#do not get a loan from her. it will not be fine

[sunnie-angel]

Part 13: The Coworker

part 12 | series masterlist | ao3 link

jason todd x f!reader

summary: a strange holding pattern develops where nothing really happens and all you can do is bury yourself in work while jason keeps hiding things from you

tags: angst, reference to off screen violence

rated explicit (mdni) | wc: 2.2k

a/n: more of a set up chapter before the next big plotty thing happens. umm don't throw tomatoes at me?

Jason Todd is lying to you. Or at the very least he’s keeping things – important things – from you. Knowing that, being unable to close your eyes and turn the other way anymore, it fractures you a little more in ways you had thought you were long past. Still, stupidly, you love him. You keep waiting for the day when it gets easier to breath and your stomach stops swooping anytime Jason Todd is in sight. Hope rises and falls. His kindness mixed with cruelty burns but you can’t stop drinking it down as though you’ve been days in the desert.

In some ways, not being around Jason and the friends you share is easier, not having to wonder with every stilted interaction what there is left to hold you together. Much easier then, to bury yourself in work, in school. Lose yourself to distractions until the fear and paranoia dogging your every step fade into the background with the hum of routine and the mindless chattering of people who don’t know you well enough to hurt you with their well meaning questions.

It feels silly to plan for your future when it might very well come to an end in an alley, but the thought of a next month, a next year, a next moment keeps you clinging to sanity like a life preserver. So you put your head down and work, fingers crossed that all your effort will pay off with the summer research position currently being dangled over the heads of all the English department interns. A stepping stone, maybe, to being able to work your way through grad school that certainly no one else but you and your student loan from Gotham Trust will be paying for. For 15 hours a week you can tune out the present, get lost in the daydreams and the work of building that future which rests just hazily out of your reach, beyond the taint of murderers creeping in the dark and a love that seeps like poison.

Something close to regret always passes over you when the work day ends and Jason stands at the door waiting for you. Maybe even something ugly, a twisted up anger, jagged and sharp, that buries itself under your breastbone. Your life is held together with duct tape and sticky glue, balanced precariously on one wobbly leg, but no matter what happens to you, Jason will be fine as always. In a few months he’ll have his degree and a family that apparently doesn’t hate him as much as he’s implied and he’ll go swanning back off to wherever the fuck he mysteriously appeared from. After graduation, who’s to say that you’ll stay friends at all? That he won’t move on with his life and maybe, occasionally, he’ll think fondly of the girl he was friends with for less than a year while he’s off saving the world, saving the Alley, from yet another idiot villain. The future is yours, shining and pristine, but yours alone. A shining knife that’s lodged itself in your chest and twists in anticipation of the moment when he’ll let you go.

You don’t let any of those thoughts show on your face though. Don’t want to ruin any of the dwindling moments you have left and so you bury it down inside, pack the soil down on top hard and cross your fingers that it won’t grow any poisonous fruit.

The first time you stay late, you’re apologetic when you ask Jason to come back in a few hours but there’s none of the usual claustrophobic sensation. Jaimie had asked for help and you had volunteered to give it to her, any excuse not to go home and sit in your tiny apartment and flinch at the wind outside. It’s the first time you stay late but not the last.

Really you had never intended to be so distant from the other research interns but when all the seniors are competing really for the same opportunity, one that would make or break your future plans, it’s not hard to see everyone else as competition. People to be polite and helpful to, but not people to get close to in the eventuality that they break your heart by getting the position or you break theirs. But in searching for more and more reasons to stay distracted, to prolong the moment just before you see Jason again, before you fall into his arms again begging for scraps, it’s hard not to get to know them better.

There’s sweet Jaimie with her bottle thick glasses who only started this semester, Amira with her nearly magical knowledge of the library’s cataloguing systems, and Louisa whose German accent only comes through when she gets annoyed. Stoic Miguel that never really says much but doesn’t have to in order to get his point across and Ian whose charm has even crabby Dr. Duvall smiling broadly. They’re friends, all of them, or at least on friendly terms. It’s hard not to thaw towards them when suddenly you’re making a point to spend so much time with them.

Probably, you should be on your guard. Probably, you should listen to the paranoia whispering at the back of your mind about strangers and hidden motives. But with all the lights turned on in the tucked away office for interns, the space heater warming the old bricks and mild laughter and offers of help freely given, it feels safe in a way. That this space makes them safe even if you couldn’t name their birthdays at gunpoint (you really hope you’ll never have to do that). Here you can leave all of your messy emotions at the door, all the bagging and sleepless nights forgotten in the face of people that don’t know you.

Three weeks and never once does Jason complain about the hours stretching later and later. He never mentions how your feet seem to trudge slower and slower to him where he waits at the door. How the lightness seems to leave you as you hit the cold night air. Three weeks until his patience hits its limit.

“Seems like you’ve been working more than last semester,” he drops leadingly into conversation one morning as he rolls out of the side of your bed he’s claimed for himself.

“Seems like it,” you reply as you struggle to get your bra hooked on right. He comes up behind and does the clasp for you, hovers like he wants something more he’s not sure he’ll be allowed in the bright light of day.

“I just worry about you, yeah? Don’t want you to work yourself sick with— with everythin’ else goin’ on.”

“Well don’t,” you tell him, harsh words that drip with your frustration as you dig through your drawers for a sweater. Dannika and Lina have already been on your case about all your overtime hours, not to mention Rei’s quiet concern. “Don’t worry about this, okay” You say more gently, turning back to him as you tug the sweater over your head. “Work’s the one place where I don’t have to deal with—” you gesture expansively “—all of this.” Quickly you register the way his eyes go blank and shuttered. “With the fear, I mean. No time for serial killers when I’m trying to collate lists of possible sources for Dr. Higuchi’s next book.” He nods, and then doesn’t bring it up again. 

It’s a Tuesday, so it’s only you, Amira, and Miguel working. The office is quiet without Jaimie’s constant questions and Ian’s little asides but its a cosy kind of quiet. Slowly the quality of the light changes as the sun creeps below the skyline and eventually you have to admit that there’s nothing more to keep you there for the day. You pack up simultaneously, Amira bumping your elbow with her overstuffed satchel as she swings it onto her shoulder.

“Oh I’m so sorry, I didn’t ding you too hard did I?” She apologizes. It was a pretty solid hit, the several hardcovers in her bag as good as bricks but she didn’t mean anything by it and so you don’t take it personally.

“No harm done,” you let her know, shouldering your own bag as you do.

“Any plans for tonight?” Amira asks.

“Just tackling some readings for class, nothing interesting,” you reply with the conspiratorial tiredness that all students have by this time of the year.

“Hmmm okay, what about Thursday?”

“Thursday? Why?” You ask, a tightness to your spine. She’s never asked, none of them have ever asked before. There’s been the usual how was your weekends and have a good nights but never anything this direct.

“Well most of us sneak into the grad student bar on Thursday for their trivia night and you need five people for a team only Louisa’s got that paper due Friday and probably won’t come. So, if you’re free, would you want to join us?”

“I— uhm I’d have to check?” You tell her, suddenly panicked because this wasn’t what you’d been expecting at all. Yes, you’d been getting on with your coworkers better but you hadn’t thought that you’d been getting on well enough to be invited to their plans outside of work. And yes, technically a Thursday should be fine, should be safe, no one’s gone missing on a Thursday. But to meet? Outside of the office, outside of the place you’d neatly marked as ‘safe’ with people that you barely know? “When does it— when does it usually end?” You ask instead. “Just with everything going on I usually have a friend—” the word catches in your throat “—walk me home at night.”

“Hmmm like eleven or so?” She cocks her head. “I’m so sorry I didn’t even think of that. It’s so scary and I don’t even look like a potential victim.” Amira smiles at you pityingly and you can already feel the sympathy curdling in your stomach. “You know what, why don’t you bring them along? The teams only have to be a minimum of five but they can go all the way up to ten.”

“I’ll see if he’s free but I’ll let you know?” It’s pathetic at how easily just the thought of Jason’s presence makes you breath easier, feel more up to accepting what’s probably a genuine invitation. Amira happily gives you a number to contact and you part ways. Jason’s waiting, like always but it takes you a while to figure out exactly how to phrase your request to take up his time with something so trivial.

“I got invited out by my coworkers today,” you tell him, staring out the bus window as you speak. He’s folded himself into the aisle seat beside you, something you’d snorted about earlier and muttered about a clown car until he’d scowled from swallowing his laughter.

“Do I know any of them?” He asks, grumbling as he tries to find a position kinder to his knees.

“Maybe I introduced you to Jaimie?” You rack your brains thinking back. “Anyway, the point is they invited me to trivia night with them and when I was worried about making you wait for so long to walk me home they invited you too,” you say in a rush.

“When?” He cranes his neck to check the next stop as he asks.

“Thursday, ends around 11.”

He sighs through his nose. “If it was any other day I’d say no problem, yeah? But I’ve got a thing.”

“A thing,” you deadpan.

“Yeah, a thing,” he evades.  The two of you get off at the stop, the bus kicking up dirty slush in its wake.

“You should go, have a good time,” Jason tells you in front of your building. “I’ll make sure to be there at 11 and I’ll still make sure you get home. But you should have some fun, yeah?”

He’s hiding something again, isn’t he?

It’s silly to be so distracted by a maybe but you can’t stop thinking about it. You miss a very obvious trick question on the publication of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, though Ian smiles very kindly when he changes the original date you had written to the date the book was first published under the author’s real name. Even without doing anything at all Jason still manages to knock you off balance. You don’t regret it, coming out with your coworkers, even if the bar starts to get more rowdy as the night goes on. That sense of safety, of oh these people won’t hurt me, isn’t restricted just to the office it would seem. Miguel still doesn’t speak very much but he smiles more and Jaimie is strikingly confident when she isn’t wrestling with spreadsheets. It’s almost, almost enough to distract you from thoughts of Jason by the time the evening is wrapping up.

You’re laughing freely at a sly joke from Amira you wish Dannika was there to hear too when you finally spot him. He’s leaning against the wall outside the building, phone still cupped to his ear when you run up to him, the snow muffling the sound of your foot steps. Even in the low lighting of the bar’s neon sign he still looks beautiful and you’re loath to disturb the moment. He’s just ending the call as you get closer, fat snowflakes catching in your hair.

“...yeah, yeah love you too Barbie.”

Oh.

a/n: on the other line, barbara's threatening to castrate jason for making dick sad

[palaeophis-fr]

@dergtober Day 2- Merchant

Rowe here is a smuggler and loan shark Perfectly Legal And Ethical Merchant. You should get a loan from her. It will be fine

[nerdyfangirlingbooks]

Every now and then I remember the times I would mention to my flatmate that I was thinking of buying myself something reasonably expensive (that I had been eyeing up for months and had budgeted for) and she'd tell me that I shouldn't spend that much money on something I didn't need and it would be stupid etc etc while she regularly impulse bought things that cost at least as much and she would use once (while complaining that she was under a lot of financial stress and couldn't afford <$3/week for 2 months for a rental washing machine when ours broke). She is... perhaps not my first call for financial advice

[forestspaces]

Oh dear GOD

grabs your hand. you've had enough plot and exposition and character development lately im taking you to the beach episode

[lilgynt]

went to that horror thing at that dudes house - it was fine and i had fun but it was just a groups of older white dudes and what comes from that like mostly fun! but watch out

[phagodyke]

my roommates parents are nuts for telling her she should get a mortgage and if she still wants me as a roommate i can pay rent to her.... we are NOT going to do that. r u kidding me 😵

[pathologicalreid]

orange juice | S.R.

you and spencer have an announcement to make, but you're not quite sure how to do it

who? spencer reid x fem!reader category: fluff content warnings: bau!reader, pregnant!reader, nausea and pregnancy symptoms, slightly protective spencer, mentions blood tests and doctors, not proofread word count: 906 a/n: this week has been so atrocious and awful and stressful!!! fuck cancer!! fuck student loans!!! i need spencer reid fluff!!!

“Drink it,” Spencer murmured, keeping his eyes trained on the file on his desk in front of him while noting the way you hadn’t so much as budged in his periphery. You were leaning a bit too far to the left, and the more he observed you, the more he worried that you were going to topple over. “It’ll make you feel better,” he prodded.

Your head jolted as he continued to watch you as if he had woken you from a deep sleep, “What? Sorry,” you mumbled, eyes focusing on the bottle of orange juice that he had placed on your desk upon your arrival at the BAU.

A laugh caught your attention as you slowly turned your office chair around, “Late night, pretty girl?” Derek quipped, winking in your direction before turning back to his own work.

Turning back around, you shared a look with Spencer while rolling your chair closer to your desk, hoping to be able to better prop your head up. The real answer was that you had an early morning, woken up by a roiling stomach courtesy of the first trimester.

Spencer had gotten up with you at five this morning and your queasiness showed no sign of faltering. Your stomach had nothing left to give by the time you went to your doctor’s appointment, but you assured your husband that you were fine when you arrived in Quantico after having your blood drawn.

The issue was that no one knew. Other than Hotch – for obvious personal safety reasons – no members of the BAU were aware that you were pregnant. It started as wariness, wanting to reach a certain milestone before letting your team know, but it quickly turned into a different form of anxiety. You hadn’t let your team know you were even talking about having a baby. Neither of you were entirely sure how to broach the subject or announce your pregnancy, so you didn’t.

Hidden in plain sight, resting on Spencer’s desk was a sonogram, a three-by-five, black-and-white photo of your baby, the two of you were simply waiting for a profiler observant enough to notice. You weren’t showing, yet, as you encroached upon the second trimester, you worried you were running out of time.

His theory was that your nausea was being exacerbated by low blood sugar, which is why he made sure to give you orange juice – you weren’t so convinced, orange juice was brutal coming back out.

You heard the familiar woosh of the glass doors to the bullpen swing as someone entered, the click-clack of Garcia’s heels snapping you back to attention, it was almost time for morning debrief. If you were lucky, you’d remain at your desk for the rest of the day. If your luck ran out, you’d have to pop a Zofran before getting on the jet.

Sighing, you rested your chin in your hand before going back to clicking through your emails, pausing for just a moment when Spencer reached across the short barrier between your desks and opened the bottle for you. To appease him, you took a small sip of the orange juice, pleased when you saw him settle in his desk chair.

“What’s that?” Garcia asked, nearly stumbling to a stop behind Spencer’s desk as her eyes snagged on something on the surface. “No, no I know what that is,” she continued, stammering and flicking her eyes between you and Spencer.

Penelope’s rising voice garnered the attention of other people in the bullpen, bringing them to your and Spencer’s adjacent desks. “What’s wrong, baby girl?” Derek piped up, making his way over and setting a hand on the back of your chair.

Pointing at you, the technical analyst wagged her finger as she made the connections in her brain. The doctor’s appointments and the sudden aversion to girl’s night made sense to her now, and you could see it in the way her gaze softened when she stepped around the desks in order to give you a hug, “Is that real?”

As you reciprocated her hug, you nodded, glancing over at your husband as you knew your secret was now out. “Yeah,” you mumbled into her blonde hair, “It’s real.”

“Would somebody please tell me what’s going on?” Morgan said, looking around, sharing a confused look with Emily but earning a ‘dude, really?’ look from JJ.

Releasing you from the hug, Penelope reached over the acrylic barrier, plucked the sonogram off Spencer’s desk, and presented it to the rest of the team Vanna White style, “Baby genius is imminent!” She announced, beaming at you and Spencer as you snuck around them to stand at his side.

One by one, Emily, JJ, and Derek embraced both you and Spencer, “Wait, how long has that picture been there?” Emily questioned, arching a dark brow at you and Spencer.

“Two weeks,” Spencer answered quickly, snaking an arm around you and resting a hand on your hip, squeezing it reassuringly.

You leaned into him slightly before nodding in affirmation, “Yeah, some profilers you guys are!”

Rolling his eyes, Morgan came back at you for another hug, holding you so tightly that your feet lifted slightly off the ground. “Woah, hey, be careful,” Spencer said, waiting expectantly for your coworker to let you go.

Taking a deep breath, you stepped back to where Spencer was standing while Emily spoke again, “Oh, he’s going to be insufferable by the end of this.”

[gremlingottoosilly]

Hello, would readers husband ever come back to pay the debt or would he just leave her mafia könig's hands ( if he's asking for his money anymore that's fine!)

Our husband might be an asshole, but he isn't a huge asshole...he doesn't want to leave his wife in the hands of Konig and be a cuck champ, obviously! He was fully expecting you to be tortured when he returns, to be turned into a steak and feed to the dogs or made up to be a whore in the fine establishment for rich and famous of Vienna - he was ready to save you, with newly aquired money from a lone shark somewhere in Poland, and he was ready to be the hero of the day... He sees you, his shy and pretty wife, sitting on Konig's lap with your face nuzzled into his chest. It was an almost innocent picture - but then he can see the slight shaking in your thighs, a big hand fondling your leg and getting under your dress...you never cockwarmed him - you were never that kinky in bed, always opting for laying on your back and vaguelly staring at the ceiling. But you whimper on the lap of your kidnapper, of the most dangerous guy in the whole country. Konig has a hand with pistol rested on your thigh, but you don't even care - your breathes sound like a pure bliss, like you wanted to be here. Oh, but Konig is pissed. Not only your loser of a husband returned with money - just enough to pay off the interest of his loan - but he managed to barge into the office while he was pleasing himself with his new favorite girl. You're adorable, shy and sensitive - even when you like sex, you would always act innocent, so he loves to take you in public, to make everyone know that he fucking owns you...but with your husband in the picture, he might actually ruin the perfect fantasy. It's like a curtain was taken off from your face - you're shoked when you see him, relieved, a bit scared for his life...poor thing, you have no idea of what to do - you just want him close, and you almost scramble from Konig's lap to go and greet your husband...but you're stopped dead in your tracks. Of course, how could you forget who really owns you now. Even if your husband tries to take you back, he'd be lucky if he would just be thrown off the premises and not killed outright. Konig is already doing the needed marital proceedes to make you his in the face of the law - and he won't tolerate any wedding destroyers.

[getosbigballsack]

Random thought!

But just imagine 35 years old CEO Gojo Satoru falling in love with the young woman whom he hired to be his surrogate.

Desperate at this point to fulfill his role as CEO and the heir of his family clan, he knew he had no other choice but to find someone who would be willing to give birth to his child.

He thought his ex-wife was the one. After all, she was pregnant when they were still together. When the due date came around and Satoru heard that she gave birth to a healthy baby boy, he was over the moon until he saw the baby for himself.

He knew that that wasn't his baby. Blonde hair and green eyes? No one in his family had blonde hair and green eyes. So he asked for a DNA test. His ex-wife refused at first, but then she gave in, and when the test came back, the baby was 99.99%, not his child.

He was broken. He served her divorce papers the following day, and after everything he had done for her, this is how she chose to repay him. As if cheating wasn't enough, she had to get pregnant and gave birth to another man’s child.

So now here he is sitting in a cafe waiting for the surrogate.

...

You didn't have much of a choice. 26 years of age and still struggling to get your bachelor's degree just so that you could live a comfortable life and be financially stable.

But with the way things are right now, you knew that it was an impossible task to complete your final year. You could hardly manage to pay your school fee. You kept on getting rejection letters from student loans, and let's face it, you barely had time to study to even try to get a scholarship.

So now you're stuck looking for a quick and easy way to make money. You had little options, and prostitution just so happened to be one of them. And you almost turned to it, that's until you heard that a "rich" CEO was looking for a woman who was willing to give birth to his heir.

So now that's how you ended up in the situation to you're in currently. Nervously playing with your fingers as sat across from no other than Gojo Satoru.

"Your name is Y/N?"

"Yes, and you're Mr. Gojo Satoru."

He shook his head yes while taking a sip of his coffee. "I hope you don't mind meeting like this. I thought it would be better to meet in a more casual setting instead of my office. I don't want to intimidate you."

"That's fine, Mr. Gojo."

"Before we get started, are you sure you want to do this? I want you to be absolutely sure because once you sign the contract, there is no backing out of it."

You shook your head yes before responding, "it's something that I've thought about deeply, Mr. Gojo, and after reading through the contract a few times, I came to the conclusion that I would rather have a baby for a stranger who is willing pay to me more than what my school fee is worth than go and become a prostitute."

He was shocked by your words but said nothing of it. It wasn't his place to say anything or have any comment about your personal life.

"Well then, I guess we can go ahead and meet with our lawyers and sign the contract."

"Lawyers? I thought... I can't afford a lawyer right now," you said to him.

He chuckled, "I figured that that would be the case. No worries, I had already hired a lawyer for you."

"You did?" You asked. Just then, the door to the cafe burst opened, and in came a man and a woman dressed in suits.

"Ah, there they are. Right on time."

Gojo stood up and greeted the lawyers before he introduced you to them. The man, Mr. Nanami Kento is his lawyer, and the woman Tetsu Akari is your lawyer. First impression she has a kind and calm aura around her.

But let's move down the line.

You four all sat and discussed what was on the contract, and before you signed it, Gojo asked, "Is there anything that you need to clarify before signing the contract."

"Yes, uhm, it's about the procedure. Are we going to uhm... have... uhm intercourse to conceive the baby?"

"We could since it's the safe way to go about this, but no," he answered with a small smile on his face.

"Ok then, where do I sign."

This is the beginning of how Gojo Satoru fell in love with the woman he hired to be his surrogate.

[ellecdc]

Can i request something bit angsty? 🥺 its totally fine if you dont wanna write it tho!

I was thinking, wolfstar x reader got into an argument and reader started to occlude and the boys got scared they might be out of line bcs she only occlude when shes really hurting?

this is my SHIT - love me some hurt/comfort. thanks for requesting, lovie 🫶

poly!wolfstar x fem!reader

CW: hurt/comfort, arguing, mention of past family discourse, toxic family memories

“I’m sorry. You did what?” Sirius beseeched, walking into the living room from the kitchen and interrupting the points (arguments) you and Remus were each in the process of making. You gave him an unimpressed look, knowing he wasn’t actually asking you to repeat yourself, he just couldn’t believe what he had heard.

“She gave Mary-Ella over a grand.” Remus muttered bitterly.

“I did not give Mary-Ella money, I loaned her money.” You were quick to correct.

Sirius just scoffed. “Sure you did, dollface.” He sneered, making his usual pet-name burn to the touch. “You are never going to see that money again.”

“What were you thinking?” Remus implored.

“I was thinking that my friend was in a bind and needed help. I hardly think that’s a crime.” 

“You didn’t just loan a little bit of money, though. You loaned a lot of money to a friend who is not reliable in the slightest.” Remus asserted.

“We have been working so hard trying to save up to move. To move closer to Diagon Alley so that Remus can be closer to work, and we can finally get out of my uncles flat.” Sirius added.

“I know we’ve been working hard, Sirius. I know this because I too have been working hard. But I’m not going to watch my friend struggle when there’s something I could do to help!”

“This choice impacted all of us. You had no right to make this decision on your own.”

It was your turn to scoff as you turned to glare at Remus incredulously. You had been trying to stay patient, knowing that this close to the moon, Remus was feeling extra sensitive. But him ganging-up on you with Sirius quickly found what little patience you had running thin. “I 'had no right' to make a decision about money that I made on my own?”

“You have no ground to stand on, buttercup. You’re now out more than a grand because of this choice; we’re all out more than a grand because of your choice.” Sirius growled, tone full of derision.

“If the roles were reversed, Mary-Ella would help me out!” You tried to reason, only for Remus to bark a laugh.

“That doesn’t even matter, dove. Because you’d never be in her position and likewise, she’d never be in yours. She’s irresponsible, unreliable, and a mooch.”

You tried to ignore the burning sensation in your sinuses as you spoke to the back of Remus’ head; he apparently had grown so disgusted with you that he couldn’t even look at you anymore. 

“I don’t like you talking about my friends like that. I don’t understand why we’re making such a big deal about this, I jus-” but you were cut off as Remus stood abruptly and turned on you. 

“We’re making this a big deal because it is a big deal!” he bellowed. “You leave this apartment in the morning and it’s like Sirius and I don’t exist anymore. You conduct yourself like some single woman with no responsibility to anyone else but herself.”

“You’re being selfish. You can’t possibly expect to drop a bomb on us like this and, what, expect us to just reply with ‘yes dear’? You fucked up, Y/N.” Sirius added, arms crossed defensively over his chest and cold silver eyes glared daggers that permeated your entire being. Remus carried on, unperturbed by the effects this conversation was having on you.

You felt like you were seventeen again, like you were eleven, nine, six. You felt like a babe whose hand had been slapped for reasons beyond your comprehension.

Do you ever stop and think about the consequences, Y/N?

You were sitting at the dining room table as your father lashed you with his words, each sentence punctuated with the slamming of his fists on the table. You were standing on the platform having just reunited with your parents after the school year as your mother’s claws dug into your arms, warning you that punishment was to come later if you didn’t smarten up. You were cowering in the backyard as your father screamed at you in front of the entire neighbourhood – a free show for all to enjoy. 

You think crying will earn you any sympathy here? You’re a manipulative little witch if you think that will work on me. Keep crying and I’ll give you something to cry about. 

You felt naked – like your figurative clothes had been violently ripped from your body – and there you stood, stripped bare for all to leer at. Standing before two people...who were meant to love you unconditionally...as they laced their words with venom and spat vitriol at you.

You couldn’t even hear the point Remus was trying to make anymore. It didn’t matter anyway.

He hated you. You were hated. You were a disappointment, a burden, unwanted.

But you couldn’t cry – could never cry. You’d just be manipulating them. You were deceitful. Emotions were deceitful. The way you felt was wrong. And they were right.

Always right. 

So, you did what you always did; you made it quiet. 

You began layering rows of stones around your being. Protection. Space. Distance. Safety.

They couldn’t hurt you from all the way in here, not from the other side of your wall. You’d be safe here. Here in the quiet.

It was safe in the quiet. 

Sirius felt disgraceful at how long it took him to notice the signs of you pulling away from the conversation. Away from them. Away from him.

Remus – always more sensitive than the two of you when it came to the likes of money, combined with feeling extra flustered with the upcoming full moon – had no reason to expect nor recognize signs of occlusion. 

Suddenly, Sirius was fourteen again. Walburga was standing over him with her wand aimed at his chest, but all he could see was Regulus. He had prayed at the time that his brother could hear him begging in his mind:

Turn it off, Reg. Just turn it off. It can’t hurt you if you turn it off. 

Sirius himself sat in an almost constant state of occlusion during his fifth year, knowing somewhere deep in his gut that the beginning of the end of his life as the heir of the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black (or the end of his life in general) was near. 

Growing up wasn’t a whole lot easier for you, it seemed. And he knew that when things got to be too much, you did what you needed to do to protect yourself.

He suddenly hated himself. You weren’t supposed to need to protect yourself from him and Remus. It was their job to protect you; just like you always protected them. 

How you protected Remus from wasting away on the days leading up to and recovering from the full moon. You never let him go hungry or thirsty, you always made sure the space was clean and tidy, and you never let him fall into his typical pre- and post-moon self-loathing.

And you protected Sirius from himself; from saying things that he wouldn’t be able to take back, from being the worst version of himself, from losing you and Remus completely. 

He didn’t deserve you.

You didn’t deserve this.

For fuck’s sake all you had been doing was being kind.

Being a good friend, someone that others could rely on, protecting people who meant so much to you. 

All you were doing was being your kind, courteous, protective, generous self that Remus and Sirius had fallen in love with from the very start.

“Moony!” Sirius pleaded, causing the lycanthrope to pause in his tangent. You didn’t even flinch at the sudden change in the atmosphere as Remus looked at Sirius bewilderedly. 

“We’ve lost her.” Sirius murmured quietly, causing Remus to spin to observe you. 

“Well...” Remus began, still struggling to shake off his anger and the need to argue. “But I-”

“It’s enough, Remus.” Sirius hissed quietly, staring at Remus with a look he hoped conveyed no nonsense.

He apparently succeeded as Remus let out whatever breath he’d been holding as he turned again to face you.

“Dove, I’m sorry.” Remus whispered as he tried to move towards you, but you instinctively took a step back to maintain the distance between you; your arms wrapped around your middle protectively as if that was all that was holding you together. 

Sirius’ heart felt like it split in two – and based off of the look on Remus’ face, he wasn’t fairing any better.

“Y/N?” Sirius tried. You didn’t turn to look at him, but you hummed in quasi-acknowledgement.

“Can you look at me?” He tried quietly, but you shook your head no. 

Remus made a pained sound as he tried to move towards you again, ducking his head down in an attempt to make eye contact with you. You didn’t back away from him this time, but your arms tightened in their hold around your middle.

“Sweetheart, I’m sorry I...I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that. I’m...I was out of line.”

“Come back?” Sirius pleaded. “Please.”

You took a deep breath and turned your face towards your boyfriends, but Sirius could tell your eyes were still foggy – you were still hiding.

“We won’t talk about it anymore. That conversation is done.” Sirius said.

“But-” you started, voice grating from the tightness in your throat, but he cut you off.

“The conversation is done. You did what you thought was right, you were being your kind lovely self, helping your friend when they needed you. We shouldn’t have yelled at you, sweets. I’m sorry.”

Remus made another pained sound and moved closer to you again.

“Dovey, I’m so sorry. Please, can I- would you like a hug?”

Sirius watched as you looked at Remus, seeming to weigh your options before you nodded once at him. Remus needn’t any more invitation and quickly (though gently) made for you, enveloping you in his arms. 

The three of you stayed like that – Remus with his arms around you, you with your arms around yourself and your face pushed into his chest, and Sirius standing helplessly at the side – before Sirius started to notice some tension leaving your shoulders.

“Why’d you go?” He asked you quietly, gently placing a hand in the middle of your shoulder blades and rubbing in a way he hoped was soothing.

“I didn’t want to cry.” You admitted into Remus’ chest, neither boy missing how tight your voice seemed to be, even as your voice barely raised above a whisper. 

“Oh, dolly. Just cry. Cry, okay? Make us feel like tossers, but don’t leave.” Sirius said.

“I didn’t want you to feel bad.” You muttered wetly, finally turning so Sirius could see your red and wet face. 

“But we deserved it. Oh, my love.” Remus cooed as he all but picked you up and locked your legs around his hips, forcing you to move your grip from around yourself to around him.

“I’m not s’posed to make you cry. I’m s’posed to make you smile.” He muttered pitifully, pressing his lips into your hair.

“And cum.” Sirius spoke in the same pitiful tone, brushing a strand of hair from your forehead.

You laughed wetly and the last of your occlusion appeared to slip away which was what Sirius had been aiming for. It didn’t make him feel all that much better though.

“Oh, my girl. I’m so sorry, Pads is right. You were just being your lovely self, and I’m a bastard.”

Sirius watched as your brows furrowed. “You’re not a bastard.”

“No,” Sirius agreed readily, “he was just being a bastard. Both of us were. Do you think you can forgive us?”

You nodded quickly but Remus tsked in response.

“Don’t let us off so easily, dovey. Make us pay for it. What do you need? Do you need a foot rub? You want cake? Ice cream? What about a kitten? You’ve always wanted a kitten.”

You had been shaking your head at everything Remus said until the last one, your curiosity obviously piqued.

Fuckin’ hells, Sirius thought, if she gets a kitten everytime one of us acts like an arse, we’re going to be overrun with cats by next month. 

[barcaatthemoon]

on display || alexia putellas x reader ||

you and alexia get distracted moving your things out of your apartment.

minors dni, 18+, smut ahead.

your apartment looked weird with nearly all of your things moved out of it. for years, you had called seville your home. now, you were moving to barcelona with alexia. it wasn't the biggest move you had ever made, but it was definitely the most nervous that you'd ever been for one.

"hi ale," you greeted your fiance. she had walked into your apartment as quietly as alexia could and wrapped her arms around your waist from behind.

"are you ready to go?" alexia asked you as the two of you stared out of the window. your apartment was on the fourth floor of the building, and you had always loved the giant window that had filled your living room with natural lighting.

"i'm gonna miss this place," you sighed. alexia turned you around to face her. your love for seville was often something that alexia teased you about. you had been born in barcelona and lived there until they let you leave on loan. you had been eventually sold to your team in germany before being tossed back to spain. you had played in most of the major cities, even madrid, but seville had been your home for the past five years.

"you'll come back with barcelona, and then you'll know how nice it feels to win here," alexia teased. you pushed her away playfully, which resulted in the same way it always did. you and alexia were no strangers to play fights and unserious wrestling matches. alexia may have been a bit bigger than you, but you almost always won them, including this time.

"are you okay?" you asked as you glanced down at alexia. she had been completely with it, even as the two of you fell onto the hardwood floors. you were terrified that you had just hurt her again. you could still remember when you had accidentally hurt her knee while she had been trying to recover.

"i-i'm fine," alexia stammered. she wasn't often nervous around you anymore, not enough to sound like that. you smirked as you took in the obvious flush in her cheeks. "don't look at me like that."

"do you want me to fuck you ale? do you want me to fuck you right here in front of this window? someone could see us, it's pretty risky." you knew that you weren't playing fair at all. alexia took short breaths to try and calm herself down as you actively ground against her. "i bet if i took those shorts off of you, you'd be soaked."

"don't tease me like this," alexia warned. you just nodded and moved back enough to grab at the waistband of her shorts. "what are you doing?"

"not teasing," you told her. alexia's jaw dropped when you took and dropped your own pants. there were a million possibilities on alexia's mind of things that you'd do, and this wasn't one of them. she hadn't expected you to drop down and get in the same position you had been before.

"fuck, baby, don't stop," alexia moaned. the feeling of your skin made the movements of your hips a thousand times better. alexia's eyes were squeezed shut as you set a steady pace. you were leaning over her, but you didn't glance down at her more than a couple of times. instead, your focus was on the world just going on around you outside of the window.

the thought of anybody looking up and catching you was thrilling. it sent shivers down your spine, ones that the steady rubbing of alexia's hands on your sides helped to calm a bit. you had always been a bit on the wild side, and alexia knew that this was something you had wanted before. it was why she hadn't tried to stop you. people were less likely to recognize one of you in seville than in barcelona.

"i know that you're close, but don't you dare stop," alexia warned you. her hands gripped you tightly, forcing you to move a little faster and harder. alexia kept going, even as your body was starting to tremble above hers. you could hear everything that she muttered under her breath as she got closer and closer to her release. it was easily the dirtiest string of words that you had ever heard, broken up in three different languages.

hours later after you had packed up the rest of your things into the moving truck, you stared up at that window longingly. barcelona was about to be your home now, and seville would just be full of memories for you again. you'd go back to barcelona for a few seasons before retiring. it was scary, but you were ready to take the next steps in your life with alexia, who you knew would never do something like this again, but still find ways to keep you entertained.

[joedirtymadre]

Jealous

LUFFY X READER! FLUFF!

You sighed as you stared off at the two figures in front of you. You weren’t the one to be jealous, envious, or clingy… but it’s impossible to not feel any of those things when the most beautiful empress in the world is feeding your boyfriend strawberries.

“If I were you I would go up to him and drag him to the back of the ship and knock some sense into him,” Nami huffed as she joined you in watching the two. You watched as Hancock giggled whenever Luffy licked his lips after eating another one of her juicy strawberries. “Should I?” You asked, half-jokingly. “It is disrespectful of Luffy to be so close to another woman when he already has one,” Robin joined in. “Definitely, but isn’t Hancock worse for being so lovey dovey towards him, knowing that you two are dating,” Nami pointed out.

“About that…” you trailed off. The two ladies stared at you in confusion. “I don’t think Luffy has introduced me to her,” you sighed again. “What?!” Nami yelled. “Well I imagine, since he hasn’t once called me over to meet her,” you pointed out. “No, we gotta stop this now,” Nami stared at the two. “Most definitely,” Robin added. “How?” You asked. “Leave that to us,” Nami winked.

…

“Nami I don’t think this’ll work, plus I don’t feel too comfortable with this…” you said nervously. “It’ll be fine!” she reassured you. You sat awkwardly with Zoro who surprisingly accepted the plan. “You’re actually ok with this Zoro?” You asked. “Well I have to just eat strawberries with you right? Doesn’t sound too hard, besides the she-devil said she’d drop 100,000 from my loan,” he grumbled the last part. “Ahh…” you sweat dropped. You weren’t too sure about Nami’s plan, feeding strawberries to Zoro near Luffy and Hancock in hopes that Luffy gets jealous and comes over?? “Luffy never gets jealous though,” you shook your head. “Any guy can get jealous,” Zoro said. “Yeah?” You asked. “Yeah, now feed me a strawberry woman,” he said as he leaned forward.

You smiled and popped a strawberry into his mouth. You glanced over, hoping for Luffy to notice you two, but with no luck. “He didn’t notice…” you said softly. “That’s because we have to up the antics,” Zoro smirked. “Huh?” You asked. “Toss a strawberry to me,” he said. “Ok…” you said slowly and tossed a strawberry up in the air. Watching Zoro completely miss it, “What was that?” You laughed. “I wasn’t ready… again!” he barked. “Ok, ok, ready?” you asked. The swordsman nodded and prepared himself. You tossed another strawberry in the air and watched Zoro completely miss the fruit again. “Nice catch!” You laughed. “It’s because you don’t toss it right!” he glared.

“No, you’re just bad at this. Watch me,” you said as you prepared yourself. Zoro softly tossed a strawberry in the air and you quickly caught it. “Beginner’s luck,” Zoro frowned as he crossed his arms. “Sounds like someone is mad they can’t catch a strawberry,” you teased. “No I have it this time, try me,” he said determinedly. “Ok…” you chuckled. You once again tossed a strawberry in the air and he finally caught it.

“Let’s go! You did it!” You cheered. “Third time’s a charm!” Zoro smirked. You both hi-fived over your small strawberry victory, but that soon ended when you noticed a shadow casting over you.

You looked back and noticed Luffy, “Oh hi Luffy, did you see Zoro catch that straw-“ but you were cut off by your captain picking you up and throwing you over his shoulder. “H-Hold on! Wait!” You protested as you squirmed but it was no use. “Luffy? Where are you going?” You watched Hancock try to follow you, but Luffy locked her out of your bedroom.

You were tossed onto the bed, seeing your boyfriend extremely frustrated. “Luffy?” You asked. “What were you doing with Zoro?” He huffed. “Eating strawberries,” you responded. “I didn’t like that,” he bluntly said as he sat beside you. “Well I didn’t like Hancock feeding you strawberries either,” you grumbled. “Hancock? She’s just a friend,” he said.

“Didn’t look like it,” you sighed. “Well I can say the same for you and Zoro!” He replied. “I only tossed strawberries into his mouth, but… you’re right… I asked Zoro to try and help me… make you jealous. so you’d stop focusing so much on… Hancock,” you said softly. “Make me jealous?” He asked. “Well, I got jealous or… scared, she’s the most beautiful woman in the sea and she’s obviously in love with you. What if you decide that she’s better than me… and leave me,” you explained.

You felt him wrap an arm around your shoulders and pull you into a hug. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “No it’s fine… I should’ve talked to you instead of making a silly plan. I wasn’t thinking…” you trailed off. “It’s ok, it’s my fault too. I told her you were my girlfriend and then she began acting weird. I thought it was because we haven’t seen each other in a while, so she was being extra nice… I guess that made you mad, huh?” He frowned. “A bit,” you replied.

“Well… I'm glad you told me,” he said. “I like seeing you get jealous,” he grinned. “Yeah? It was kind of funny seeing you get so upset about me and Zoro too,” you smiled. “Yeah… don’t do that again, please?” He asked as he loosened his hug to look at you. “Ok, but you need to go out there and show that empress we’re dating,” you laughed. “Definitely, now come on. Let’s get out of here,” he smiled as he stood up and held out his hand. You quickly take it and follow him out the door.

[roseyodditea]

Just Fix It - Wriothesley x gn! Reader

Summary -> 1.2k words. Your repair work is interrupted and then ruined by The Duke himself.

Warnings -> Swearing, Minor injuries.

A/N -> I love the idea of being a mechanic in Meropide. lmk if it's actually interesting to anyone that isn't me and I can write more. I'm just testing the waters with this one lmao

**********

For the first time in a long time, the halls of the Fortress of Meropide were quiet. The consistent and loud clanging of heavy machinery was absent, much to the pleasure of a lot of the prisoners. However, prisoners that were close to the elevator could hear the shouting of the scariest man under the water and the most stubborn person to probably ever exist. The shouts of The Duke and you, the head mechanic of the Fortress. 

“Get down from there!” Wriothesley shouted at the top of one of the large presses in the production zone where you stood, 10 feet in the air. His tone was half amused and half frustrated.

“You aren’t my boss! I don’t take orders from you!” You chuckled, standing in triumph on top of the machinery, holding nothing but an angle grinder. “I am literally your boss!” You let out a scoff. “I am an employee of the Fontaine Research Institute of Kinetic Energy Engineering. I am on loan to you, bitch.” A few of the newer prisoners looked away in fear as you insulted The Duke, not understanding the dynamic between the two of you.

“How much longer do you have on the repairs?” He rolls his eyes, trying not to laugh in front of others.

You scoff and return to cutting off some of the warped metal of the old press. “Not too much longer. I’m just cleaning up some metal that’s causing some of that god-awful screeching. I could fix it faster if you stopped distracting me.”

“Just hurry up and fix it. You’re wasting my precious time.” “What, you planning on dying soon, old man?” You snort to yourself and duck as a wrench is thrown dangerously close to your head, the guards and prisoners in the production zone moving to quickly leave now that metal was being thrown around. You put down the angle grinder and stand up, looking down at Wriothesley. “Say that again.” He looks at you with that cocky smirk you’ve grown to love and picks up a hammer from the toolbox you left on the ground.

“Careful there. That’s heavy, you might throw out your back trying to toss that all the way up here.” You taunt and hold your arms out wide, making yourself a bigger target. 

Wriothesley was throwing the hammer when the high-pitched sound of someone clearing their throat caused your blood to run cold. “Need I remind you both of the strict safety procedures we have in place?” Sigewinne’s voice immediately caused you to panic, looking away from Wriothesley, not realizing the hammer had already left his hand. You were about to say something when the hammer flew towards you. Panic ran through your body as instinct took over, dodging backwards, but losing your footing and falling off of the top of the machinery. Before you fully realized you were falling a ramp of ice emerged and broke your fall, but causing you to catch your wrist as the transition from ice to metal flooring caused you to roll. You didn’t even try to get up, a throbbing sensation in your wrist overpowering you. Two sets of footsteps approached you quickly. Sigewinne grabbed the wrist you landed on and furrowed her eyebrows, your body relaxing now that you knew you were in good hands.

“It’s just a sprain. It should heal just fine in a month” Sigewinne went to grab one of the first aid kits always kept in the production zone. She took out some wraps to help stabilize your wrist when Wriothesley grabbed it from her. 

“I’ll take care of it. It’s my fault they got injured in the first place.” He nodded at Sigewinne and she took that as an order to leave the both of you alone. He took your wrist in his hand and began to gently wrap it. “I’m sorry. That was stupid of me.” 

You tried to ignore the pain in your wrist and chuckled. “Yeah, it kinda was.” You watch his hands move around yours shockingly delicately, his brows furrowed in concentration as he looks down at your hand. “It’s really not a big deal. This isn’t the worst sprain I’ve gotten from climbing on equipment like that. I should have expected it.” Wriothesley shakes his head. “Stop that. This is serious. I hurt you and now you can’t work.” “Oh come on. You have plenty of other mechanics at your beck and call that will come to fix this and do it safer than I would.” You were met with silence, Wriothesley still focused on your wrist, refusing to look up into your eyes. “Unless you have a personal attachment to this one?”

“How bad does it hurt?” He tried to push down the lump he found stuck in his throat, but it still made his voice crackle in a way you hadn’t heard before. “Oh my god, you do have an emotional attachment.” You move your wrist closer to your body. Wriothesley doesn’t seem to notice and moves closer. “Just tell me how bad it hurts. I can get you some medicine from the infirmary, or I can-” “Oh shut up.” You pull him even closer, but this time he notices. Neither of you make any move to back away from each other. “I’m not worried about my wrist anymore. Something more interesting came up.” Wriothesley finishes wrapping your wrist, the support lessening your pain. He wraps his fingers around your wrist and you feel a chill creeping up your arm, his cryo vision glowing subtly as he tries to soothe the inevitable swelling. “I find your company enjoyable. You bring a sense of fun and light I never could afford to have in my life until recently. And the fact that you’re willing to consistently make the trip down here to this damp metal prison means a lot.” He sighs and shakes his head. “And for some stupid reason, I got wrapped up in the moment and threw a hammer at you when you were already in a precarious situation without any sort of safety harness on.” He fully sat down instead of just awkwardly crouching over you.

“And who’s fault is it I wasn’t wearing a safety harness?” “Mine. I’m your boss and I’ve been letting you get away with not wearing one for far too long.”

You let out an exaggerated groan. “You’re not technically my boss. You don’t even sign my paychecks.” “Can’t you let me have anything?” He lets a playful smirk grace his face, the chill making you forget all about your pain. “You’re one of the few people I trust with half the old equipment in this prison. What am I going to do for the next month while you’re healing?”

You moved to rest your head on his shoulder. “You know I’d make a good supervisor.” You wiggle your wrist out of his grip and slide your arm to hold his hand, not minding they were still ice cold.

“For me or other mechanics?” He asked with a hopeful tone in his voice, leaning in slightly.

“I think you know that answer.” You lean in the rest of the way, placing a quick and gentle kiss on his lips. 

“Hmm. I‘ve never heard of that supervision strategy.” “You’re a fucking idiot”

**********

[ckret2]

Chapter 50 of by this point human Bill Cipher is almost relieved to be imprisoned in the Mystery Shack again: Bill tells Mabel about his adventures, and Ford and Dipper tell Fiddleford about theirs.

But first Bill's gonna die for a bit.

"Guys! You're okay!" Mabel flung her arms around Dipper and squeezed him. "We were worried you were floating around and broke your legs when the gravity came back."

"N—no, we were fine," Dipper said. 

Mabel let go of Dipper to hug Ford next—and then drew back, looked him up and down, and looked at Bill. "What happened to your clothes?"

Bill said, "We fell in the lake."

"Ha!"

"Tate was kind enough to loan us dry clothes," Ford said.

"You look like big dorks." She turned to Bill last, took in his dirty haggard appearance, and said, "And you look awful. Where have you guys been the last two days?"

"Thanks for asking! I've been in..." Bill glanced at Stan. "Am I allowed to say the name of the place I've been?"

Stan shook his head. "Not in front of the kids, you don't."

Bill sighed. "Agony. I've been in agony."

"Aww!" She hugged Bill last. "I like your stupid Fishmas sweater."

"Consider it yours as soon as I can change." He wriggled out of her embrace to point at his feet. "Check out the shoes, though!"

Mabel cracked up. "Omigosh, fish slippers! Fi— Fishlers? Fishppers?"

"Fishoes?"

"Fishoes!"

Soos said, "What did happen out there?" He was in the kitchen, cleaning and reorganizing after zero gravity had tossed everything out of order. "Did you heroically save Gravity Falls from imminent multidimensional devastation?"

Ford said, "No. Aside from the effects on gravity, it... turned out to be a benign phenomenon."

"Oh," Soos said. "Like... what Bill said?"

Ford grimaced. He managed to just nod instead of saying afraid so.

Again, he expected Bill to gloat; again, Bill said nothing. He didn't even look at Ford.

"It wasn't an eclipse, though," Dipper muttered, shooting a dark look at Bill. "It would've been an eclipse if it had gotten between us and gravity. It was basically the opposite."

"What do you want from me." The question was more sighed than spoken. "It was called an eclipse when I was growing up, I dunno what to tell you."

Ford, Dipper, and Mabel all looked straight at Bill at the mention of his childhood; but he didn't say anything more. He just trudged to the kitchen and leaned tiredly on the doorframe, watching Soos work. "Grab me something from the fridge."

"Sure thing, dawg." Soos opened the door. "What do you want?"

Bill was silent for a moment. Slowly, like a spirit medium channeling a faint message from the other side, he said, "I think... the body wants a vegetable. Gimme some guacamole."

"Sorry, dude, we had the last of it with dinner."

"Fine. Just give me an avocado and salsa, I'll make do."

"You got it."

"Two avocados."

Soos started rummaging through the jumbled mess in the fridge. "So if everything was okay, what took you guys so long to get back?"

"Yeah, I've been wanting to ask," Stan said. (He hadn't been able to in the car; when everyone realized Bill had passed out as soon as he'd sat down, they'd fallen into an awkward silence.) "Was the demon making trouble or what?"

Dipper and Ford exchanged a glance; who wanted to share the embarrassing news? Ford said, "Actually, under the circumstances, he was... well behaved." Ford resisted the urge to add the modifier "tolerably." It seemed mean-spirited. Bill had constantly complained, sure, but in retrospect could Ford say the complaints were unjustified?

"Then what took you so long?"

Now Ford felt Bill's gaze on him, watching him sharply. Ford understood now. This was why Bill hadn't mentioned saving them. He was holding it in reserve—offering a deal. If Ford and Dipper didn't embarrass him, he wouldn't embarrass them. If they mentioned his breakdown, he could cut in, claim it was natural for him to be in shock after performing such a difficult, heroic deed.

It wasn't blackmail, per se. Revealing the truth wouldn't cost anybody anything but a bit of momentary self-consciousness. But wasn't that just like Bill—only passing up an opportunity to boast so he could use it to shield his ego.

"It was Bill's fault," Dipper said quickly. Ford's heart leaped into his throat. "Because—we had to climb up and down the tunnel to Gravity Peak, and he only brought dress shoes and dumb fish slippers. We kept having to slow down."

Ford felt the pressure of Bill's gaze slide off of his face as he turned away, staring back into the kitchen. Bill said, "Yep. Guess I should have brought my hiking shoes—oh, wait."

Stan said, "You could've got some better shoes when we were at the mall! You're the one who wanted those dumb dress shoes."

"In my defense, I didn't think you paranoiacs would ever let me wander around in the great outdoors—much less force me to." He leaned more heavily against the doorway with a groan, muttering, "My legs are still jelly. Worthless human body."

Dipper glanced at Ford, as if checking with him to see if he'd made the right decision. Ford gave him a tiny nod of approval. After the day they'd had, humiliating Bill just for the sake of humiliation wouldn't have served any justice; it would have just been mean.

For the past three decades, Ford had always felt that Bill deserved the strongest possible punishment, both for his prior atrocities and to prevent future ones; but, he wanted to deal with Bill swiftly and efficiently. No gloating, no torture—just one quick shot. Sure, he got some grim satisfaction from knowing Bill was unhappy—knowing that Bill's vile intentions were being thwarted—and if anyone decided to treat Bill cruelly for cruelty's sake, he couldn't say they were wrong for it... but the thought of committing it himself made him uneasy.

He tried to remember if he'd felt that way when Bill had first arrived.

"I found the salsa!" Soos called from the fridge. "Somehow it all floated onto the highest shelf? Which kind do you want?"

"That one with a picture of a sobbing baby on it."

"Extra spicy it is!"

When Soos handed over the salsa and avocados, Bill said, "Hey, Hick Junior said his father was making announcements about staying inside and low to the ground? You didn't happen to have anything to do with that, did you?"

"Oh—yeah, I called Old Man McGucket and said I had a hot anonymous tip about what was going on," Soos said. "You said it was this whole public safety thing, so I figured the whole town should probably know? He's the local respected science guy now, I thought he'd know what to do with that kind of important information."

Bill grunted. "Terrific, he gets credit for my help. But you'd all be giving me heck if I'd said nothing and half the town broke their necks, so... whatever, net zero. Here." Bill took off the Monster-Mon backpack and swung it over to Soos. "Your reward. Good job."

"Whoa, haha, this is heavy. What's in here, a bag of rocks?"

"No, just one." Bill pushed off the doorway, wheeled unsteadily around, and trudged toward the stairs.

Soos unzipped the bag. A drugged geodite blinked sleepily up at him. He gasped. "Dude! A real Monster-Mon! Is this my call to epic adventure with a lovable animal sidekick?"

Ford grimaced, remembering watching Bill feed a geodite cold medicine. "Ah."

"I think I'll name you... Rocky," Soos said.

"That—really shouldn't be here. Its natural environment is caves, I don't know if it's safe for it to be out here—for it or us." They had been known to bite.

"Aww." Soos cradled the backpack like a swaddled baby. "Do you think it would be okay if I made it a fake cave to live in?" He gasped. "I could make an exhibit for him! I'll say he's a living meteorite! People love aliens."

"I'm not sure that..." Ford sighed. Well, none of them were going back to the cave today. "Maybe you should put it in the cellar where it's darker."

"Great idea!" Soos carried the geodite through the living room. "Hey, I've already got a mattress down there. You're gonna love it, lil dude..."

Ford hoped Soos didn't get attached to that thing. He shot a glower at Bill.

Bill was already on the stairs. "Now everybody leave me alone. Except you." He pointed at Mabel. "I don't want to do anything but lay on the floor and talk about whatever Mabel wants to talk about for the next three hours."

"Cartoons and boy bands."

"Yes," Bill sighed in relief, already preparing to turn 95% of his brain off. "Wow, yes, that's exactly what I want to talk about. I can't wait." He grabbed the handrail as he climbed heavily, leaning against it for balance as he dragged himself upstairs.

Before Mabel could follow him, Ford put a hand on her shoulder. "Oh, before you go—there's something I wanted to tell you and Dipper." Voice low, he said, "You remember when you told me that Bill had mentioned Edward Bishop Bishop?"

"Yeah? When we were drawing our houses."

"Something Bill said while we were out shook a memory loose. It reminded me of a book I read as an undergraduate—Flatworld, written by Edward Bishop Bishop."

"Aww," Mabel said. "Not an artist?"

"No, although he did illustrate the book," Ford said. "It's a novella that combines Victorian social commentary with a primer on higher-dimensional mathematics by using an allegory about sentient shapes living in a two-dimensional world."

"That's what you were talking about in the boat, right?" Dipper asked. "When Bill said something about..." He scrunched his face, trying to remember, "'Up in the sky'...?"

"Upward-but-not-skyward," Ford said, "to describe something that isn't higher than us in the third dimension, but rather, in a higher dimension relative to us."

"How do you know about it?" Dipper asked. "The first time it came up, you said the name Edward Bishop Bishop was familiar, but..."

Ford sighed in irritation, "I read it as an undergraduate—in a haze of sleep-deprived exhaustion just before finals week—to get extra credit in a course on the history of mathematics. I immediately forgot ninety percent of it—which I'm sure is why I never thought of it in relation to Bill. If only I'd remembered the book thirty years ago, when it might have done me some good..."

"It's okay," Mabel said. "I forget almost everything I've read for class basically as soon as I've taken the test. I think it's pretty good that you remember anything about Flatworld at all!"

Ford smiled awkwardly. He was afraid that might say more about Mabel's study habits than about his. "Thank you, Mabel."

"And you did have a lot on your mind thirty years ago," Dipper said. "Like, Bill. Literally. On your mind."

Mabel added, "Doing creepy possession things!"

"I suppose that's true, too." What would he have done if he had remembered the book during that frenetic, delirious period when Bill and Ford had wrestled for control over his body? He'd been in no fit shape to go to the library. "I did think about it a couple of times in the multiverse—when I was visiting Exwhylia, for instance—but at the time I'd brushed it off as a lucky coincidence that I'd read a book that invented a society of shapes. It wouldn't be the first time science fiction predicted science fact. But now that Bill's mentioned it twice, I'd say it's less likely a coincidence and more likely that Edward Bishop Bishop was another of his 'students.'"

"Is there a way for us to find out?" Dipper asked. "If he was Bill's student, would he have left behind any... hints? Coded messages?"

"Like secret society conspiracy things?" Mabel asked.

"Yeah!"

"I suppose it's possible," Ford said. "If Flatworld happens to feature a one-eyed yellow triangle sharing the secrets of the universe, we'll know for sure. But, there's only one way to find out: now that I do remember the book, we can pick up a copy for research."

"That's great," Dipper said. "If Bill told the author about his home dimension... there's no telling how much we can learn about him by reading it."

"So it's basically a math textbook disguised as a story?" Mabel groaned. "That's just like doing word problems! The most confusing kind of math problems. Why does Bill keep making me have homework this summer?"

"You know what he's like," Dipper said, elbowing her with a grin. "Dastardly villain."

"Pure evil."

Ford huffed. "If it helps, as I recall the book teaches you about math concepts, but it doesn't make you do any math."

She let out a longer, more theatrical groan. "Fine. But if there's a cousin Throckmorton I'm throwing the book away."

"I dunno, sounds kinda neat," Dipper said. "It might give me a leg up when we start geometry."

"I don't remember the details of what it covers, but I bet it could," Ford agreed. "I have to visit Fiddleford this evening to return the equipment he loaned us, and... discuss the events of the last couple of days. If the library's still open when we're done I can go by and see if they have a copy of Flatworld."

"Can I come along?" Dipper asked.

"Of course. Just give me a moment to..." He looked down at himself, "change into something a little less ridiculous."

Dipper tried not to laugh. "Okay. I'll wait here. Mabel, do you want to...?"

"No thanks!" She pointed upstairs. "I've got a captive audience to teach about boy bands. I'm going to make him listen to Sev'ral Timez's entire discography."

"He's already had a pretty bad day. Don't torture him even more."

Mabel blew a raspberry. "He'll love it." She bounded up the stairs.

Ford headed to his and Stan's guest room. Dipper took off his backpack, dropped it in the living room, and stuck his hands in his pockets—then pulled one out in surprise.

The enchanted friendship bracelets. They were still in his pocket. Bill hadn't had them on since Dipper's out-of-body experience that morning.

Dipper stared at them uneasily; then hung them in their usual place on the entryway coat rack and resumed waiting for Ford.

####

It was a rare opportunity that Bill was allowed in the kids' room; but with Ford and Dipper out of the house, the one person most likely to complain wasn't around. So after having extracted a strict promise for him to behave himself, Mabel had let him in, for ease of gossip and CD-switching.

But even if Dipper had been in the room, he wouldn't have found much worth complaining about. Once Bill had finished his snack (he'd eaten the avocados like pears, skin and all, and drank down the salsa like a chunky smoothie), he'd laid down on the floor, and since then had remained a dead lump. Face buried in his crossed arms, curled up in the oversized Fishmas sweater and a set of loose stolen-from-Soos sweats to replace the towel skirt, he might as well have been a pile of laundry that had sprouted curly golden hair. Mabel had put Sev'ral Timez's first album on the boombox, sat herself on Bill's back, and started brushing out his damp, knotted curls without asking as she talked about each track.

To her delight, Bill started insisting they skip past the slow, emotional love ballads, saying he preferred the bouncier dancier tracks; she thought the fact that he was displaying a preference rather than begging to turn the band off was a good sign. He was actually listening to the music. Possibly even liking it! Maybe she'd manage to convert him into a fan. She recounted her experiences with the band's cloned members and Bill threw in the polite "Mhm" and "Uh-huh?" where appropriate without lifting his head from the floor or opening his eyes. She'd thought he might have had something to throw in about the cloning thing, that seemed like the kind of conspiracy nonsense he might have a hand in; but if he knew anything, he wasn't up to sharing it.

When she'd wrangled his hair into some semblance of order, she got to work on his fingernails. His arm was like a dead weight in her hands, loose and unresisting but not helping, either. He shifted his head over to rest on his other arm and otherwise didn't move.

"Your fingernail polish is destroyed," Mabel said. On three fingers the paint had been all but completely scraped off. When he'd left a couple of days ago, it had just been lightly chipped. She started stripping the remainder with nail polish remover.

"Is it?" Bill mumbled. "Mmh. Yeah, probably from clawing in the dirt."

"Pfff. What did you do the last couple of days?"

Bill slowly sucked in a breath so deep that Mabel felt his back lift her a little higher off the ground; and then he just as slowly let it back out. "Do not," he said, "get me started."

He got started.

He began with a tirade about the contempt that both Ford and Dipper had shown him and his far superior subject matter expertise for the last two days; and then about being hauled out and exposed during totality after repeating over and over how dangerous it was and how much he would prefer to not do that—Ford had even admitted he'd dragged Bill out into open air just because he knew how much he didn't want that!—and from there Bill looped back to listing a whole litany of gripes against what he perceived as egregious and undeserved disrespect from Ford over the last couple of weeks—"Youmight have lied to me about that glass pyramid, but at least you didn't laugh in my face about it!"

(Mabel thought Ford pretty much had the right to be as disrespectful to Bill as he wanted, after everything Bill had put him through. Lying about a silly imaginary cult was less mean than lying about taking over the universe. But part of being a good friend, she knew well, was lending a sympathetic ear to your friend's venting without suggesting that said friend might be in the wrong. She had a Color Critters episode about being honest with your friends she could show him later.)

Bill seemed to gain strength as he aired his grievances, bolstered by Mabel's encouraging "mhm" "uh-huh" noises. By the time she'd finished repainting his first hand (she'd picked a glittery purple polish she thought would complement all the yellow he wore), he was sitting upright and Mabel had to sit in front of him to start on his other hand.

"—and my stupid feet hurt," Bill griped. "Since Stanford made me traipse halfway through the mountain barefoot because he wouldn't let us go back down before the gravity returned and I don't even own shoes for spelunking. And my knees hurt, and my back hurts, and I could have killed for a walking stick but do think they'd have allowed me one if I asked? Because I don't think so! I tripped over—I don't know, a hundred roots."

"Worst hiking trip ever." Mabel finished painting his second hand, and started looking through her miniature sticker sheets for some fun stickers to put on Bill's first hand now that it was dry.

"Worst in the history of your planet! Even the Donner party had a better hike! At least some of them got something to eat," Bill said. "All I got for two days was a handful of cereal and Stanford's liquid meat in a toothpaste tube."

Mabel stuck out her tongue.

"And Stanford walks too fast. And your brother kept trying to squeeze through gaps between trees I couldn't get through. And Stanford kept fiddling with his—stupid—useless antique Civil War lantern he's so proud of, and he's just lucky that I thought to bring a way to find a light source even though I didn't even need one, because I knew he would bring that stupid Civil War lantern..." Bill's complaints petered out.

And then, voice oddly quiet, he said, "And I saw my corpse." 

Mabel looked up from carefully placing a yellow butterfly on Bill's middle fingernail. There was a dark look in his eyes. "Oh," she said. "Oh, Bill. I'm so sorry."

This wasn't just a bad camping trip. This was serious. She had to treat it seriously.

She ejected the current CD from the boombox, put in another Sev'ral Timez album, and skipped to track 4: "This goes out to anyone having a bad day. Ladies, this one's for you. 'Girl, today has been—straight whack. You don't know how you're gonna—bounce back. But any time you're down, I'll always be around; I'll drive your heart back to Happy Town'..." Oh yeah. That was the exact energy Mabel was trying to channel.

"And I didn't feel anything when I touched it." Bill was staring down at his hands like he barely recognized them. "No energy, no connection—nothing. What if there isn't a connection anymore? What if I'm just a human now?"

Did that weigh on Bill? Clearly, enough that he'd decided to endure imprisonment in the Mystery Shack rather than kill his body to see if there was still a triangle inside.

But he'd never talked about it before now; she'd thought maybe he just didn't worry about it.

But that was dumb. Of course he worried about it. He was just like her. When something scared him, he just pushed it down and hoped that if he ignored it enough, everything would be okay! Until he couldn't pretend anymore.

And she'd never heard him sound this scared before.

She took his hands and hoped that would help.

He squeezed her hands so hard it hurt. His still-wet nail polish smeared on her hand. "What if I'm really gonna grow old and die in this rotting meat doll, what if I never go home again—? There's so much I haven't done, I was going to throw an eternal party, it would have been beautiful, everyone would have loved me, but now— and now—" He let out a choked noise, head bowing over their joined hands, posture broken. Hot tears landed on the backs of Mabel's hands. "And I didn't even get to, just, die and be done with it, I have to know I'm dead, I have to know everything I was going to do..."

"Hey—come here." Mabel tentatively wrapped her arms around Bill's neck and shoulders, compressing his bouncy curls. She half expected him to pull away.

Instead, he buried his face against her shoulder and hugged her back like she was the only thing keeping him from drowning.

After spending the last two days suppressing his grief and fear so hard his body couldn't function through it—after spending over a month suppressing his grief and fear—finally, finally, he peeled the tape off his cracked shell to let it leak out. He couldn't hold it together anymore. He'd barely put himself back together long enough to get on his feet and make it to the shack. This was the only place it was safe to fall apart. He muffled his sobs in Mabel's sweater.

And Mabel—who was used to being comforted by adults but who had never been called upon herself to comfort anybody but her brother and the occasional friend—had no idea how she was supposed to comfort a zillion-year-old almost-definitely-adult alien through an existential crisis.

Not for the first time, she wondered whether she might have gotten in over her head.

She pushed the worry down. Everything would be okay. Bill needed her—she could feel him trembling—and he didn't have anybody else in the world he could trust. And if she didn't know what else to do, at the least she could keep hugging him.

Voice so tight it almost squeezed out as a whisper, Bill said, "I was going to make a utopia here, but now I'm just gonna die here."

"I'm so sorry." How do you comfort someone processing the fear of mortality? She'd never processed it herself, she was thirteen, it was just another scary future thing she'd deal with when she had to. The best she knew how to do was be nice. "But... I'm here, okay? For—for anything you need." (Anything that wasn't evil, anyway—but now was not the appropriate time to make Bill feel like her support was conditional.)

"Tell me I won't die."

"You won't die! You're never, ever gonna die." Mabel hugged him tighter. "I'll fistfight Death. I'll—break his bony kneecaps."

"Thanks."

"I'll swing at the reaper with a baseball bat."

Bill laughed feebly. "With nails in it?"

"Yeah! And barbed wire! Connected to a battery!"

"Oh, we're taking Death down. Nobody's dying ever again."

"Everybody lives forever!" Mabel laughed; but it quickly petered out. "But... I'm not gonna let you die. You're my friend, and I won't let anything happen to you."

Bill's trembling had stopped, and his embrace was less death-grippy. "I owe you one, Shooting Star." From Bill, "thanks" sounded hollow, but "I owe you one" really sounded like a thank you.

"Hey. If I tell you a secret, do you promise not to do anything evil with it?"

"Sure. Promise."

Mabel doubted it, but that was as good as she was gonna get. "I've always thought you're still a triangle on the inside. You've got those creepy cat eyes that see the future and stuff! If you were just a normal human, wouldn't you have normal human eyes?"

Bill made a noncommittal noise.

"Plus, if you'd really been turned into a human on the inside, then being in a human body wouldn't feel so bad—right? It'd just feel normal."

Bill was silent for a moment. Voice hoarse, he whispered, "I hope you're right."

####

Fiddleford answered the door himself. "Stanford, Dipper, come in! I was just cleaning up." He had a broom, and the great hall's floor behind him was sparkling with broken glass. Ford was relieved to see Fiddleford had put on shoes. Unfortunately, they were fuzzy slippers. "Pardon the mess!"

"Think nothing of it. The shack's been turned upside-down, too." Ford stepped around a broken chair. "Don't you have anyone to help you clean, though?"

"Oh, I do, I do! I built me a Janitorial Executive Drone to tidy up," Fiddleford said. "I'm just cleaning up the mess JED left."

Ford and Dipper looked around at the shattered glass, broken furniture, scorch marks around the fireplace, and torn curtains. Dipper asked, "Did... JED make this place any cleaner?"

"Not at all!"

Ford and Dipper caught Fiddleford up on their scientific findings of the last couple days. Ford was almost embarrassed to admit they hadn't found any noteworthy quantities of micro-rips, as if he were confessing to a personal academic embarrassment—even after Fiddleford pointed out that it had been his own theory, not Ford's. (All the same, Ford hated to be so wrong, even by association. Being wrong felt like a moral failing.)

In return, Fiddleford told them what he'd been up to. He'd confirmed with them NASA fellas that the odd gravity effects weren't detected anywhere but Gravity Falls. At their behest, he'd set up some sensors around town, and when gravity suddenly reversed, the measurements they'd taken had allowed him to make a very loose model of the shape of the force that caused it. He showed Ford and Dipper the model on a computer in his lab, black screen with sharp glowing green lines forming an armature in the shape of a force. It looked like an enormous flying sausage that tapered down at one end. Too little detail to tell exactly what it was; but it certainly could have been an axolotl.

It was turning to look at the cliff where they'd stood.

Fiddleford wasn't pleased to find out the information he'd passed on from Soos had originally come from Bill; but he'd suspected it and already done all his soul-searching before reluctantly sharing his advice with the masses and hoping it wouldn't come back to bite him. "He didn't bother to warn us that gravity would actually disappear today, though," Fiddleford said indignantly. "So he could crow about being right and still get to see some folks get hurt, I reckon."

"Actually, this time I don't think he was hiding it. I kinda think he just made a mistake?" Dipper said.

Ford nodded. "Dipper's right. Bill was incredibly alarmed this morning when it became clear our estimates were wrong. It only made more trouble for him."

"I suppose," Fiddleford said grudgingly; then gave them a sharp look. "This mornin'? You took him camping?"

Ford and Dipper winced. Ford mumbled, "Not for fun."

"Stanford Pines—!"

It took a minute of hooting and hollering before Ford could calm Fiddleford down enough to explain the circumstances: that they'd only brought Bill because of just how much he explicitly did not want to be brought; that it had been a thoroughly unpleasant experience for everyone and Ford had never expected it to be otherwise; and that Bill had proven useful—Ford decided not to share the details—but he hadn't forgotten that Bill always made himself useful before he betrayed someone. If a man helped a little old lady cross a street, opened her door for her, put up her groceries, and then knocked her out and burgled her house, only one of those actions mattered.

(Dipper fell silent rather than help reassure Fiddleford. Ford supposed that was because he'd objected to bringing Bill, too.)

Fiddleford grudgingly admitted that under the circumstances, bringing Bill had been logical. "But that's just the thing—sometimes your logic don't account for the fact that you've got human emotions, too."

"Ah, yes, those human emotions. One of my worst flaws," Ford joked.

Fiddleford didn't laugh. "I mean it, Stanford. The most logical plan in the world don't mean nothing if he talks you into throwing it aside."

Ford thought of all the times he'd let his temper get the best of him over the last couple of days. Could he really say he'd made the logical decision when he'd made it out of anger? "Yes. I... see what you mean."

"Just be careful," Fiddleford said. "I saw you under that demon's oppression for months and never thought it was anything worse than how you always got around finals week—heck, for all I saw, I reckon he coulda started possessing you without me noticing—and I don't want that to happen again!"

Dipper winced. Ford found somewhere other than Fiddleford's face to look.

"What?"

"He... did. Possess me." (Dipper didn't pipe up with his experience. Ford didn't blame him.)

"He what? When?!"

"Remember toward the end of the project? When I started pulling all-nighters to finish the calculations...?"

Fiddleford smacked his forehead and sank down into the nearest chair.

Ford winced again. "I should have told you." During their talks over the past year, he'd been very reluctant to mention Bill or the fallout at the end of the portal project. They both had. "But—I assumed you'd guessed by now. What did you think was happening?"

"Frankly? I thought you'd started taking something illicit."

Ford snorted. "I—all right." He'd done stupider things during finals week.

"If he was possessin' you, why didn't you ask for help? I could've found somebody who knows how to do exorcisms. Did he not let you? Or—or did I miss you trying to tell me...?"

Ford shook his head. "No, I didn't want an exorcism." He wasn't sure Bill was the kind of "demon" that responded to exorcisms anyway. "At the time, I thought... that he was helping me."

Dipper reluctantly piped up, "He... possessed me once too. I didn't know that's what he was doing until too late, but... Even after you know he's a bad guy, he's really good at making you think he's just helping."

Fiddleford didn't immediately say anything to that. Ford couldn't meet his gaze.

Finally, Fiddleford said, voice low and worried, "Just tell me you won't let him get into your head again. Either one'a you."

Dipper shook his head. "Definitely not."

Ford said, "As he is now with all his powers gone, I don't think he can enter my head. Anyway, I had a metal plate surgically installed—"

"I didn't mean that way."

Right. "I won't. I promise."

Fiddleford nodded. "Didja really get a metal plate installed?"

Ford knocked on it demonstratively.

"Hmm." Fiddleford stroked his beard thoughtfully. He pointed at a contraption in the corner that looked like a ten foot tall tuning fork with electricity arcing between its tips. "Try not to get within five feet of that thing."

Ford eyed it nervously.

####

Fiddleford insisted Ford and Dipper stay for dinner. It was the first proper meal they'd had after two days of tubes mushy meat and mushy vegetables; so they tried not to show their disappointment when they received mushy meat and mushy vegetables. Fiddleford's automatic meatloaf-and-mashed-potatoes maker did its job more competently than JED did its, but Ford suspected that was partially because it didn't have legs to let it go get in trouble.

As they drove back into town, a stoplight turned red at the intersection with Main Street. Ford glanced down Main toward the library and asked, "Do you still want to stop by the library?"

Dipper, who'd nearly nodded off, blinked sleepily. "Huh?"

"To pick up Flatworld?"

Dipper yawned. "Honestly, I kinda just wanna go home and sleep."

"I hear that." He'd almost drowned today. He was exhausted. "Perhaps this weekend."

"Aren't you going to that concert with Mabel?"

"Was that this Saturday?" He'd lost track. Mabel had won four tickets from some radio contest to see Phrancisco in Portland and had asked Ford if he'd like to come. "I'm undecided. I'd like to go—I've been a fan of Invisible Plastic Yellow since they formed." He was the one who'd told Mabel about the band after their Portland trip and gotten her their albums. He'd had a phase when he'd really gotten into cutting-edge underground new wave music. It had made him feel conventionally cool, which not many things did. Now, all his musical tastes were three decades behind. He hadn't even known Phrancisco had a solo career until Mabel came home with tickets.

"But she's bringing her friends, and whoever has the fourth ticket needs to chaperone; and I'm afraid an old man escorting around three young girls would look... odd. It may be more appropriate for one of the other girls' parents to go." But he did want to see Phrancisco. "Perhaps I'll wait and see whether Mabel talks me into it."

"Better pack your bag now, then."

Ford laughed. He had a point. "If I do go to Portland, maybe I can stop by a bookstore to pick up Flatworld. If it tells us anything useful about Bill, I suspect we'll want a household copy for reference."

He was eager to reread it. He'd forgotten so much of it since college. He only recalled the vague, overarching plot: something about a third-dimensional sphere teaching a second-dimensional square about realities with higher and lower dimensions—from zero dimensions up to four—and a stuffy society based on what geometric shape you were... but that was it. He probably never even would have remembered the phrase "up but not north" if Bill hadn't referenced it. He wondered how much it could have helped him if he'd reread it sooner.

Dipper yawned again. "Sounds good."

The light turned green; and Ford drove past the library and headed on home.

####

(After going full tilt for two months, we finally get a breather lol. I hope y'all enjoyed, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts!)

[bluewxrld07]

love ain't so pretty (Luke Hughes)

Warning(s): angst, gold-digger accusations, self-doubt, insecurity

Summary: Y/n is a hard worker. She may not come from a family of wealth, but she doesn't let that define her. Until Luke says something inn which that something is said in a way he can never take back.

She was so overstimulated. She was tired, she was sweaty, she had stains on her shirt from a spilt coffee mishap.

Yet she still had that smile on her face as she greeted and bid farewell to regulars and other newer customers. Y/n wiped the sweat dripping from her forehead away as she finished wiping down one of her last tables for the night, pocketing the leftover generous tip she was left.

As she brought the dishes to the back and hung up her apron, she saw one of her closest coworkers, Grayson, making his way towards her.

"We're going out tonight if you want to join? Just to Don's down the street." he tells her as she helps the chefs with putting dishes in the sink.

She purses her lips. "Not tonight-" her coworker groans. "I promised Luke I'd come home tonight and watch the rest of the Frozen four game. UMich plays tonight, so he invited some of the guys over and wants us all there to watch it."

Grayson puts his hands on his hips and looks her up and down. "Girl, you are absolutely smitten by this man."

Y/n rolls her eyes, feeling her skin heat up. "He gets me what can I say. He's the first guy who likes me as a person. Not as just something with tits and ass." She jokes, earning a playful shove from him.

They laugh. "Hey those guys back then were fine as fuck and you know it." He shoots, earning a defeated sigh from her as she grabs her belongings.

"Yeah yeah, that was back then. I'm happier now," she chuckles, giving Grayson a hug. "Tell your man of the night hi for me though." she jokes, earning a snort.

"Oh you'll bet hearing about it tomorrow don't you worry." Graysons calls out to her as she walks off.

As she drove home that night, she felt more of the fatigue slipping in from her twelve hour shift, her feet beginning to slowly throb from being on them nonstop.

She knew she would regret taking another twelve hour shift for the fifth day in a row, but in all fairness she knew her paycheck was going to look super nice. Not that she minded working anyway.

Y/n has never had things come easy to her. She came from a family of the lower class, and she had done what she could to support them while also getting her education.

When it came to college, she knew that she wanted nothing more than to graduate with her Bachelor's degree in health science. That all came to an end when her mom died, and her father was struggling to pay bills. So she put her dreams and scholarship acceptance letters aside, putting her family first and working her ass off.

Now she was working as one of the partial owners of a very beautiful restaurant, making a decent amount of change and ignoring what everyone had said about her decisions of not going to college. Sure she still wishes she could have experienced the college life, but she knew that this life was better than spending the rest of her life paying off student loan debt.

She worked hard to get where she got to, and working where she does is what caused her to meet her now boyfriend of almost three years, and she would be damned if she would let Luke be the only one making the money in their relationship.

He has always made comments about how he could be their income, but it always needed with her saying she wanted to make her own money. As well as knowing she would get bored not doing something with her life, and she couldn't face the thoughts of him thinking she would become too reliant on his money.

She snapped herself out of the darker side of those thoughts, knowing she does work hard.

Y/n lets out a sigh of exhaustion as she made her way up the stairs towards her and Luke's shared apartment, the sounds of the guys voices being heard as she got closer to their place.

The girl opened the door quickly to not disturb their conversation being had in the other room, shutting it quietly as she took off her shoes.

She set her keys and purse on the rack, making her way down the hall and pulling her hair into a knot on the top of her head.

The guys chuckles and conversations dying down a bit as she cam into view, everyone giving her warm welcomes and 'hello's. She exchanged a few hugs and greetings to the Devils players in her household, soon making her way behind the couch to hug her boy from behind.

Luke lets out a chuckle as he felt Y/n bury her face in his neck and place a kiss there, his fingers caressing her wrists that were around his neck.

"How was work, baby?" he asks softly, she hums.

"Busy. Long. Grayson asked if I wanted to come out with him and the rest of the crew, but I just could not. I'm so tired."

"How many hours did you work today?"

"Close to thirteen. I covered for Miriam because her son was sick." she sighs, laying her chin on his shoulder.

Luke places a few chaste kisses on her cheek and temple. "You definitely deserve a drink or two though."

"Yeah, but I wanted to come watch the game with you and the boys. I also don't get paid till tomorrow, so I'd rather just keep the money spending to a tighter budget." she explains, earning a grin from Luke.

"I could've sent you money, love. You never go out really," he assures her, but she shakes her head and stands straight. She squeezes his shoulders.

"Not the point, baby. I don't need you spending your money on me. I make my own money, I don't want to rely on you, you know how I get with you spending money on me." she says, placing a kiss on his head.

Luke just sighs, and looks up at her. "Why don't you go shower, and I will grab you a drink and something to eat for when you get back out here?" he suggests, she grins down at him and nods.

Y/n walks off to their shared bedroom and into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her to strip down.

The warm water instantly helps sooth her muscles and pains, earning some decompressing sighs of relief from her as she washes herself clean.

Once she is done, she steps out and heads towards the mirror to do her nightly routine. She shrugs on some cropped sweats and Luke's sweatshirt that was hanging up, brushing her hair after.

As she opens the door that goes back to their shared room, she sets her towel on her desk chair and goes to place her phone on the charger.

She pauses when she hears something from one of the guys, in which it makes her frown.

"Why didn't she go out tonight?"

She hears Luke sigh. "I don't know. She said something about not getting paid till tomorrow and being tight on her budget."

One of the guys snort. "What does she do?"

"She's a partial owner and full-time manager for that nice restaurant down the street overlooking the bridge."

It's quiet for a few seconds. "That's it? Nothing special?"

"Really? I thought she did something else," one guy chuckles.

"Nope, she's just over there." Luke answers quietly.

"No wonder she is tight on money. I thought she went to college and got a real job or something."

"I didn't know you'd stoop down to lower-class type girls Lukey," a guy jokes, making Y/n's insides churn.

"I don't that's the thing," Luke laughs, Y/n instantly getting closer to the doorway to hear what else he has to say. "She could definitely use the money I make here and there. She doesn't make shit compared to what I get."

Y/n's blood runs cold.

She knows she is not professional sports player, but she does make a decent amount, so hearing Luke say that makes her heart ache. The man that was supposed to stick up for her and love her regardless was saying things like this when she wasn't in the room. Who knew what else he was saying when he wasn't around her.

"Wouldn't you be worried about her becoming a gold digger though, man?"

Luke scoffs. "I mean yeah of course, but she's got this thing where she needs to prove to whoever that she can make money. So she will never accept a dime from me. She barely pays for our rent here, she pays a good forty percent. But without me around who knows if she'd have a roof over her head."

Y/n didn't even realize she was crying until she felt the drops hitting her toes, the girl instantly wiping at her eyes.

She couldn't listen to any more of their conversation, instantly heading towards their closet and grabbing whatever she could fit into the duffel.

If he was going to say this about her, making her sound like she could be so broke and so homeless if he wasn't around. She didn't want a man like that in her life.

Y/n grabbed her phone and charger, slipping on a pair of socks and her jacket before walking out of their bedroom.

She stormed down out past the group sitting in the living room, noticing Luke in the kitchen in her side view. She beelined towards the hallway that led to their front door, putting on her shoes as she heard Luke say her name.

"Where you going? I just finished making you your favorite!" he says in an excited tone. Luke's smile falters as he sees her puffy and red splotched face.

"Baby? What's going on?" he asked, as he began to walk towards her.

She just shook her head, grabbing her purse and keys. "I can't do this." she scoffs with a sniffle.

"Do what? Hey, hey, hey," he says, grabbing her waist to turn her back towards him as she begins to open the front door. His face falls completely at the sight of her broken one.

"I won't be some fucking charity case for you," she snaps. Luke's face frowning. "What?" he asks.

"I make more than enough money to be financially stable on my own fucking feet. I don't need you feeding some fucking lies to your so called friends that I can't pay shit. You chose the rent split percentage. You chose how much you wanted me to pay because you wanted to spend more on me."

Luke's face was white. "Y/n I-"

"No. I'm done Luke. Go fuck some high-class bitch that can afford everything you can and more. We're over."

Before Luke could get another word out, the door slammed in his face.

Luke backed away from the door silently, his figure coming into view to the boys who heard the door slam.

"Luke you good?"

He ran his hands through his hair, his eyes still locked on the door in hopes she would come back. Tears threatening to spill in his eyes.

"Luke?"

He turned away and towards the kitchen, swiping the glass on the counter away and letting it shatter on the fridge.

"I fucked up. Big time."

[lilgynt]

i cannot even be sick without my mom being like i will make you want to kill urself