#hope that someone reads it lol

[zmediaoutlet]

fic: all we want is more

Been working on this Sam/Deanna fic and figured I'd post the first half. I'm a sex scene and denouement away from finishing but -- hey, it's wincest wednesday and let's get some writing out there.

title: all we want is more pairing: Sam/always-a-girl Deanna rating: explicit length: 16k (chapter 1; full fic will likely be ~35k)

summary: Sam and Deanna have never been good at boundaries.

(read on AO3)

When Sam slams his way back in, muscling through the cheap Kwikset that sits sloppy in the hollow-core and then making sure the screen door bangs satisfyingly behind him, it's a disappointment to find the house empty. He heels the door closed, turns the slack lock. It smells musty inside, the way it always does—this is a particularly skanky rental—but the nose-wrinkling shock after he gets back from school is worse than usual. Dad's gone, of course, but the bathroom's also all shadow and the bedroom's dark and, when he drops his backpack by their pile of clothes and clicks the light on, it's… okay, yeah. He deflates a little. He'd been pissed off all day, even through third period English where he was working on his project with Noelle Cooper, who was in the running for nicest girls he'd ever met, and he'd been short with Mr. Trainor in AP Stats even though he actually loved stats, and he'd gritted his teeth through a crappy lunch and ignored his group in World History, all because he was marshalling his arguments and drawing down battle lines. If this school had a forensics club he'd be the star. All that righteous anger that'd foamed its way up to a thundercloud kind of dissipates, standing in an empty house with nowhere for it to go, and he's just left in the slow turn of the ceiling fan, the bare bulb shining too bright, and as he looks around the bedroom all the piss and vinegar just kinda tastes like the shit it is, because… okay, maybe—maybe—he's not completely in the right, here, and maybe his sister had a point. He chews his lip. He hates it when Deanna's right.

The argument was stupid. They always are. Dad's been gone for three weeks of a planned four, and Deanna actually got a job this time, which wasn't the usual but had become more common as Dad started leaving them alone for longer and longer stretches. At twenty she'd developed an impressive resume of an eleventh grade education, three waitressing gigs, a stint at a garage that ended quickly when she'd had to feed the manager his balls for what he'd said into her ear on her second shift, and as many cash-under-the-table quicky jobs as she could get with a winning smile and her wits. Sam got to hear most of the details because the defense of needing to do homework wasn't enough to stop Dee talking his ear off while she vented a day working some crap job and bitching that she wasn't out doing some real work with Dad—and Sam gets, he isn't actually an idiot, that she's worried about Dad and that she's guilty for staying behind and that she doesn't know what to do with herself when both those things are true. He reads books, he watches movies; he gets more than Deanna thinks. Doesn't stop it from being incredibly annoying when she spills all that bitching over onto him, and then because bitching doesn't do anything she starts nagging, like she's not just his sister but his mom—she's working, can't he clean up after himself; she's cooking, can't he do the dishes; she's the only one earning money around here, can't he help?

The bedroom's really—a disaster. They've each got their twin mattresses, shoved against the walls on either side of the room, and it's not like Deanna's side is pristine but Sam's is… he's not sure he noticed it was getting that bad. When was the last time they did laundry? In the kitchen he looks to see if there's still Kool-Aid in the pitcher, and there is, but all the cups are dirty, jumbled in with the mugs in the sink, and—when Dad's here they take turns, regimented, no matter if Deanna's got work or if Sam's got homework—even Dad takes his turn, and Sam can say a lot about his dad but shirking duty's not one Sam can really lay on him—or at least, not this kind of duty, and thinking about it that way's got a weird curdling kind of acid lacing its way through Sam's gut, because—he's mad, but. He's not an asshole. He's—almost certain he's not an asshole. Right?

Four o'clock on a Friday. He has homework. He has all those arguments he put together. Most of them boiling down, if he plays them back, to how life isn't fair. He hugs the cold pitcher against his stomach, looking at the full sink. When he goes to put it back there's a takeout box on the top shelf he didn't notice that says, scrawled in dark pen that bites into the styrofoam, EAT ME. New since that morning. He cracks the lid and finds: club sandwich, pale steak fries, wilty greyish broccoli. The kind of thing Dee would never order. He takes a deep breath and closes the fridge. Okay. Okay.

The rental is from some old lady. Sam didn't meet her but watched Dad talk to her through the windshield while whatever deal got done. Lemon-faced broad, is what Deanna called her, leaning in confidence over the back of the bench seat while Sam tried to pretend he was reading, but the house she was letting them rent for cash was more-or-less furnished, a couch and a TV and plates and a weird carpeted cover on the toilet lid, and in the closet by the kitchen there's stuff people could use to clean. Not that it's been used, much. Sam's never had a lot of opportunity in his life to practice this stuff—the only good thing about motels is that someone else is paid to clean them—but, hey. He reads, he's watched movies. Mrs. Doubtfire had that whole vacuuming scene. It can't be that hard.

*

By nine o'clock Sam's exhausted. The kitchen alone took an hour. The vacuum bag burst, and that's when Sam learned that vacuums took bags, and that's also when Sam learned how to replace one, and got completely covered in a silty fine dust that he thinks might still be in his lungs when he's fifty. He took a break to eat the sandwich and fries and broccoli, all cold and needing salt but if this house has one thing, it's salt, and he was ravenous like he usually only is after a long afternoon of training with Dad clapping his hands, making them go faster and faster. Bathroom was freaking gross, and the trashcan stunk bad from what he realized only too late was tampons in little mummy-wraps of TP, and then he kind of gagged but—blood's blood, right, and it's not like he hasn't seen his share. Tired or not, though—that was the whole point, wasn't it, so: the bedroom, smelling like weeks of undone laundry, and he opens the window on the back wall and—gets to work.

The second good thing about this house: it's only two narrow streets inside the cramped neighborhood, so it's a five-minute walk to the laundromat out on the main road, in the middle of the strip mall between a nail salon and a donut shop. 24-hours with an attendant who barely looks up when Sam comes in dragging two army duffles full of everything he could stuff into the bags, and a machine that spits out quarters in exchange for the crumpled bills in his pocket, and no one else in here, because it's a Friday night, and who's sad enough to be doing the laundry on a Friday night?

He takes over the folding tables in the middle of the silent machines and gets to work. This he has done, because Deanna's given him the rundown: separate whites from colors, jeans & jackets from soft stuff that might get torn, check pockets for money & tissues & bullets. He starts the sheets first, glad at least that Deanna's not doing this—he doesn't need any commentary about crusty cotton, thanks very much—and then it's unzipping both bags, making three horrible piles. Blood on the sleeve of Deanna's blue canvas jacket. Sam's favorite jeans with mud ground into the knees from the fight he got into at school, the other day, which he still hasn’t told Dee about, because he hates the expression she gets when someone's commented on the hot chick who picks him up after school sometimes and wants to know how much she charges. Not the first time, anyway; probably not the last.

He finishes with his own duffle and turns to Deanna's, upending it completely. T-shirts, camisoles, underwear of all kinds. Bras, that he untangles and attaches the hook & eyes, like she showed him, so they won't catch on everything else. Rolled up jeans, and the wad of flannel shirts he'd scooped up from the dirty pile and shoved in, and then, rolling out of a plastic bag like the one Sam uses for his dirty shorts, a plastic clamshell-style box, and when he picks it up he takes a second, tired and staring, before he realizes what he's looking at, and then he drops it with a huge clatter onto the linoleum, loud enough to be heard over the rattling washer, making the attendant glance up over her book, uninterested. "Sorry," Sam says, and she returns to the paperback, and Sam stares at the thing by his feet. Lurid pink against the speckled yellow-grey floor. Absolutely zero way to mistake it for anything but—what it is.

The bell on the door jingles—some lady, backing in with a huge basket in her arms—and Sam stoops quickly and picks up the box and throws it into Dee's duffle. His face is so hot his cheeks are prickling. He wipes his hand over his mouth—is briefly revolted, because he—he touched it, and now he's touching—but the new customer's noticed him, and she smiles briefly in that way people do when they're in the same space and never plan to speak, and he's got to be normal, because this is—normal. He's doing laundry. He shoves loads two and three into their washers and drags the bags off the table so the new lady can do her own sorting, and he decamps to the chairs on the far side of the room from the attendant booth, more or less hidden, where he can see the TV in the corner playing a silent version of The Mask, and he points his face at the TV and watches Jim Carrey make goofy faces and he's being very very calm and casual because he's just a person, doing his laundry, and he's watching a movie that's pretty funny, and he's not thinking about his sister's dildo, tucked into the bag between his feet. At all. Just watch him.

*

Past midnight, when he's walking home. Slight cool breeze that feels good. He keeps flushing, on and off. Over the waiting for the wash cycle and then switching everything over to the dryers and then the hour plus of waiting for that he'd gone through various stages. Gross-out obviously first. But—he did know that Deanna went out with guys, and he'd seen her with guys even, although never—never all the way. But when that dude who'd run the desk at the last motel had had her backed up against the counter with his hand on her ass and his mouth tucked up close under her ear when Sam came in to get a soda from the machine—when Deanna had seen Sam walk in and grabbed the guy's shoulders, warning, and then when a beat passed and she relaxed and was squirming and laughing lightly and saying, hey, Sammy, get me a Crush, would you? I'll get back to the room in a minute—it's not like Sam didn't know what was going on. He reads. He's seen movies. He's seen those kind of movies, too. He's lived with his sister his entire life and he had sex ed at like five different schools now. He jerks off. He does get it. He just didn't expect—it was always kind of—academic. Theory versus practice. But now—

The Impala's parked in front of the house when he turns the corner to their street. Shit. He fumbles for his keys in the porch-light but it turns out not to matter: the door flings open, and Deanna says, "Oh my god, Sammy!"

Sam hefts the bag he'd dropped over his shoulder. "It's Sam," he says, as calmly as he can, and walks in through the clean living room back toward their bedroom with every no-big-deal bone in his body.

It smells better in here, at least. He dumps the bags onto the clean and empty carpet between the mattresses and slings the sack with their sheets on top. Eruption of Fresh Breeze as he drags out the wad of cotton, still warm. Two top sheets, two pillowcases, two of the thin filler blankets they stole from motels a five years and who knows how many miles ago, and he's splitting them between the two halves of the room when there's an ostentatious throat-clearing behind him, and he bites his lip hard, and turns around with the blankets still in his arms, and Deanna's leaning in the doorway, giving him a look like he's some alien species she's never seen before.

"So," she says.

Sam shrugs. "So?"

She raises her eyebrows, looking exaggeratedly around the bedroom. He hasn't seen her since this morning, since he slammed the door the first time, and she looks—like she always does, pretty much. Messy ponytail, a lot of eyeliner, purple plaid shirt tied up under her boobs because she says it gets better tips at the bar, and if anyone would know it's her. She's holding a beer, dangling lazy against her thigh, and she taps a nail against the glass one-two-three times before she meets Sam's eyes again, squinting a little. "Did you get replaced by a pod-person?"

Sam rolls his eyes. "No."

"Shapeshifter? Some kind of, I don't know, djinn wish freak where the dishes get done but I'm gonna get all my blood sucked out before Monday?"

Sam drops her green blanket on her bed, flush crawling from his throat to his ears. "No."

"Okay, cool," Deanna says, and then when Sam looks up at her she's smiling, crooked, in that way where she's kind of sweet and kind of sorry and kind of making fun of him, all at once. That smile where she's just—his sister, annoying and comforting in equal measure. "You ate, right?" He nods, thinking: eat me. Deanna's smile angles, making a dimple peek into one cheek, and she tips her head. "Bet you could eat again, huh?"

Sam's stomach twinges. Dee and Dad say he's going through a growth spurt; the only way he notices is that he's starving, half the time. "I guess," he says, shrugging.

Deanna rolls her eyes but she's not mad. "He guesses," she says, and comes forward, and grabs Sam's wrist while he's trying to shake out a pillowcase, warm, tugging. "C'mon, short stuff. Walt sent me home with the manager meal. Might as well make sure it goes to a good cause."

In short order he's pushed down at the kitchen table, another styrofoam box in front of him. Burger, more fries. He takes the burger—he is hungry—but swivels the box her way, and she sits across from him, eating fries one at a time, the corners of her mouth tipped soft. Easier than he's seen her since Dad left. The burger's cold but it's not the first time he's had a cold burger; he wolfs it down, avoiding her eyes, and she finishes her beer and then gets up and brings back two, uncapped, pushing the other right in front of him.

He wipes the back of his mouth with his wrist. "Dee," he says, careful.

"You earned it," she says, and holds out her bottle, neck first. Not like he gets to drink with them much but he knows this part—he clinks the necks together, clumsy, and drinks at the same time as her. Bitter and kind of gross as always, but she smiles at him again when she lowers her bottle. "Hell. Who even knew the carpet was that color?"

The argument's completely dissolved. Maybe she won; Sam doesn't care at this point. "I'm not sure old lady Franken remembers it's this color," he says, and Deanna sniggers, and takes another sip of her beer, and then leans over the table and tucks her hand into his hair and kisses him on the forehead, so abrupt that Sam just freezes and lets it happen, even if he's been too old for her to do that kind of thing since—well, since—forever. The amulet he gave her swings forward between them, gleaming.

Dee tugs his hair, just slightly, at the nape of his neck. "Thanks, Sammy," she says, quiet, and it's the apology they won't say out loud, soft between them. She touches his jaw, quick, and straightens up, and says, "Bar was extra greasy today, somehow. I'm taking a shower. Don't drink the rest of the beer without me, huh?"

"As if," Sam says, and she ruffles his hair back—this time he does duck out of the way, scoffing—and then she disappears into the bathroom, and he's left with the last few bites of burger and this warm feeling all through him, from his belly all the way up to the flush in his cheeks, because—Deanna's annoying, frustrating, too demanding and too invasive and too much, all the time, but—ever since he can remember, this is how it's been. When she's happy, and when she's proud of him, and there's this answer in his chest. Like it's a Michigan winter and he's freezing to death, but then he gets into the Impala and the heater's on full and he holds his hands up to the vents and there's that prickling, tingling thaw that means—home safe.

He makes the beds, as much as possible. Cases on each of their pillows, thin blankets smoothed somewhat into place. They're lucky it's April, and luckier that they're in Louisville and not Bismarck; mostly it's Sam who's lucky, because he doesn't exactly mind camping in the cold but Deanna bitches absolutely nonstop, out loud if they're alone and under her breath if Dad's nearby or, somehow, Sam's convinced, using some kind of psychic brain powers when Dad's right there with them so that even if she's not saying anything out loud Sam can hear every single thought she's having about cold toes or fingers or freezing my frickin' tits off. How would that even work, Sam has said, and she's just huddled closer to the fire and flat-out pouted. It's sort of cute. In a deeply annoying way.

He's unpacking their duffle bags when the shower turns off. He thought she'd be slower. The tile in here's even kinda white now! comes echoing through the mostly-closed door and around the corner into the bedroom, and she sounds genuinely delighted. Sam bites his lip, setting his stack of jeans next to the pile of his folded shirts. He's worked his way around to her side of the room and is making more stacks—her jeans and cut-off shorts, her jackets, the more complicated pile of her tops—when she leans into the bedroom, and he looks up to find her—towel wrapped around under her armpits, legs bare and gleaming, wet hair clipped behind her head, amulet cord shiny-black around her neck. "Dude, you aren't careful, I'm gonna get used to this," she says, crooked smile firmly in place. "It's gonna turn into the adventures of rockin' Deanna Winchester and her butler baby bro."

"Fat chance," Sam says, which does come out a little thin when he's laying out her clean bras on the freshly vacuumed carpet. She raises her eyebrows, looking between the clothes piles and his face, grin getting bigger, and Sam shrugs. "It stunk in here, okay? I do have a nose that works."

"Well, we know who the culprit was there," she says, and disappears for a second—back, before he's finished pairing her boot-socks—and hands him his discarded beer from the kitchen, and crouches down next to him, smiling soft at the clean clothes. "So, full-service Sammy—" ignoring Sam's scoff— "Are there any clean pjs in here, or do I gotta sleep in my altogether?"

"Ew," Sam says, firmly, and Deanna wrinkles her nose at him, making fun. He hands the beer back, ignoring in his turn how she promptly steals a swallow, and unzips her bag further. Not like she's got a fancy matched set like people in movies; she mostly sleeps in Sam's old D.A.R.E. shirt he got in middle school that would've fit a linebacker better than an eleven year-old, and a pair of Dad's old boxer briefs, which Sam finds honestly weird but Dee claims they're the softest things ever and, well, Sam has now folded them, and they're… pretty soft. But still. They're past the pile of her folded underwear, which he hands out to her, and under the—oh. Right.

He doesn't look up when he pulls out the plastic bag with the dildo. "Here," he says, holding the clothes over to his left where she's crouched. She doesn't move and he waggles them. "C'mon. I don't need to see any more naked sister than I have already."

To his credit, he manages to sound like he mostly has his crap together. Dee pulls the pjs out of his hand, slowly. He wraps the plastic bag more securely around the clamshell box and tucks it into a space between her boots and her jeans, and with that her duffle's pretty much empty, other than the little zip-bag with her tampons and pads and condoms. Like Dad taught them, he rolls the duffle up into a tight burrito that can get tucked neatly in with everything else, and with that he's done. House is clean.

"Okay," Deanna mutters. "Awkward."

Sam's mostly been able to ignore how hot his cheeks feel. He shrugs, standing up, and Deanna stays hunched there on the ground, her arms folded over her chest holding onto her pajamas and holding the towel in place, grimacing. "Not like it's nothing I haven't seen," Sam says.

Deanna frowns at him. "You're fifteen."

Sam rolls his eyes. "Sixteen," he says. "In, like. Three weeks. Come on, I know what a dildo is. Didn't you call that last werewolf one? He got super mad, too."

Furious, actually, enough to charge like an idiot out of cover at the pretty girl mocking him, bait dancing out in the open, which meant that Dad, waiting with Sam behind the cover of the trees, could shoot him in the heart. The blood spatter hit Dee's face and she spat it out right onto the corpse, and called him something else Sam couldn't hear.

"That was pretty funny," Deanna says, now. Her ears are pink. "Still. Didn't mean for you to, um. You know."

"Maybe now you won't ask me to do laundry," Sam says, and makes his tone all sweet and hopeful like a little kid.

Deanna makes a really strange face, hesitating, and Sam can't hold onto it before he starts sniggering. She stands up, finally, rolling her eyes. "Dork," she says. Blushing, still, which is pretty rare for his sister, but at least she's not freaking out. "Fine. Grown-up Sammy, knows all about dildos. Guess that means I don't need to give you the advanced sex talk, huh?"

"Can't be any worse than the last one you gave me," Sam says, which on second thought might be the last time he was this embarrassed, and she snorts, her eyes drifting down, away. Still pink. All scrubbed clean like this she looks different—no eyeliner, her skin shining soft. Freckles all over her cheekbones and nose and her curved-in shoulders. A loop of hair's curling at her neck and Sam reaches out, tugs it—not hard, but enough that she blinks, looks up at him. "No big deal. Swear."

She looks up into his eyes. Her lower lip sucks in and drags out slow through her teeth, shining wet. Something warm curls in Sam's gut and swoops high up into his chest and then plummets straight down. He catches his breath. "No biggie," Deanna says, while Sam's still trying to reorient himself, and she gives him a one-sided smile. She turns back toward the bathroom, says over her shoulder, "Hey, I think they're playing Evil Dead on the movie channel tonight. You make the popcorn and I'll braid your hair."

"Ha," Sam says, watching her bare leg disappear around the corner, and he holds his knuckles to his cheek, feels how hot it is. The bag sits on the floor, inert. He stares at it, thinking—stuff he shouldn't be thinking—and then reaches up and yanks the chain so the bare bulb winks out. He's left in the dark, the fan turning slowly overhead.

*

They sleep in on Saturdays. Meaning, mostly, Deanna sleeps in on Saturdays, because as far as Sam can tell, given the opportunity, she goes into a coma. In the quiet of the house Sam does most of his homework. Sophomores at this school do geometry for some reason and it's kiddie stuff but it means he can blast through the assigned problems for Monday and Tuesday and the extra credit, too, before he gets through his first cup of coffee; world history is going over the creation and spread of Christianity, and he has to fill out a worksheet on important dates and leaders in the Roman Empire at the turn from BC to AD; in health they're studying the reproductive system, and again this is stuff he pretty much already knows, but it's at least kinda interesting to see how the egg cell is about the size of the period at the end of the sentence. He's put his fingernail there, comparing, when Deanna wanders out of the bedroom, yawning. 10:30, according to Sam's watch. Not even close to her record.

"Hey, short stuff," she says, blurry. Makes a happy noise when she finds the coffee made. Sam's filling out another worksheet—the bilateral conduits between ovary and uterus are called fallopian tubes, he writes carefully—when she wraps an arm loosely around his neck, a kiss mushed against his hair. A boob squishes against his shoulder. "Hm. Nerd o'clock?"

Sam goes tch, barely paying attention. He's nearly done with this page, and then it's just the chapters they've got to read for English.

"Ooh, sexy," Dee says. She taps her nail on the cross-section of the female body in the textbook, on the breast diagram with its layers of nipple and fat and milk ducts neatly labeled. "No shame, but c'mon, porn at the table? Rude, Sammy."

"Dude," Sam says, lifting his head, and she snickers and lets him go, slumping into the chair across the table. Her bun's all messed up from sleep, crust still at the corners of her eyes. Holding the weird chipped mug that says KENSUCKY in both hands under her chin, apparently trying to inhale caffeine through the steam. Kinda gross but all soft and relaxed. Not a bad way to start a Saturday. "You got a shift today?"

She groans, takes a slurpy sip from the mug. Wrinkles her nose. "Blah," she says, sticking out her tongue. Sam rolls his eyes. If she refuses to put milk in that's her own problem. "Four to close, same as yesterday." Sam checks his watch again and she raises her eyebrows. "That work for your schedule, boss?"

"I have to meet Noelle at the library at two."

Deanna actually focuses, finally. "Noelle?"

"From English," Sam says. At the continued blank look he sighs. "She's my partner for the Shakespeare project. I told you about that."

"Oh, right," Deanna says, dragging it out. Her mouth curves, in that way that broadcasts to space that Sam's about to be made fun of. "No-elle."

Sam waves his hand. "Okay, get it out."

"No, no," Deanna says, grinning. "I think it's great that the two of you are so focused on your education." Like a dirty word. She slurps at her coffee again, annoyingly loud while making big eyes at Sam over the rim, and splutter-snorts at whatever expression Sam makes. "Relax, dweebus. I'll give you a ride over there. Walt's been on my ass about being late, though, so if the hot Shakespearean action keeps going past like 3:30 you gotta find your own way home."

"Thank you, Deanna," Sam says, perfectly polite, and she mouths it back at him purely to be annoying.

Quiet then, though. She drinks her coffee; he fills out his worksheet. She eats a bowl of cereal and watches whatever's coming through on the rabbit-ears—Seinfeld rerun, sounds like—and Sam reads another fifty pages of The Age of Innocence, and he's bored to death but they're going to have essay questions on it next week, so. She gets up to wash dishes—not such an imposition now that it's just two mugs and two cereal bowls—and touches Sam's shoulder as she goes, just—checking in, basically, clearly not even thinking about it on her way to the sink, but it's a soft little warm thing that goes through Sam's t-shirt and through his skin down into his chest, because Dee just—she really has been pissed off, this last week, and he didn't realize until last night how much she doesn't touch him, when she's mad. He didn't know how much he missed it.

Dee goes out to mess around with the Impala, doing… whatever it is she does when she's got time to kill and an engine under her hands, and Sam ends up finishing the book for English. The writing isn't his favorite but he got caught up in the plot. It's… depressing, to say the least. All these people, doing what they're expected to, and all of them worse off for it.

He vents this to Deanna, sitting on the toilet while she's doing her make-up for work. Newland's a coward and Ellen got cold feet and May's boring and why didn't any of them just—do what they wanted?

Deanna finishes her eyeliner, leaning back to look at the effect. "But didn't New-guy knock up May?" She catches his eye in the mirror; he shrugs, already seeing the point she's going to make but still annoyed at the fictional idiots. "I don't know. I mean, it sucks, but—you gotta do what you gotta do. It was like medieval times or whatever, right, so it's not like anyone was being smart about babies."

"It wasn't medieval times," Sam says, and Deanna shrugs, in her turn. She ties up her hair, like she usually does on civilian days: ponytail, bangs falling around her face that she tucks behind her ears. He watches her swipe on a layer of lip gloss, feeling mulish. "Seriously. All he had to do was—go talk to Ellen, sack up."

That gets him raised eyebrows in the mirror. Like Dee isn't gross or cussing or whatever, all the time. She smacks her lips, makes an O of them, staring down her reflection. "Sounds to me like he sacked up, but it was for the kid, not some random broad," she says, but like she's barely paying attention. "You wouldn't like him any better if he were some deadbeat dad."

She goes all heavy-lidded at herself, makes kissy-face. Model-pretty, his sister. Smart, too—sometimes, Sam thinks. Rarely. Another look, backwards in the mirror, lips parted and her face set like she's in one of those Calvin Klein perfume ads, sexy for no reason. "Good?" she says, breathy.

She's wearing the thin dark green henley unbuttoned as far as it'll go, her amulet resting in the split and the inside curves of her black bra showing on either side of it, and those jeans that sit so low on her hips that there's two inches of creamy-white stomach peeking out, her silver ring heavy on her thumb and those little silver studs in her ears and her face just—her face. All she ever needs. "If you're into that kind of thing," Sam says, dismissive.

All the model-sexy collapses and she snorts, grinning. "You're such a sweetheart," she says, and swivels away from the mirror, smacking her hands against her hips. "So—are we going, or what?"

"Or what," Sam says, outraged, sitting up straight. "I was waiting for you—"

Deanna drops him right in front of the library, a minute to two. "Phone charged?" she says. Sam sighs, gathering his backpack. "Yeah, yeah. I'm going to the Checker, and then I'm gonna swing by the discount mart for some groceries—you want anything? It's gotta sit in the car."

"Just no more peanut butter," Sam says. Pleads, more like. He's eaten his weight Peter Pan this past month.

"Starving kids in Ethiopia or wherever would kill for that peanut butter, you know," Deanna says, but she just swats his hip. "Go on. Miss Noelle ain't gonna wait forever."

Sam sighs, again, but Dee's checking the wing mirror to pull out, not paying attention, and so he piles out onto the sidewalk, swinging his backpack over his shoulder, engaging with the normal world. "Make sure she's really into it before you try for second base, tiger," Deanna says, leaning over the bench seat, and Sam says, "Oh my god, leave already," and slams the door, and Dee grins wide at him with her tongue between her teeth before the engine throttles up and the car leaps away, too fast through the sedate Saturday afternoon parking lot, making too much noise, just too—everything. He watches it go, face hot, and then closes his eyes and tips his chin up, feeling the springy breeze and remembering that—okay, there are people in the world who are not his family, who are totally normal, and one of them is—oh, waving, through the glass doors of the library, and Sam packs everything that is weird and Winchester down and away and waves back, trotting along the sidewalk and up the steps to meet Noelle, who smiles at him broad and then shy, and Sam can do this. Sam's good at this.

*

When she comes to pick Noelle up, Mrs. Cooper offers to give Sam a ride home, too. She has a blue minivan, with a little boy strapped into a carseat on the middle bench, giving Sam a sticky and curious look while Noelle stows her bag. "No, thank you, ma'am," Sam says. Actually-polite, not the voice he used on Dee earlier. "My mom's on her way."

"All right, sugar," Mrs. Cooper says, and Noelle waves from the passenger seat as they move sedately out into the neighborhood. Mrs. Cooper has a faded bumper sticker that says her child is an Honors Student at Jefferson County Middle. Sam tries to imagine the Impala with something like that and snorts out loud, then feels bad for it, even if no one's around to hear, or even know what he's thinking. Mrs. Cooper seems nice. Noelle's nice. It's all just—nice.

He gets to the basically-a-dive where Deanna works at half-past six. Marv's, says the flickery neon sign, though Sam has no idea who Marv is, and it's the kind of place that has windows but they're made of block glass, impossible to see through, and the door has iron security bars over the front. Not somewhere the Coopers visit, probably.

About half-full, when Sam comes through the door. In about a quarter second he takes in: jukebox playing Styx, yuck; cigarette smoke in the air; a couple guys playing darts, laughing loud, already kind of drunk, hopefully won't be a problem. Deanna's behind the bar, leaning on her elbows, talking to two guys, smiling like she's really interested, but she catches Sam's eye for a split second and tips her head toward the back. He goes where he's pointed: the tiny two-seater booth right by the kitchen doors, where he's already spent hours doing homework even if Dee's only had the job three weeks. Marv's is a pit but it's better than being home alone. Sometimes.

He's deep in his fresh-from-the-library copy of Helter Skelter when there's a tickly-shivery drag of fingers at the back of his neck, rucking his hair up, and he jumps. "Great situational awareness, kiddo," Deanna says, while he shudders, and sets a Coke in front of him. She drops down into the other side of the booth, raising her eyebrows. "You and books. Seriously, I think a ghoul could've snacked on your innards just now."

"If a ghoul's in the bar then we've got bigger problems," Sam says, and she huffs. She looks back out over the bar, eyes going from table to table. Like there's actually a ghoul, and not just people drinking the daylight away. "You still working until midnight?"

"Unless a handsome prince comes and steals me away," she says. Her eyes slide sidelong to him. "You got a chariot out there you haven't told me about?"

"Not yet," Sam says.

She smiles at him, and then the door opens again—another two guys, biker-looking, who probably will appreciate flirty service from a pretty girl, and who hopefully will tip well, since that's the whole point of this stupid gig. Deanna bites the tip of her tongue and takes a deep breath, and stands up. "I'll get Carlos to make you something—what, sandwich, burger?"

"Chicken strips?" Sam says, and she nods and says, "Don't disappear into the book, Poindexter," and then she's behind the bar again, smiling warm and wide at the two new guys, and in a gap between songs on the jukebox Sam hears her say, "Hey, fellas," sweet as pie, and they smile back at her like it's a compulsion, because that's what Dee does to guys. It's only Sam, he's pretty sure, who knows the difference between the smile these guys are getting and the one he just got. It's a subtle difference, but—it's different.

He has his dinner, and tucked into the back here he does get to watch the bar, between sections of his book. Deanna's good at this, like she's good at practically everything: engines and crossbows and classic rock and figuring out what Dad wants before he even says it, and sometimes before he thinks it, as far as Sam can tell. Seems like that last skill extends to here. Saturday night and it gets busier, although no one looks to steal Sam's table. Wendy the waitress comes in for her shift, but Sam can see that it's Dee the guys want to talk to, who they wait for, whose attention they drink up, as much as the beer. Sam goes to doctor the jukebox at one point, slotting in his quarters for the Led Zeppelin songs he's heard least if he can't get anything actually from this decade, and when he turns around Deanna's at one of the four-tops in the middle of the room, the yellow-and-blue beer sign neon shining bright on her hair, and she's leaning on the back of one guy's chair while another one's telling some joke, from their faces—Deanna laughs, on cue, bright over the music—and Sam can see, through the tables, how the guy's hand is curled around the inside of her thigh, his thumb sliding up the inseam of her jeans while she leans in, close, and that weird thing swoops through his gut again. Queasy and hot, in what ratio he can't decide.

It's a long night, torn between bored and tense. Walt appears from the back where he does nothing, as far as Sam can tell, and frowns at Sam, but Deanna catches his attention and asks some question about the POS Sam can't hear and Walt's face melts into soppy butter. It's honestly embarrassing. A minute of that and Deanna has to move off to get refills for the biker guys at the bar, and Walt pats her hip when she goes. Her hip, not her ass. It makes a difference, but how much of one Sam doesn't know.

Kitchen closes at eleven; last call at half past; and by midnight there are just a few guys that have to be ushered out. When Wendy closes and locks the front door Deanna bends over and buries her head in her folded arms on the bartop. Sam closes his book—he's nearly done, just from trying his best not to pay attention to the customers, no matter what Dee said—and brings his cup up to the bar himself. "Thanks, sweetie," Wendy says—she's like thirty, Sam wishes she wouldn't talk to him like he's her kid—and then she says, to Dee, "Thought Ty was gonna try to order off-menu by the end, there. Might've gotten you a big tip." Kinda smirky, the way she says it, though Sam doesn't know why.

Deanna levers upright, unfolding like a push-up, and gives Wendy the same kind of smile she was giving the guys, earlier. "Walt's going to need help with inventory," she says. Her mouth tips, fake-sorry. "I was gonna stay, but my kid brother's here, you know, and Walt said I better get him home safe." Wendy's expression goes kind of still, kind of murderous, but Deanna just lifts a shoulder and then says, "Got your bag, Sammy?" and when he nods she says, sweet, "Have a great night, 'kay?"

Outside it's cool but not cold, butts ashed all over the sidewalk. "Bitch," Deanna mutters, while the neon OPEN sign flickers out over the not-really-a-window. Sam's smart enough not to say anything. Dee takes a deep, deep breath, blows it slow with her chin tipped up at the night sky. Not a lot of stars, in the city. Sam rocks back on his heels, thumbs hooked into his backpack straps. Kinda smells like pee out here. There are worse places to wait.

Finally, Deanna: "Okay," she says, and tips her head toward him. "You ate, right?" He nods. "Okay," she says, again, and shrugs both shoulders, like she's dropping a bag she's not carrying. "Let's roll."

Tapedeck comes on super loud—the Stones, which isn't as bad as it could be—but Deanna cranks it down, letting them drive in relative quiet back out to the dumpy neighborhood with their rental. "Your project go okay?" she says, and it's kind of absent but she's also actually asking, so Sam says, "Yeah, we're doing this like—compare and contrast thing, Romeo and Juliet vs Hamlet," and Deanna gives him this sidelong look across the bench seat and says, "Isn't that the one where those teenagers bang and kill each other?" and Sam opens his mouth, not quite sure how to correct everything wrong with that question, before they pass under a streetlight and he sees that Deanna's got one of those teasing dimples tucked up into her cheek. "Pretty much," Sam says, instead, and Dee laughs, softly. "Hot stuff," she says. At a stoplight with no one else around for apparent miles she tugs the tie out her hair, and it falls in a wavy mass over her shoulder, and she makes this little noise like that's a weight come down, too. Sam sucks the inside of his cheek, watching her, not trying to pretend he isn't. Her wrist, loose and soft on top of the steering wheel. He wants to put her in some other life. Like that's an option.

At home—rather, back at the rental house—she tugs her boots off in the bedroom and then, glancing at Sam, tucks them into the line of her neatly-laid out clothes. She peels her henley over her head and tosses it into the corner—a new dirty clothes pile, but at least it's fresh instead of moldering weeks old—and pulls the D.A.R.E. shirt on, and while Sam's sitting on his mattress, pulling off his sneakers, she undoes her belt and shucks her jeans off, right there, so Sam gets a flash of purple underwear before the shirt falls down around her hips and there's just a mile of white thigh. "I want an entire chocolate cake," she says, peeling off one sock at a time. "Like. Triple layer, fudge frosting, those fancy, you know, rosette things. That and a fork."

"Um," Sam says. She drags her hands through her hair, cracking her neck side to side. "I think there are M&Ms you didn't eat in the kitchen?"

Deanna snorts. "That'll work," she says, and then squints at him, one-eyed. "You going to bed?"

Sam shrugs. She looks tired-but-not, loose and on edge. "You staying up?"

"Well, yeah," she says, like it's obvious. Smile spooling out, somewhere between the smile Sam usually gets and the ones those guys at the bar do. "I got these M&Ms to crush, I hear. If there's no cake."

Late night TV always sucks. They end up on the movie channel, like always, and it's—ugh, that terrible Street Fighter movie, but Dee throws down the controller and grins and says, "Perfect," and darts over to the kitchen quick and returns with: yes, the family-size bag of M&Ms, but also two beers, one of which is for Sam, again. He takes it, feeling weird—since when is he included in the list of grown-ups in the family?—but then Dee plops down into her corner of the couch and tucks her toes under Sam's thigh, and tugs the candy bag closer to her telling Sam that if he wanted some, he should've been smart enough to buy his own, and that feels more normal. He leans his elbow on his side of the couch and Deanna slouches into hers, bare legs gleaming in the TV-light. Van Damme is so bad in this movie. "Bite your tongue," Deanna says, wiggling her cold toes under his thigh, and Sam sighs, and drinks his beer, getting slowly used to the taste, and ignores Dee while she wrangles her bra off under his shirt and drapes it over the couch back, smooth black satin gleaming in the TV-light. He sort of watches the movie but mostly he listens to Deanna's commentary, and how Raul Julia is the best, and if they hit the arcade she bets she could beat his ass with Chun Li, and he's kinda warm and kinda nervous and kinda bored and kinda glad, all at once, but even with all that he does fall asleep at some point before the movie's over, because he wakes up when Dee's pulling the empty bottle out of his hand, careful and quiet. The TV's off. He hears her feet pad away, over the carpet, and then she's back, tucking something—his coat—around his shoulders, like a blanket.

He keeps his eyes closed, keeps his breathing soft. He gets to feel her swipe his bangs back, tucking his hair behind his ear, and then there's her fingers on his jaw, and then—a kiss, very soft, against his cheekbone. Her lips are warm. When he falls back asleep he dreams they're in the car, sleeping together in the backseat—the bench magically big enough to hold both of them end to end and side by side, like it hasn't been since Sam was like eight years old—and he's spooned around her, his arm over her waist and his nose in her hair, and her ass round and soft pressed up against him. His hand goes between her legs and feels that hard ridge of denim inseam, prickling painful against his fingers like it's the edge of a saw, or rose thorns, and it hurts but he keeps dragging his fingers up, light gleaming all over the back of the seat electric blue-and-yellow and making it so that when she turns her head, and stares at him, he can see the exact look on her face, but when he jolts awake in the pre-dawn light, breathing hard and sitting up straight and pushing a hand against his aching dick, he can't remember what the expression was.

*

Deanna wakes up when her phone rings. Sam's lying on his back with his arms folded over his face, breathing in and out very evenly, and gets to hear the whole thing. A muffled fuck and then the fabricky scramble through her discarded jeans, and then the phone flipping open, and then: "Dad?"

Who else would it be, Sam thinks.

His hair's wet and sogging out the pillow but he doesn't want to move. It was a very long and very hot shower and he scrubbed clean until his skin and hair squeaked. That didn't make anything go away but at least he couldn't smell beery cigarette smoke on his skin anymore. Not nothing. He turns his head and past the shadow of his arm Deanna's sitting up on her mattress, bare legs tucked beneath her, shoulders curved up around the phone like a girl from a movie whispering to her crush. The morning's coming through the blinds in clear white, striping her thigh, all the way to where Sam's shirt is rucked over her hip and her underwear's showing, alternate lines of dark and vivid purple. Creamy skin above that.

"Yeah, of course," Deanna says, while Sam's closing his eyes very tight. Weird purple bursts against the inside of the lids. Can't escape, apparently. "You need—?"

She's cut off. Little affirmative sounds while she listens. Sam takes another one of those deep breaths but jerking off in the shower apparently wasn't enough from how everything south of his navel seems to be on high alert. He folds his arms over his ribs instead, thinking tactically—he's got the blanket over his waist but if Dee goes to the bathroom he can change from his pajama shorts to his jeans, and maybe go for a walk or something, or read the Manson book to calm down, or—something—and when he looks again Deanna's shifted around, too, her back to the wall, her knees pulled up, shadows between them. Her lower lip sucked between her teeth. "Yeah," she says, soft. "'Kay. Be safe."

The phone's closed against the angle of her jaw, and she holds it there with her knuckles against her lips for a little while, eyes low, playing with her amulet with the other hand. "So?" Sam says, like he's not having an alternate crisis.

Her eyelashes dip, and then she leans forward, wrapping her arms around her knees. "Another week." She shrugs, like what can you do, except when has Deanna ever been casual about Dad gone on a solo job for weeks on end. An answering sourness crawls down Sam's throat to his stomach—that what if that's there whenever Dad's gone, but then again it happens when Dad's here, too. At least it takes care of the other problem, and as soon as Sam realizes there's a weird horrible mix of relief and shame that dumps over his head, like a prank bucket of shitty paint.

Luckily Deanna can't see it: she takes a deep breath and leans forward, her knees spreading out in a butterfly, grinning. "Means we still get to pick what to watch at night, huh?"

"You're joking," Sam says. If she wants to pretend to be casual, Sam can too. "I never get to pick."

"Aww," Deanna coos. "Little brother problems. I think they got a column for that in Highlights for Kids, you should write in."

Sam throws his pillow at her and she catches it, sniggering. More real than the grin before. "All right, whatever," she says, and unfolds from the mattress, stretching tall with the pillow held high overhead—Sam cuts his eyes away, in self-defense—and then hops the six inches down to the carpet, sighing. "Day off. Let's get some work done, huh?"

*

Bar's closed on Sunday. Marv's religious. Go figure. "I was gonna do laundry today," Deanna says, making the coffee, and she sends a sidelong conspiratorial glance over her shoulder, and Sam feels himself flush, collarbones to hairline. Luckily she's focused on grounds and filter and fishing her KENSUCKY mug out of the drainer, so he doesn't get ragged on for it. Deanna would be happier if he did the housework stuff more often; he's not sure he can take the intensity of her gratitude. It's just embarrassing, aside from everything else.

He's sent to get the groceries out of the trunk from Dee's trip yesterday: bread, ramen, condensed tomato soup, rice, strawberry jelly, 24-pack of beer, canned green beans. He holds up a can while she's sipping her coffee, raising his eyebrows, and she shrugs. "You said no peanut butter," she says, and, well. Sam did say that. Breakfast is generic-brand Eggos that she pops into the toaster and that get smeared with jelly, and she leans against the couch eating hers while watching the local news, watching with a professional eye for anything officially weird—nothing; as far as Sam can tell nothing interesting has ever happened in Louisville, ever—and Sam watches her. Her knee turns in, her thigh flexing. Toes painted blue. She sucks jelly off her thumb, eyes heavy on the TV, and Sam—oh, goddamn it. He sits up very straight at the table, tries the trick a kid at the last high school taught him: flexing his thighs, hard and quick, trying to redirect bloodflow. Sometimes he wishes he was born a girl. At least then it wouldn't be so obvious.

"Ugh," Dee says. Sam's eyes fly open but she's just shaking her head at the television, going to commercial. "Seriously, they can't get one cattle mutilation?"

"Super lame," Sam says. Kind of breathy. Deanna doesn't seem to notice. She scratches her thigh, absent, and drains the last of her coffee, and sighs. Tongue swipe along her bottom lip. Jeez-us.

"Guess we don't have a choice," she says, and tips her head at Sam. Pursed lips, apologetic. "You know what that means."

"What does it mean?" Sam says, and she wrinkles her nose, and he does get it, finally. "Aw, no—"

"Aw, yes," Deanna says, and ruffles his hair back on her way to the sink. "C'mon, kiddo, I don't like it any more than you do."

"So we could not, right?" Sam tries.

Obviously not: Deanna shakes her head, rinsing her mug. "Meet at the car in ten, soldier," she says, while he bangs his head against the table. "And if you're not in the bathroom in thirty seconds then I've got dibs."

He gets up, goes. Isn't shy about slamming the bathroom door when he does. In the mirror his hair's all screwed up and he's pink in the face and he's scowling. "Shut up," he says, to his reflection, and hustles.

*

Sam doesn't actually mind PT. He likes running, which is super lame after all the years of bitching about it—and there is absolutely zero chance he'll ever admit to Dad that he does—but there's something kind of satisfying about getting to the end of five miles and feeling that blood-rush through every part of his body, thighs humming and lungs working hard and his head clear.

That Deanna hates it is icing on the cake. "Can't the monsters just run to me," she pants, hands on her knees.

"Don't you wanna be the one doing the chasing instead of being chased?" Sam says, stretching his quads.

Deanna gives him a baleful look through her hair. He grins at her and she gives him the finger.

They're out in the woods, since Deanna drove them way out past the edge of the city. Better for the next part, but also good practice. They spend a lot more time sprinting at midnight between tree-trunks and leaping over rabbit-holes than they do on nice smooth high school tracks. Sweat's sticking Sam's shirt to his back but it's a pretty spring day, new leaves all over the trees and wildflowers coming up, white and yellow and pink.

"Ugh," Dee says, while Sam's feeling relatively at peace with the world. She redoes her ponytail, higher and tighter, although the choppy layers around her face don't quite make it. What passes for her PT gear are cut-off denim shorts, a grey camisole with a bloodstain making it unsuitable for the public (though it's not her own blood, which she insists counts for something), and a bright blue sports bra that she cusses at every time she wrestles herself into it. Better than bouncing, she says, and Sam figures he's got to believe it. She tucks her amulet behind the line of the bra and nods, and then says, "Okay," and levels a look at Sam. "Come at me, punk."

"Wait—" Sam says, backing up a step. "I thought we were shooting. Aren't we shooting?"

"Can do that too," Deanna says. She starts to move to the side, gearing up to circle him, and he rotates to face her, hands up. "But your grapple's kinda sloppy. Gotta keep you ship-shape."

Her eyes are tracking the important points—his hands, his feet, how his torso's turned—all the stuff they've used in wrestling, practically as far back as Sam can remember—but he hasn't often been this alarmed, not like now, all the sunny springtime peace of the run draining out to leave him nearly panicked. "This is dumb," he tries, continuing to back up, letting her pace him backwards.

"This is important," Deanna says, patient, like they haven't had the same argument fifty times. "Anyway, it's for me as much as you. You don't want me to be ship-shape, too?"

"Cute," Sam says, and Deanna smiles at him—really smiles, not one of those mocking sugary ones—and he catches his breath and says, "Dee," not knowing how he's gonna get out of it, and then his back hits a tree, his head clonking back against the bark, and she says, "Gotcha," and darts in.

He blocks the first punch, takes the second to the ribs. "Fuck!" he says, shoving, and she dances back, grinning at him, her boots kicking up the leaf-litter and moving easy over the uneven ground.

"Gotta think fast, little brother," she says, and hops in to aim a shot at his face—he ducks, and slaps her side as hard as he can with an open hand—connects, and she lets out this quick little noise, but that left him open for another punch to the chest, her knuckles right on his breastbone, pushing the breath out of him. He slaps at her again, wild, and she leans back and then dives right back in, making him block at shoulder and waist and jaw, dancing quick, light on her feet even in the clunky boots, making him work for it.

They don't swing as hard as they can but they don't pull back much. Dee's faster, Sam's stronger; Dee's better, but Sam's not bad, and they block each other's hits way more than they actually connect. When they started doing this Sam was nine and Dee was thirteen, and it didn't seem fair at all because she was like a foot taller than him, bigger and older and better at everything, but Dad said that was the point: making Sam catch up, grow up, get strong, and giving Deanna the chance to practice with someone who wouldn't really hurt her, especially then.

With all these years of practice they know each other's tells, even if they're also supposed to practice hiding those. Sam lands another slap on her hip and takes a soft-ish punch to the gut as punishment; she lunges for his leg and he catches her arm and uses her momentum to throw her around, stumbling back through the loam, panting. He could've gotten her there and didn't. They both know it—she frowns at him, chest heaving, and comes around to his left, circling, hands held loose and ready. Coming up on the end—if they're not going to really hurt each other, there's usually just the one end—and Sam knows where the trees are in the clearing now, avoids getting boxed in, waiting.

Deanna charges, aiming for his shoulder. He braces—and then, no, her eyes dart down—he swivels on his right leg, reaches for her forearm when she goes to grab his knee—pulls her in, close, and she cusses even as he yanks her around, stumbling, and shoves her chest-first into the nearest trunk, using his weight and height, her arm twisted behind her back between them, his chest and hips and legs crushed up against hers, stilling her, subduing.

"I win," he says, panting.

"Shit." Burst out, bitten. She strains, flexing and pushing back, but he's got thirty pounds on her and once they're grappled there's no way. Her arm twists in his grip but he keeps her still, fingers tight, making sure she gets it. Her head drops against the bark, a long sigh gusting out, her shoulder slumping soft, and that's when Sam feels past the adrenaline rush the warm-soft length of her body, her vanilla shampoo and the sweat at the back of her neck rising in his head, his hips pressed up against her ass, his stolen-from-school gym shorts thin, making him—

He steps back, hot-faced. God, is he—he glances down but not yet—not yet, and he crouches in the dirt, folding his arms over his knees, still breathing hard. Like that's why.

"Telegraphed that feint," Deanna says. She turns against the trunk, leaning her head back. Sweaty, flush high in her cheeks and ears and down her throat, disappearing into the blue bra. She puts her wrist to her forehead, puffing out a deep breath. "You're getting faster." Not even a compliment, just stating facts. Like she always does when they're really working. He sniffs, shrugging, and she leans forward, putting her hands on her knees again, squinting at him. "If it was a dirty fight I woulda got you, though. Left your nuts wide open."

"Thanks for not hitting me in the nuts," Sam says, dry, and she raises her eyebrows, like, try me.

Breeze swirls into the clearing, cool on the back of his neck, his bare arms. Deanna closes her eyes against it, lips parting in pleasure. Sam's gut wobbles but—he's calmed down, mostly, and he can stand up without embarrassing himself. "So," he says. Like it's no big deal. "Can we go home?"

"I got a case of empty cans in the trunk that need to get full of holes," she says. "You won the fight. So what? I'm gonna kick your ass at target practice." He makes a rude sound and she smiles, loose, and then finally opens her eyes and looks right at him—heavy, warm, like—yesterday in the bathroom mirror but real, this time, her lashes dark with sweat and her skin flushed and her chest rising in a deep breath, and he—he—

"C'mon, pipsqueak," she says, tipping her head back to where they parked the car. "I'll even let you choose, handgun or rifle."

"Thanks a lot," he says, as sarcastic as he can, and she grins and pushes away from the tree and brushes past him, fake elbowing like a dick but really just soft-warm, close, and he follows, forced to think the calmest, plainest thoughts he can, focusing on what's around: running water in the creek, and birdsong, and trees casting dappled shadows across the trail, and not at all the way her hips move, nor the freckled soft skin of her shoulders, nor the way he thinks he could fit his hands around her waist, hold her in place, and she'd turn her head and look up at him over her shoulder and she'd say—he can't imagine. In the image her mouth opens and no words exist.

*

They make it back to the rental house in the late afternoon. Shooting—yes, Deanna cored more cans than Sam, about which she crowed like an idiot—but also swinging by the post office box across town Dad had rented before he left, and stopping for gas, and then using one of those do-it-yourself carwashes, where Sam gets roped into helping, although he doesn't know why when Dee's always popping up behind him to re-do whatever sidepanel he's just finished. Not even trying to be bossy; she's just obsessive, even if she keeps making Miyagi wax-off jokes and waggling her eyebrows like she's funny. Sam determinedly doesn't laugh.

Sweaty and sore and yet kind of glad, all told, when they pile through the door. This is the kind of day Sam's never minded: working, with his family, but safe. Deanna groans, pulling her boots off, and says, "Oh my god, I have like a thousand dibs on first shower," and so Sam's left to sit in the bedroom, stripping off his sneakers and socks and sweaty shorts, sitting in his t-shirt and boxers, listening to her sing very very off-key—Long Black Road already sounds weird an octave higher—and then he sits on his mattress with his arms around his knees and feels all the good ache in his thighs and forearms and the sore spot where the rifle kicked back during shooting practice, and then he blinks and sees that what he's looking at is the plastic bag with its clamshell box, tucked next to where she tossed her boots, and this weird heat corkscrews down from his heart to his balls, quick as dropping a coin down a well, and he—licks his lips, swallows. Listens to the water hissing down.

Deanna comes out in her towel, again—amulet still on, like it always is, although her hair's loose, dripping down her back. "Your turn, stinky," she says, and Sam passes her like it's nothing, says, "Hope you left some hot water," and she says, "Can't rush the finer things, Sammy," and Sam strips and climbs into the tub and puts his head directly under the spray, taking that first rush of luke-cold before it goes hot, drowning. Like it helps. It smells like her in here: vanilla shampoo, peachy soap. He scrubs his hair back from his face and breathes wet under the spray and when he reaches down he's already hard, has been, needing—god. To get his head straight.

Not the first time. Not the last, given his track record. From furtive schoolyard magazine-sharing and pilfered late-night cable and the way they watched Basic Instinct and Dee paused it at that exact second and said, oh yeah, that's the stuff, and laughed fizzingly at Sam while he turned red and she pushed him over on their shared bed and mushed his head under the pillow, smothering him in heat and soft and warm girl-smell, pussy behind his eyes—god, yeah, he's got the mental images, enough to get him there. The shower's hot and deafening and his head goes blank except for that, imagining without context, just—soft boobs and the soft white curve of tummy between the navel and the too-low rise of jeans. The pink wet split, and what he imagines it'd be like to sink two fingers in, or to make like the too-tan guys with too-white teeth who get their heads between spread thighs and make the girls make those sounds—except, no, not exaggerated like that, because even if Sam hasn't done it he knows girls don't scream, that way, because he's got his sister and he's heard her, in her bed that's so often less than a yard from his. He's laid awake in the night listening to the wet rhythmic squishing that hardly rocks the other mattress and heard, too, the puffs of breath through her nose, the way he can tell that her bottom lip's bitten between her teeth, the way she makes that little tiny caught whining noise when she's getting close, the way he'll be hard as a tire iron with his arms folded under the pillow, trying his absolute damnedest to pretend he's asleep, and his eyes wide open in the dark of a motel room lit only by the green numbers on the clock radio to see the way the shape of her legs spread under the shiny polyester comforter and then the way her hips lift under the shiny lump of it and then the sound, a tiny grunt through her nose, the slick pumping squish going still, and then—his favorite part—this long sigh, like she's been holding up a weight and finally gets to let it down, her knees splaying wide-out and flat, the barest tiniest shine of light on her lip as she lets it out of her teeth, the heave of her chest where the blanket's rucked down, the way her head turns, toward him—

When he gets out of the shower she's dressed, kind of. Dad's boxers and a freshly-washed grey camisole. Hair loose and drying wavy over her shoulders, although she swipes it all over to one side, leaning over the stove, peering into their battered single pot. "Hungry?" she says, and then immediately snorts and says, "Dumb question."

"Ha," Sam says. The radio's on, the crappy local rock station that has way too many ads, but they play Metallica and AC/DC sometimes and Deanna says that's enough for her. "What are you making?"

"Oh, Sammy," Deanna says—leaning on the counter, smiling at him sidelong. Not hot, like she is for the guys at the bar, but something else. Sam's gut aches. "That'd spoil the surprise."

"Wouldn't want that," Sam says, trying for cool and somehow kind of landing on it, and Deanna winks at him. Winks. He takes a deep breath, and passes behind her to go to the fridge, and gets out two beers, and cracks them both. He hands one to Dee and bumps the cans together before she can object. "Try not to give us food poisoning, huh?"

Deanna lifts her chin, her eyes narrowing. Smiles, slow. "No promises," she says, and when they take a drink at the same time, her eyes stay steady on Sam.

*

"So," Deanna says, drawing it out slow, lips a plush teasing O. Sam raises his eyebrows, like, so what? Dee raises her eyebrows back, making fun of him. "So: Noelle." Sam groans and Deanna grins wide at him, leans forward. "Don't front, little brother. C'mon, spill. You make much ado about her nothing?"

"That doesn't even make sense," Sam says, but it's without much strength, and Deanna sticks her tongue out at him, still grinning.

So it's been a couple of beers, and then another one to make up for the pretty weird dinner—tomato rice soup with green beans stirred in is not something that's going to end up on fancy restaurant menus, put it that way—and they're sprawled on either end of the couch, the TV on the news in case there's anything Dee would have to care about but silent, the radio still playing—the top 40 now, and Sam got to see Deanna bounce around lip syncing to how she didn't want no scrubs, which he groaned and rolled his eyes through but to be honest was actually pretty funny—and his head's kind of swimmy, kind of heavy, his cheeks hot and his fingertips cold, although maybe that's because he's holding his—fourth?—can of Milwaukee's absolute best, pretending like everything's cool. Everything is cool. Four beers in he can't imagine how they'd be otherwise.

"Hellooo," Deanna sings. He blinks at her. "Ground control to Major Sammy? You in there?"

"Yes," Sam says. Dignified. Maybe. "Where else would I be?"

Deanna looks like she thinks something is very funny. Never a good sign. She leans forward, her elbow on the back of the couch, her knees spreading out. "N-O-E-L," she says. "Let me hear it. She cute?"

"She spells it with two Ls," Sam says, which makes Dee wrinkle her nose. "And—I don't know. I guess."

"You guess." She whaps his knee and then grabs his shin, waggling his leg back and forth. "Dude, you are a hot-blooded American male. You can do better than guess. Unless—" She squints at him, assessing. "Are you gay? Or—wait, your junk works, right?"

"Yes!" Sam says, and then, hastily— "No!" Dee snorts, taking a sip of her beer, and while she's mopping foam off her chin he wraps his arms around his knees, annoyed. "You suck."

"When they ask nice," Deanna says, and then pauses, her tongue pressed up against the back of her front teeth. Shining, pink. Sam looks at that and then away, at the TV. Weather this week will stay warm. Rain on Thursday. The weather guy has stupid gelled helmet hair. A soft warm grip on Sam's ankle, low. "Hey, Sammy."

Warm, and a little wet from the beer. It races up the nerves from Sam's ankle to his heart and then back south to his nuts, confusing, worrying. Good. "Noelle's cute," Sam says. He licks his lips. "Smart. She's on the volleyball team."

"Selling girl scout cookies, too, I bet," Deanna says. Her thumb skims up the inside of Sam's ankle, where there's that dip. Kinda ticklish, kinda not. "Didn't ask about her test grades, dweeb. What's she look like?"

Sam shrugs. "Tall? I guess. For a girl. Blondish hair. Skinny, kind of."

"She got good tits?"

When Sam turns his head Dee's really watching him. He chews on his bottom lip. She's still got her arm laid out along the back of the couch, holding her beer loose in long fingers, and her other hand around his ankle, scooched forward so she can reach—cleavage made even when she's not wearing a bra, the amulet he gave her spilling off-angled over the pressed-up white curve. Her eyes dark and kind of hard to see in just the TV-light, with the sun down and them not turning on any other lamps. He shrugs again, and then nods. Yeah, Noelle's boobs are okay.

"Yeah?" Deanna says. The tip of her tongue touches the center of her bottom lip. Shine. "What about her ass?"

"It's okay," Sam says. His voice sounds weird.

"You kiss her?" Deanna says, and then without waiting: "No, huh. But you want to, huh? Maybe after the library. Or before volleyball, with the uniform on, you dog."

Sam's never known why guys who want to have sex are called dogs. Deanna's thumb is working in little circles on the inside of his ankle and the skin there feels like it's on freaking fire. "You kiss Walt?" he says.

Her thumb stops. "Walt?"

Like it's the dumbest thing ever. Sam unfolds enough to take a drink from his can. Warm now, bitter, but it's something to do with his hands. "I think he wants to kiss you."

"Oh, you think," Deanna says, sarcastic. Sam takes another gulp, too quick, and has to stop himself from coughing like a dork. While his eyes water Deanna lets go of his ankle—a cold spot there that he regrets immediately—and leans over to the table, grabbing a can from the box, cracking it fresh. "Walt wants me to blow him under the desk in the manager's office. Good thing we're gonna be out of here before he works up the balls to ask."

She says it like, no big deal. Like, duh. Deanna drains the last of her previous can and drops it into the pile they're making on the carpet, and then leans back with the new beer tucked between her thighs, making a damp condensation spot on the thin grey fabric of the shorts. Sam drains his beer, too, and gets another, too, although he leaves his empty upright at least so it doesn't spill drops on the carpet. It takes some concentration; his balance is a little weird.

"Shit, we made a mess, huh?" Deanna says, while Sam leans doubled over his own knees, setting up all the cans like bowling pins. "Ruining all your hard work."

"Don't want you to get mad at me again," Sam says, which is kinda supposed to be making fun of her but he also kinda means it. All the cans upright and he flops back onto the couch, full beer resting on his stomach. "Plus, like. You've been all—nice. I didn't know vacuuming would get me all these perks." He lifts the beer in a little toast before he takes a sip. One of Deanna's cheeks sucks in before she toasts him back, takes a swallow too. Sam smiles at her, feeling weirdly light in his chest, even if things are just super—weird. "I get anything else if I keep doing all the laundry? Gonna let me drive?"

"In your dreams," Deanna says, immediately.

"What about… let me pick the music?"

"You know the rules, dingus." She lets her right foot drop off the couch, thigh stretching out long, wide. "I'll keep you fed. Consider yourself lucky, punk. But…" Smiling at him, crooked and small. Beer still between her legs. "That really was cool, man. I know I was bitching and all, but. I didn't really expect you to do anything."

Sometimes that's the kind of thing that makes him feel like a baby, getting a pat on the head. This time it's—different. Sam feels heat rising up in the center of his cheeks. "Homework doesn't take that long," he says. "Figured you were right, I could manage the laundry or whatever too."

"Wait, wait," Deanna says, eyes opening wide, "I was right?" Sam rolls his eyes and flicks a drop of beer at her, which she promptly returns with interest, and when he's wiping scattered foam off his cheek, grinning, she says, "Sounds like a deal to me," and then, in a different voice—"Although if you're gonna be in my stuff, guess I ought to find a different hiding spot, huh?"

Half a second to remember what she means and then the heat in his cheeks flames up over his whole body. Lurid pink. Big? Even two days gone he can't quite remember. "No big deal, remember? Where else would you keep it, anyway—glovebox?"

She snorts. "Get pulled over and hand that out to the cop with the license and reg? Yeah, guess not."

"Where'd you even get it?"

"You never heard of a sex store?" Deanna says, tipping her head. "Thought you were all grown-up now. Give me that beer back, Kid Icarus—"

He pulls it back out of her mimed grab and she ends up leaning forward toward him again, his drawn-up feet practically tucked up between her spread legs. That half-circle of damp is still there on the cotton, high up on her thigh. "I meant where. Or like—when, I guess."

"Back in Houston. So—what, four, five months ago?" She shrugs, rests her beer on his knee like it's a cupholder. "You really haven't done laundry in a while, huh."

"So, you…" She raises her eyebrows at him like a dare. He swigs his beer, clears his throat. His fingertips are cold. "I don't know. It's kinda weird. Like, when the girls at school talk sometimes, it's like—they talk like it hurts, or something. Like they just do it because their boyfriends want to."

This from Jackie Martinette and Laura Kennedy, who had a full whispered gossip session on the subject in study hall while Sam tried desperately to pretend like he was on another planet. Bad enough to spring wood at home in bed while Deanna walked around in her underwear after a shower; truly mortifying at school when any second he'd have to get up and walk to second period biology.

"You think girls aren't getting anything out of it?" Sam lifts a shoulder, really not sure. In porn sometimes they shriek. He doesn't associate much good with shrieking. Deanna smiles at him, sort of patronizing but also warm, friendly. Like she's sharing good news. "Sammy, if you know what you're doing it's all kinds of good. When you're hot for it and it's go time?" She makes this low purry sound, deep in her throat, her eyes half-lidded.

Sam swallows. "Go time?" He's amazed his voice doesn't sound weird.

"Girls get horny just like guys, you know," Deanna says. She licks her lips, shining flushed. The TV bursts blue-yellow color over her cheeks, the rise of her chest as she takes a deep breath. "Harder to tell, I guess. But if it's go time a girl should be so wet you just slide right in, you know? Even if you didn't eat her out first. I mean, that's how it works with me."

Sam's so hard he's dizzy. He drains his beer, lets it slide down to the pile on the carpet, hooks his hands around his own ankles, keeping his knees together so she can't see. "What do you think about?" he says. The air's thin, hot. Deanna blinks at him, slow. "When you're—using it. Like—guys, or…?"

"Brad Pitt in Thelma & Louise," Deanna says, and Sam laughs, not expecting to. She grins at him and her face is pink, too. "Yeah, guys. But not even like—specific guys. Just… what feels good, you know? When a guy holds my tits right—not squeezing hard, but just…" She tucks her beer up against her crotch and cups one boob, pushing it up high and full through her camisole, fingers splayed wide, her thumb brushing over her nipple where Sam can see it hard and poking through the cotton. Her other breast curving plush, that nipple also round and tight, and Sam reaches out and copies her, sliding his palm up her ribs and feeling the sudden rise of them and spidering his fingers wide over the soft heaviness, shifting to hold it up high to match, his thumb glancing over the nipple and it's—oh, rigid as a bullet but giving somehow too, tilting under how he sweeps back and forth, swollen hot. Her cleavage looks incredible, the amulet squished between both boobs like she's wearing a push-up bra, the cord disappearing between them. He imagines very suddenly licking there, swiping up with his tongue in the dark shadow like he's imagined licking a girl's pussy, except he'd keep going, lick up into the hollow of her throat, lick up over her chin and push his tongue into her mouth and see what that was like, see how it tasted, and he's thinking that, rolling her nipple over and over under his thumb, when he sees that her lips are parted and she's staring at him, chest heaving, and he's—god, he wants to kiss her. He wants to very badly.

"Like that?" he says, thin. She nods, quick. He holds his ankle very tightly with the other hand. "What—what else? Do you think about."

The tip of her tongue touches the center of her top lip. Sam's balls lurch. Deanna's eyelids dip but don't close, and she says, "A guy fingering me. But not like most guys do it. Stabbing in like they're trying to buttonmash in Street Fighter. There was this dude in Buffalo—he got me off over the top of my jeans, just rubbing right, steady. Got me so wet it soaked through. Thought I was gonna marry him."

The can of beer's right there, on the y-front of the old boxer-briefs. Sam's breathing through his mouth, lips drying. "You fuck him?"

Deanna's ears are dark red. "Yeah," she says. A breath. "In the bar bathroom, over the sink. That's a good one, when I'm using the dildo. I was so wet. Just thinking about it—swear to god, like someone turned on a faucet in my pussy, Sammy."

He pushes forward and she grabs the beer can, holds it right there for some reason, so it doesn't spill when Sam crams his fingers between the lukewarm wet tin and the cotton, curving over—soft too, warm too, hot as he pushes his fingers down, when she spreads her thigh wider and her hips tip forward, crushing his hand between the couch cushion and her pussy and the cotton that, fuck, is wet, sticky, and he pushes his fingers up, where it gives, and—and—

"Sammy," she whispers, and he looks up and he's, oh, squeezing her tit hard, hard enough that when he startles and lets go there's a ghost-white impression of his fingers above the line of fabric that floods red right away, and he takes in a breath to say—nothing, absolutely nothing comes to mind, but it doesn't matter because she grabs his wrist and pushes his fingers right up against her tit again, and then drops the beer over the side of the couch, letting it thunk to the carpet, glugging, and curves her hand over his hand between her legs, pressing it harder against herself, groaning, a sound he's only heard in the dark.

His head's thick, like oxygen's not getting in. Her hips grind in and he presses up hard, with the heel of his hand and his fingertips, and she shudders so maybe it's good. He pulls at the neck of the camisole and it yanks to one side but Dee shakes her head, shifts—Sam yanks his hand away, but she only pushes forward, up on her knees—still holding his fingers up against her pussy—and then reaches down and pulls the camisole off over her head, entirely, so she's bare from the waist up except for her amulet, her tits white and full, her nipples blushy red, the skin around them drawn up tight. He grips one in just the way she showed him and drags his thumb around the bare skin, rolling the nipple without the barrier of cotton, and she makes this tiny little noise high in her throat, like she can't help it, so hot that Sam leans forward and slurps the nipple into his mouth so she'll make it again.

"Fuck," she says, the f drawn out like she didn't mean to. Her hand on his head while he mouths at her boob, licking and then opening his mouth wide and sucking hard, so she hisses and grips his hair tight, and so he learns to roll it under his tongue, suckling, like a popsicle he wants to last. Her thighs clamp around his wrist and then open, and he rubs her whole crotch front to back, not knowing what's best, from the y-front down to where she's sticky and all the way to her ass, squeezing where she's soft there, too, pulling her in except his knees are in the way. He squirms, pretzeled up tight like he is, and Deanna kneels up high so he can unfold and then his legs are between her thighs. She grabs his wrist again and that's fine, he lets her push and get his palm seated on the hard ridge of bone, his fingers squishing around in the wet cotton where she's so soft, riding the seam of the boxers back and forth, finding where—oh shit—yeah, where he can push, a gap, which must really be her pussy, where the dildo goes, where that guy from Buffalo was, where Sam could—

She grips his hair, pulls his mouth away from her tit. He comes off gasping. Flickery light from the TV but it's dark, dark, blood pulled up into the skin from how he was working there. Her hand goes to his jaw, her thumb sliding over his mouth—wet—smelling like… He licks and it tastes like—salt. Salt and something tangy, what's heavy in the air, stronger than the smell of the beer spilling onto the carpet and how he feels drenched in sweat, this—incredible thing, addictive, better than anything. A flex, against his buried fingertips, where she's soaked, and he finally looks up to see her staring at him, at his mouth. Her thumb drags over his lip again and he leans in to her other, paler tit, slurps the nipple in and cups his hand hard over her pussy and wraps his arm around her waist, holding her warm and close, drunk. His head swims but it doesn't matter—she keeps hold of his hair, keeping him up against her chest, and covers his hand on her pussy, pressing in this rhythm that's easy to follow, clutching hard and grinding and rolling her hips into his fingers, her breath fast and hot and puffing over his ear, everything between them getting sweaty, tense, her grip over his hand hurting almost and he'd worry about hurting her except clearly that's not an issue. He drags his teeth over her boob, sucking hard on the squishy softness, his tongue exploring the tight wrinkled rim around the nipple, and squeezes her ass with his free hand, and his wrist hurts so he flexes his forearm, grips the front ridge of bone over her pussy with his thumb, and Deanna jerks against him, curves in, holds his hand hard and still up against herself, and she's totally silent and even her breath is held and he lets go of her tit and looks up and she's staring at him open-mouthed. He rubs his fingertips against her crotch, squeezing through the boxers, and it's only then that she makes a little sound, jerked out of her belly, and she bends down—he blinks, not sure—but she just sinks down to his shoulder, her lips spread wide on the side of his neck, her breath heaving out of her like she just finished a five-mile run.

Her thighs spread over his. Their hands caught together, cupped wet. Sam's nuts hurt he's so hard and he doesn't know what to do. He wants her nipple back in his mouth, wants to put his mouth on her pussy and taste that tangy smell right at the source, wants to crawl behind the couch and jerk off with his fist between his teeth, fast and hard as he possibly can. Wants—

Her hand, on his crotch, through his shorts. He jerks, whole-body, like when Dee was showing him how to replace an outlet a few rental houses ago and they didn't bother with flipping the breaker. His boner's popping stupid-obvious so it's easy for her to grip it with her whole hand and it feels—god!—warm, even through the double-layer of the polyester and his cotton boxers, and firm, squeezing hard at first and then feeling the shape, from the base to the head. "Jeez," she murmurs, and he squeezes his eyes closed, every part of his body feeling shivery, strange, oversensitized. "When'd that happen?"

"What?" he manages. She smells so good he can't stand it—wants to hide, wants to disappear, wants to grip her ass and drag her down and rub off against her like he used to against the mattress, when he was a kid and didn't know how to jerk off right, only she'd be so soft, sweet, wet—

"You got a big dick," Deanna says, soft, her head dipping down, her cheek against Sam's cheek. "Fuck, that's—thick. All grown up, huh?"

He shakes his head, confused, and she laughs very softly but not mean, not like she can laugh, and says, "God—" and pushes his chest, bears him back down against the arm of the couch, and he goes because he doesn't know what else to do and he puts his hand over his mouth—oh oh oh the hand that was on her pussy, his fingers sliding wet, and he sucks them in, bites his own skin, tasting, the smell and tang clutching up his throat and his foggy head. Deanna groans for some reason and pushes up his shirt, her fingers skimming over his belly, on the sparse hair that's started to trail down from his navel, and she—lifts off his legs, her weight and heat disappearing, and he opens his eyes to find the world gone all smeary, dark still but the light from the TV splintering weird and wet across the ceiling, and when he looks down she's on her knees between his knees, her fingers cupping his balls through his shorts, squeezing the shaft, and she bends down like she's going to—her mouth open, like she's going to—and Sam's toes curl and his thighs spasm and he comes, hips jerking up into her grip, creaming up the inside of his shorts, pulsing, shocked.

His heart thuds in his throat. He breathes hard around his fingers, still in his mouth, and drags them out finally, curling wet and pruny against his chin. Deanna lets go, eyes at first pinned there at his crotch and then flicking up at him dark and wide-startled, her lips an O. Sam blinks at her and pulls one of his knees up, in, and somehow that makes her flinch, and she sits up high, back on her heels, arms folding over her chest and hiding her tits, her eyes still big, going all over his face.

Deanna laughs. Again. High and breathy, fake. Still not mean but—"Man, couple beers and we're crazy, huh?" she says, brittle and fast, and Sam digs his heels into the couch and scooches away, as far as he can, his back pressed all the way against the couch arm, his brain feeling like it's sloshing in acid. Deanna smiles at him, wide and with a lot of teeth, and swivels and stands, kicking a beer can, stooping quick to pick up her camisole, tugging it over her head, yanking it back into place. Sam blinks and wet runs down his cheek so he has to scrub the back of his hand over it, smearing. "Guess we really are hard-up," Deanna's saying, while Sam folds back over his own knees, stomach doing a slow horrible somersault. "Gotta work on your game, get that Noelle girl to go for it sometime."

"Dee," Sam says, but it's barely voiced, and Deanna shakes her head and rolls right on, walking off to the kitchen like it's nothing, saying, "Anyway—we screwed up the carpet—better get something for that before the beer soaks in—"

Sam's gonna hurl. He—oh, he really is—and he unfolds off the couch and his legs stagger but he makes it the half-dozen steps to the bathroom, to his knees, stomach lurching, eyes burning. Dinner and beer and everything else. He shudders, clutching the sides of the bowl in the dark. Sits there, miserable, for…

Faint touch to his back. He makes a weird sound, spits. Reaches up and flushes, and sits back on his knees, and his face is sweaty, hot, and Deanna's not in the bathroom with him but there's a cup on the side of the sink with water in it. He swishes the taste out of his mouth, spits again, drains the rest. When he gathers his brain together and stands back up he sways and there's—sticky wet in his shorts, cold and sludgy, and he leans his shoulder into the doorway and sees that Dee's cleaned up the beer cans and there's a towel on the carpet by the couch. He gets more water in the kitchen, drinks it down in cool stomach-filling swallows that make his gut slosh but in a way where he doesn't feel like it's gonna chuck up again, and when he goes to the bedroom—she's on her mattress, lying on her side, blanket tugged up to her shoulder. He stands between the two beds for a second, uncertain, until she turns over, her back to the room. "Go to bed, drunkie," she says, quiet in the dark, and he licks his lips and crawls onto his own mattress on his stomach, folding his arms under his pillow, staring across at her until the dragging sloshing tide in his head pulls him down, undertow sucking at his whole body, drowning.

In the morning her bed is empty. Sam's head hurts like someone took a sledgehammer to it in the middle of the night. His boxers stick crusty against his pubes. He takes a shower, nauseated and aching and wondering if it's possible to be poisoned by five beers. Coffee already made—he drinks a cup and then pours a second, miserable, and then the front door opens and Deanna's standing there, fully dressed and eyes wide and bright, and she says, "Rise and shine, wonderboy," like a chirpy bird, and then, "C'mon, I'll drive you to school," and Sam says, "I feel like crap," and she says, "That’s what happens when you drink with the big dogs, but no excuses, come on," and so he puts on sneakers and gets his backpack and loads himself into the passenger side of the Impala and slumps against the window while she drives, the two of them not talking, the radio on low to morning shock-jock crap. Wondering if this is what it's always going to be. This sick dragging awful, at the base of his skull and in his gut, making the morning into something that has to be endured, like every single day from this one to when he's dead will be—this. The Impala pulls up smooth to the drop-off area, muscling ahead of a champagne-colored sedan, and Sam sighs, and goes to open the door, and Deanna says, "Hang on."

He looks at her straight-on. First time, really, all morning, the humiliation feeling like it's coming off him like radiation, like if they had an EMF meter for it the thing would be shrieking. She looks like she always does. Part of the problem. Deanna's cheek sucks in and she looks in the rear-view, and then she meets his eyes, and her expression is—Sam doesn't know. She looks into his eyes and then at his mouth, and then at his hand on the door for some reason, and then she shakes her head, and touches her own lips, and then grips the steering wheel tight with both hands. "Knock 'em dead, Sammy," she says, looking out at the road.

First period, study hall. He drops his bag under the desk and drops his head onto his folded arms. The bell ringing hurts. Laura Kennedy and Jackie Martinette start whispering behind him, about the date Jackie went on this weekend, and he folds his arms over his head, shuts it out. He feels like he took a beating from a werewolf, but that's not the worst part. For some reason the thing that keeps repeating in his head, and what lasts all day, through English where he ignores Noelle and through AP Stats where he doesn't answer a single question and through the lunch he doesn't eat and through World History, staring through the review slides for final exams coming up in a few weeks, is how Dee laughed. High, and weird, and like she'd done something horribly embarrassing, like there was no way to live it down and so you just had to laugh, because what other choice did you have?

When he gets home the living room smells like stale beer. Deanna's not there. In the fridge, a styrofoam box with spaghetti and meatballs and no note, and he eats it by himself and does his homework and goes to bed alone, and she's not there the next morning, and she's not there the next afternoon when he gets home, either, and it's not until Wednesday morning that he wakes up and she's sitting crosslegged on the mattress across the room from him in the clear morning light and she says, before he's even registered that she's really there and what it means, "Dad's coming home."

He blinks muzzily and sits up and she's looking at him with her fingers knotted in her lap, her lips red and her eyes red, too, and then she gets up and walks out of the room. He watches her go, robbed of any other option.

[finsterwalds]

Got a request for Skyler and Saul content.... Here's my proposition: instead of having an affair with Ted Beneke, Skyler and Saul are pretending to have an affair to piss Walt off but they actually aren't. Non-pictured: Saul gets beaten up by Walt for this

[doctor-cowboy]

Just got around to watching Holly's Chronicles of Benry stream. It's great and everything I wanted. I love viewing it through the lens of it being Benrey's personal playing-with-dolls recreation of his fantasized life, where he imagines himself to be a relatable Normal Person who can be sympathized with because his life has been sooo hard (and normal). Favorite moments along with my interpretation of them: -The introduction of Emmet Calhoun. I love characters that barely exist and Emmet is no exception. I think we should let him be real -When Benrey is talking about the boss battle, he calls Xen his home -He talks about getting shot with the "Gordon gun" and being killed, and then says "I never forgive him, and he's my best friend, so I gotta forgive him". He's still mad about what happened but he likes Gordon enough that he "has to" forgive him -After his death, he is trapped in gm_construct and not allowed to leave -Constantly talking about how happy he is, how he doesn't have any friends but it's ok, how he's dead but it's ok, and how he can do anything he wants. From the perspective of this being his fantasy world, (and with all context), it can be assumed the opposite is true -Everyone in his fantasy perceives him as very funny, smart, kind, and helpful. I think the whole section with the cow friend says a lot about how Benrey sees himself in relation to others- mostly about how he thinks others should see him -^He tells the cow that he can do "bad stuff" with his powers. She responds by saying everyone is capable of good and evil, and that she thinks Benrey is good. Despite everything, Benrey wants to be a good person, or at least perceived as one -^After saying this, Benrey says that she reminds him of his friend Tommy. The cow then says "he sounds like a fine man, and its really cool when you know him." Benrey and Tommy are best friends -When he was on the phone with Dr. Coomer or Emmet, he insulted them once or twice. They responded by laughing. Could be interpreted that when he's being randomly mean to someone, he thinks he's being funny rather than an asshole -Claims now that he has died, he can't die ever again -Every part with Gordon is important. Gordon's 2 roles in this are being a damsel in distress- with a high-pitch voice and everything-begging Benrey to help him (which he does, because he's so nice and cool), or Gordon talking about how happy and proud they all are of Benrey's performance in "the videos" -^Gordon tells Benrey he's not mad about the "arm stuff" anymore because he has his arm back now. Benrey wants Gordon to forgive him too, and thinks he deserves forgiveness because of the perceived impermanence of what he did. It *is* hypocritical, since Benrey is still mad at Gordon for killing him, despite him being "alive" now -Overall implication that Benrey is not only self-aware as an AI but self-aware as a show character. Talks about "the videos" a lot. If you couple it with the idea that Gordon was streaming the game in-universe to justin.tv, I think that could be really interesting

Conclusion: I love to take a joke so real and serious. This stream is only tangentially related to canon, but in a comedy series, "canon" means a lot less. Which means that anything about it can be real if you want it to be. Or not. But I enjoyed the stream and thinking really hard about it, and I encourage everyone who hasn't watched it yet to check it out!!!

[pyralart]

All thanks to them...

Just an idea of what Belos could be doing next episode- you might also spot some suspicious drawings hidden in there- if not... it's your loss

ID in ALT and under read more:

[ID: Comic with the character Belos from the cartoon show The Owl House, in his monster form. It takes place after the episode "Thanks to Them". Belos is back to the demon realm in his monster form. He is seen going in his cave, overhead some tubes are full of a green glowing magical liquid. He says with a distorted voice: "I will finish this"

 

Belos is kneeling on the ground, looking down at it. A green tube is planted in the ground. Belos continues: "I just need..."

 

Belos is slowly melting into the ground in a horrific manner. In the background a goopy hand is reaching down as it shows all the goop disappearing in the ground as a green glow emanates from the earth.

 

A last drop of goop is seen on the ground before disappearing completely.

 

Next panel, a hand emerges straight from the ground.

 

A grimwalker, almost Hunter lookalike, is halfway out of the ground, looking at his hand. He show signs of possession by Belos, his eyes are icy blue and some green and brown patches appeared already. He finishes: "... A proper body to work with"

 

The background turned to black. On it is written: "Right, Caleb?".

 

The next panel shows the grimwalker, currently Belos, with horns sprouting from his head. He is taking up his (Caleb's) coat from a chair, continuing: "Thanks to them, we can finally-"

 

"Do this together" He ends in the next panel, tugging on his coat and smirking menacingly as his horns fully grew out of his head.]

[lilyrizzy]

nico hischier, family & home

the athletic / guess how much I love you - sam mcbratney / the ny times / the players tribune / the hockey news / giovanni’s room - james baldwin / markerzone / regrets - hether / electra - euripides

[luxaofhesperides]

Surprise husbands + "How are you real?" ; requested by @vehan-tikkun-olam-and-stuff!

They may not have planned to get married, or even wanted it all too much at the beginning, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t going to treat each other right. It was rough going, with both of them coming out of relationships and having secret identities, but time had softened the hurt feelings and allowed them to actually get to know each other.

And Danny, Duke has discovered, is a really good husband. 

Neither of them ever saw themselves as married at 20, but sometimes life throws horrible curses at you and the embodiment of balance and life and death swoops in to save your life. Via marriage. 

His life is weird, okay? Duke has made his peace with it.

The thing is, if they had met naturally and started off as friends, Duke could see himself falling for Danny and asking him to marry him in a far off future. Instead, they’re doing everything backwards: married, then going on dates to know each other, and finally feeling close enough to be friends. 

It helps that Danny does his best to communicate and that helps Duke find the words he needs as well. 

He’s sweet, too, so kind and doting and affectionate. Like a really lovable cat, honestly. Duke’s never been cuddled so much in his life and he’s loving every minute of it. 

He… might be falling in love with his husband. What a revelation.

“Duke?” 

He blinks, looking up from his half-empty plate, pulled out of his thoughts suddenly. Tim and Dick stare at him, concerned, and he realizes he’s missed the entire conversation because he was so preoccupied thinking about Danny. In his defense, it was their one year anniversary the night before and Danny had kissed him for the first time after a date night spent playing video games and talking shit about their respective rogues. 

Tim snaps a finger in front of his face, and Duke startles. He got distracted by his Danny Thoughts again.

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“You okay? You’ve been out of it all day,” Dick says, clearly concerned.

“Oh, uh, yeah, it’s all good. Just… adjusting.”

“To what? Did something happen?”

Duke shrugs, scooping up another forkful of pasta to shove in his mouth. “Yeah, I… this is going to sound kind of stupid, but I think I’m in love with my husband.”

Tim, taking an ill-timed drink, chokes and spits out his Zesti. Dick springs back, trying to get out of the spray zone but doesn’t move far, shocked still by Duke’s words.

“Oh, yeah,” Duke realizes, “I didn’t tell you guys, did I?”

“You’re married?!” Tim shrieks as Dick clutches at his chest, eyes wide.

“You didn’t tell me?” Dick asks, offended.

“Seriously? That’s what you focus on?”

Duke smiles as they begin to bicker. They do it constantly, but this time it’s halfhearted, as if they’re just going through the motions of something familiar to distract themselves from the bomb he’s dropped on them.

In all fairness, Duke did forget that he didn’t tell them that he’s married to Danny. He’s also only mentioned Danny once or twice and heavily implied that Danny was just a classmate at GCU. And then forgot that he didn’t tell them, assuming that they’d figure it out eventually being Batman trained detectives, after all.

Well. 

Oops.

Clearly that is not the case. Duke hurries to finish his pasta before Tim and Dick finish their joint freak out and get their senses back together enough to interrogate him. He can’t escape it, but he refuses to have this discussion with an empty stomach. 

He just barely manages to scrape the last mouthful off the plate when his fork is being yanked out of his hands. Tim and Dick close in on him, standing to either side of him, trapping him in place, and look at him with knife-sharp smiles.

Here we go, Duke thinks tiredly, and resigns himself to clearing up this misunderstanding.

Somehow, he manages to explain the situation (I got cursed, he saved my life, we ended up married because magic is bullshit, he treats me so well) and Tim and Dick both agree to not hunt down Danny to show him the wrath of older brothers on one condition: Danny has to join them for a family dinner.

“Don’t worry, we’ll catch everyone up on your… situation,” Dick says, pulling on his jacket to head out. Tim is already on his phone, no doubt telling someone already. 

“Great,” Duke says, unenthused. “You’ll also be answering all the questions because I’m not in the mood. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to figure out a day that works for all of us, and then I’m going to kick my husband’s ass in Mario Cart.”

He walks out the door, grinning as he hears them scramble after him, then twists the ring on his finger (not a wedding ring, but a magic portal making gift) and steps into the portal. It closes quietly behind him, leaving him in Danny’s lair, a comfortable, spacious house with high ceilings and little bits of his personality scattered about. There are soft rugs with geometric patterns on them, star maps on the wall, stained glass windows that throw colors across the floor, and a giant couch and pillow pit in the living room.

Danny’s asleep in it, curled up and looking completely at peace. Duke toes off his shoes and carefully makes his way over, footsteps silent so he doesn’t wake him up, all plans of Mario Cart fading away instantly.

Danny doesn’t get much sleep, with the stress of school and an internship and ghost fights to worry about. It’s why his lair is so quiet and comfortable; it’s what he needs, and he doesn’t let anyone else in without invitation, rare as it is.

Duke is allowed to waltz right in thanks to the ring Danny gave him. It never stops making him feel overwhelmed by how much trust Danny puts in him to allow him unlimited access to what is his only true sanctuary, letting his lair be a place of safety and respite for Duke as well. 

He crawls into the pillow pit, There’s no way to do this without waking Danny up since he can’t fly, so he isn’t surprised to see Danny blink his eyes open, still looking soft and content. He smiles when he sees Duke, reaching a hand out to him that Duke gladly takes, bringing it up to his mouth to kiss his palm.

Sitting up, Danny tilts his head up in a silent request. Duke happily obliges, still reeling over the fact that he’s allowed to do this! He can kiss his husband whenever he wants! 

Yeah, he’s going to be riding that high for a while.

“Hey,” Danny murmurs, sleepy and quietly pleased to see him.

“Hi honey,” Duke returns fondly, “Have a nice nap?”

Danny nods, leaning into Duke and closing his eyes again. “Mhm. How long are you staying? I wanna cuddle.”

“I got nothing going on today. I’m all yours, baby.”

“C’mon,” Danny tries to tug him down. Duke goes slowly, covering Danny’s body with his own, but holds himself with one hand before he blankets his husband completely.

“Wait. There’s something we need to talk about.”

Immediately, the sleepy haze is fading from Danny’s eyes, leaving him alert. “What’s up? Is something wrong?”

“Not really? You know how we agreed to keep our marriage a secret until we weren’t in danger anymore and all those cultists and sorcerers were taken care of?”

“...Yes?”

“Well.” Duke sucks in a breath and offers a bashful smile. “Guess who forgot to tell people we were married after that whole mess was dealt with?”

The nervousness clears from Danny’s gaze as he stares up at Duke with incredulous amusement. “No. No way.”

“Yeah. Kinda dropped a bomb on them and they started freaking out over me being married. Anyways, they want you to come to dinner?”

“When?”

Duke leans back, sitting on his heels. “Let me check.” He pulls out his phone and sends a quick text to the group chat asking for a day they could have a family meal to meet his husband.

His phone is bombarded with texts and calls immediately until Barbara, bless her entire soul, forcibly mutes all of them and puts in a poll with a few dates, setting the poll to close in 24 hours.

“Okay, well, they’re deciding now, but probably soon.”

Danny nods. “Alright. I know these aren’t normal circumstances at all, but I’m so excited to meet the Bats.”

“You do not mean that after hearing all my stories about them.”

“No, I do!” Danny laughs, surging up to wrap his arms around Duke and pull him back down to lay among the giant pillows with him. “They sound nice!”

“The Bats sound nice?!” Duke repeats in horror. “Did you hit your head?”

“They do sound nice! You talk about them so fondly, and yeah they have problems and are dysfunctional, but they’re heroes. Of course they have problems. Even with all their baggage, they’re kind. And you clearly love them, so I do too.”

It’s hard to resist the urge to hug Danny tight enough to make him squeak while peppering his face with kisses, so Duke doesn’t. He just goes and does it, because he’s allowed to shower his husband (!) with affection (!!!) as much as he pleases.

“How are you real?” he says against the corner of Danny’s lips. “How are you so perfect! To me specifically! Honey, if we weren’t already married, I’d be going down on one knee right now.”

“I mean, you still can. We never got a proper wedding either. Think if we offer them a chance to help plan our wedding, they’ll forgive us for secretly being married for so long?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Duke says. He’s already giddy, just imagining what their wedding will look like, what song they’ll play for their first dance, where they’ll have the ceremony… He should create a Pinterest account to start putting ideas together. 

Later, though. He wants to woo Danny properly and take him on so many dates.

Dates which include dinner with the Waynes and Wayne-adjacents, apparently.

“You sure you’re okay with meeting them over dinner?” he asks, just to be sure. He knows how intense they can be, even when pretending to be normal civilians. It took him years to get used to them, himself, and he doesn’t want to push Danny into doing something he’s not ready to do.

Danny cups Duke’s face in his hands and gives him a quick, reassuring kiss. “I’m sure. If nothing else, it’ll be fun to see how long it takes for them to realize I’m not fully human.”

“I really am glad it’s you.”

“Yeah, me too. I’d choose you all over again if given the choice.”

“Took the words right out of my mouth,” Duke laughs, wrapping an arm around Danny’s waist.

“Can we nap now? Now that you’re here and holding me, it’s taking everything I’ve got to stay awake.”

“Yeah, we can nap now.” Duke settles into the pillows, Danny cradled in his arms and closes his eyes to bask in the quiet easiness of it all. 

He really couldn’t ask for a better husband, unexpected as he was. The others will see that too, once they meet him. It’s impossible to not love Danny once you meet him; Duke knows this all too well.

He loves his husband.

And his husband loves him back.

Duke is fully prepared to keep making that choice for the rest of his life.

[drawnfamiliarfaces]

INTERRUPTED (Parts I & II)

A short two-part comic (total of 20 pages + 8 extras) by me! (for me lol)

Fandoms: Ninja Showdown (Randy Cunningham 9th Grade Ninja x Xiaolin Showdown)

Ship: My Immortal Soul (First Ninja x Chase Young)

A comic where nothing really happens! But it contains a lot of half-naked men. So like, kids avert your eyes and adults don’t open it at work or whatever. ¯\_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)_/¯

thanks for checking it out <3

[t3chborb]

It be Ramattra's birthday today (the first one since the cast's bdays were revealed), so obviously I had to make something special for such a monumental occasion~

The art may appear a little strange, given the pic's purpose. Shouldn't it be a bit more obvious that it's a birthday celebration? What's going on here?

Well...

Let's just say this art is indeed special. If you want the context, you'll have to read @korpuskat's "Date of Manufacture" (Tumblr / AO3) ;)

[nightmare-foundation]

Yknow, I feel like Dick not fighting back against the mistreatment of him during the Spyral arc (perpetrated by the batfamily) isn't super surprising from a trauma lens, at least not to me.

I've seen people tend to argue that Dick should've and would've fought back, and I'm definitely not arguing otherwise- but why DIDN'T he fight back??

Personally, to me, his behavior strikes me as fawning. He's not arguing against the shitty things the batfamily does to him or say about him, if anything he's agreeing with them. I could probably really look back over how he acts in B&R: Eternal, but from what I remember, he feels very people pleasing.

And imo this isn't super surprising? Especially if what happened in Nightwing #30 is still fresh in his mind, not to mention Spyral breaking him down and the others lashing out at him, physically and verbally. These things are very traumatizing, and would've changed him most likely. His trauma response being to fawn here makes sense; he Needs the others to work with him, and fighting them on something they won't budge on will only get him hurt. Not only that, but physical punishment seems to be a very real consequence at this time, and Dick is likely in survival mode.

If fawning means he can get his job done and not be physically punished, then it makes the most sense for him to go that route, as sad as it is. His trauma response moving from fight(?) to fawn would be a really interesting thing to explore. After all, Dick said things wouldn't be the same, but we don't know WHAT would change, or if it would even be for the better (since people seem to interpret that to mean 'I'm leaving after this' or similar, which is fair tbh but that statement can mean a multitude of things).

Overall, regardless of how in character it is, I think Dick turning to fawning makes sense in this situation. Being beaten by your father and then repeatedly physically and verbally assaulted by the rest of your family is deeply traumatizing, not to mention everything that is Spyral. If Dick can minimize the damage to himself as much as possible and finish the mission, then it makes sense for him to fawn.

[strwbrryfire]

dog at door, tail in between my legs. endlessly anticipating.

i. you cooked for me by caitlin conlon / ii. chesapeake by better oblivion community center / iii. moon song by phoebe bridgers / iv. la vie pensive by louise breslau / v. the old shepherd's chief mourner by edwin landseer / vi. same as ii

[sideblogdotjpeg]

also also also. i dont know if this is ever gonna get really explicitly explored in the show. but.

like. theyve talked pretty minimally i think? about jovyres motivations as an antagonist. and while the main explanation they have gg on right now is the general "power corrupts universally" i also think. with how prominent this theme of sibling conflict has been ....

jovyre is cirillas younger sister. because of this, while cirilla gets to be the queen of the summer court, jovyre is relegated to being the princess of the "lesser" autumn court. an arbitrarily lower status. she had to use magic & trickery in lieu of cirillas' power and armies. her sister got to be a fairytale princess while she was the pragmatic ruler, with a chip on her shoulder. she has to get her hands dirty, "not all of us can be perfect can we". in spite of this, she was the one who stayed in command while her sister had fallen into her own despair. she negotiated her way into the unseelie crown. why should she have to be the one bending the knee to her sister. "i dont believe any of us should be limited by how we were born.... i only want to be her equal".

so its like. even though we havent met her yet. jovyres rise to power was explicitly via the death of the previous unseelie queen. of course she would be paranoid and defensive of her title. and while jovyre is plotting and planning and carefully amassing the army that she had to build herself to defend the crown she had to earn herself. her sister is in the columns of milfred murmurs and partying, all with the crown that she would have lost if not for her. "well some of us value beauty more than others". jovyres second offer to the band of boobs, "the more pragmatic approach", was to kill queen cirilla and bind her followers to someone else (someone more worthy, someone more fit to rule). at the time, jovyre admits that she would rather not take that option, "i dont wish for any harm to come to her". in the intervening 200 years. how many times did she wonder if she had made the right decision then. shes certainly changed her mind now

(and a minor thing ... because i admittedly might have misremembered. while talking to the band of boobs, she tells them that she wants to unite the seelie & unseelie courts. wouldnt it be nice for unseelie to get to experience spring and summer too? if im not wrong ...... the unseelie courts still only experience dusk and night? i might have totally misremembred this BUT if its true . then queen cirilla was also not as easy to negotiate with as jovyre expected)

anyway! all that to say is. given how this campaign has explored sibling relationships that are based around feelings of inadequacy & insecurity against a perfect older sibling. the way that leads to competition and jealousy, the desperate urge to prove that actually i AM better than my sister and im soo going to rub this into her face! well! maybe the story of jovyre and cirilla is not just entirely "power corrupts" and more also about the. "200 years of growing resentment and jealousy that has clouded all my love and protectiveness towards you into hatred, and envy, and havoc". on parallel planes, callie and cyra forgive each other, while jovyre plots her own sisters assassination.

[champ--bear]

luckybeartoys has now shown The Boy in his box, and he looks so fucking fluffyyyyy

the back of the box reads:

Oopsy Bear is clumsy which continually affects himself and others. But Oopsy, using all the caring in his heart of gold, gets in touch with his inner oops!! And stumbles to the rescue of his friends.

While at first, it may seem like poor Oopsy is doomed to spend his life in second place, his true potential begins to shine through as he overcomes his own disabilities, often putting forth more effort and dedication to solving problems as they arise.

honestly i'm beyond thrilled that they truly acknowledge oopsy as a disabled bear. now if we could get them to also actually use the word autistic, i'd be ecstatic. but as it stands, seriously them saying that oopsy is disabled is a big thing (they did not use to put it that way, he was only clumsy and had struggles)

[sunnysidemage]

I finished season 1 of Drawtectives

[meownotgood]

I'm going back to bed the moment I post this but I've been having a super rough and stressful night... so for whatever reason I went back to read some of the kind asks I've received since I saved a lot... some since the first time I started writing... and I got so emotional and just began sobbing haha.... I can't believe how lucky I am...... I love writing so much.........

[koszmarnybudyn]

Ok this is intended with me as its target audience (as all my aus are to be honest). But I just finished tma and this has been stuck in my head for days so i gotta share it. I will elaborate extensivily if asked.

So DADDIES is basiclly the magnus istitute, and these guys are its employees (all intended as like easrly-mid 20s) tho its less archiving/researching and more stopping the monsters, after the mysterious dissapearences of the previous ceos (kiddads and previously the og dads) Willy takes over and hires Scary as the archivist (well not archivist more like investigator or something, but anyway hes trying to groom her to start the apocalypse). This institude is more web/hunt and less eye adjecent. The doodler is still a thing (tho its diffrent cause its the entities). And these guys are trying to survive, earn a living and maybe actually investigate a mystery, as shenanigans and terrors ensue.

[toxintouch]

Hyperspecific modern era Ais Headcanon:

He still collects physical newspapers. He likes to do the crosswords.

He knows he could do them online or buy a book of crosswords, but something about the smell and the feel of the paper and the morning routine...

Edit: Danger-Bird made art inspired by this! Check it out!