#except maybe when we haunted them with awful crack fics. but even then they still loved us for it. despite the horrors

[simplydnp]

what's your opinion on fanfics about dnp? (more in a way of do you think that it's crossing boundaries and/or being parasocial)

i'm of the same mind of dnp in that phanfic is fucking incredible. it's an important and valid way to express yourself, as well as a building block of our community. i don't think it's crossing boundaries, as it's fiction. i don't see it as parasocial either--you're writing for you and others like you. most people don't want dnp reading their fics, it's not for them in a sense, it's for us.

i think dnp are extremely aware of fanfic and its value and place in community. they've always encouraged it, appreciated the support, and given us space about it. they're not ones to make videos about it and mock fans for it (which happened to some of our lovely fic writers here writing for other yt fandoms, and i'm so sorry about it). dnp are fandom culture people. they've written fic themselves! and published it in their book!

the word parasocial has been twisted lately to imply any fan support is unnatural and should be shamed, which is complete fucking bullshit. making art is always important and valued. and it is necessary for your existence as a human, but also for the thing you're a fan of to thrive.

the parasocial side comes in once you start believing you know this person. and that you're their real friend. when in reality, they do not know you specifically, and you are not their friend, you are an audience member.

so a parasocial relationship only occurs when people start crossing boundaries (digging for not publicly available information, contacting people in their personal life, showing up to their house, etc). which, is absolutely nowhere close to real fan behaviour.

tl;dr: phanfic is great, i love you fic writers, parasociality is a problem but not one that we have

[zmediaoutlet]

in support of wildfire relief, @bulbuli83 donated $50 and requested ‘Sam showing how far he’ll go to save Dean’. Thank you for donating!

to get your own personalized fic, please see this post.

Sam prays, every day. He keeps it secret, sort of, although it's less that he's hiding and more that he just doesn't know how to talk about it, and so he doesn't. He picked it up when they were really little, staying with Pastor Jim up in Blue Earth, and he was staying up past his bedtime and saw Jim go down to his knees on the dusty floorboards through a crack in the door, and watched, amazed, while he talked quietly to someone who wasn't there. An imaginary friend, is how Sam thought of it when he was small. When he got bigger he thought of it as… he doesn't know. It's hard to articulate.

It's harder to pray, some days. People die and worlds end. He watches a wife crouched by the broken body of her husband, gripping his ripped bloody shirt and making these awful, awful sounds into his sagging neck, and that night while he lies sleepless in bed he looks up at the ceiling, his hands locked together over his stomach, and he thinks—things he can't say. Questions that don't have an answer. Intellectually, he knows that half of this is just talking to himself—reflection, indecision. Justification. There's never an answer, and for a long time he thinks there never will be. Then, he meets an angel.

It was a bad year. He thought before that he'd been through bad. He had no idea what bad was until Dean's timer was ticking down, the days slipping away from them both like a paper blown on the wind, always just out of reach. Dean acted casual and it was a lie and Sam hated it more than he hated anything. Then, Dean wasn't lying anymore, and Sam thought, bleakly ironic, maybe he should've been happy with the fake smiling and the devil-may-care, because Dean hollow-eyed and afraid was—worse. It was worse.

He prayed then, too. Asking, in an incoherent way. He didn't often get on his knees for it, but he did those last months, in random places—by his bed like a little kid when Dean was sleeping troubled; in the bathroom under fluorescent light, the shower running to provide the excuse for privacy; on the cold ground, on the side of the road or in the woods, his hands clasped so tight they hurt, just asking, asking, saying please. Of course there was never a response. One day, when there were just weeks left on Dean's deal and Dean was waking out of panting desperate nightmares every morning and Sam could hardly eat, could barely sleep, all his focus locked onto finding some way, getting out of it somehow, he was on his knees by the car, his shoulder leaned against the cold side-panel and his lips moving in something furtive, desperate, saying I'd do anything, I swear I would, I'd give up whatever it took, if only—and then he opened his eyes, and Ruby was standing there, watching him.

There's a story he always liked. Sort of a joke, sort of not. A man's house is flooding and he prays to God for help. The waters rise, inevitably. A neighbor comes by with a rowboat, and the neighbor says, come on, there's a flood!, but the man says that no, he'll stay, because he's a faithful man and he knows that God will save him. The waters keep rising and the man has to go to the second floor of his house. A police boat comes by, and the police say, sir, sir, come out of your house, there's a flood!, but the man is faithful, and he says no, he will stay, because God loves him, and will save him. The waters rise. The man climbs up to the roof. A rescue helicopter comes, and a rope hangs down, and the flood surges dangerous all around, cracking trees and threatening foundations, and from the helicopter comes a voice that says, sir, the town is gone, you must come with us to be safe. The man sits alone, on the roof, and ignores the rope, and looks to the sky, and the helicopter leaves, and the man is content because he knows that God will save him. When the house shatters—when the man drowns, brackish water filling his lungs—he goes to heaven, and is met by God, and he says Heavenly Father, I prayed, and I believed in you, and I thought you loved me, and you didn't save me. God says, I sent a rowboat, and the police, and a damn helicopter. What else do I gotta do, you idiot?

Dean died. Sam—didn't. He tried to for a while but it didn't stick. He got very, very drunk, and he went to his knees mainly because he was struggling to stand, and he braced his hands on the ground and thought he was going to puke, his shoulders hunched against the pain of it, and he said, or thought he said, I would've done anything, I promised you, I said—I said I would save him and I couldn't save him, and that's the meat of it, in the end. That he had made Dean a promise and he'd seen how Dean tried to believe him, and then he broke it. He didn't do the only thing that mattered. He hunched there, on the ground, and it was only when Ruby came and touched his shoulder, lifted him up, that he realized that he hadn't really been praying the whole time—that he'd been begging—and Ruby said, then, her little hands hard on his wrist and on his jaw, You can't fix it, Sam. You can't. No one can. The only thing we can do now is get revenge. If you let me help you, we can kill her. You and me. He swayed on his feet but she held him up, her eyes dark and steady. He thought of water, rising. Tell me how, he said, and she did.

He'd already broken one promise. It didn't seem that much worse to break another. He drank her blood and he cleared his mind of anything but one goal. Lilith had to die, and the world would be better for her dying. It seemed—not fair, nothing was fair, but it seemed—right. She'd taken something from him. The most important thing. He'd take something from her. When he prayed, for the rest of that year, he prayed not for mercy or for clarity or for wisdom, but for focus. He had one thing he needed to do. He just needed to be able to do it.

Ruby had told him that no one could fix it, and she was right. Dean comes back and Sam can hardly believe it. He holds Dean in his arms and Dean grips his hair, his shoulder, vivid and breathing and real. Dean's alive and he's here, with Sam, and that should resettle the world. It should make things—okay, again. It doesn't. Dean says he doesn't remember hell but his eyes are still haunted, as raw and fearful as he was in the months that led up to his dying. Dean says things are okay, that he wants to make it work, but he's harsher, his voice wrecked and low, the way he watches Sam strange and mistrustful. They meet—and Sam can hardly bear it—an angel, and Sam's whole body feels strange, resonant. Proof, if he ever needed it, when faith had always been enough. The angel looks at him and is an answer—God's warrior, solid on the earth—and he says to Sam that he is an abomination, and he says to Sam that what he's doing, his work, the only thing that had made sense out of Sam's life for the broken time when Dean was gone—he says that it's wrong, and he has to stop, and that the angels will take care of it.

Of course, they won't. Sam knows that. Angels are miracles, God's intervening hand, but Sam has to do this himself. That's been clear for a long time, now.

He prays still but it's to something distant. He doesn't know if it's God, anymore. He sits on his bed, watching Dean sleeping (troubled, frowning), and he folds his hands between his knees and thinks, what can he do? How can he make it right, make it better?

There's a fight. An alley, a hard fast scrum. They're looking for one of these stupid seals, at the behest of the angels, but apparently the angels can't be trusted to watch their backs. In the alley they're all normal-looking guys except for how their eyes go black, when Sam comes around the corner and finds them with Dean, and Dean's bleeding. Dean's bleeding, from his nose and his lips, a cut on his temple like someone bashed his head into the wall, and even if Sam's had the impulse to do the same a few times in his life, other people aren't allowed to hurt him. What has it all been for, if not for that?

"Sam," Dean says, warning—warning, like there's not a demon's hand around his throat.

One of them squares up. Four, in the alley, two on Dean, one watching, one making like he thinks he's going to take Sam down. Last night Sam prayed and Ruby came, telling him that they were close to Lilith, that they were going to make it right, and she nicked her wrist and he drank deep and it's still there, crackling under his skin, filling his bones with light. He holds out a hand and the demon going for a haymaker stops in his tracks, flinches. There's a rustle. Leaves blowing, underfoot.

Sam concentrates but it turns out that it's not all that hard to concentrate, anymore. He's focused. He has clarity of purpose, and all the belief he needs, because it's easy to believe when the proof's right there in front of you. The demons surge at him and he stops them all, two hands out and his eyes half-lidded, the light in him roiling up, yoked to his needs. The one holding Dean lets go and Dean sags, his legs unsteady after that head wound, but Sam doesn't have time for him right this second—it's more important to make sure that the one who was touching Dean dies, and—he dies. The smoke in him gutters out, his spark crackling and then snuffed, like a fire without oxygen. The others go—more slowly, all three at once, and Sam breathes and feels them ebb, their soured souls trapped inside their mouths, the pain flaring and the light in Sam white-hot, bright, scorching them away until the bodies drop, empty, broken in the scattered leaves and trash of the alleyway. None of them stand up. The meatsuits must have been destroyed, too. Sam breathes out, rolling one shoulder, and feels—righteous. It'll be like that, he thinks. It'll be this way, when he finally kills Lilith.

Dean's still crouched by the wall of the bar. Sam steps over the bodies, crouches too. Dean flinches back a few inches but Sam shushes him, touches his jaw. "It's okay," he says, "it's over," and Dean sucks in air and looks at him with big worried eyes, but it is okay. Sam made it okay.

He runs his hands over Dean's shoulders and then gets his forearms, helps him up to his feet. No broken bones, that Sam can tell, and he gently presses Dean back against the bricks and tilts his face toward the neon light. In the blinking blue-red-white the blood looks bad, but it's been worse, and Sam applies a crumpled bandana from his pocket to the spot by Dean's temple where it's still seeping. Dean's eyes are closed, his face turned a little away. Sam touches his throat and feels his heartbeat, racing. They haven't been this close in weeks—Sam's heart is racing a little, too.

"I know you don't like them," Sam says, quietly. "My powers, I mean. But—if there's a way to save you, I'm gonna take it. If there's a way to fix things, to make it better—take out Lilith, stop all these seals from falling—then I'm gonna do it. I can do it, Dean."

Dean shifts against the wall but Sam holds him in place. Dean goes still. "The angels don't like it, Sam," he says. His voice sounds wrecked, like he's been yelling. Was he yelling, during the fight? Sam can't remember. "They say it's—wrong."

"Well, they're wrong," Sam says, and Dean opens his eyes, and Sam smiles at him, and shrugs. "I mean, how can it be wrong? Look," he says, and Dean looks, at the alleyway with the bodies filling it. His eyes are hooded a little but when the neon sign flashes white, Sam can see the green. He takes the bandana away and cups his hands around Dean's jaw, instead, turning his head back, and Dean's eyes are still lowered, fixed on Sam's chest, his breathing heavy. That's okay. Everything's okay.

"No one's going to touch you, again," Sam says. He's broken two promises, already. This third one, he can keep. "I swear. I'm gonna keep you safe, okay? And there's nothing any of the angels or any of the demons can do about it."

"You swear?" Dean says.

Sam frames Dean's face with his hands, the light still churning inside him. He leans in, and Dean's head tips back against the brick wall, and he looks Sam in the eyes finally, and his lips part, a breath heaving in. Sam could answer, but he thinks this is answer enough—he bends his head and kisses Dean, carefully, like they haven't in—god, months and months and months, with things so strange between them. He moves his mouth very softly, aware of how Dean's bleeding with that cut inside his lip, and Dean shudders under his hands, grips Sam's jacket, but then—slowly, tentatively, he kisses back. His tongue tastes like dark iron, like copper's tang. Sam pulls him in, closer, and Dean makes a small deep sound and presses close, just like Sam wanted, and Sam thinks, giddy, that all his faith was worth it. All those prayers, all those works. He did what he had to, and in reward he has—this. Dean, safe and his. Above them, it starts to rain.

[kosmosguk]

Insatiable| Yandere Vampire Jungkook x Reader

Word Count: 2.7K

Fanfic Type: Fic; Angst and Thriller-ish

Description: You never would’ve thought that the boy you rarely talked to would harbor such a sinister secret, and that you’d be the one to suffer from it.

[Warnings: Death, blood, literally anything about vampires, some spooky themes, yandere themes, manipulation]

It's the night before Halloween, and instead of watching horror movies or baking pumpkin bread like you normally would've, you're stuck here, waving around a flashlight in an old clearing before a very large, very abandoned, and very, very haunted mansion.

You didn't want to be here, but when Taehyung flashed his boxy smile and made his eyes into that damned kicked puppy expression, no one could refuse without feeling like a monster. You, despite your many, many years of friendship with him, certainly couldn’t.

The building was old, dilapidated, and looked like it was going to fall apart into pieces if a strong enough wind gusted against it. The bricks’ color was faded, a washed-out shade of brown, and mold crusted its crevices, peeking out of the dark and clinging onto any bits of space in the open air that it could. It creaked, groaned, and protested under its own weight.  And you were sure that if the supposed ghost didn’t kill you, something for sure would with the atmosphere of this place.

It was also an awfully cold night, the kind of cold where it sunk deep into your bones and left you miserably paralyzed. You wanted to go home, wanted to sink into your warm covers and feast on the slice of pie you had baked earlier that day. You would’ve done anything but this.

You heard a soft crunch of leaves underfoot, but when you turned the flashlight around to peer at the cracked gravestones lining the courtyard, there was nothing. You shook your head, burrowing your face deeper into your warm scarf. It must’ve been your imagination. 

"You look a little dazed," a girl from one of your classes--what was her name again? Jiwoo? Ah, Jisoo--said, coming up from behind you.

"Just feeling a little tired from Professor Kim's boring lecture," you feigned a yawn for exaggeration. Jisoo nodded in agreement before her eyes became glazed, foggy. 

"Hey, Y/n," she said next after a brief pause punctuated the air between the two of you, and her next words, ones that you could never ever forget until the day you died, chilled you to the very bone.

"Who do you think will die first?"

You sputtered out, unable to answer properly because what the absolute FUCK was that kind of question. You knew this wasn’t a good idea, and Jiwoo, Jisoo, whatever the fuck her name was was clearly out of her mind. Going into a haunted house with her was, you were completely sure, not going to end well.

"Hey! We're about to head in; don't fall behind!" Taehyung frantically waved from in front of the doorway, three other classmates by his side who you were fairly sure were named Seokjin, Jungkook, and Jennie.

They all turned to stare at you, with three of them including Taehyung smiling brightly down at you, but the new guy, Jungkook, didn’t smile in a friendly manner like they did, choosing instead to stare at you almost unnerved you more than Jisoo's words did. His eyes were intense, almost hypnotizing, and the stare lingered even when everyone's gaze shifted away. You shivered, though this time you were certain that it wasn’t from the cold.

"Coming!" Jisoo waved back before looking back at your frozen self, smiling in a way that could've been interpreted as friendly but, when you peered just a little closer, menacing, like she knew something you didn't.

You tried to calm down your rapid heartbeat as she left, heading up to join the rest of your group.

Taehyung noticed the distress you were in and leaned over, flinging an arm around your shaking--you didn't even know you had been shaking--shoulders and leaning close to you with an inquisitive look in your eyes.

"What's up? Are you scared?" Taehyung asked, his voice soft and full of worry.

"Yeah I'm fucking scared," you hissed out between clenched teeth," Why did we have to come here? Let's just go back, Tae. Forget this ever happened."

Taehyung's eyes flashed with an uncertain emotion before he said," Don't you know? We can never go back."

For a second, Taehyung didn't look like Taehyung, not the one you knew. It was like he was enchanted, spun under some delusional fantasy that he couldn't escape from. But you brushed that thought off. He was still Taehyung. Your Taehyung. Your best friend Taehyung who hogged too much of the blanket and tried to warm up his icy blocks of toes on you.

"What the fuck; that isn't even funny, you dickwad!" you grimaced, sharply shoving your elbow into his side, your lips twisted in a grimace-like frown.

‘’I was just kidding. Lighten up!’’ he laughed, though you noticed with building panic that the emotion didn't reach his eyes. "You can wait outside for us then! We'll be in and out before you know it!"

Your mind spun as you tried to think of an answer. You could stay out here, where at least your phone had a bit of service, or you could go in and possibly die at the hands of some ax-wielding maniac straight from a thriller. 

"Fine, I'll stay out here. You better be out in 20 minutes or I'm calling the cops," you said, huffing.

Taehyung smiled at you, reaching to ruffle your head, and for a second, he looked just like your Taehyung," Thanks, Y/n/n."

You walked away, standing by the entrance of the courtyard as you watched them open the door before getting swallowed up by the darkness inside. A sharp chill ran up your skin, leaving goosebumps in its wake.

The door clicked shut. The chill never left.

You bundled tighter in your coat, teeth slightly chattering as you waited, each second feeling a minute and each minute feeling an hour. You heard the sound of creaking wood and flashed your flashlight in the direction. There was nothing that greeted you except for the scampering of a small rat across the boards. You felt your fear rise with every second and you itched to just go in, haul them out, and leave. One more minute, you thought to yourself, one more minute and I'm going in.

A scream shattered the night air, and you noticed that it sounded an awful lot like Seokjin with the way it flawlessly rang out. After all, there was a reason why he was the lead actor in the musical at your University. You just didn’t think that you were going to experience his full vocal capabilities in this kind of situation.

You dropped your flashlight in panic and scrambled to pick it up, taking out your phone and trying to dial in the emergency number.

The call didn't go through and with a look at your bars, you realized that the service had cut out.

What were you going to do? Try to run back and get someone to help but it might be too late or run inside and find out what was happening?

Your mind flashed with each thought as your panic built up in your throat, choking you. You saw images of Taehyung, small child Taehyung handing you a bandaid when you first met, Taehyung setting off the fire alarm because hell he couldn't cook, Taehyung when you had a nightmare and he had run to your side even though he lived an hour away and it was 3 in the morning. Hell, you had to go in. Not just for your own sanity, but for the boy you watched grow up, the boy who never left your side. You couldn’t leave his side now.

You got up, running towards the building, your shoes slapping against the cobblestones, and rushing inside the building.

Without you even needing to, the door swayed behind you and shut, sealing you inside.

"Taehyung?" You looked around, wandering in the direction that you were sure the scream came from. You felt a cool breath wisp against the back of your neck and fingertips slowly sliding up your side in a sensual sweep. You whirled around. There was no one behind you.

You pressed on, calling out Taehyung's name until you saw a brief glow of a flashlight. You exhaled in relief as you hurried towards the light.

You got closer and closer, your fingers shaking.

Taehyung, Jennie, and a shaking Seokjin greeted you, three out of the original five. You let out a breath you hadn't known you were holding at the sight of Taehyung, intact.

"Didn't mean to scare you!" Taehyung grinned, like you hadn't been sent to the ends of hell," Jisoo and Jungkook went missing and we went to find them but Seokjin got scared because there was a big spider in the doorway."

You sighed, smacking your forehead in a sign of complete exasperation and relief before your frustration set in, hot and melded with the intense fear you were suffocating in. 

"God fucking dammit, Kim Taehyung. I thought something had happened!" you weren’t even fully aware of this but tears had built up in your eyes, threatening to drip down your cheeks," I thought something bad happened and I lost your dumb ass."

"Hey, hey," Taehyung panicked at the sight of your tears, reaching over to wipe them away," Don't cry! You won't lose me without a fight."

You sniffled before crossing your arms resolutely. "I better not, you asshole. Now let's find Jisoo and Jungkook and leave this shithole."

Taehyung's eyes shifted slightly at your words, a brief flash of intense emotions, fear and panic, glowing in them before his eyes cleared, and he was back to your easy-going, loving Taehyung.

"Let's check the hallways! Maybe Jisoo wanted to check out the rooms and wandered off!" Jennie said, pointing away.

Your group started to walk in that direction, getting closer and closer when a movement in the corner of your eye caught you off guard.

"What's that?" you whispered loudly," Did you see that?"

Everyone else looked at you, curiosity and confusion written all over their faces and you shook your head. "Nevermind, probably imagined it or something," you said, clearing your voice," It's probably my nerves."

You reached out for the doorknob of the nearest room and watched, in stupefied fear as it creakingly swung open. Jennie let out a bloodcurdling shriek as the door slammed against the molding wall, making a loud dull thud as it hit, before bolting.

"Jennie!" Seokjin's teeth practically chattered together in fear as he bolted after the girl," Stop!"

You called out Seokjin's name, turning around to call for Taehyung to follow you because everyone knew that you didn't want to get separated in a horror movie. And everyone also knew that getting yourself stuck in an old creepy clearly haunted house was also not the smartest idea. But clearly, your group wasn't the smartest and you were fucking stupid for going along with them.

And when you turned around, just like what would happen in a horror movie, Taehyung wasn't there.

"Taehyung?" Your voice was a soft gust at first, meek and trembling as the first wave of pure animalistic fear finally hit," Taehyung! TAEHYUNG!"

The only reply that greeted you was stone-cold silence. You didn't hear Seokjin calling after Jennie anymore or Jennie running frantically to the doorman. The only sound you could hear was the rushing of your blood through your veins and the rapid way your heart thudded against your ribcage. You sucked in a deep breath and pushed it out before scrambling after the direction Seokjin and Jennie went in. You were going to find them both, and then you were going to find Taehyung. You just had to.

You weren't expecting to find them like this though. You stumbled into the main hall and noticed two dark figures hidden in the shadowy dimness of the mansion, swinging your flashlight to whom you hoped were Seokjin and Jennie.

Jisoo greeted you, her eyes flashing crimson and she grinned, the kind where all her teeth showed, and you noticed how sharp and white and bloody they were. Her skin, which was already usually pale, glowed translucent under your flashlight's yellowy artificial light.

You noticed the second figure next, the one that had been tenderly scooped in Jisoo's arms. Jennie, still and pale, looked terrified, her mouth stretched open as if she had been prepared to scream when Jisoo attacked her. You noticed the two neat puncture marks, oozing a trail of vermillion, in the crook of Jennie's neck and felt like you were going to hurl.

Jisoo bared her teeth at you, dropping Jennie's body onto the ground, and your stomach turned and churned when you heard the dull thud.

Jisoo took a step forward, licking the blood trail dribbling from her mouth, and she met your eyes, the predatory glint that had been washed over them shining brilliantly.

"You know," Jisoo practically sneered, and she looked, illuminated by your flashlight, like an avenging angel, both beautiful but oh so terrible and merciless," If you weren't his beloved, you would be replacing her next. But he wouldn't mind if I had just a little taste, right?"

Your chest constricted as Jisoo took another step closer, looking like she was ready to launch herself at you, and you couldn't move, couldn't breathe as her body tensed and...

"Jisoo.”

Her neck snapped to look behind you, and your head slowly craned to look behind you, feeling almost robotic with the level of fear and panic that you were drowning in.

Jungkook stood behind you by the window, his beautiful features glowing underneath the waxy glow of the moon. Even when you had to squint to properly see him, he already mesmerized you. He had a sharp jaw, soft pink lips, and slightly round intense dark eyes. His features were inhumanely perfect, and even the steeper slope of his nose added to his allure. You were transfixed, your mind occupied with thoughts about Jungkook.  His eyes wouldn't stop looking at you, their eyes burrowing deep into your soul as he waved dismissively. You heard a soft rustle of fabric behind you and when you dared to look back, Jisoo was gone. His voice was breathless as he shifted slightly, a blur of black, and then he was in front of you so uncomfortably close.

"You know," he cupped your cheek, his touch cold, lacking the warmth of life," I knew from the very moment that I saw you that you were my destiny."

You didn't move a hair despite how much you wanted to. You heard of the way vampires could enchant someone and force them to comply with their demands. You just never thought that vampires were real and that, if they were, you'd be a witness to them.

"I saw you in passing and the way I felt, that is the only way I could ever feel with my mate. I wanted to steal you away, take you away, but that's quite suspicious in the human world apparently. But it wouldn't be that suspicious if you went into a bad place and ended up gone, now would it?" Jungkook pressed you further against him, burying his nose into the crook of your neck," Taehyung was difficult to control, but humans are malleable, no matter how strong they think they are."

Your throat freed and you managed to finally speak, although you still couldn't move.

"Why did you have to kill Seokjin and Jennie and," you sobbed," What happened to Taehyung?!"

You couldn't see his smile, how innocent and bright it was like a little boy opening up a big present and finding out that it was exactly what he had wanted all along, but you could feel it pressing into your warm flesh, almost mocking.

"We got hungry," you felt his teeth prod at your flesh as he pressed even further against you," And with the way you're so close to me, I'm getting a little hungry too."

"You don't mind if I take a bite?" his voice was raspy, animalistic almost.

You didn't reply. You couldn't reply. Even as tears dribbled down your cheeks and splattered onto him, salty, you couldn't say a word.

Jungkook played with the hem of your jacket, gentle like a lover would, and then his teeth sunk in, sharp like needles.

Really, even if you could answer, with the way he desperately curled into your warmth, Jungkook would never take your refusal for an answer.

After all, Jungkook, the boy who barely spoke to you before except to ask for a pencil and the boy now who refused to let you go, was absolutely insatiable.

[HAPPY HALLOWEEN BABES! I wanted to release something for this spooktastic holiday so my writing is messy :( Be safe and take care of yourself on this spooky day! Part 2 of my reactions will be posted soon, but I wanted to focus on writing this today! Love you <3]

[agent-murica]

High School Experinces

•Was walking down the hallway and my vision went black and I fell flat on my ass. Turns out a group of kids threw one of those lip balm eggs so damn hard it cracked against my head and knocked me down.

>No, none of them helped me up

•A guy had a crush on my friend and flirted with her by saying, "Are you osteoporosis? Because you make me weak in the knees"

>Same guy was once heard saying that if he could have a threesome with anybody, it would be her and me

•In ninth grade, the week of Valentine's Day, I had two boys (a Jock and my male best friend) basically courting me, buying me chocolates and flowers (Jock), drawing me art (best friend), and writing me poems (Jock)

>I ended up saying yes to the Jock, was his Valentine, but then realized I actually had feelings for my female best friend, and asked her out the very next day.

>>Turns out she was going to a funeral and I forgot about that. Somehow still said yes??

•Volunteered for four years at a haunted attraction. Thought the zombie apocalypse had actually happened during the last year I worked there

•Teacher said in class that there's no song where the singer uses the sense of touch for something other than sex, and a kid slammed his hands on his desk, stood up, and started sing/yelling, "FEEL THE RAIN ON YOUR SKIN, NO ONE ELSE CAN FEEL IT FOR YOU, ONLY YOU CAN LET IT IN"

>This was a prelude to a song project, said project where one of the kids (Osteoporosis Kid) chose the Backyardigans theme song

>>This teacher became such a class meme that we used to sneak pictures of him into all our presentations and it became a contest on who could hide it the best

•My chemistry teacher said, "No one is FAILING my regents- well except maybe for [one of my best friends]"

>Actually here's a collection of quotes I've gathered over the years:

APUSH Teacher: "So they're bitching out the regents kids"

9A English: "That's what we are at South, happy campers"

WHAP Teacher, to me after having met my brother: "DAMN THE GENES ARE STRONG-"

Same guy: "Everyone meditate on the desks for [Muri]"

•Quotes from my various friends over the years too:

Male Best Friend, after I told him I was awake since 12:35 one day: "What the shit"

Two seconds later, after seeing me eat a KitKat by biting lightly in the middle for grip and curling my tongue underneath the bottom to propel it into my mouth: "What the Fuck- what the SHIT. That was an- that was an experience holy fuck"

Jock: "I'm a feminist, therefore..."

Chemistry Friend: “DeBlasio you fucking moron, the groundhog can’t see his shadow if he’s dead"

•My, at that time, girlfriend was rushing to finish an art project for a class that we had together so I helped/did the background for her, and when my art teacher found out she exclaimed, "Ooooooh that explains everything"

>"That's ok, you two can hold hands in detention," she said, because she wanted the both of us to redo our backgrounds because I'm so god awful at them

•I've mentioned this before, but when announcing who was going to win the Excellence in Creative Writing award during the Senior Award ceremony, the English department head quoted my APLIT teacher who said, "This student even writes fanfictions in her own time" to basically my entire graduating class, letting everyone know about how I write fics

[happywitch416]

I received  @melaena for this years @fic-or-treat ! While not explicitly Halloween themed, I did go with a Haunting. Definitely more of a PG-13 haunting as I am giant chicken, so fear not. What if the Chantry had charity hospitals like the Catholic Church?  

Read on Ao3.

"Where are we going exactly?" Hawke asked, turning about in circles as they walked. Some parts of Darktown you could almost forget the soul-crushing poverty that reigned. This area was not one of them.

"Andraste's Grace Hospital, the former crown of the Chantry's charity work in Kirkwall." Anders answered, staring resolutely ahead, marking the streets until they needed to turn and head north to the edge of the city.

Hawke stopped walking, lurching to the moonlit center of the road in case someone threw anything out a window. Or if the shutters fell off when they did. "At night?"

Anders turned and gave her a bemused grin. "When else do I have time to duck the templars and my patients?"

She grabbed his shoulder as he went to start forward again, steering him to face her. "Anders, it's haunted. No one goes there."

"Love, I will hold your hand the entire time." He laced his fingers through hers and squeezed before tugging her along. "Besides, we will be in and out before you know it."

"But why?" She whined as they turned down another road.

"Free supplies hopefully. This is it."

They stared up at the building. The roof was caved in one side. The full moon did little to lighten the dark gaping windows or to lessen the feeling that the decrepit building was watching them. And waiting.

Hawke sighed heavily before pushing the iron gate open. "You are lucky I love you."

Anders gave her a grin and brushed a kiss against her cheek. "Yes, I am." He led the way up the crumbling steps before gingerly pushing open the door. It shrieked on its hinges and they both winced.

 "They probably heard that at the Circle." Hawke tsked. She let the door fall closed behind them, the hinges barely whispering this time. She shivered as Anders called light to the end of his staff, illuminating what had once been a waiting room. Broken chairs littered the floor, covered in dirt and leaves blown through the broken windows. She turned slowly on the spot. The wood counter was long cracked, the crevice filled with dust and cobwebs. "How long as this place been empty?"

Anders was already looking through the drawers in the counter, but they were long emptied of their contents. "During the Blight, before Kirkwall set so many regulations against the refugees. From what I've heard." His nose curled in disgust when he opened the storage closet, mops and brooms stuck to the walls with grim. "They quarantined anyone who was sick. Most left rather quickly, seasickness doesn't last much past the sea, and a poor diet is easily corrected. But."

 "They got someone with the Blight." She finished for him.

He nodded. "They didn't realize until it was too late, and it had spread to most of the other patients and sisters. Then they locked the doors and waited for the screams to end." She stared at him in open horror and he sighed. "It was not the wisest of medical decisions but the fear of it spreading to the rest of Kirkwall was far louder than anyone who spoke of temperance."

 "Like keeping them at the docks was better?" She followed him into the hallway and ignored how deep the darkness was past the light. She rubbed her arms trying to rid herself of the crawling feeling.

 "Did you ever see anyone who was sick there?" She didn't answer, didn't have to. They had peered at them all too close and her mother had only been sick with grief. The moonlight shone in illuminating a set of cabinets. The glass was broken along the sill, she tried not to think of how it was broken, with no glass on the inside, like something got out. But the heavy leaded stained glass was whole with its depiction of Andraste burning at the pyre. The red flames looked more like blood. She couldn't decide if Andraste was rising from the blood or sinking into it, nor did she want to consider which was worse.

��Anders opened several of the small cabinet doors, barely a foot across, peering into their dusty depths. Hawke did her best not grin when he jumped at the sound of her voice at his shoulder. "What do you think these were for? They are too deep to make good storage."

 He tugged on the slatted bottom and they both took a step back when it slid out smoothly. They stared at it a moment before Anders took a deep breath and shoved it back into place. "I think. I think we were just looking at the child morgue."

Hawke vehemently shook her head, hard enough her braid whipped around to smack her in the face. "No."

 "Well whatever was there, it's gone now." He opened and closed several more.

 "Maybe it was for chamber pots that were not in use."

 Anders chuckled, kicking the last one back shut. "Or snacks, they kept the trays lined up in there, or the kitchen is in the next room and they just slide them through."

 Hawke's grin was still a little pale when he squeezed her hand. "That would be a terrible mistake to make."

 "Yes, nothing says snack time like chamber pots and cadavers." She turned green and glared at him when he laughed. "Medicine makes for dark humor, Hawke."

"I am not touching anything in this place." She said primly sticking her nose in the air. "Surely we can just buy what you need? Smuggle it from the estate to your clinic?"

 "And how would you explain purchasing all those supplies?" 

She thought a moment, their boots disturbing the dust as the floor creaked beneath them. "Bethany and I like to brawl in our spare time. We'll take up challenging the other noble families."

 "Promise your hand in marriage to the first man to best you?"

She snorted. "Have you seen them? I'd have to let a 900-year-old man beat me." Her smile warmed at his laugh and she reached out to squeeze his hand.

 The next several rooms were more of the same, empty except for dust and cobwebs. "I think this place is so empty the spiders have even left." She batted the floating web until it stuck to the door frame. She stopped in her tracks. "By the Maker."

 This room was the largest they had found, a sunken amphitheater with rows upon rows of meticulously clean seats. "This is unusual." Anders gently took the first step down the stairs.

 Hawke peered at the dim ceiling; feet firmly planted on the top of the stairs. "Are those Tevene statues?"

 Anders followed her gaze upward and cast a second ball of mage light towards the ceiling. The flickering statues leered at them in grotesque laughter. "I don't think the Chantry built this." He cast another ball into the center of the floor. What should have been the floor. "Is that water?"

 The circular pool took up more than half of the floor, leaving a ledge just wide enough to navigate around it. Hawke was past him before he could stop her, and she was peering down into the pool. "It smells like the sea?" She turned her gaze to him as he joined her by it, walking around to the other side. He shrugged, focusing more on the hair standing on his neck and arms, the cold grasp on his heart, willing himself to breathe. A deep breath verified her claim. It smelled like seawater and blood. Justice seared across his mind, blinding him as he caught a glimpse of something moving in the depths. "Run." He ordered, taking several leaps up the stairs. But when Anders realized she wasn't behind him, he won out over Justice's will and turned back to her. Inky blackness rose from the water, caressing and crooning as Hawke leaned forward.

He grabbed her, a hard yank pulling her into him and away from the water. The darkness settled back into the pool, waiting.

Hawke shook her head slowly. "Can't you hear it, Anders? Such a beautiful song." Her eyes were unfocused and hazy. "Like a Chantry choir in a single voice."

He felt the prickling along his skin but listened hard. It was all too familiar to him, the taint in his blood firing to its call. So familiar yet he knew it was not right, not quite, just an awful mimicry. He grits his teeth and drags her up the stairs. Something began to howl, and he felt Justice once again take hold but this time in the companionship they had held for years, not the Anders obliterating rage of late.

Hawke finally came to her senses as the door slammed shut before them. She gave herself a hard shake and flicked the lockpicks from her belt, going to one knee as she cursed the lock. Neither of them acknowledges the singing as it grows louder, closer. Neither of them looked back. "Here." Anders gruffly pulled her back and sent magic splintering through the door. A wail took up behind them, drowning out the song with its wretchedness, the wind catching at their heels as they sprinted down the hallway, guided only by Justice's glow. Doors swung open trying to block their way, long-abandoned wheelchairs and gurneys flew into their path. Hawke went sailing over the counter and shoved open the door. Holding it open until Anders joined her and they sprinted through. They didn't wait for it to shut, careening across the broken cobblestones and through the iron gate.

Hawke slammed it shut behind them, breathing heavily and staring at the still open, writhing, screaming door. After what felt like hours it slammed shut on its own, thrown by an unseen force so hard into its frame it shook, roof crumbling further in. The song began again while it waited, a stalemate this time.

She wound her fingers through his and gently pulled him away, both walking backward until it passed from their sight. Hawke could feel the song in her mind, like a sticky ooze as she finally turned towards the rest of Darktown. "Home sweet home?"

"Sounds wonderful." Anders answered tightening his hold on her. His eyes still blazed but the worry in his features reassured her it was only Anders. He gave a short chuckle. "I'll take you up on your offer of buying supplies."

She nodded, her grin not as strong as she wanted, before glancing behind them before slowing to a stop. "We should burn that place to the ground."

"I vote we never return. Send the guard to do it."

She chuckled and let herself be drug along. "Aveline can shame it into burning itself down."

They ended the night in Hawke's bed with a few too many mugs on the nightstand and Dog happily at their feet while a roaring fire warmed them. Hawke had drawn the curtains feeling eyes staring at them but otherwise, they settled comfortably into each other's arms. Yet neither of them could sleep, the mournful haunting song echoing in their minds even as the sun began to shine.

[elsaclack]

set the fire and let it burn

HI SO THIS IS 110% BASED OFF OF @startofamoment‘s ATLA AU IN WHICH JAKE IS A FIREBENDER!!!! WHICH IS AMAZING AND AWESOME AND EVEN THOUGH IT’S NOT COMPLETELY NECESSARY TO HAVE READ THAT PRIOR TO READING THIS YOU GUYS HAVE TO READ IT. RIGHT NOW IMMEDIATELY I’LL WAIT

okay ANYWAYS this is based on one little snippet from that fic bc i’m a trash goblin and i couldn’t stop thinking about it and erica only encouraged me (read: politely listened while i screamed about it in her dms and then VERY KINDLY allowed me to write and now publish this) so here it is: the firebending angst au spin-off from hell

(titled in my google docs as “i gotta get a new Brand but shit boi!!!!! this au is so good!!!!!!!”)

Beneath a flickering fluorescent light, in the only plastic chair not cracked from years of wear-and-tear, Jake Peralta sits alone in an emergency room waiting area. Between his fingers he compulsively spins a golden ring, fingertips occasionally catching on the green gemstone set along the band; he stares down at it with eyes that do not see, do not process, do not blink.

He’s been waiting here for the better part of an hour now - sitting here, mostly. Except for the thirty seconds during which he’d been certain his inner organs would finally manage to crawl right out of his throat, which also happened to be the first thirty seconds he spent here in this room, manically pacing, borderline running in circles. He’d visited the bathroom after that, because through the anguish clouding every other sense, he’d somehow registered that he needed to wash his hands.

(It isn’t until he notices the water rushing over his hands into the basin below runs red that he fully realizes why.

And in his reflection in the mirror behind that sink, he sees that same red liquid dotted on his cheek. He splashes water into his own eye in his haste to wipe that away.

It isn’t his blood.)

He’s been waiting here alone for the better part of an hour, except for when one of the healers approached him, her expression unreadable, the ring currently twisting around his fingers clutched in her hand intended for his safekeeping.

(It was apparently the only item of clothing salvageable - not that she told him that.

She didn’t need to.

He was there.)

He’s been waiting here alone for the better part of an hour now, and he finds himself wondering how many waited here before him - how many felt anguish gnawing at their throats, how many felt their bones crack beneath the weight of their uncertainty, how many plummeted into the inky black void of grief and heartache and loss.

How many struggled for air through lungs compressed by guilt and shame and the fear that they maybe, possibly played a role in what happened.

He closes his eyes and grits his teeth, focusing on the sharp bite of a band too small fitting snug around the first knuckle of his thumb, banishing the haunting echoes of an hour ago to the furthest corners of his mind.

She hadn’t cried.

He isn’t entirely sure what to do with that information - can’t fathom a situation in which he’d need to know that. But he has it, carved deep into his memories: Amy Santiago did not cry.

She’d screamed.

She’d yelped.

She’d rasped and trembled and gripped his shirt like a lifeline.

But Amy Santiago did not cry.

He cried. He hadn’t even realized it at the time (or afterwards, in all honesty), not with his hands so slick with blood he could barely keep a grip on her. He’d ripped holes in the knees of his jeans from skidding to a stop at her side and he’d pulled her up into his chest, out of the blood quickly pooling beneath her, into an unsteady and panic-stricken embrace.

She didn’t cry when she got shot - nor did she cry when he burned her to stop the catastrophic bleeding.

And really, it felt an awful lot like what he imagines having his very soul ripped out of his body would feel like, to press the sharp heat of his palm against her wound despite her hoarse cries of pain echoing off the towering alley walls surrounding them.

She didn’t cry, but she did pass out from the insurmountable agony of it all; the healers found them there on the ground, his inflicting hand shaking as he stroked her face, desperately begging her to open her eyes again.

And then they left him here, alone in the waiting room. They left him standing on a grimy tiled floor with his hands stained red, his face carved by glittering tear tracks, his heart ripped open in his chest.

She was still unconscious.

Her grandmother’s ring is far too small to fit on his thumb, or really any of his fingers, but he twists it around his fingers anyway, mimicking the movements he’s seen her do countless times before when lost in thought. It does nothing to drown the guilt out.

Years. He’s spent years learning how to control the fire raging within him. Years of intense focus, of tutelage, of unlearning deeply-ingrained self-hatred and suppression - and in the end, he still hurt the one he loves most. He’s certain it will be a lifetime before the look of sheer agony that had twisted Amy’s face the moment his palm pressed against her wound will even begin to fade from his memory, and even then he’s quite certain the sound she’d made - the guttural, heart-wrenching sound that he ripped from her throat - will never leave him.

The ring falls from his fingertips and clatters against the tiled floor between his feet; it’s only then that he registers how heavily he’s breathing, how blurry his vision has become.

Focus, Jacob, a voice that sounds suspiciously like Holt’s says, as clearly as though the man himself is seated right beside him. Benders have emotions, but emotions cannot have the benders. Focus.

He grips both arm rests on his seat and hinges his entire existence on them, eyes falling closed as he forces himself to inhale deeply through his nose. His lungs are rioting between his ribs and the edges of his teeth pinch the edges of his tongue, and he’s real. He’s real and present and his emotions are a hurricane in a cardboard box inside his chest.

He opens his eyes and the world is technicolor once again; the green gemstone on Amy’s grandmother’s ring winks beneath the flickering fluorescent light twelve inches from his left foot.

It’s as his fingers close over the ring that the waiting room doors slide open and a familiar healer steps into the room.

“Is she okay?”

The question springs up from somewhere deep inside him, spilling from his lips without a conscious thought. He blinks and he’s on his feet, clutching Amy’s ring like a talisman, and the healer’s face is kind and gentle where not blurred by unshed tears.

(So maybe he’s still working on the whole focusing thing.)

“She’s okay.” the healer says, and all of his senses fade for just a moment. He is the physical embodiment of relief, teetering on the precipice, seconds from floating away into the heavens at the weight of the world vanishing from his shoulders. “She’s resting now,” the healer says as he slowly comes back to himself, “but she would like to see you.”

“I-I didn’t,” he rasps, and then stops, words lost to the sharp emotions jutting up like icebergs in his throat. “I didn’t - hurt her?”

A look of understanding flashes in the healer’s eyes. “You must be the firebender,” she says slowly.

And for just an instant every last nanoparticle of self-hatred in the universe crashes down upon him like a tsunami rising from the deep -

“Cauterizing the wound was the best thing you could have done for her,” the healer says, voice gentle, and the unshed tears pooling in his eyes finally crest and drip down his face. “In fact, without that, I’m not certain we would have gotten to her in time. You didn’t hurt her.” Her hands close over his, her grip steady and warm. “You saved her life.”

He hadn’t felt himself crying in the alley, but he definitely feels every last poorly-restrained sob shuddering through his chest like aftershocks of an earthquake now. “Saved - saved her life?” he repeats hoarsely as the healer pats and releases his hands.

“Yes, sir,” she says with that same kind smile, “and I know she would very much like to thank you for that.”

He nods, swiping the back of his hand across his face, and shuffles blindly after the healer as she gestures toward the emergency room.

Amy’s sitting up in her bed when he gets to her, and though he recognizes all the signs of exhaustion in her face, her eyes still light up when she sees him.

And if he was crying before, he’s all-out sobbing now.

“I’m so sorry,” he says in a mumbled rush, practically tripping over his own feet to get to her and her outstretched arms. She draws him into a tight embrace without a word, the muscles of her arms straining against him from exertion, and when she falls backwards against her mattress she traps his arms wrapped around her waist beneath her. He buries his face in her pillow, well aware of the fact that it’s soaking up his tears, and Amy’s hands are clumsy where she strokes his hair and shoulders.

She’s looking up at him when he pulls away minutes later, and in her eyes he sees blazing intensity, and her fingers wind around the collar of his shirt moments before she pulls him into a hard and unforgiving kiss.

“You don’t apologize to me,” she says, voice quiet and hoarse and so, so fierce, when he pulls away a moment later. “You saved me. Never apologize.”

He clenches his jaw and closes his eyes as the truth of her statement washes over him. “I know,” he whispers thickly, “but I had to hurt you to do it -”

“I don’t care, Jake,” she interrupts sharply. “I’m alive because of you. That’s all that matters.” Her eyes are still blazing when he manages to open his again. “You’re a good man. You used your firebending abilities to save my life. I love you more than anything in the universe, and -” she reaches up to frame his face in her hands “- I am so proud of you. Thank you, Jake. I love you, every part of you, so much.”

He lifts his hands to cover both of hers and turns his face so that his lips slide against her palm; he presses three kisses there, eyes never once leaving her face. “I love you, too,” he whispers into her skin, “more than you’ll ever know.”

He can tell there’s a part of her that would very much like to argue, a lighthearted and playful part he only sees when they’re goofing around or flirting, but the dark circles beneath her eyes seem to be carved deep into her skull and her thumb strokes weakly against his cheek; she merely smiles, soft and serene, and allows him to gently buffet her to one side of the bed so that he has just enough room to shimmy in beside her. And he falls asleep quickly to the sounds of Amy’s deep, even breathing, her grandmother’s ring snug against the second knuckle of his index finger, his face all but buried in her soft hair.

It’s the best sleep he’s had in years.

[rivertellsstories]

The case of the demon’s den #3

If you can’t find part 1and 2, feel free to shoot me a message!

Words: 2432

Editing: nope

Ships: JOJOBUTTONS CHAPTER WHOO, eventual Javid, eventual Spromeo, eventual Newsbians, Blush

Things you should know: Buttons, Smalls and Sniper are girls, JoJo is nonbinary, Race, Romeo, Jack and Smalls are adopted siblings. There are horror elements in this fic.

Chapter 3: The only logical thing to do in a haunted house, is to watch Barbie movies.

By Sunday noon, the demon’s den living room had traces of every newsie all over it and they decide to throw a modest housewarming party. Henry and Buttons have taken over the kitchen and are baking cookies, Finch and Sniper are outside, trying to teach Smalls how to use a slingshot. It’s not going well, but at least they aren’t inside with those slingshots. A bunch of people are lazing around on the couch and on chairs. The unfortunate ones have to sit on the floor. Race and Albert are trying to make the DVD-player work and it seems like they’re succeeding. Romeo and Specs are having a heated discussion over which Barbie movie they should watch.

  “Princess and the Pauper!” Romeo yells and hits Specs with a pillow he found somewhere. “Three Musketeers!” Specs shrieks back and wrestles with Romeo. Jack silently inserts Barbie & the Diamond Castle before either of them notices it and when the movie starts to play, they break up their fight to glare at the tv. “Who is the fool that wants to die?” Romeo growls and Specs glares too. Wisely, Jack stays silent and sits down in front of the couch. Grumbling, Specs and Romeo sit down too and angrily snack on the potato chips that Mush brought along.

Speaking of Mush, Jack is fairly sure that he and Blink are making out somewhere. Ah well, who cares.

  Halfway the movie, the two of them return and Blink drapes himself across all the people who are sitting on the couch and steals a cookie from Elmer. “This is cosy.” The sentence is barely understandable through the cookie in his mouth and Mush gives him a disgusted look. “Really Blink? I’ve got to kiss that mouth.” With his mouth still full of cookies, Blink grins. “You’ve got to do exactly nothing.” “Okay then”, Mush says and leaves for the kitchen. Promptly, Blink clambers from the mountain of people he had placed himself on and trails after Mush. “Babe, come back!”

  “Whipped”, Specs whispers as soon as Blink is out of earshot and Tommy Boy snorts. “Like you are any better.” Specs turns to him with a confused look on his face. “What’s that supposed to mean? I don’t have a boyfriend. I wish I had a boyfriend. I’m lonely.” Romeo reaches up to pat his head. “Same bro.” Their friends watch the scene, but decide not to comment on it. Eventually they’ll figure it out. Maybe. Who knows. Probably not.

  “You know what this evening-“ “It’s afternoon” “Shut up Jack. Do you know what this evening needs?” Buttons asks, when she gently pushes JoJo out of their chair and claims it for herself. “Candles!” JoJo, who’s now on the floor, gives her a smile. “I can get you those, wait here for a minute.” After JoJo left the room, Tommy Boy smirks. “Whipped nr.2”, he announces and Buttons kicks him for it. “Shut up, dickwad.”

  Within record time, JoJo is back with some candles. “The first time we went here, I discovered these”, they inform Buttons. “Now get off my chair and enjoy your candles.” Childishly she refuses to return their chair. “Nope it’s mine now. Nothing you can do about it.” They give her a flat look before picking her up and lifting her high above their head. “You weight literally nothing”, they remark before sitting down on the chair and placing Buttons on their lap. “There we go, place for two.”  

  Nothing out of place happens, and in the late afternoon, before the sun begins to set, they say goodbye to each other and plan to meet up here the next Saturday with the whole group. Some people want to come back earlier in the week and Jack advises them to go in groups. “In case you fall down the stairs”, he adds as a joke, but it falls flat as all of them pointedly stare at his right leg, where is his pants are hiding a massive bruise. Then their gazes travel up to his forehead, where a faint line indicates the place where he headbutted a step. “Just be careful y’all.”

  Later that night, when JoJo is staring at their ceiling, trying to fall asleep, they suddenly come to a conclusion. They recall grabbing the candles, and dropping them again because they had been hot. They are fairly certain that none of the newsies had gone upstairs, which means that someone else must’ve lit those candles. The sound of their phone alerts them of a new message in their group chat. ‘Anybody want to go to the DD (demon’s den) w/me after school tomorrow? I need to fill up our snack cabinets.’

  Immediately they want to tell Buttons not to go, but then they remember that Blink and Mush had been gone for a suspiciously long time during the movie. Also, aren’t candles supposed to be a mood setter or something? Relieved that they simply have a very active imagination, they shoot a message back. ‘Sure, count me in.’

-

“I’m going to fucking kill Denton” rages Buttons as she enters the ‘DD’. “Who deducts points for grammar mistakes?” “Well, he is our English teacher”, JoJo points out and they get a glare in return. They raise their hands in surrender. “Don’t mind me stating the facts.” Grumbling, she admits that they are sort of right. “I’m craving some cookies and this house has a working oven. Want to help?” Despite never having baked cookies before, JoJo quickly agrees.

  “Jorgelino Josephino De La Guerra” The use of their full name shouldn’t get to them like this, but JoJo’s heart skips a beat and their breathing stutters for a minute. “Yeah?” they answer when they’re sure that their voice isn’t going to sound like that of a six year old. “What in God’s name are you doing?” Buttons’ voice is filled with amusement and JoJo sticks out their tongue. “I’m making cookies, Yasmin Davenport”, he retorts and she tries to keep herself from cracking up. “I see”, she says and eyes their clothes, which were black half an hour ago. Now they are streaked with flour.

  They even managed to get some of the stuff in their hair. “Bow down, skyscraper. There’s flour in your hair.” They bow down and as Buttons reaches for their hair, JoJo places their arms around her legs and hauls her up. “There we go”, they giggle as they set a shrieking Buttons on the kitchen counter. “That’s better for my back.” “What are you? An eighty year old?” “Slowly getting there.”

  Sitting on the kitchen counter, Buttons is finally taller than JoJo and as she looks down at their messy hair and lazy grin and feels the warmth of their hands on her thighs, she leans down. JoJo meets her halfway and for a few seconds it’s merely their lips touching. Then JoJo growls and pulls her close, while she tangles her hands into their hair and gives an experimental tug. That, combined with her softly tugging on their bottom lip, draws an obscene sound from their lips and Buttons groans in return.

  “Fuck JoJo”, she breathes and kisses their neck. “I’ve been wanting this since sixth grade”, she pants. “Remember when someone pulled the arm of my favourite teddy bear off and you tried to stitch it back? Your stitching was awful, but damn if it wasn’t sweet.” She presses another bruising kiss onto their neck and JoJo keens. When their eyes cross, JoJo brings out: “Me since eighth.” They gently rub circles into Buttons’ thighs and she sighs with pleasure. “That fucking teacher wouldn’t stop misgendering me no matter how much I asked him to stop and you plainly started screeching whenever he opened his mouth. That’s when I first thought: yup, she’s the one.”

  While they are busy staring at each other, they hear the sound of a door opening. Quickly they spring apart and Buttons calls out: “Hey! Who’s there?” When she gets no answer, she and JoJo trade glances. “Wanna go look?” she asks and they nod. “Wait, let me take this along.” Out of their backpack they grab a 12 inch cross. “JoJo, I’m 90% sure that ghosts don’t exist.” JoJo grins and mischief sparkles in their eyes as they reveal a blade hidden within the cross. “This one ain’t for ghosts.” With an aghast expression on her face she eyes the cross-dagger in JoJo’s hand. “Why do you have such a thing? Where do you even get something like that? Whatever, just don’t give one to Race. Ever.” Their grin widens. “Bold of you to assume that I haven’t given him one yet.”

  Nothing seems out of the ordinary as they wander around the house and every door they come across is closed. Even the doors upstairs aren’t open. Confused, JoJo enters the attic bedroom and plops down on the bed. As Buttons sits down next to them, the door locks itself. Immediately both of them rush to the door and try to open it in vain. “What the fuck”, Buttons whispers as she peers through the keyhole. “There’s no key in here, but we both heard a key and this fucking door won’t open. There’s nobody in the hallway and we heard no one. What the shit is going on?”

  Before JoJo can answer, a high and feminine scream rings through the house. In a moment of clarity, JoJo pulls out their phone and calls the first person in his contact list. For a moment they fear that nothing’s going to happen, but then they hear that the call is going through and after three rings, Finch picks up. “Sup JoJo.”

  “HeyButtonsandImightbedyingsoonpleasehelpus” They spit the words out at a nearly impossible pace and Finch is silent for a minute. “What? Speak slower buddy.”

“We’re in the demon’s den and we’re locked into the room. There should be nobody here except us, but we just heard someone scream. Please help us.”

  “Shit, I’m coming. Where exactly are you guys?” “We’re in the attic bedr-“ Once again, a scream is heard throughout the house and judging by the sharp intake of his breath, Finch had heard it too. “Fuck, I hope you guys have something to defend yourselves with. I’m on my way.” Finch hangs up and JoJo clutches their dagger-cross tighter.

  The minutes go by slowly and both of them sit on the bed in silence. Their hands are intertwined and JoJo runs their thumb over the back of Buttons’ hand in what they hope is a comforting manner. A smile graces Buttons lips as she gives them a brief kiss on the tip of their nose. “You’re a sweetheart” They want to tell her the same thing and about a million things more, but the words get stuck in their throat and all they can do is blush and press little kisses all over Buttons’ face.

  “Would’ya look at that”, Finch comments as he enters the room, a grin plastered on his stupid face. It’s hard to tell whether JoJo or Buttons is glaring more at him, but he ignores it.

“This one” he raps his knuckles against the door “was open. If you weren’t busy” he waggles his eyebrows at that part and continues “maybe you would’ve noticed. Also, you guys left the tv on and some horror movie was playing. I shut it off.”

  From downstairs, the sound of voices travel up and as Buttons and JoJo tense up, Finch quickly waves away their fears. “That’s just the guys. I called everybody and they all wanted to be involved in the JoButtons rescue mission.” The tension drains out of their shoulders and Buttons grabs JoJo’s hand and speed walks out of the room. For some reason, JoJo looks back and their eyes land on a mirror. They can’t make out a face, or even a person but when they close their eyes, hauntingly blue eyes are imprinted in their mind.

  As JoJo goes down the stairs, they see something move out of the corner of their eye and turn to look at it. Their own image stares back at them from a mirror, but the view is distorted, like in one of those houses of mirrors at the carnival. As they stand still to watch their comically warped reflection, it changes. Its amused smile moulds itself into an unnaturally wide grin and when it opens its mouth, it reveals two rows of teeth on both the upper- and lower side of it’s mouth. The image unravels its long, sharp tongue and licks the second row of teeth in the upper side of its mouth. Completely caught in a mix between horror and morbid fascination, JoJo keeps watching until Finch’s voice breaks them out of their trance.

  “What’cha looking at JoJo?” When Finch looks at the mirror, JoJo’s reflection has turned back to normal. “That’s a pretty funny thing, but if we keep standing on these stairs, the others will worry. Let’s go downstairs.” JoJo complies to Finch’s request, but as they turn their back to the mirror, they feel a gaze following them. It feels awfully wrong and merely thinking about it makes them nauseous. “JoJo”, a mangled voice garbles and judging by their lack of a reaction neither Finch nor Buttons heard it. JoJo pretends they don’t either and they have never felt more relieved than when they set a foot into the living room and get surrounded by a heap of newsies.

  The first person who comes into view is Romeo. He runs towards them, opens his arms for a hug, sees the cross-dagger in JoJo’s hand and immediately retreats. “Excuse my wording, but what the fuck is that?” From the couch, Race holds up a necklace with a cross and clicks it open. “Look Romeo, JoJo gave me one too!” Befuddled, Buttons rakes a hand through her hair. “I thought you were kidding when you said that Race had one too. Why did you think that was a good idea?” They smile sheepishly at her. “Sorry babe, but since Albert handled his responsibly, I thought Race would be able to do the same.”

  As Jack shouts: “Babe?” in utter confusion, Buttons looks like she’s on the brink of a breakdown. “Albert has a dagger-cross too? JoJo you can’t do that.”

  “That’s right”, a new voice speaks up and the room falls silent. All of them stare at the new boy leaning against the doorframe with Hello Kitty socks on his feet, as he casually eats the chocolate that was supposed to go into JoJo and Buttons’ cookies. “No crosses”, he continues. “This is a nice and respectable Jewish household.”

[singingwordwright]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Shadowhunters (TV) Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood Characters: Magnus Bane, Alec Lightwood Additional Tags: 2x15 speculation, 2x15 promo stills, False Memories, or are they?, I really have no idea how to tag this, Cheating, Maybe, sometimes people make bad choices, see notes Summary:

Magnus isn't sleeping well. Haunted by his experiences with the agony rune, he has to question which of his memories is real, and which of them aren't.

MAY CONTAIN SEMI-SPOILERS FOR 2x15 - BEWARE

Notes: This fic is something of an intellectual exercise. There's a lot of speculation about the 2x15 production stills, particularly the fact that Magnus and Alec are more or less wearing the same clothing they were when Alec went to Magnus's loft in 1x12. When coupled with production team tweets about a possible flashback to Season 1, people are hypothesizing that there was more to that scene than we saw.

We don't know, and we won't know until July 10. And I honestly don't think anything I describe in this fic would actually happen, but I just had to try to make the theories make sense in my head, and this is what I came up with.

Depending on your definition of the term, this fic contains scenes of infidelity. Read at your own risk.

It’s not yet sunrise when Alec awakens tangled the crimson satin bedding. The sheets beside him are cold; he’s been alone in bed for a while.

He finds Magnus exactly where he knows he will, sipping tea out on the balcony in the pre-dawn light. Alec shuffles his feet as he approaches to avoid startling him. Magnus turns his head slightly to look over his shoulder, the side of his mouth lifting in a half-hearted greeting.

“Couldn’t sleep again?” Alec murmurs, dropping a kiss on the side of Magnus’s neck as he wraps his arms around him from behind, then rests his chin on Magnus’s shoulder.

Magnus’s shrug jostles him. “I’m getting used to it. I should be already, really. It’s not like I haven’t seen dawn from the wrong side many, many times. Usually those occasions involve very complicated jobs for clients or raucous parties, however. Insomnia isn’t usually my thing.”

Alec draws a slow breath. “Look, I know you haven’t wanted to talk about it, and I don’t want to push. But maybe if you were to get some it out there and stop stewing…” Magnus shakes his head quickly, but for the first time Alec doesn’t stop. “Whatever it is, Magnus, you can tell me. I swear. Whatever memories that agony rune brought to the surface, they’re not going to drive me away.”

Magnus pulls away from Alec’s loose hug and sets his teacup on the balcony railing, clasping his hands on the edge of the stonework. “I know that Alexander. And if it were just memories of the distant past, it’d be one thing.”

“What else is it?” Alec steps forward to stand beside him, shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip, looking over the river at the city.

Magnus glances sideways at him. “Do you have any idea what an agony rune does?”

“Only what it says in the Grey Book. I’m guessing the experience is something else entirely. But it’s supposed to amplify the memories of the most traumatic things that have ever happened to you, or the things which haunt you the worst.” With centuries of life behind him, Magnus must have plenty of memories for the rune to pull from. “Loss, guilt, fear. It makes it so real it’s like living it all over again.”

“All that and more.” Magnus laughs bitterly. “I don’t know if what I experienced was part of the normal agony rune package, or if my experience was somehow affected also by the fact that I was a warlock’s soul trapped inside a Shadowhunter body, but there was something else. There were plenty of terrible memories based upon awful experiences, yes, but it also...created memories where none existed before. Of things I fear, things that hurt me, many of which never actually happened.”

“Like what?” Alec turns to face him fully. Magnus’s eyes are distant and a little glassy. His knuckles are white where he grasps the railing.

“I couldn’t begin to list them all.” Alec suspects Magnus is trying for a blithe tone, but he falls far short. “Not surprisingly, you feature heavily in a few of them. Losing you, specifically.” There’s something very fragile about Magnus as he speaks those words. Like the slightest jostle will shatter him. “Your death, of course. Sudden and violent, fighting demons tomorrow or the next day, or fighting Valentine, or even decades from now, after a lifetime together. But those aren’t the worst ones. The worst ones are the ones where you just...walk out on me.”

“Walk out?” Surprise makes Alec’s voice a little sharper than he intends. “It’ll never happen.”

Magnus’s Adam’s apple bobs sharply as he swallows. “You don’t get it. It did.”

“I won’t ask again.”

Magnus knows the little disappearing trick is a petty touch, giving him the opportunity to get the last word in, and sparing him the ordeal of hearing another rejection. But he’s entitled to a little pettiness after the way Alec just accused him of playing games when he’s laid it all on the line for Alec in a way that he hasn’t done for another person in decades, and thought he’d never do for a Shadowhunter.

He rifles through a few papers lying on the desk where he meets with clients and waits for the sound of the door closing behind Alec. But instead, he hears footfalls. Just a few. Slow, meandering, like they have no idea where to go.

He calls out. “Magnus please. Please.” His voice doesn’t quite crack, but there’s a ragged edge of emotion there that suggests cracking isn’t outside the realm of possibility. Like his footsteps, Alec sounds lost, and it tugs at something inside Magnus.

Sympathy is something he can’t afford right now, but it’s there, and it has been since Alec admitted that he didn’t know if he was in love with Lydia. This poor, beautiful boy doesn’t even know what love is, and that’s an absolute tragedy, that’s what it is. Because for all his contentious dealings with the Clave, Magnus has known too many Shadowhunters to be under the impression that the passions of the Nephilim burn gently. No, once set ablaze, those passions are an inferno, one that can immolate and purify, and maybe even destroy.

But Alec will never know that, never know what it is to be consumed by that fire. Not on the path that he’s determined to walk. Magnus can’t afford to be moved by that fact, and yet he is. He wants to help Alec, even wants to help Lydia, but there’s nothing…

Except there is.

No. No, that’s just...no. Absolutely not.

That’s a low Magnus to which has never brought himself to knowingly stoop. And if Alec were to go along with it, he wouldn’t be the sort of man for whom Magnus should be feeling this level of turmoil anyway.

No.

“I don’t know what to do. I’m going to ruin everything and I don’t know how to stop it. I don’t know what’s right anymore.” Alec calls out from the other room, his voice getting quieter with each sentence, trailing away. “Just...help me, Magnus. Please. Tell me what to do.

His feet are in motion, pulled by that plaintive murmur, carrying him back to the living room even before Magnus really even decides to go. He stops in the doorway, his heart breaking a little to see Alec slumped dejectedly against one of the red brick pillars. His head is bowed, his eyes closed, and he just looks broken.

Magnus places one foot steadily, deliberately before the other as he crosses the room, taking his time with those slow strides. He needs the time, needs to sit with this decision in his mind for a moment. He’s crossing a line he’s always sworn he would never cross. It’s wrong, it’s a mistake, it will end badly, and he knows that.

He takes that moment of strolling toward Alec to wrap his head around it, to accept it and all its inevitable fallout. When this is all over, he won’t be able to indulge in self-serving denials. He’s fully aware of what he’s doing.

He’s going to do it anyway.

Alec’s head snaps up when Magnus’s toes enter his line of sight. The expression on his face as as lost and shattered as his tone of voice was, and again that pulls at something inside Magnus, dragging him into Alec’s orbit against all better judgment.

“Kiss me,” Magnus says, making his voice firmer than his resolve.

It takes Alec a moment to comply, and Magnus is glad for that. Glad to see Alec go through the same process of knowing it’s wrong and making the choice to walk unflinching into that wrongness.

And then Alec swallows. Licks his lips. Slides one hand gently along Magnus’s jaw and lays his mouth on Magnus’s.

The first tentative brush of Alec’s lips across his jolts him like an electric shock. Magnus’s lungs empty of breath on a startled gasp, which Alec swallows as his lips part and he closes in the kill.

And Magnus learns that for all his centuries, he knows nothing.

It’s not just a kiss, it’s a maelstrom, and it rips apart everything Magnus ever even imagined he knew and flings it all into the wild winds. Alec falls back against the brick pillar, letting it support them both. His hands are on the nape of Magnus’s neck and the small of his back, dragging him closer. His tongue sweeps across Magnus’s lips and then plunges inside, and Magnus’s heart thuds against his ribcage like an enraged stallion kicking his stall.

What hubris made him think he could teach this torn Nephilim boy what passion means?

By the time they wrench themselves apart, they’re both hard and shaking with need. Magnus’s hands have found their way under the hem of Alec’s shirt, fingers spanning the corded muscles and warm skin of Alec’s back.

And Alec...Alec looks just devastated.

His cheeks are flushed, his lips swollen, and his eyes...his eyes are almost feral, filled with confusion and fear and need.

“I didn’t know,” he rasps desperately. “I never—never knew.”

Neither did I, Magnus wants to say, but the words that fall from his lips are far different.

“Give me one night. Just one.” Magnus bows his head and takes another moment to accept that he will never be able to reconcile this decision with what he knows to be right. It is wrong, but nothing feels as wrong as letting Alec leave without at least trying to see where this might lead them. “If you can still walk away in the morning, I won’t try to stop you.”

Alec’s eyes close. His brow furrows for a moment. Then he meets Magnus’s gaze and takes his hand with all the willful trepidation of Eve reaching for the apple.

They stumble to the bedroom amid frenzied kisses and hands grasping for whatever purchase they can find. Alec sweeps the satin of Magnus’s robe off his shoulder and his open mouth lays a trail of heated kisses along the skin he’s bared. When Magnus had chosen to appear in dishabille for this meeting, his intent had been merely to tantalize. He hadn’t planned quite so literal a seduction, but he’s not backing away now. He tongues the rune on Alec’s neck and reaches low, dragging a groan from Alec’s throat as he tugs him into full contact.

Alec is trembling. The way he keeps moving back and forth between desperate determination and astonished wonder tells Magnus everything he needs to know about Alec’s level of experience. Perhaps that should have some relevance, but it just doesn’t right now. Scruples have ceased to be a thing that matters.

Alec’s shaking hands pull the belt on Magnus’s robe free and slip inside. His hot breath gusts against Magnus’s ear. “I just...Just once, Magnus, I need to…”

Magnus cuts him off with another kiss, hard and demanding. He doesn’t want to hear it, that confirmation of what he already knows.

He’s being used. Alec doesn’t mean to do it, but that’s what this is. One moment in a lifetime of self-denial. One taste of what he can never let himself have. In the morning, all the reasons Alec is selling any hope of joy in his short, mortal life to the Clave will still be there, and he’ll carry through with his wedding.

Magnus buys time with that fierce kiss to reconcile himself to these facts. He shoves Alec’s jacket to the floor, drags Alec’s shirt over his head, and pulls him by the hand onto the bed.

Alec doesn’t try to make excuses or justify what he’s done, or what he will do. If nothing else, Magnus has to admire him for that. After the third round (or is it fourth? A couple of them really just melded together) he falls asleep, but Magnus doesn’t dare close his eyes. If he does, he knows Alec will be gone when he opens them again.

Instead, he leaves the bed, his heart heavy and his body humming with the memory of pleasure. He pulls on his discarded robe and and greets the dawn with a cup of tea, grasping for all the calm he can muster to power through these final moments and somehow convince Alec he’s okay with it all.

“Tell me honestly,” he asks when he hears Alec’s shuffling footsteps behind him. “What is it you’re afraid of? What’s the worst possible outcome if you don’t go through with this wedding?”

“Whatever will happen if Izzy and Max don’t have the Lightwood name and connections to protect them,” he says with no hesitation. “That trial—well, you saw. You saw how the Clave treats someone in disgrace. How they scapegoat someone. When Clary brought the Cup back, I thought maybe—maybe that would be enough, that we found the Mortal Cup and brought it back to the Clave. I thought maybe I could talk to Lydia and she’d understand. I-I-I think she really would.”

“But?”

“But now it turns out not only have we been helping Valentine’s daughter, we’ve been harboring his son for years.” He huffs humorlessly. “My parents got off lightly for what they did when they were in the Circle, because of our name. Hodge didn’t have that, and look where he is. I can’t let that happen to my little brother and sister.”

“Alexander, do you really believe Isabelle would want you to sacrifice your own happiness to protect her?” Magnus finally turns to face him. Alec is adorably tousled and there’s a glow to him that wasn’t there before last night. He looks like a man who has received divine revelation. Magnus shakes his head and sighs. “You have to know she didn’t ask me to be her advocate because she thought I had any hope of swaying the Inquisitor. Me? Persuade Imogen Herondale? That was never going to happen.”

Alec’s confused frown would be precious, if Magnus’s heart weren’t breaking for the dilemma Alec finds himself in. Magnus takes pity on him and lays it out plainly. “She asked me to represent her in the hope that seeing me again might convince you to call off your engagement. She blew her last shot at avoiding being deruned to try to help you find some happiness after she was gone.”

Alec closes his eyes. “Even if that’s true, it was before we knew about Jace. Now that we do—”

“Even the Branwell name might not be enough to spare you the fallout from that one,” Magnus says. Alec winces and nods. “But let’s be honest, Alec. Max is too young to suffer any consequences for your family’s actions, and Isabelle would rather deal with whatever happens on her own terms. You have two possible futures laid before you. One is miserable but at least it’s familiar: duty and obligation, self-sacrifice and denial. The other is something you can’t even conceive the shape of. It’s completely unknown, and that’s what really scares you, isn’t it? You don’t know who you are if you’re not denying yourself in the name of family.”

The look Alec gives him should by all rights be bleak, but instead it’s tender. He doesn’t smile, but his hands fall on Magnus’s waist and he pulls him close. Alec’s lips brush his, and then he lingers there with Magnus, resting forehead to forehead, breathing the same air.

“I swear, Magnus, if I thought I’d be the only one who had to pay the price, I’d find out. For you, I’d take that chance.”

“Well, that’s...lovely to hear.” Magnus is pleased his voice doesn’t sound as fragile as his composure feels. He smiles and steps back, patting Alec’s chest. “You may wish to tidy up. Before you return to...the Institute.”

He can’t say her name. He likes her, but he’s done her a great wrong and he hates her a little right now anyway. It’s an enmity he has no business feeling. She’s the only innocent one in this mess now.

He spends the moments Alec is washing putting himself together. He belts his robe, fingers his hair into shape, and refreshes his now-tepid tea.

“I should...I should get going,” Alec mutters when he reappears, sidling toward the door. He’s used a healing rune to get rid of the lovebites that had speckled his throat.

Magnus smiles blandly and nods. “Of course. Good luck, Alexander.”

When Alec turns away, Magnus murmurs an incantation under his breath and plucks the memory of the last twelve hours from Alec’s mind, molding its replacement into a boring evening of last-minute wedding plans, a demon hunt that kept him out until almost daybreak, and a strained but benign call upon Magnus to consult on Jocelyn Fairchild’s condition.

If he’s honest with himself, Magnus isn’t sure if it’s petty revenge or kindness driving him. Maybe both. Maybe he wants to take that one memory Alec was so desperate to make, leaving Alec with even less than Alec is leaving him with.

But it’s also true that that memory will haunt Alec. It’ll strangle him with guilt and with a yearning for something he knows he can never have again. It’ll drive him to despair, or to acts he’ll loathe himself for.

Alec’s chances of finding at least some contentment are far better without it.

Alec turns abruptly, glancing around the room in confusion. “Did you say something?”

“I said good luck finding the warlock who bespelled Jocelyn,” Magnus answers calmly. He even manages a smile. “Please, don’t hesitate to have the Institute call me if they wish to confer further on the matter. I’ll even offer a discounted rate.”

Alec frowns, but eventually nods. Magnus turns away, unable to watch him leave.

The sound of the door closing a moment later is like a gavel falling.

“You don’t get it. It did.”

Alec tries to make sense of that statement and can’t. “I don’t understand. Do you mean in the detention cell?”

Magnus’s fists clench. This isn’t the cold, vacant distress Alec has seen him in so often since his ordeal in Valentine’s body. There’s something frantic to this.

“It’s not like remembering a nightmare, Alexander, not even a particularly vivid one. The memories that rune made are real, every bit as real as if I had actually lived through the experience. So I can’t always tell which memories are true anymore.” He sighs raggedly. “Some of them I can. Obviously, you’re still here, so I know the ones where I saw you die are false. But others...I just can’t be sure.”

“I can.” Alec gently grips Magnus’s shoulders and turns him until they’re face to face. “I’d remember walking out on you.”

Magnus hesitates at that. “Not...if I took the memory from you.”

Alec freezes. “You wouldn’t do that to me,” he says, trying for certainty and falling far short.

Magnus scoffs. “Wouldn’t I? If it seemed like an act of mercy at the time? If I thought I was setting you free?”

Alec swallows thickly. He can’t imagine the circumstances under which Magnus would ever do such a thing—which is really sort of a problem, isn’t it? What if he can’t imagine those circumstances because he can’t remember them?

He hates himself for doubting. Shakes his head and resolutely pushes the thought away.

“No. No, we’re not doing this. We’re not going to play ‘what it’ games and second guess whether we can trust each other and ourselves. Not now,” Alec says adamantly. The thought that Magnus would betray him like that gnaws inside him, and he squashes it ruthlessly. Even if it really did happen, he repaid that betrayal with interest down there in that cell when he ignored Magnus’s desperate pleas for help and trussed him up to be murdered.

No more of this.

“Whatever happened—if it happened, or if it’s a false memory created by that rune—whatever choice we made, they don’t matter now. I chose you, Magnus. I tried to walk out, once, but in the end I still turned away from that altar and everything it meant, and I chose you. That’s all there is to it. I’m not going anywhere and that’s what’s important. Anything else, we can deal with. Okay?”

Magnus closes his eyes but eventually he nods. When Alec tries to draw him in, he willingly steps into Alec’s arms and accepts his gentle kiss.

“Will you tell me about it? Whatever it is you don’t know really happened?” Alec asks softly, because he can’t help himself. He needs to know now.

Magnus swallows. “I will...but not today, please. Today I think I’d rather just enjoy the sunrise, and knowing that you’ll still be here when it’s over.”

Alec smiles and tightens his arms. “I can live with that.”

BUY ME A CUP OF COFFEE!!

[flarebossmalva]

just for future reference and in case anyone was curious i’m going to explain what the hell i was on about re: some stuff in my writing tag

skipping things that are obvious or self-explanatory but if you’re puzzled by something i wrote and i didn’t explain it here then feel free to ask i guess

disgust - i thought of vomit immediately and then wrote about the last experience i had with a friend who was sick. i don’t actually remember which friend this was anymore. “you’re never going to die ever again” i’m not sure about but i think this may have been referring to how awful stomach sicknesses are and how they can literally be so bad they make you feel like you’re dying? that’s a guess

aether - thought of “ether” instead which is very volatile so that’s how i got onto the theme about exploding. i think the rest was just vague associations

pincushion - human pincushion. i guess someone who has bled out completely

aura - you know how they talk about people having colored auras? i just picked a color and went from there. don’t know what “i can taste it under my fingernails” means even remotely but if this is from when i worked in produce/floral i constantly had plant matter under my fingernails so maybe that. am reading “you look lovely, by the way. very fresh.” in GLaDOS’ voice for some reason and not sure if that was what i had in mind when i wrote it

mint leaves - catnip is in the mint family and some people says humans can get a mild high off smoking it

indie - this was about seeing mother mother live. the “he” is ryan

wind - probably masturbation but trying to explain the trip from point a to point b that i made here would get really complicated if i’m even recalling it correctly

lamp oil - amnesia: the dark descent. lamp oil is a resource in that game. player character hallucinates bugs and grinds his teeth when he spends too long in the dark

bombs - boss fight wheatley. the track that plays during that battle is called “bombs for throwing at you”

cucumber - i was thinking of items you could buy together at a supermarket that would disturb the cashier. a single cucumber, rope, and a paperback romance novel sends some interesting implications i think

columbia - no idea but one of my friends told me this is essentially the plot of bioshock infinite

kevin james - one of those paul blart mall cop memes involved the phrase “distant egg song!” and that’s what i was going off of

marigold - flowey

25-27 - since this looked like it was referring to three sequential questions on an askmeme i acted as though that’s what i was answering here. i don’t know why i chose the colors blue and orange; portals from the portal games are those colors but what with the other two responses in this post being undertale related i’m thinking maybe blue = sans and orange = papyrus

🙌 - reference to a (nsfw, i won’t link it) fanfic about sans smoking. i have a massive smoking kink so i think you can see why i’d find that emoji appropriate

syringe - this is a reference to a short story i wrote in high school. the association is that i think syringes were used to administer drugs to the protagonist

wine - almost positive there’s an audio log in the first bioshock game that’s a bit like this. even if there isn’t, there’s an area where a party has clearly gone down (lots of alcohol, splicers are dressed fancy) and that’s what it made me think of

glow - no idea

can of soda - i was thinking of a sprite can

amsterdam by imagine dragons - a song i don’t know; i used to be friends with this kid who was weirdly snobby about music and would condescend to me if i admitted to not knowing of a song or artist, so i wrote about that, kind of

apartments - “apartments are like cages” is a phrase that either i or someone else has used and i thought of that phrase and then i thought about cages and then i thought about johanna from sweeney todd and her one musical number

gold - this is about my paternal grandfather moving west as an adult. he didn’t move as part of the gold rush but that’s what i thought of first and then i thought about his moving to california so this was kind of a mix of the two concepts

sting - musical artist sting has got an album called brand new day and this was written thinking about the album art

lunar theatre - i’ve explained this one before but i wrote this while really sick around the time i first got diagnosed with lyme disease. i was sleeping most of the time and tired whenever i was awake. at the time i was also taking ativan (among other medications) and it made me very sleepy and out of it. the title comes from an art installation i saw once which basically looked like an artificial shoreline, which is where the ocean/water imagery comes from

tessellation - obvious maybe but repetition is part of the definition of the word

roses - james from team rocket, often carrying a rose

paris - this was a joke about egg hatching in pokemon x/y (the most efficient way to do it is to bike in circles repeatedly around the game’s version of the eiffel tower)

n - i feel like this is obvious too but it’s a joke about n harmonia from the 5th gen pokemon games

nature - i’m not sure how i got to talking about gelatin molds but have you seen some of the ones from the fifties and sixties? truly horrifying

berry - early on in x/y you’re put in charge of a berry field and then later you become champion (the league is at the top of a mountain). there are curtains in the champion’s room. idk i just thought about becoming champ and then abandoning the berry field since that’s basically what i did in-game

dogs - pretty literal, this is just my experience with pet dogs

q - this is a reference to a song from goddamn sesame street

teacup - malva has a butler, who presumably serves her tea sometimes. he battles you on her behalf once and his team is pretty powerful, but of course she’s elite four and would have him beat

guitar - at the time there were a lot of “wonderwall” memes that’s what i thought of

pine - pine trees, christmas trees, their lives are cut short but they get to dress up fancy for a few weeks, i don’t know

touch-me-not - fanfic i plotted out once but never actually finished writing. in it, bryony and celosia are using one of those remote-control vibrators (celosia was the one wearing it, and bryony had the remote, iirc) but if you remember team flare also used a remote to control the ultimate weapon and i loved the idea of getting the two remotes mixed up. all the higher-ups (save bryony and celosia, of course) are playing with the remote thinking it’s broken and trying to get it to work. meanwhile poor celosia is dying and the only one who notices is malva, who is the “she” in this piece, who deliberately starts messing with the remote to get a reaction out of bry + cel. i don’t remember how this fanfic was going to end but i think probably celosia would excuse herself to go to the bathroom (to, ahem, take care of herself) and malva would follow her in and then idk they’d fuck. listen i’ve had worse ideas

nightshade - i’m not sure how i got from the prompt to my fill but the fill is definitely about another fic i was working on involving a trainer who experiments on eevee trying to discover new eeveelutions

knives - my abuser had a “suicide attempt” (not really, he didn’t do anything except think about it, but that’s how he classed it iirc) where he planned on using a knife. also he wrote (bad) poetry once comparing me to a knife because idk i was mean for not wanting to fuck him probably

cake - it’s 2007 bro. memes bro. this was about portal bro

gameboy - self-explanatory i think but this was specifically a goof on ben drowned even though a lot of video game creepypasta start out this way

ruby - as in the pokemon game. this was about being a team magma grunt

cicada - i think this one is straightforward but in case it’s not, in my area you find dead cicadas all over the place in june

notebook - this was about harriet the spy

tree - based off of something that happened with me and my best friend when i was eleven or twelve

big ben - well, english clock towers... there’s a scene in a christmas carol where scrooge wakes up and hears the clock strike an hour it’s already struck and gets freaked and worries about the spirits coming to haunt him

cookie - i got a baby doll for christmas when i was a little kid and gave it to my younger sister bc she liked baby dolls and i didn’t. she named that doll cookie. this was general feels about being the Bad Child who Wasn’t Feminine

paint - straightforward again but this is about my parents’ house, the one we moved into when i was a young teen and where they still live with my little sister (and, currently, me). it was initially painted white and we repainted yellow a few years ago (i think after i had moved out to go to college). also that house still doesn’t feel like home to me in the same way our old house did

boots - god this is gonna take a lot of explaining but in the underland chronicles, second book, gregor (protagonist) is separated from his baby sister (nicknamed boots) after, iirc, the boat they’re in capsizes and they get washed into the nearby catacombs by the waves. he assumes she’s drowned since she’s a toddler and can’t swim. it’s basically his blue screen of death moment and he spends the next part of the book feeling totally dead inside, like a machine, no emotion no empathy. this scene fucked me up bad when i first read it aged about nine

freckles - i think this is obvious but just in case, this is about me (formerly) hating my freckles

egg - aforementioned fic about eevee experimentation was maybe going to involve unethical forced hatching of eevee eggs by cracking them open before they’re ready. i was basically thinking of every sick thing you could do to a pokemon to try and force an evolution

fairy - same fic. the protagonist has a shiny eevee that she gives special treatment and thinks is going to evolve into something special bc no evolution method she’s tried has worked on it. it was to be revealed later that her “special” eevee had actually just swallowed an everstone, and, immediately upon operating to remove said everstone, eevee evolved into sylveon

orange - as a small child i was allergic to oranges. the only memory i have of having an allergic reaction was breaking out in hives and going down our creaky old staircase, which felt big and intimidating to me as a little kid, to tell my parents about it

yuri - i thought of a favorite f/f pairing of mine, bryony/celosia, and in particular the scene that got me to ship it. in that scene, you battle celosia (who acts very woe-is-me upon being defeated) and bryony immediately springs to her (girl)friend’s defense

mitochondria - i learned the word from the sequel to a wrinkle in time, in which charles wallace gets really sick with some sort of mitochondrial disease and his older sister meg tries to save him by like astral projecting inside his mitochondria or something. god that book was weird

a gigantic rubber duck - when she was a baby someone gave my sister a gigantic rubber duck (which she adored, i think we still have it somewhere) and so this was about how i felt about having a new sibling

electricity - eevee fic again. rival character in the fic was an electric-type trainer. this was about the convention of trainers locking eyes and then battling

feverish - fevers as sex metaphor somehow??? i guess because fevers, like sex, often leave you sweaty. eleven was when i had my first wet dream and eighteen was when i listened to that “naegi with a fever” audio and got real gay

anger - metaphor again. i really did make a glass paperweight one time, on a class trip to a glass museum. my abuser and i were off-again with our friendship at the beginning of that trip and on-again by the end of it but there was still, i think, unresolved anger on both sides. that’s the association. i don’t know how to explain what i was thinking here beyond that

mosquitos - “petty annoyances” is just what i think of mosquitos and then i guess i just went from there. “bigger than i am but you know when to kneel” might have been my abuser again. he was, indeed, bigger than me but he got down on his knees begging me to be his friend again right at the end of things between us lol. honestly it was the most compelling thing he ever did

laundry basket - i thought about dirty laundry and then about worrying my clothes smelled dirty or that i smelled dirty and like, obsessively bathing because someone wanted to come over and have sex with me and i was just barely not a virgin at that point and had no idea what i was doing and was freaked out over the whole thing

cow - i took a year of spanish and for some reason the only thing i actually learned was how to say “where is the cow” and “the cow is here” which are not actually useful phrases in most contexts