “Think I forgot I could?” He didn’t really move much in general. Not like he had anywhere to go, his cage didn’t really change.

She just looked tired. “This isn’t fixable.”

He wasn’t really paying attention, poking at the edges of his cage with his feet was pretty entertaining. It tingled a bit when he got pushed back, but flipping over in the air was easy. Why didn’t he float more? “Gun grunts don’t fix things, so Idonno why you care.”

Tie wasn’t paying much attention to him either, muttering to herself. “Manson would kill me for doing it. No way she’d believe you’re like this. Let alone the Fentons...”

Well, that was boring. He busied himself with counting how many seconds it took for the shock to stop coursing through him when he touched the walls. Though it was a bit tricky to keep track between tries.

“Skulker? Ember? You at least remember the ghosts, don’t you?”

“Are you just making names up now Tie?” They just sounded silly. The thought of someone named ‘Skulker’...who was also very tiny. Now that’d be funny. Kinda liked that idea actually.

“Probably don’t even remember the guy who put a million on your head…”

“A million whats? Questions? That’s more a you thing, Tie.”

“No, Vlad. The mayor?”

“The what?” Things weren’t funny anymore. He wasn’t cool and passive. That word, there’d been others but he didn’t even care what they’d been. The V had been enough to set his core to a furious pulsating heat of fury. His ice claws clung to the wall even as the buzzing in his skull grew stronger as the field tried to shove him back. “WHERE” He snared, not caring how his throat burned from the partial wail trying to scrabble out of his throat. Tie didn’t matter, nothing mattered and he actually missed his arm since not having it made it harder to keep his grip and snarl at the one backing away from his prison. “WHERE IS HE?” Oh he’d order anyone, and they’d listen or he’d shred them as soon as he got through- but his claws were cracking- green and red staining and corrupting the fine edge he’d honed so often. Why did he care? He didn’t know, didn’t want to know, he just had to act and now, just in case. The chance might slip away and he wouldn’t, they’d pay they’d pay, they’d PAY.

“Danny! Stop hurting yourself, he’s not here!” Tie was blathering, but at least backed away when he shrieked at her. Stupid Tie. Didn’t know anything. “Hell. You don’t even know why you’re mad, do you.”

He kept slamming the ice back in place, even as his arm weakened and started oozing. He didn’t need his legs, he didn’t need arms, he didn’t need anything. Just OUT. NOW. He snarled and snapped at the metal that grabbed his back and slammed him hard to the ground of his cage. It ignored him and the awful warmth that had consumed everything. He never won against it but now he had to keep trying because-because the anger? Because of something. The metal easily ignored the green surging pulses of electricity, just kept pressing down on him until he wasn’t solid enough to struggle, not strong enough to scream at it. The awful stabbing feeling in his core wanted him to act, but he couldn’t even defiantly flick his tail as he grew colder and slipped out of consciousness.

Everything hurt and it wasn’t even Friday. At least. He didn’t think it was? He’d have to ask Tie about it...if Tie showed up again. Something about her gave him a stab of unease. Might have something to do with all the green stains in here. Didn’t remember getting shot though. Strange. Must have done something. Maybe. Didn’t really matter.

[lucifer-is-a-bag-of-dicks]

I actually used my own experiences with grief and loss in this one, I could channel it better writing from Jazz's perspective

so yeah if you thought the last two were sad-

Part 3

Jazz had never gone ghost hunting with her mother before, at least never with just the two of them. It was uncomfortable, unfamiliar, like when her only friend at a party left her alone with someone she barely knew.

Her relationship with her mother had always been intellectual in nature, they would engage in philosophical debates over the ethics and morality of the ghost hunting profession while eating dinner, the discussions became far more intense after Jazz discovered Danny's secret. She was no longer debating simply for the sake of an interesting discussion, she was trying to introduce concepts that would smooth the way for when her brother was ready to reveal his other self to them.

It was a tactic she had used successfully many years before, albeit for a far more mundane reason.

Going ghost hunting with Maddie wasn't just uncomfortable because it was unfamiliar, it wasn't even because of her ethical disagreement with her mother's tactics.

It was because her father was supposed to be here.

Maddie rarely went hunting without Jack, not if she could help it, they had always been a team, they worked perfectly in synch with one another, but Jack wasn't here. Jazz was, and his shoes just didn't fit.

Jazz didn't have to go, technically, she wasn't even trying to help with the ghost hunting part, but... she couldn't let Maddie go alone.

Maddie was coping with Jack's death far worse than anyone.

From the moment they'd returned home from the hospital, after Jack had been declared dead, Maddie had been out every day and night hunting for the Wisconsin Ghost. It didn't matter to her that he hadn't been seen since that night, it didn't matter that he had always been too powerful for anyone to take on alone.

Maddie would drive around for hours, chasing any blip on her radar and ferociously ripping into any unfortunate ghost to cross her path.

Danny had been running damage control, warning the more agreeable ghosts to stay out of Amity, capturing the rest as covertly as possible, doing everything he could to stay away from Maddie while in his ghost form.

Jazz had been the only one left to do everything else. She had turned 18 just a few months before, so thankfully she had been legally able to sign all the documentation, to plan the funeral arrangements, the cremation, the obituary. All of it, by herself.

She was grateful, in a way. It gave her something to do, something to focus on that wasn't grief, that wasn't the cold empty hole in her life. Jack's presence had always been hard to ignore, his absence even more so.

Danny had tried to help with the preparations, when he wasn't in the ghost zone or cleaning up ghosts around town. He appeared to be holding himself together okay, but Jazz knew better, she knew that the guilt was eating him up from the inside. It didn't matter how many times she reassured him that he wasn't responsible for this, that he wasn't to blame, it made no difference.

It was only when Jazz had run out of tasks to do that she let herself cry.

She knew that sitting around was only going to make her feel worse, she couldn't let herself stew in her grief, she needed a purpose to pull her through. So she joined her mother on her feverish hours long hunts.

It was escapism, she knew that, for both of them. To Maddie, the hunting was something else to focus on so she could ignore her grief, it gave her a sense of control and purpose. Jazz was using looking out for her mother as her own distraction, her own grasp for purpose and control.

She knew these things, and she knew they were not entirely healthy, but she didn't know what else to do.

If this were anyone else she would have told them to seek out professional therapy, go to grief counselling, practice radical acceptance, to use visualisation exercises and grounding techniques to manage intrusive thoughts. Vengeance and fury weren't a healthy release, they would only build, they would only lead to more pain.

But her books hadn't prepared her for something like this, how could she seek help from someone she can't tell the whole truth? How could she grieve in peace when the justice system couldn't touch her father's murderer? He was still out there, he was still a threat. It was only a matter of time before he started working his way into Maddie's good graces, shamelessly emboldened by his successful assassination.

Jazz was furious when Danny insisted they keep Vlad's identity a secret. She understood where he was coming from. Her mother was struggling enough as it was, Jazz couldn't imagine what it would do to her to find out that it had been her husband's best friend all this time. That he had murdered Jack because he wanted her, the guilt alone would be soul crushing, and then there was the certainty that Vlad would reveal Danny's identity in return.

She couldn't even imagine...

Jazz was still angry, angry that Danny had to be the one to say it, angry that he was right, angry that he could be so rational while inside she was falling to pieces. She knew better, she knew how much he was hurting on the inside too, she knew that he was just good at hiding it, much better than she was.

She was still angry, but they both knew she wasn't angry at him.

When she got up that morning, her mother had been in the lab, her weaponry was getting more dangerous, less capture oriented and more destructive. Jazz wasn't sure if working down there was better than the hunting or worse, but at least no unsuspecting ghosts were getting torn to pieces.

Jazz had witnessed a few first-hand, it was bad enough seeing it happen to the formless, barely sentient poltergeists, she didn't want to know what a true spirit would look like, being eviscerated with such malice. She imagined a ghost like Johnny, laying on the ground with chunks ripped from his-

No, no that wasn't helpful, that was an intrusive thought, she needed to acknowledge its presence and move on, it didn't help her, let it go, like leaves on a string, let it go...

It would be back later, she knew.

Her breakfast was suddenly incredibly unappealing, not that that was anything new. She wouldn't be surprised if she'd lost weight over the last week, her clothes already felt just a little too loose.

A sudden and intense pang of longing hit her fast and hard, she missed him. It had only been a week and she already missed him so much. She just wanted him to wrap his big arms around her and hold her close and dig his chin into her hair in that way that annoyed her and tell her everything was okay Jazzypants and... and he was the only one who ever called her that. She hated it. She'd never hear it again...

She pushed her bowl of cereal away and stood, her eyes burning. She had to find something else to do, to keep her mind busy.

She went around the living room, clearing the coffee table and fluffing the pillows, there was a stain on the lounge, probably from a bit of fudge-

The curtains were looking dusty, they could probably use a clean, would they fit in the washing machine or would they need to be hand washed?

She'd started trying to unhook them from the curtain rod when the lab door banged open loudly, Jazz jumped, startled. She ran to the kitchen to find her mother in tears, hand over her mouth like she was trying to hold it all back. Jazz wrapped her arms around her and Maddie grasped onto her tight, like she was afraid she would be snatched away at a moment's notice.

Jazz rocked slightly and ran a hand up and down her mother's back comfortingly as they each cried into the other's shoulder. Maddie hadn't cried like this since the first night, Jazz recognised it as a good sign, she was letting herself feel again.

"Where is he?" Maddie stammered, "W-where'd he go, where'd he go?"

Jazz just squeezed tighter, it was a difficult question for someone who studied the dead for a living, to wonder what happened after. They were never a religious family, being raised by scientists there was never talk of a heaven or hell, just the ghost zone, what lay beyond that was a mystery to them all, even the ghosts.

She sniffed, she could feel tears clinging to her eyelashes, and an odd itch to her scalp.

"Jazz?" Danny's voice echoed down the stairs.

She heard Danny come into the room behind her, he made an odd sound, a quick and quiet intake of breath. Was he trying not to cry? Jazz hadn't seen him cry once, not since he was dragged off of Vlad that night, bruised knuckles dripping red. They were tears of fury then, she would never forget the sound of Danny's ragged screams as he pummelled Vlad into the ground, despite all the hands trying to pull him off the man.

Vlad had simply taken the beating, he'd use it later, she knew. He would forgive Danny, say it that he deserved it for failing to fight off that terrible awful Wisconsin Ghost when it overshadowed him. He would say it was all his fault, that he deserved all that pain and more, he was oh so sorry.

And Maddie would forgive him, because it wasn't his fault, it was that awful awful ghost. Vlad could never do something so terrible to his best friend. Vlad would always be welcome in their home, and welcome he would make himself. Jazz could see it all, and she could do nothing about it.

Danny placed a hand on his mother's shoulder. "Maybe you should do another lap around town, you might find something today." he pressed his head close to hers and spoke softly into her frazzled hair.

Jazz glanced at Danny with narrow eyes, annoyed and confused, their mother was finally making progress, and Danny was going to send her right back to her fruitless obsessive search for vengeance? He had to know it wasn't helpful, he had to.

He looked at her, wide eyed and thin lipped as he gave a quick jerk of the head and flick of the eyes to the front door. He wanted Maddie out of the house, for what reason Jazz didn't know and obviously couldn't ask, but she trusted her brother and did as she was told. Something was going on, but she would have to ask Danny about it later.

The day was warm and only a little humid, they drove with the windows down. Jazz enjoyed the wind on her face, she did not enjoy the silence.

It stretched on, unbroken by the radar as Danny's patrol earlier in the dawn had swept the town clean of ghost activity. It looked like Jazz wouldn't be watching another massacre today, she couldn't be more relieved.

"It's been quiet." Maddie said, out of the blue.

"Huh? Oh, yeah. Guess it has," Jazz paused, "maybe you scared them all off?"

"They should be scared." Maddie's tone was low, threatening. If Jazz were a ghost she would be terrified.

There was more quiet, they passed the local park, the sound of kids playing and birds singing were loud for a few moments, until the trees disappeared into the distance behind them and the quiet returned.

"Haven't seen much of Phantom either." Maddie spat. "I'm surprised he hasn't shown up to gloat."

Pain shot through Jazz like an arrow, she would have to warn Danny to make extra sure to stay out of their mother's way, she was very clearly ready to shift a whole lot of misplaced aggression directly onto him.

She considered challenging her mother's assumption, but thought it best not to provoke her right now. Instead she merely hummed an acknowledgment.

They drove past the school, empty for the summer. Jazz's final exams had only just ended before her father's birthday, but she had missed graduation. She didn't want to go without him there, she was supposed to give a speech, she was too busy writing a eulogy.

They passed a group of people she knew from school, they gave her a little wave. Despite Jack's notoriety, everyone had been sad to hear the news, they'd sent a giant card around the school and everyone she knew had signed it, including the teachers, and everyone in Danny's year too. Mr Lancer brought it to the house with an enormous bouquet, he couldn't convince the school to pay for one so he bought it out of his own pocket.

Jazz had gotten texts and private messages, all saying they were here for her if she ever needed to talk. She responded to most of them, but sometimes she just sent a heart emoji. It was easier than writing the same thank you message over and over. She didn't take any of them up on the offer.

The drive wasn't too bad honestly, without any ghosts showing up it was almost relaxing. Maddie hadn't said much else other than a few observations about the traffic or the weather. When Jazz suggested getting some lunch Maddie had opted to use the Nasty Burger drive through so they could eat in the van. Jazz was grateful, she didn't want to run into anyone else from school.

Her phone buzzed, it was Danny sending her a thumbs up, they were safe to go home.

"We should probably head home." Jazz suggested, slurping the last of her drink. "We've been all over town, there's nothing here."

Maddie grit her teeth but revved up the van and turned toward FentonWorks.

As soon as they were through the door Maddie headed to the lab, presumably to drown herself in more work. Jazz headed up the stairs where Danny waited for her.

"What's going on?" she asked.

Danny shushed her looking over her shoulder down the stairs.

"It's fine she's in the lab," Jazz reassured him, "what's going on?"

He didn't answer, just grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward his room, closing the door behind them and locking it.

"I'm going to try something," he said, crossing the room to stand before her, "But I think you should sit down first."

Jazz frowned but she sat down on the edge of the bed.

"Is this about Vlad? Did he come here?" A rush of heat spilled over her face, "If that son of a bitch tried anything I'll-"

"Jazz it's fine, it's not Vlad, it's fine." Danny breathed, running a hand through his hair nervously. "It's just, I'm trying something but I need you here to tell me if it works, okay?"

He nibbled his lip anxiously but he also seemed... almost excited about something. Had he developed a new power?

Jazz nodded and paid close attention as Danny took a few steps back and put a hand up, palm facing to the side and away from himself, his fingers curled slightly as if grabbing for something.

He took a deep breath and the heat of the summer air chilled, a trail of green mist flowed over his hand and began to form a shape in the air beside him.

Almost immediately as it began to form Jazz knew.

She leapt to her feet to stand before the large figure revealing itself gradually before her, when the mist crept over a square jaw and close cropped haircut she threw her hands over her mouth to stifle her gasping breaths.

"Dad." she breathed, she reached for him but didn't dare touch, afraid that she would ruin the illusion. Was he here? Was he real? She looked to Danny but his eyes were closed, face scrunched in concentration. He peeked at her for a moment, his grimace lifting into a strained smile.

"It's him." said Danny, through gritted teeth, "Say hi."

Jazz cried as Jack lifted a hand toward her face, he was still a translucent shimmering green, but she was certain she could see tears on his face. He mouthed words that she couldn't hear, but she knew them all the same.

Hey Jazzypants.

She was sobbing hard as she grasped the hand cupping her face, her fingers went right through it, but she could feel it, like she could feel his palm against her cheek. It was cold, and so light it almost tickled, but she could feel it.

She tried again, very gently feeling for that slight resistance to the air and holding her hand against it, she couldn't touch him for real, she couldn't hold him, but she could feel him. That was enough.

"I missed you dad." She smiled through her tears, "I missed you so much."

His features were still hard to make out, but it was clear he was smiling, he mouthed more words.

"Sorry, I can't hear you." said Jazz, sadly.

"He says he liked the obituary." Danny grunted, eyes still squeezed shut. "He knew you wrote it, he could tell."

Jazz laughed, it was only a little hysterical. Danny's hand trembled against Jack's arm. Jazz wanted to tell him he could stop now, but she didn't want her dad to go, not yet.

She raised her hands to cup his face, only just feeling the whisper of a few bristles on his chin. She didn't know what to say, what could she say?

"I'm so glad you're here," she said quietly with as much feeling as she could, "but, why are you here? You said you'd never... you'd never..."

Jack said nothing, but glanced over to Danny, whose hair had started streaking with white and glinting with crystalline shards of ice.

"Don't get to choose." He growled, his voice sounded distorted, his jaw clenched so hard Jazz could hear his teeth grinding, "Happens or it doesn't."

Danny's lips were pulled back in a pained snarl and were turning blue, his canines were sharpening as blinding flashes of green slipped from beneath his eyelids. A large puff of opaque mist rolled from his mouth upon each laboured exhale.

Jazz gave her father a careful hug, trying to lean into him without falling through.

"We're gonna figure this out dad I promise we're gonna figure it out."

She could feel his arms around her, the slight pressure reminding her of being buffeted by a strong gust of wind.

Danny took that as his cue, he pulled his hand back with a ragged cry and Jack's misty green form dissipated like smoke in a breeze.

Jazz stared into the empty space her dad's face had only just filled moments ago.

"Is he still here?" She asked, voice trembling.

"Yuh- yeah," Danny huffed, he was bent over, catching his breath. "I can suh- still see him, and hear him."

He stood straight as he pulled in a deep lungful of air. Then he laughed, a rough, exhausted laugh, but a laugh nonetheless.

"I'm so glad that worked, oh Ancients. I'm gonna need a minute." he crashed onto the bed face down.

"What exactly did you do?" Jazz asked, eyes still locked on the space where Jack had been, and presumably was still, standing.

"Dad only just formed a consciousness this morning," Danny grumbled into his bedding. "He's still warm, hasn't manifested a core yet. I just loaned him some energy."

"Still warm?" Jazz turned her nose up at the phrase.

"Yeah, it's uh, ghost slang. Means freshly dead, y'know like the body's still-"

"Yeah yeah I get it," Jazz waved a hand dismissively. "Gross."

"That's what dad said."

"Yeah! Because it's gross!"

Danny laughed, but it was barely more than a breathy huff. Jazz eyed him carefully, he was a little more pale than usual, there were bags beneath his eyes, his cheeks were a little hollow and his lips were still tinged with blue. All his usual signs of overexertion, but other than that he looked relatively okay.

"Why was it so exhausting?" Jazz asked. "I would've thought you'd have more than enough energy to share, especially for something as simple as visibility."

"Amount isn't the issue." Danny raised a finger pointedly, "Simple is the issue, imagine trying to fill a water balloon with a fire hose."

Jazz balked.

"Wait, that sounds unbelievably dangerous!" Jazz glared at Danny and then back at the empty room, "What happens to dad if you lose control?"

Danny groaned and flipped himself over onto his back, an arm flung over his eyes.

"Don't get mad at me it was his idea." Danny glared at the empty space for a beat before barking, "Was too!"

Jazz rolled her eyes, "Oh my god you are both children." She turned to Danny and pointed a thumb over her shoulder, "I can't hear him so you're going to have to tell me, what would happen to him if you lost control?"

Danny pressed his lips together and muttered guiltily, "He... could'a destabilised."

"He WHAT?!"

"I told you it was his idea!"

"I don't care whose idea it was!" Jazz alternated between glaring at Danny and at the space behind her. "You're both idiots for trying something so risky! There wasn't some way to practice?!"

"What do think we were doing while you were gone!" Danny exclaimed, "Also he's standing over there now, he moved so he wouldn't feel like you were yelling at him."

Jazz planted a hand over her face, and shook her head in disbelief, she didn't know whether to laugh or cry, her dad had been back for not even ten minutes and she was already yelling at him.

She spluttered a choked up giggle, wiping her eyes and sniffling.

"God I missed you dad." Jazz said, before she started bawling.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Whumptober 30 + 31: Internal Injury and Left for Dead

CW: Blood, just like a whole lot of violence, organ removal, more than mild arson, whumper turned whumpee, character death, dissoci@tion, mild vampirism, some brief threatening pet whump and dehumanization + a noncon reference

TIMELINE: Begins immediately following Possession, end of the Bad Arc. One year after Danny is abducted for a second time.

Nate tastes blood on his tongue, thick in his mouth, but he’s tasted blood before. Bram’s skin is cold but it is always cold, and his panting breaths are heavy against Nate’s ear but he knows Bram’s breathing better than almost anything else, better than he knows anyone’s breathing but Danny’s.

Abraham Denner has been breathing in Nate’s ear, down his spine, inside his mind for seven very long years, and Nate is about to ensure he can never do it again.

Bram groans in pain, like so many other sounds he’s made against Nate’s ear before, whispering, I love you, you’re mine as Nate cried and fought and screamed and didn’t cry and moaned and gave in to him, to his eyes and his love, again and again and again-

Nate pulls back, his teeth and tongue black and red, blood smeared thick like oil around his lips and down his chin, and Bram’s eyes meet his, wide with rage. 

Nate isn’t scared of Bram any longer.

His wrists burn from tearing free of the ropes, the scent of new and old blood is thick in the air around them. His hands close around Bram’s neck, a collar of skin, and he closes his grip slippery-red, thumbs pressing down on the windpipe of a man who will not die from this, because he already died centuries ago.

Ryan is in his mind and in his hands, guiding their strength, Ryan is darkness and white teeth sharpened to points. Ryan is glowing yellow eyes that stare out from Nate’s own. He is not alone inside himself, and they are the same, and if Danny is dead then Nate will make sure Bram follows him-

He’s not dead, Ryan’s voice whispers inside of him, and Nate bears his thumbs down harder just to hear Bram’s gurgling, rasping chokes, to feel his hands press against Nate’s bare chest and then claw there, digging in but Ryan is between Nate and the pain, pressing up against his skin, a barrier between Nate and true sensation. He’s not dead. We can still save him.

Nathaniel Vandrum’s life has been narrowed, day by day, month by month, year by year. He spent years under Bram’s spell, eight months a hunted animal. He spent four years keeping Danny alive, he spent a year and a half helping him learn to be human again, spent a year watching Danny suffer from a place too far for him to follow.

He has spent a year watching Danny bleed, and scream, and cry, and slip away inside himself with only Ryan there to bring him back out.

He is tired of watching Danny suffer.

He is tired of this.

He is so fucking tired.

He feels no pain from his broken right hand - Ryan stands between him and the pain there, too. He can feel Ryan twisting inside him, pushing him to close his hands tighter around Bram’s neck, staring down into his eyes. The things that move there thrash with desperate desire to survive but Nate has no mercy left in him.

He should be horrified by someone else being inside his body with him but he can’t be, he can’t let it sink in that he is moving as two people working together inside one skin, or he’ll slip. It takes one mistake and Bram will have him again, and if Bram gets him again he’ll be done, he’ll die before he’ll hurt anyone, but Bram would make him hurt so many people.

“N-Nate-” Bram’s voice is husky, but the anger boils inside it, and he grabs Nate by the shoulders finally and throws him off. Nate slams to the ground on his side, groaning and moving to scramble to his feet just as Bram, blood still pouring in thick black waves from the wound Nate tore open, stands and kicks him hard.

Something snaps in Nate and Ryan isn’t fast enough to take the pain. There’s a burst of it, an ache that overrides him, and he’s still for too long. Only a second... but too long. 

Bram drags him to his knees by one arm and slaps him, his palm slamming into Nate’s cheek sending him back to the ground. Back up to slap him again, the other side. Kicked again and Nate coughs out air before he can find more to inhale.

Ryan is gone from inside him, collapsing onto the ground where he’d been standing before he stepped inside Nate’s skin, dark skin glowing faintly with the same yellow as his eyes.

Somewhere, Bram’s sister runs from her own mistakes, but Nate stares up as Bram walks towards him and thinks that Bram has never needed his sister to keep his puppies in line before, and he doesn’t need her now.

“You would… refuse the gift?” Bram’s voice is laced with his disbelief. He raises a hand to touch the uneven skin torn apart at one shoulder, looking at the blood there with something like wonder. “You’d try to kill me? After everything I did for you? After everything I gave you?”

“After-...” Nate coughs again, trying to get back on his feet, but as soon as he’s on all fours Bram kicks him again and sends him back down. His eyes move to Danny - limp on the ground, blood welling up around the blade buried in his back. Danny’s eyes are open, wide and so so blue.

So blue, and so empty.

Danny’s gone.

“No.” The voice is from Nate but it’s not his voice. It’s a whimper. A whine. Barely a protest.

Too late.

“I gave you the puppy,” Bram says, stepping between Nate and Danny, blocking him from the sight of the man he loves most in the world. The only thing left that he loves in the world. “Now I’ve taken the puppy away.”

Nate’s heart does not twist with fear. He doesn’t let himself grieve yet. Instead… he lets his head drop to the ground, into his arms, and he starts to weep. If the tears are anger, not sadness, Bram doesn’t notice. He chuckles, satisfied, and pulls Nate back onto his feet again. One hand gripped tightly around his arm, the other hand cups Nate’s cheek, gently pressing his jaw to tilt his head up, get him to look Bram in the eyes.

“I w-wanted to save him,” Nate whispers.

Too late, Vandrum. Always too late.

“I know,” Bram says with unnerving tenderness, and when he leans in to kiss Nate, the man doesn’t fight him. Bram’s lips are cold. 

He spent half a year, once, being the perfect lover. He can do it again, for just a few minutes. 

For long enough.

Bram licks his own blood off his lips when he pulls back, smiling now. There’s blackish red on his teeth, staining his pale pale skin. “You can’t save anyone, Nate,” Bram says, reaching up, running his fingers back through Nate’s hair. “You’re mine. Mine, forever. For the rest of fucking time, Nate, you’re mine. Mourn him if you want, but you were never meant for the puppy. You were meant for me.”

“Yes,” Nate says, and pitches his voice to be slightly faint and empty, the voice he used when Bram would wipe him away from himself. He looks into those colorless eyes and, like every day since Bram once forced a muzzle on Danny for months and nearly took him from Nate for good, he feels absolutely nothing.

“Bring Faerie Boy inside,” Bram commands with effortless certainty. “I know how to take care of his kind, too. Then we’ll decide what happens next.” Bram looks carelessly over at where Danny lays crumpled in the dirt. “Faerie Boy can bury the body.”

The body.

Nate has to steel himself with every ounce of willpower not to make a sound in response. He only nods and, making his expression blank, he limps over to Ryan, dragging Danny’s brother to his feet. Ryan’s skin feels like an open flame under his hand, far hotter than human skin ever should be, but the glow in his eyes is dulling. He’s too tired, too new at this. His strength is already waning, Nate thinks, he pushed himself too far.

“Danny’s n-not dead,” Ryan says in a croaking, cracking voice. “He’s, he’s not-”

“I know,” Nate responds, forcing him to move. He knows Danny is dead, though, and that this is just Ryan trying to convince him not to give up, give in, and let Bram rebuild his family - with his true love and his dog - with Ryan in Danny’s place. Bram is behind them, ensuring they go where into the house, and Nate half-drags Ryan up the steps. “T-trust me. I h-h-h… I’ve got a plan.”

Ryan laughs, dry and hopeless, but he allows himself to be moved. His neck is a ring of bright red agony, his wrists look the same. He’s skinny, after a year earning bites of food with obedience to torture, bony under Nate’s hands. His hair is dull and brittle, dried and tangled frizz instead of curls. “Sure… hope so.”

“When I m-m-move,” Nate whispers, barely loud enough for Ryan to possibly hear, just hoping he understands, “grab his l-l-legs to s-slow him down, and then c-c-come back… I’ll l-let you in.”

Nate deposits him on the floor next to the kitchen table without waiting for a response, letting him drop more roughly than necessary, pretending he is still in thrall as he pulls out a chair and sits. 

He’s going to have one chance at this.

Bram pulls out a chair and sits across from him, giving Nate a smile. Brilliant, and shining, and loving, even as the love of Nate’s life is bleeding to death in the front yard. Nate might not be able to save Danny, now - but he can save Ryan, he thinks.

He hopes it’s enough for wherever Danny will be after he’s gone.

He hopes it will somehow settle Danny’s soul, to know Nate gave everything to save his little brother, after watching Danny break himself again and again to hold Ryan together.

If we’re damned for loving each other like they told me, Nate thinks with an all-consuming grief and conviction, I’ll see you in hell soon enough.

“We’ll have to go somewhere new,” Bram says, gripping Ryan by the hair, jerking him backwards. Ryan bares his sharp, inhuman teeth, and Bram snorts, ramming his head directly into the edge of the table, making Ryan cry out and slump.

Nate doesn’t flinch.

“I’ll dedicate you. Make you one of us. I’ll finish the dedication and then you’ll understand.” Bram’s hand is still gripped in Ryan’s hair, tightening on the curls until he hisses in pain, but it’s a faint and faded sound. “We’ll take the puppy with us and go find my sister. You know I never like to leave a puppy, Nate.”

Those eyes are back on his, and Nate gives Bram a slight smile - as if pulled out of him unwillingly, as if he’s falling into the depths of his eyes all over again. As if, without Danny to fight for, he has no fight left.

Danny might be dead - Nate’s mind skips from that truth, runs from it as fast as it can, circles around it endlessly - but Ryan isn’t. Danny would want his brother saved, and Nate… 

He can do this.

He has to do this.

“Y-yes, Bram,” Nate says, soft and as empty as Danny’s open eyes. “I c-can help t-t-take care of Faerie B-Boy.”

At his feet, Ryan lets out a choked-off sob. Whether he’s only playing the part, or drifting into pure hopelessness, Nate isn’t sure. He can’t risk a look, can’t risk giving anything away for a second. Instead, he moves to lay his hand over Bram’s on top of Ryan’s head. Bram’s hand is cold under his.

Danny’s hands get cold, too, his long fingers feel like ice sometimes in the morning when he wakes Nate with a hug. He pulls his hands into the sleeves of his sweaters, tugs them constantly down to cover the scars on the backs of his hands. His eyes are warmer than his hands can be, as Nate holds one of his hands in both of his, rubbing at them to warm up those cold fingers while Danny smiles-

Danny’s dead. You can save his brother. Focus.

“I l-love you,” Nate says, softly. He knows how to twist his tone just right, to make his voice foggy like the power of Bram’s eyes has once again papered over Nate’s will, his very self, to remake him in Bram’s image.

If there is a heaven, it will be Danny that I beg for forgiveness, not God.

“I love you, too.” Bram smiles, letting go of Ryan to hold Nate’s hand. Cold dead fingers. Nate forces his smile to widen, softens his expression. “My black-haired prince. Red got in our way. But it’s just us all over again, isn’t it? Just you and I.” He smirks, pale lips smeared with drying blood. “And the puppy.”

Nate nods, and pulls Bram’s hand up, to press a kiss to the back of it. Smooth, scarless.

Not the hand he wants to kiss at all.

“That’s why you had to watch it all, you know.” Bram sighs, content in this moment. There’s still blood running from the wound in his shoulder but he doesn’t seem to notice it, and the wound is closing before Nate’s eyes, skin knitting itself together. He won’t die, even if Nate kills him he won’t die. There’s only one way to be sure. Only one way to keep him from coming back.

“Wh-what? Why?” Nate tilts his head, closes his eyes so Bram won’t see he’s disgusted by his touch, plays it off as shivering desire, maybe. Somehow, somewhere back there, he gained the ability to hide some of his unhappiness from Abraham Denner.

They lost with their first attempt.

There’s only one more chance.

“So you would get used to it again.” Bram pulls his hand back and away, lays it palm-down against the back of Ryan’s neck, and Nate tries not to watch Ryan shiver where he kneels on the floor. Bram scratches his fingernails through the red, irritated skin, reopening old wounds from the iron collar. Ryan whimpers, whines with the pain, and Nate fights the memory of Danny’s scream behind his muzzle, jaw straining as the wire mesh cut in deeper and deeper. 

Bram took the muzzle off - the new one remade, but it might as well have been exactly the fucking same - before Ryan and Ora came out. It’s still out there, isn’t it? Lying in the dirt, bloodied. 

Nate almost loses his iron grip on his own emotions at the thought of Danny’s body in the dirt so close to the tool of torture that hurt him the worst. Not from grief, no - he still has that locked up inside his head, he will mourn Danny when he has saved Ryan, when it’s over, when it’s done. But the fury that comes with the realization that Danny’s eyes, still open and unblinking, will be staring right at the muzzle.

He catches himself. Holds the anger down. Gives Bram a soft, sweet, loving smile. “Used t-to it?”

“Right. Used to it, and… maybe a little bit appreciative.” Bram laughs, his high-pitched hyena’s laughter, smacking the wound he reopened on Ryan’s neck just to hear him cry. His eyes glow such a brilliant, bright yellow they turn nearly white, like staring into the sun - and then falter again, fade and go dull. 

He needs to be strong enough to do one more thing, and Nate isn’t sure if he will be. But he’s going to try, anyway.

“I’ll l-learn,” Nate promises, and runs his own hand through Ryan’s dirty, greasy curls, catching in the tangles. He looks down, cold green eyes locking on Ryan’s dulled yellow, back to the color of old, cloudy honey, and uses his good left hand to tilt his chin up, rubbing his thumb over his lower lip. “You’ll b-b-be good for m-me, puppy, won’t you?”

Ryan’s eyes widen, just a little, flicker in the dim kitchen lit only by the light coming through the window over the sink, and through the open inside door. Outside the closed screen door, down the steps, fifteen feet away, Danny lies in the dirt. 

“Oh, that’s good,” Bram says, rubbing at Ryan’s back. “What do you say, Faerie Boy? Can you be as good between us as you’ve been for me so far?”

Ryan’s lip trembles under Nate’s thumb. Nate smiles at him, the same soft loving look he’s been giving Bram. He is the personification of what Bram can do. He is the perfect vision of Bram taking control and making him someone he’s not, as he did for years with power, manipulation, and threats. “Bram asked you a qu-... a question, p-puppy,” Nate whispers. “Wh-what’s the r-r-rule?”

Ryan’s eyes well with such human tears. “Al-... always answer Abraham’s questions, never hes… hesitate and neh-... never lie.”

“So wh-what’s your answer?”

Ryan looks up at him, pleading, but Nate keeps his eyes, his face perfectly steady. I’m sorry. Just a few more minutes...

“I...” Ryan’s voice catches. He’s exhausted, struggling to pull threads of himself together. Whatever it is Ryan is, whatever it is he can do, it takes too much out of him. “I c-can be good for you,” He whispers.

“B-B-Both of us?”

Ryan’s eyes close tightly. “Both of you.” He has to spit out the words.

“Good b-b-boy.” Another rub over his lower lip, his skin is rough and chapped against Nate’s thumb. “Do you w-w-want a d, a drink, Bram?” He raises his eyes, lets his hand drop, but not before he taps twice on the front of Ryan’s neck next to his Adam's apple, deliberately spaced apart to make it clear it’s a message. “I th-think I remember how you l-like it.”

Bram smiles, twists a curl around his finger, yanks on it until Ryan winces. “Sure. Whiskey sour. Red made sour mix, it’s in the fridge.” He sighs, mournfully. “I suppose Red won’t get to make me my drinks anymore. Pity, he was always better at it than Faerie Boy.”

Nate swallows. He won’t cry for Danny yet. 

Not yet.

He pushes himself to his feet, walking away and moving to the fridge. Slow footsteps, careful and solid. He feels strange, as though he’s far away from himself, watching his body go through these motions from a distance. Open the cupboards until he finds a glass, pull it down and add some ice cubes. Find the whiskey in a different cabinet, expensive small-batch distillery in Portland, he notes absently, pouring a shot, and then two, into the glass.

He pulls the sour mix, stored in a pitcher, out of the fridge and tries with every ounce of strength he has left not to think about how Danny’s fingers were the last to close around the handle, and now they never will again.

Not yet not yet not yet.

Cry when Ryan is safe. Until then, be for Ryan what Danny cannot be any longer. He owes Danny that much and more, he owes everything he could ever give. He pours in the sour mix, adds a cherry from a jar in the fridge. Picks a lemon up from a basket, staring down at it, and then his eyes move to the knife block, but he’s careful not to turn his head to make it obvious. 

One chance.

He picks up not the chef’s knife but the smaller, sharper paring knife, and he feels Bram’s eyes on his back as he cuts three identical lemon slices, struggling to do it gracefully with his broken hand throbbing again, fighting him with every step. He drops the lemon slices into the drink, gives the whole thing a quick stir. Closes his eyes and breathes.

I’m sorry, Danny.

He turns around and throws the drink in Bram’s face.

Ryan is moving before Nate has even finished his own motion and he grabs Bram around the legs as he starts to stand up, slamming the man into the ground as he’s knocked off balance, pale eyes widening in surprise as Nate falls on him with his teeth bared and the knife in his hand, bringing it down over Bram’s heart.

There’s resistance, and pain, and Nate doesn’t care about either anymore.

Ryan’s eyes flare, glowing brilliant with one last spark of energy, and the shadows press like velvet against Nate’s back, overtaking all the light but Ryan’s. The kitchen is pure and perfectly black as Nate feels Bram’s blood bubble up cold around the handle of the knife as he forces it down.

Cold hands grab onto his like a vice, and he opens his mouth to scream-

Let me in.

Ryan is in his skin in his heart in his head, pressing the knife down harder, dragging it back towards himself, cutting into Bram’s skin as he fights them but Ryan is stronger than Nate and the two men working in one body open the emptiness inside of Abraham Denner and Nate shoves his hand inside.

It’s cold, like everything about Bram is cold, and it has a little give under his fingers. He grips as tightly as his hand will allow and Ryan is gripping alongside him as they pull backwards. Bram screams, the first true scream Nate has ever heard from him, high-pitched. Windows crack around them as the scream carries on and on and on, Nate’s head is pounding but he can’t feel it. Ryan takes it for him, presses himself along the length of Nate’s body, underneath his skin, against his eardrums, layers himself over Nate’s mind.

He is protected.

He uses the blade of the paring knife to cut the veins and arteries. Cold black blood coats his hand as he pulls out Abraham’s Denner ancient heart.

The shadows recede - or Nate can see through them now, he doesn’t know, the whole world seems strange and disconnected from him - as he pushes himself to his feet.

Nate-

“It’s not d-d-done,” Nate says to the voice inside his head of his dead love’s little brother, and he turns, dragging one leg as he moves out into the sun outside.

Danny hasn’t moved, but Nate didn’t expect him to. 

Dead people usually don’t, unless they’re Bram or Ashley.

He is nothing but blood now, and the heart in his hands is still beating. Soft contractions of muscle with nothing to push through, no blood to rush through old veins. But still the heart beats. It’s not over.

There’s a burn pile over by a shed, covered with sticks and trash, and Nate walks to it with Ryan still inside him. The two of them look out of one set of eyes. 

Burn it?

“B-burn it,” Nate confirms in a fierce whisper.

There are no tears.

Not yet.

He lays the beating heart down in the burn pile and walks away from it, moving to a shed to open the door. He stares, blankly, at a skeleton that faces him against the back wall, rotted away by now. It’s been a year. Death is still in the air but neither of them can smell anything any longer but Bram’s blood. Nate ignores the skeleton and finds a can of gasoline - Bram is predictable, always predictable - and carries it back out to toss about a third of the can into the sticks, taking special care to ensure some of it splashes over the disembodied, beating heart.

Left here, Bram’s body would eventually reform and wake back up.

Like Ashley.

Nate will not lose anything else to them ever again.

“I’m not your b-b-black-haired p-prince,” He says to the heart, and lights a match.

The gasoline catches immediately, flames rising with the sharp pungent smell. Nate doesn’t wait - he picks the can up again, sloshes it around to see how much is left, and looks to the house. “Go s-s-say goodbye to your b-b-brother,” He says. “I’ll come, t-too, when this is o-over.”

Danny-

“Go s-say goodbye.”

Ryan is out of him in a flash, and Nate is oddly lonely inside his mind as he makes his methodical way back to the porch. Ryan kneels next to his brother, hands out but not quite touching, as Nate moves inside. He passes Abraham’s body without looking at it. He lets the gasoline trail - a little here and a little there, splashes on the curtains, splashes on the rug.

With his leg throbbing, he moves upstairs with gasoline trailing on the steps. He pours a little on the bed, staring at the bloodied ropes tied to the headboard a little too long. Outside, he starts to hear the crackle of the fire catching outside. Good. The heart will burn.

Just like his.

More gasoline for the curtains - he’s getting low, he needs to conserve. He has to be sur the whole house will burn.

Then he stops in front of a room with no door, a room he’s seen in Bram’s texted photos and videos, in a few of the livestreams he watched. He watched them all, desperate for clues. Danny and Ryan had managed to tear the paper that covered the window once and before Bram had cut the video, Nate had been able to pause - and see beyond the rolling fields to a water tower in the distance.

One of his first clues.

In this room there are manacles attached to the wall, a broken chain of iron on the floor, pools of drying blood. Nate pours a little gasoline into the pool, watching the change in texture as it thins and goes oddly shimmery.

In the closet, he finds half-drunk bottles of cheap high-proof alcohol. He lets the trail of gasoline lead to those too, and opens them all.

Done with his work, he drops the now-empty can and walks through the house, reeking of gasoline and blood, and goes downstairs and past Bram’s body one more time without looking down or looking back.

His heart beats steady and calm inside of him as he lights a match and lets it fall onto the porch, to find the first thin trail of liquid.

He stands long enough to watch the flames lick into the kitchen, over Bram’s body. He stares long enough to watch Bram’s long wavy pale hair begin to darken and curl. He watches the flames find their way from kitchen to living room. He watches the curtains burn.

Then he turns and walks down the steps.

His hands have started to shake.

Ryan, kneeling on the ground next to his brother with his wrist torn open and pouring blood, pressing it against Danny’s mouth, speaks to him but Nate doesn’t hear it, turning from Danny’s body - too late too late too late too late - and going back to the other fire, to see Bram’s heart burning, turning black. It will be ash soon, and nothing else.

Nate doesn’t cry, no.

Still, he doesn’t cry.

Not yet.

The wind blows warm over his face and Nate takes in a breath. The world is blood and smoke and his failure to save the most important person in his life. The world is the empty feeling underneath his skin. The world is the grief trying to claw it way back up his throat to make him scream-

“Nate!” Ryan’s voice is right next to his ear and he jumps as Ryan grabs at his arm, spinning him around. The yellow eyes are dull, shadowed, bereft of power - but they still dance. You can’t torture the beauty out of Ryan Michaelson.

You can’t kill the light inside him, or the things that live there.

He smells like green hills and a rainy season over waving grasslands. He carries the scent of a predator that hunts at dusk and at dark. Blood soaks the hills, pours down the river, threads into the homes of sleeping people at night.

He’s smiling.

“Nate, he’s not-... Nate, listen to me!”

Nate jerks back into himself, blinking rapidly as his strange disconnect ends. There is fire all around the two of them, and Nate realizes for the first time that the shed will burn, too. It’s already dangerously close to catching. The air is starting to heat around them. “What? Wh-what, Ryan, I-”

“Danny’s not dead! I-I can’t-... but he’s not dead! He’s still breathing! We still have time!”

In the distance, the first faint sound of sirens. Nate raises his head, staring. “Who c-c-called the c-cops?”

Ryan lets out a peal of wild, half-hysterical laughter, and the sound is beautiful. “Whoever saw that bigass cloud of fucking smoke, Nate! Someone’s-...” He swallows, suddenly, sways as his knees buckle, and Nate catches him, arms around him, keeping him upright. “Someone’s... coming for us. Someone’s coming to h-help, someone’s... someone’s coming...”

“Someone’s c-c-coming,” Nate agrees, softly.

Ryan turns to look at him, then slides his arms around Nate, hugging him, burying his head in the side of Nate’s neck.

“Someone fucking came,” He whispers. “And Danny’s not dead.”

Nate’s eyes move over to the tall, thin body sprawled out on the ground, and watches as empty blue eyes blink once, slowly move to meet his.

He’d seen emptiness and thought it was death, but it was someone else buying Danny - buying Nate - some time.

He gently pulls away from Ryan and moves to the muzzle, picking it up in one hand. Someone else is still watching him, blue eyes following his movements, and he holds it out. “Never ag-again,” He says, softly.

Someone else doesn’t move. Just keeps watching as Nate drags himself to the fire and throws the muzzle in.

But when he turn back again, tears are running down Danny’s face, his lips twisting with the agony, and he whimpers, “Nate, h-hurts-”

Nate and Ryan both run to him at once.

When the fire trucks arrive, they find the three of them together on the ground, Nate and Ryan each holding one of Danny’s hands.

---

@slytherynjolras, @whump-it, @bleeding-demon-teeth, @finder-of-rings, @burtlederp, @whumpywhumper, @18-toe-beans, @pumpkinthefangirl, @special-spicy-chicken, @swordkallya, @astrobly, @slaintetowhump, @moose-teeth, @untilthepainstarts, @whumpiary,  @lave-whump @raigash @cupcakes-and-pain

[carrisarune]

In Your Eyes

Next

Note: This is my second attempt of dropping a fic on this site and I can only ask that you have mercy. This was an attempt to expand on the book and certain scenes with my OC. Here’s hoping it works

Tags: I was inspired by the lovely @jamespotterthefirst and their amazing works into dishing out this fic. I also want to thank them for being willing to listen to all my wild rambles in chat and me bein a weirdo. You’re awesome and I can’t thank you enough.

CHAPTER ONE: FIRST DAY INTO THE FRAY (Part 1)

With one last shove to balance the pile of boxes against the wall, Rai sighed before flopping on the bed. A room under the stairs wasn’t the most ideal place to start in a new city but at least it was something. Given how the majority of his savings and allowance had gone into paying any school debts, he was lucky enough to get the room with his own money and not have to reach out to his family. While both sides of his family were well off, using their money without contributing anything gave him hives. 

On that thought, he shifted to pull out his phone from his pocket and called his parents. It took a few seconds before he heard his mum pick up. He greeted her with a, “Hey Mum, I’m all settled in-” before he was interrupted by his mum fussing over whether he was doing alright and if was really sure he didn’t want them to contact a friend for a better place to stay. 

“Mum, MUM! I’m fine. It’s not the worst place to stay in the city and hey, with enough work, I can get myself a better apartment to stay in” he chirped optimistically. His words only served to have his mum fuss even more before his dad took over. Rai could easily picture his dad calming her with a kiss to the cheek as her voice faded away and was replaced with his father’s rich baritone. 

He sounded amused as he spoke, “We had to stop your mother from grabbing her phone more than a few times today, you think you’re ready for your first day of work tomorrow?” showing his own turn at concern. Rai rolled his eyes as he continued to assure his parents for the next few minutes. Honestly, he managed to take care of himself in medical school, he could take care of himself in a new city. 

After ending the call and seeing he had a few hours to spare, Rai carefully pulled a box of books towards him and pulled out a few he could study. As he pulled out one particular old but well-loved book, he gave a grin. It was still hard to believe that he was going to start his residency at Edenbrook tomorrow. Who knows what kind of challenges he would be facing on the job. Plus, having the chance to work and be mentored by some of the top doctors? Rai wasn’t even sure he could sleep with all the excitement buzzing through him. 

Suddenly, he heard the sound of rumbling from the ceiling and gave a sigh. Well, if that was going to be a constant thing, maybe it was best to turn in early. Here was hoping he’d get a comfier place in the future. 

Stepping out of the cab and taking in the hospital, Rai couldn’t stop the grin that overtook his face before he practically ran inside. Once inside though, he realized he didn’t know where to go and paused. Tilting his head in thought, he looked around for anything that might give him directions. He then felt a tap on his shoulder and spun around to see a woman with curly brown hair and a warm smile. “Hi!” she greeted, “You look lost. Let me guess… first day of your medical residency?” and Rai nodded enthusiastically. She directed him to a corner where a camera and a white sheet was set up near the reception. 

He hoped that he didn’t stand out too much from the crowd. But being an Asian with windswept black hair and sharp brown eyes, Rai was sure he’d garner some curious looks like he did in school. Once he settled his ID and managed to get some helpful advice from the doctor whom he learned was Dr. Ines DeLarosa, he headed for orientation. 

On the way there through the waiting room though, Rai suddenly heard gasps and turned to see a woman collapse to the ground. Quickly moving as he saw the other patients start to crowd around her, he called, “Everyone please step back! I’m a doctor” and moved to check on the woman. As he did, an attending rushed in, kneeled by her side, and checked her pulse. “Pulse is weak. She’s unresponsive” he announced then looked around before catching sight of Rai. 

Without hesitation, he ordered, “You. Rookie. Get in here” and Rai quickly moved to obey with a, “Yes Doctor!” The woman was then lifted to a gurney before the doctor turned to a male nurse and asked, “What was she in for? Did she fill out a form yet?” to which the nurse replied with a negative. This clearly didn’t please the doctor as he stated, “If we don’t figure out what’s wrong with her fast, she’s gonna die on this table” before telling Rai to check the patient’s B.P. 

Doing as instructed, he peered at the numbers before announcing it’s quick descent and the patient’s immediate need for fluids. While the nurse was preparing the IV, Rai noticed the rapidly forming bruise on the patient’s elbow. Knowing that she had not landed on that elbow, Rai’s mind began to rapidly speed through possibilities as he noticed the patient’s fingertips were also turning blue. 

When he called the symptoms to attention and noted how the patient was most likely lacking oxygen, Rai saw the doctor nod in approval before instructing him to check on the patient’s lungs. The moment Rai did, he felt panic settle in upon hearing the failing of the organ. Urgently announcing his findings, he tried to reign in spiraling thoughts while the attending calmly announced a Code Blue and began to gently pump air into the patient. 

Digging his nails into his palm to center himself, Rai asked, “What can we do doctor? The problem hasn’t been confirmed yet” his mind whirling through all possible answers. With intense blue eyes piercing into Rai’s, the doctor told him, “Consider all the clues. It’s all there. You know this, Rookie.” Rai unclenched his hand to bite at a fingertip as he muttered the symptoms before exclaiming, “It’s a hemothorax!” thoughts coming to focus as the answer came to him. “Precisely. A blood vessel ruptured and is filling her pleural cavity…” the doctor started and Rai continued, “...blocking her lungs expanding! Hence the failure!” Then another thought popped in, “But since there’s no time to repair the vessel, that means…” Rai trailed off.

“We’ll have to do an emergency thoracotomy to drain the cavity instead. Nurse!” the attending called. To Rai’s shock, he finds himself handed a test tube and socket while the attending lift’s the patient’s shirt to expose the side of her ribcage. Blood roaring in his ears as he gripped at the scalpel, Rai gulped as he muttered, “No time for anesthesia… have to make the incision at the fifth intercostal space… anterior… to the mid… damn it, get a grip Hayashi!” growling at his trembling hand holding the scalpel. 

He jolted when felt the doctor steady his hand with his and their eyes met once more as the doctor told him, “Hey… You can do this.” Gripping onto those words, Rai took a breath before steadying his hand and carefully making the incision. He faintly heard the doctor’s encouragement before following the instruction to insert the tube. 

The moment the patient gasped for breath, Rai felt all remaining tenseness leave him before nodding to the doctor in silent thanks. As the doctor gave orders for the patient to be taken to surgery and the onlookers applauded, Rai released a heavy breath. He carefully rubbed his hands and with a breathless laugh, he said to the doctor, “Uh… well, that was… pretty amazing” barely believing that he barely started a shift and he managed to help save a patient. Calm as can be, the doctor retorted, “You’re right. it’s pretty amazing you didn’t get her killed’, his words causing Rai’s smile to freeze. Seeing the other lost for words, the doctor ruthlessly continued, “Your examination was slow and superficial. Your scalpel technique amateur at best…”

Before he could stop himself, Rai jokes, “In that case, maybe you should give me some private lessons” and the moment he did, his mind screeched, “(YOU FECKIN IDIOT!!!)” while alarms blared. Of all reactions, Rai did not expect the doctor to be amused, “Ha! I just might, Doctor…” he said, lifting Rai’s lanyard to read his ID, “Hayashi. But I sincerely doubt you could afford my salary” before tossing it back and walking away. 

It was one thing to suddenly have his ID grabbed, but hearing his last name be pronounced right left him more than a little breathless. He quickly took a breath to reel himself in before ruffling his head and groaning, “… Please tell me I didn’t just make a total fool of myself in front of a top doctor” a whimper tinting his words towards the end. 

The same male nurse from earlier walked over and patted his shoulder, “Don’t worry about it, Dr. Ramsey is like that with everyone.” Hearing the doctor’s name, Rai’s brain conjured the Looney Tunes ending theme, replacing the ending catchphrase with “You’re Screwed!” as he buried his face in his hands. “Greaaat, so not only do I mess up my first impression with an attending, I made a fool of myself in front of my medical hero of all people” he bemoaned. Clearly trying to cheer him up, the nurse chimed, “On the bright side, you’ll get plenty more chances to impress him” and Rai smiled in thanks. Once he learned the nurse’s name was Danny and introductions were made, Rai looked down to see his scrubs had been stained with blood and sighed.

Asking for directions to the locker room, he thanked Danny as he was led the way. Once inside, Rai searched for his locker, only to come face to face with a beautiful woman with dark skin and black hair in her underwear. Quickly turning about-face, Rai shut his eyes, “Sorry about that, do you need some privacy?” he asked. The woman seemed amused at his reaction, “How’d you make it through medical school without seeing a bra?” she asked and Rai shrugged. He turned to move away and reply only to bump into a muscular male; “Go easy on him, Jackie. It’s the first day for all of us” Rai heard him say. 

The woman, now identified as Jackie retorted, “Hey, I can be friendly… if you stay out of my way.” Rai couldn’t help but snort at that before piping, “To answer your question, I got away by being respectful, my parents didn’t raise no creep” rocking on his heels. 

The shirtless male barked a laugh, “We got ourselves a smart one here then” he joked before extending a hand with a playful wink. “Bryce Lahela, a.k.a. your new favorite surgical intern. Pleasure’s all mine” he introduced only for Jackie to snark, “Ignore the meathead, he’s a scalpel jockey.” Rai accepted Bryce’s hand with a grin, “Rai Hayashi. Internal medicine, nice to meet you!” Jackie nodded at that, “Guess you’re with me then. C’mon, we’re gonna be late” she said before slipping into her scrubs. 

Going from his first impression, Rai thought it was best to be quick and follow after. It didn’t take long for the trio to reach the main atrium where the rest of the interns were listening to an impressive, statuesque woman up front. From the sound of things, she was already in the middle of orientation. Peering at the woman’s face, Rai tried to place her face before perking. He leaned towards Bryce and whispered, “Isn’t that Harper Emery? I thought she was with the surgical team?” 

Jackie gave a smirk as she overheard, “You’re a little late on the news there Hayashi, she’s the hospital’s new chief.” Rai nodded in acknowledgement before listening to the rest of the speech. As she ended her speech and the interns burst in applause, Rai joined in and grinned at his fellow colleagues only to catch something, or rather someone in the crowd. 

Out of all the interns, there was a young woman who was not clapping with the rest. Frankly, she looked rather unimpressed with everything. Before Rai could think further on it, he hears Dr. Emery announce that they would be meeting their senior residents tomorrow and for today, they would be partnering up for their first patient and that assignments were on the board. 

Waving goodbye and wishing Bryce good luck as he left to join his group, Rai moved to peer at the board. Once he found his and his partner’s name, he tilted his head, “Huh, I’m partnered with… A. Emery?” he mused out loud. An intern with curly hair exclaimed, “Like, Chief of Medicine Dr. Emery?!” and Rai turned to him. “It says A. Emery, so I’m sure it meant a relative, unless Emery somehow became a common last name without anyone knowing” Rai joked and a loud snort was heard followed by an, “I wish.” Everyone turns to the source and it’s revealed to be the unimpressed intern that Rai saw earlier. 

He walked up to her with a smile and held out his hand, “Hi! A. Emery right? I’m Rai Hayashi, it looks like we’ll be partners for this assignment. Are you alright with me calling you Dr. Emery or something else? I mean, if you want,; it’s tough that people pile on expectation when it comes to certain last names. Oh wait, I didn’t even get your first name, my bad” he babbled, though still maintained his bright smile. For a moment, the female intern looked surprised before her expression turned cool and she shook his hand, “Dr. Aurora Emery, Dr. Emery is fine. Anyone tell you that you talk… a lot?” she said and Rai gave a chuckle. “My bad, I was just excited to work my first assignment, let’s go?” he offered and Aurora gave a curt nod; the two breezed past the crowd before anything else could be said.

On the way to their patient, the two managed to have an amicable agreement on their partnership for the assignment. Though he had read the chart, Rai still felt a pang as they entered the room and saw the young patient named Annie. Still, he managed to push through with Aurora taking her vitals while he made the patient more comfortable and asked more on what happened before they ended up in the hospital. 

After leaving Annie with further reassurances and taking note of her symptoms and other unrecorded injuries. Just as they were discussing submitting their findings for lab work, Aurora was paged by her aunt. Rai gave a wince upon hearing the announcement from the P.A System, “Go ahead. I’ll handle things and keep you updated. Good luck” he encouraged.

Aurora peered at him for a moment, as if she was trying to figure him out before she nodded and left. After making the submission, Rai found himself busy with other patients. By the time he managed to have a minute to himself, Rai was close to just squatting on the floor to rest. Just as he was about to do just that, a nurse came up to him with the results. 

Looking them over and noting the uncommon strain of bacteria, he advised for some antibiotics and some observation on the effects before thanking the nurse for their work. With that done, Rai took a moment to breath before heading off to continue his rounds. Only, he realized later, in his attempt to head back to Annie’s room, he had somehow gotten himself lost.

He looked around to see if there was anything familiar, but as he turned around, he ended up bumping into another intern who dropped the textbook they were reading. “Sorry!” Rai exclaimed before bending down to pick up the fallen book and held it out. The intern waved his apologies, giving his own apologies before introducing himself as Landry Olsen. When he was handing the book back, Rai saw a peek of the cover, “Oh hey! ‘Diagnostic Principles by Ethan Ramsey’, you a fan?” he asked. Landry grinned, “Yeah, I totally worship the guy. Shrine in my basement and everything” he said before immediately stating, “Kidding! I’m kidding. I never know it’s clear when I’m joking,” his words caused something to itch at the back of Rai’s head but he ignored it. 

“Well, here’s hoping you give a better first impression than I did,” Rai offered and Landry gave a gasp of recognition. Apparently, the whole incident from the morning had already made his rounds. Landry was gushing on how lucky Rai was and how he wished he hadn’t been early to work, wishing he had the chance to meet Dr. Ramsey. Quite honestly, Rai had been trying to not cringe into a ball as he listened to Landry’s words. When the other trailed off and seemed to stare in shock at something, Rai followed his line of sight and saw the very man being talked about at the end of the hall. 

“(Whelp, time to find the nearest window and yeet myself then)”

[tabloidtoc]

National Enquirer, May 10

You can buy a brand new copy of this issue without the mailing label for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: Prince Charles orders Prince Harry to divorce Meghan Markle

Page 2: In a sniveling fit of pique, scorned Alex Rodriguez has trashed former fiancee Jennifer Lopez as a dud in the sack and A-Rod is moaning J. Lo drove him to chase excitement elsewhere because she couldn't keep up with his sex demands and Alex is defending his piggish behavior by saying Jennifer pushed him into it and their spark died long ago, and they were barely intimate for the best part of a year before calling it quits -- Jennifer would pack on the PDA for the cameras, but the moment they were in private she pushed Alex away and even made him sleep in a separate bedroom and he says it was like dating an ice queen and pities the next guy she ropes in -- Jennifer thought she and Alex had a pretty good connection during their happier times, even though she'd likely admit things really petered out toward the end when the lack of trust set in so it will sting her that he's trashing her skills in the bedroom

Page 4: Robert De Niro is getting pummeled by estranged wife Grace Hightower's free-spending ways and his bitter spouse is intent on taking the aging legend for every penny as their nasty divorce drags on -- Robert's lawyers argued in court that greedy Grace's extravagant lifestyle has forced him to take every job he can snag, causing the 77-year-old to toil 12-hour days, six days a week and what's more, Robert's Nobu restaurant business has hit hard times and his tax bills to Uncle Sam are piling up but he is reportedly worth a whopping $500 million, and Grace's lawyers have countered he's pleading poverty but regularly charters a helicopter to Sunday brunch, a charge denied by his lawyer and her attorneys also claimed Robert frequently flies to Florida on a private plane and spends millions and millions on himself -- meanwhile, Robert's relationship with 66-year-old Grace has taken such a nosedive, she's spending frivolously just to punish him and she's walked into a shop a spent $80,000 in 15 minutes and she will go on vacations to the Bahamas, stop at the duty-free store and pay four times the price of what things usually cost and she has more wigs than Imelda Marcos had shoes -- Robert met Grace in 1987 when she was working as a waitress in London, and they married a decade later but they split in 1999 then reconciled and renewed their vows in 2004 before finally calling it quits in 2018 -- De Niro has forked over as much as $375,000 a month to his spouse since their split and the financially squeezed star may resort to doing product endorsements just to pay the bills -- under the terms of the couple's prenuptial agreement, once Grace and Robert are finally divorced, she's allowed a $6 million home, $500,000 cash and $1 million in annual alimony, but her lawyers have argued she should be entitled to half his fortune

* Nearly two years after Hayden Panettiere accused ex-boyfriend Brian Hickerson of brutally attacking her, the bully was sentenced to serve time in Los Angeles after he pleaded no contest to two felony counts of injuring a spouse or girlfriend, and the remaining charges of battery, assault with a deadly weapon and dissuading a witness were dismissed and he was hit with 45 days behind bars and four years' probation but he'll get credit for 12 days served -- he's done his own damage and will pay a permanent price for it -- meanwhile, Hayden is now in a great place in her life

Page 5: Danny Masterson has dragged Leah Remini into his rape case, claiming her docuseries Scientology and Its Aftermath influenced his alleged victims to file police reports against him -- former Scientologist Leah offered the women inducements and benefits to report Masterson to cops, his lawyer Tom Mesereau told a L.A. criminal court -- Danny, a 45-year-old Scientologist and That '70s Show alum, has pleaded not guilty to charges he raped three women in separate incidents between 2001 and 2003 -- Mesereau also called an LAPD detective who worked a second job as security for Leah a double agent and questioned how a 2000 police report made by one alleged victim went missing, but Deputy District Attorney Reinhold Mueller dismissed Mesereau's double agent claims as hyperbole and said the defense got a copy of the missing report and Mesereau's request to push back Masterson's preliminary hearing, a Scientology delay tactic, was also rejected

Page 6: Kelly Osbourne's shocking relapse after nearly four years of sobriety occurred amid intense family drama for the former reality show clan -- Kelly's mom Sharon Osbourne's exit from The Talk amid racism claims by co-hosts and dad Ozzy Osbourne's struggles with crippling Parkinson's disease and excruciating nerve damage frazzled her and she confessed she relapsed and she's not proud of it, but she's back on track and she's truly learned that it is just one day at a time -- her parents' problems weighed heavily on 36-year-old Kelly, who first struggled with substance abuse in her teens, and there's no doubt her mother's scandalous exit from The Talk played a big role as Kelly was crushed over the beating Sharon took in the press and retired rocker Ozzy's relentless suffering also pains Kelly and throw in brother Jack Osbourne's progressive MS and she's dealing with a lot

Page 7: Distressed Dolly Parton is ready to stage an all-star country intervention for her party-hearty goddaughter Miley Cyrus after recent photos of the troubled wild child swilling booze triggered alarm bells for Miley's family members and inner circle, including Dolly who has acted as a mentor to Miley and Dolly has always fussed over Miley like a mother hen and she's worried Miley is going to throw away her career and her life -- 75-year-old Dolly is so concerned about 28-year-old Miley that she's talked about reaching out to other country icons to arrange a meeting with the former Disney child star and help her consider her options and Dolly wants to enlist women she knows Miley truly admires, like Reba McEntire and Loretta Lynn, and organize a sit-down and Dolly knows if Miley hears from legends who achieved so much in the music industry, she's likely to understand any mistakes she makes now can affect her life forever -- every time Dolly thinks Miley's got her demons beat, she hears of another slip-up, so she feels like it's time to take action and Miley's parents Billy Ray Cyrus and Tish Cyrus, who are good pals of Dolly, are thankful for Dolly's concern because Billy Ray and Tish have tried talking to Miley, but she tunes her parents out and they agree their daughter is more likely to respond to Dolly and her legendary friends

* Angelina Jolie blamed her ugly divorce with Brad Pitt for dashing her dreams to direct movies -- she and Brad split in 2016 and the two have been locked in a mudslinging legal slugfest ever since -- Angie says she love directing, but she had a change in her family situation that's not made it possible for her to direct for a few years and Angie, who last directed 2017's First They Killed My Father, said she needed to just do shorter jobs and be home more, so she kind of went back to doing a few acting jobs

Page 8: Shamed sleaze Matt Lauer has been snubbed by his old Hamptons crowd, and it's got the scandal-scarred scumbag down in the dumps and the super-rich who live and socialize in the fashionable high-society playground won't forget how Lauer was axed from his longtime Today gig over bombshell allegations of sexual misconduct and Matt's done everything he can to regain his place in the community, from hanging out in the village to splashing money around and tipping too well and he's convinced he can make a comeback, but snooty residents turn their noses up and it must be difficult for him because it's tough for anyone who wants to get in with this crowd but for Matt it's become almost impossible -- with scandal raging, Lauer's marriage to Annette Roque collapsed and they divorced in 2019 after a two-year separation and they share three children, daughter Romy, 17, and sons Jack, 19, and Thijs, 14, and Lauer has denied any wrongdoing and insisted his reputation was wrongly smeared in a media feeding frenzy intent on destroying him -- after his divorce, Matt hooked up with public relations guru Shamin Abas and the two have reportedly been pals for years and were first linked when Matt took her to his New Zealand home in December 2019 and Matt's friends are saying he's talking about a big Hamptons wedding when he and Shamin make things official, but it would be a failure if no one attends but Shamin has a lot of connections, so maybe that will help in time -- Matt's obviously an embarrassment in the area and he's not getting much joy at the swanky country clubs he likes to frequent either and it's clear to see that doors from many A-listers, like Martha Stewart, Gwyneth Paltrow and Scarlett Johansson, who have had ample time to put out the welcome mat and Matt won't be getting invites to their homes anytime soon

Page 9: Kourtney Kardashian is packing on the PDA with new boyfriend Travis Barker and insiders said her desperate bid to compete with her sisters has gone way over the top and ever since Kourtney and Travis first went public, the oldest Kardashian sibling has made it a point to post the couple's passionate romps in racy pics and videos on social media and people in her circle feel it's beneath her to advertise her personal moments like this and even her family thinks it's unflattering, but she's getting a kick out of showing off her wild side and Kourtney has been desperate to raise her profile to keep up with internet-savvy sisters Kim Kardashian and Khloe Kardashian, who promote themselves by posting incessantly and Kourtney was always more low-key, but now she thinks she needs to be outrageous to keep up but her friends and family say it's not who she is, and she should put a lid on the steam

Page 10: Hot Shots -- Alison Brie helped tend to newly planted trees in Malibu, Chris Rock tuned out the world with a set of headphones while walking in Miami, Dylan McDermott plays a bad guy on Law & Order: Organized Crime, Dancing with the Stars pro Sasha Farber buzzed around L.A. on an electric bike, Margot Robbie skating in Malibu

Page 11: Paula Abdul is filling in for Luke Bryan on American Idol, but she's gone crazy with fillers and Botox to the point where she can barely move her face -- 58-year-old Paula, one of the show's original three judges who left before the ninth season, jumped at the chance after Luke tested positive for COVID-19, but when she showed up for work, she was far from the familiar face everyone was expecting and she must have given her co-hosts quite a fright because her face is blown up like a balloon and her forehead has no lines and her eyes have no crinkling at the corners that you would normally expect on someone who's pushing 60 and people are saying she never did know when to quit and this time she's really gone overboard and it was a shame, since it's no secret she'd love to make a comeback on the show and she's still in fantastic shape, but it's kind of sad to see her fall victim to these Hollywood trends as she's a lovely lady and should leave well enough alone -- her heart-shaped face may predispose her to a slower aging process than longer facial shapes

* Jessica Simpson has plumped up her kisser, but one expert thinks her new inflated piehole would look better on a fish because she's gone overboard with filler in her lips and the end result is an unnatural and very unattractive look because the M-shape of the middle upper lip is distorted, creating a fishy appearance she surely wasn't going for

Page 12: Straight Shuter gossip column -- James Bond will be gunning for Top Gun: Maverick on movie screens in November, and Tom Cruise isn't happy -- moving the Top Gun sequel from July to November has left Tom shaken and stirred and no one is more competitive than Tom and going up against the new 007 film starring Daniel Craig has put the fear of God into him because Tom likes to win and coming in second is not an option so get ready for an all-out box office war between Tom and James Bond and this is going to get ugly

* Just out-of-the-closet Colton Underwood has been invited back to his old stomping grounds on The Bachelor but he won't be the new Gay Bachelor, but there's been talk about him returning to help contestants through the process -- he'll literally play the gay best friend who helps the straight contestants find love

* Bridgerton stud Rege-Jean Page won't be back for season 2, but crossing the show's powerful producer Shonda Rhimes was not smart because Shonda is not used to being told no, especially by an actor no one had heard of before she cast him -- Rege-Jean was naive about the business of Hollywood, but he's learning fast but saying no to Shonda is a move he's now thinking twice about

* Irina Shayk had her hands full during a photo shoot in NYC (picture)

Page 13: Racy reality series The Bachelorette has so disgusted some American viewers, they've flooded the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with complaints and calls to yank the sexy show from TV -- according to documents, a season 16 dodgeball game that turned into a stripping competition among Clare Crawley's suitors in 2020 especially fueled viewers' rage, even though the aired footage was blacked out to protect the men's privates but the game was not over until one team was fully naked

* Matchmaker Olivia Newton-John is itching to play Cupid for longtime pal John Travolta as her Grease co-star approaches the one-year anniversary of the death of his beloved wife Kelly Preston and Oliva would like nothing more than to bring some joy and happiness back into John's life and she has lots of beautiful, fun-filled lady friends from the U.S. and Australia she could set John up with but he may not be ready for a new romance, and John himself has admitted mourning is individual and experiencing your own journey is what can lead to healing and John still hasn't gotten over Kelly's death yet and it feels like yesterday to him

Page 15: Tiger Woods' former mistress Jamie Jungers is dishing about her doomed 18-month affair with the then-married golf great and the fallout that triggered her harrowing spiral into drug addiction in a juicy new tell-all -- Jamie, 38, said she met the skirt-chasing links legend, now recovering from a shattered right leg after a February car crash, during her stint as a party host in Sin City and she claimed they kicked off a fling behind the back of his wife Elin Nordegren and Tiger would often fly his new squeeze to his L.A. home for their secret trysts and Jamie said she even once signed for a package at the newlyweds' pad that turned out to be wedding photos of Tiger and his bride, who divorced the sex addict in 2010 -- but it was not too hard for Jamie to convince herself the couple's marriage was on the skids because Elin spent so much time in her native Sweden and Jamie confessed she loved Tiger in a way but knew they'd never have a real relationship -- things came to a screeching halt when the tightwad millionaire refused to help her find new digs and Jamie kept her lips zipped about the hush-hush affair for three years, but she claimed her ensuing media appearances, in which she was dubbed Mistress No. 4, left her feeling humiliated, triggering a $500 a day pill habit that led to her getting hooked on heroin and meth and homeless Jamie endured failed stints in rehab, went through detox while behind bars and hit rock bottom before getting clean in 2018 and now sober, she said of her former flame she's not in love with him anymore

Page 16: Picky parents Alec Baldwin and Hilaria Baldwin have found one thing that's even tougher than raising six kids: finding the right nanny -- Alec and Hilaria have high expectations for prospective carers and exacting demands when it comes to their duties and Hilaria is so involved with the kids, so she's especially vigilant and has the final say when it comes to hiring and firing though Alec definitely has his checklist on what makes a good nanny and try as they might, they realize they can't do everything themselves and need help, lots of it, but it's been a logistical nightmare getting a team of nannies organized as Alec and Hilaria are tough on them and firm and long hours and multitasking are a must and of course they must be quick on their toes and know what to do with a cranky set of children without losing their cool and a good disposition, a clean and tidy appearance and the ability to step in last minute when needed are all prerequisites to be a Baldwin nanny -- Hilaria and Alec feel guilty about using more help than they initially thought they'd need and typically have at least two nannies on duty and they're doing their best to keep their home from becoming a nuthouse and stay sane and even when Hilaria and Alec are both home at the same time, they still need help changing diapers and doing endless loads of laundry, preparing meals and snacks and assisting homeschooling for the older ones and making sure they all get plenty of exercise and playtime -- it's been a challenge and they won't settle for anything but the most skilled nannies, and their friends can see the efforts are paying off

Page 17: Britney Spears has taken to social media to insist she's OK, but there are increasing concerns over the singer's state of mind -- Britney, 39, has shared bizarre Instagram posts showing her maniacally dancing and also bellyached that she's trying to learn how to use technology in this technology-driven generation, but to be totally honest she can't stand it -- the wacky videos followed the documentary Framing Britney Spears, which cast an unflattering spotlight on her troubled history amid her fight to have her conservator dad Jamie Spears removed from overseeing her personal and financial affairs and Britney, who has not had control over her own cash or major life decisions since her notorious 2008 breakdown, said the documentary's portrayal embarrassed her and brought her to tears and she cried for two weeks -- still, Britney reassured fans she's totally fine and she's extremely happy, she has a beautiful home, beautiful children, referring to her sons Sean, 15, and Jayden, 14, and although Britney, who's been coupled up with 27-year-old personal trainer Sam Asghari since 2016, insisted she's enjoying herself, she was caught on camera in Malibu appearing out of sorts and she looked a total mess and she looked like she hadn't brushed her hair in days and the truth is she's wracked with anxiety and she doesn't trust anyone in her orbit except her boyfriend

Page 18: American Life -- Like many dads, J.B. Handley couldn't understand his teenage son, but in this case, 18-year-old Jamison Handley is autistic and has not spoken a word since he was born -- using a breakthrough strategy called Spelling to Communicate (STC), J.B. discovered his son was hyper-intelligent and now Jamison is graduating from high school and will go to college to study neuroscience in 2022

Page 19: Newly single Kanye West is in the market for someone to cuddle with now that Kim Kardashian is out of the picture and the National Enquirer has decided to help him in his quest: Amanda Gorman, Bjork, Quay Dash, Marina Abramovic, Maria Cristerna

* While Kanye West is looking for a new lady to be his creative muse, his estranged wife Kim Kardashian sees the dating pool as the source of her next career move -- Kim has not been romantically linked to anyone since she filed for divorce in February and she's not dating anyone because, if she were, it would be a career move and Kim can't date quietly; she doesn't even understand what that would be like

Page 22: Katie Holmes and her boytoy beau Emilio Vitolo Jr. haven't been photographed together in more than a month, leaving people to wonder if the once snap-happy couple's romance is cooling off -- after being constantly caught on camera packing on the PDAs, the coosome twosome's vanishing act has sources suspecting work stress is taking a toll -- they're still together but things aren't anything like they were, and Katie seems pretty down and Emilio has been working long hours at his dad's restaurant, which was hit hard during the pandemic and that's meant less time for him and Katie to hang out and their romance may have gone from full boil to simmer

* Hollywood Hookups -- Danica Patrick and Carter Comstock dating, Zac Efron and Vanessa Valladares split, Madison LeCroy is dating a mystery man

Page 23: Lizzo stripped nude on social media for an unedited selfie to promote body positivity in all its glory and the 32-year-old defied the haters by bravely going makeup-free and wearing only her birthday suit -- she said she's letting it all hang out to encourage girls struggling with their self-image and self-confidence to embrace their natural beauty

* Bethenny Frankel plans to spend a whopping $10 million on her upcoming wedding -- she is set to wed Paul Bernon after she was spotted flashing a ginormous sparkler reportedly worth over $400,000 and movie producer Paul, 43, has given Bethenny, 50, carte blanche to spend whatever she wants so she's thinking 50,000 roses, champagne, gilt-edged glasses, a garden setting with fountains, dancers and a choir and Bethenny wants it to be perfect and she expects the best of everything

* Julianna Margulies has admitted things were hot on the set of ER, and it was because she and co-star George Clooney had a crush on each other and the chemistry on the beloved TV series between Julianna, now 54, and George, 60, was organic, she gushed in her upcoming memoir -- she also said when you create an environment that people feel safe in, then you do your best work and George taught her that and she felt so safe with him

Page 25: Troubled Tori Spelling is convinced having a sixth baby is the only way to bring her rocky 15-year marriage to Dean McDermott back from the brink -- Tori, 47, and Dean, 54, have been living separate lives for months and she has frequently been seen in public without her wedding ring and lately they've been more like brother and sister than husband and wife, but Tori is under the impression that another baby will give them a fresh start -- Dean has tried to repair their romance by taking on more dad duties and he even pushed for a recent family getaway to Palm Springs, where Tori socked her husband with the ultimatum to give her another baby or hit the highway and it's true they got along a lot happier when she was pregnant, but a lot of people think she's being delusional since they still have a lot of issues to work through and having another kid isn't going to be a magic fix and in fact, it may even add to their problems

Page 26: Cover Story -- Prince Harry's desperate bid to make peace with his estranged royal family exploded spectacularly when his father Prince Charles gave him an ultimatum to divorce Meghan Markle or you're out forever -- the secret showdown came after the funeral for his grandfather Prince Philip that forced family members to reunite for the first time following a year of bitterness and shocking allegations and any hope Harry had of mending fences and being welcomed back went out the window when he broke Queen Elizabeth's heart by snubbing her 95th birthday right after the funeral because he flew back to California the day before her birthday and it was the last straw for Charles, who was furious and he was stunned his son couldn't wait just 24 hours more to show respect for his grandmother and felt compelled to rush back to his pregnant wife Meghan and it would have meant so much for Her Majesty, who was still mourning her husband and needs all the comfort she can get but instead Harry headed back to his ritzy $14 mansion and Hollywood lifestyle, callously leaving his grieving grandmother on what should have been her big day -- the word is Meghan ordered him back as he'd been gone 10 days, their longest separation since they wed, and she didn't want his family playing mind tricks on him, trying to convince him he should return to the U.K. -- Charles confronted his younger son about snubbing Her Majesty during a phone call from his country getaway in Wales, where Charles was grieving his father Prince Philip and considering the future of the monarchy and Charles didn't mince words and he called Harry selfish and blamed Meghan for ripping the family apart and he bluntly admitted he and other royals, including the queen herself, were deeply disappointed and very angry by what the couple said in an explosive tell-all TV special and he couldn't believe Harry would agree to such a devastating interview without pressure from his publicity-obsessed wife or her advisors and Charles told Harry he was ashamed of him for turning his back on his family and breaking his grandmother's heart and Charles said he didn't believe Harry's marriage can survive long-term and suggested that Meghan was so ambitious, she'd dump Harry when something, or someone, better came along then he shockingly told his son he would only be welcomed back if he divorced that American actress and Charles insisted divorce was the only way to save the royal family and Harry himself -- Harry faced a great deal of frostiness from other members of the family after he arrived for Philip's funeral: Princess Anne, Prince Edward, his wife Sophie and other relatives didn't even look at Harry, they are so angry with him and Meghan, and Prince William and his wife Duchess Kate tried to put on a united front, speaking to Harry as they walked away from the service, but it was all for show as the queen had ordered a truce in the feud to avoid another public scandal, but family feelings are running very deep against Harry and Meghan for quitting royal duties and trashing the royals in their interview and the truth is if Harry doesn't divorce Meghan, this rift will never be mended

Page 36: Ellen DeGeneres confessed she'd swilled three cannabis-laced drinks and popped two snooze-inducing pills before driving wife Portia de Rossi to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy -- during an interview with Jimmy Kimmel, Ellen said she'd downed a commercial beverage containing the weed compounds THC and CBD and admitted she didn't feel anything and then she drank three, and she also took two melatonin sleep pills and she's lying in bed and realizes Portia is not in bed -- after finding Portia on all fours and in pain, Ellen claimed her adrenaline kicked in and she rushed Portia to the hospital

Page 38: Gwyneth Paltrow knows at least one person who is not a fan of her catalog of sex toys: her mom Blythe Danner -- while Gwynnie loves to bang the drum for frisky female fun by hawking vibrators, whips, handcuffs, genital-themed jewelry and even a candle called This Smells Like My Orgasm, her 78-year-old mother is always shocked by her raunchy online inventory and is very proper, but Gwyneth said even proper ladies have sexuality too -- although her mom is not lining up to purchase the BDSM starter kit or the $15,000 gold-plated dildo, Gwyneth remains committed to tackling taboos related to female pleasure, saying she thinks that our sexuality is such an important part of who we are and one of the things they really believe in at Goop is eliminating shame from these topics

* The Entourage crew might get back together, with Charlie Sheen joining the gang -- the creator of the bro show and 2015 spinoff movie said he may bring the boys back with his buddy Charlie in the reboot and Doug Elin says whether he would ever be in Entourage as Charlie Sheen or whether he would create a character for him, he would be all for it -- Charlie hasn't been seen on the big screen since a 2018 guest spot on Saturday Night Live

Page 42: Red Carpet -- Sofia Vergara

[bazwillendinflames]

Gravity Falls/LIS2 AU

The last place Sean wants to spend his Summer is in a weird town in the middle of no where, Oregon, reconnecting with a Mother who hadn’t wanted to see them in years in her weird tourist trap. But Daniel is determined to go and his Dad gives Sean little choice but to babysit him.

But soon it becomes clear there is more to Beaver Creek than meets the eye and the strangeness of the town soon unlocks some family secrets and strange abilities. Maybe their Summer won’t be so boring after all.

AO3 

“Lyla, I will die of boredom.” 

“It can’t be that bad,” she replied, her voice a little tinny still. The bad reception was just one of many reasons that Sean was having an awful time. (In the week and a half since they had arrived, he’d already made a list.) 

“Nope, it is exactly as bad as I’m saying.” 

“I mean, come on, you’re Mom’s there. What’s that like that?” 

Sean scowled. “Number one on reasons this place sucks. All she talks to us about is all this weird mystic stuff she likes. Her store is so weird, it’s all crystals and bad poetry.” 

Lyla snorted. “Really?” 

“Yep. Not to mention this is the whitest town ever.” He glanced out the window, where Karen was smoking, notebook in hand and ducked his head before she could spot him. “There are no cool people.” 

“Come on, you have Danny.” 

“I get enough babysitting at home thanks.” He glanced outside again, wondering exactly how long he could bitch on the phone for and call it a break. “Anyway, this place is just making Daniel weirder. He’s convinced this place is magic or something.” 

“That’s sweet. Hey, we used to play witches when we were kids, remember?”

“Hey, you were the witch, I was a manly wizard.” 

That time Lyla actually laughed. “Sure dude. I’ll believe it when I see it.” 

“Anyway, we were into the Harry Potter books, you know before terf-face ruined them. Daniel is into the ancient runes and fake spell cards Mo- Karen sells.” 

“That’s adorable.” 

“Ugh, only you could find him adorable. That’s only because Daniel doesn’t kick you in your sleep-” 

“Did Lyla call me adorable?” 

Sean sighed as Daniel barged in. Not much had changed since home tehre at least, apart from the fact they now shared Karen’s attic room. (Bunk beds, making the being kicked in the shin at night thing even more annoying.) 

“Hey, I’m kinda on the-” 

Daniel yanked the phone and rolled on the bed. “Hiiiiii Lyla. Do you miss us?” 

“Give me that back.” 

He wiggled out of his grap. “Did you know Sean talks in his sleep, it’s so weird-” 

“You would know about weird,” he grumbled, snatching his phone back, only to find the shitty signal had finally cut out on Lyla. “Dude.” 

“Sorry.” Daniel grinned at him. “Hey, I’m helping Mom restock, can you help me reach the top shelves?” 

He checked the time on his phone. He had almost managed a whole brother-free hour. 

“Guess I should I get back to work.” 

“Cool.” Daniel followed him downstairs, bouncing with energy. “Hey, Sean what does terf-face mean?” 

  Sean was stuck behind the register, although the store was still empty. He wasn’t sure why Karen insisted on such early opening hours when no one else showed up. 

He rubbed his eyes, the early start not helped by the fact Daniel had been reading with a torch all night. He had picked up a weird book from the store or something. Of course he would pick up a late night reading habit once they were sharing a room. 

“I brought you guys some toast.” Karen balanced the plate on the top of some unsold art books. (Her organization was as great as her parenting.) 

“Thanks Mom!” 

Sean poked at a black spot under a thick layer of peanut butter. “Yeah, thanks.” 

“I gotta do some inventory but I’ll be back up for lunch.” 

“Can we go to the cool diner? Chris says the milkshakes are great.” 

Karen smiled. “Yeah. Does that sound good Sean?” 

He grunted in response and her grin flickered. 

“Right, work. You boys got this.” 

“We’re not your boys,” Sean muttered, although she didn’t hear. 

“Why are you so mean to Mom?” Daniel asked, his mouth full of toast. “She’s always nice.” 

“Right, she’s been real nice the first nine years of your life.” 

Daniel looked up at him with big eyes. “Sean…” 

“Fine, I’ll try. Put those eyes away Bambi.” 

He smiled. “So, I was thinking the strawberry milkshakes are Chris’ favourite but I like chocolate more so you could get one and we could share?” 

“Huh, yeah, sure.” Sean had only been half listening, distracted by the newest customer. Waking up early suddenly had its appeal. The girl had matted purple hair, an arm full of tattoos and a guitar strapped to her back. She caught him looking and winked. 

“Are you okay Sean? You just went really red and-” 

“What? No. Shut up.” Sean moved into a more casual position, his eyes still fixed on the pretty girl. His elbow knocked the tip jar and it fell off the edge. “Shit-” 

“Here.” Daniel put it back. “Woah…” 

“Good catch Enano.” 

“Yeah. Catch! I totally caught it.” Daniel smiled a little suspiciously. “Hey, you said a swear, you owe me a dollar.” 

“A dollar? It’s only a quarter at home.” 

“Now we’re away from Dad, you’re supposed to be a good influence.” 

“You get a quarter.” Sean dropped the coin in his hand. “Be cool.” 

“What?” 

“Hey boys.” The purple-haired girl leaned against the other end of the counter, an easy smile on her face. Her voice had a faint Southern tang. “So, I come to this town every Summer and I don’t recognise either of you cuties.” 

“I- we- um-” 

His brother beat him to it. “I’m Daniel.” 

Cursing his stammering, he finally managed to introduce himself. “I’m Sean.” 

“Why hello. I’m Cassidy.” 

“Hi. Um, cool guitar. You play?” (Internally, Sean cringed: You play? Why else would she have a guitar?) 

“Yeah, funnily enough. I’m actually here to hand out flyers for my band’s show. Could you hang it up?” 

“Yeah.” Sean took the flyer. “Your show is this Friday?” 

“And every other Friday. You wanna come?” 

“I’m invited?” 

Cassidy laughed. “Yeah sure. It is a concert. You’re lucky you’re cute, City Boy.” 

“City boy?” 

“It’s on your sweatshirt idiot,” Daniel whispered. Seattle Track Meet, 2015. He was frowning in the general direction of Cassidy. “We’re busy Friday so-” 

“No. Nope, I’m not busy. Ignore him.” Sean flattened his hair. “I’ll be there Friday.” 

“I’ll look out for you City Boy. Nice to meet you.” 

Sean waited until Cassidy had left before pumping his fist. “Yes! She called me cute Dan!” 

“You’re the worst.” 

“What?” 

Daniel pouted. “You promised you’d take me camping in the woods Friday. I already brought us marshmallows and walkie-talkies.” 

“Hey, there is plenty of time to camp in those freaky woods. But I only have one chance with a girl like Cassidy.” 

“Wrong, you have zero chances with any girl.” Daniel stomped off to the corner of the store. “You’re the worst.” 

“Dan- come on.” His brother went back to ignoring him. Sean crossed his arms. “Fine. Be like that!” 

There was the only sound of a raspberry in response. 

  “Nope, I’m totally with Danny. That was a jerk move.” 

“What? Lyla, you’re supposed to be my hype man- er woman. You’re always trying to set me up on dates.” 

“Dude, three weeks ago you were so into Jenn.” 

He sighed. “And Jenn was into Derek Anderson. We had ice cream and everything.” 

“Dude, don’t fuck up your relationship with Danny over a dumb Summer romance.” 

Sean buried his head in his pillow. “You sound like my Dad.” 

“Go to this hippy girl’s show next time. You Danny will do the face.” 

“The Bambi face?” Sean groaned. “I have been facing the Bambi face all week.” 

Lyla scoffed. “Is there anything else to add?” 

“Fine. I’ll go camping. But only for the s’mores.” 

“Okay, brother of the year.” 

“Thanks jerk.” 

Lyla blew him an exaggerated kiss. “Aw, love you too.”

Sean grabbed his backpack, moving to shove in his hoodie and torch. Daniel had already shoved one of the walkie-talkies inside. 

“Calling little wolf, we are back on for camping.” 

There was nothing but static on the other end. Sean pocketed the walkie-talkie and headed downstairs, calling his brother’s name. There was no one in the kitchen and only Karen sitting in the living room, chewing on the edge of a pen. 

“Hey, have you seen Daniel?” 

Karen looked up. “Oh, I thought you already left? Daniel passed by twenty minutes ago with the sleeping bags.” 

“That little-” Sean wasn’t panicking, but he was maybe sweating a little more than he had been before. “Um, right. I just forget a…” he scanned the room and grabbed Daniel’s weird book, “scary story. Classic camping right?” 

“Oh. Have a nice time then.” Karen hesitated. “I know you’re not thrilled to be here. But I hope by the end of the Summer we can understand each other better. 

“Me too.” Sean tried to look as un-guilty as possible. “See you tomorrow Karen.” 

  “Daniel!” He yelled, running head first into the spooky mass of woodlands beyond their store. “Dan, I’m sorry okay. Quit hiding!” 

No answer. Sean went digging for the walkie-talkie, now glowing an eerie blue. 

“Dan?” 

The walkie-talkie crackled again- “Sean?” 

“Dan.” He let out a shaky breath. “Hey, I’m sorry I ditched you-” 

“Sean, help!” 

He was clutching the walkie-talkie so hard his knuckles went white. “What’s wrong? I’m coming okay. What’s happening?” 

“Creature- help- monster- ahh!” 

Sean scanned the trees around him, suddenly aware he was lost too. Daniel had been the one eager to explore the woods but he had said it was too creepy and now it seemed he was being proven right. 

“Sean- book- monster-” 

He dug around to find the weird book Daniel had been carrying around all week. He had assumed it was from one of Karen’s displays but now he was looking at it, the journal seemed too real to go with the modern witchcraft bullshit she was trying to sell. The cover was dark blue and the pages thick with drawings and polaroids. 

“Dan, I have the book, what do I need to look for? What is this thing?” 

“Page- tree- monster-” Daniel was breathing heavily. “Hear?” 

“I can hear you,” he said comfortingly, “I’m coming.” 

He held the torch in his teeth, flicking through pages until he came across a few marked with Daniel’s doodles and writing. He seemed to be studying telekinetic powers, complete with a superhero sketch: SUPER /DUDE DAN/ WOLF? ask Sean for name ideas

He finally came across the page that looked like a bush drawn with yellow eyes. 

Dangerous 

camouflage shape shifters 

Hard to photograph shush ma-

Likes dark 

Under the original writing Daniel had added his own note: babies in woods. 

“Hey,” Sean held up the walkie-talkie, “is it these moss creatures? What well?” 

“Sean!” This time Daniel’s voice was clearer, his voice steadier. 

“Dan. What happened? Please tell me you had a good reason to go into the woods alone without telling me or Karen.” 

“Come on, that’s it? Can you yell at me when I’m not being chased?” 

“Okay. I’m coming, where are you?” 

“Where are you?” 

“By some trees. There’s a sign for a lake?” 

“Go to the lake, I’ll meet you there.” Daniel was cut off by some more static. “Hey, stop chewing that Mushroom!” 

Sean followed the signs, hoping Daniel at least would know a way out. How did he know the woods so well already? Was Sean that much of a shitty brother he hadn’t noticed him running off into these haunted-ass woods? 

The lake slowly came into the view but it was empty. 

“Daniel? Dan?” 

The lake was weirdly normal, just muddy water and a few droopy looking frogs. Still, Sean was still on edge, swinging the heavy torch from hand to hand. The faster they got home, the better. 

His relative peace was interrupted by the rustling of tree branches and heavy footsteps. Daniel came barging through the trees, a small bundle of something wrapped in his checked shirt. Something was chasing him and fast- Sean barely had time to move out the way as Daniel crashed into him. Something big and fast ran past. 

“Sean!” Daniel threw himself into his arms. “I’m sorry, don’t yell at me.” 

“I’m not mad. But you did scare the shit out of me.” 

“Sean-” 

“Fine, you get a dollar, let’s just go-” 

“No, look.” 

Sean turned slowly, met with amber eyes and a large face of bark and weeds. The creature sniffed at him curiously. 

“Um-” 

Daniel hid behind him. “Any ideas?” 

“You have the stupid haunted book!” The creature snorted, blowing hot air in his face. “Wait, the book said-” Sean slowly moved for his pocket, finding Dad’s lighter. 

“Dan, on three, we run.” 

“One-” he reached for a branch, “two-” he flicked the lighter on, “three!” Sean held the flaming branch up the creature’s face, dragging Daniel out the way as it squirmed. “What, the light should have scared it off.” 

“Remember when you said you weren’t going to get mad?” 

Sean turned to him, as Daniel revealed the squirming mass of moss in his arms. 

“You stole it’s kid?” 

“I always wanted a puppy! She’s called Mushroom-” 

Seeing it’s child, the larger creature started inching slowly towards Daniel. 

“Put it down! We can’t keep this weird monster-baby!” 

“We bonded!” The larger creature nudged its nose towards the smaller one, poking his chest with a spikey horn. “Okay, I’ll give her back.” 

Daniel held out his arms, placing the small creature on the floor. It wiggled a loose vine that could almost be a tail and followed its parents into the woods. 

Sean punched him in the arm. “That’s for trying to adopt an actual monster.” 

Daniel rubbed his arm. “Ouch.” 

Sean pulled him into a hug. “And that’s for scaring the shit out of me. I’m glad you’re okay though.” 

“Me too.” Daniel smiled. “Hey, now you owe me two dollars!” 

  After all the excitement, the brothers’ settled on camping in Karen’s yard. 

“So, you found that spooky book in a tree and didn’t think to tell me?” 

“You were being the worst!” 

Sean laughed. “Okay, I deserve that. But, next time you find a weird monster thing, tell me. We’re in this together.” 

“Okay promise.” Daniel threw another marshmallow at him. “Sorry I made you miss your concert. I guess Cassidy wasn’t that bad.” 

“Hey, I saved your butt, that’s more important.” Sean took a bite out a s’more. “Hey, there isn’t anything else you’re not telling me right?” 

“Actually,” Daniel held out his hand, a marshmallow hoovering a few inches above his palm. “Surprise?” 

(A boring Summer suddenly looked so much more appealing.)

[popculturebuffet]

New X-Men Xtrospective Part 2: Germ Free Generation (Annual, #117-120)

Hello all you happy mutants! And welcome back to my look one of my faviorite runs of one of my faviorite super teams by one of my faviorite comic book writers!

For those of you just joining us.. it’s been a while. I did the first instalment of this retrospective back in early January as a present to my friend for christmas, as he had never read E is for Extinctoin and what with this run being vital to the current, utterly brilliant Krakoa era of X-Men. But with both Black History Month and Valentine’s day, February had no real room for this one and march ended up being just as crammed with me doing essentially the entire della arc of ducktales in one month. I didn’t mean for this retrospective to get pushed so far back, but since I gave up doing weekly coverage of Final Space I had some room on the schedule so this retrospective is back with a vengance with two entries this month and hopefully at least one a month afterword to keep it at a decent clip. 

Last time I covered the background of this run and didn’t really find much for the issues after, so I won’t have to spend as much time on background. 

So since i’ts been a few months, a refresher is probably in order

PREVIOUSLY, ON X-MEN:  Our merry mutants enterted a marvelous new era. As Charles redidciated to the dream with new equipment and a new uniforms our hero encounter a new villian: The Mysterious Cassandra Nova, a powerful telepath who used an uwitting patsy from the trask family and a defucnt sentinel factory to slaughter the mutant nation of Genosha, killing 16 million mutants in the most horrific act of genocide against mutants ever known. And the fact there has been more than one genocide against mutant kind MIGHT, just MIGHT be the reason they blackmailed for peace with life saving drugs instead of helping willingly and freely in the current comics. Just maybe. 

Cassandra was captured by the X-Men soon after but escaped and nearly got a hold of Cerebra only to be stopped thanks to a combination of former enemy, genoshan resident at the time of the genocide, and that bitch Emma Frost who snapped her neck and Charles himself who uncharacteristically shot Cassandra in the head. That night Charles took a bold step over that would change the X-Men forever and told the world on live tv:

While all of this was going on we got caught up on the team’s personal struggles, currently consisting of Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast and Wolverine with Emma joining as of the issue we’re about to cover. Beast is grappling with a secondary mutation that makes him look like Aslan, the jesus of narnia and all lions. Meanwhile Scott and Jean are grappling with their non existant sex life as Cyclops possesion by Apocalypse shortly before this story has severely rattled him and caused him to close himself off emotionally. 

So that’s where we pick up. Our heroes are now no longer hiden saftely in the shadows from a world that hates and fear them but are out front and center with the world watching. And we’ll see both how that helps their cause and how it puts them directly in the cross hairs under the cut.  Content Warning: This review discusses Transphobia and a scene involving a school shooting. If either of these are a trigger for you or something you do not want to read about  please skip this part of the retrospective for your own well being. Thank you and have a lovely day. 

The Man From Room X:

We have three stories today: an annual that introduces our final team member and the main villians of our next arc, a one off that moves the main plot for the first 12 issues along, and a three part arc about said villains.  Before we get into the Annual, I have to talk about it’s weird gimmick: The issue is entirely sideways. I don’t mean it’s bad though some parts are problematic I mean when bought it’d be on it’s side and in my trade I have to flip the whole thing over on it’s side to read it. It’s just a .. weird choice. Not the weirdest thing about this issue somehow but not unexpected from Grant as they like to play with the formula. 

We open in said Room X, a location in China where a mutant named Xorn is kept and showed off to a mysterious group of dickweeds in suits representing “Mr. Sublime”.  His jailer, General Aao Jun,, shows him off as most bad guys would : By undoing his helmet and thus disntegrating two innocent children just by looking at them. Sublime says they have a deal. 

Meanwhile also in China the X-Men are there for a funeral and Emma and Scott trade insulting questions back in forth: She mocks him about his lack of sex with Jean lately and he brings up her criminal past. As for why Emma’s still with the x-men.. it’s out of pragmatisim. WIth Genosha gone, the x-men are the saftest faction to throw in with. 

As for why the X-Men are in China, Charles has rapidly expanded his operations now he’s public by setting up X-Corps, a multinational humantarian aid organization dedicated to helping mutants in need wherever they sprout up. He’s set up offices in Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Mumbai and Melborne. 

He’s also half assed it, at least for the Hong Kong office and only gave them two employees: Domino, who those of you not as familiar with the comics may remember from deadpool and Risque.. who I honestly had never heard of before New X-Men and frequently forget existed. I just looked her up for the first time and she’s a minor mutant who was an associate of X-Force and Warpath’s love intrest. She could compress matter causing it to implode. My assumption here is that Morrison simply picked a minor mutant at random for the job. 

But yeah naturally with only two mutants charged with, according to domino “All of asia” went horribly and the x-men are there for Risque’s funeral and to find out what happened. Unsuprisingly it’s tied into our cold open: Risque had found evidence of a mutant trafficking operation and died fighting them off and Dom is naturally f eeling in over her head since said operation involves the chinese goverment, who according to her exccute most mutants at birth and John Sublime and his cult. 

We soon see a press confrence from this asshole and find out what his deal is: Sublime is the head of the U-Men, a group that belivies they are a “third species” of mutants trapped in human bodies that deserve to have the surgery to make them into mutants, and thus wear weird suits until the world is pure and allows them to have surgery for it. 

Yeahhhh this.. this is really fucking uncomfortable and is going to be present throughout today’s piece so let’s just go ahead and rip that band-aid off:  The U-Men come off as HIGHLY transphobic. They use terms similar to trans people call themselves trans species and are trapped inside a body they don’t belong in. It’s VERY uncomfortable to read as a result and something that hadn’t really sunk into till thsi reading but once it had.. oh god does this not age well. 

The one thing that keeps this from runing the run and Grant Morrison as a whole for me.. is that I do not think for one second it was intentional. Grant themself is genderqueer, nonbinary and a cross dresser. None of this means they CAN’T be prejudice, being Queer does not magically make you immune to being prejudiced. But before this Grant had the genderqueer sentient street Danny the Street over in doom patrol and a trans main character in his book the invisibles, Lord Fanny. And given New X-Men’s biggest flaw as a whole is clumsy early 2000′s unforutnate implications such as a good chunk of the things about Cyclops affair with Emma, we’ll get to that at the right time, Angel in the next arc and Dust, who was introduced as from afganastan wearing an outfit not seen in the country and speaking a language not spoken in the country. Grant didn’t make these mistakes TWICE, it’s why I still have respect for them, and this won’t be the first or last comic i’ve forgiven for being stupid for it’s time. But I will still call Grant out when I see it. Just because I respect an author just because they changed my life does not mean I won’t call them out when they fuck up. And if they prove to be truly vile, have harmed someone or what have you I will cut them the fuck out of my life. I’ve done it with JK Rowling, Warren Ellis, Brad Jones and Joss Whedon. I would do it with Grant if I truly belivied they were transphobic and instead didn’t just write something very stupid without thinking the metaphor through 20 years ago. 

So anyway back to the comic book bollocks as Wolvie and Dominio prepare for an infiltration and flirt a bunch. We also find out Jun is a mutant himself with a power only Grant could dream up: his skin, hair and what have you that falls off him turns into a naked golem for a bit before expiring. And if you hadn’t read this issue before reading this review, yes that actually happened. While the first arc had a BIT of Grant’s trademark batshit insanity, the series REALLY starts to pick it up from here: This issue has a mutant with functioning star for a head, a poorly thought out bucnh of sci fi new age organ theives, and a general whose power is “makes naked clones out of his dandruff”. Oh and his fondest wish?

I just... I don’t know how to respond to that. I don’t know how you respond to an old man’s weird murder fetish that he tells a somehow even creepier cult leader while said cult leader is paying him to buy a star man, and their both surronded by the creepy old guy’s skin golems that weirdly look like mudokons. Look i’ve  read Grant’s entire utterly bonkers run on doom patrol. I’ve seen a man who looks like a question mark use a bicycle that makes everyone high like their on LSD for president. And THIS is what breaks me. 

So while.. THIS is going on, Dom and Wolverine plan to do it all night long on the professor’s credit card, no really he gives all his professors carte blanch to use school fun, and inflitrate, Dom through the elvator this horrorshow just took place in and Wolvie james bond style. Also I gotta say I REALLY love how Morrison writes Domino. She’s wittiy, entertaining and her power is as awesome as always, super luck if you didn’t know. It’s a real shame he didn’t add her to the team: She wasn’t on any other x-teams, with X-Force having been rebranded into X-Statix by this point. She would’ve been a fun addition to the cast. 

Naturally wolverine is found out.. but that was the entire plan, for him to serve as a distraction then cut his way to domino while she steals something from the vault. As for the rest of the X-Men, Cyclops, Beast and Emma are all downstairs in the parking garage and find a secret entrance. Jean is not on this trip and that’s a major plot point for this run. This is where Risque died.. and it only get’s worse when Hank goes inside, finding a bug like child, basically htink a giant caterpillar but with tons of human arms inttead of legs with her wings cut off. 

Thankfully as Logan and Dom escape above, the U-Men are dumb enough to storm down bellow.. and while they incapacitate beast with some launched tiny knives, designed to incapcicate but leave them in tact for harvest, Emma beats the shit out of them and get the info out as only she can....

Granted she could’ve just turned back to normal and used her telepathy.. but what fun would that be? Plus they have blockers and you know CUT UP A FUCKING CHILD. SO yeah fuck them, let emma have her fun. 

Thanks to her they find out the U-Men are a front for illegal organ harvest, and while they can’t prove sublimes attached Emma suggests killing him.  Good idea but Scott suggests the lighter approach and we find out what Dom stole, a key, something Emma can psychcially scan. She warns it might take her a bit to get something.. only to be flooded instantly and we find out who the man in the box was. Shen Xorn... i’ll let emma tell you more herself. 

It’s stuff like this why, despite some serious flaws like the U-Men debacle and some stuff to come, some I mentioned above other that’s just with the plot that i love this run. Morrison just gets how to really tell an x-men story and the real tragedy of being a mutant. That just for being diffrent, you get shut out, or in this case thrown into a box when you could’ve and should’ve been something more. As emma turns herself to diamond to deal with the psychic backlash, Beast has some solemn words to share. 

That night Scott rests in his bedroom while presumibly hearing some truly horrific and sexy things next door while talking to jean before clocking out.. only for Emma to head in in a sexy dress with champagne. What happened? Well we won’t know for sure for most of the run. 

The next day the U-Men prepare to load and we get some scrap of what the idea was supposed to be: John talks to Ao Jun about his procedures. We see wings crudely sewen to his back and his throat implaants hurting “But one day I will fly”. THe IDEA is their supposed to be lunatics, people who envy mutantkind but don’t actually respect their culture or their sense of personhood. It’s not the worst idea and had Grant not used trans termnology for htis, it would’ve been a great one. I think he INTENDED for them to be coopting the idea of being trans and what not to maks their true intentions.. which is problematic due to debates like the ones on bathrooms where a lot of transphobic asshats make the bad faith argument a bunch of people are going to pretend to be trans to assault people. 

We’re.. we;’re not even to the main storyarc yet. 

But things soon go wrong as Xorn’s starhead starts to collapse into a black hole, with no solution as the x-men took the key to his helmet.. and assault the compound. Turns out the star collapse thing is Jun’s revenge on humanity for lockig him down here and he gets his neck snapped.  Scott has a solution though.. and it’s stuff like this why I fucking love Scott Summers and get annoyed when people call him “boring”: He realizes Xorn is comitting sucicide.. so he’s going to talk him out of it. Not just for everyone else but he deserves to live. And while Emma points out only logan among htem knows chinese and she can’t get through to Xorns’ head due to the way his brain works, Scott has a simple workaround: Use the nearest chineses speaker to teach Scott chinese. So.. with that he talks to Xorn. 

And that my friend is Scott Summers. A man who faced with powerful man whose given up, whose lost all hope... convinces him he can still go on. That living’s better than dying.. and that it does get better. The issue closes with Xorn basking in the sunlight for the first time in decades while Domino sweats having an extremley powerful unknown mutant out in the world. Scott’s already thought of that.. and signed him up with the x-men. Granted it won’t be until our next article that he actually fully joins the team, but w’ell get to that next time. 

This issue is great... while the U-Men stuff is pretty bad and isn’t going to get better, the tale of xorn is excitiong, Aao Jun is an intresting antagonist and the sideways gimmick suprisingly works. So now we’ve finshed our apitizer let’s get on to the main course. 

Danger Rooms:

We open in well.. the Danger Room with Beast training a new student. 

This is Beak. Beak is my faviorite character Morrison came up with and one of my faviorite X-Characters. Beak is a bird like boy who can fly, it’s just a struggle and due to looking diffrent and not having the most impressive power has very low self esteem. It’s also part of something Morrison took a concerted effort to do: introduce more mutants with genuinely odd apperances and drawbacks. Like we saw with Ugly John last time and Aao Jun in the previous issue, Morriosn really likes adding weird mutants but he also uses it to give a genuine downside to being one. While this isn’t NEW to x-men, Morriosn upped the scale and number of characters like this with weird powers and apperances. We see a bunch of human passing ones too but the backgrounds just jammed with all sorts of unique designs and students. It’s also the point where the school became far more crowded like the movies, a good call on my part both to help those coming in from the movies, and to help sell the mutant baby boom going on. After all it wouldn’t make sense if the school was just about 5-7 students and a bunch of grown adults doing superhero stuff like usual would it.

But we get to see that Hank is a good teacher, as he reminds the boy that he’s getting better and won’t be an x-man overnight, and worries about him to the professor, wanting the boy not to slip through the cracks, figuratively, and not to feel like an outcast.. especaily here. But Hank dosen’t feel blue for long, metaphorically he was blue long before he became the lion minus the witch and the wardrobe, as he has a date to night.. and so does Charles. 

Or rather he did.. his girlfriend trish, a long time love intrest of his and a reporter.. breaks up with him. Over voice mail. While in washington. And the reasons she gives are not great

Yes Hank’s transformation is radical.. but not only was it not his choice... she’s being a coward, sending the message it’s okay to dump someone because hteir a mutant or because they happen tobe diffrent and that efffects your career. Again it’s moments like this that make the run soar over the more awkward bits. 

Meanwhile Logan’s off doing logan stuff, i.e. gazing at a deer. Wow. Jean followed him. Both notice a space ship: Despite recently outing himself as a mutant, leading to an increased number of students and a bunch of rioting morons at the gates, Charles has decided NOW’S a good time to take a vacation to the Shiar empire. As for why Jean’s really out here, her marriage to Scott isn’t doing so good and while Logan encourages her to stay it’s just not that simple: Her telekenisis is coming back, stronger than ever. She feels the most alive she’s been while he’s shutting her out and feeling his deadest. She tries to turn to logan for comfort but he shuts her down. Just wait two decades jean... he’ll open up to a threesome. In all seriousness though having Jean try and come onto Logan .. will backfire slightly on later storylines. But we’ll get to that eventually. 

In the basement Hank is studying Cassandra or rather a virtual version of her since her body is naturally in storage. And he’s found out something disturbing: She’s Charles Genetic Twin.. oh and it gets way worse. The Professor’s weird behavior? Barely staffing the hong kong office, leaving suddenly with rioters t the gates, outing himself? About that...

Cassandra tourtures Hank with the possiblity he’s devovling and then tries to mind controlli him into cleaning himself with his diploma when Beak enters. The good news is this allows hank to shake off her control and tackle her, showing off why hank mccoy is fucking awesome in the process. 

That is the Hank McCoy I know, love.. and miss dearly. The one we’ll probably never get back sadly after what others did and what Percy’s had to do to reconclie with all they did. 

Unfortunately beak being around means cassandra can force him to beat beast into a coma with his bat. She plans to tear Charles dream down around him and make him watch.. and cryptically says he tried to kill her. She then cheerfully leaves Jean in charge.. and talks about just how much damage one could do with an entire interstellar empire in the wrong hands....

This issue is also excellent and sets up the next two arcs nicely while giving us a nice peak in hank’s head. Great stuff. The artist also hid the word sex in a lot of the images see if you can find them. 

Germ Free Generation Issue 1: 

So now we get into our main story for today. This story and the one before it were drawn by Ethan Van Sciver whose a talented artist.. but also highly contrversial for being a conservative. I myself.. don’t know what he’s said or did, though calling himself “Canceld Superstar’ on twitter really isn’t a good sign. So I really can’t comment on it but I also know someone would mention it if I didn’t bring it up and if you know what he did please enlighten me. 

So we open with a school shooter who also scooped out a guys eyes and is part of the U-Men. He get shot by the swat team while making his speech> it’s an effective opening but one that’s become more uncomfortable to read with each passing day due to school shootings going up and up in number. And mass shootings in general and I... I need a second. I need something to relax me

Thank you Stoopy. Your doing Odd’s Work. 

So the news reports on this and we soon see how Jean watches the news.. by using Cerebra to read the minds of every person on the planet. Neat. Everyone’s talking about them. We also get a hint for later as we hear on the suicide of one martha johanson who wrote the note in her own blood. She’ll be important later.... and I mean that both in the context of this retrospective and for the fact she’ll go on to be part of x-men in perpetuity. 

This is also where another great concept of Morrison’s pops up: Mutant culture. After all mutants are a minority, they should have their own culture. It’s something Hickman’s era has taken and ran with, but it’s a damn good idea and one that it shoudln’t of taken almost 20 years for someone else to use given Decimation was undone way back around 2012 in Avengers Vs X-Men, aka that event half hte articles on the mcu around the fox sale used as either their image for the article or asked about happneing. And yes that is a pet peeve of mine: while I do think like Civil War AVX could use a movie version to make it better, I don’t think it’s an event that could be done right away and would have to be almost entirely redone anyway given the context for AvX is entirely couched in decimation i.e. something NO ONE wants in any x-adaptation. 

So it turns out while watching the news in a next level way Jean is also talking to Logan. “Stay out of my personal fantasies”. Yeah I .. I don’t think your ready for a hairy canadian dry humping a transformer.. specifically killbison. And yes.. that is an actual transformer and why yes, I have been waiting to bring him up. 

And he is , and I am not making any of this up, part of a group of decpticons known as the breastforce. Your life is better for knowing that and you are welcome. 

Anyway as you’d imagine a genocidal old woman in her brothers’ body leaving the X-Men to fend for themselves after having a teenager bludgeon one into a coma after publicly outing them with a rabid bunch of bigoted morons at the gates has not gone great. Henry is still out and despite the short staffing Jean needs logan to stay where he is as he’s close to an emerging mutant and within range to go get her. 

Emma of course has never been so fucking irate in her whole life and is plotting various forms of psychic tourture with the help of her proteges the Stepford Cucokoo, 5 teenage mutants who functoin best as a unit and are easily some of MOrrison’s most prominent additions to the x-cast. Unlike a lot of the x-kids, they’ve been featured prominently in every era of x-men after this including the current one. 

Jean decides for a less “Make them hate us even more” approach, but no less pissed off, opening the gates and going out directly to chew out the assembled bigoted morons, pointing out the ones carrying “Mutants Go Home!” signs are especailly dumb as this IS her home. And while she dosen’t point this part out, it’ the same for all of them: most of the mutants are either adults who choose to live here, teenagers who along with their parents choose to live here, or in the majority teens who have no where else to go due to either being abandoned by their families or it being way to dangerous for said families for them to stay due to bigoted assholes like the ones holding mutants go home signs. 

A member of the press asks if she’s willing to talk to the media and she refutes most of his bullshit allegations: He asks if their building an army, she and Scott respond they are not and are simply educating mutants and protecting them. When he counters with the fact their living weapons and wearing uniforms... she counters with the fact she’s wearing them to protect herself, rightfully, from people like her, and the x-men are an aid orginzation going where needed to protect the world and while asshole points out no one apointed them.. jean shuts him down by pointing out there are no mutants in goverment and a genocide just happened, so someone has to do the job. Another random asshole tries to pipe up with “Genosha declared war on us” and Emma senses this is just going to go round and round and round and simply presses the assembled mob’s “bliss buttons” in their brains to knock them out. Non violent but honestly warranted: A dangerous part of bigoted assholes is they’l bring up racist bullshit to try and couch it like an actual conversation. None of these complaints really hold water if you looked at the x-men’s history for more than 5 minutes. Yes Charles is training them to fight and yes hte ingial class was an army but every class since has only been trained for self defense: they still got into adventures and what not, but it was usually by their own choice or because they were thrust into them by circumstance. Xaviers is exactly what jean said and endudgling these morons, while good on paper, only makes them seem legit. 

Jean retreats to the infirmary where she’s on the verge of breaking down from the sheer weight of everything. Cyclops proves that despite not being the best husband right now... he still loves his wife, offering to go look into Sublime with Emma and hoping Hank wakes up. Turns out his mind for now is a big blank room.

So she can’t get any info off his skull, and neither of the two think what happened with Beak adds up. Something is up here. Their also coming down with colds which will be important later. And just as important.. Magneto is becoming a symbol among people and merch sales with his image are on the rise.  We then get this. 

So Jean is trying to be a supportive, honest wife, and while the questions incredibly insulting.. his answer is equally so. Spoilers, as mentioned we do get an answer long after this.. and they did not. So Jean is wrong to be suspcious, at this point, but is at least trying to be polite about it and gave him the benifit of the doubt.. and Scott basically said he slept with her without actually saying it despite not having to. You could’ve said “no we did not have sex, we simply talked all night”. It’s not ENTIRELY better given the horrible state of their relationship right now, but it’s still better than HEAVILY implying he rocked her body to the break of dawn for no damn reason. 

So we meet our next major addition to the cast Angel Salvador, an abused teen who is a mutant.. and whose abusive and molesting step dad beats her and throws her out over this. The scene’s a bit overdone, coming off like an after school special.. but it’s what happens AFTER that’s truly heartwrenching. 

A poor scared teenager clutching herself, finding herself homeless alone and desperatly wishing she wasn’t what she was. It’s just a striking image and shows how well Grant uses the mutant metaphor. I could easily see myself in that position had my parents not been good peopl and had I come out far sooner as bi. The idea of desperatly hoping your not what you are simply becaus eof what hell it brings, despite all the joy it can bring too. . it’s heartbreaking to hear. 

Naturally though things don’t get much better as the next morning the U-Men have found her, calling her a freak and successfully kidnapping her.. if only because while she uses acid spit to escape, she flies into a power line. 

We then get Sublimes meeting with Emma and Scott and a BETTER use of teh u-men as while Grant made the horrible mistake of calling them “transpecies”, seriously what the fuck were you thinking, the way sublime frames it here is a MUCH better, much less accidently bigoted concept. 

The idea isn’t bad: A group of humans jealous of the mutants powers, blatantly ignoring the horrible downsides and mountain of persecution that comes with being one. Grant just made the mistake of couching in in Trans metaphors, clearly trying to have the U-Men steal from Trans People too as a way to make themselves seem legit. And I say if you want superpowers.. fine.. wanting to be a superhero or a mutant is fine, the issue with the U-Men is their copoting a culture, trying to be part of mutantkind without having any of the drawbacks and by actively butchering them. It’s why the concept HAS shown up elsewhere; it’s not TERRIBLE, Grant just made a bad creative choice that’s only gotten worse as Transphobia has ramped up further and further. 

Sublime denies it when our heroes bring up Hong Kong.. but naturally he’s simply just keeping them talking long enough to bring out his trump cards, an army of u-men and a brain in a jar he uses to incapacitate them.. and announces his plan to use the school as an organ farm for his third species. 

Meanwhile Logan finds the U-Men in their truck preparing to rip angel apart.. and given he snikit’s soon after.. i’ts very clear whose REALLY about to get ripped apart. 

Germ Free Generation Part 2: 

Part two begins wth Sublime monologoging about how Mutantkind are just cattle to them and reveals the brain is martha’s, her sucicide having been faked and her brain currently being controlled to use as a weapon. 

So while Johnny monlogues we find out what happened with Wolverine last issue he didn’t cut up the guys yet as they fired their little flichete guns at him... it was about as useful and effective as you’d expect and the massacre you were expecting occurs. Though in a nice bit of reality the fact wolverine’s soaked in blood and just killed a bunch of blood shockingly does not make the already frighttend teen feel he’s safe and she spits acid on him. Logan pours some stuff on the acid, figuring rightly a black ops murder farmacy would have something to counteract it and tells her she’s safe now .. and tells the guy behind him not to try it. He’s stupid and does anyway and likely gets a claw to the head off panel. 

They go to a diner to eat and find a local asshole who threatens them with a shot gun to leave once angel uses her power to digest and goes on a rant about how he snapped his own son’s neck to prevent him being born a freak. Just.. fucking hell this arc is not good for my depression. We get some more angst from Angel and whiel her dialouge is not the best, i’ts a too bit mark millar flavored edgelordy for my taste and if I wanted that i’d go read Ultimates or Ultimate X-Me, her pain is real and Logan helps her through it. 

Back at the Mansion the U-Men are on their way to strike, whlie Jean unaware continues to buckle under the weight of all the shit she’s had to deal with, feeling SOMETHING is making them weak with the colds and something worse is going on and thus tries going to Beak’s mind instead and gently helps talk him through it, showing her grace and empathy.. and in return finding out Charles was the one responsible. The alarms flair up and Jean tries calling the police now that’s an option.. but it goes exactly how you’d expect. 

Also a second artist took over for this issue and the next Igor Kordey. He’s fine, but not nearly as good as Quitely or Van Sciver and it shows. Meanwhile Beast awakens and heads for the body drawer with Cassandra’s body, and professor’s mind in it. 

However Jean’s finally had enough and got her second wind. She’s outgunned, outmanned and left to her own devices. And she’s fucking fed up with it. She steels herself and assembles the students. This is obviously a last resort.. but some of them can defend themselves and their going to need to. But today they won’t be learning.. they’ll be teaching and as the U-Men call them defensless Jeans simply asks “Are you sure about that?”

Germ Free Generation Part 3:

So we come to the finale of this arc. Angel is once again an ungreatful brat to logan and he opts to just leave her there if sh’es going to be like that pointing out being a mutant sucks, it’s going to keep sucking.. and she needs to deal with it instead of lashing out at him and herself over it. 

We get back to the U-Men, one of whom is utterly flabergasted they want to him to cut of Cyclops head... only for Emma to awaken.. and take back her regular form meaning she has her telepathy back. The only reason they were able to get her ealier is she was in diamond mode which is stronger but lacks that, a nice way to check and ballance her new powers. She quickly takes them out and disables Martha. 

Back at the school we get one of Jean’s definting moments for me and a true chance to show how badass she can be. Before this while Morrison wrote her well, and his version’s still my favoirite, she didn’t really get to do much and was motly in the background. This arc has been her time in the limelight, having trouble grappling with all the stress of running this place by herself.. and emerging from it stronger, more capable and ready to kick some racist weirdo ass. She tries a few diffrent tactics first, having a mutant with a voice power project it to make them think their san invisible army and having the cuckoos fuck with their heads but when both fail, Jean REALLY gets to show off. Thier blade ammo gets turned into a cool looking 3 dimensioinal shape with her telekneisis, and in a cool moment and a wise use of something gross makes the only one of them with useable powers throw up, before issuing a badass boast, wreathed in flames all while she crumples their guns into uselessness. and tears open their suits. 

Bad ass.. and logan and Angel arrive just in time for the cecendo as hte u-men flee in terror

The Phoenix has been Reborn. Jean Grey has risen from the ashes and returned to full power. 

Meanwhile Sublime is pankcing.. and it gets worse when Emma shows up, fully enraged after all of this and has some words for him. 

Iconic. Emma prepares to drop him out of a building but Scott rightly tries to get her to back off, pointing out the pr nightmare it’d create and the fact that they have enough evidence ot shut him down. Martha however has other ideas and gets him to let go of his own accord, falling to his death.. but given he’d aranged a stunt for the press apparently this gives our heroes deniability and Martha her revenge. 

So we end this three parter as Jean revels in her new power, and Beast returns with an announcment:

Final Thoughts for Germ Free Generation:  This arc is pretty good if forgetable. The struggle of Jean to run the school herself and her rising from the ashes of her own pain at the end with the power of the phoenix at the end is fantastic, finally both giving her a chance to shine.. and a worrying sign for her friends given what her phoenix force copy whose memories she has a copy of, long story, did is awesome. The other parts are okay and ehhhhhhhhh though. Scott and Emma’s investigation into the u-men while having a really good climax, is pretty standard x-men stuff, and Wolverin’es trek with angel is just okay with Angel being highly intolerable during this arc, with Morrison trying a bit TOO hard to make her a “realistic” teen instead coming off as horribly unplesant. She’s supposed to just be lashing out but comes off obnxious as a result. That said this arc does furhter a lot of Morrisons best idea and introduce more, and is a great setup for our next arc, which we’ll get to in two weeks. Soooo

Next Time On X-Men: We find out just what the hell Cassandra Nova is, what her plans are, and what happened with her and charles as our heroes come down with a cold as the might of the shiar empire bears down on them. It’s IMperial in two weeks. 

Next Time ON This BLog: Speaking of long Delayed Projects, I finally return to The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck as a young Scrooge starts his prospecting career, learning the ins and outs from a rich new mentor, and finding the price tag striking it rich comes with. Raid a copper hill with me tommorow. 

If you liked this review, subscirbe for more, join my patreon, and if there’s a comic you’d like me to cover suggest it in the comments or outright comission a review from me via ask. See you at the next rainbow

[chayacat]

Devil’s Sweet Star (4)

Fandom: Dead by Daylight

Ghostface x Female Reader  

Rated M for Violence, Language and Smut  

***

Every person on this planet has a different mentality. Some will laugh at all things because they always see the good side, others will buy French fries in the shape of animals or candies because they’ll have kept their children's souls. Those with a deranged mentality will be locked up in suitable institutions and those who are self-centred prepare as evil strategies as they are to reach glory and power. But do you know what's common to all of us? The sweet desire for perfection.

Ah perfection... A utopia for all of us, an invisible thing that everyone wants to achieve. Everything we do has to be perfect: our work, our schooling, our life, our family, our friendly relationships... We always want EVERYTHING to be perfect. And we are outraged, angry, sorry when a tiny drop of water overflows our vase of perfection. Danny is one of the best examples.

He calculates everything down to the smallest detail, analyses all possible situations, so that his murders are perfect. And so far, he's getting there! not the slightest suspicion, not the slightest, tiny evidence of his involvement in all these crimes. He could have been an actor given the talent to play the comedy he owns.  

But artists like him must know how to bow out and change places. And that's exactly what he's been thinking about since that night in addition to his next victim. To the point of falling asleep at his desk. He had turned what was to be used as a guest room into an office, with a sofa, in case tiredness prevented him from going to his bed.  

He rubbed his eyes before getting up and heading to the kitchen to make a coffee. He needed to have clear ideas and a clear mind. Then he returned to his office and glanced at the map while sipping. Red crosses were on it, indicating the cities he had already made. Next to the map was a table where most barred names were inscribed, that was none other than his “hunting table”.  

“Well, well... What's going to be my next destination after Roseville? Ontario? No... The Canadian cold is unbearable and then the snow may slow me down in my leaks. Houston? Tss no no no... I don't want to be executed.”

His gaze was on Florida, the state that saw him born. It would be a good idea and down there he could be FINALLY himself. To present himself as Danny Johnson and never as Jed Olsen. But his family lives there, his "parents" who throughout his childhood repudiated him and treated him as a trash. That's why he left, so does he really want to go back? Only the day his parents died. Danny shook his head with a sigh. He prefers to forget his darkest years of his life.

“I still have time to think about it. No one suspects me as usual. So, there's no need to rush my escape.”  

He looked at his "hunting board," including the names inscribed on it. Since the time he lives here, some names have come to mind, including Travis who is no longer of this world. The first in his list is none other than that dear Mike Harris. If Jed held back, Danny couldn't stand him anymore. Why all this? Because he thinks he's better than everyone else and can't stand the competition? Poor idiot that you're Mike, your ego will lead you to your loss and to tell you the truth you won't miss anyone.

Second on the list was Horace McKellan. That wretched rich man who threatened to close your business. A real jerk's face. Danny already smiles at the thought of sticking the knife in his stomach to eject his guts, dismembering him pieces by pieces, hearing his screams and begging you to stop ... Oh my God, what a pleasure it's going to be.

Other names appeared on this chart, people who were mostly had done anything wrong in particular and others who are real rubbish for society, even if Danny had nothing to do with it. Then as he went along, his eyes landed on a name... Particular. A person who made him ask a lot of questions. That person? It's you.

What was he going to do with you? An umpteenth victim with no interest or reason to kill you except for... have fun? Or keep you alive and make yourself... His toy? It's an idea that made him smile a lot and he already imagine you as his toy, his property, his little pet that he can frighten when and where he wants, without ever killing you.  

He put a question mark next to your name while waiting to decide your fate. Until then he has plenty to deal with. He took another sip of his coffee when he heard someone knocking on the door. He came out of his office, which he locked, and then went to the front door where he came face to face with Mr. Lawson, the owner.

“Mr. Lawson? Is there a problem?” He said.  

“oh no, nothing special! You are so caught up in your work that you forgot to get it back your mail. I bring it to you and I took the opportunity to retrieve the advertisements even though you put the label they continue to put you in the mailbox.”

“oh...Thanks sir, I must admit that with work, I forgot simple things like that. I’ve heard that you’ve got some problems with some tenants?”  

“oh yes! Those little hooligans on the 4th floor are always late on their rent, when I tell them, it's limit if they don't slam the door in my face! No respect! they should work more instead of doing nothing of their day!”

“Sure. Well, I got some work to do sir, good luck with the hooligans and... Take care of yourself.” Danny replied before gently close the door.

Then he throws his mail on his table, he doesn’t really care about all that stuff. He was about to return to study his next victims when his phone rang.

“Yoooooo Jeddy! How are you? I don't mind you, do I?”

“No, not at all Mattew. What’s going on? You're not working today?” answers Danny.

“Yes, but the boss makes a meeting with everyone. So, he wants you to take your cute little ass back to the office. And quickly, visibly it looks important. You know how the boss is when someone is late.”

“I see it too many times with you.” Laughs Danny “Tell the boss I coming right now.”  

He hangs up and took his belongings before locking his door. He walked to his car, opened it, went inside and drove towards the newspaper's office. he passed security and went upstairs to fall face to face with Mike. If there was one person he didn't want to see when he arrived, it was him.

“Mr. deigns to finally show himself... Come on Olsen, you're wasting our time. In addition to my nerves.” said Mike a little angry before entering the meeting room.  

Danny breathes deeply before entering too and close the door seeing that everyone is here. He notices Melina and Mattew talking in a corner and decided to join them, he needed to laugh a little and these two are real comedians. Mr Hembrook came in and shut the door making everyone silent. Then he goes to his chair and put some folder on the table.

“Well, it seems that everyone is here so, we can start the meeting. If I ask you to come here today, it’s because I've some big news for you. First of all, the head of the journalists' convention contacted me last night to find out if we intended to participate this year. I responded favourably and also told him that I would contact him again to give him the names of those who would go there. As you know, the reputation of the Roseville gazette extends a little further than our small town and if we could make ourselves known in other states, it would allow us to fill our newspaper a little more.”

“Great, boring convention is coming...I'm excited” said Melina ironically.  

“Ahem. Then I heard that a certain Richard Hoggins gives a reception in a few days to celebrate the signing of his new trade. All those rich people who break our feet will be there including Horace Mckellan. I know these two were working together, and I can feel the scheming in this story. So, in order to "cover" this reception I convinced Mr Hoggins to bring a small team from our newspaper.”  

“wow that's more exciting than the convention” said Mattew happily as Jed nods.  

Danny smiles wildly, maybe he can learn more about McKellan and found new preys if he goes there?  

“So, I need to know now who's going to go where to tell the organizers and Mr. Hoggins. I thought of Mike, Karen and Thomas at the convention. And for the reception ... I think Melina, Mattew and our little Jed would be the perfect trio.”

“WHAT ??” says Mike by failing to stun. “But Boss! This is impossible, I mean...Jed is kind of a newbie here. For a scandal like that, we need someone more...experienced more suitable. With all due respect, I think it's best for my team to take care of Mr. Hoggins' reception and Jed's go to the convention.”

“If I may say so...” starts Jed who surprised everyone: “As you said SO kindly Mike, I'm a newbie. But that's my strong point: no one will suspect me of spying or snooping if no one knows me. no one will pay attention to me and I can discreetly sneak into the crowd.”

“I like that mindset. You definitely convinced me kid. I'm going to make the phone calls. I'm counting on you to resent a great scandal.” said Mr Hembrook before leaving the meeting room followed by the others reporters. Melina and Mattew left too and when Danny was about to leave the room, Mike pushed him and closed the door, then stuck him to the wall, his arm at Danny’s throat.

“You're lucky we're in the office Olsen because I SWEAR to god, I'm going to kill you. But beware, by pushing me to the limit, you’ll quickly regret the consequences. I don't know what game you're playing, you little shit... but accidents happen much faster than you think.” He grunts before punching him in the face and in his stomach, leaving Danny on the floor as he leaves the room.  

Danny got up and wiped his nose with a hand gesture to make sure he wasn't bleeding from the nose, which fortunately for him was not the case. The rage grew in him, he wanted only one thing: to kill Mike there now, without worrying about what the others would say. But he couldn't afford it for the moment, he would grill his cover. He had to take it upon himself as Jed but Mike loses nothing to wait: Ghostface intends to return the device to him.

The rest of the day went relatively well even though Mike behaved like a real bastard towards 'Jed'. Luckily, he could count on Mattew and Melina to make it all more bearable. The trio headed to the exit, telling each other jokes, each one more stupid than the others. Danny shakes his head with a smile, they are unrecoverable.

“Hey, are we eating together tonight ? I know a small Japanese restaurant that will nail you to your seats at the end of the meal.” said Melina.

“Ha! No meal is consistent enough to nail me to my chair!” answers Mattew proudly.  

“I wonder how you eat so much without gaining weight. you could cause the loss of all the restaurants in town.” replies Melina with a smirk before laughing when she saw Mattew sulking. “What about you Jed?”

“Sorry, I would have liked to come but... I feel a little tired” he responds with a little smile.

“oh... Say instead that you prefer to go for a coffee at the Nebula... The boss is pretty cute. Maybe you should think about settling down with someone someday. I don't bother you with that. Rest well Jed. And get ready to play spies!” Said Melina before leaving with Mattew.  

Danny drives back at home thinking about how he’s going to kill that bastard Mike. So many things pass through his mind... He parked and when he raised his head, he saw you through your window, cleaning and tidying your home. He hasn’t decided about your fate but he’s got time. He doesn’t know you enough to make a decision.

He quickly went to his apartment to retrieve his bag which contained his camera. He wanted to stalk someone tonight, another potential victim who had done nothing to him, but that he's going to kill for one reason or another. Another trophy in his hunting board.

As for you, you can sleep peacefully. Your little star will continue to shine tonight. Until the devil in the white mask came to steal it...Or smash it down forever.  

***

(Finished! this time I wanted to focus mainly on Danny, on how he operates. Tell me what you think! I hope you’ll enjoyed it! And remember if you want to have a closer look of Danny, check out @arkkosun’s page!  His/her work is amazing! Also Check @sleepydaydreamz and @horror-ink’s pages! They're so great! See ya! )  

[hockey-fics]

123 Days ~ Nolan Patrick (Part One) 

Summary: There’s 123 days of summer. 123 days of you and your best friends and nothing to do but enjoy the long summer days. But this summer might become just a little more complicated. 

Word Count: ~3,000

Warnings: Drinking

Dropping your suitcase next to your bed and tossing your duffel bag on top of it you let out a heavy breath. It was early in the summer, but the air in the lake cabin was hot and stuffy. Yet there was no other place you would rather be. You had spent almost every summer of your life out at the cabin and you spent most of the rest of every year waiting for these months. Now, after your third year of university you were more than ready to escape the stress of life. 

“Y/N,” Alena calls.

Spinning around you look at the figure standing in your doorway, a smile spreading on your face. “Alena,” you state, stepping closer and wrapping your arms around her tightly. Alena’s family had bought a cabin by the lake a couple years after your own and you two had spent every summer together since then. Even though you didn’t see each other for 8 months of the year you still considered each other best friends. She wasn’t the only one. You, Alena, Danny, Xavier, and Nolan. Each of you had spent summers growing up out at the lake and for those four months you were all practically inseparable. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“You too,” she echoes, pulling back and walking around you to the window on the other side of your room. Quickly she pushes back the curtain and pulls the window open, allowing some air into the room. “I’m so glad you’re finally here.” Walking over she plops down onto your bed. 

“Me too,” you tell her, sighing contently as you unzip the duffel bag on your bed and begin to unpack. “Danny and Xavier are coming tomorrow, right?”

“Danny is coming today instead, he’s on his way.” 

Nodding you pull a pile of t-shirts out of your bag, beginning to refold them before dropping them into one of the dresser drawers. “And Nolan? He’s already here, right?”

Giggling Alena leans over, pulling a couple of the scrunched up shirts out and refolding them for you. “Yeah, Nolan’s here,” she coos. 

Rolling your eyes you shake your head at her. “We’re just friends, Alena.”

“That’s bullshit,” Alena comments, handing you a couple of folded t-shirts to put away. 

“It’s not.” You place the shirts in a drawer, turning back to your pile of clothes and grabbing another shirt. 

“Fine,” Alena states, slipping her legs underneath her and kneeling on your bed. Swinging her arm out she catches your hand, yanking you closer. Dropping the shirt you were holding you stumble forward. Bracing yourself against the edge of the bed you stare at her, eyebrows furrowed as she leans closer.

“Alena?” you laugh as her face inches closer to yours. “What are you doing?” you exclaim, giggling as her lips get alarmingly close to yours, placing your hands on her shoulders you playfully shove her back. 

Alena rolls back onto your bed, laughing as she crosses her legs and resumes her task of refolding your shirts. “See, Y/N, friends don’t kiss.” 

Groaning, you turn your back to her, shaking your head as you organize the drawers. “It was one time, we were drunk and we agreed that it didn’t mean anything,” you remind her, glancing over your shoulder in time to catch her unconvinced look. 

“Whatever you say,” she mutters under her breath, the two of you finishing unpacking the rest of your clothes as you talk about all the things you were planning to do that summer. 

Later that night Alena places her plate and fork into the dishwasher. “Thank you for dinner,” Alena tells your mom. She had yet to leave and you hadn’t expected or wanted her to. 

“You want a drink?” you ask Alena, standing in front of the open fridge gazing over the selection of drinks in the fridge. 

“I”ll take a Mike’s, please,” Alena asks. Grabbing a can of Mike’s Hard Lemonade from the fridge you swing your arm back behind you. 

“Don’t you dare,” your mom warns at the same moment you underhand toss it across the kitchen to Alena who jokingly fumbles with it to tease your mom. “I would have thought managing you two would have been easier now that you’re older.”

Laughing you grab a black cherry cider for yourself, shutting the fridge after. “We know you love it,” you tell your mom with a smile. “Want to go down to the beach?” you ask Alena, nodding towards the back patio door that overlooked the lake. 

Alena nods and the two of you head outside and down the stairs to the beach. The sun was setting over the lake as you two walk together, sipping your drinks and talking about all the things you had missed while being apart. 

Suddenly you hear footsteps behind you, loud and quick like someone was running. Just as you turn around a pair of arms circles your waist, lifting you off your feet and quickly turning in the direction of the lake. “Nolan,” you yell, one arm clutching around his shoulders, the other extended to keep your drink from pouring all over you two. “No, Nolan, no, don’t you dare,” you scream as he laughs, carrying you closer to the edge of the water. “Nolan, it’s too cold,” you plead, wrapping your legs around his torso. If you were going in, he was coming too. 

“Fine, you wimp,” Nolan chuckles, setting you down beside the edge of the water. “Didn’t bring me one?” he asks, gesturing to the drink in your hand. 

“I didn’t know you would attack me on the beach,” you retort, reaching over and offering him your can. Nolan takes it from you, bringing it to his lips and taking a large drink. “That’s enough,” you whine, watching him down half your drink in one go. Reaching up you take it back from him, glancing over at Alena as she slowly approaches, a mischievous smirk on her face.

“Hi Nolan,” she laughs, leaning over and giving him a quick hug.

“Hey Alena,” he replies. 

A moment later you feel your phone vibrate, hearing Alena’s beep at the same moment. Pulling your phone out you look at the message in your group chat. “Danny’s here,” you say happily. “We should go see him.”

Shortly after you three begin the walk to Danny’s house. He lived a short distance from the beach, but the route there was ingrained in your brain after making the journey there many times over the summers. “So how’ve you been?” Nolan asks quietly, walking beside you on the sidewalk as Alena leads the way, a couple paces ahead. 

“Good,” you reply, looking up at him. “Happy to be back here with you though,” you reply and then glance down at the ground, realizing exactly what you had just said. “With all of you,” you add quickly, skipping forward and wrapping your arm around Alena’s shoulders. “It’s going to be a fun summer.” 

Getting to Danny’s house the three of you head up the front stairs, knocking on the front door. Danny emerges a couple minutes later, greeting you all happily. “Beach fire at my place?” Nolan suggests a few minutes later. 

It had been hours since you got to Nolan’s place, sitting around a fire on the beach sipping beer from Nolan’s fridge. 

“Danny, you’re such an idiot,” Alena laughs after Danny recounts a story about almost being arrested for public intoxication a couple months prior. 

Smiling you feel a heaviness in your eyes. The day of travel to get there catching up with you now. Pulling your legs up you wrap your arms around your knees, leaning into them and staring absently into the fire. 

“You good?” Alena asks you from across the fire. 

Glancing up you shoot her a reassuring smile. “Yeah, just a little tired.”

“Suck it up, we’ve got a long summer ahead of us,” Alena jokes, making you laugh. 

As the conversation continues Nolan scoots closer to you, settling on the blanket beside you. He places his arm that was closest to you behind you, leaning back on it. Turning your head you look up at him with a sleepy smile. “Hello.”

“Hey,” he chuckles, moving his arm to your waist and gently pulling you into his side before replacing his arm behind you. 

Resting your head on his shoulder you extend your legs, lifting one up over his that was stretched out in front of him to make it easier to lean into him. When you make eye contact with Alena she simply shakes her head, the look in her eyes screaming ‘I told you so’. 

It’s not long before the night begins to slow down, everyone’s energy fading. “You want me to walk you home?” you hear Danny ask Alena, barely able to keep your eyes open as you fight against falling asleep curled up at Nolan’s side. 

“Sure,” Alena says and when you sense her standing up you pull your head away from Nolan, looking up at him. “Coming?” Alena asks you, your cabin on the route they would be taking. 

Nodding you pull your leg off of Nolan, yawning as you stumble to your feet. “Yeah.”

“You can stay here tonight,” Nolan suggests, standing up after you. “My family isn’t even here yet.”

Thinking through your options you nod, leaning down and grabbing the blanket you had been sitting on. “That’d be great.” It was only a ten minute walk home, but the idea of simply walking into the house twenty feet away from you was much more enticing. “See you guys tomorrow,” you call to Danny and Alena as they head off. 

Inside Nolan’s place you kick off your shoes, tiredly shuffling to the couch in the living room. “Goodnight, Nolan,” you mutter, laying down on the couch and curling your legs up into you. 

Nolan chuckles, following you into the living room and grabbing a blanket to cover you up with. As Nolan pulls the blanket over you, you look up at him, smiling softly. “Thank you.” Tugging the blanket around you, you let your eyes fall shut, asleep almost immediately. 

“Goodnight,” Nolan says quietly, hesitating before turning around and heading out of the living room, turning the lights off as he leaves. 

A loud clattering draws you from your sleep, making you groan as your eyes flutter open to the brightly lit living room. Turning your head you gaze through the living room and into the kitchen. “What are you doing?” you call to Nolan, watching him rifle through the cupboards. 

“Trying to make breakfast,” Nolan tells you, smiling sheepishly at you. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

Laughing you push the blanket off your body, standing up and walking into the kitchen. “Trying?”

“Can’t find a pan for the eggs,” he admits. 

Shaking your head you take your best guess, finding a pan quickly. “So you’ve never cooked here before, have you?”

Nolan chuckles, setting the pan onto the stove. “Not really. Do you want some eggs?”

“Sure,” you reply, leaning against the counter as you watch him make breakfast.

After breakfast you head back to your own place to shower and get ready for the day, knowing it would only be a few hours before you were all back together again. 

It only takes a few days for all of you to fall back into your typical summer routines, of spending almost every day together.

It had finally reached that point of the summer, when it remained hot enough through the night for midnight swims. Under the moonlight you pull your shirt up over your head, tossing it onto the sand and sliding your shorts off a minute later. “Last one in has to buy us all a case of beer,” Xavier yells as he takes off running for the lake. 

A second later you’re on your way too, knowing Alena and Danny were still in the process of taking their clothes off. Suddenly a hand is wrapped around your wrist, stopping you dead in your tracks and making you stumble back, body slamming into Nolan’s bare chest. “Nolan, what the fuck?” you exclaim, giggling as you place your hand on his shoulder to steady yourself. 

Nolan’s laugh fades as he stares down at you, your body still pressed against his, seeming speechless. 

“What are you doing?” you mutter as Nolan places one of his hands on your waist. “A case of beer really isn’t this serious,” you say, laughing nervously. You had originally thought that’s what this was about, him wanting you to be stuck with the punishment of buying the beer. But suddenly he was acting so strange, you weren’t sure exactly what he was doing. 

“I know,” he mumbles, his fingers sliding around to your lower back, pulling you a little closer as he leans down, his lips getting closer and closer to yours with each passing second. You wanted more than anything in that moment to kiss him, but you knew you couldn’t. You couldn’t risk anything ruining the group. The five of you were best friends, you couldn’t risk wrecking that. 

“Nolan,” you say, voice wavering as you fumble your hand to the arm he had wrapped around you. Quickly you push his arm down off your body, stepping back from him as you stare up at him with wide eyes. 

“I, uh, shit, I’m sorry,” Nolan stutters, running his hand through his hair.

You feel your heart melt a little, the way he was staring at you like he was concerned he had done something irreconcilable. Laughing softly you step forward, leaning up and pressing your lips to his cheek. “Last one in the water buys the beer,” you whisper, stepping back and running down the beach away from him, diving under the water as soon as it was deep enough. When you surface you take deep breaths, trying your best to get your heart to stop racing. 

“What was that about?” Alena whispers after swimming over to you. 

Your gaze focuses on Nolan as he walks into the water, heading towards Xavier and Danny. “I don’t really know,” you whisper, turning your head to look at Alena as you tread water. “I’m swimming to the dock,” you tell her, gesturing towards the floating swim dock a few yards away. 

“You know he really likes you, as more than a friend, right?” Alena asks as the two of you sit on the edge of the swim platform, legs dangling in the water as you watch the silhouettes of Nolan, Xavier, and Danny wrestling and shoving each other around closer to the shore. 

“I don’t know, Alena,” you whisper, turning your attention to the surface of the still water a few feet ahead of you, at the moonlight glistening off of it. “We’ve been friends for so long, maybe he’s just confused.”

Alena laughs and shakes her head. “Do you really think he’s that clueless?” Alena pauses, watching you shrug your shoulders in reply. “You don’t see it, Y/N. You don’t see the way he looks at you when you’re not watching. You don’t realize that everytime we’re all together he spends so much more time focused on you. He’s constantly checking on you, making sure you’re okay, walking you home. He doesn’t do those things for the rest of us.”

“Those things don’t mean anything, Alena. Those are just things friends do for each other.” 

“Whatever,” Alena says, rolling her eyes. “You can deny it all you want, doesn’t mean it’s not true,” she adds, letting out a breath of laughter. 

A few minutes later the guys begin swimming towards the swim platform, getting there shortly after. Nolan swims up to you, placing his hands on the platform beside you and pulling himself out of the water, pivoting his body and sitting next to you. “Everything okay?” Nolan whispers. 

Turning your head you look up at him, nodding with a smile. “Yeah.”

Nolan glances over at Xavier, Danny, and Alena, making sure they were focused on their own conversation before looking back to you. “I mean, with us.”

“Nolan, we’re good. Everything is fine,” you whisper, laughing softly. 

“Good,” Nolan comments. 

“I think I’m going to go home, it’s getting late,” Alena says, slipping into the still dark water. Xavier takes a couple large bounds from one side of the platform to the other, taking a large jump off the platform and into the water. Danny follows a moment later. 

“Come on,” you say to Nolan, tapping his thigh gently. Lifting yourself off the dock you lower yourself into the water, waiting for Nolan before heading to the shore. 

“Thanks for walking me home,” you say to Nolan, standing on the front patio outside your house, Nolan’s shirt overtop of your damp body, him standing shirtless in front of you. You told him you were fine, it really wasn’t cold out, but he insisted on giving you his shirt. 

“Of course,” Nolan tells you with a shrug, leaning against the patio railing a few feet away from you. “About earlier,” Nolan starts, looking down at the ground in front of him. 

Quickly moving forward you step between his legs, reaching your hands up and placing them on either side of his face, tipping his head up to make him look into your eyes. “Nolan, don’t worry about it,” you say with a smile. Your eyes land on his lips and by the time you realize you’re looking, it’s too late, you know Nolan has already noticed. There’s a warmth radiating to your cheeks when you look back into his eyes, dropping your hands to your side, feeling your right hand brush against his thigh on the way down. “Sorry,” you mutter, moving your hands closer to your own body. Letting out a shaky breath you lean forward, your hands sliding up over his shoulders. As you get closer to him, everything you had thought before returns, the idea of causing issues in the group sending a wave of panic through your body. Quickly you lean to the right, wrapping your arms around him in a hug. Nolan’s hands land slowly on your back, tentative as he pulls you closer, hands brushing gently along your back. 

“Goodnight, Nolan,” you whisper, pulling back. You avoid looking into his eyes as you turn around, stepping back to the door and opening it. Looking at him one last time you step inside, shutting the door behind you. Standing at the door you take a few minutes to collect yourself, your thoughts and feelings running at a million miles an hour. You couldn’t deny the fact that you had feelings for Nolan anymore. 

[lexosaurus]

Everything Was White: Part 9

part [1] / [8]

read on: [ao3] [ffnet]

---

Danny glared at the space where his hand should have been, concentrating on the light tingles that ran throughout his fingers like tiny electric beads of energy. He felt the current in his fingers waver, and his hand flickered back into visibility.

That was no good. He pulled his eyebrows tighter together, willing his hand back out of the visible spectrum. 

Danny sighed in relief and allowed his arm to fall to his side. He closed his eyes, and his body relaxed into the soft carpet below him. He could feel the stress leaking from his muscles. Even his chest, which seemed constantly at war against his fried nerve endings, felt at ease.

Much better.

Danny couldn’t remember ever feeling so fake . He spent the whole day with his core under lock and key—feeling physically more human than ever—yet surrounded by teens who couldn’t see him as anything more than Phantom.

The rest of his day at the PHP had been even worse than Danny thought it would be. With each new therapy came a new opportunity for the therapists to try to get Danny to open up. And when that happened, so did the stares and the tense silences which made him very much not want to speak, but then if he didn’t speak he would have to return to inpatient, but that resulted in more stress which caused his voice to clam up and then he was stuck right where he started.

His physical therapy session hadn’t come soon enough, and when Danny finally got to the clinic, he made sure to push himself as hard as his body would allow and then some. His physical therapist had commended him on the “great day,” but Danny couldn’t help but feel disappointed.

No matter what, it wasn’t enough. He wasn’t enough.

Because he was still trapped.

Footsteps sounded from the staircase. He bolted upright and glanced at his wheelchair beside him. 

This was bad. This was really bad. The government was back and he had no way of escaping.

Goddamnit, if only his parents had given him access to his core, he could phase out of here and fly away. But he couldn’t do that now. He could hardly keep his fingers invisible for over a minute without breaking a sweat.

He made motions towards his chair as a plan formed in his head. A very ill-formulated plan—one that was sure to cause him to lose a few teeth—but a plan nonetheless. But just as he touched the wheels of his chair, his door flung open.

He turned, fully prepared to use what little muscular strength he’d managed to build up in his legs to launch himself over to his captors, but he froze.

The people at the door weren’t tall men in white suits and black sunglasses. There were no ecto-guns pointed at his face. There was no glowing green inhibitor ready to be clasped onto his neck.

It was Sam and Tucker, staring shyly at him in a way that reminded him of how they used to act around each other before they truly became friends.

“Hey, Danny.” Sam gave him a small wave.

“Oh.” Danny dropped his hold on his wheelchair. “Hey. Hi, guys.”

For a moment, no one said anything. Sam stared at him with eyes that were progressively getting shinier by the second, and Tucker stood with his mouth hanging open, as if he couldn’t believe Danny was there.

Danny fidgeted. There was so much unsaid emotion happening. The atmosphere was suffocating, and suddenly Danny was hyper aware of how uncomfortably he was sitting. He shifted so his legs were crisscrossed under each other and placed his arms in his lap. Maybe that would solve it. Maybe his posture was the source of his discomfort.

“Dude,” Tucker said. “Holy shit.”

“I—yeah, uh…”

Tucker shook his head. “You look...damn, what the hell did they feed you in there?”

The red package flashed in his mind, and Danny felt the blood drain from his face.

He wanted to snap at Tucker, to shout that he wasn’t a dog and turn invisible because he hadn’t seen his friends in weeks and the first thing they were going to bring up was his biggest point of shame and destruction in his life? Something so embarrassing that he hadn’t told anyone about it?

Oh. Wait.

If he hadn’t told anyone about it, then Sam and Tucker wouldn’t know about it either. He was safe, then, and Tucker wouldn’t have been referencing that thing. So then what was Tucker talking about?

He creased his eyebrows and looked down at his hands. He didn’t think he looked any different than usual. Even though the Guys in White had forced him to consume... that, it hadn’t drastically altered his appearance in the same way that his eyes would give off a light glow if he accidentally ate one of his mom’s ectoplasm-infused dinners in human form. 

His arm looked the same. It was a little thin, and his skin was a little pale, but it looked like a normal human arm. There were no globs of ectoplasm dripping from his skin, no inhuman glow encasing his form, nothing. It was just a normal arm.

He must have looked lost, because Sam supplied, “You look really healthy, Danny.”

Oh. 

Right.

He was reading too far into this. The last time Sam and Tucker had seen Danny, he was so underweight the doctors told him it was a miracle his organs were still functioning. He was on a special high-calorie diet filled with vanilla protein shakes, all with the goal of helping him regain what he lost.

It seemed like so long ago now, but it had only been a month since Danny had seen anyone outside the hospital. And so much had changed in that time.

“Oh...um, thanks?” He said, peeking at his friends from under his bangs. “I—uh...they had these...the protein—protein shakes. Made me drink them.”

“Well, you look amazing,” Sam said.

Danny felt like his face was on fire. He attempted to settle the topic with an “I’m glad you think that.”

If anything, that made their reactions ten times worse.

“Oh, Danny.” Sam sniffed, bringing one hand up to cover her mouth. “Wow.”

“What?” He blindly reached over to his wheelchair again, hoping that maybe some height would make him seem less pitiful. But before he could pull the chair closer to him, Sam sank to the floor.

“I’m sorry. I told myself I wasn’t going to do this. I promised I wasn’t gonna cry.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her fingers. “Ugh, sorry.”

“No—it’s. Um. I just...I just—” Danny tried to look at Tucker for help, but Tucker was avoiding eye contact with him now.

“I’m sorry?” Danny tried.

Sam’s eyes snapped over to his. “No! God, Danny. Don’t apologize. Please.”

“I don’t...I don’t…”

“No, it’s me, Danny. I’m sorry, it’s me.” Sam sniffed again and brushed unshed tears away from her eyes. She took a few deep breaths before glancing back over to Danny with that same damn shy expression as before.

Just what was going on right now?

“I know you don’t like being touched anymore—”

Danny grimaced. It wasn’t his fault that none of his nerve endings responded the same to physical stimulus anymore.

“—but would you mind if I hugged you? Just for a second?”

“Uh…” Danny trailed off. Since when did his friends ever ask him if it was okay to touch him? Normally they just barreled right into him, intangibility be damned. But, thinking back to his interactions with them a month before, he hadn’t really allowed them near him, did he? Of course, they invaded his room anyway, no thanks to Jazz. But even then, they always sat a respectful distance away from him on separate chairs rather than piling on his bed like they would have done before his time with the GiW.

Something churned in Danny’s gut. Had he really been that bad before that he made his own friends feel like they couldn’t have physical contact with him now?

“Sure?”

She leaned into him slowly, raising her arms up towards him as if he would break as soon as she touched him.

But he didn’t flinch, his eyes didn’t waver, and when she finally made contact with him, he didn’t pull away.

But he wanted to.

Arms wrapped around his waist, resting lightly on his back, and for a moment, he forgot how to breathe. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had held him with such care, such tenderness. He knew his family was still keeping their distance, still unsure about how much contact he could handle, but he didn’t realize it had been this long since anyone had just...given him a hug.

And it bothered him. 

The first time he woke up in the hospital, his parents had wrapped their arms around him similarly to this. Then, he felt nothing. He spent weeks after that mulling it over, wondering if maybe deep down inside he had been angry at them for letting the Guys in White force him away. Maybe he was just another Pavlov’s dog, and he was only able to associate touch with pain now. Or maybe it wasn’t that serious, maybe he had just been too drugged up to be able to process even a simple hug.

But it couldn’t be the drugs from the hospital, because it still felt different to him. He still felt nothing.

He tried to melt into her embrace, pulling his own arms to fit around her slim body. He squeezed his eyes shut and focused on the familiar smell of her coconut shampoo, the one from that vegan company she liked so much.

“Danny,” Sam’s shaky voice sounded from his shoulder. “I missed you.”

He felt something wet touch his neck, and he tightened his hold on her, desperate to ground himself in the moment. But the dampness from her tears reminded him of the way his skin felt for those last few weeks in his cell. Never dry, always trickling with loose ectoplasm.

Get a grip, Fenturd.

“Yeah. I missed you too,” he managed to choke out. 

Sam shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“For what? You didn’t—”

“I—we tried. We tried so hard to get you out sooner. I’m sorry it didn’t work.”

He paused, then pulled back. What were they talking about? Hadn’t they organized that protest for him? What more could he have asked from them? “It wasn’t...it wasn’t your fault. I know you tried.”

Tucker shook his head. “No, dude. Like, we tried tried. We had a whole team of people—Ember, Frostbite. Hell, even Skulker—but nothing.”

“Wait, hold up.” Danny tilted his head, glancing between the duo with raised eyebrows. “Skulker? How did—how did you get Skulker? And, and Ember?”

“You remember that time last winter that Ember came over to listen to that band’s new album? ‘Cause she couldn’t do that in the Ghost Zone?”

“Yeah...she...oh, she almost got...right? The Guys in White almost got her then?” 

“Right, and you remember who came to save the day?”

“Um...it was...it was…” Danny ran his fingers through his hair. That day was fuzzy. He remembered that Ember came over, and they were listening to the album up on the roof of the Nasty Burger while eating some fries some drunk teenager handed him in the parking lot. But then, a net came out of nowhere and grabbed Ember.

And after that, everything was blank, as if someone had burned a hole in the middle of his memory.

“Skulker, I guess?”

Tucker nodded, his face contorting into an expression that Danny couldn’t read. “Skulker came. He’d been watching Ember the whole time. Didn’t want her crossing over by herself, I guess.” He grinned. “Though, if you ask me, I’d say he has a crush on—”

“Ugh, Tucker! Gross! Don’t even joke about that!” Sam scowled.

“Right, you keep thinking that!”

“No, we’re not having this conversation again!”

“Sure, Sam…”

Danny blinked, head turning between them. For the first time ever, he was on the outside of their bantering.

It felt...odd.

“Point is,” Sam continued. “Ember almost got kidnapped, and neither of us were there to help you guys. And they had the whole building surrounded in no time, mind you. But Skulker of all ghosts actually showed up, blew up the Guys in White’s van engines, freed Ember, and got you both away from there.”

“Oh. Whoa.”

“Yeah, whoa. So when he heard you were taken, he actually came to us wanting to help.”

Danny’s fingers twitched. He started to raise his arm, but then, thinking better of it, lowered his fingers down to run along the carpet. His movements were rigid, and when he spoke, his voice was tight. “And what did...him and Frostbite...what did they think they could do? Find me? Break me—break me out? And then what?”

Their silence, as well as the blanket of unease that had settled over the group, was all Danny needed as a response.

His shoulders sagged. “You couldn’t...there was no way. I tried, and that didn’t...it doesn’t matter.”

Danny felt a hand drape his shoulder, and he looked up to see Sam’s eyes fixated on him.

“It does matter, Danny. You matter to us. And we would have never forgiven ourselves if we didn’t try to get you out, even if it was impossible. You’re our friend, and we care about you.”

“Yeah.” He broke eye contact. “I’m sorry. I put you through so much and I—I didn’t think. You guys didn’t know. I mean...what—what do you guys know now? Has—has Jazz told you anything? About what happened in...in there?”

“Uh…” Tucker started. His gaze flickered over to Sam. “I mean...Jazz told us some stuff. Other stuff I think we were able to infer. Like uh...your...you know…”

Danny could feel the looming presence of his wheelchair and walker next to his bed. And apparently, so could Sam and Tucker, because suddenly their eyes were flickering between Danny and his wheelchair, and he could see the inevitable question on their lips.

Maybe they wouldn’t ask. But then again, if they did, would it really matter if they knew? They were his best friends, and friends were supposed to tell each other these things.

Hell, they’d been there for the portal, they were there during all the time’s he’d been bitten or stabbed by all sorts of unsavory characters.

Maybe it would be okay.

He took a deep breath. “That’s what happened when I tried to escape.”

Tucker froze, and Sam ripped her arm off his shoulder and brought it to her mouth, her eyes growing in size by the second.

“Holy shit, dude,” Tucker breathed.

Danny lowered his head. This was a mistake. He shouldn’t have told them. They were only going to pity him more than they already did.

“It’s fine, I’m pretty over it at this point. It’s...wanna play Doomed instead?”

“Oh...Danny...”

“How did—I mean, what did they—”

“I—I can’t remember when it happened,” Danny said.

This was a disaster. He was going to have to tell them now, which is something his therapist would be proud of because that would mean he was being open and honest with his loved ones. So he should be fine telling them, right? This shouldn’t be a big deal. 

He just had to power through this. “Everything kind of...blurred together at some point. But a guard—the guy who gave me dinner—he opened the door and I had this...this protocol…” He was fine. He could do this. 

“What was the protocol?” Sam asked.

“Um it was...it’s not important.” He remembered it too well. Stand in the back of the cell, against the wall, facing the agent. Refuse and be punished. “But there was a...he—the guard would shut the window and unlock the door. And in that—that moment, when he opened the...the door and I push—pushed him. I pushed him down. He fell, and I ran.”

“Oh no…”

“It was stupid.”

“Danny, no it wasn’t.” 

Sam went to wrap her arm around him again, but he shrugged her off, turning his head away from her.

“I wasn’t thinking. He still had his...communi...communication device in his ear. So when I turned down the—the hallway, he told...told...uh...it was over. I was—was ambushed before I knew it. Electrocuted. Dragged to a room with Operative...the head operative, and he had a metal...a metal bat I think, and it was over.”

“And they left you like that? Just beat you to the point of paralysis and then left you to rot?”

“Sam,” Tucker hissed.

“No, that’s—that can’t be legal! That’s torture! They can’t do that, even if you are half-ghost. They can’t do that!”

He frowned. “I mean, was it really a secret? What did you—did you think? When you saw me in the hospital?” 

“I don’t know.” Tucker said. “Obviously we knew something happened. It felt like every time we talked to Jazz, you were in the operating room undergoing another surgery, or you were recovering from a surgery. So we knew something happened.”

“And my speech. It’s not...not the same.”

There was another awkward silence, before Sam said, “We didn’t wanna ask. But it seems better. Than the last time we saw you, I mean.”

“It’s fine.” Danny shrugged. This was exhausting. “They think I...I, uh fell asleep on a concussion...at some point. It wouldn’t...surprise me.”

“It was that bad,” Tucker said.

“It…” Danny’s voice trailed off. He had been ready to deny it, but the proof was right in front of them. 

They were his best friends. He needed to trust them. 

Sam and Tucker were silent, probably processing everything that was happening. How all their worst fears about life inside a secret government anti-ghost compound were likely coming true. Danny could see the last of their denial leaving their face. They’d tried their best to find him, even going to Danny’s enemies like Skulker for help, with nothing but speculation to go off of, and for what? 

He’d already talked about the paralysis incident with his parents in therapy extensively . Not willingly, of course, but it was something he had to do before they would release him, and he’d really wanted to be released so he could get access to his core back.

Lot of good that did him now. He was home and still sans powers.

He thought back to that day. The therapist had already told his parents what happened—to prepare them, she’d told Danny—but that didn’t matter. They both started crying the minute Danny started the story.

It was funny how time worked. That therapy session seemed like it happened months ago. 

But even then, there were things he didn’t talk about, like how for the next few days he lay in his cell, surrounded by a pool of his ectoplasm, passing out and waking up so often that he didn’t know how much time had passed. He remembered the chilling feeling as he realized that no one was coming to help him, that he really might die there. And then he remembered when the click of the door finally sounded, revealing two operatives who stood there, ordering him to “get up, ghost.” But he couldn’t stand up, they knew he couldn’t do it. 

They had taken their time with him that day, mocking him. He was weak, pathetic, disgusting. 

“You really thought your little Houdini act would work, ghost? I know you lot are stupid, but that’s just sad.”

“Hah, are you gonna cry, ghost? Are you crying for Mommy and Daddy right now?”

He remembered that morning, and he so desperately wished he didn’t, because when the operatives were finished having their fun with him, they punished him for not following orders.

For not standing up.

Danny frowned. He still hadn’t told anyone about that. He couldn’t…

Oh, right. Sam and Tucker were still here, still living with microscopic breadcrumbs of knowledge of Danny’s reality.

What was the question again?

Danny glanced up at Tucker. “Don’t you have homework?”

“Nah,” Tucker said, waving him off. “Lancer was nice to us today.”

Danny stared at Tucker, his lips twitching upward in some poor attempt to grin, just like the old times. “You’re such a—a shit liar. You know?”

“Must be a new ghost power. Nobody can see through my charming gaze.”

Danny snorted, his mind wandering to last night. He thought this would be so easy last night, but he hadn’t exactly been in his right mind then. He was happy and full of bliss, but it was all a lie. 

Last night, he thought that telling them wouldn’t be so hard. Hell, they had seen him bloody and beaten more times than he could count. Just because this time it was done by the government, and not one of his ghostly foes...

But now the drugs had worn off, and reality was hitting him like a ton of bricks.

He knew he could tell them about some things. He could tell them about how the Guys in White would strap him down in a tube chamber, testing different chemicals on him to see how his body would react. He could tell them about how one day they surrounded him with blood blossoms to try to harness the electricity from the flowers and use it for energy.

Danny was almost thankful that one was a dead end. It turned out his ectoplasm was more powerful than the blood blossom electricity. 

But there were some things he still couldn’t say. Like the time he was strapped to a table, conscious—though barely—and taunted with metal knives and other sharp objects. He couldn’t tell them about how just minutes later, the knives were brought to his skin and he had to lie there helpless and watch the ectoplasm trickle down his chest and pool around his sides, dripping off the table and splashing against the tiled floor. How the room started blurring and then, before he knew it, he was forced into consciousness by the feeling of fire and the sight of green-stained gloves inside his body, groping around for his core.

And just how violated he felt. Like the last of his innocence had been stolen from him right along with the chunk of his core they extracted. And that was the real reason why he wasn’t allowed access to his ghost core, because it was scarred and damaged now just like the rest of his body.

Ugh, he was stupid for inviting them here. He couldn’t tell them what they wanted to know. 

This wasn’t a typical ghost fight. This wasn’t a time where he needed a few stitches in his arm, some Advil, water, and a good night’s sleep to heal. 

This was permanent.

And then there was another matter entirely, the one with the red bag. And the sight of it, the smell, and the taste and—

“Earth to Commander Fenton! Do you copy?”

Danny’s head jerked up, and he realized where he was again: in his room, tense, with two concerned faces hovering over him.

He forced his shoulders to relax. “Yeah—yeah, sorry. Just, the timeline...weird.”

Sam gave him an encouraging smile. “I know it’s a lot, but we’re here for you. We’ll stay as long as you need, homework be damned.”

“Fuck homework,” Tucker agreed. 

“Yeah.” Danny sighed. 

Reality sucked. 

“Um...”

“Danny, how did they get you?” Sam asked.

“What do you mean?” 

“When they kidnapped you. I mean, what even happened?”

“They ambushed my house. You know—I heard it made the news—and...they dragged me away. Into the van.”

“We, uh…saw some footage of that. Videos people took. You know,” Tucker said.

Danny pretended not to hear that. “My parents tried to fight them, but they pinned them down. Shot a bullet in the floor next to...to my dad. I couldn’t...fight back. Couldn’t fight back. So they put the inhibitors on me and that was it, I was done.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah, I mean, it wasn’t all bad…”

Sam wiped her eyes. “That’s bullshit and you know it.”

That almost sounded like their confrontation before Danny was admitted to inpatient, before Dash caught him in the middle of a breakdown and got Lancer involved. 

“I was in my cell most of the time.”

In the darkness, with the smell of ectoplasm and the red bag permeating the air, cold and shaking, constantly fighting against his body’s pain receptors or the clawing hunger in his stomach.

“And the rest of the time?”

Danny shrugged. “It depended. Most of it wasn’t...wasn’t horrible. They didn’t do much.”

Tucker raised his eyebrows.

“I mean…” Danny shifted. He needed to give them something, or else they were just going to accuse him of lying again. “I...uh, how do I say this...at first, they mainly just wanted to understand ghost—ghost biology. You know? Typical stuff. And they had other—uh, lower level...ghosts to compare me with. Tested my ectoplasm against theirs. They realized my ectoplasm was more...potent. Because my body is more dense than an—an average ghost. I don’t know. But they would have me flat on a table...and there would be a—uh...they would take some. I would just lie there and they’d have a tube in my arm. It was...boring.”

“And then?”

“I tried to escape...and things changed. They got worse. I don’t remember most of it, but they made me...I wasn’t—I couldn’t eat anymore. I could barely move, and one of my arms was busted. I couldn’t eat, so they would...granola bars, and...it—it was red, like one for, you know—and it...they...and…” 

“There’s a good dog,” Operative O’s voice hissed in his ear. “See, was that so hard?”

Danny’s throat burned. He felt something trickle down his cheeks. Was it ectoplasm? Tears? Bile? He didn’t know. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered.

It was too hot in here. But he was so cold.

“I’m only doing my job. If you were a better trained dog, we wouldn’t have to do this, now would we? It’s not my fault we’re in this position. Don’t you get it?”

“—what was red?”

Danny flinched, startled.  “Huh?”

“The red thing?” Tucker asked. “With the granola bars?”

“Granola bars?” Danny breathed. “I don’t...I don’t remember. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I brought that up. It’s not...I don’t remember why they brought the bag in. It was probably just to collect samples. For storage. I don’t know, I’m sorry.”

Sam and Tucker exchanged a look with each other. Another silent conversation.

“Everything is jumbled. I don’t remember most of it.”

“It’s okay.” Sam plastered an obviously fake smile on her face. “We can do something else if you want?”

Danny looked down at his hand. It was shaking.

“You up for some Doomed? Or think you’re too rusty to take us dweebs on?” 

“Yeah,” Danny forced out. “Doomed sounds great. Let’s...let’s do that.”

He was fine, after all. Reality sucked but he was here and alive and with his friends who cared about him very much. He could play Doomed with them. It was his favorite game, right?

So why did he feel like there was a wall in between them? 

---

They could hear the yelling as soon as they stepped out of the elevator.

“Oh dear,” Maddie said, hesitating beside Danny. “I hope everything’s alright.”

Danny hummed in response and focused on the voices. Stretching his sensitive hearing, past the muffled babble, he was able to pick out one distinct word.

“...Ghost…”

“I think we should wait out here,” Maddie said. “At least until it’s calmed down in there.”

Danny pushed himself forward. Had he heard wrong? 

No, that was impossible. He knew what he heard.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” he said, trying to ignore the way his stomach squirmed.

Ghost. 

“Danny, I’m not sure…”

“All I have to do is sign in, anyways.” Danny pushed himself closer to the door. The voices were getting louder on the other side. He could pick out more words now from the muffled yelling.

“...unsafe...vicious...”

“It’s not like we have to—to hang around the lobby.”

“Wait, I don’t think—”

But Danny had stopped listening. His hand was already on the door handle, his heart was already thumping in his chest, and his head was already swimming with pain from his chest and back and everything else going on.

“I thought you were running a professional clinic here!” the woman’s voice on the other side cried out.

There, that was all he needed to rip open the door to the lobby, where he immediately locked eyes with the owner of the raised voice.

The woman narrowed her eyes at him. “My daughter came here to heal. I can’t sit quietly while I know she’s here with that—that thing putting her safety at risk!”

Whatever Danny was about to say, whatever half-baked plan he had constructed in the corners of his curiosity vanished in an instant. He looked up at the woman twice his height, her finger extended out to him, scorn etched on her features, and Danny shut down.

That thing, his brain echoed. He was just a thing. Just some piece of trash kicked off the sidewalk into the street where cars could run over him.

He used to be something back before he stupidly outed himself on national television. Someone admired by most in the town. A ghost, sure, but a ghost with a purpose. 

But not anymore.

The therapist swiftly moved between them. “Danny,” she said gently. “Please wait out—”

That thing.

He wasn’t human. Hell, he wasn’t even a ghost. What was he? What right did he have to be here?

“How dare you,” came his mother’s voice from behind him. “That is my son you’re talking about. How dare you imply—”

“And you, what the hell were you thinking? Enrolling your science experiment in—”

“He is a child!”

No. No he wasn’t.

Danny felt someone push him away from the raised voices, but he couldn’t see where they were going. All he could see was the expression the woman had on her face.

Disgust.

Repulsion.

Fear.

That was it. She was afraid of him, wasn’t she?

Maybe...maybe Operative O was right. Maybe all those days being tested and tortured were for something. Maybe they were all right back in the compound.

Maybe he was just a rabid dog.

A door closed behind him, and one part of his brain played the sound of his cell doors shutting in the Guys in White facility—that soft click bouncing off the walls of his mind—while the other part of his brain reminded him that he wasn’t there he was outside the compound where the government couldn’t get him, but then that was a lie too because he would never escape them, not really.

There was a therapist in front of him now. She was talking to him, Danny was sure of it. He could see her lips moving and he could hear a voice in the room but he couldn’t understand what she was saying. The words didn’t make sense together. It was just noise, just like everything else. It didn’t matter. It was noise.

His core thrummed in his chest, and he could feel the prickles of intangibility dance along his fingertips. More than anything, his core wanted to escape. To get away. Fly out the window and soar through the sky. Who cares if anyone saw him? It wasn’t like his leaving the hospital was a secret any longer. By tonight, the woman from the lobby would be all over the news, telling the story of how she only narrowly escaped the sharp claws of that rabid animal known as Danny Phantom. The disgusting, vile ghost masquerading as a human teen. How horrid that he’d managed to infiltrate a PHP program to prey on the defenseless, traumatized teens.

Everyone was going to know about him now.

Nothing mattered.

The therapist moved in closer to him, her lips still moving. He made eye contact with her, and she nodded encouragingly. But it didn’t matter.

There was no more hiding. No more running away.

Danny Phantom was back.

He was a monster.

“There’s a good dog.”

<previous / next>

[phantomphangphucker]

Phango - Danny’s Family Only Body Worlds Interactive Display

(Family Reunion + Dissection + Post-Reveal) *PP Compliant 

Fenton’s are a family of scientists and Danny’s basically a scientific marvel. Now that the whole family, and the world, know they’re even more curious. Sure, dissection was not a listed family reunion activity, but Danny’s honestly a bit of a messed up person.

“And this is my liver”, Danny holds up the organ and lets the kids and a couple of adults inspect it, many mouthing ‘wow’. Danny tilts his head down and points into his open chest and abdominal cavity, pointing to where the organ had been inside him. “You can see how it would be cuddled up with my one lung and kidneys. And if you really look you can see how it’s already reforming”, Danny tosses his liver up in the air playfully, while a few people do indeed lean closer; gaping a little at being able to actually watch the organ slowly reform.

Danny grabs and flips around a scalpel and uses it to push around his lungs some, making his core more noticeable. Grabbing clamps from his metal medi box to pin back either side of his dissected skin flaps a bit more securely. Tracing his fingers over the unusual shape of his lungs, “now for those of you familiar with organs you’ll probably notice my lungs are a bit funky”, poking at his core and looking at the little crowd and smiling slightly, “my Core’s much more important so really, makes sense my lungs just got the fu-Hell out of the way”.

Jazz watches from one of the setup tables as Danny is rather animatedly wiggling around one of his lungs after popping it out, still fully attached to him at least. This was firmly not how she was expecting today to go. For one, a Fenton family reunion seemed like more than just a bad idea. That many eccentric hunters in one place? Yeah, bad. Add in Danny revealing himself to the entire world -seriously little brother, why? Why did you do that in front of the live tv crew?- and she was sure this was going to go bad. And yet... Jazz has to make a damn point of not gagging at Danny just letting one of the curious youngsters poke at and squish at part of his small intestine. How was this not going to be traumatising to such impressionable minds?

Danny chuckles down at the kid before just deciding to pull out a length of intestine and lay it across a table he just levitated over, leaning back with his hands behind his head after pushing a container of scalpels at everyone. “Feel free to dig around”, chuckling again at all the gathered adult relatives not even wasting a beat before slicing open portions of his intestine; promptly poking around the insides with their gloved hands, children leaning over their shoulders.

Danny barks out a laugh at the sight of Aunt May pulling out half a pencil and looking at him with confusion. Making Danny fall back off the little stool he’s sitting on, yanking his intestines with him and sending a few scalpels flying; one of which stabs him in the eye.

Danny floats back onto the stool cradling his intestines before plopping then back onto the table; everyone looking at him with either worry or mild annoyance while he yanks the scalpel out of his eye.

Waving everyone off, “sorry ‘bout that, here”, handing Jester -who’s apparently the grandfather of his dad’s brother's wife’s adopted sister- back his scalpel. Danny points at the pencil aunt Mays still holding and chuckles a little, “I have swallowed a great many things. A pencil is honestly one of the least weird things”. This seems to get everyone rather curious again, digging around his intestines with renewed vigour; curious over what they may find.

Danny’s leaning back on his hands when his mom comes over, smiling down at him a bit sweetly before looking rather unimpressed, “care to tell me why little Levi is running around with what’s clearly a green liver?”.

Danny blushes a bit and rubs his neck, “they’re not, like, playing hacky-shack with it or something are they?”.

Maddie opens and closes her mouth, having been about to say that even for Fenton’s that would be a bit weird but based off of Danny’s growing knowing smirk...She turns and looks back to the kids, sighing at them doing exactly that. She’s honestly a bit impressed and curious at her boy’s organs being durable enough to tolerate being kicked around very literally. Looking back to Danny and glaring slightly, “their shoes are going to be horribly stained now. They’re not even wearing protective gear, Danny”.

Danny shrugs while the other relatives look at the kids a little worriedly, Danny replying with slight amusement, “oh ecto-contamination isn’t nearly as bad as hunters have always thought”, chuckling and gesturing to his displayed intestines and eyeballing uncle Fezz who is honestly getting a bit close to overstepping boundaries by just digging in Danny’s torso to prod a kidney. Looking back up to his mom after uncle Fezz has the awareness to look a bit sheepish, “I mean, Sam’s handled my innards without protection more times than I’ve gone to class this year”.

Maddie sighs, at least school was going easier on him now that the school board was accommodating his heroism. Looking over the gory viscera covered table with a slight smile, it was a bit nice the rest of the family getting to join in with this, even if she herself had become quite familiar with toying with Danny’s organs. Before looking back to Danny and pointing towards his chest, “you’re healing up a bit”.

Danny tilts his head down, the flaps of his skin have partly stitched themselves back together over his chest and some new skin reforming underneath the pinned sections. Danny wags a finger humorously at his chest, “ah ah ah, I don’t think so”, before grabbing up one of the scalpels and slicing away at the skin. At least no one here was going to cringe or question his pain tolerance, that’s Fenton’s for you.

Jazz sighs over Danny’s antics and buries her head back into her book, it was a pain being the only relatively normal person in the family. Or at least the only one that actually still associated with the ghost hunting side of the family anyway. Though this was just her dads' side of the family, none of mom’s relatives were here. And thinking of Danny, that was probably for the best. Mom was the only ghost hunter on her side, and arguably the only really weird one.

Tilting her head back and attempting to ignore Danny explaining how his stomach acid could dissolve ectoplasm and likely proving it. With Danny being public news she’s sure mom's side of the family will want a little reunion as well. She seriously hopes Danny knows better than to even consider putting himself on a halfa body works field trip with that part of the family. Shaking her head at remembering this morning, since of course, like always this had been sprung last minute.

-Cut To This Morning-

Jazz had just finished stirring the creamer into her morning coffee when her mom came into the kitchen, clearly having just gotten off her cellphone. Mom glares at dad, “you’ve been ignoring your phone, Jack dear. Julian just called, there’s going to be a Fenton reunion in Elmerton and”, looking to Danny, who’s got a spoon in his mouth, “they are insisting the ‘world-saving hybrid’ just needs to be there”.

Danny quirks an eyebrow and swallows, “they're not going to dissect me are they?”. Jazz isn’t sure if Danny’s being justifiably paranoid or smirking ever so slightly; which is honestly more concerning than it has any right to be.

Dad shakes his head, “we may all be weird but they’re great! There’s no way they’d hurt you!”. Mom nods, clearly agreeing, “they don’t want you there as a science experiment sweetie”.

Danny over dramatically snaps his fingers, “drat, I’m going to have to take the initiative then”, before kicking off the ground and phasing through the ceiling, returning with an arguably oversized metal box.

Jazz sighs, Danny needed way too much therapy. While her parents exchange a glance and smile slightly. Mom ruffling Danny’s hair, “I’m glad you’re so comfortable with our science but maybe don’t open up with an invitation for dissection. You haven’t even met many of them”.

Danny laughs, “oh no, I’ll be opening up much more literally. But I’m not just going to walk in and scream ‘who wants to dissect me!’. That’s more for after mingling a little. Granted no one tries to shoot me”.

(No one was really surprised when one person, a distant relative named Hames, really did try to shoot Danny. But that’s what you get for revealing yourself internationally)

-Return To Present-

Jazz gets jolted out of her thoughts when someone yells, “Danny! Put yourself back together! Food’s ready!”. Closing her book to the sounds of disappointed moaning and groaning from the little circle that had come to surround Danny’s little horror show.

Danny smirks at Jazz as she walks by him, shaking her head, as he’s scooping up his intestines and stuffing them back in haphazardly, popping his lung back in to slip comfortably around his core. Unpinning his skin flaps and tying them into a little bow around his waist to hold everything in, then throwing a stained shirt over the exposed mess.

Pausing after taking a couple of steps, he felt a little too light, tilting his head before muttering, “well shit, kinda need that”, and then tilting his head up and yelling, “alright! Who’s got my stomach!”.

Multiple people laugh while twice removed aunty Ali -who clearly has a similar sense of humour to Danny- comes over with said organ on silver plated platter and bows to him exaggeratedly. Danny grins wide and makes a show of looking both overwhelmed and blessed, “but I couldn’t possibly stomach something so one of a kind”, before taking it.

Sitting down and holding up the base of his t-shirt with his mouth while he busies himself with reattaching his stomach, since it was honestly faster than regrowing organs. He would actually like to be able to stomach his food thank you very much. Though he does appreciate someone loading up his plate for him.

Danny can’t help but smirk at how all the food is green coloured in some way. Though that does make him ever so slightly paranoid that someone could have possibly accidentally added in a bit of his organs.

(In retrospect, he probably should have paid better attention to people running off with his internals. Since someone absolutely did exactly that. Though he’s pretty sure no one else noticed and it’s probably better that way).

End.

[darks-ink]

Unveiled

Prompt: Jack was just trying to plan a surprise for his good ol' friend Vladdy. He...did not expect to discover a secret lab in Vlad's mansion--or a second portal or weaponry to rival theirs or-- Was that a hologram of his wife? Prompt by: @ladylynse Word count: 3,836

[AO3][FFnet][more Phic Phight fics]

The door creaked as Jack opened it, arms full with birthday decorations. He kicked it closed behind him, the key already put into a pocket in his jumpsuit. Sure, Vlad might not have handed it to him, but the man hadn’t changed in the years since they had met. He still hid it exactly where Jack would’ve expected him to.

Which was useful, because now Jack could decorate the mansion for the surprise birthday party he was going to throw for his best friend! He knew for a fact that Vlad would be out for several hours – mayoral duties and all that. And while he normally did his best to attend… This was a golden opportunity. He was sure that Vlad would forgive his absence once he saw the party.

He dumped his armful of decorations (carefully) in the entry hall. It would be the most convenient place to access it – he could return to this spot and decorate the separate wings of the mansion. Pleased with this plan, Jack picked up some of his goods and set off.

A few hours of decorating later, Jack had reached a cozy-looking study. He was just hanging up some flags when he accidentally knocked over a small statue. Worried that he had broken one of Vlad’s precious items, he approached to inspect it.

And then, with a grinding noise, the wall behind the statue started to open. Jack paused, watching how the wall opened into… a staircase?

Curiosity peaked, Jack crept closer. Why would Vlad have a hidden staircase like this? But just imagine what kind of cool things could be hidden down there?

He eagerly bustled down the stairs, and ended up in an enormous lab. It was much more neatly organized than theirs – a clear sign that Vlad was in control of this one.

Jack had to admit that he was a little confused by the fact that it was hidden. As exciting as this discovery was – his best friend was still into (ghost) science! – he didn’t understand why Vlad had kept it a secret. Why hadn’t he mentioned it to his friends? To him or Maddie?

Were mayors not allowed to have interests like these? Or was it something to do with his image, as mayor or as billionaire? Jack knew that the town tended to look askew to him and his wife because of their interest. Did Vlad hide it because of that? Was he afraid of being scorned like that?

He walked further into the lab, curious to see what Vlad worked on. What kind of inventions had he stowed down here? Could they work together, perhaps? Secretly, so he didn’t have to worry about his reputation?

Now that Jack was away from the staircase, he could see the entire lab. It was far larger than the one underneath FentonWorks. Not entirely surprising, that was.

What was surprising was the invention set in the back wall. It was a familiar sight. A giant metal arch, the insides filled with swirling green; a Ghost Portal. Set in the steel beside it was an Ecto-Filtrator. It… was the exact same as their Ecto-Filtrator.

And, sure. Maybe Vlad had based it on the old design for the Proto-Portal they had made back in college. But the one he and his wife had built for the new Portal was entirely different in design. And somehow, Vlad had made his exactly like theirs. How? He shouldn’t have had access to the blueprints. Right?

All along the walls, carefully stored and labeled, was ecto-weaponry. Jack would’ve been excited about that, except that these seemed to be very much like the FentonWorks weaponry as well. The designs seemed eerily similar. Most guns could’ve been theirs, except that they were detailed with red instead of green. Seemed to be powered by pink ectoplasm instead of the green they used.

Was this why Vlad had hidden his lab? Because he borrowed their designs – Jack didn’t want to think of it as stealing, because surely his best friend didn’t so such things – and didn’t want them to know? Didn’t Vlad realize that they would’ve forgiven him for such a thing? If he had asked, Jack would’ve gladly shared the blueprints, even!

Everything in the lab seemed to be directly inspired from the FentonWorks lab, except bigger and more expensive. Everything, except for the giant machines in the back.

They resembled enormous pods – and Jack had no idea what they could’ve been for. They weren’t connected to anything, and were littered with shattered glass and broken machinery and snapped cables. They were clearly salvaged from somewhere, but from where and why, he didn’t know. Was Vlad researching the machines for something? And if so, for what?

In his curiosity, his feet had been carrying him ever closer without him noticing. Apparently he passed too close by the main computer, because it turned on. Startled by the sudden activation, Jack backed away a step or two.

And in the empty space he had just cleared, a hologram appeared. See-through and glitchy along the edges, but still clearly recognizable. The auburn hair and violet eyes were a clear giveaway – as was the teal jumpsuit.

Vlad had a hologram made to resemble Maddie. Jack’s wife. What the hell?

“Hello darling,” the fake Maddie said, her voice so staticky that it was barely recognizable as Maddie’s. “How can I help you today?”

“Go away,” he commanded, disgusted and confused and so many other emotions that he couldn’t discern. “Leave me alone.”

“Of course sweetcheeks,” the hologram replied, before flickering out of sight. Jack sighed, relieved, and sank down into the chair sitting in front of the computer. Maybe… maybe he should take a look. Something was going on here.

The cool hidden underground lab suddenly wasn’t as exciting anymore.

On the computer, the files were neatly organized. Another sign that good old Vladdie hadn’t changed as much as one might think. Unfortunately, this didn’t make the information presented to Jack make any more sense.

A bunch of files were dedicated to Maddie. And another few specifically to the AI version of Maddie he had seen just now – which implied that most of the files were about the real Maddie. Jack briefly wondered what on Earth his friend could’ve hidden in these – but he skipped past them, nonetheless.

Disgust curled in his stomach. Maybe Vlad wasn’t the friend Jack thought he was. To him, or to Maddie.

There are also a lot of files about Phantom. These, at least, should be safe for Jack to explore. The ghost was an interesting one, after all. And had no link to him or his family, besides the fact that they hunted it.

Initially, the files make perfect sense. They were studies – far more in-depth than anything Jack and his wife had ever managed. Phantom was notoriously elusive, and he wondered how Vlad might’ve acquired the more advanced data.

Phantom’s power levels, its abilities and skills, weaknesses and strengths. These were all perfectly normal – they kept the same things logged. The ghost was a powerful one, and knowing one’s prey was important for hunters. And while Vlad wasn’t a hunter, he might’ve been compiling the information for other hunters to use.

More curious were the anatomical pointers. Some of the notes were fine – location and strength of the core, ectoplasm density, such things – but others… were not. Skeletal structure, which ghosts shouldn’t have, and even organs? Was Vlad somehow ahead of them in research?

Jack did seriously wonder how Vlad had acquired all this information, then. He wasn’t a hunter – and he certainly couldn’t have caught Phantom. Right?

More curiously, however, was that he kept referring to the ghost as ‘Daniel’ instead of Phantom. This, Jack definitely didn’t get.

Until he reached the part of the file dedicated to Phantom’s origin.

From the start, it was a confusing mess of data. It listed all kinds of information about Phantom which Jack couldn’t fathom Vlad accessing – and which he highly doubted were true. Additionally, it was all presented in a way which made it seem all the more sketchy.

Even the first note, cause of death, was highly dubious. “Electrocution via Ghost Portal,” it stated, which was clear enough – if a little worrying, because it meant that not only was someone trying to mimic their grand invention, they had gotten a kid killed in the process. More confusingly, however, the sentence didn’t end there. No, instead, “much like myself” was tacked on. Like Vlad himself had died – or like the files had come from a ghost.

Jack wasn’t sure which was better. He ignored it in favor of reading on, hoping to find less confusing information.

Apparently Phantom had only become a ghost a year or two ago. By the time they first encountered him, he would’ve been barely formed. Supposedly, he had formed immediately upon death – he had died early August that year.

Instead of getting hung up on this, Jack’s eye caught on the details on the ghost’s identity. Because there, in plain text, it read, “Daniel Fenton”. Like his son had died two years ago, and had somehow become Phantom. As if he wouldn’t have noticed if his own son had died!

But the file provided picture proof as well. A lot of picture proof. Comparative photos between Danny and Phantom, taken at regular intervals. They did look like perfect mirror images – identical copies, if one ignored the difference in hair and eye color. In the pictures, one could even see them growing up in perfect sync.

And the file continued on. It listed Phantom (Danny?) as a halfa – a half-ghost. A special type of ghost caught in the split between life and death. Not entirely a ghost, but not quite human either.

It was… It was all too much. None of this could be true. Jack refused to believe it.

Something… Something must be wrong with Vlad – clearly had been for a while. He was sorry that he hadn’t noticed it before, but for now the best would be to help. He didn’t know what had caused it, or how to fix it, but he owed it to his friend. All these files were a clear sign of some mental problem – Jazz’s constant rants about psychology had taught him that much, at least.

Because, as convincing as all this was… As much as all of it held up to Vlad’s old standards, rigorously collected and sorted information…

Danny could not be Phantom. It was impossible. No matter how similar their appearances were, it simply wasn’t physically possible for one to be both ghost and human at the same time.

Still, morbid curiosity drove him to scroll just that little bit further down.

Logs. So many logs. Detailed breakdowns of Danny’s DNA – or parts of it, at least. Some clearly human. Other bits seemed otherworldly – tainted by ectoplasm, or so the file said.

More concerning, however, were the carefully kept notes on the various clones that Vlad had made. Of Danny – or Phantom, that wasn’t entirely clear. Maybe a mixture of both, which would’ve explained his faulty belief that the two were one and the same.

Jack would’ve considered that the reason why they were all listed as destabilized. All had broken down over their contrary existence – an existence not physically possible.

Except that, apparently, a single clone had survived. Slightly younger than Danny, and female. There was no name listed for her – just like there had been no names for the others. And somehow, she had survived.

Jack would’ve scoffed, laughed it off… but there were, once again, photos. Of a girl who looked so much like Danny that it was scary. And of a girl who looked just like Phantom, but younger. Different in the same way she was different from Danny.

And a video, which showed her shifting from one into the other in a sharp burst of light. Bright rings which swept away one girl and replaced her with the other.

So maybe there was some sort of truth to Danny being Phantom. Or Vlad had become incredibly competent with video editing – which Jack highly doubted. If he had gone this crazy, surely he couldn’t fake such convincing footage?

More concerning, however, was what Vlad apparently thought of this clone. She was the only survivor of an act he shouldn’t have tried – creating new life was morally wrong, and he highly doubted that either his son or Phantom (or were they one and the same?) had consented to it.

But Vlad seemed intent on figuring out why this one clone had survived. And to do so, he wanted to catch her.

He wanted to kill her, just to find out why she hadn’t died sooner.

It was… It was disgusting. No matter what had gone wrong with Vlad, no matter how much of this was real or fake or imagined – the intent was still there. Even if the girl– ghost– halfa wasn’t real, Vlad still wanted to kill her. Wanted to kill a living being he had created, because of what? Because she wasn’t a perfect copy of Danny? Because she had somehow survived when his ‘good’ clones hadn’t?

Why did he even want to clone Danny? Phantom or not, what could Vlad possibly achieve from having a clone of Jack’s son?

He didn’t know what to think. He didn’t know what the truth was – behind Phantom, behind Vlad, behind the lab and all its contents and–

Pushing himself away from the desk, Jack stood up. He wanted to get away from it all. Wanted to deny it – but at the same time, he wanted to help. Wanted to figure it out.

He didn’t know how long he stood there, intending to leave, trying to decide what to do–

A sound like shattering glass snapped him out of his reverie. He whipped around to see Phantom – the ghost was hovering next to one of the tables in the lab. Its – his – eyes were wide with shock. At his feet laid broken glass, like he had accidentally knocked a beaker over.

“D– Jack,” he said. Now that Jack was listening for it, he could clearly hear the hesitation, the correction. Phantom had been about to call him Dad.

God, this really was his son. Or derived from him somehow, but… that didn’t seem right. His gut said that the first was correct – and Vlad’s files seemed to imply the same.

“Danny,” he greeted back. Phantom – Danny – seemed confused by the words. And, perhaps, also by his non-violent approach. And how sad was that, that his own son looked at him with genuine fear?

He took his eyes off of the ghost of his son. Or half-ghost, if Vlad’s notes were to be believed. He doesn’t know anymore. Some of them seemed to be right, but others… they were too disgusting and scary to imagine.

“What are you doing here?” Danny asked him, cautiously. Jack continued to look around the lab, eyes roving over the entire room. Scanning it for any signs of the horrible things Vlad might’ve done. The ways he might’ve hurt Jack’s son.

“I could ask you the same thing,” he countered, shooting Danny a glance over his shoulder. The half-ghost fidgeted, unsure.

Then Jack’s eyes land on the broken down pods. Knowing what he did now, he could figure out what they were for. Cloning pods. One used to grow the clones – there had surely been more, but only one had been brought here by Vlad.

The other had been used to torture Danny, to somehow obtain the missing DNA samples.

And now that he had started thinking about it, he couldn’t help but worry… What had happened to the female clone? Because if Vlad was right about Danny being Phantom, and the pods were real enough… did that mean that the girl was also real?

Did Jack have a daughter out there, illegally cloned from his son? A baby girl, who had grown up in a lab without a name, watching her siblings melt and die?

“Is she safe?” he burst out, startling Danny – and himself, a little.

The sudden question seemed to confuse the half-ghost, since he frowned at Jack. “Who?”

“The female clone.” He turned to face his son properly. “The notes said that Vlad tried to hurt her, melt her down. What happened to her? Is she safe?”

“Oh, uh. I stabilized her fully, and then she left to travel the world.” Then the ghost fidgeted even more, slowly approaching him. “What, um. What else did the notes say?”

“A lot.” Jack scratched his cheek, offering a hopefully soothing smile. “Most of them bad things. Terrible things that Vlad has done, or wanted to do. He has a hologram of Maddie, can you believe that? Your mother!”

Danny stiffened, eyes widening even further. The glow from his green eyes cast flickering lights on the shiny surfaces of the lab. For once, Phantom’s eyes seemed kind and lively – Jack wondered how he had never noticed it before.

“You know?” he stuttered, looking at Jack. “And you… don’t mind?”

“Of course not,” he soothed, stepping closer to his son. He went slow, careful not to startle the boy. “You’re my son, Danny. Ghost, boy, or something in-between.”

Then suddenly Danny launched himself at Jack. Chilly cold arms wrapped around him, and in turn his big arms folded around his son. His son, who fit into his arms like he had always done.

A scoff interrupted the moment before they could truly cherish it. They broke apart to see the villainous Wisconsin Ghost hovering in the lab, in front of the Portal. Its arms were crossed, red eyes empty yet somehow still conveying a glare.

“Vlad,” Danny snapped at the ghost, and suddenly all the dots connected for Jack. This was his best friend?

But it made perfect sense. If Vlad’s files were to be believed, Danny had become a halfa thanks to his accident with the Ghost Portal. Vlad, too, had had an accident with a Portal – even if his had been the Proto-Portal. The larger amount of ectoplasm must account for the sickness, for the more… ghostly appearance.

And it explained Vlad’s behavior. The ectoplasm made him more volatile, more ghostly. It must’ve brought down hell upon his mind – and that was without the outside influence of people hating ghosts. It didn’t excuse his behavior, but, well. If they knew the problem, they could help Vlad. Could fix this – could fix him.

He realized that he had missed part of the conversation between Vlad and Danny. But it was impossible to miss the impending fight between the two, so he stepped forward to break it up.

“Wait,” Jack said, holding up his hands. And miraculously, both half-ghosts halted. He turned to face Vlad – his best friend, whom he had hurt beyond words.

“Vlad. I’m… I’m so sorry for what I’ve done to you.” He saw Vlad’s eyes widen, but he wasn’t sure with what emotion. His face was surprisingly hard to read like this. “I’m sorry for the accident with the Portal, and I’m sorry for unintentionally threatening you with my hatred of ghosts. I’m sorry for all the time we – I – made you feel unsafe, or unwelcome, or hated because of something you can’t control.”

Then his eyes hardened, and he made sure to keep his eyes locked with his best friend – or the man that once was his best friend. “But that doesn’t excuse anything you have done. It doesn’t excuse what you’ve done to me, or to my family. It doesn’t excuse what you continue to do.”

Vlad snarled in response, baring his pointed fangs. “What makes you think that I care at all about what you think of me!” Pink ectoplasm sparked around his hands, forming into coiling clouds of active ectoplasm. “What makes you think that I care about your opinion?!”

The ghost shot off, launching himself at Jack with startling speeds. He flinched back a step, throwing up his arms in a feeble attempt to defend himself–

But Danny collided with Vlad before the man reached him, and he was thrown into a wall instead. A fight broke out between the two half-ghosts, Vlad immediately ignoring Jack in favor of the bigger threat.

It made feel Jack feel sick, but he didn’t focus on it. He might not have brought any weaponry, but he didn't need to – the lab was well-stocked with ecto-weaponry. And as much as he hated their similarity with the FentonWorks weapons, it was a boon for the moment. They all seemed to work exactly like the guns he was used to.

His eye caught on Vlad as he charged another ball of volatile ectoplasm. Below him, Danny was picking himself off of the floor. He was unable to defend himself.

Jack blindly reached for a weapon, aimed, and shot.

The explosion blew Vlad back, and his attack dissipated. He hit the wall with a dull thud, head banging against it. Then he collapsed on the floor, his head bent down. A black ring formed around his waist, then split in two and swept over him.

Vlad Masters remained where the Wisconsin Ghost had sat, moments before. A perfect mimicry of the transformation Jack had seen on the screen, an eternity ago.

He stepped closer, bending down over his former best friend. Danny, who had finally picked himself off of the ground, hovered close to him.

“Don’t hurt my son,” he hissed, inches away from Vlad’s face.

“Stay away from my family,” he warned. “From me, from my wife. From my beautiful daughter Jazz and my wonderful son Danny. And from my newest daughter,” he paused, scrambling for a name.

Quietly, Danny added, “Danielle.” Jack didn’t question the name – he trusted his son’s judgment.

“And from my newest daughter, Danielle, whom I haven’t met yet but who I will protect anyway.”

His enormous hands curled around Vlad’s shoulders as he shook the man, driving the point home. “And if you even dare to hurt any of them, I will make the remainder of your life hell. Remember that, Vlad Masters.”

Then he straightened up, nodding once at Danny. The boys eyes flitted between him and Vlad, uncertain.

Jack strode towards the staircase. After a short moment of hesitation, Danny followed him.

“So,” Jack said as they climbed the stairs. Or as he climbed the stairs while Danny floated over them. “Do you have any way of contacting this Danielle?”

Danny remained silent for a moment longer. Then, quietly, he asked, “Why?”

Shooting him a grin, Jack offered, “Well, she’s a Fenton. And us Fentons, we stick together. No matter what.”

[pricechecktranslations]

TTDS: The Ring of Evil; Chapter 2

Torture Tower Doesn’t Sleep: The Ring of Evil infomine under the cut

Scene 1

Rack is gazing at the sky at night again. The moon is waning and currently over half in shadow, meaning 20 days until it’ll be full again. She goes down to the first floor dining room. Maiden had filled in the hole in the wall, but made it so Rack could pull the brickwork away to open it again (which she does). She moves some of the furniture around so that the moonlight can hit the trapdoor again.

The first thing Amo always asks her is if she’s found a way to open the trapdoor (she hasn’t). It’s been ten days since Rack and Amo first met, and she’s been trying to find ways to open it ever night since then (Josephine R, dynamite left behind by the miner in the first book, destroying the floor around it, etc. She considered using acid, but needs Gibbet to bring back materials to make it).

Rack is just there to talk to Amo. Gibbet hasn’t brought in any prey and is out still, and Maiden has been cooped up on the fifth floor with Garnes (who has a key to the room on the fifth floor where the torture devices are made).

There’s this bit of pondering on the girls’ nature and such (like how a torture device like Rack could get bored).

Amo decides to continue the story he was telling her last night, abut the selfish princess and her servant (as a note, all of the stories that Amo has told Rack are apparently ones she’s never heard before or seen in any books).

Scene 2

The scene opens with Luna Ruth (ruusu) looking up at Torcia tower (which she thinks is beautiful, having studied architecture in college—as a note, apparently her seniors in the field disparage her chances of success for being a woman). Basically, her investment in this whole thing is to succeed as an architect, and Romalius has promised to help with that.

Luna surmises that the lake Torcia is built near is manmade too. She is joined by another figure (Lubet? spelled rubetto), who pops up from inside the lake, having been investigating the bottom. He says there’s a door down there, but can’t get it open as it’s locked. However, it’s (started rotting, I think?), so they could break it open. They’ll need to do something about the water, though.

Another one (unnamed) pops up, having found evidence that this is indeed a man-made lake, installations set up to keep the water in. Luna orders them to use this stuff to drain the water. After they leave she looks up at the tower again, noting that it wasn’t proofed well for aging.

A very fancy (it’s described in detail but I’ll skip that) carriage approaches, with Bateau, Raymond, and Tsukumo in it. There’s a bit of comedy as Luna tries to hide what she’s doing there (having not met Raymond before) and Raymond feigns being a normal clown. She’s also confused by Tsukumo calling him Papa. Raymond then heads on his way to Lion City.

Scene 3

They’ve arrived at the Chamberlain estate. Raymond is greeted by Danny Chamberlain (a little more grown up now), who leads him to his father’s room where Benji is. Tsukumo insists on coming with them. After introductions (kooky daddy Chamberlain hilariously taking the “Tsukumo is my daughter” thing to mean Raymond is married to Cynthia somehow).

Benji leaves for the drawing room with Raymond, having Danny watch over his father as he rests. Benji confirms that Chamberlain does have dementia, before Raymond brings up Benji knowing Romalius (with them quibbling a little over whose fault it is that Benji didn’t tell him). They discuss the events of the previous book (Benji already knowing who Tsukumo is, just not Raymond’s involvement).

He introduces himself to her, and that he’s a doctor. Tsukumo asks if he can fix her poor memory (to which Benji replies it’s not such a bad thing be unintelligent like that, likely thinking of his own problems with being too smart for his own good). The narrative recaps for us on who and what Tsukumo is.

A servant brings them tea, and Raymond pushes Benji to discuss the organization he’s part of. He explains that he’s not really the leader, more just the facilitator for all the type A personalities in the group. It’s a group formed by Benji’s desire to learn more about the tower after what happened a year ago, and how to deal with it (especially Rack). He ran into a golden haired young man in town once (who looked a touch like Raymond), who also wanted into the tower (I think this is the same one from the meeting—might be Amo?). He introduced Benji to Isaac and Romalius.

Benji explains that Isaac is an assassin from the “Pere Noel Brotherhood” (a remnant of “Pere Noel” that Beritoad used to head), which operates in the shadows as an assassin group rather than publicly like the old organization did. Apparently some of their clients are powerful people in government. They’ve kept him on because he can actually fight (really, Benji would have preferred Raymond take his place, but Raymond didn’t respond to his summons six months back). They were also able to afford some mercenaries for the whole thing with Gibbet in Mercerie City.

Benji had wanted to go into the tower again, but Romalius stopped him, saying they still needed to prepare. To that end, Benji called Luna (an old acquaintance) into town to investigate the tower, Luna also being descended from the tower’s architect (though unlike the Benji clan, she and her family are still practicing architecture). Raymond realizes that this is the woman he met earlier. They discuss the tower a little more (Raymond inadvertently revealing he’d been there again with Tsukumo) before moving on. Benji has found another secret route into the tower.

Raymond apparently saw the iron trapdoor that had been in the dining room the last two times he’d been in the tower, but had left it be.

As a note, Benji’s map of the tower from his ancestor has left many things out—he suspects there’s more secrets to be found.

They discuss the matter with the new mayor. He doesn’t make public appearances now that the election is over. Benji describes him, and Raymond realizes that he’s talking about Rabiah.

At that point, Danny enters, and reveals his connection to the mayor—he’s a member of parliament (not sure entirely how to translate the word—it’s for the town, not the country). He’s already made the appointment that he’ll take Benji and Raymond along to, where they’ll go to the mayor’s wife (Gibbet)’s house.

Two days later, they’re there (sans Tsukumo). It’s Torcia Tower. Of course.

[ladykateofledfordpark]

The Most Amazing Person (Parker x MC)

OMG this took so long to edit. I still haven't really finished, but I don't have any patience anymore. So I hope this is good enough. XD

This one-shot is dedicated to @pbmychoices! Hope you like it! =)

And thank you, @kinda-iconic and @choices-fam for your support! ^-^

If anyone wants to be tagged, comment below! Just don’t forget to specify if you want to be tagged in all my fics, or only specific ships! =)

Pairing: Parker x MC (Harper)

This story includes:

Talk about trauma and murder

Fluff 

Summary: A few weeks before Harper leaves for school, she goes over for a romantic dinner at Parker’s house.

Word count: 1953

______________________

It felt like ages since Harper finally had time to relax. The last attempt on her life left her reeling, and it was still nearly impossible for her to let her guard down. She would wake up multiple times every night, every movement of Thumper a step of an intruder, every shadow a looming figure. She already made sure Richard Sutcliffe will never bother anyone again, but history taught her that nothing was ever certain. As far as she knew cult lackeys could still be hiding, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Richard’s ghost wasn’t an absurd theory either: if Josephine came back, who said he couldn’t do the same?

Harper’s only comfort was the marlinspike under her pillow. Every night she would take it out from its hiding space and hold it, her hand firn and the weapon ready to strike. In the moonlight it would shine like a beacon, warning any who dared come near. It was beautiful as much as it was deadly: the perfect weapon to kill anyone who dared harm the Vance family.

Harper didn’t know for how long she would sit in her bed, eyes alert and shoulders stiff. Sometimes it would be solely for minutes, while other times she would sit there for hours. Once the erratic beat of her heart slowed down she would force herself back to sleep, ignoring her shaking body. Everything’s fine, she would whisper to herself, everything’s fine.

And maybe everything was fine. Danni’s photographs were gaining more and more popularity, the demand growing the more time passed. Her smiles were much more common, her success in ClickIt the reason behind it. Tom was as excited as anyone could possibly be for his return to Hartfeld, talking animatedly about all the unique experiences waiting for him there. Imogen was finally free to find herself without the added weight of her parents, and she flourished now more than ever. Parker himself proved to be just as talented as Harper knew him to be, leading the police the way Pine Springs deserved.

As the time to leave neared, Harper found herself spending more and more time with Parker. He may have been much busier than his predecessor, but luckily for Harper, Pine Springs was a small place, leaving him more available than one would’ve guessed.  She loved entering his office in the morning, holding warm coffees for the both of them, and seeing his brilliant smile. It was the highlight of her day, and by the way Parker showered her with affection- she was sure it was the same for him.

But somehow he still managed to catch her off guard when he casually asked if she wanted to eat dinner at his place. The offer was long overdue, considering Parker saw her house more than a month ago, but she still hesitated before giving a yes. She never reached this stage before, but this was the first relationship where she really felt safe. She could never turn him down.

That was how Harper found herself at the entrance to a vast house. It wasn’t exactly the size of a mansion, but neither was it as small as a cottage. It's security was more upkeep than the Sutcliffe's mansion, warning her that one small step could kill her on the spot. Harper frowned as she scanned the exterior. This building was hauntingly beautiful and yet strangely empty, like a memory from the past. Was she sure this was the right place?

She squinted at the address written on the house, and compared it with the one Parker sent her. Once she was sure that was the right place, she smoothed down her dress and pressed on the intercom. At first there was only static, but then Parker's familiar voice sounded from the device. “Harper?”

“I'm outside.”

Even without seeing him, Harper sensed the smile in his voice. “I'm coming.”

She didn't have to wait long before a tall figure opened the door and walked in her direction. Parker smiled at her, the twinkle in his eyes stronger than all the light of all the streetlamps combined. He was always radiant when he saw her, but now he stopped mid stride. “Harper, you look-”

She shrugged, a small grin on her face. “I wanted to surprise you.”

Parker shook his head. He walked toward the keypad, which was in safe distance from the entrance, and absentmindedly entered the code. “If I knew you were dressing up I would have done the same.” He frowned as he looked down at his everyday clothes.

The light on the keypad pulsed green and the gate slowly opened. Harper hesitantly walked inside as the gate closed behind her with a metallic grinding noise. The crunch of the grass beneath her feet was almost deafening in the silence, but that didn't erase her smile.

She stopped once she reached Parker, and a small smile rose to her features. “It's fine, Parker. You look good in anything.” She scanned him once again, admiring how his tight shirt hugged his torso and the way his pants hung on his frame. Somehow Parker managed to pull off even the most simple clothes- something that was no small feat.

Parker smiled as he gently snaked an arm behind her waist. His brown eyes appraised her sea green dress, admiring the way it shone in the weak light. He turned so she was facing him before he lowered his head, his breath fanning her mouth. “And you, Harper, will always be the most beautiful girl in the world.”

Harper wrapped her arms around his neck and smiled. “Really?”

Parker pulled her so almost no space stood between them. “Even if all the others would wear the fanciest dresses while you would wear a potato sack.”

He cupped her cheek, his eyes shining in affection. “Even then you would be too good for me.” His eyes met her own before his gaze flitted to her lips. He leaned in, his lips brushing hers, before he backed away and cleared his throat. His warm hand found hers and he gently pulled on it. “Let's go inside.”

Somehow, the Victorian seemed even emptier once they entered. Everything was more advanced than Harper had ever seen: the door closed itself, the windows opened without waiting for a command, and a tiny screen blinked on with illegible writing. Warm air encased her, and she breathed a sigh of relief. She could swear that she could smell all the metal, even if it was hard to pinpoint exactly where some of the hidden technology lay.

Parker pulled her closer, a weak smile to his lips. “Abe wasn’t the type to spend his riches on big and fancy houses. Since he was the only one who lived here, he prefered to keep his house as modern as possible. Once we grew close he had more reason for such a big house, but he was never the generous type. Even I visited him only a few times.”

Parker shrugged nonchalantly, but his hold tightened on Harper’s hand. “He was always more of a loner. Sometimes I managed to break through and see a bit more of him, but never enough. I saw his fatherly side mostly at the station, but even then he still had his walls. I guess he just never wanted me to come close enough to find out everything he was hiding.”

A bitter laugh escaped him, and Harper’s heart sunk. She squeezed his hand, but his eyes still stared ahead. He was drowning in a sea of grief, and she didn't know how to fix it.

They passed through a vast living room, which was cluttered to a fault. Old clothes lay on the floor, thrown haphazardly in a careless mess. Police accessories were strewn around, while some albums lay open, revealing hundreds of pictures, all of them of Kelley: some were in color, while all the rest were in black and white.

Parker scratched the back of his neck. “Sorry about all this,” he cleared his throat and shifted his gaze, “ever since Abe died...” he trailed off, a faraway look in his haunted eyes.

“It's alright.” Harper smiled. She knew from experience how traumatizing death could be, and she didn't expect Parker to fare any better than he was already.

Parker sighed. “Somehow, even after everything he did, I miss him. He’s still the man who saved me all those years ago. Still the guy who took me in and turned me into who I am today.”

She squeezed his hand, and he shot a grateful smile her way. “Hey, it’s okay. I get it.”

It was hard to fathom how many of their group lost their parents in the bloody fiasco. Imogen was now all alone, barely coping with the nightmares of the horrible deaths she witnessed. Parker lost his only father figure twice: when he realized that the man who raised him wasn’t who he thought he was, and when Abe was murdered with a spike to his throat. Harper already lost both of her parents at the bloody crime scene Richard left in their home, and Josephine almost stole Arthur too.

She tightened her hold on Parker’s hand. A cruel string connected the three of them, tying them in a bond that would never break. Harper wished she could take all their pain away, but she knew better than that. Living in illusions wouldn’t help, but she could help them regain their strength. That way they could stand taller, and be stronger in their fight against the world.

Once they reached the kitchen, Parker hurried to prepare the ingredients. He didn't look at her as he emptied the fridge, though she could make out the slight blush to his cheeks. “I'm sorry you had to see the living room like that. I would've organized it, but there was something at work today that-”

Harper laughed, and Parker's eyes met her in question. “What's so funny?”

“I already told you it's okay. Why are you so worried?”

Harper walked toward the ceramic table, which was already piled with different ingredients. She could feel Parker's gaze on her, his warm brown eyes filled with adoration. Her whole body tingled as she reached for the cutting board, waiting for his answer.

“Harper… you're the best thing to ever happen to me. You know that?” Her hands froze and her pulse quickened, knowing he wasn't done. “I want to be the best I can for you, but then you come to Abe's old house, see the messy living room and watch me at my most vulnerable state. I guess that I'm just worried that maybe this is too much for you.”

Harper turned so she was facing him, a smile on her face. “Parker, since coming here I escaped crazy cultists, fought undead monsters and was almost killed more times than I can count. Somehow, through all of that, we stuck together. Do you really think that seeing a bit of a mess will make me run away?”

Parker's eyes shone, and in that moment Harper knew that he was the most beautiful person in the world. He walked toward her and stopped when they were only inches apart. “You're the most amazing person in the world. You know that, right?”

She took hold of the lapels of his shirt and pulled him so their lips were nearly touching. “Stop being so humble. You're the only person who would hurt himself before he would hurt others.”

“I guess we'll just have to see who's right, won't we?”

His lips brushed hers, and an unbidden smile rose to Harper's face. “I guess we will.”