#dvd in our dvd player for like hours over and over)

[ms-demeanor]

Also, joke's on that guy. The only way that could have been more fun is if it was multiple denominations of coins. "Sort giant container of coins into small piles and total up the contents" is one of my favorite activities and part of why I loved closing the register and counting tips at the coffee shop.

[blissfali]

hey guys. wasnt able to be on tumblr because ivr been busy building this he-man castle grayskull mega construct (knock off lego) set for the past 36 hours. doesnt it look awesome

[simplydnp]

Do you think the recording of TIT (bc it has to be getting recorded at some point tbh) will be a dvd release or a youtube upload this time around? I forget if Dan said any specific reason why WAD ended up being free on YT, but I feel like after setting that precedent, there's almost no going back. Ofc, there is the precedent of the two actual dnp tours being dvd or YT Red/Premium releases, but do you have any thoughts?

oh anon i'm so happy you asked. bc i did so much research for this about WAD before we knew what would happen with it.

so. the problem with dvds is storage capacity. with TIT being 2 hours, that is a lot of footage to put on a singular dvd at the resolution that they'd currently want to. dvds come in 2 sizes: 4.7 gb and 8.5 gb. you can fit a 2 hr movie onto a single layer (4.7) but any longer, and you need the double layer (8.5). thus, TIT would have to be on a double layer, unless they don't plan on including anything else except the 2 hr recording. a dvd can't play high resolution footage, only standard definition (480p). so there'd be a picture quality difference.

this is where blu-rays come in. they can store and play 1080p footage. they also hold significantly more space (a single layer blu-ray can hold 25 gb, a double 50 gb). part of the trade-off here though is that higher resolution footage takes up more space. a single layer can store 2.25 hr of HD video; a double 3 hrs. they could get away with a single layer, and that includes room for 2 hours of standard definition BTS video.

problem is, not everyone has a blu-ray player (not like everyone has dvd players either). but the main issue is that DVD players won't play blu-rays--and this includes disc drives for laptops and PC's. you need a special external driver to do it.

we'd be wading into contracts and companies being interested in selling physical copies, and given how discs in general are sort of becoming obsolete, i would be surprised if they put it on disc.

our next option would be streaming. i don't really see them wanting to attach it to any larger corporation--especially given they're physical media guys. the thought of just losing something simply because a streaming service doesn't want it anymore, or the company goes under, would be enough to keep them away from that.

people pitched the idea of nebula or dropout, but i don't see them posting a single video on nebula and then nothing else. and since i don't see them as patreon guys, i don't think they'd want to do incentives for subscription style stuff. dropout would be more of a possibility, but they'd probably want to do more with dropout in terms of guest starring before entirely handing their baby over, y'know? like hank did a whole d20 season before he did his special there.

i do think they might just upload it to dapg. genuinely. because of what happened with WAD--both rights wise and precedent wise. but also, could be extremely good for them if they can actually monetize it. their longer videos on dapg do very well, and since WAD happened before TIT was fully ironed out, i bet they've included the prospect of doing so into their scripting, so it has the ability to be monetized on their channel. plus, the desire to make it accessible for everyone (even though they are trying to tour in more countries). depending on how that goes, it may be delayed in being released online.

a lot of technical talk but i am so glad you asked anon, i love logistics discussion!

[wil-o-wispy]

The Wife, the Lover and the Bastard Son - Part 5

Pairing: Chris Redfield x FEM!Reader

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 (You are here)

Summary: The more hours that pass, the closer he is to finding you.

Content: Canon typical violence/swearing, descriptions of blood, more reader lore drops, references to RE5, brief mentions of vomiting from seasickness, mostly next chapter setup but there's some juiciness in here, brief description of banging a head against a wall. Reader is referred to as 'Doc' and is the wife of (dead?) Albert Wesker and is a former Umbrella scientist.

a/n: That took longer than I thought but here it is. Once again, I appreciate you and thank you for reading!

w/c: 9.4k

It felt like you were running for an eternity after you witnessed Albert breaking out of his experimental confines. You didn’t look back. You didn’t have a plan. You didn’t even think on where to go next. Your only goal was to get as far away from Albert as physically possible.

Years of suppressed trauma from the day Albert died rears its ugly head and everything floods back to you in one overwhelming emotional wave that feeds your adrenaline and keeps your feet moving one in front of the other. Fear. Confusion. Anger. Devastation. Fear. You keep having to wipe away the tears that won’t stop leaking out of your eyes, trying in vain to keep your vision clear as you blindly wind your way through the facility.

But adrenaline highs eventually run out even if paralyzing fear is still present.

Your legs cramp. Your lungs scream for something more than just short puffs of air. Your heart works overtime from the strain of the situation and beats so fast it hurts and black dots the edges of your vision. Blood pumps through your veins so quickly that you can hear it in your ears so you can’t focus on anything else.

The moment you need to place your hand on the wall to keep yourself from collapsing is the second you decide to open whatever door is closest and hide out in whatever room is on the other side of it.

You’ve managed to run from the inner sanctum of the new lab all the way to an older, non-refurbished part. Is this the old lab? What used to be part of the military base? You can’t tell and you don’t care. You push open the door and sink to the floor as soon as you shut it again, trying to gulp some air into your lungs so you don’t keel over and pass out. As you try to slow down your breathing and collect yourself, only one thought is going through your mind.

This isn’t fucking happening he’s supposed to be dead.

There’s a sound that makes you jolt upright and whip your head to the edge of the room.

Whoever was here previously left in a hurry. There are loose DVD’s, clear DVD cases, and cases with DVD’s still in them scattered all over the desk in the back while a projector idly flickers against a white screen against the adjacent wall. The noise is coming from behind the projector.

You cautiously get up from the floor and make your way over to it, still wobbly on your feet but able to keep yourself from toppling over and discover the source of the whirring: a DVD player. The disk holder is trying to retract into the machine, but the machine is askew and miscellaneous office junk is preventing it from closing properly. There’s a date written in Sharpie on the disk: March 19, 2006. The day Albert died.

A note with an official looking letterhead sits next to the machine, partially crumpled up. You pick it up, unfold it, and read its contents.

RE: Wesker Collection: Africa Tanker July 2002 – March 2006.

To Our Most Esteemed Client,

We thank you for entrusting us with this extensive recovery project involving the late Albert Wesker and his surviving wife. It has truly been an honor to observe the infamous scientist in his private life while carrying out these services.

We are happy to report that 93% of the recovered footage provided from the Africa tanker was able to be upgraded to your UHD specifications, as well as remove the most glaring audio anomalies for improved sound quality. Please see the attached inventory sheet for a full breakdown. The full transcripts will become available in the coming weeks as previously discussed.

I would humbly encourage you to reconsider my suggestion regarding upgrading the remaining footage archive. There is much to be learned from his methods in creating the Uroboros virus as well as advancing the gestation of the Plaga parasite. Should you change your mind, we would be elated to welcome you back as a client.

You feel a gentle numbness come over you as you read the note. The DVD player whirs again. Your eyes flick over to it. You absentmindedly put down the paper, reposition the DVD player so it sits properly, and move the junk that’s preventing the disk compartment from closing. The little door finally closes with a soft tapping noise, and the DVD inside it whirs until it emits a soft hum.

The image flickers to life on the projector and you feel a lump in your throat. You recognize the room. It’s CCTV footage a captain’s quarters space with a metal chair in the center with straps to constrain an unlucky subject to it at the wrists, arms, and chest. On the screen, two distant voices outside the room are arguing: a man and a woman. As the voices get closer to the room, you recognize the sound of your own voice even before Albert kicks the door open and drags you into the room by your forearm while you struggle in vain against his grip.

“I’m not like you!” You retort defiantly.

“But you are my dear, in more ways than you care to admit.” Albert replies, clearly getting impatient with how you’re acting.

“Like hell I am! Statistically, I’m gonna end up like any other one of your test subjects!”

“Don’t you dare compare yourself to those weaklings!” Albert spits, incensed at your response and abruptly forcing you in front of him so his angered expression is up close to your nervous one. Albert breathes heavily for a moment, then speaks in a colder, more pragmatic tone that is expected of him.

“You will evolve beyond your limits, and you will thank me for it.”

You watch Albert force you into the chair despite your continued protests. You watch as he straps your wrists to the arms of the chair and your torso to the back of it so quickly that the video appears to buffer on Albert’s main movements while you fail to struggle against him. You know it’s not the video. He was just that fast. You continue to struggle even after Albert takes a step back with an angered look.

“I have a rendezvous with an old colleague that I can’t afford to miss, but when I return-” You watch Albert roughly grasp your chin and turn your face to look up at him and you freeze. Albert’s voice turns into a deadly, low tone.

“I want a satisfactory answer out of you.”

After staring you down for a moment, he releases your chin and walks to the door, intending to close it. You watch him go with a defeated look.

“Please don’t do this.” You beg with a small voice.

You see Albert pause at the door and sigh with his back to the camera. He doesn’t turn to look at you. “It’s happening with or without your participation my dear. I suggest you be in good company when my New World emerges from the embers of humanity.”

Albert slams the door and you jump in your seat. A lock engages, then heavy footsteps quickly get further and further away. Once it’s quiet again, you immediately resume your attempts to wiggle out of the chair.

With no warning, the footage erupts into pixelated static, a slideshow of random frames you can barely make out, then it finally cuts to you later, still strapped to the chair in that room, and screaming at the top of your lungs.

“HELLO? I’M IN HERE! GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF THIS THING!” Your voice is strained from shouting and thick from crying. You remember the ship rocking from side to side so precariously that you thought it was going to flip over and you’d drown in that room. There’s methodical, forceful banging on the door and you can see it straining from the force of your rescuers on the other side of it.

In the real world, you hear heavy footsteps stomping towards the room you’re in and you’re suddenly very aware of how loud the projector is. Whoever heard already knows you’re here, so you just grab the closest thing to a weapon you see, which happens to be a stapler, and crawl under the desk and pull your knees to your chest. All the while, you hear yourself keep screaming for help on the projector.

A moment later, the door to the projector room flies open with so much force that you hear it slam against the wall followed by quick and heavy footsteps rushing into the room.

At the same time on the screen, you hear the door to that room finally break open, and Chris’ words trying to comfort you as Sheva and him undo your binds. Their chorus of ‘It’s okay’s’ and ‘you’re alright’s’ are ignored by you, and you get straight to business as usual, albeit with a rattled voice.

“What was that? Why was everything shaking?”

You can’t see the screen, but you know Sheva and Chris are looking at each other. Sheva finally answers.

“Excella was rejected by Uroboros.”

You’re silent for a moment on the projector. “… I tried to warn her.”

You hear yourself struggling to get to your feet, your seasickness coming back at full force as you struggle to walk in a straight line and you hear Chris grab your arm to steady you.

“Careful!” Chris says with a worried tone.

“Forget about me! We have to hurry we’re running out of time!” Your voice is strained like you’re about to vomit and you hear yourself quickly stumble out of the room while Chris and Sheva hurry after you.

The three sets of voices retreat from the room on the screen and the projector grows silent.

In the newfound silence of the room, you realize your breathing is much too loud so you cover your mouth to silence yourself.

But it’s too late for that.

You hear the footsteps stealthily approach closer.

And closer.

And closer.

You sense the presence stop right outside of your range of vision under the desk.

Albert found you. This is the end.

You yelp in surprise and raise the stapler to bludgeon whatever just discovered your hiding spot, but you freeze like a deer in headlights when you see Jake with his pistol raised.

For a moment, he just stares at you while you try in vain to steady your staccato breathing. You know you look like a mess. Tears streak your terrified face, hair sticks out in every direction, and most notably, there are blood splatters that stain your clothes.

“Doc? Jesus what happened to you?”

Jake holsters his gun and brushes your arms out of the way. He looks closely at your clothes, looking for entry points for injuries.

“It okay it’s… it’s not mine. I-I just can’t get a grip.” Your voice is hoarse and strained. No matter how hard you try you can’t seem to slow your breathing enough to even think about calming down.

Jake stops looking for injuries and directs his icy gaze to your tearful expression. “What happened?”

“He’s-” You take in a deep and shaky breath, “-he’s alive b-but he’s… he’s not himself and I… I don’t know if that’s better or worse-”

“Doc. Take a breath. Who’s alive?” Jake is trying to be the voice of reason in your panicked state, but his tone has an edge of seriousness to it.

“Wesker! These people excavated his fucking corpse and decided it was a genius idea to reanimate him. That director guy took me to the chamber, then he woke up and there was carnage when he heard my voice and… and…I can’t… I can’t do this again Jake!”

You slam down the stapler onto the ground and you put your head in your hands trying to get some sense of comfort. You mumble in your hands, still not wanting to believe your new set of circumstances.

“Why do people keep doing this? This kind of shit never ends well. You’d think people would learn but they just don’t.”

It never ends. People will always think they’re smarter than their predecessors.

Your head is pounding behind your eyes so you move a few fingers to pinch the bridge of your nose for some relief.

“What do you mean?”

You blink. Your hands retreat from your face and your eyes slowly move to Jake’s. “What?”

“You said you couldn’t do this again, what do you mean?”

Right. You did say that. You take a deep breath and finally muster up enough composure to answer.

“I… it’s a long story but to make it brief, I was the one who blew the whistle on the Uroboros project.”

Jake’s serious expression doesn’t change. You look at your hands.

“I finally realized how apocalyptic the project really was and I needed to tell someone. By a stroke of dumb luck I managed to get a B.S.A.A. radio and alert the African division.”

You feel your eyes growing hot again and you blink away the heat.

“Two agents were able to get to me about two weeks later and I told them how to kill him.”

You take another deep breath and continue.

“I told you earlier he needed regular doses of the virus to keep it stable. I knew that giving him too much would cause adverse effects. Or at least slow him down enough so the B.S.A.A. could put him down.”

You swallow the lump in your throat.

“So I showed them where he kept the extra doses. And then I showed them where the virus warheads were.”

You close your eyes and lean your head back against the underside of the desk. Jake doesn’t need to know the rest. He doesn’t need to know that Chris noticed how sickly and scared you were and put his hand on your shoulder to comfort you. He doesn’t need to know that Albert saw his nemesis touching his wife and was seething with barely contained rage because of it. He doesn’t need to know how your heart got caught in your throat when you felt Albert’s inhumanly strong arms wrap around your waist, your body move dizzyingly fast, and before you realized what had even happened, he had your back to his chest and his hand wrapped menacingly tight around your throat as he growled in your ear.

“It’s in your best interest to listen to me dearheart. We wouldn’t want any accidents to happen in front of our guests, would we?”

Jake doesn’t need to know that everything in your body betrayed you at that moment. You should have screamed, you should have thrashed, you should have done quite literally anything to try to escape his grip as futile as it would have been. But you didn’t. Jake doesn’t need to know that you’d seen Albert angry a handful of times but this was the first time you felt that he could actually kill you for going against his wishes. It wouldn’t do anyone any good if he knew it was a thinly veiled threat at best, but it was more than enough to rob you of your voice, freeze in place, and cause tears to prick at the corners of your eyes, just like today.

You don’t tell Jake any of this, but he seems to understand the subtext of your words perfectly anyway. When you feel confident you’re not going to burst into tears again, you look back at Jake.

“Albert saw. He knows what I did. He’s going to kill me for betraying him.”

Silence weighs over the two of you like a thick fog, choking any semblance of hope in the haze of reality.  You sit there wallowing in the harsh reality of your words. You knew in your soul that it was the truth, but it feels so much more real when you hypothesize Albert’s intentions with you out loud. Jake is silent, the wheels turning in his head on what he should say.

“That was a long time ago you can’t know that for sure.”

“He’s not the forgiving type, Jake. He never was.”

You hear a distant clang, and something you could have sworn was a monstrous roar from the direction of where you last saw Albert outside of the room. You freeze. Jake glances outside of your hiding place, then back to you, now aware of how distressed you actually are. Jake holds out his hand to you. He gestures you to come out.

“C’mon. I found someplace safe we can hide out for a while.” He whispers in a confident tone.

You don’t look at him. Your eyes are trained on the open door to the room.

Would Albert inject you with a virus first? Terrorize you? Gloat? Kill you outright?

“Doc, we have to go. You can’t stay here, it’s not secure.”

The ‘not secure’ comment breaks through to you, and you turn your head away from the hallway to nod up at Jake. You let him help you to your feet.

It takes much longer than you would have liked to get to the safe place even though it’s only a few hallways past the room you ran into. You freeze at nearly every distant noise, but Jake is surprisingly patient with you. He gives you incentivizing but firm words to keep your feet moving, occasionally putting his hand on your back to encourage you to keep going.

The ‘safe room’ ends up being a hybrid communications room. One part is dedicated to running the security cameras with over a dozen different monitors flickering to different parts of the facility with an intercom system attached to it. Another computer system close by it has a complex-looking computer system with a microphone attached to it. Yet another part is made up of a large console for computers and a hodgepodge conglomerate of tech for listening to and watching different sorts of media, some storage boxes, as well as a professional assortment of radio equipment. Jake sees your eyes light up upon seeing the radio setup, then shakes his head with a serious expression.

“Don’t get your hopes up yet. It’s busted.”

Your shoulders slump.

“… great.” You utter quietly. You drag your feet over to a table overflowing with scattered papers, a pair of headphones and a personal computer on it, and slump into a chair.

“Hey, we’re not out of options yet. We’ve still got this thing.” Jake says optimistically, lightly smacking his hand on the control panel of the large computer system with the microphone. “All it needs is a key card with enough clearance.”

You sigh, wanting the computer route to work out but also trying not to get too invested in the idea if it doesn’t. “Try this.” You mutter, pulling out Youju’s white keycard and holding it out to Jake. The blood on it has dried to a sickly brown color and has a faint coppery smell. Jake takes it with an eyebrow raised.

You shrug. “It was Youju’s. He won’t miss it.”

“…. I’m sure he won’t. Give me a couple minutes.”

Jake heads over to the computer and you hold your head in your hands, leaning over the table on your elbows trying to process everything that’s just happened.

Albert’s alive.

You destroyed the only Uroboros sample on this godforsaken island.

You’re willing to bet the military part of the facility isn’t stocked up on a convenient rocket launcher to get you out of this mess.

You aren’t one to wallow in self-pity but given the unthinkable circumstances, you can’t help but feel like you’ve already been backed into a corner that you have no hope of escaping.

You take another deep breath and stare absentmindedly at the papers on the table. You weren’t particularly looking for anything, but you can’t help but notice the format of the documents in front of you. All of them are audio transcripts. One of them catches your eye with its title in bold letters at the top of the page. The heading reads WESKER/GIONNE UROBOROS MEETING– JANUARY 18, 2006. A few inches below it, there’s a handwritten note in the right margin: No good. Audio too distorted and she doesn’t say anything we can use. Positive depictions of the wife only.

Positive depictions of you only? That piques your interest.

You think back to what Youju said before you woke Albert up. We’ve tried recordings of your voice and they’ve yielded positive results but not the ones we’re looking for.

You turn your attention to the computer, then eye the headphones. You dig for the mouse under the mountain of papers and wiggle it when you finally find it. The computer monitor hums to life, already logged in. On the screen, there’s a video file already pulled up of the meeting.

Out of curiosity, you put on the headphones and hit play. As the audio recording runs, you alternate between looking at the transcript and watching the footage.

The footage plays and you see a board room with a presentation on a projector. The angle is from above the projector so you can’t see what’s on the screen, but you have a good view of you and Albert sitting on opposite sides of a conference table with a cloaked figure standing not too far from you.

Jill. She deserved a better chance than you to rescue her from hell.

You recognize Excella’s thick Italian accent before you can even see her come into view. You can’t really hear everything Excella is saying due to her being in such close proximity to the camera microphone, but you recognize choice words throughout her presentation.

Tanker.

Uroboros.

Transport.

Warheads.

You remember this presentation. Excella was talking about transport protocols for Uroboros leading up to the actual virus release. Albert insisted on your attendance. While you never gave verbal feedback on his experiments at this time, you eventually figured out that Albert would carefully watch your facial expressions and body language to get your thoughts instead. You perfected your stone-faced expression out of necessity in not accidentally contributing to his plans. You watch yourself paying rapt attention. You have to give yourself credit, your poker face looks good here even though you know you were scared out of your mind. It was finally sinking into your head that the world would end if you didn’t do something to intervene.

While you’re lost in your thoughts, Excella finally finishes her speech and sultrily saunters behind Albert’s chair. Now that Excella is farther away from the microphone, it’s picking up the rest of the audio in the room much better. Even so, the audio still sounds grainy.

“Albert?” Excella croons, putting her hands on Albert’s shoulders and lightly rubbing them. She leans down close to his ear.

“Do you have any contributing thoughts?”

Albert doesn’t even look at Excella. Instead, his sunglasses adorned face turns to you sitting across the table. “I’d like to hear what my wife thinks of this contingency plan of yours.”

Excella’s mouth morphs into a thin line and she straightens her posture, not happy about that request but not saying anything to refute it. She puts on a fake smile but doesn’t take her hands off of Albert’s shoulders. “Of course.”

You don’t look at him. You only stare blankly at the presentation on the projector. You can’t tell from your body language, but you know that in this moment you were already thinking of ways to combat the Uroboros plan. But you also knew that voicing your honest thoughts would throw a wrench in any plan you would make in the future.

“Excella has already outlined the important details and caveats. I have nothing else to add.” You reply politely. Even through the slight graininess of the footage, your stiff posture and unwillingness to look in Albert and Excella’s direction are very noticeable.

Albert grunts with a nearly imperceptible frown, not satisfied with the answer. Or with the fact that you’re refusing to look in his direction. “Very well, but I still want your thoughts on the project.”

“You already have the project in good hands. End of thought.” You finally turn your head away from the screen and gesture to Excella with a neutral expression.

You knew that Excella wanted Albert, but you were almost certain that he didn’t want her. He only mentioned her in passing in whatever limited conversation he had with you, but there was always an underlying message in his choice of words that he thought she was beneath him. A pretty face with brains, a bankroll and resources behind it, but too caught up in wanting to be recognized as a legitimate member of her prestigious family and not having enough self-awareness to know she was in partnership with a viper in the grass that would discard her when it became convenient. You were almost certain because even though you knew this, he never pushed her off or rejected her advances in front of you.

“I feel tired. I’m turning in early.” You get up from your seat and briskly walk to the door.

It would have been easy to miss if you didn’t know Albert’s mannerisms so well, but you see him let out a sharp breath through his nose. He’s miffed by your response. He knew you were growing more distant by the day. He knew you didn’t like his plan. He knew you were slipping through his fingers like grains of sand that he methodically kept trying to contain by constricting his grip even more heavy handedly than he did before.

Any other interaction like this behind closed doors would have progressed to him subtly forcing his proximity to you; following you out like a suffocating shadow and pulling your attention to any mundane conversation that would ultimately lead to him explaining himself with yet another angle that didn’t justify his end goals in the slightest with the intention of you at least understanding why he thought this was the only viable course of action. Saving the known world is an admirable adventure in a number of epics old and new. But saving the world by starting anew? A new world with superhumans could never be justified by sacrificing billions of lives.

On any other day he would have followed you.

Instead, Albert is forced to save face in front of his suffocating business partner.

“Escort her to the suite.” Albert orders the cloaked figure, which follows you right on your heels. His tone is short. Controlled.

As soon as the door shuts behind you, Albert raises from his seat and shrugs off Excella’s wandering hands. Excella has an annoyed look on her face for a moment, but quickly covers it up with an alluring smile.

“You hear that, Albert? The project is in good hands.”

Albert doesn’t even bother to look at her. He only prowls to the front of the projector clasps his hands behind his back. A map of South Africa is reflected in his sunglasses. “Then ensure it stays that way. I won’t tolerate any further delays or incompetence,” Albert replies in a cold tone.

The video ends.

You pull off the headphones with a scowl on your face. The son of a bitch was trying to make you jealous on purpose.

Despite your annoyance, your eyes keep drifting back to the note in the margin. Positive depictions only.

If this one was rejected, then what do the accepted ones have you saying?

You begin looking more closely at the scattered papers.

It appears that Neo Umbrella was only working from security footage that was obtained from the Africa tanker. It’s not surprising they weren’t able to find a lot of usable audio from you. You were falling out of love and didn’t have a lot of sweet things to say to your husband. Even with that in mind, you’re surprised at how little they were able to scrape together with the gargantuan amount of media they had to work with. You knew Albert liked his cameras, but you didn’t know he kept footage of you that was this extensive.

From what you can see from the transcripts, the only ‘useful’ audio was you calling Albert one of the few pet names he liked hearing; dear, darling and love, sometimes with a ‘my’ thrown in there. Albert insisted that other terms of endearment sounded too casual, although in the early days of your marriage you’d call him increasingly ridiculous nicknames until he’d put you in your place in a way that left you both shaking and satisfied. There was a time where he liked it when you challenged him. Not just on the domestic front, but in the Umbrella labs. You weren’t afraid to tell him he was wrong or that there were more efficient methods of doing things. Sometimes you were right. Other times, Albert proved you wrong. Even with the latter, Albert would always at least listen to your input since he saw you as someone who was worth listening to.

Among the other transcripts, strangely enough, there was a fifteen page document of you reading plaga laboratory results to Albert. This was a routine occurrence. It wasn’t uncommon for Albert to ask you to read things like that aloud to help him think or as a way to review previously explored experiments before diving into new ones. It was a small ask in your eyes and it was a good way to stay informed on what Albert was doing, so you didn’t object unless you felt too seasick. What surprised you was how positive the margin notes were: Yes! She sounds interested and engaged. Find more of this to put in the rotation.

Talk about desperate for something other than curt politeness and apathy when talking to your husband. Nearly every other transcript has less satisfactory notes:

Wife too combative. Exclude from rotation.

She sounds too demanding. Discard.

This one has Gionne talking over the wife. EXCLUDE the audio if Gionne is present in future selections.

Too disinterested, but keep on file just in case.

They’re fighting again in this one. Do not use.

Can’t you read? Wesker clearly didn’t respect Gionne stop giving the lab team audio of her flirting with him.

“Doc, we’re in business!” Jake’s victorious exclamation pulls you out of your investigation.

You whip your head over to the monitor Jake was working on and to your delighted surprise, instead of the Neo Umbrella logo, you see a landing page with a number pad.

“What does it need? Radio frequency? Phone number?” You ask intensely, shooting up from your chair and standing behind his to look at the screen.

“Phone number unfortunately. The radio stuff is out as well.”

You blink, unsure why he made that sound like a problem. “Do you not have number you can call in your phone? Like your captain?”

Jake’s facial expression turns something close to sheepish.

“I lost it. Let’s keep it at that.”

You look at him blankly. Do people these days not memorize important numbers like that?

“… I know who we can call.” You mutter, shooing Jake out of the seat so you can type it in and speak easily into the microphone. You’re not sure if he’ll pick up, but he’s your best bet.

For a moment, you hold your breath hearing the dial tone come in over the speakers. Is he on a mission? Asleep halfway around the world? Stuck in a never-ending cycle of training exercises?

A gruff, annoyed voice that makes you weak at the knees finally answers on the last ring. A crowd of voices can be heard in the background. “Hello? You’ve reached Captain Redfield.”

“Chris, it’s Doc.” You breathe a sigh of relief. Even though it’s just Chris’ voice, you already feel a little better knowing rescue will imminently be on its way.

“Doc?” Chris’ tone immediately shifts to a relieved one as sounds of rummaging erupt on his end of the call. “Are you alright? Do you know where you are?”

“Well… debatable considering the circumstances and somewhere in the Pacific. Jake Muller has more info on that.”

The rummaging abruptly stops. “Wait, Jake’s with you?”

“Right here Redfield.” Jake says nonchalantly. However, you notice a sliver of something in his tone but you can’t place what it is. You have a feeling Jake isn’t on the best terms with Chris considering his role in Wesker’s death at the mansion. Second death at the Spencer Estate? Third death in the volcano? Does the third one even count at this point?

“Yep. We’ve already been introduced. He’s got an interesting history with the B.S.A.A. I’m shocked we weren’t introduced sooner since we’re both consulting.” There’s an underlying message of I know who Jake is and you’ve got some damn explaining to do in your words, but now is not the time to read Chris the riot act.

You hear Chris sigh on the other end of the line. “Well Doc I tried calling, but you’re a hard woman to reach.” Chris doesn’t sound accusatory. Just… stung. You feel your face heat up at that. You had been dodging his calls ever since that intimate moment in your kitchen a year ago. However, any guilt you feel is overshadowed by frustration in not being informed about Jake until today.

“You could have given me a little context and I would have made the time.” You reply through your teeth. Jake gives you a weird look as you’re leading this exchange. He silently points between the microphone and you, then holds his hand up in a ‘what’s that about’ gesture. You mouth back ‘long story’ as Chris ignores your comment starts addressing Jake. “Jake, your orders were to find the location of the G-sample.”

“I’ve done that boyscout.”

You hear Chris huff in annoyance. “Your orders were to find the location of the sample and not leave the mainland.”

“Well… when opportunity arises, I take it.”

“Do you have it?”

“… still workin’ on that.” Jake replies with a sour expression. You jump in.

“Chris, we’ve got bigger problems than the sample. Albert’s alive.” The words feel wrong coming out of your mouth, but you have to let any personnel know what danger is waiting for them.

Silence. Even the hum of the people in the background grows quiet. For a moment, you’re worried the call may have dropped from the old machinery.

“Did you hear me? Say something.”

“Heard you loud and clear. What’s his status compared to when we saw him last?” Besides sounding more serious, Chris doesn’t even seem phased. He’s in soldier mode: Know the enemy. Come up with a plan. Rescue the hostages.

“Physically, very similar to your encounter with him in the volcano. Mentally… he’s different I don’t really know how to explain it.” You try to put on a brave face, but even without seeing you Chris picks up on your current vulnerability.

“That’s alright. The important thing is that you’re safe and you stay safe. Are you two able to hole up somewhere until we arrive?”

“Well… we have a safe place for now. And how long’s that gonna be?”

“Depends on your location. Jake, do you have any coordinates?”

Jake responds with a latitude and a longitude. You hear talking on the other end of the line, then you hear something that has to be a curse from Chris before he finally gives you an answer.

“Seven hours, give or take.”

You sigh. That’s too long but you can’t shorten the length of the ocean, so you accept it. “Okay. Just operate off the assumption that he’s going to be hard to put down. Use flame-based ammunition, magnums, rocket launchers, and anything else you got that packs a punch.”

“I’ll pass that along. Keep this line open, I’ll be back. Don’t hang up.”

“Roger that. We’ll be here.”

You mute the microphone and lean back in your chair with a tired sigh. Jake gives you a pointed look.

“You have Golden Boy’s number memorized, but you talk to each other like that?”

You give Jake an annoyed look. “Not important right now! We have bigger problems.”

You get up from your seat to pace the room. You need to come up with a plan. “As of right now, we have absolutely nothing in terms of defense.”

Jake leans against the computer system with his arms crossed and watches you. “Not exactly. There’s too many gas masked bozos walking around here for there not to be an armory somewhere.”

You look at Jake, exasperated. “Machine guns and pistols aren’t going to make a big enough dent. There were five guards unloading everything they had on Albert in the chamber, and it didn’t even phase him. You’d need something stronger. A lot stronger.”

“Well maybe they have some heavy-duty stuff stashed away for emergencies. Point is, we won’t know unless I go out and look.” Jake pushes himself away from the monitor and starts to walk towards the door but you stand in front of him before he can get too far.

“You’ll be a sitting duck out there!” You chastise, ready to put what remains of your fighting spirit to convince Jake not to walk straight into the maw of the beast, but your facial expression shifts to a haunted look when something on the security system catches your eye.

One the center console, a hulking figure that makes your blood turn to ice comes into view. You see the black, elongated, tendril engulfed arm grasp the corner of a hallway before the rest of Albert’s body comes into view. The blood of all the unfortunate scientists is splattered across his face and chest. His red eyes are very clearly dilated, and he has an uncharacteristically wide grin on his face.

Jake notices your expression and looks behind him. Jakes expression and tone turn cold and serious.

“That him?”

You nod, unable to tear your eyes from the screen. You walk toward the console as if you’re in a trance and sit in the chair in front of it. Like driving by a car accident, can’t take your eyes off of the disaster that Youju insisted on causing. You see Albert’s lips move, but nothing is heard.

“Does this thing have audio?” You mutter the question to yourself more than anything, but Jake is quick to come to your side and flip on a switch on the control panel. Albert’s voice, somewhat morphed from the audio system, is heard loud and clear.

“My looooove? Where did you go lovely? We have so much time to make up for…”

Albert speaks in that same ‘off’ tone from before; direct and garbled. However, now it has a… singsong quality to it? Your fear is momentarily replaced with confusion. Jake glances at you, then back to the screen just as confused as you are. This is his infamous father?

“Did he… talk like that?” Jake asks, watching the screen along with you.

You keep watching the screen with a befuddled look on your face. “Absolutely not. The lava, or whatever Youju’s team tried to do to wake him up before today fried his brain or something. It’s a complete personality shift.”

You and Jake continue to watch Albert on the screen as he leans against the wall walking down the length of the hallway, leaving a trail of black gunk dripping down the pristine paneling along where he’s touched in his wake. When Albert’s in the center of the hallway, his posture grows rigid and he stops walking. His unengulfed arm attempts to reach behind him in the center of his shoulder blades in jagged movements. After a couple seconds, Albert’s body twitches again and the free arm drops back down to his side and he keeps calling out to you and continues his journey down the hallway.

You lean forward closer to the monitor that Albert was on.

“Wait… he was clawing at something on his back.”

Jake nods and pauses the footage. Then rewinds. As you saw before, Albert stops sauntering down the hallway and jerkily tries to reach behind his shoulder to something on his back. It’s easy to miss with all the black Uroboros tendrils overtaking his upper body, but there’s clearly a circular device between his shoulder blades.

“You’re right. What is that thing?”

You tilt your head and squint, recognizing the shape but confused as to why it’s there. “It’s hard to tell from the angle, but it looks like a regulator.”

“Regulator? For what?”

You shake your head, still confused. “Nothing Uroboros related.”

“Then why is it there?”

You don’t have an answer. You sit back in the chair and keep looking at the regulator in the center of the screen. “Before Albert woke up… Youju said all avenues of breaking his comatose state had been exhausted,” you think out loud.

The gears in your head are turning. Once solitary threads of thought gradually intertwine to form a loose weave until they tighten into a tapestry revealing the answer. The sample room. The audio recordings of your voice. His comatose state. Him acting much gentler with you than he ever was when you knew him. The regulator.

You sit up in your chair so quickly that it startles Jake, but you’re too caught up in your revelation to care. “Neo Umbrella gave him a parasite!” You exclaim excitedly, turning towards Jake. “We can use that.” You don’t wait for Jake to reply, you’re already up and out of the chair looking for some kind of map.

Jake looks at you blankly, not following your thinking. “A parasite? And that’s a good thing?”

“I think I know what Youju meant! There is no reason for them to have that extensive of a virus collection unless they were using it for something. I bet they tried injecting Albert with a bunch of viruses to see if they could wake him up. When that didn’t work they turned to parasites.”

A map of this floor of the facility hangs on the wall from haphazardly placed yellow tape next to the door. Your smile grows bigger and movements more animated the longer you explain your thought process as you grab the map off the wall. You turn back to Jake.

“But not just any parasite. The Nemesis parasite.”

Jake is still confused, not knowing what that means so you continue, walking back to the announcement system and putting the map on the console.

“Back when Umbrella was making Tyrants, big beefy bioweapons that were designed to be soldiers, they were impressive physically, but had limited brain function as a result of the T-Virus so they could only follow simple commands and they couldn’t talk. ‘Kill everyone you see,’ ‘guard this thing,’ you get the idea. They were trying to find a way to make them a bit smarter. They’d hit a dead end with viruses, so they added engineered parasites to Tyrants.”

You pause to make sure Jake is still paying attention. He is, but he still has a look that says, ‘how is this relevant?’ so you keep going, taking a pen from the table and trying to find the locations of the cameras to mark them on the map.

“The Nemesis still had limited brain function, but he could say a few words and it could carry out detailed commands and use weapons. ‘Kill these specific people, use this rocket launcher’ etcetera etcetera. But there was still a high risk of over mutation when the parasite was inserted, so they smacked on a regulator to help mitigate that.”

Jake blinks, still not understanding. “So?”

“So if they gave Albert the parasite, that means he’s going to be much more susceptible to taking orders from me.”

“From you? Weren’t you worried about him killing you earlier? Why would he take orders from you?”

“Like… the parasite has been told for however long it’s been in there to wake up because its wife is here. It’s only been given carefully curated audio snippets of my voice, so it’s forced to view me as a positive… figurehead in Albert’s life.” You point to the transcripts on the table, trying to make Jake see your point before turning your attention back to him.

“He told me he missed me, Jake. I’m willing to bet if I use that announcement system, I can lead him anywhere the system is-”

“-and give me a window to slip in and get the sample and some supplies.” Jake finishes with a serious expression.

“And if everything goes right, we just might hold out until reinforcements get here.” You’re smiling, still riding the adrenaline high from finally figuring out the bigger picture of what’s going on.

Jake crosses his arms and stares at the monitor with Albert still on it. “It’s a crazy plan Doc.”

Your face falls and you’re about to try and plead your case, but Jake smirks before you can answer.

“I’m in.”

_____________________________________________________

“Albert? Where are you darling? I can’t find you.”

You croon into the microphone and watch Albert, yet again, jerk his head towards the hallway you just projected your voice to and use his Uroboros arm to drag himself along the wall in the direction of your voice.

On the walkie talkie Jake scrounged up from the storage boxes that were by the broken radio equipment before he left, Jake provides an update on his search for better weapons plus the G-Sample.

“216 through 245 are bust. It’s just storage.”

“Copy that.”

You respond on your walkie talkie, marking off and labeling the relevant rooms on your map and watching Jake continue to navigate through the labyrinthine facility on the cameras.

Considering the circumstances, everything has been going well in the half hour Jake has been gone. Albert, in his limited mental capacity, hasn’t caught on to the fact you’re talking to him through the announcement system. Plus, Jake is making good time going through each hallway in the facility thanks to Youju’s white keycard.

 Chris’ professional voice from the computer system breaks your concentration.

“Doc? Jake? You there?”

You close your eyes and take a breath. You were hoping that the universe would be merciful, and the connection would drop so you’d have a valid reason not to talk to Chris.

You weren’t so lucky, so you check the cameras one more time to ensure that Albert and Jake aren’t going to cross paths, then roll your chair over to the microphone on the other module. You flick off the mute button.

“You’ve got Doc. Any updates?”

“We’ve got an army of guys on their way to your location. Time of arrival is estimated at seven hours.”

You feel your shoulders visibly relax. Rescue is on the way.

“That’s great news.” You mutter.

“Is Jake around?”

For a second, you think about lying so he doesn’t know you’re alone. Nothing convincing comes to mind. “No. He stepped out to get supplies. I can pass along a message on his walkie though?”

“That’s alright.”

Awkward silence.

“How’s working in Germany?” Chris sounds less professional this time.

You sigh and close your eyes. “I don’t think this is the best time for small talk.”

“Just making conversation. We’ve got time. I want to know how you’re liking it.” Chris says. You can hear the slight smile in his voice. The genuine nature of his words.

You always had a weakness for his kindness. He had a way of worming himself into your good graces without even trying.

“It’s good. The people are great. I miss having reliable air conditioning though.” You joke.

You hear Chris chuckle. “Yeah, the Europeans aren’t big on that kind of thing.”

Despite everything, you find yourself smiling. As much as you hate to admit it to yourself, you missed his laugh. How easy it is to talk to him.

“What about you? How’s Claire doing?” You ask.

“She’s still helping the world in her own way with TerraSave. She’s also been breathing down my neck about cutting back on smoking.”

“I’m sure you don’t mind that. If she’s breathing down your neck, that means she’s visiting.”

Another chuckle that makes butterflies erupt in your stomach sounds over the speaker. “If she were doing it in person, I don’t think I’d mind so much.”

Both of you sit in comfortable silence.

“I’ve missed seeing you around, but I’m glad you’re doing alright.” Chris says, vulnerability underlying his words.

Your throat gets tight, and you bite back the words before you can say them.

Don’t tell him you miss him too. It will make him feel worse.

Luck is on your side this time. Jake’s voice emanates from the walkie talkie in your lap.

“Doc? I need eyes on something.”

You let out a sigh of relief, then speak to Chris through the microphone. “Jake’s calling. I’ll be back.”

“I’ll be here.”

You mute yourself on the microphone and wheel yourself back over to the security system.

“I’m here. What do you need?”

“Can I get your professional opinion on what’s happening in front of 250?”

Your eyebrows scrunch in confusion, but you pull up the necessary camera to see what Jake is talking about. All you can do is stare for a moment at the grim sight. Most of the lens is obstructed by a black substance, but even with the limited visibility you know it’s the personnel and guards that were unlucky enough to be in Albert’s way when he escaped containment. Black gunk saturates the walls and ground that you’re able to see.

You force yourself to respond.

“Part of the lens is blocked, but those are casualties of Albert. Just step around them. The dead don’t come back naturally with Uroboros. It just makes them harder to kill.”

“Not talkin’ about that Doc. Give me a second.”

You’re about to ask what Jake means by that, but before you can, you see something wiping the lens of the security camera you’re looking through. After a few seconds you see an uncomfortably close view of Jake’s nose as he wipes away the gunk from the lens.

How the hell did he scale the 12 foot height to wipe that gunk off?

You use one of the other screens to pull up an angle of the hallway Jake just cleared, and you can see that he scaled the wall by somehow using his balance and strength to tuck himself into the corner where the two hallways meet.

“Were you raised in the fucking circus? Where did you learn that?” You say into the walkie in disbelief.

“By being a teenage shithead, now look!” Jake replies, exasperated and moving out of the way of the camera and revealing a body almost completely overtaken by worms of Uroboros. Your disbelief quickly shifts into grim realization.

That needs to be burned.

Your voice comes out eerily calm.

“Don’t touch it. Don’t shoot it. Don’t interact with it. Uroboros needs to be burned for proper disposal.”

You see Jake crouch to look at the body from a different angle. You see him bring the walkie to his lips.

“Will touching it infect me?”

“No, but it might eat you since you’re organic material!! Just don’t ingest it, keep your distance and you’ll be fine.”  You spit through your teeth, not liking Jake’s series of questions or what it could mean for his future actions.

Jake looks at the body for a moment longer then stands up with the walkie to his lips, looking at you through the camera.

“Don’t lick the weird black stuff. Seems simple enough.”

You groan. “Let’s just hope these Neo Umbrella guys had the foresight to keep a flamethrower on hand.” You tiredly respond.

On one of the other monitors, you see Albert meandering in the direction of Jake’s current location. You speak into the walkie.

“Hey sit tight for a minute, I need to redirect Albert.”

You see Jake give you a thumbs up on the camera and you flit your attention to one of the other monitors. While Albert isn’t alarmingly close to Jake’s location, it’s still too close for comfort. You set the microphone to make an announcement in the opposite direction.

“I’m over here love! Come find me!”

You see Albert’s face light up on the screen and turn to follow your voice, but he freezes mid-turn. You tap the screen, thinking that the old equipment froze up on you. But then you see Albert’s face twitching.

It’s mild at first; only one of his red snake eyes twitch. But then it’s his whole face. The uncharacteristically wide grin twitches downward, a scowl gradually etches itself into his visage, and his blown-out eyes undulate like a heartbeat smaller and smaller until they’re thin slits.

You hear a guttural groan of something akin to agony escape Albert’s lips as he attempts to reach behind him towards the regulator in between his shoulder blades.

“I will not be subdued!” Albert seethes through his teeth, arm, body and face twitching from an invisible battle for control. It’s a losing battle, and Albert isn’t on the winning side, but he realizes it too late. The second his eyes start to dilate and his arm stops grasping for the regulator, he throws his body against the wall in a vain attempt to remain coherent by bashing his head into the smooth white plaster. He shrieks in a heart wrenching combination of frustration and agony. You recognize it with dreaded clarity from the day he died in the volcano. The plaster is marred with a watercolor painting of red, pink and black splotches. Then, as quickly as it started, Albert freezes in place, his face twitches back to what it was before, then he meanders towards the direction he last heard your voice, not bothering to wipe off the blood or black substance from his face.

“Dearheart? Where’s my little wife?” Albert asks with an uncanny grin, leaving a trail of black liquid in his wake.

All you can do is sit and try to process what you just saw with a haunted look on your face. Albert hasn’t changed. It only appears like he has.

You slowly bring the walkie to your lips.

“Jake there’s been a development.” You speak into the walkie lowly.

“I’m guessing it isn’t the good kind.” Jake quips.

You don’t acknowledge his attempt at humor. “It looks like Albert’s fighting with himself.”

Jake is silent for a moment. “And what does that mean?”

You take a deep breath to collect yourself. “This is only a theory, but I think because Albert has a natural immunity to a lot of viruses and parasites, his subconscious is buried but mostly intact.”

“So… the parasite’s driving the car but Wesker’s in the backseat trying to take the wheel.”

“Exactly. And I don’t want to find out what happens if he succeeds.”

You glance back at the monitor where you last saw Albert. From a surface level perspective, he’s back to how he was when he broke out of the chamber. It’s apparent that the Nemesis parasite currently has the upper hand. But what happens when it doesn’t?

You shake away the thought and keep talking to Jake through the walkie.

“Look, try to find Youju’s office and try to figure out exactly what they did to try and wake him up. I can give a much more accurate game plan on how to handle this.”

“What’s the theory without it?”

“If he overpowers the parasite, we’re fucked.”

“Find the papers. Got it. Just keep the old man busy.”

“Will do. You keep laying low.”

You set the walkie on the security panel, already feeling exhausted. You watch Jake continue his methodical room check on the monitor, then drag your attention over to where Albert is heading, his sudden clarity sending a chill down your spine. Then you look over to the computer system where Chris is still waiting to hear your voice.

You groan and let your head hit the back of your rolling chair.

This is going to be a long night.

Tag List: @killerwendigo @appreciativemediaconsumer @kaymarnun @chucklefak

a/n 2: Thanks again for reading! I've got an AO3 account now so I'm cross posting this series on there if that's where you prefer to read your fics. Based on my outline, it looks like this thing is gonna be a 10ish parter so stick around!

Also I'm on AO3 now at wil_o_wispy if you like reading your fics on there!

AO3 link for this part.

[letmesleep8]

even if I die screaming // elliexreader

CHAPTER 2: To Someone Special

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

chapter 1 | chapter 3 | AO3 gets it first

content warnings/tags: subtle homophobia; friends to lovers; christmas love.

notes: hello again, buddies! <3 chapter two is here, thank you for the notes! let me know in the comments in case anyone wants to be tagged in chapter 2 btw

•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────••─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────••─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•

"Every second counts, I don't wanna watch tv anymore"

— Bags, Clairo

December 24, 2038 Winter

Dear diary, 

Christmas is FINALLY coming up! I've always been a big time Christmas girl but this year it's extra special: Ellie suddenly realized she would not self-combust if she showed up at one of my Christmas parties just once! Well, it's not exactly a party. Mama's gonna be on patrol on the 25th, so I called Ellie, Dina and Jesse over to watch some movies. Dina and Jesse decided they'd spend the holiday with the boy's parents this year for once and Ellie, I believe, felt pitiful and decided to come by. 

I like her. She can be closed off, but she's fun. Cat said she is easy to like when she makes a bit of effort. They had a fight last week and I think I saw them kiss once, maybe twice. Mama's not the biggest fan of Ellie, she says she "doesn't think that's normal". How does she fight literal zombies every week and her biggest fear is a lesbian?

Gonna do some baking now. Hope Ellie likes pie.

•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────••─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────••─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•

I placed some blankets on the couch and put the best holiday movie I could find next to the player. Our house was always incredibly tidy, I can't stand dusty places. I lit a candle and put the star I made myself on top of the pine. I'm committed to having a Christmas tree every single year, it doesn't matter how hard I find to bring it inside by myself. To me, it's a glimpse of what life was before the outbreak, and I also realized that my mom finds some sense of normalcy in these things. In a world like this, we lack some tradition. My kitchen timer rings and I run to the oven, the apple pie I've made looks great. I carefully take it off the heat and place it on the counter.

"It's a blizzard out here!" I hear some knocking on the door. "I am about to freeze to death!" I walk to the door to find Ellie all bundled up, her tiny nose red from the cold, the calluses on her fingers covered by navy blue wool.

"Come on in, sorry for the waiting", I reply as I brush some of the snow off her shoulders. She enters the house, a thankful gaze as she sees the lit fireplace. The girl takes off some layers of clothing along with her shoes, sitting on the couch.

"You should stop wearing sneakers on the snow, your feet are soaked", I threw her a blanket. "You're gonna get a cold."

She scoffs, "Well, if I ever do I know that I can count on ya' as my doctor", a slight smirk present on her face, still red from the low temperature. I smile and roll my eyes at her, maybe slightly blushed, 'cause my face definitely feels hot. 

I cut each of us a piece of pie and joined her on the couch. “You like Christmas movies?” I smirk. Of course she does, who doesn’t like Christmas movies? Well, I am quickly surprised by her, who admits she’s never watched one.

“I’ve never really been into Christmas n' shit”, Ellie shrugs her shoulders, “not really any holidays at all.”

I look at her, mouth wide open in disbelief. How does one live without ever watching Home Alone? “We’ve got a lot of catching up to do”, I exclaimed, excitedly. I get up from the couch and run over to my dvd shelf. A few seconds later I came back with three more movies for us to watch.

Our plan was to watch all the movies this afternoon but we soon lost focus. We talked for hours while “A Nightmare Before Christmas” repeatedly played in the background, we kept hitting “restart”, saying we were gonna actually watch it this time. Instead, we discussed the simplest of things, drinking tea and sharing Stevie and her warm fur on our laps. 

“Okay, I am not saying they're all dead”, Ellie’s out of breath laugh filled the room. To me, it seemed brighter all of a sudden, as if we had lit the third homemade scented candle of the day. “It’s just a probability, we wouldn’t even know”, she continued.

I threw my head back, laughing. “At least they’re voice actors, it wouldn’t be as weird. Could you imagine running into an infected that looked just like the girl from Pulp Fiction?” I shook my head, trying to erase the thought. “I think I’d pass out.” She laughed while shaking her head.

“You really do not like to fight, do you?” She grinned, teasingly. 

“I don’t think anyone does”, I replied. “Would you still do something like this if we were born before the outbreak?”

She nodded her head “no” without hesitating. I raised my eyebrow, wondering if she was going to elaborate. A moment later, Ellie continues: “Astronaut, I’d like to be an astronaut, maybe a musician.”

I smiled softly, she seemed to have previously thought about this. After a while I, too, respond: “I would like to be a writer, perhaps a teacher. I really like kids.”

I could see in her eyes that had softened her demeanor. She looked into the floor, smiling. “I think you’d be a great teacher, you’re all bubbly and… fucking gentle”, she stated. 

I looked into her, my eyes whispering “is that bad?”. She then gave me a smile that, to me, said “not at all”. Her slow approach asked “can I come close?” My worried gaze declared “this isn’t right”, but the sudden free will of my hands shouted a crystal clear “I object”. My left hand touched her right,I could finally feel the warmth of her fingertips. A good liar could pretend it was only a distasteful accident but I am as true as the sky is blue, so I trace the patterns on her index finger with mine until I could find rest in her palm.

Ellie moved her hand, she was going to hold mine with her palm. My heart is filled with anxiety when, as subtle as a lightning in a dark room, my mom bursts the front door open. “Merry Christmas”, she yells across the room to us with her welcoming smile. I don’t think it was honest.

Some minutes later, Ellie decided it was time for her to go. Mama insisted she took a piece of pie for Joel, so she did. The cold hugged my body as I opened the door for her and she quickly disappeared into the same blizzard she came from. 

[wrestletotheground]

~ promptober day 3 ~

scary movies - ross macdonald fluff

no cws just cute boyfriend ross

the buzz of the doorbell rang through the house, waking me up from my nap. I tapped on my phone to check the time. 7pm. 'shit', I muttered, jumping out of bed and hurrying down the stairs to answer. I swung the door open to see ross standing there with a huge smile on his face. he looked so adorable in his black hoodie and grey tracksuit bottoms, hair tied back into a clean ponytail, the leaves and trees of the garden framing him in red, brown and orange.

'hi baby', I said, diving straight into his open arms, letting him envelop me in him. I breathed in his scent, warm and comforting in the chill of the october air. 'i missed you darling', he said, pulling away slightly to look down into my eyes. 'I missed you too, the 9 hours you've been gone felt like too long', I replied truthfully. we'd been living together for 3 months and it still felt surreal, waking up beside the love of my life every day and spending more time with him than ever on days we had off from work (and in his case, touring).

it was then I noticed the shopping bag on the ground by his side. he saw me looking, and without me having to ask, said 'I thought we could have a little movie night to kick off the start of spooky season. I went to tesco on the way home and got all of our favourite snacks'.

my heart melted at the gesture. after the long week I'd had this was just what I needed. 'ross,' i cooed, pouting my bottom lip. 'what did i do to deserve you?' I asked, resting my chin on his chest. he smile at me before leaning down to kiss me gently. 'go in and pick a film love, ill get food sorted'.

~

10 minutes later he reappeared from the kitchen balancing a bowl of buttered popcorn, 2 cans of cherry coke, a bag of chilli heatwave doritos under his arm, sour cream dip and a bag of m&ms between his teeth. 'jesus, someone took advantage of their clubcard', I laughed, getting up to help him put everything down. 'I got it, I got it', he said around the m&m packet, squatting down to the coffee table. he flicked off the big light, leaving just the warm glow of the lamp in the corner and the tv screen. he then produced a lighter from his pocket and bent down to light the scented candle across from us.

once everything was set up he sat down beside me on the couch. the atmosphere was so cosy and cute, it truly felt like halloween season now.

I returned my gaze to the tv, flicking through the endless films under "halloween" on netflix. 'have you still not decided?' he asked. 'listen. there's a lot of options', I started, looking over to see him looking at me incredulously. 'fifteen minutes I was gone for, unbelievable', he replied, shaking his head. 'ten', I mumbled, pushing his arm playfully, still swiping through the catalogue of spooky films.

'what about one of them tim burton ones you have on dvd?' I snapped my head around, gasping theatrically. 'ross. you're a genius' I replied. I practically ran over to turn on the dvd player. I picked up the corpse bride, my favourite, and showed it to him. 'perfect, whatever you want darling', he said, grinning.

I put it on and sat back beside him. he put his arm around me and I lay into him contently as the opening credits played. I pulled the blanket down from the end of the couch over us and snuggled into him. his thumb rubbed up and down on my arm comfortingly, a constant reminder of his love for me.

I took a moment to look around the room. everything was perfect. ross, the film, the seasonal decorations, the pumpkin spice candle burning on the fireplace in our living room. our home. together.

{s/o to @abiiors for the cutest prompts I'm having sm fun reading n writing them 🤭}

[seat-safety-switch]

The world is changing now. Soon, it will leave me and all the knowledge I accumulated during my life behind. It's not too late for me to get into the permanent record, though, with this information about a long-lost art of car ownership. I speak, of course, of the car stereo installation.

Nowadays, car stereos are largely an extension of your phone. And why shouldn't they be? Your phone can access any music you desire, conjure up pornographic visions from the ether itself, and tell you how to get out of the corn maze that you and your borderline-sentient 1979 Firebird Formula have gotten stuck in during your latest secret-agent shenanigans. Car manufacturers make terrible stock stereos, and so it just makes sense for them to step aside and turn them into "big screen that phone makes go."

It is for this same reason that, before the ubiquitous smartphone era, we wanted to swap the stereos in our shit-box Hondas. In the late 90s and early 00s, new standards were coming out practically every weekend. You didn't want to be the dope with an AM/FM/Tape combo when it was possible to be the brave technologist who accidentally bought a stereo on sale that only understood uncompressed Mini-Discs and the Diamond Rio 600. You could go to the store and buy a "head unit" (car stereo dweeb speak for "car stereo") and jam it into the dashboard, yourself. Sure, there were semi-professional installers out there, usually working at that very same store. Those installers cost money, though, and surely you can connect between 15 and 200 wires together in a way that doesn't burn your car down, right?

Wiring a stereo wasn't really that hard. It was just one of those death-by-a-thousand-papercuts deals. You pull out the old stereo, a task which ranges between "annoying" and "holy shit I don't think my car will ever go together again." Then, you unplug it from the wiring harness. They call it a wiring harness, because you get whipped by it and still somehow enjoy the experience.

It's at this point that the driveway-installing amateurs are separated from the driveway-installing pros. A smart person gets a little plug-in wiring adapter that translates from the car's wiring to the stereo's wiring. Someone who forgot to buy the little wiring adapter from the stereo store, and doesn't want to go back there because their car is torn into a million pieces, decides to hack and slash, twisting and soldering the car into the stereo permanently. This works too, but it will be a problem in about two weeks, when the MP3-CD player you just spent your paycheque on becomes obsolete, and is replaced by a Tokyo-24-HotSauce-WMV-DVD player.

Now comes the harrowing. You have just made your car's stereo harness much, much longer, and also likely much fatter. You gotta cram that shit back in the hole it came out of, ideally without getting in the way of anything else inside the dashboard. This is the point at which you must decide whether you will spend eight more hours routing wires, potentially re-doing the wiring work you just completed, or explain to your significant other that the heater controls only go two-thirds of the way to "cool" now. You will pass through this crucible and emerge a stronger, angrier person. You will have opinions on electrical tape for the first time in your life. Your neighbours will call the cops to have you killed after you swear loudly enough to wake their babies. The cops will laugh as you nearly pass out from heat exhaustion underneath your dashboard.

And in the end, you will be able to play an MP3 file from a burned CD. Congratulations. It was all worth it, until you go over a slight bump and the damn thing skips a bunch. I hear the new ones on the shelves now have a bigger anti-skip buffer. And those stock speakers, well, they sound like shit, now that you have this fancy new stereo blaring 64kbps Napster rips through it. Maybe pick up a new amplifier while you're at it, and an upgraded alternator to handle all that new current demand, and...

[ham-st4r]

𝓢𝓵𝓮𝓮𝓹𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓻 - 𝓛. 𝓗𝓮𝓮𝓼𝓮𝓾𝓷𝓰

🍿Pairing: heeseung + female reader🥤

Warnings: one use of the F word.

Genre: fluff, best friends to something more.

Summary: you hadn't seen your best friend in a while, so he invited you to his apartment to hang out. Before you know it, it's past midnight, and he's asking you to have a sleepover.

Number of words: 1741

Find your way around!

Hello! just dropping by to give you your dose of hee fluff. I hope you love it. Please leave feedback and reblog!

Heeseung, your best friend, had invited you over to his apartment to catch up with you and play some video games after not seeing you for a while, games soon turned into dinner, and then dinner turned into a movie, and after said movie had ended, it was already midnight somehow.

You stretch out on his sofa as the credits roll by, and heeseung turns the lights back on. “Well, I think I should head home now.”

Heeseung frowns at the mention of you leaving. “Already?” He plopped back down next to you with a pout.

“Already?! Heeseung, it’s past midnight!” you exclaim.

“So?” He asks with a shrug popping an M&M into his mouth.

“It’s literally a school day tomorrow” you glare at him and steal one of his M&M's.

“Right, I forgot,” he hummed and nodded his head in understanding. “I forgot that I don’t give a fuck!” you chuckled and slapped his shoulder.

“You’re so stupid, hee,” you giggle.

“I’m not stupid, what’s stupid is that everyone at school gets to see you every day, but I don’t.”

“Well, that’s just the way it is” you stood and walked toward the door to put on your shoes.

“Wait!” He shouts from across the room with a crazy look in his eyes as he walks over to you and lightly shakes your shoulders. “We can have a sleepover!” He smiles brightly, and you can tell how proud he is of his idea from the way he's smiling from ear to ear.

You chuckled lightly and shook his hands off your shoulders. “And why would we do that?”

“To spend more time together” he looks at you weirdly and states the obvious, or at least it was obvious to him.

“Hee, I’ve been here for nearly ten hours,” you whine. It’s not like you didn’t enjoy spending time with him, but it was late, and you wanted to go home.

He just ignored you and started mapping out his little plan. “So, what I was thinking is we watch another movie,” he said, rummaging through his DVDs while he was on his knees in front of his tv stand. “Oh, and I have some of your favorite ice cream in the freezer that you can have.”

You just watched him go on and on about what else he wanted to do.

After a few minutes, you had tuned his voice out, wondering why you decided to even come over in the first place, but then you remembered you wanted to be a good friend and keep him company for the day, but you didn't know his plan was to hold you, hostage, all the night long.

You shook your head a bit, snapping out of your thoughts, and he was still talking.

“The other day, I bought this heated blanket I still have yet to try” he was just rambling, trying to say anything to make you stay. “Do you want to try it together?” He finally slides the DVD into the player and sits back on the sofa, looking at you with hopeful eyes.

“Hee, it’s lat-” He cuts your words before you can even finish.

“Even more reason for you to stay. It’s late, and you shouldn’t travel while it’s dark. You know, I wouldn’t forgive myself if something ever happened to my dearest best friend.”

You stood there with an expressionless face.

He was so shameless, using all your weaknesses against you, and now he was throwing logic into the mix. “Come on, y/n, please. I even put on our favorite movie,” that’s it. He presented an offer you couldn’t refuse, and you kinda hated and loved him for it.

You just sighed and stepped out of your shoes, trudging back over to his insanely comfortable couch. And sitting down on it. “Does this mean you’re staying?” he asks you with puppy eyes.

You glared at him and gulped, eyes flicking to the TV nervously. “Go get my ice cream,” you said in a stern voice.

“Alright!” He smiled and hopped off the couch, running to the kitchen and retrieving your ice cream.

He came back from the kitchen with a giddy smile, and you couldn’t help but smile as well, although you frowned when he only brought one bowl of ice cream. “Where’s yours?”

“I uhh,” a blush spreads across his face before answering. “I only bought a small one specially for you” he cut his eyes at you and tucked his hands under his thighs.

Your heart swelled at the cute gesture, and you dipped the spoon in the bowl, holding it up to his mouth. He parted his lips slightly, allowing you to spoon-feed him a taste of your ice cream. “Good?” You smiled at him softly, and he just nodded with a bashful expression.

“Oh! I forgot” he got back up and went to his room, grabbed the infamous heated blanket, and plugged it in before draping it over you both, making sure the temperature wasn’t too high.

Once you finished your ice cream, you snuggled into the warmth of the blanket, and you can’t lie that it felt absolutely amazing, especially after eating the chilly ice cream. Ten out of ten, definitely worth spending the night.

Heeseung shifted a bit under the blanket, nuzzling into the couch as he focused on the movie that played on the screen.

About an hour into the movie, you had made more popcorn for the both of you and brought some soda with you as you sat back down on the sofa. “I could have made it, you know,” Heeseung whispered to you.

“I know I just wanted to do something for you since you bought me ice cream” you smiled genuinely, and he felt his heart melt at that moment. No one could convince him that you weren’t an absolute angel.

“Thank you,” he mutters shyly and turns back to the tv as your gaze lingers on him just a second longer before digging into the freshly made bag of popcorn.

Once you were both done eating, you pulled the blanket up around yourself and rested your head on his chest.

He leaned into you a little more and wrapped an arm around you, hugging you closer as you hummed in contentment while the rest of the movie played.

Occasionally he’d brush his thumb over your shoulder soothingly. You looked up at him when he did this, scrunching your nose with a smile, He mirrored your expression and accompanied it with a playful laugh that resonated in his chest.

When the movie ended, you both stood up, stretching a bit and cleaning up your mess. It was now nearing two in the morning, and heeseung knew you should have been sleeping sooner, but he selfishly kept you up late.

“No, no, I got it,” he reassured you. Taking all the items, you had used it's the least he could do.

“Are you sure?” You say not wanting him to clean up all by himself.

“Positive,” he smiled and headed to the trash bin tossing away all the candy wrappers and napkins. He threw the empty soda cans away and washed the dishes before turning off the light in his kitchen.

He came back to the living room smiling at you, covered with the blanket. “Sorry I kept you up so late. I feel bad now,” he pouted, and you made room for him to sit back down.

“It’s fine, hee I had so much fun with you tonight” you smile earnestly, letting him know you meant every single word.

“Yeah? He fiddled with his chubby fingers and looked down at his lap, that was covered in Star Wars themed pajamas. “Maybe we could do it again soon” he looks at you with a glint in his eyes.

“Definitely!” You say excitedly, already looking forward to spending another day like this with him.

He smiles warmly and stands up abruptly, picking you up in his arms. “Hee! What are you doing” you giggle and wrap your arms around his neck.

“You have school tomorrow, remember? We need to get you some sleep” He laughs and struggles to open his bedroom door. Once he managed to twist the knob, he nudged it open with his foot, gently laying you down on his bed and tucking you in afterward.

“What about you?” You ask, noticing he wasn’t getting into bed with you.

“It’s fine. I’ll sleep here” he pulls out his gaming chair and grabs a thin sheet from his closet.

You snorted out a laugh as he adjusted in the small chair. His long limbs did not help the situation, and you could see him already shivering from the lack of warmth the thin sheet provided.

He cracked his left eye open, and you instantly stopped laughing. “What are you laughing at? This is perfectly comfortable” he shifted again, and you laughed again. “Seriously, it’s the best seat in the house. I can literally just wake up and turn on my computer and start gaming” at this point, you know he’s lying just so he wouldn't make you uncomfortable, but you really didn't mind sleeping in the same bed with him.

He turned on his side and nearly fell onto the floor. You didn’t even try to hold back your laughter this time. “Wow, this is what I get for trying to make you comfortable,” he playfully rolled his eyes.

“Hee stop playing games and bring your butt to bed” you pulled back the covers so he could join you, and he bolted out of the chair right away, sighing in relief when his back hit the soft mattress.

“Are you sure you’re comfortable with this?” He asks.

“I have school tomorrow,” you remind him so he can keep quiet and let you sleep.

“Like I said, the chair is the best seat in the hous-“ you cupped your hand over his mouth, stopping him from spewing out any more nonsense.

You removed your hand from his mouth and lowered it around his torso, resting it there. “Goodnight, hee,” you whisper softly.

“Goodnight, y/n,” he mutters and rests his hand over yours, and you smile, catching the warm smile that spreads over his features as your eyes flutter shut, and just before you wander to dreamland, you feel him press a soft kiss to your cheek.

Yeah, you definitely couldn’t wait to have another sleepover.

FIN.

[joyceyayo]

“Tell me we weren’t just friends”

Jim Halpert short story fanfic by joyceyayo

A/n I originally did this as a Request for my wattpad but thought it was pretty solid and decided to post it here :)

He starts to walk over to me with his hands in his pockets.

"Do you want to hang out tonight? I know it's short notice," he asks me at my desk. I jumped on the opportunity and told him that I would be happy to. "Great," he responds with a smile. "Wanna get pizza and watch a movie or something" I reply quickly. "Sounds great," he says, and he returns to his desk

It felt like a million years had passed since we last hung out. The last time I was at his house was at his party. Then he still lived with Mark. Now he's alone, and so am I.

The hours tick by slowly

I walk into his new apartment to watch a movie with him. He's showing me around, but the place is tiny but cozy. The blinds are closed, but the lights are on, so it looks like we're in our little world. It's nice in here; it's even clean, which I didn't expect from him, to be honest. He has some comic books and a writing pad sitting on his dining table, along with some video games, a stack of DVDs, and a trash can full of empty alcohol bottles. The entire room is devoid of anything to distract him from my presence. He signals to the DVDs and picks them up.

"Pick." He orders. I look through and smile when I see the bee movie. He widens his eyes. "I bought that for a kid I babysit and never brought it over." He shrugs "well, your in for a wild ride tonight, James," I wink while putting it in the player.

We're eating pizza and halfway through the movie. He stops it and looks at me. "How is he the villain?! If a literal bee that I'm deathly allergic to stole my fiancé, I would have the same reaction!" He exclaims, and I touch his shoulder while placing my plate down. "Settle down. I know it's a very emotional piece of film." He laughs, and then I tilt my head.

He breathes out, and his nostrils flare. His hand roams to mine, and he rubs the back of it. I swallow and break eye contact.

       "You're beautiful," he admits, and I smile at his boldness.

      "But... what about Pam?" I ask, and he tilts his head. "What about her?" He questions and I breathe, "you still like her." He looks down. "No, y/n, that ship sailed almost a year ago.  We're friends. But she's married now, okay?" I look down, and he lifts my chin to look me in the eye. "Listen to me; you're who I want" I blush and smile.

      He begins to lean in slowly, or is that in my head? Either way, I move towards into his mouth. He smiles at my lips, and he places one hand on my shoulder while the other remains on my hand, resting in my lap. I feel my stomach tighten, and the sensation travels lower. I hold his head and pull him to lay on top of me, making gentle fistfuls of his hair. I touch his tie.

"You wanna go there y/n?" I bit my lip and nodded, looking him in the eye. "I've wanted to go there for years, Jimmy, do you?" I confess and questions him, all while using a cutesy nickname. He smiles and nods. I pull off his tie and let him undress me enough to be cold on the couch.

He picks me up and walks me to his bedroom. His bedroom is cozy. Unlike most men, his bedsheets are an actual duvet and fluffy blanket. We get under, and I get at that pesky belt of him. I throw it on the floor and meet his lips more aggressively. I lean him down and lay on top of him. I get at the button of his pants while he undoes his shirt. We're both now only in our underwear. He slides his middle and forefingers under the hem of my panties and pushes them off my thighs. I'm straddling him and kissing his stubble-covered jawline down to the base of his neck. He flips us over and rids off the rest of our clothes. He's cupping his hand on my cheek, and I feel the warmth of his other hand on my waist. Simultaneously, I feel his dick against my pelvis.

He reaches for his nightstand and gets a condom. I look down as he rolls it over him. He puts it towards my entrance and looks me in the eye. I put my hand on his cheek and nod. He pushes himself inside me, getting past the initial resistance my body gives. I open my mouth while still making burning eye contact. He gives a small side smile at my reaction. I bite my lip and look to the side. He starts to thrust. I hold onto his shoulders and angle myself up a bit. My eyebrows curve, and I hug him. I breathe as he ruts faster, and I start to moan. I observe his room, the fan going around and around.

      "Oh god," I whimper, and he kisses my neck. "You like that?" I feel like my head is spinning around and around. "Yes," I say, and he is going harder. I dig my nails into his back, take one, pull his head back, and force his neck back by his hair. This wasn't very nice, but I was in the moment. I kiss him sloppily and desperately breathe. I pull his hair and swear; he meets my lips again, and his lips muffle my loud moans. "Jim," I said into his lips. "I'm gonna..." he smiles, and I hug him tighter than ever and grab my legs around him to get him as deep as possible. He thrusts harder and groans into my ear, and the sound makes me shake harder.

      We calm and breathe, looking at each other lovingly. He gives me and few pecks.

      "You're amazing," he says and rolls off me.

I hesitate, but I touch his chest and support myself to lay my head on his chest. He gives a small chuckle, a simple blow out of his nose, but it's enough to make me comfortable. He strokes my hair and hums a bit. I run my fingers over his chest and play with the hair.

"I don't know what to say," I admit and look up at him. He's looking at the ceiling. "I don't think we have to say anything. We can be here. right now." I smile and close my eyes. He pulls the covers over my bare shoulder, and we snuggle up and fall asleep.

[isadora-greenhall]

DnDads Halloween Week 2k23

Day 1: Watching horror movies

Okay, so I’m giving up getting this finished today, but I’m gonna post what I have so far! It’s a gothcleats date night where they watch a beloved creepy kids film together.

Under the cut so it’s not too long 🫡🙌🏼

(Tentatively titled) Too Close to Home

They’d been planning on going to a fancy restaurant together for their one year anniversary, but about an hour before they were going to leave Linc had received an email regrettably informing them the restaurant had lost power in the storm, and wouldn’t be up again until tomorrow. Lincoln had been relieved — the place wasn’t really his style — and when he’d told Scary she’d looked relieved too.

“Sorry,” Linc had said. “Do you want to head home, or…?”

She’d scoffed. “No? It’s our anniversary?”

Our anniversary. He loved the sound of that. “Well, we could watch a movie?”

Scary’s eyes shone at that. “Ooh, something spooky?”

“Well, we don’t really have horror movies…”

“I didn’t say horror, you dork,” she said affectionately. “Spooky. Like Over the Garden Wall. Man, I love that show. Those pumpkin freaks? Pure nightmare fuel.”

Linc led her over to his family’s DVD collection - Marco had a thing for physical media - and had a quick flip through. Nightmare Before Christmas? No. Paranorman?Nah. Corpse Bride? Maybe. Labyrinth? He moved his body in the way of that film so she wouldn’t spot it — they’d tried to watch it together once before and Linc had found himself getting more jealous as the film went on, because of the way Scary was glued to the screen each time David Bowie and his stupid tight pants were on screen. Not that he could fully blame her…

Then he spotted it. “Coraline!” He pulled it off the shelf and showed it to Scary. “What do you think?”

She looked blank. “Never seen it.”

“What?! I love this film, super creepy.”

She smirked at him. “Is there an orange cat in it?”

“No! …A black one…”

She laughed. “Okay, sold.”

Linc slipped the DVD into the player then they cuddled down together on the couch as the haunting opening of the film began. He could feel Scary beside him, watching awed as the doll was altered to turn into the girl on the cover — blue hair, a yellow raincoat.

She sat, silent and rapt for so long…until Coraline found herself in the Other World and met the Other Mother and Other Father, at which point Linc felt her stiffen beside him. And as the film went on she seemed more and more tense. Lincoln had no idea what went wrong - he was sure she’d love this film, it was edgy and dark and was made in the “coolest animation style ever” (Taylor hadn’t spoken to Scary for a month after she’d declared that). He didn’t know what to do - she hated it when he made decisions for her, and she hadn’t said she wanted them to turn the film off yet.

But then the Other Mother revealed her true colours, and Scary made a small, anguished sound, and Linc decided to call it. He paused the film and turned to her. “Are you okay?”

She didn’t answer for a second, just staring at the screen. Linc winced when he realises it was paused on a shot of the skeletal form of the Beldam, grinning viciously, hands reaching for the girl with dyed hair.

She pulled her knees up to her chest and tugged the shirt down over them - Linc tried not to wince at how that would stretch his shirt. “I just…it hit too close to home, alright?”

“In what way?”

Scary looked like she wanted to die rather than admit it. She waved a hand vaguely at the screen. “An angry mom, a pathetic dad…people changing. Becoming worse. I don’t know, man.”

[mayisgoingnuts]

ALSKA THE DVD THING REMINDS ME OF HOW WE DIDNT HAVE INTERNET- SO WE JUST WATCHED DVDS ALL THE TIME ON IUR PS5

Now we have an even bigger collection bc my mom kept getting more (she hated watching the same thing over and over)

I do have our old DVD player in my room though! It’s fun :))

•🍂

IT ISSS!!

When I was a lil kid and we also didn't had wifi yet I only watched those dvds ALLLL THE TIMEEEE, MY DAD SAID I WATCHED FOR LIKE 5-8 HOURS A DAY,, ONLY STOPPED WHEN I WAS LIKE 12

We stopped buying them but there's like a full ass box FULL of cartoons, easily assuming that there's +100 dvds

[tea-stained-notes]

Steve Rogers x OFC - Waiting On a Miracle, Chapter 4

After catching an infamous serial killer in the act, Julie Castillo is in line for the witness protection program. She is sent to a temporary safe house with U.S. Marshal Steve Rogers to protect her. Both of them scarred by trauma and tragedy, they find solace in each other. But how far will they dare to go?

It's been ages, I'm sorry. At least I've been procrastinating this so long that it's once more cosy cabin fic season lol

Let me know if you’d like to be tagged in the future!

CHAPTER 1 | CHAPTER 2 | CHAPTER 3

Series warnings: violence, death, angst, trauma, smut

Chapter warnings: anxiety, light trauma

Chapter word count: 2350

Song(s) referenced: Waiting In the Wings (Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure)

As the days passed it became increasingly impossible not to get to know each other. After all, we were all we had. Natasha had dropped by with new groceries and stayed to chat for a bit, but while Steve and I were in our own little world, she had a hundred things other than my safety on her plate. Staying in my small room all day wasn’t an inviting prospect and leaving the cabin proved too great a risk with only Steve there to protect me. What I hadn’t expected was that he would care for me in a way that must have been above his pay grade. When the nightmares finally caught up to me, forcing me awake with a scream and sending me to the door to escape the terrors seemingly living under my bed, he was already waiting in the hallway. Calmly talking me down from my panic and gently guiding me to the kitchen for some tea. And during the day his sheer presence kept my anxiety at bay with almost miraculous ease.

As the endless hours passed we grew more and more familiar with each other. We talked about anything and everything from our views on female reproductive rights (which were luckily the same) to our favourite Disney movies, mine being Moana and Steve’s Beauty and the Beast. “Really?” “Yeah, I prefer the old hand-animated movies. Plus, the songs? They’re timeless.” I nodded reluctantly while biting into one of the brownies Steve had just baked. “And like any sane person I’m obviously a sucker for that library scene,” he said with a smile so disarming I almost choked on my bite. “You do live up to that admission,” I croaked out. Steve had blazed through a whole stack of books over the past week. The shelves housed a pretty great collection and for the first few days I had been glad to have some time to read as well. But I found myself more and more distracted — by being cooped up inside while the surrounding nature looked so inviting through the windows, by the restlessness from the unfamiliar inactivity and wondering about the people I had left behind, and embarrassingly by Steve. His warmth and genuine interest in everything that went on inside my head still caught me off guard. “Great, now I wanna watch Disney movies.” I cast a disappointed look at the old TV that only offered a measly handful of channels. “How about we ask Natasha to get us some DVDs and a player up here?” I jumped up immediately, on the hunt for pen and paper. “Let’s make a list!” My enthusiasm earned a soft chuckle from Steve. “Honestly, how come we don’t have that here anyway? No Smart TV I understand but DVDs?” I made my way back to the couch, sinking into the cushions a few feet away from him. He shrugged. “This place is meant for short stays. We rehouse people if they have to go into long-term protection.” “Fine, but such little entertainment? What if you can’t stand the other person and don’t wanna talk to them?” “Well, luckily you and I don’t have that problem.” Steve’s gentle smile made my heart flutter. I quickly glued my eyes to the notepad in my lap and brandished the pencil. “Hit me then. Besides Belle shitting on the entire townsfolk, explaining the plot of her book to some random sheep, and not eating a single bite throughout a whole song about food.” He ignored my comment. “Hercules.” “God, that one’s a hot mess but you gotta love it.” “Baboom. Name is Hades, lord of the dead. Hi, howya doin'?” I stared at him in disbelief for a second, then broke out into laughter. “Okay, that was a seriously good impression.” “Don’t sound so surprised,” he retorted with mock offence, “Like I said, I did do theatre at school.” “I know, but…” “What?” I studied him. Lounging on the couch in jeans and a knitted sweater, relaxed and comfortable. “When I met you at the station… You seemed like a very different person.” “So did you.” He gave me a crooked grin. “Maybe we’re just very different people when we’re in the city.” “Maybe first impressions are just stupid.” “Also that.”

We worked on the list for a while, moving from animation to mini series, dramas and comedies. I wondered how many of these we would actually make it through until this surreal bubble would finally burst. When I would lose this strangely wonderful companionship. Something pulled in my chest at the mere thought. I set the notepad down and let my eyes wander through the room until they landed on the piano. “You do that a lot,” Steve said quietly. “What?” “Look at the piano.” I swallowed hard, feeling his intent gaze on me. “I wouldn’t mind you playing. Whatever you want.” “No, thank you.” Silence fell over us for a while. Not the easy silence I had grown used to with him, this one was suffocating. When he spoke again his voice was even more tender. “That song you were singing the other day. About… waiting in the wings?” My throat went dry. “Was that from the show you’re working on?” “No. Uh, it’s from a spin-off TV show about Rapunzel, you know, from Tangled.” “Huh.” Steve raised his eyebrows. “I had no idea they write such good songs for cartoons.” “Well, they brought back Alan Menken and Glenn Slater for the show, those two don’t fuck around. And Eden Espinosa sings this one, she’s pretty famous for playing Elphaba in Wicked, so you know what she brings to the table. Jeremy Jordan sang a few songs for the show as well, you don’t tend to hire him for some shitty run-of-the-mill pop tunes.” He stared at me for a moment. “That was… a lot of names.” “Never mind,” I smiled. The tension had almost left my body when his next question brought it back in full force. “It means a lot to you though, right? That song?” I swallowed thickly, the paper crumpling in my clammy hands. “Let’s just say, it hits a little too close to home.” “Hmm.” Steve nodded. “I mean, it’s not actually about theatre of course,” I fumbled, “it’s just a metaphor.” “But it’s about theatre for you.” Another endless pause stretched between us. “I’m sorry,” he eventually murmured. “You don’t have to tell me.” “I think I want to.” My admission took us both by surprise. I had been keeping up my walls for so long, with Finn being the only one who actually knew my entire story. But now I was almost craving to tear them down for this man before me. He settled back into the cushions, giving me an encouraging smile. I cleared my throat a few times, my stomach and fingers in knots.

“My mom was from Mexico. She moved to New York all by herself at nineteen. She’d been obsessed with the stage all her life, starring in every school production and constantly putting on shows for her family at home. She put herself through AMDA on a scholarship—“ I stopped myself. “Sorry, that’s the American—“ “Musical and Dramatic Academy.” Steve smiled gently. “Some theatre kids from my high school applied.” “Right. She was gifted and relentless. Even when the industry kept putting spokes in her wheel, denying her roles with bullshit excuses and, well, very thinly-veiled racism. I wish I could say things are nothing like that today but… Anyway, she eventually got her foot in the door with some minor parts and then one day broke out as Diana Morales in A Chorus Line. And she was incredible. I mean, I only ever got to see some grainy footage from the time but… God, you should’ve seen her.” His eyes shone with light warmth. “Was she even better than you?” “Definitely.” It came out sounding more bitter than I had intended. “One day she met my dad through a school music program. He was teaching high school back then. And when I came along I didn’t really have a choice but to be into music. Something was always playing, either from the stereo or my parents’ instruments. I was into the guitar but my mom insisted I learn the piano as well. She always said, ‘I don’t care what else you learn to play, as soon as you’re decent at the piano. It’s the best basis.’” “Was she right?” “Unfortunately yes,” I smirked. “And I learned to love the piano. But my real love was musical theatre. She never forced that, I simply fell for it, just like she had as a child. So both my parents taught me at home and I signed up for lessons in singing, acting, dancing. It was basically a full-time job outside of school.” “That sounds intense.” “It was. But I couldn’t get enough, I loved nothing more than learning new techniques and routines, running lines, hanging out with other theatre kids. For years it was heaven.” Steve’s smile faded. “What happened then?” “In my last year of high school I started auditioning for drama schools.” I took a deep breath. “And I choked. Every single time.” “Why?” The word came out as soft as the rain pattering against the windows. For a moment I could hardly breathe with the urge to fall into Steve, to bury my face in his chest and never come up for air. I roughly cleared my throat. “Pressure, I guess. I had been in countless productions, but as long as I’d been a kid, it had always been a game somehow. Now I was facing the big leagues, my entire future depended on those few minutes in front of the committee and—“ I sank my teeth into my bottom lip. “And they all knew my mother.” “So, they expected you to be perfect.” “Of course they did.” A strangled laugh escaped me. “She always bragged about how much promise I showed. And she wasn’t wrong. I was good for my age. The stage had been home all my life. But suddenly it became hell.” Steve’s hand found mine and my heart jumped at the gentle contact. I stared at his thumb as it caressed along my knuckles. Back and forth, just like the tug between panic and comfort in my chest. “That must have been incredibly difficult,” he finally murmured. I nodded, still choked up. “My dad was pretty relaxed about it. He kept saying I could just focus on something else for a while and return to theatre when I felt ready. But Mom… She tried so hard to hide it but her disappointment broke me. I can’t imagine how it felt for her. All those countless hours teaching me, watching me learn and perform, encouraging me, supporting me. She’d always believed that I would be a star. Had made me believe I would be.” Steve didn’t say a word, just looked at me with endless sympathy, his hand a warm tether to the world.

“After a while I couldn’t even try anymore. I had panic attacks on the way to auditions, I barely slept, I almost failed my finals. So, I gave up. I worked some odd jobs for a while, trying to flush that dream out of my system, to find something else I could be good at. But as much as it hurt, I couldn’t stay away. I trained as a deputy stage manager and in some ironic way made it to Broadway after all.” “And what about your mom?” I shrugged. “She tried to be happy for me. But I think she could never really see past the waste of my education.” “Julie—“ “And then she died.” The room feel silent. I could feel Steve’s eyes on my as I tried to blink away the tears in mine. “Heart attack. Everyone said it was just stress, she had been extremely busy with work while doing all sorts of charity work and giving lessons. But I wondered… I just couldn’t help but think that my failure—“ “Julie, no.” Steve took my hand in both of his, his grip as urgent as his tone. “Don’t you dare believe something like that.” I inhaled deeply, wiping at the tears that had spilled over at last. “Sometimes I wonder whether I should just leave New York behind. Whether the joy the theatre still brings me sometimes is worth the constant reminders that I'm not really part of that world. Not in the way I want to be. The way she wanted me to be. Most of the time it all just hurts.” “I get that part,” Steven said quietly, half-lost in his own thoughts. I studied him for a moment. “You left Chicago for a good reason, huh?” He swallowed, then nodded almost imperceptibly. “The thing is: The pain leaves with you. You just keep carrying it everywhere.” Once more, silence fell upon us. I was caught somewhere between the relief of finally having opened up and the wondering about Steve’s past which was still mostly a mystery to me. “Have you ever auditioned again?”, he suddenly asked. “I’ve tried a couple more times. But I never made it to the actual stage. I probably never will.” “Is it even possible to fully give up on something that feels like your life’s purpose?” He seemed to direct the question at the room more than me. We both stared out the window for a while, following the raindrops’ paths down the pane. Eventually he withdrew his hand from mine to stand up and an instant chill ran through my body. I had grown dangerously used to his touch. “I’m gonna make coffee. Would you like some more tea with those brownies?” “That would be great,” I said, still slightly off kilter. On his way to the kitchen he turned to face me once more. “Julie?” I looked up at him expectantly. “Thank you for trusting me with your story.” He said it as if I’d ever really had a choice.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

CHAPTER 5

MASTERLIST

[i-need-some-advice-on]

How can I cut off one person from a group of friends and keep the others?

One of my friends (Abby) has been quite bitchy to me since my birthday last year. They've always been a bit abrupt, but I didn't know them very well or hang out with them very much until mid 2021. At that point, a group of five, including me and Abby, started doing a group activity once a month.

Until December 2022, Abby's abruptness wasn't too much to handle and rarely seemed vicious.

It started when I said that I was on the waiting list to see a specialist for an autism diagnosis. She said "You don't have autism" in a really dismissive way. BTW, she's not qualified to diagnose this and has not told me that she has a diagnosis of autism. Also, in my country, you don't get on the waiting list without first seeing your GP and doing a initial exam and providing testimony from longtime friends/family.

The other person there, who was a friend of Abby (not me at the time), had to defend me by explaining that not all people with autism look like Sheldon Cooper because I was too shocked to say anything.

Since then, Abby has also complained that she finds it stressful to plan stuff with me. (She wanted to watch this specific film and I couldn't find it at the library or on streaming, so I wanted to know if she wanted me to buy it and she kept saying "Can we talk about this later?" The problem is that it would take two days for the dvd to ship and it was a week between her asking me to watch this film with her and the date we picked.) I struggle with plans being changed at the last minute, like for instance if the film hadn't arrived, and we had to move the day we were watching.

She never told me that her cousin had the dvd and she was just borrowing it from her. If she'd said this, I wouldn't have sent her a few separate messages trying to get her to respond about whether I should buy the dvd.

Abby spoke about someone she knew with diagnosed autism and how they had been telling her about their plans because they like to make plans in advance. I said that I could relate to that and she said to me "it's not the same".

Despite me saying that I have problems with plans being cancelled, especially last minute, she has cancelled on me several times for individual meet ups. Once, she said she was just leaving the house and then rang back five minutes later to cancel because she had anxiety and another time we were supposed to watch a film over Zoom when I had Covid. She rang me and cancelled at the time we were supposed to start. There have also been numerous times when we were going swimming that she's cancelled within an hour of our pool booking.

Abby also has been bitchy about me going to an animal sanctuary in a foreign country and getting a picture with one of the wild animals. (I know that animals should never be used for entertainment, but the sanctuary makes a lot of money to look after the animals by charging tourists for a minute long interaction just after the animal has been fed.)

She's also been very vocal about thinking I'm a bad person for going to a murder mystery event at a bar which is (probably) named for Jack the Ripper. The bar is not themed for Jack the Ripper and is actually based around horror movies. When I told her that, she just said "I've made my point and dont wish to talk about it anymore".

She's also snapped at me quite a bit for things like tapping the best card to play in a board game after she specifically asked and the other players were trying to stick by the rules.

So does anyone have any tips about cutting Abby off and keeping the rest of my friend group?

.

[mlobsters]

the x-files: fight the future (1998)

the x-files s2e24 our town

i'm watching fight the future. again. because listening to an elizabeth holmes trial coverage podcast that had someone named kurzweil in it. so clearly... anyway. apparently this is my liveblog of my millionth rewatch. i had this movie on vhs, my friends.

it's gary grubbs who was in the cannibal town episode!

you know what else i like about this movie. someone's clear helicopter obsession. give me all the helicopters.

what about my men?!

i just think it's neat how they managed to make a fucking cool ass movie in the middle of the tv show run. i know it was hell on the cast and crew and the show itself kind of suffered but damn they made a good movie (some plot silliness aside, it is chris carter after all)

SCULLY: Well, I just climbed up 12 floors, I'm hot, I'm thirsty and to be honest, I'm wondering what I'm doing up here.

MULDER: You're looking for a bomb.

SCULLY: Yes, I know that, but the threat was called in to the federal building across the street.

MULDER: I think they have that covered.

MULDER: Whatever happened to playing a hunch, Scully? The element of surprise, random acts of unpredictability? If we fail to anticipate the unforeseen or expect the unexpected in a universe of infinite possibilities, we may find ourselves at the mercy of anyone or anything that cannot be programmed, categorized or easily referenced.

What are we doing up here, Scully? It's hotter than hell.

glenne headly (uncredited, bartender)

mr holland's opus (1995) - glenne headly as iris holland

i love her voice. and she had this great little scene with mulder.

MULDER: I'm the key figure in an on-going government charade, the plot to conceal the truth about the existence of extraterrestrials. It's a global conspiracy, actually, with key players in the highest levels of power, that reaches down into the lives of every man, woman, and child on this planet. So, of course, no one believes me. I'm an annoyance to my superiors, a joke to my peers. They call me Spooky. Spooky Mulder, whose sister was abducted by aliens when he was just a kid and who now chases after little green men with a badge and a gun, shouting to the heavens or to anyone who will listen that the fix is in, that the sky is falling and when it hits it's gonna be the shit-storm of all time.

BARTENDER: Well. I would say that about does it, Spooky.

martin landau as alvin kurtzweil

fox peeing in the alley on the independence day poster. keep it classy.

KURTZWEIL: That official FBI business?

MULDER: What?

KURTZWEIL: Bet the Bureau's accusing you of the same thing in Dallas. Standing around holding your yank while bombs are exploding.

choppers!

plague to end all plagues. and FEMA!

"going that way" forever burned into my brain. little dudes with their thick accents and coordinated pointing. maybe i'll draw that some day.

MULDER: Five years together, Scully. How many times I been wrong? Never. Not driving anyway.

helicopters and the jiffy pop poppers (still an hour left, how many more choppers can we cram in)

MULDER: But you saved me! As difficult and as frustrating as it's been sometimes, your goddamned strict rationalism and science have saved me a thousand times over! You've kept me honest ... you've made me a whole person. I owe you everything ... Scully, and you owe me nothing. I don't know if I wanna do this alone... I don't even know if I can ... and if I quit now, they win.

fakeout kiss whatever. these little speeches, hugs and forehead smooches are a balm.

LANGLY: What can we do?

MULDER: You can strip Byers naked.

john neville as the well-manicured man

well-manicured man is well manicured.

In the DVD commentary, Chris Carter tries to peddle the idea that the emotions from the almost kiss in the hallway plus the CPR scene later in the movie equals a kiss. Not surprisingly, nobody buys that. (source)

oh, chris carter.

also, famously:

In X-Files Redacted, a 30-minute special that premiered on Comcast (before being leaked online and making its rounds on the Internet, of course), creator and showrunner Chris Carter set up the scene about where the main duo currently stand coming into the revival of the show: “Mulder and Scully, for 9 years, had a platonic relationship.”

SCULLY: I had you big time.

handwave the halfdead out of antarctica to talk to blythe danner.

CASSIDY: Bees and corn crops do not quite fall under the rubric of domestic terrorism.

SCULLY: How many other lives can we save? Look ... If I quit now, they win.

all right, all right. i'm done--WAIT

[chxckens]

some life updates... this is a big chunky post, just for those who care abt what’s happening w me. i feel like a dvd player

i had a difficult conversation with my mother yesterday where i was able to explain how difficult working has been for me with my health conditions and how i’ve been struggling to keep things like stable income for rent and health insurance because of it. like, i’m on long-term disability leave from work right now but i’m not even sure that i’ll be able to return to working full-time in the same capacity because of my health. and it isn’t a matter of finding a better job or a more flexible job- no employer likes that i keep growing tumors and getting cancer. like, that’s not a particularly good trait for an employee. legally they can’t fire me for it but i feel terrible not being a reliable employee because of it, it makes me feel like shit (even though my self-worth shouldn’t be derived from how Good a worker i am. i know this.)

my mom was taken aback somehow by how deeply it has been affecting me (of course it has. i’m always stressed.) and she actually literally said, “i think that we- that i- have been holding you to impossible standards considering your circumstances.” and that meant a lot. she said, “no, you don’t have to be financially independent right now, fuck it. i have money, move back home for now and let’s just make life comfortable for you.” i can’t explain how surreal it was to hear all that from her because she’s always been the one pushing me to Be Normal (work full-time, live independently, etc.) but i think i got through to her yesterday about how impossible this all feels.

it’s just, like- at this point i have had three separate cancers and i am only 28 years old. i will likely have more cancers down the road because of my genetic disorder. the three cancers isn’t even counting the benign brain tumor i had last december, that was a fucking freebie. nothing about the life i’m living is normal and it was killing me trying to work forty hours a week and keep house and take care of myself on top of all the medical misery.

so like....

i’m not HAPPY about having to live with my mom again ‘cause we don’t cohabitate super well (i love my mother dearly! but i would say this to her face and she would agree- we are both hermits and like having our own space) but there’s a wing of her condo that she’s fixing up that has its own entrance/exit so i can have like. a mini apartment in her condo. hopefully we can figure out enough systems that’ll make it manageable

it is a fucking miserable bummer to have to constantly curb my mother’s plans. she bought some land out in michigan and has plans to build a house out there and she’s been so excited about it and talking about it constantly and i’ve seen the land too, it’s lovely. but now she says she might sell it so she can take care of me. and that’s fucking wretched it makes me want to cry again to think about. but she reassures me, says that the money is better spent closer to home right now. on me. i don’t want her to sell the plot, i told her i’d move out there with her but she thinks it’s too far away from any major medical center for me to live there. because i have my perpetual ball and chain wherever i move- i have to be near a hospital. a cancer center, preferably.

but i can’t complain because it’s huge that she’d be willing to help me survive without working like i have been. and she’ll help me pay for health insurance that isn’t employer-sponsored so i don’t, like, die... that’s huge for me... definitely don’t want to die....

it does make me nauseous, of course, in a survivor’s guilt type of way- i am hyperaware of the fact that the only reason i have this option is because i come from a family with money and that my mother is offering it. i am fully aware of the fact that i would have died several times over if not for the fact that my mother happens to be sitting on enough money to care for me when i’ve been sick and out of work. having grown up with that wealth, it wasn’t until i got cancer for the first time that i was truly radicalized, politically. the system is horrific and even with my immense privilege it is still impossible to navigate when you’re sick/disabled. none of you need me to tell you this, but it is on my mind a lot, especially when it feels like i’m getting handouts like this

so, y’know, there’s a lot of guilt/shame here. and i’m trying to remind myself that this isn’t “giving up” it’s “finding a way to live that doesn’t feel like torture.” i think this is the only decision i can make right now?

i’ll start packing up my stuff and get rid of a bunch of it so that i can fit in my mom’s space. that’s prolly the first step here. the rest, we’ll figure out, i guess? i still feel queasy and like crying about this to be honest. being on my period probably isn’t helping LMAO

[castle-of-ruin]

Day 1 - Movie Night

A/N: This is the first day of @obiknights wwdilfcember!! This is not my first piece of writing, but it is my first piece of writing for my new tumblr. I hope you all enjoy. It's rather short but it was fun to write. Also, I tried to be as gender neutral as possible! I am not very good at it because I am used to writing f!Readers. Either way, I hope you get as much serotonin as I did while writing this!

Pairing: Triple Frontier Boys/ Reader (platonic relationships)

Word Count:

Warnings: a few curse words, friendly banter, and teeth rotting fluff

Trying to watch a movie with four grown men turned out to be a more difficult challenge than you ever thought it would be. You sat back and watched the four of them argue over what we were going to watch. Will wanted First Blood, Santi wanted The Expendables, Frankie wanted Lone Survivor, and Benny wanted Sand Castle. You knew in the end the final decision was up to you. When their heads all turn to you, you knew it was time to make a decision. Before any of them could ask you what you wanted to watch you blurt The Expendables. Santi lets out an excited holler and pushes Will’s shoulder. 

“I told you they’d pick The Expendables!” His excitement is contagious and you let out a laugh shaking your head. 

“It was not an easy choice Santi, they were all great choices.” You tell him, your smile growing wider. 

He nods his head and dips down to grab your dvd from its respective place on the shelf and pops it into the player. All of them scramble around like ants trying to find the perfect place to sit. Benny ends up sprawled out over the lounge chair, his long legs hanging over the edge. Santi plops down next to you on the couch and steals your blanket. Will settles down on the other side of you with a bowl of popcorn in his hands. You stare at him for a moment, when did he go do that? Frankie sits on the floor at your feet and props his arm up on your knee. You knew he wouldn’t be comfortable down there for long, eventually you would go and grab him a chair. 

The movie starts and the five of you zone in on what’s happening. You had seen the movie several times, but it was still good each time. It brought you a sense of joy that you only got from specific movies. 

“Oh fuck me!” You all turn your  heads to Benny who sits up in the chair. 

He looked exasperated, his hands pushing into his hair in frustration. 

“What?” Will asks, concerned for his brother. 

“The guy I was supposed to fight just backed out. Now I don’t have a fight before Christmas to make some extra money.” His tone drops at the end. 

“You can make money some other way Benny, it’ll all be okay. Don’t worry.” You tell him.

“Yeah man, maybe we can become strippers for the holidays or something.” Santi pipes in, you can hear the smile in his voice. 

Benny’s eyes light up like he was suddenly considering it. 

“Yeah no, I am not doing that shit.” Will says, making you cackle. 

You see the edges of Will’s lips turn upward. 

“Oh come on! The girls would love you Will!” Santi shouts. 

You shake your head, you knew Santi was fighting a brick wall on that one. You look down at Frankie who sits quietly, unphased by Santi’s chaos. 

“How about we bake stuff or something like that?” Frankie suggests, still immersed in the film. 

“That’s actually a really good idea. And something we can all do without having to take our clothes off.” You tell them. They all let out laughs at that. 

“Well, unless you wanted to, I guess. Maybe we will make more money.” You laugh once more. 

Benny nods his head in agreement. After the movie ends the five of you begin planning your Christmas bake sale and stay up into the early hours of the morning. Laughing and being together and while enjoying each other's company.

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