#i have to go to the next town over to go to the hospital <3< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[jackredfieldwasmyjacob]

the way my stomach turns just seeing this map (it shows the public vs private hospitals in madrid; red is public, blue is private)

[luvvixu]

mind over matter pt. 4

synopsis: witness how your marriage was bound to fall apart with you on the front seat and your husband gojo had missed the show—now, he gotta figure out the story on his own.

content: arrange marriage au, angst, husband!gojo, mean!gojo, mention of blood, strong languages, some unsettling scenarios, emotional trauma, read at your own risk

a/n: ok, im such a bad author now huhu, i always broke my promises about updating the new chapter :((( should've just wrote in advance but i'm afraid i don't have that enough free time oqsjjanswjaj anyways, here's the anticipated chapter!! THANK YOU FOR Y'ALL PATIENCE <3 MWUHEHEHHEEHHE

previous / masterlist / next

the next day comes and you've got yourself some visitors. megumi, yuuji, nobara, maki, and inumaki was in your room and they were all seated around you as you talk.

panda and your two third years were not around at the moment because this is a non-sorcerer hospital and people would freak out to see a big ‘talking’ panda. during your two third years, they were out of town and were on a mission but they still text you to get well and even send you some fresh flowers.

“wait, i still can't believe that he's your husband.” nobara couldn't explain his shock at the revelation. out of all, she didn't think that her goofy teacher was someone's husband.

you chuckled at her reactions as you turned your gaze on megumi, who's still his mouth hanging. “megumi, i thought you're getting a hint?” you tease the boy. although it was true, you actually thought he already had an idea because you've known him for almost his entire life and even once lived with you as a kid.

“no…” was only his answer.

“so, gojo-sensei was the one you're talking about when you said that he was a busy man. most of his job requires being out of town. but he never fails to shower you with love and he is making sure that you two would still communicate despite his busy schedule?” your eyes widened when yuuji literally just said what you had said from before, word-by-word!

“i—i supposed he is.” everyone in the room sweat dropped at your answer.

what do you mean you supposed?!

“y/n-sensei, is it okay if we ask your baby?” maki chooses the gentlest approach because she heard that post-pregnancy can make the mother quite crikey, sensitive, and is prone to depression. but to her relief, you respond to her warmly.

“oh, the baby is being treated since they're premature. i really can't wait to meet them once i get better. but right now, shoko was the only one who had seen my baby.” you smiled softly at the thought of your baby.

“gojo-sensei still hadn't seen the baby?” maki’s eyes went wide.

you nodded. “yeah, he said we should go together so i must heal quickly for that to happen.”

the door suddenly opened and it revealed your husband with food in his hand. you smiled at the packages not because you're hungry, but because you had finally persuaded satoru to go out and leave you even for just a few minutes.

how did you do it? well, you just give him an earful after what he did yesterday night and he's like;

“i don't know how you did it but you should've just gone to the convenience store or the hospital canteen just for an oatmeal and eggs. and look, i'm not upset over the fact that you just had the ‘very easy to get’ food delivered on this doorstep. what concerns me is you seem not to trust me very well to handle myself— well in fact i've been doing it since i was a kid and blah, blah, blah, blah…” it was your turn to yap but a little longer than he did. you even probably bought up some of his minor mistakes like not taking out the trash on random sunday night.

and he was like, “i'm sorry. i won’t do it again ( •̯́ ^ •̯̀)”

“y'all done backstabbing me?” satoru teasingly smiled at you all.

“oh, we're just getting started. so why don't you take a seat and hear us out?” you patted the empty space of your bed beside you.

satoru playfully huffed and gave the foods to his students and let them distribute it themselves. sitting beside you, he gave you the separate plastic with food and helped you feed yourself. the two of you had your moment with you telling satoru to just let you be and stop feeding you like a kid, but satoru was like nuh uh—and it goes on and on.

meanwhile, the students watch you two with surprise in their eyes. they still couldn't digest the fact that you two had managed to hide your marriage for like five years or so. and out of all spouses out there, they couldn't believe their eyes that you married a guy that is a total opposite of you.

“i still cannot really believe that you're married and have a baddie wife.” nobara almost never tears her gaze towards you two.

“yeah, much more is that they look so in love!” yuuji agrees to what nobara said as his words made you two stop bickering instantly.

like a cold water being poured, you two were suddenly experiencing a reality check that this so-called in love was very far from the two of you actually is. coughing slightly to hide his awkwardness and nervousness, he just let himself chuckle. while you? you're an expert at this, you maintain a smiley expression and wordlessly (and also forcefully) agrees to what the boy said.

“oh my, do we?” putting a hand on your cheek, you smiled with your eyes closed. your act looks so legit but satoru has seen this multiple side—he knew this facade was all fake.

maki suddenly puts herself into attention by calling your name. “anyway y/n-sensei, i've noticed you two don't have a ring—” before she could even finish her sentence, you already beat her to it.

“that's because the two of us, mostly him, are constantly fighting curses and both involve using our hands when we use our techniques. it would be risky to wear it and we're scared that we might get it lost or damaged.” you explain meticulously.

you watch the students agree to your explanation, while satoru is looking at you with meaning. you stared back at him too, hoping that he would get your telepathic message.

“alright guys, your y/n-sensei needs to rest now. we'll just see you guys soon or you can all just drop by tomorrow after your training.” satoru called everyone's attention by clapping his hands then started to playfully shoo the students.

you watch them pack their things and wave you a happy goodbye, in which you return their enthusiasm as well. when they all left, you let out a sigh and started to gently lie your body on the bed. satoru, who was done cleaning just now, sit at the end of your bed and carefully massage your legs.

“did you have fun with them?” you just lazily hum at his question and proceed to rest your eyes.

“i…i'm surprised you managed to convince them about our marriage.” satoru continued quietly.

opening one of your eyes and looking at him, you said, “of course, i've been doing it to a lot of people for the past five years.”

that alone made him shut up.

satoru looked down to his hands, which were still busy massaging your legs. you've noticed that his eyes were casted down and his behavior was somewhat familiar to you, he's feeling something that is related to guilt and regret.

clicking your tongue, you're in no mood to deal with his behavior today. so to find a solution to this problem, you just put yourself to sleep and let all of this just go on without a single care.

it has been two days and you're getting better day by day. today was probably the bestest day so far because you're about to finally see your own baby!

“calm down, mama. do you want your stitches to open again?” shoko holds your knees to stop it from shaking anxiously as you were currently sitting just right outside the neonatal intensive care unit (nicu) where your baby was.

you understand that the doctors need to prepare the room first before you all come in, but you wished that they speed it up.

“but sho, i'm finally seeing my baby!” you squeal at your friend who just ruffles your hair and tells you to be patient—in which you definitely can't.

meanwhile, satoru, who was standing beside you while you and shoko were sitting together, has been eyeing you since this whole waiting. he understands that you're excited about seeing the baby because he is too, he is excited. but he couldn't help but to feel a sensation that you would rather share your excitement with others than him.

he knows that he sounds ridiculous and undeserving to say that in the first place after what he did to put you through, but he still couldn't help it and he wouldn't even dare to say it to you.

the door of the nicu just opened and it revealed the doctor who was wearing protective gear to keep bacterias and viruses from entering the room and harm the baby. before he lets you all in, he first instructs you all to change the same gear as him and then proceeds to give you all some explanation in which you actively listen and take notes.

and after that, he finally lets you go inside.

the moment your eyes traveled on a crib, you saw your child laying down there with some breathing apparatus that is connected to their little body. you could feel your eyes swell with hot tears as you inch yourself towards the bundle of joy who's their crib was also protected with glass and only small holes on both sides were there.

satoru and shoko watched you with pure warmth at your sight—it was a nice scene of mother's love. finally, a tear escapes your eyes the moment you get a whole view of your child.

“isn't he pretty?” shoko said beside you, someone who you didn't notice had come near you.

you gasp, “he? m-my baby is a boy?” your cries go even harder, but it was just pure happiness. you couldn't bring yourself to tear your gaze away from your child even though he looks fragile for being premature but you love him dearly.

“can i touch him?” you look at the doctor who assisted you earlier without caring that you might look like a crying mess. you're far more thrilled to be with your child than to be pretty at this moment.

the doctor smiled at you and he agreed. he pointed out the small hole on the side, telling you to stick your hands out to feel your baby. you do what he said with your shaky hands, and when your fingertips touch his warm skin—you feel like you could die from the burst of euphoria.

“my b-baby, my baby is n-now here!” you really can't hold your emotions back as you keep on passing your fingers through your baby's arm until it reaches his closed hands where you slightly and gently open it for him to grab index finger. and when he does, your smile becomes even wider.

“hi baby~ this is me, your mommy. it's so nice to finally see you.” you whispered softly, hoping that despite the glass, he could hear your words.

this is the bestest day of your life. your baby was here and that's all you need.

the scene continues to unfold with you still getting emotional and shoko was just watching you with a smile on her face. while satoru, the father of the child, the husband of the mother, was a little distant but he could still see the baby. he was all quiet and couldn't bring himself to utter a word but he's not speechless.

his eyes behind those glasses were trailed on the child, but most of his gazes were on you. satoru watches you become all smiley—this is probably the happiest smile he had seen on your lips for the past years of your marriage.

and he would absolutely never forgive himself if he breaks it—but he already did.

shoko notices his odd behavior and promptly leaves your side for a while (but you're busy having a baby talk with your baby to notice her leaving) to go talk to him.

“what? you're just gonna stand there and watch y/n?” yup. still the same as before, hostile towards the man. satoru let out a sigh and didn't give her attention. instead, he walked towards y/n and just focused on his family.

“you’re so tiny!” you continue to cooed at your son who keeps on moving slightly which is a good sign that your son is responsive and fighting. you also noticed that satoru was now right beside you and is looking at your son too with adoration tinted in his eyes.

“i don't think i could let myself be away from him anymore.” you said. your cheeks were now hurting from constant smiling but you don't mind.

satoru only looks at you briefly because his attention was now on his son, fully. “hello, it was nice finally meeting you.” his eyes trailed on his own flesh and blood with the most care of all.

on the other hand, you're not dumb to not notice that satoru was acting hesitant towards this scene and you knew what his reason was. you think that satoru thinks that he was undeserving to be here, and you're correct about his assumption.

but as a woman who grew up with an experience of being inside a shattered family, you absolutely would not want that to happen to your own child. and as much as you would also like to satoru be away at least for now because you're still that sensitive about what he had said during those conversations in the clinic and hallway, you respect his role as a father.

you'd give him a chance to prove his worth as a father to your child, but he's far worse to have a chance to prove his worth as a husband to you. if he messes this up real bad and without any proper explanation, this will be all over—satoru would no longer have you and your child as his own family.

“stick your hand on his hole, that way you could feel him.” you guided his hand towards the hole that you had said before and watched his hands turn shakey as he reached for the baby.

once satoru had finally experienced a skin-to-skin touch with his baby, he wanted to cry so badly but he didn't allow himself to, at least not yet. he felt like this was one of the best moments in his existence.

satoru would like to punch himself for questioning the baby for his plans as he seemingly thinks it would affect him. but just when he look and touch his baby, all of his recollection about the mixed emotions he felt when the baby is on the board has suddenly vanished and it was replaced with gratefulness and adoration for both of you.

it was like a full 360 degrees turn was done after the early birth of his first born. plus, he had seen you be ever so happy that you are with him. and deep inside him, satoru deniably hopes that this kid, this child, can at least help him save this marriage that was destined to fail and doomed.

because he now finally realizes that you're slowly wrapping him around your tiny fingers.

your tears had made him be a better person, your recent experience had made him behave. it almost cost you and your baby's wife just for him to realize the importance of your five years of marriage, and he's planning to tell you that soon.

“have you finally decided what name we should give him?” shoko asked you and she didn't fail to see your eyes sparkle at the mention of name.

ah yes, baby names.

that was something that a mother and father should decide together because it comes very crucial because the name that your baby will get is a symbol of you two's relationship. but the thing is, you and your husband hadn't talked about a single thing or just anything related to this matter.

that's probably why you're still embarrassed whenever you think about nanami accidentally seeing you open a website into one of the school's computers about unique baby names with its meaning.

you're four months pregnant at that time and you're spending your free time in a teacher's lounge. you're very invested in your mini research to the point that you didn't notice an old friend peeking at your screen. you actually only notice his presence when you're about to stretch but accidentally bump his torso, and to your surprise, he was there.

and then the rest becomes a story and history. nanami helped you pick baby names for both genders or even unisex until you came out with…

“kazuki. let's name him that.” a soft smile was decorated on your lips as you watched satoru, who's looking at you, plays with the hands of your son.

“kazuki…that's a nice name, y/n.” satoru said happily. however, you can see his disappointment behind those words and you know why. you didn't even invite him to search for your baby's name because why would you?

“does it have any special meaning?” shoko asked you.

you nodded and said, “of course, kazuki means hope of peace—and i really need that.”

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[part 5 will be just there right around the corner — ©luvvixu2024]

[persevereforahappyending]

A Legacies Secret |5|

Pairing: Tara Carpenter x Reader

Summary: You just wanted a happy life with your girlfriend but then Ghostface attacks, revealing long thought to be buried family secrets.

Warnings: None

Word Count: 2.9k+

Main Masterlist | Series Masterlist

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15

Sam had held Tara as she cried, it had been a long time since she got a hug from a member of her own family. Tara almost forgot how nice her big sisters’ hugs were. She had missed Sam like crazy, she still didn’t understand why she left. Tara thought Sam loved her, even when she was struggling, she always treated Tara well, but if she actually cared she wouldn’t have left. It seemed like Tara’s entire family left her at some point, her only constant was you.

Sam was pacing back and forth in front of her hospital bed. It seemed after their emotional reunion; Sam didn’t know how to act now. Tara wasn’t sure how to act either, she was curious where Sam had been, what she had been doing, why she left, it didn’t feel like the right time to bring any of that up though. She was also curious as to why Sam came back, Wes had called her and she came as soon as she learned Tara was hurt, that had to mean Sam cared about her, but if Sam only came back because she was hurt then that meant Sam didn’t actually want to come back.

“So,” Sam said, crossing her arms over her chest. “You and Y/N,” she nodded.

That quickly snapped Tara out of her thoughts. “Yeah, we’re together,” she said, taking on an edge in her voice. “What about it?”

“I just didn’t realize you two knew each other.” Sam’s eyes darted around the room, but Tara could tell Sam wasn’t thrilled about the idea of her relationship with you. “How’d you meet?”

“School,” Tara glared at her sister. She really didn’t appreciate the fact that Sam was gone for five years, left without notice, and was coming back trying to comment on her romantic relationship.

Sam’s eyes snapped to Tara. “She would have been a senior when you were a freshman.”

“Yeah,” Tara rolled her eyes. “We shared a class, we sat next to each other, had to do projects together.” Sam let out a little scoff, clearly not liking the sound of that. “It’s not like we started dating then,” Tara snapped. “We were school friends and then became actual friends the summer after sophomore year when we ended up working together.”

“Oh, you also worked together?” Sam couldn’t hold back her humorless chuckle, the judgement dripping from her voice.

“Yes,” Tara groaned. “Liv and I got summer jobs at the video store. Y/N already worked there and before you ask, they weren’t like my manager or anything.”

Sam closed her eyes, tilting her head to the ceiling. Tara glared at her sister, she hadn’t even been back five minutes and she was already judging her relationship with you. Tara really didn’t understand what the big deal was, you were amazing. The judgement from her friends, from her mom, from Judy, and now from Sam was so unnecessary. All those people claimed to care about Tara, so they should just be happy that you were so good to her, that you loved her and expected nothing from her.

“Don’t you think they’re a little old for you?” Sam sighed. She put a hand to her head as if she was trying to stop an oncoming headache. Tara wasn’t going to back down; Sam was the one who wanted the argument after all.

“Two years!” Tara scoffed, rolling her eyes. Sam opened her eyes, raising an eyebrow at Tara. “Practically three, whatever,” Tara rolled her eyes. Three years was hardly a big age difference.

“I know,” Sam let out a tired sigh. “You’re so young and they’re-where do they even work?”

Tara opened her mouth, the fire in her eyes was fueled solely by defending you. “The bar in town,” she mumbled.

“That’s just great!” Sam threw her hands in the air.

“It’s good money and they need to pay rent!”

“Oh, they have their own place as well, that’s great!” Sam clapped her hands together.

“They’re literally the only person who’s always there for me!” Tara snapped, glaring up at her sister. She didn’t care how much she missed Sam, she would not let Sam say anything bad about you or talk down about her relationship with you. “Even before we started dating, they were there for me, every time mom…” Tara aggressively wiped the tears that had started to fall.

Sam uncrossed her arms, shoving her hands into her pockets. “Tara I-”

“The only reason they’re staying at that that shitty job,” Tara didn’t allow her sister to speak. “Is to help save money, so when I graduate, we can get the hell out of this town.”

Sam’s head snapped up, looking at Tara with wide eyes. “You haven’t graduated yet?” Tara’s eyes fell to where her good hand was picking at the fabric of the hospital blanket.

“Why do you think I’m still here?” Tara asked quietly.

Sam blinked rapidly, shaking her head and gave a little shrug. “I don’t-I thought maybe you were pushing college a year, maybe putting it off because of mom, or Y/N-”

“I got held back,” Tara snapped. “I had to repeat junior year.”

“What?” Sam breathed out. Tara was sure she would have missed it if they weren’t the only two in the room.

“Mom wasn’t doing great,” Tara’s voice got smaller.  “I missed too many classes.” Tara watched as Sam closed her eyes and slumped back against the wall across from the hospital bed. “My relationship with Y/N was literally the only good thing to come out of that shitty year. When they saw me struggling, they helped as much as they could, whether it was making sure I had a ride to school or helping me deal with mom, if I needed something, no matter what it was, they were right there.”

Sam nodded; she kept her head pointed towards the floor. “That’s very nice of them.”

“I don’t know what version of them you knew.”  Sam finally looked up, meeting Tara’s eyes. “But, the one I know, is someone who would take time out of their day to bring me food, just to make sure I ate, they would stay up after working all day just to help me get all my homework done because they knew I couldn’t have any more missing assignments.”

Tara ignored the way her vision began to blur again as tears filled her eyes. “So, if you’re going to just judge my relationship with her,” Tara said, her voice stronger than she ever imagined it would be with what she was about to say. “Then you can just go back to wherever the hell it is you’ve been hiding.”

Sam’s eyes were once again glued to the floor. “You really trust them,” Sam said, though it didn’t come out as a question.

“With my life,” Tara said without hesitation.

Sam nodded to herself before pushing off the wall. Tara’s eyes tracked her movements as she crossed the room and took the seat you had previously occupied at her bedside. “So, how did you two get together?”

Tara gave her a soft smile. Maybe Sam did miss her after all, maybe coming back wasn’t just because she got attacked, Sam didn’t approve of Tara’s relationship with you, but she was willing to accept it, she was actually asking about you. No one had ever actually asked Tara about how the two of you got together, not without a snide comment following the question at least, or there was always an eyeroll of some sort.

“I had a crush on them for forever,” Tara said, giving a small eyeroll. She thought you were cute from the second she saw you. “We were in photography together.” The class was usually filled with seniors because the teacher was fun, and most students didn’t have the previously needed classes before then, but Tara took nothing but art electives in middle school, so she was able to take it as a freshman.

“They didn’t complain when I sat next to them and they got stuck doing partner projects with me,” she continued. Most seniors would complain about being stuck partnered with a little fourteen-year-old freshman, but you didn’t complain one bit, you even listened to Tara’s ideas of what to photograph, you treated her just like any other peer.

“It was a yearlong class, we became friends,” Tara looked down at her fingers continuing to pick at the blanket. “That December, I turned fifteen, mom went out of town. I’m pretty sure she forgot what day it was, but she was very busy.” Tara shook her head, even after all the years of consistent disappointment she was still making excuses for her mother. “But Y/N learned it was my birthday after I was grumpy all of class, or at least that’s what they said.” Tara pouted; she still didn’t think she had been grumpy.

“That night she knocked on my door, it was the first time we saw each other outside of class.” Tara shook her head at the memory of her opening the front door to see you standing there, an awkward smile on your face as you shifted from foot to foot. “She brought me a cupcake.”

“What are you doing here?” Tara asked, her mouth hanging open as she stared at you. Out of all the people to be knocking on her door she never expected it to be you.

“Oh, I,” you said, chuckling awkwardly as you rubbed a hand on the back of your neck. “I know it’s your birthday and I-” you held out a little plastic container.

Tara furrowed her brow but took the little container from you. She opened the lid, revealing a singular chocolate cupcake with chocolate icing. She looked back up at you, her wide eyes beginning to fill with tears. No one had done anything like that for her before. Her mother forgot her birthday and the last true celebration she ever had was before her father left, before Sam left. Her friends offered to do things with her, Judy would offer to bake for her, and Chad and Mindy’s mom would invite her over for dinner, but it always felt like they pitied her, like they felt bad that none of her family loved her enough to stick around or remember her birthday.

“I-I know it’s not much,” you said, breaking Tara out of her thoughts. “Maybe it’s weird-it’s weird I did this,” you gestured to the cupcake, though your eyes were glued to your shoes, refusing to meet Tara’s gaze. “I just think everyone deserves a little something on their birthday.”

Making sure to be careful of the cupcake in her hands, Tara stepped forward, closing the distance between the two of you and flinging an arm around the back of your neck. You froze as soon as her arm went around you but after a second, she felt you slowly relax. You knew what it was like to be alone, your parents gave you up when you were a baby, you never even knew what it was like to have a family. Even though Tara didn’t know what it was like to be an orphan, she knew what it was like to be abandoned by her entire family.

“Thank you,” Tara mumbled before pulling away.

You gave her a soft smile, your eyes flicking down to the floor for a second before meeting her gaze again. “Happy birthday Tara,” you said.

Tara gave you a wave as you made your way back to your car, quietly closing the door once she saw you driving off. A part of her wished you had stayed but just the idea that you had gone out of your way to bring her a cupcake was enough. She took her cupcake to the kitchen, sitting it on the island before picking it up and taking a huge bite. It was perfect and delicious; Tara was going to make sure to do something nice for your birthday as well.

Tara smiled at the memory. You and Tara never talked about that day, the next day at school Tara went to class, she sat next to you, and it was never brought up. You didn’t make a big deal out of what you did for her, she knew it didn’t change anything, but it definitely didn’t help her crush on you. You were nice but she couldn’t even bring herself to classify the two of you as friends, you were just someone who talked to her in class, and yet you were kind enough to go out of your way and get her a cupcake when you realized she didn’t have anyone there on her birthday. Tara never forgot that day though, she knew you didn’t forget about it either because when the two of you became true friends you always managed to get her a chocolate cupcake and it tasted just as good as the first one.

“I didn’t see her after she graduated, not until the next summer,” Tara continued. “I was bored, mom was gone, so I got a summer job at the video store with Liv.”

“Where Y/N happened to work,” Sam said.

Tara nodded. “Ended up bonding over the fact that we were doing all the work while Liv would flirt with guys.” Tara chuckled to herself, she didn’t know how many times she and you were restocking movies and she’d look up to see Liv flirting with someone at the counter. “She would also give me a ride home when we got off at the same time.” Her car rides with you back to her house were her favorite moments of the day, she wasn’t stressed about work, or worried about her mom, she was just at peace with you talking about whatever new movie she had seen, you would listen as she rambled on and on.

“We became actual friends, and I still had my crush,” Tara said. “I would ramble to Amber for hours about her despite Ambers clear disdain for her.” Tara rolled her eyes, even before she got together with you Amber practically hated your guts.

“I wasn’t sure if she liked me back,” Tara admitted. “Not in that way but then on my seventeenth birthday I decided to take a chance.” Tara smiled; it was more like she was talking to herself than to Sam now. “We had a small party, she stuck around to help me clean up and I just kissed her.”

“You don’t have to clean up,” Tara said. “You are technically my guest.”

“And leave the birthday girl to do all the cleaning up?” you asked, spinning around as you continued to walk around filling a trash bag. “That’s just bad manners.”

“Thank you.” Tara grabbed a few more empty cups, bringing them over as you held the trash bag open for her.

“Anytime.” You looked at Tara with the same soft gaze you always did, wearing the same small smile you always seemed to have around her. “Oh!” you dropped the garbage bag and ran to the refrigerator. “Before I forget.” You rummaged around in the fridge before turning around, holding a little plastic container with a chocolate cupcake inside. A shy smile slowly took over Tara’s face as you made your way back towards her. “Happy birthday.”

“Thank you.”

You flipped open the lid, then pulled out a little box of candles from your pocket. Tara chuckled as you stuck one of the candles in the cupcake. You brought out a lighter next, lighting the candle and holding out the cupcake towards her. Tara shook her head, hoping her inevitable blush wasn’t noticeable. She closed her eyes before leaning forward and blowing out the candle.

“What did you wish for?” you asked, your voice barely above a whisper.

Tara gently took the cupcake out of your hands and sat it on the kitchen island. She looked up at you, letting out a shaky breath for what she was about to do. “For some courage and for you not to be mad at me.”

You furrowed your brow. “Why would I-”

Tara reached up, grabbed you by the back of your neck and pulled you into a kiss. She felt your entire body freeze and just as she was about to pull away you leaned forward, eagerly reciprocating the kiss. Your hands found her waist, instantly pulling her closer to you. Tara smiled into the kiss, feeling you do the same as it went on for a few more seconds.

“We’ve been together ever since,” Tara said, smiling the same way she had the first time she kissed you, the same way she always did when it came to you.

“I can’t say I’m thrilled about your relationship,” Sam said. Tara opened her mouth, ready to go on a tangent about you again but Sam continued before she could get a word out. “But I’ll try to learn to accept it.”

Tara looked up at Sam, giving her a soft smile. “Thank you.”

Sam got up, opening the door to allow you and her boyfriend to come back in. You instantly moved to Tara’s side, silently asking her if everything was okay, not taking a seat by her bedside again until she gave you a small smile. You glanced at Sam who spared you a side glance before going back to talking to her boyfriend. Tara sighed, she knew it would take time for Sam to get used to you being around, which she would have to do if she actually wanted to be a part of Tara’s life.

[cowgurrrl]

Roll The Bones

Pairing: Joel Miller x reader

Author’s note: I wrote this in the midst of a flare up so please enjoy and be gentle with your disabled friends <3

Summary: A bad pain day with Joel [1.5k]

Warnings: descriptions of injuries and subsequent chronic pain, medical settings and discussion, I think that’s it??

When Joel finds you, you're in a pitiful state. Your arm is folded over your face, covering your eyes even though the blinds are closed and the room is dark. Your right leg is peeking out from under the bundle of blankets and quilt, elevated with a lukewarm towel surrounding the swelling kneecap. The room smells like the salve someone in the town makes that's supposed to alleviate your pain. So far, it's just given you a headache. Your entire body throbs with pain and frustration. It shouldn't be like this, you think ruefully. I shouldn't feel like this. 

Joel lightly pads over to your bedside— his footsteps quiet now that he's discarded his boots by the front door— and perches next to you. His hand finds a home on your afflicted knee and carefully maneuvers his thumb over the tendons to help with the pain. You shift the arm covering your face to reach for him, and he smiles. 

"There she is," he murmurs as you take him in. His hair is long and a little unruly in the back, but you think it makes him look soft and domestic. He's shed his work jacket and heavier clothes downstairs and is clad in his soft, well-worn-in flannel. He smells like pine and leather. You want to wrap yourself in his warmth but settle for having him nearby. "Ellie told me you were havin' a rough day." He says. It doesn't surprise you that she did, even though you promised her you were fine and didn't need him. It's become rare that she doesn't update him daily on your health.

About a year ago, you were on patrol with Tommy when a Runner came out of nowhere and charged at your horse. She startled and bucked you off before you could regain control of the reins. The Runner was dead before you could hit the ground, and your horse would be recovered within the day, but the damage was done. You broke your leg in two places and dislocated your knee, in addition to a low-level concussion and cuts on your face and arms. When you came back into Jackson on Tommy's horse, half-conscious, bloody, and delirious with pain, Joel was horrified, Ellie even more so.

You were in the hospital for a month as they used what they could to put you in something akin to a cast and reset the bones. Joel and Ellie took turns being guards at your bed, monitoring what they gave you, when, and how much, and how your healing process was going. They were there with you every day, learning the tips and tricks to support you and keeping you sane as you stared at the white walls. 

Six months, the doctor said. Six months is all it would take to be back to normal as long as you did everything you were supposed to. Things have gotten better slower than you would like, but they have gotten better. You have really good days where you don't feel anything other than slight twinges when you move your leg in a weird way. Those days, it's hard to remember that you broke it in the first place. But other days, like today, you can feel every muscle in your leg tightening as stiff pain rockets up and down your body. You thought you could persevere enough to go to the store with Ellie, but your body obviously had other plans.

"My leg gave out on me when I was coming down the stairs. Pretty sure I made the whole house shake when I fell." You explain, and his eyebrows knit together in phantom pain as his thumb works your muscle. 

"You hurt anythin'?" He asks. "Other than your pride?" You blow air out of your nose in a half-laugh and shake your head. 

"Just some bruises," you say. He finds a tender spot in your knee that makes you hiss and ball up your fists, but he doesn't let up until the muscle releases. It's what he's supposed to do: break up the scar tissue, relax the muscles, and hope for the best. It still hurts like a bitch, and it'll hurt more in the morning. He mumbles apologies under his breath and kisses you to try and distract you, but your brain's been running wild for hours. "I went so long without any pain." You finally say, breaking the reverie and collapsing the unwanted space your pain often creates. 

"You've been takin' on a lot these past few weeks. It doesn't surprise me somethin' would flare up." It's an honest assessment. He warned you this would happen, but you ignored him. You thought you knew your body better. You wanted to know your body better. The returning thought and the gentle hand on your knee turn your tongue into sandpaper, and tears prick in the corners of your eyes. Despite the low light in the room, Joel catches it and makes a sympathetic noise. 

"Hey, talk to me." He says softly, shifting his hand from your knee to your face to catch a few stray tears. You shake your head and try and fail to form the words. Joel is patient. He always is, but he shouldn't have to be. 

"I'm so tired of being like this." You whisper, hating the feel of the words on your tongue and hating the sound of them even more. Joel gives you a confused look and pushes your hair out of your face. 

"Bein' like what?"

"Sick," you choke out. Now that the dam is broken, there's no stopping the bitter rush of words from leaving you. "We took her across the country and got rid of anyone who even looked at her wrong. Now, I can't even get on a horse without hurting. And I do all the stupid fucking things the doctor tells me to do. I do the exercises and take the medicine and everything, and nothing is making it better, and I'm so tired." 

"Why didn't you tell me that?" 

"Because I didn't want you to think I'm broken." It's a thought you've harbored since you were laid up in the hospital, unable to even walk to the bathroom without help, but this is the first time you've expressed it. You secretly hoped if you just didn't say anything about it, maybe Joel wouldn't notice. It's a stupid idea, given that your entire lives have changed since the accident. You just didn't want to get thrown away like all the other broken things in this world. Joel takes a deep breath and gazes at you. 

"Honey, you aren't broken. Not even close to it," he says. You want to counter him, but the weight of your emotion is too heavy on your chest. "I wanna know if somethin' is hurtin' you cause when you hurt, I hurt, okay? You're not a burden or somethin' to fix. You just… need a little extra care right now, and that's okay. I wanna take care of you."

"What if it's like this forever?" You ask, and he shakes his head. 

"It won't be."

"But, what if it is?" More tears fill your eyes as you await his answer. He didn't fall in love with this version of you. You don't know if you could blame him if he never does. But with enough ease and love to take your breath away, Joel kisses your forehead, right where your temple smacked against the cold ground. He kisses your forehead and the white scars littering your cheeks before finally shifting to kiss the knee propped up on pillows and hope. He doesn't flinch at the swelling or the angry spasms. He treats them with care and attention. He treats them as another part of you. 

"Takin' care of you has never and will never be on the list of worst things imaginable. Your health is not a sacrifice or a burden on me. If it's like this forever, we'll adapt, but I know you. I know how hard you're workin' to get better. I know we'll find a way to live with this," he says. "But I need you to talk to me when things aren't workin'. I can't help you if you don't tell me what's helpin' and what's not, okay?" You swallow around the lump in your throat and nod. 

"Okay." 

"Okay," he echoes. "I'm gonna get you an appointment with Dr. Lutton and see if we can't get you on a new treatment plan first thing tomorrow mornin'. Is there anythin' I can do for you until then?" He asks, fully prepared to go to the edge of the earth if you asked him to. 

"Can you lay with me?" You ask, and he smiles. 

"Of course, baby." He mumbles. He kisses your knee one more time before shuffling to wrap you in his arms. The warmth from his body helps relieve some of your tension and pain, and he kneads calming circles over your shoulders and back. Your focus shifts from the pain in your leg to the song he's humming, the vibrations in his chest a welcome distraction. The pain doesn't go away entirely— you doubt it ever will— but you rest your weary body against his and sleep, finding wholeness in his acceptance of your loss. 

TAGLIST: @abbyhaslongshorts @kiwiharrykiwi @sumsworldz @myloveistoolittle @anavatazes @marantha @cosmoscoffeee @shyminnie07 @beezusvreeland @eddiemunsonsbedroom @harriedandharassed @doodlebob-mp3 @ignorethisplz2004 @buckyispunk @d1lf-loverrr @vee-bees-blog @moel-jiller @anoverwhelmingdin @casssiopeia @maried01 @acupofhollie

[slayagami]

𐙚 synopsis: after losing consciousness in a villain attack, you wake up 2 and a half years later in the hospital. the time doesn't feel long to you, so adjusting to the new updates takes you by surprise. like your boyfriend of 2 years, izuku midoriya, apologizing that he found love elsewhere, in your best friend ochaco uraraka. you find refuge and comfort in your old friend todoroki, who visited you everyday you were out. does new love blossom or do you fight for midoriya back?

𐙚 pairing: midoriya x afab!reader x todoroki

𐙚 warnings:: mild violence, cursing, cheating?, love triangle-ish, angst to fluff, slow burn, friends to lovers, depression, nonchalant reader but over thinker, reader struggles expressing emotions, characters are 22

𐙚 readers quirk: poison arrow. can appear a bow and produce arrows that are ingested with poison that can temporarily paralyze or slow down the movement of who was shot. effects lasts roughly 20 minutes but depending on the victim, possible to move but will be slowed down. quirk allows the reader to have sharp sight, and can see farther and more clearer than most. reader has to train to shoot arrows more accurately. strength of poison depends on readers emotions. hero name: artemis.

𐙚 a/n: slow writer </3 3.9k words & might include typos, i finished this at 4:45 am lolz. link to join tag list is at the bottom! [next]

┊ ➶ ｡˚ ° m.list ! ┊ ➶ ｡˚ ° mha m.list ! ┊ love again

you remember sitting in your u.a. classroom in your final year, ochako around your arm while giggles left the slip of her mouth laughing at iida’s antics. his stiff arms flailing around the place as he scolded bakugo yet again, red eyes full of irritation and annoyance.

“something’s about this class will never get old!” you laughed as well, holding onto your bestfriend. she agreed, slowly pulling you to the hallway as the lunch bell rang, waiting outside the door for iida and another.

you remember loving your class. loving your homeroom teacher. loving the lunch meals, loving the thrill of training. but most importantly, you loved the flirtatious glances across the room from bright green eyes, the soft pink hue of his cheeks dusting over his freckles, a nervous smile paired with a wave. you loved eating lunch with him, sitting beside him while your knees touched. you loved visiting his dorm room late at night to play games on his switch. you loved going on dates around the city with your hand holding onto his arm while he guided you through town. you loved graduating with him, jumping into his arms in your cap and down and diploma in hand. you loved the way he asked you to be his girlfriend, bringing a huge bouquet of your favorite flowers and a pretty bracelet to your apartment door. you loved how gentle his hands always caressed your body, mumbles of permission being asked against your lips. you loved waking up in the early mornings with his arm over your torso, half naked while drool seeped its way onto your pillows, green hair tousled and scars on his back prominent. the melodic hum when you scratched his scalp, eyes peeking through long eyelashes up at your sleepy face. you loved working under the same agency as him, being sent on missions together and working hard. you loved having parties in your now shared apartment (after a year of dating) and inviting ochako and iida as well as other old classmates.

it was a comfortable life. so warm and loving. maybe that’s why you had this unfair situation happen to you. perhaps being too happy, too perfect, was a sin. but why? why have you been stuck in a void for so long, unable to move or wake up. faint beeping to your right. why did you deserve to be paralyzed for so long, after having everything you wanted. being where you wanted. you lost sense of time, only knowing the inescapable black hole that you seemingly floated aimlessly in. it was dark and cold. so dark that when you finally opened your eyes, even with the lights turned off the room was still too bright. it took you a while to understand where you were. pupils dilating as they adjusted to the low light. you turned your head to the side, eyeing the heart monitor and wires that connected from the machine to your arm, the soft glow illuminating the bed stand. there was a vase of flowers, still fresh, with a small ribbon that wrote ‘mom & dad’ . there was a red button behind the vase above the desk, ‘push for assistance’ and with a slow and sore arm you reached over. almost immediately loud footsteps and hushed yells came from the hallway, the intense flicker of the lights turning on causing you to wince and close your eyes.

“miss y/n! you’re finally up, how are you feeling?” the head nurse walked over with a clipboard, her blue eyes shining excitedly through her glasses. she wrote down on her clipboard while looking at the monitor, pen scratching filling in the silence. now that you had the chance to talk, your throat felt like sandpaper. dry and stiff, so scratchy it made your eyes water. one of the nurses standing around passed a cup to you, pink bendy straw in all its glory.

“what time is it? how long was i asleep?” a nervous glance between the nurses made you uneasy, fully awake now.

“ahem, its currently 3:44am. you were out for almost two and a half years. do you remember anything before you knocked out?”

a throaty laugh mustered its way up, scoff-like. you thought, unbelievable. it had to be some prank. some pro-hero reality show. you scanned the area, looking for possible hidden cameras. but the room was empty. just your heart monitor, IV bag, flowers. you spoke slowly, unsurely.

“i dont. i feel like i woke up a very long nap but im so stiff..” you fixed yourself to sit upright, your lower back tight. with uncertain eyes the head nurse gave an awkward smile, telling another nurse on stand-by to notify your parents. she spoke with a low tone, as if it would ease into her words.

“you were involved with a villain attack two and a half years ago. you fought very bravely one on one with a man who’s quirk went out of control. from what other pro heroes told us, your body had given out due to extreme exhaustion and overuse of your quirk, but your body automatically moved on its own and still fought. we believe the immense stress your brain and body endured is the reason you fell into a coma for so long.”

after the nurse ran your vitals she excused herself, and you spent the rest of your time wracking your brain to try and remember this so-called fight you were in. but you cant recall anything, and to be honest you don’t remember much of anything from before your coma. just the general facts like where you live, your agency, your friends, your boyfriend. but what you did the week before passing out? nothing. you don’t even remember when you had last went to your agency to work, just the general knowledge that you went. it was a strange feeling. almost out of body, like the person you were was you but also wasn’t.

it was 4:00am when your parents walked in the room, teary eyed and elated. your parents’ hair was longer, complimented with a few more noticeable gray hairs. it tugged at your heart not knowing the amount of stress you put them through, engulfing them in a warm hug. you talked for an hour or two, for any updates you should know and if everything the nurse told you was true. a part of you was hoping this was still a stunt. your parents awkwardly gave each other a look while you drank some water, unsure what to say. their hands found place in each other and intertwined their fingers, a thumb from your father rubbing your mother’s hand. it was quiet and still in your room. the clock on the wall ticking faintly in anticipation. you were now propped against your pillows, big eyes waiting for their words. and, almost comically, a knock on the door broke your attention, all three of you turning in curiosity. plush green of hair paired with the emerald eyes you fell in love with two- no, four? years ago. a smile cracked at your lips, your heart skipping at beat at the change of look your boyfriend held. hair that was shorter than before, styled and cut. a tanner complexion, slightly taller in height with new scars on his arms. he seemed more buff too, white tee hugging onto his biceps.

now, your eyes were always more perceptive than most, mainly because of your quirk. maybe thats why finding these differences were so easy for you to see. maybe thats why you noticed his new scars and shorter hair. maybe thats why your eyes trailed to his wrist, a thin gold chain wrapped around. a different bracelet from what you had given him on your one-year anniversary, to match with the old one he bought you when he asked you to be his girlfriend. your smile faded, intuition kicking in. something didn’t seem right. the glare in his eyes wasn’t as bright as before. weren’t excited. his face showed relief, sure, but also uncertainty. uncomfortableness. guilt. but for what?

you spoke softly, unsure. nonchalant. but your eyes held so many emotions. and midoriya knew that. he knew you’d rather be nonchalant when you’re unsure, even if the thoughts in your head are spiraling. he knew everything about you. which is why it was so much harder to speak. to get the words out. his eyes glanced at the machine next to you, the bpm slowly raising. with awkward, stiff steps he walked towards you, stopping at the your side of the bed. his hand held yours, unfittingly. you took note of the uncomfortable look on your parents face. it only made you worry more.

“it’s nice to see you’re finally awake. are you feeling okay? does anything hurt?”

of course, he still cares for you. you can hear it in his voice the hidden feeling of love and affection,

but why hide that?

like its there but he doesn’t want to show it. you can feel the tension in the room, in your neck as you strain to look at him. you told him you were fine, not knowing how to feel. the conversation lingered, all four of you sitting awkwardly in silence. in the background down the hall, faint flip-flop and footsteps made their way in the direction of your room. little gasps of air, brown hair shoving itself through the doorway.

“y/n oh my goodness! i’m so happy to see you’re finally awake!!” ochako squeezed her way to your side, hugging your body with teary eyes. she seemed like the only normal one, the only one expressing her happiness and relief. it was enough to make you feel better yourself, sighing in ease at her side with a light chuckle.

“of course im awake. that would’ve been a lame way to go out.”

she laughed with you, exchanging jokes and a giggle, yet slowly making her way towards midoriya’s side. then your unease came back. the weird gut feeling, the tug at your emotions and brain. you can see the remorse through the green irises. you can feel the thickness in the room. and as much as you wanted to run away from this feeling, you couldn’t. not physically, not emotionally. what in the world happened when you were out? with a quivering voice, midoriya speaks up softly. cautiously. you can practically see his puppy-dog ears folding downwards against his skull. “things changed between us.” you parents escorted themselves out, saying a faint goodbye. midoriya fiddled with his thumb, teeth nipping at his lower lip. you just say and listened. to his rambling, to the way his voice shook and how the back of his food tapped the floor.

“the doctor’s told us many times you weren’t going to make it. that your body would reject the IV fluids and make you ill, or your heart would stop and they’d struggle to start it again. i spent a year in agony, refusing to eat, refusing to work. i never left your side in the hospital. but it make me sick too. i couldn’t sleep, i-… i felt so hopeless knowing there was a huge chance you’d never wake up.” his lip shook with every word like a leaf to a tree, the smallest crack in his voice breaking his sentences.

“and so ochako took care of me. she let me cry, listened to my nonsense, helped with my sleep and motivated me to go to work again…”

“i guess a part of me accepted you weren’t going to wake up, so i allowed myself to grieve and found new love in ochako. she said she the healthiest way for us us if i agreed to be with her even if there was a small chance you woke up and wanted me still. that if you woke up, i’d still choose her.”

you wanted to laugh. now this really had to be a set up. some sick joke. it was unfair. to wake up, and be told by your nurse you've been out for two and a half years. to not even remember you fighting in the first place. to be stuck in a black hole with faint memories of your past. to see your parents age in the slightest ways 'overnight'. to see your boyfriend change physically. to hear your boyfriend say he's in love with your best friend.

to have your best friend betray you.

frankly, you don't know what hurt more. the fact that your own boyfriend, or now ex-boyfriend, the same man who never let you open a single door, pay for a meal, tie your shoes or take them off, order your yourself, walk alone anywhere without him, the man who talked about marriage and kids with you. to just wake up and hear he couldn't "wait" for you. and that he still can't chose you just from a stupid promise.

or your best friend, the one you've known since you were 5, the girl who sat in the rain with you when your parents forgot to pick you up after school, the girl who's seen you cry so hard you threw up after your first boyfriend in middle school, the girl who always chose you over a boy, over anyone. or used to. ochako knows everything about you. she knows you hate super sweet foods because it makes your stomach hurt. she knows you like your coffee on thee slightly more bitter side. she knows you like the fuzzy socks with animal faces. that you attempted to run from home when you were 11 because your parents grounded you, but got lost at the subway station and cried. and especially knows your love for midoriya. ever since you first started being friends, he was all you talked about. she knows how much you talk about him and how he treats you so well, how excited you were when he first held your hand when he walked you home for the first time, or how you cried when you had an argument that almost ended your relationship, how you had a pregnancy scare and couldn't sleep for days. so why? and ochako looked at you with her huge brown eyes, almost hopeful. you can see it, her asking not for forgiveness, but for you to understand where she's coming from. if you can let it go because nobody knew if you would ever wake up. that she should have the right to date him too. that you were too late.

the tips of your fingers grew cold. your face grew even more pale than before, completely losing whatever life you could express. why must the world be so unfair to you? and why couldn't you express the frustrate you felt, the anger, the pain, the betrayal. you had it verbally sorted out in your head, everything you could possibly say to make you feel better by shitting words out, but the lump in your throat refused any noise to slip by. the room was silent, becoming colder each passing second. it was unsettling. the two just stared at you. green eyes filled with guilt, brown eyes with expectance.

you allowed yourself to slump down the hospital bed, trying to calm your beating hard. though the machine just gave it away, beeping at the same pace as you, only increasing as more time passed, the rise of your chest more visible as you kept battling your thoughts.

"i understand it must be hard for you, for your girlfriend to be unconscious for two and a half years and you finding the comfort in our close friend. and i know as heroes we talked about death, and for us to find happiness if we ever lost one another," you could practically see the growing excitement in ochako's eyes, holding onto every syllable that slipped through. was she even ochako anymore? did she even care that you just gained consciousness not even three hour ago? doesn't she not understand that, to you, yesterday you were 20 and today you wake up 22. you ignored her gaze and look dead straight into midoriya's.

"but i didn't die. and i guess it was wrong of me to assume you'd wait in the first place."

you could tell izuku wanted to say something, and you can see the stupid look in his eyes of wanting to be with you, but would rather be a man of his word to ochako instead of you. and ochako? the excited look in her eyes should be illegal. why is she so happy she gets to be with your man? why does she look like she’s accomplished something? did 20 years of friendship mean nothing to her? before she could slip a word out, your assigned nurse came back in with a stack of papers and medications, asking the visitors to leave so she can properly discharge you. her words found no importance in your mind, completely passing through your head as you replayed what just happened, the anxiety kicking in and making the monitor go off again, dangerously high.

but the nurse calmly removed your vital compressor on your arm as well as your IV drip, refusing to ask questions. she stood outside your door and heard everything. but she really didn’t have to. there’s articles everywhere pertaining to your coma and inside scoop magazine’s of midoriya and uraraka’s dating life. you guys weren’t celebrities or anything, but coming from a school like U.A. that documented your every move puts you in the spotlight. you were considered heroes as soon as you got you license anyways.

midoriya was always at the top of his game, having interview after interview, making his name known whether he meant to or not. he became a popular topic for years, and still continues to rise in popularity. and you got your spotlight after being sent to Kyoto with ochako to handle a gang of villains from the LOV in an abandoned building, managing to save three children who got lost in there while fighting off three villains with close ranged attack-based quirks. your quirk is mainly used for medium to long range combat, but you and ochako interned under gunhead and improved your physical combat which stunned citizens and made you a ‘big deal’. you spent 20 minutes using only combat skills and plain arrows to paralyze them, since they always attacked once you pulled your bow out, never giving you an opportunity. you both took a beating, sure, but you both had unwavering confidence and raw strength, causing you to headline for a couple weeks in Kyoto. ever since then, the media has been keeping tabs on both of you, and your relationship.

so obviously everyone freaked once pictures of him holding ochako’s hand went public, a year after your comatose article went viral. he received a lot of hate, especially from his friends. and it was hard for him to be out in public again without being ridiculed. he eventually stopped his hospital visits, the media speculating it was his new girlfriend’s jealousy of her boyfriend visiting his unconscious lover.

“take this medication when your body feels sore, its just some asprin. your limbs shouldn't feel too stiff, our staff helped stretch your body while you were in your coma. this reduced the shock of trying to use them after they were idle for so long. and these pills are supplements to update your body on the natural nutrients it missed throughout the years! come back in two weeks for an MRI to make sure your body is recovering well,” she handed you two bags of pills, and a change of clothes your parents had left before going to work. you took your leave, a stretch of the body with a silent ‘crack’ of your unused bones. it was roughly 8am now, the sky painted in pink and blue’s as the sun rose, rays of sun covering your body in a light hug. you thanked the nurse,

“oh, and before you go!” she chimed, blue eyes sparkling with interest, “i know its not any of my business, but while you were gone the handsome young man with red and white here visited you quite often, you should thank him.”

todoroki? he was a good friend to you, in fact one of your closest friends you shared with midoriya. you sat next to him your second year at u.a. spending time getting to know him as a person. he was always quiet during class, yet you can see how his eyes shone curiously as he eavesdropped on conversations, acting like he didn't care. or how he would engage in the silly activities your classmates did, like fake a protest when the teacher was biased, or twisting the top off a confetti canon as people walked in during your christmas party. most students always thought he was cold, mean and uninterested. you could tell how that affected him too in the long run, your classmates not conversing with him enough or being too scared too. though as the school year went on, more people realized he just wasn't good at expressing so much. and that he was in fact, just really dense. the only one he was ever mean to was his dad, understandably.

and so you spent class throwing pieces of paper on his desk, written in small characters random questions you had about him. when's your birthday? who's your favorite classmate? favorite subject? what manga do you read? it was simple at first. general question to please the curiosity you both held. until the questions turned into late night invitations hang out in his room, playing on his switch at 2am. he was fun to be around, he became sassy and full of snarky remarks as you grew comfortable with each other. his personality seemed much more brighter to you. and you told him a plethora of things, a bunch of tiny secrets you kept to yourself. throughout each time you saw each other, you grew to understand each other more and more.

“i dont know if i like him or if i just think hes cute..” you hummed, face squished on his silk pillows as you laid on your side. he sat on the floor, back questionably straight as he played on his switch. a piece of cookie stuck out of his mouth, “you and ochaco both like midoriya? isnt that.. against girl code, or whatever you told me?” blue and grey orbs flicker across your face through his bangs, a hidden emotion dwelling in the depths. cookie crumbs lingered on the corners of his lip, moving his attention back to the mini screen in his lap. you laughed naively, hand reaching out to wipe his face.

“oh, she doesnt like him! she said she only sees him as a friend,” the softest shades on pink touched the tips of his cheeks, his face heating up unbeknownst to you. nimble fingers stopped fidgeting at the buttons, peeking once more to look at you, though to his dismay your eyes remained elsewhere, distant. “and you? is it true you have a thing for yaoyaorozu?” your eyebrows wiggled, giggling like a child finding out these simple secrets. everyone in 2-a knew yaoyaorozu had the mushy-gushy for your bi-colored friend, it was a topic always brought up during parties when the two sexes were separated in their respective rooms, desperately seeking gossip. todoroki remained silent for a minute, a soft huff puffing out his chest. “yeah, i like her.” sure, he liked her. she was smart, intuitive, intelligent, diligent, a great leader. anyone would like yaoyaorozu. she came from money yet never expressed that she was better than anyone else, she was generous and humble, kind. everyone liked her. but in todoroki’s eyes, you can see he longed for something else

tag list @c0sm1cstqrsx @aliceblossoms @0b1wan @obeythehuman @whippedbyikemen @faimmm @sagejin @gummy-toes @seobstarr

[vicariousresearcher]

part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4

the intro is boring as shit i know just power through

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Johnny who's just gotten released from the hospital with a half-ton bag of medications and months' worth of pre-scheduled appointments. Physiotherapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy, he didn’t even realize there were so many damn therapies that didn’t have to do with talking about feelings. 

He has one of those too, much to his discomfort. Even asking Price couldn’t get him out of that. 

Now he’s been freshly moved into his new flat. A nice place that his Ma picked out. A garage, basement, and even a fenced-in backyard.

  "Your discharge is paying for all of this, can you believe it?" His ma coos as they sit out on the back porch.

Johnny hummed in acknowledgment, peppermint wafting up out of his cup to almost tempt him to try and take a sip. It tasted like shit but there was no other tea in the house. 

“When's the nurse c-c…arriving?” Johnny asked, trying his best not to seem too eager. About as subtle as a bull in a china shop but his mother was never one to notice things like that. Mind already bouncing off to the next thing.

“Wednesday the text said I tink? Oh did you see the ramp that your friend Simon put into the garage, such a nice boy. Say do you reckon….."

…….. Maybe you were being impulsive but you accepted the position. You left your job at the hospital and moved towns over to be flatmates with a patient. But it was awfully hard to regret your decision when the pay was so good and you didn’t have to pay for boarding. And maybe there was some conniving part of you that wanted to spite your now ex after he cut things off claiming that you were cheating on him. 

So here you were with half your apartment in a storage unit and the other in the back of your car. Unpacking your clothes just after you finished a lengthy conversation with Johnny and Mrs. MacTavish. Or well, more so the latter. It’s kind of impressive how far that woman can go with a single question.

The whole time Johnny is just sitting there watching you. At first, it was weird because ‘dude youre the one who wanted me here can you not act like i’m an alien’ then you stop to consider that maybe he doesn’t even want you here. That this might be just another case of the family being overly attached with no regard for the patient's feelings. Part of you feels bad now at the idea of him being the one truly forced into this situation. 

Maybe this won’t be too bad of a job, you try to reason with yourself as your stomach twists in discomfort at the idea of living alone with a stranger. You can’t be too different from Johnny since your favourite scent is in the candle on the coffee table. The niche reality TV show you're obsessed with is playing in the evening. And he must like peppermint tea too since it’s one of the few things in the pantry. 

…….

Johnny is doing everything possible to seem normal about his nurse. Who has to stay quiet as he watches you interact so perfectly with his mother because if he opens his mouth he will ask you to marry him.

He is sweating at the idea of having you within reach at all times, your attention only ever on him. No other call bells or charting or lunch breaks to keep you occupied.

Johnny who has picked up journaling at the recommendation of his therapist to try and organize his feelings and memories from the coma. It’s not even like he's trying to focus on you but when he tries to think back to the coma all he can remember is you. Your hands, your voice, your warmth.

Lists of everything you’ve ever told him to fill the pages. Your favourite shop that has such a good deal on hair conditioner, the spinning candle on your fifth birthday cake that made you scream, the butter chicken recipe you can never get right even with your friend hanging over your shoulder. 

Johnny who has to try his hardest to stay quiet when you tell him about your first time skiing because he knows the end of the story. He knows how you cried and your mother fell off the lift coming off because you told him. So many little snippets of yourself you’ve already exposed during the two years he was under your care thinking he wasn’t listening. 

But he was and oh he will use it in every way possible to lure you in. He sees how uncomfortable you are even just sitting on the same couch as him but that's okay! You just need some time. 

In the meantime, he will just keep lying. Saying that your favourite flower seeds were just on sale when you spotted them on the table. Shrugging when you ask if he is sure about you taking the room at the back of the house because you mentioned hating the sound of the road. Asking his mum to help him make some roasted garlic butter because suddenly he actually cares about that. (You mentioned it at least a dozen times after your neighbour gave you some.)

[take-it-sleazy375]

HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY CATCH AND RELEASE!

1. Look for your prey at night. Easier to hide, less people. Easy math.

2. Wear a mask. She won't bother going to the cops if she doesn't think she could even identify you.

3. Bring a belt. She a screamer? Loop it around her neck for a choke collar. She a fighter? Loop around the wrists for handcuffs. You a sadistic bastard? Whip her with it until she passes out.

4. Hurt them to shut them up. I suggest impact over cuts, you don't want them to have to go to the hospital. It'll be reported. Try not to hit the face too much either. A good rape slut will be too humiliated or scared to report it, but if she's got two black eyes and a missing tooth, everyone's gonna ask her what happened. The easiest option for her should be to return to normal life and pretend it didn't happen. Hit her hard in the gut or the ribs. Don't be scared to break something. Knock the wind out of her and she loses her voice and her fight.

5. Get her in your vehicle asap. More space the better, I like to use my truck.

6. Have something ready to chain her up once you get her in. Hurt her first so she doesn't fight ya. Once she's chained she'll give up hope on a quick escape. Pulling a knife on her is effective at this point. Remember though gentleman, nothing worthy of stitches or the cops will be at your door first thing tomorrow.

7. Play some music, real romantic. I go with hillbilly deluxe to set the mood, myself.

8. Here it is boys, the big show! Step 8! You got yourself a pretty free use whore until further notice! Everything you've ever wanted to do to a hot chick is on the table, and it's your job to fuck that cunt so freak nasty you get to cut to the front of the line in hell!! Fuck her tits, rape a baby into her pussy, jizz on her face!! Whip, slap and bleed that bitch until she thinks she's two steps from death! Bruise her ass black, pinch her nipples until she blows her vocals out screaming! Make it humiliating, make it HURT! Make it a night she'll try to forget for the rest of her life!

9. Don't forget to make her cum her stupid fucking brains out! Don't let her forget how much her body loves this! Make her writhe under your grip until she squirts, melt her fucking brain! She'll be so humiliated thinking about how many times you made her cum around your cock, she'll forget it was rape at all! Make her thank you every time she cums, make her shriek out loud that she loves your filthy bastard cock!

10. Take. Every. Hole. Her body ain't hers tonight, and if you fuck her right, it'll belong to you for the rest of her life. Her whole body will be violated by the time you're done. She'll be a mess of aching bruises and abused holes and she will never shake the feeling that you took everything you could have taken from her.

11. Had your fun? Time to clean up. Take a few pretty pictures for later. Hogtie her good and drive her just out of town. Once you're on a nice empty road, give the bitch her clothes and cut her loose. Keep her panties as a trophy and peel out, brother!

12. Set a course for home and plan your next night out!

[darlingshane]

I’d love to hear your thoughts on why Shane is the best character in TWD 😊

Cause he's my baby and he's hot and I love him and that's good enough of a reason 😂 

But if you want something more logical, perhaps for a lot of reasons people tend to overlook… First, something that always bugs me is how little acknowledge there is of him actually stepping into the role of a leader for months before Rick showed up. As far as I know, no one in that group stepped in like he did. For the few interactions we saw, everyone would come to him for answers, and while he wasn’t always very diplomatic, he had good survival instincts and kept the group safe for months. Perhaps staying at the quarry wouldn’t have worked in the long run, but it was a plan nonetheless. 

He was right most of the time. He figured out pretty quickly how things were after the infection, and adapted a new mindset. He had to make tough decisions nobody was ready for yet, and maybe he pushed too hard instead of giving people time to get into that same headspace. And we see in later seasons that almost everyone thinks in a similar way Shane did, they just have different approaches. 

and it keeps going under the cut...

I recently saw a timeline in a subreddit or somewhere else that said the events from season 1 and 2 happened in the span of 2 or 3 weeks and that's crazy to me. So they were seemingly doing good, and they found Rick, everyone automatically herd to him, and everything until that point didn’t really matter anymore. That really pisses me off that he was just killed a few weeks later because they couldn’t sit down and talk things over. All and that, and despite him being driven for his misplaced love for Lori, he was still loyal to Rick in his own way. Did he question Rick’s leadership? Yes, countless times. Did he also follow his lead every single time? Also yes.

Which leads me to my next point. He also kept Rick safe. In the hospital flashback, he went in and saw what was happening and amidst all the chaos he still tried to get him out. When he couldn't, he did the only thing he could, he locked the door and barricade it. Did he know that would keep him safe? Probably no. He had absolutely no idea, but he was driven by getting them all out, and when he couldn’t get him out, he did the best he could to get Lori and Carl out of town. If he hadn't lied about Rick, Lori wouldn’t have agreed to leave him behind. Again, tough situations led to hard decisions.

And one of the hardest decisions he made was killing Otis to save Carl. He didn’t murder him in cold blood, he was with him until the end, killing him wasn’t something that crossed his mind until the very last second when he had no choice. If he hadn’t, Carl wouldn’t have gotten the care he needed. BUT people tend to paint him as a murderer for shooting him in the leg. It wasn’t right, but it was the only way out at that moment. I recently revisited one of my fics and wrote that Shane sacrificed his soul to saved Carl that day and I still agree with that. I don’t think he purposely hurt someone before unless he was defending himself. And from that moment on, you could see it changed him and didn’t know how to deal with that, which led him to his own demise.

Was he an asshole sometimes? Yes. Did he do or say things in a way I didn’t agree with? Yes. Did I ever want to slap him? Many times. But there was something about him, compared to other antagonists later on the show, that made him more realistic to me. He wasn’t driven by wanting to be right all the time or even being the leader. His misguided love for Carl and Lori, was at its core the things that he cared the most about and that he wanted to protect at all costs. And while I cared for neither, I think it was beautiful of him. 

I can never watch his last moments. For me, he got the right idea at the beginning of season 2 when started considering leaving the group on his own. I wish he had done that, even if that meant leaving the show. 

I’m probably forgetting something here cause I haven’t rewatched in years, but I think that’s it. Like I’ve said, I didn’t pay much attention to him the first time around, I did agree with him most of the time, it was his manners that left a lot to be desired. It wasn’t until my love for Frank got me to go back and watch some of his previous performances that I got to see Shane in a new light. 

In conclusion, he’s still the best character to me, and everyone should love him like I do. Or not. More Shane for me if you don’t. 

[writtenonreceipts]

Rowaelin Month Day Twenty-One: Performers @rowaelinscourt

Month Masterlist // Hey Neighbor Masterlist // Ao3 Link

It fits the performers prompt because they’re putting on a show of lunacy.  <3

Warnings: just minor medical talk and references to bad hospital experiences right at the beginning, ~2.9k words

Hey, Lucky

Aelin could count on one hand the number of times she’d been in a hospital. 

Two when a grandparent passed away and one when she’d broken her arm.  She hated each and every experience.  Her grandparents’ passing had been traumatic to say the least.  All she could remember was seeing her Papa hooked up to an assortment of tubes and wires to the point that she couldn’t even see his face.  Gran was supposed to come right back out after a surgery to fix her heart…only she never had.  And when Aelin had broken her arm, she’d had to have surgery to resent the limb properly, the meds had made her sick and she couldn’t leave the hospital for over a week. None of the doctors had been nice, either. 

So, yes.  Aelin hated the hospital.

But here she was, sitting in an uncomfortable vinyl chair in a stuffy waiting room and nerves keyed up.  Her knee wouldn’t stop bouncing and she’d already destroyed a paper pamphlet citing the signs of diabetes and the importance of knowing preventative measures.  She’d found it on the side table beside her and, needing something to do with her hands, had folded and refolded the thick cardstock.  It was the only thing keeping her sane.

“You’ve got to eat some real food,” Elide said softly from next to her. 

The pamphlet was plucked from her fingers replaced with a sandwich.

Aelin looked at the sandwich.  It was a simple peanut butter and jelly, but it wasn’t hospital food.  Her stomach roiled.

“I’m fine,” she said.

Elide didn’t look impressed by that statement, but she said nothing else and settled in her seat.

Setting the sandwich aside, Aelin grabbed her phone instead.  She looked at the text thread she’d started with Iona after the news thread of the avalanche.  With the weather and the Whitethorns living one town over, Aelin insisted that she go to the hospital at least until the roads cleared up more.

<<Aelin: No update yet, but the rest of the crew is here now.

She couldn’t help but send the message.  Maybe it would have been better if she had actual news.  It was the nerves, the need to do something.  And she supposed if she were a mother separated from her child she would want to know anything and everything going on.

She leaned back in her seat and took inventory of the waiting room.  It had calmed down quite a bit over the last few hours.  There were other family’s waiting for news, the bad weather brought in many other injuries and messes.  The rest of Rowan’s search and rescue team had also come now that the missing hiker was found.

Fenrys had also been injured, but not as extensive as what happened with Rowan.  He hadn’t been caught in the torrent of snow and ice, only enough to cut off his retreat back down the mountain.  After everything settled, Fenrys had gone in search of Rowan and the lost hiker.  He’d found them and even managed to get a signal for a rescue.  He was being treated for dehydration and a dislocated shoulder.

“Aelin,” Elide insisted, grabbing the phone from her fingers, “I am your emotional support human right now and I need you to eat.”

“You sure you’re not just here for a certain ranger?” Aelin quipped.

Elide glared. “Moral support.”

“Right.”

“I will force that sandwich down your throat,” Elide said.  For such a tiny unassuming woman, she was a bit feral.

Aelin took a savage bite.  It was a tasty sandwich; raspberry jam, creamy peanut butter, and fresh white bread.  Perfection.  She wouldn’t let Elide know though.

After forcing half the sandwich down, Aelin couldn’t stomach any more.  Elide seemed satisfied with her efforts and didn’t say anything when Aelin tucked the remains back in its baggie.

It was another few minutes until a doctor stepped through a pair of double doors that led to the operating rooms.  Aelin leapt from her seat, just as she’d done for every doctor or nurse that stepped through the doors.

“Whitethorn and Moonbeam?” The doctor asked, already walking towards the assembled rangers.

The captain, Gavriel, stepped forward. “How are my men?”

“Fenrys is on an IV and doing fine, he just needs rest,” the doctor said, she smiled reassuringly, “already asking to be released.”

Only a little bit of tension eased out of the rangers.

“And Rowan?” Gavriel pressed.

The doctor, Yrene Towers by her nametag, offered a strained smile that made Aelin’s stomach clench.

“He’s out of surgery,” Dr. Towers said slowly. “His left leg was broken in two different places and needed some titanium screws.  He’s got three broken ribs, a concussion, and severely sprained wrist.  Honestly…he was extremely lucky.”

“But he’s okay?” Aelin asked, “He’ll wake up?”

Dr. Towers’s smile softened, which under normal circumstances would have made Aelin’s hackles rise. “Yes.  Probably within the next hour or so.  You can see him now if you’d like.  He’s in his recovery room now.”

Aelin’s entire body vibrated and it took all her effort not to bolt down the hall.  She was overstepping, she knew she was overstepping.  Right?  Why was she so concerned, so insistent about seeing Rowan?  Especially when his friends and colleagues were right here.  It was ridiculous.

And then, much to her surprise, Lorcan was the one to speak up. “Go make sure Whitethorn doesn’t break out of here prematurely.  We’ll give Moonbeam hell.”

The rangers already started filing towards the ER where Fenrys was holed up.  Lorcan narrowed his eyes slightly while glaring down at Aelin.  She raised an eyebrow in challenge to which the larger man merely shrugged before following his squad mates.

Dr. Towers rested a hand on Aelin’s shoulder. “I’ll take you to Rowan’s room.”

Nodding, Aelin glanced over her shoulder to where Elide still sitting in her chair.  Her friend only waved her on with an encouraging hand.

“Thanks,” Aelin said, turning back to Dr. Towers. “That would be great.”

It was a quick walk to the elevator and trip up to the third floor.  The entire time Dr. Towers continued to talk to Aelin about Rowan.

“I’ve done a lot of trauma work and have seen a lot of tragedies,” Dr. Towers said, “and even though his injuries sound bad, he’s going to be alright.  Just a bit of recovery and physical therapy with his leg.  It’ll be a long road but he can make it.”

They came to a stop outside a room with the blinds drawn up to look in on the sleeping body.  Aelin’s heart skipped a beat as she took in Rowan’s prone form.  Thankfully, he didn’t have a respirator or any tube actually inside his mouth.  His warm skin had taken on an ashen pallor and his usually styled hair lay flat over his brow.  One of his legs was suspended in a sling and wrapped in white bandages.  His injured wrist was also wrapped in similar bandages and resting on his chest.

“Thank-you, doctor,” Aelin said.  She smiled at the woman. “Really.”

“Of course, just let a nurse know if you need anything find a nurse, find me, and we can help.”

With another hand on her shoulder, Dr. Towers headed down the hall to the nurse’s station.

Aelin looked back into Rowan’s room.  Just the sight of him lying there had panic racing through her body.  She didn’t know what to make of all the emotions she was feeling. She didn’t know where they’d come from or what to do with them.  She knew…well she knew she’d been attracted to Rowan for a while now.  Known she’d been willing to flirt with him and see if something more that could happen between them. 

With a steadying breath, Aelin pushed open the door.

The was strangely quiet.  Even with the soft hum of the equipment and steady beat of the heart monitor, there was a stillness occupying the space.  She hated it.

Aelin crossed the room to take a seat in the chair beside the bed.  She debated taking a picture of Rowa to send to Iona.  In the end she decided there was something distinctly creepy about that so she settled on an over simplified text. 

<<Aelin: Sitting with Rowan.  Doctor said he’s doing well.  He’ll need physical therapy for his broken leg and he has a concussion, but she said it’s all going to be fine.

>>Iona: Thank-you dear.  The storms blown over so the roads should be cleared by tomorrow.

That was good. 

Aelin sighed, tucking her phone back into her purse.  She leaned forward, hand hovering over his own.  The action felt strangely intimate.  She withdrew her hand and looked at Rowan’s face.

He appeared peaceful.  Even with the gash on his forehead and the bandage trying to cover the worst of it.  He was paler than Aelin was used to him looking too.  Really, this entire situation was a nightmare.  She wanted to wake up.  Desperately.  She wanted him to wake up and scowl at her.  Wake up and roll his eyes.  Wake up and just be him.

“I am so mad at you right now,” she muttered.  She sat back in her seat scowling at his unconscious form. “You were supposed to be careful and not get hurt, Rowan.  Nox Owen said he’d be dead if it wasn’t for you.  You risked your life up on that mountain and scared the shit out of me.  You’ll be lucky if I forgive you.”

His heart monitor beeped in response.

“And you know, that’s not even the worst of it,” she continued.  Now she was picking at her nails, too upset to actually look at him.  “What’s worse is that I thought there was something more between us.  I thought…Did you even eat those cookies I baked you?”

She glared at him now, still disgruntled over how flat his hair was lying.  It made him look so much younger, soft.  She had to swallow down the lump forming in her throat.

Emotions were the worst.

The literal worst.

Taking a long breath, Aelin straightened.  She leaned forward again and did her best to channel the old Aelin.  The irritated Aelin.  The Aelin who used to have dance parties at two in the morning to rile Rowan up.  The Aelin who tried to trick Rowan into drinking a RedBull.

“You are going to wake-up and you are going to take me on a date,” she said. “Do you hear me buzzard?”

To emphasize her words, she took Rowan’s hand and entwined their fingers.  There was nothing to indicate that he could hear her.  Nothing to indicate he was waking up soon.  Which was fine.  She knew Dr. Towers had said he was fine, that he’d only just gotten out of surgery and wasn’t going to wake up for a while yet.  But she was Aelin Galathynius and she was not patient.

She squeezed his fingers.

“You’re an idiot if you think you can get rid of me that easily,” she added.  Sniffing, she rose from her chair.  She may as well let the other rangers filter through to see their friend.

She tried to pull her fingers from his grasp only to find that his grasp had tightened.  Aelin froze.

“Rowan?” She nearly fell over herself to lean back over Rowan. “Rowan Whitethorn.”

His eyelids fluttered and he took a deep, rattling breath.  His mouth twitched, trying to form a word. 

“Buzzard?”

And then his eyes opened.  Glazed and unfocused but open.  It took a few blinks and then those gloriously green eyes landed on her.

“Fireheart.”

Tears that Aelin hadn’t even known were brewing started pouring down her cheeks.  She raised her other hand to cup his cheek, feeling the stubble there.

“Hi,” she whispered, staring into his eyes, eyes she hadn’t realized she’d missed so much.

“What—” Rowan began, but he tried to move too much of his body at once and broke off with a wince and a curse. “Damned hell, what happened?”

“Lay back and stop moving,” she ordered him.  “You were in an accident; do you remember that?”

Groaning, Rowan actually listened and leaned back into his pillow. “Yeah, yeah I remember.  Nox?  Fen?  They okay?”

“They’re fine,” Aelin assured him.  She ran her thumb over his jaw, refusing to stop touching him for at least a little longer. “Nox had some frostbite and scrapes.  I think I heard he broke his ankle.  Fenrys just got some bruises, he somehow missed the worst of it.”

Rowan’s eyes shuddered closed.  He took a few breaths before looking at Aelin again.

“And are you okay?”

Aelin just stared at him. “I’m not the one who fell down a mountain.  Y’know, I think you’ve got me beat now for doing stupid things with this.”

“I was saving a life, doesn’t count.” His mouth quirked up into a half smile.

Aelin didn’t have a good response to that.  Because really, all she wanted to do was kiss him and call him a fool.

He must have seen something in her eyes because he tried to move.  She had no idea what his intentions were—he was still stiff and loopy from his medication.  Whatever he was trying to do sent a spasm of pain crawling over his features.

“Stop moving,” Aelin insisted. “You’ve got some broken ribs and a broken leg and your wrist is sprained.”

“I—then why does my head hurt?” He asked.

Poor, silly man.

“That would be the concussion.”

Rowan huffed, squeezing his eyes shut.  “Right.”

“You’re in pain,” Aelin said, trying to pull away again. “Let me go get the nurse, they should know you’re awake.”

Shaking his head, Rowan snagged her hand again and tightened his grip. “No.  It’s fine, just stay.”

Aelin didn’t like that.  Not at all.

“You are literally gritting your teeth in pain,” she said.

“Aelin.” Rowan tugged on her hand, his index finger hooking with hers. “I’m fine.”

She ducked her head, suddenly unable to meet his gaze.  She had too many thoughts and emotions rolling inside her, too many things she couldn’t define well enough.  Especially not now. 

“I was really scared, Rowan,” she whispered.  “I saw the newscast of the avalanche and thought—I thought…”

Aelin cut off as another wave of tears clogged her throat.

“Aelin,” Rowan said.  He pushed through the pain that he was so obviously in and pulled on her hand so she had to lean in closer. “I’m sorry.”

That should have dried up any and all tears that Aelin was fight back. “You’re what?  What do you have to be sorry for?  You fell off a cliff.  You broke your leg.  Don’t you dare try and sit up, I will go get a nurse, don’t try me.”

“For the bar, for the cold shoulder,” he said, only partially speaking over her. “For not talking to you.”

Aelin sank down on the side of the hospital bed, careful of any wires or tubes she might disrupt.

“Yeah,” she murmured. “I am still mad at you about that too.”

Rowan, to his credit, looked chagrined. “Sorry.”

Aelin squeezed his hand. “You don’t have to tell me everything, not now anyways, but I—I want to know.”

“My last girlfriend couldn’t handle the job,” Rowan told her, hardly waiting for her to stop speaking. “Not all the calls in, the long trips I’d be gone for, not the potential danger of it all with storms like this one.  She kept showing me other jobs to apply for, telling me to get a real degree at a real college…eventually she told me to make a choice.  So I came to Terrasen.”

That had been almost three years ago at this point, if Aelin did her math correctly.

“It didn’t seem fair to put anyone else through that,” he concluded.

“That doesn’t seem fair,” Aelin said, “not fair of her, not fair to you, to anyone.  Not if you love the job.  Not if your partner loves you.  And it’s not fair of you to make that choice for me, either.”

She brushed away the remnants of her last round of tears.  Heart hammering in her chest, Aelin fixed Rowan with a stare she only reserved for Fleetfoot.  A mix of amused disappointment.  It seemed apt for the Buzzard.

“I like you, Buzzard.  But you can’t keep acting like a fool.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he conceded.

Aelin nodded resolutely and then, before she could lose her nerve, leaned forward and planted a kiss on his forehead.  She thought it perfectly reasonable to leave it at that but then Rowan shifted beneath her and before she could pull back, his mouth collided with hers.

Even drugged up and concussed, Rowan knew how to kiss a woman.  Aelin certainly wasn’t one to pass up on this opportunity.  She kissed him deeply, feeling the spark of something flare in her chest and spread like wildfire through her blood.

Aelin pulled back far sooner than she wanted to, but she knew he was still recovering.

“Took you long enough,” she told him.

“Sorry, had a mountain fall on me.”

“Ass.”  Aelin forced herself to pull away from him for good this time.  She went back to get her phone from her purse. “I need to let your mom know you’re awake.”

Rowan made a strangled noise. “You’re talking to my mother?”

“Mostly just texting right now.  But she did invite me to family dinner next Sunday, so you’ve gotta be out of the hospital for that.”

“We don’t do family dinner.”

“Now we do,” she planted another kiss on his forehead and dialed into FaceTime. “Hi, Iona!  Guess who’s awake!”

.*.*.*.*.

epilogue next

[starrystormwritings]

Something's Off

Something's Off

Master List <3 Request List <3 Criminal Minds Master List

Spencer Reid x Reader

A/n: Hey so I haven't written anything in over a year and this is my first criminal minds thing ever so any criticism is welcomed. This was written at 3am so any bad grammar or writing can be excused in my opinion lol. Please consider sending me some requests or ideas for anything on my request list, I'm desperate to get back to being active on here but I'm running low on ideas.

Summary: You and Spencer work at the BAU and after a lapse in Spencer's judgment you end up getting hurt.

Warnings: Murder, guns, shooting, stabbing, blood, hospitals, possible death, general criminal minds talk to gruesome murders

Word Count: 2669

(NOT MY GIF)

"There she is, we were starting to think you'd quit on us." Derek joked as me and Spencer walked into the briefing room hand in hand.

After a particularly long and emotional case I had decided to take some time to myself to recover from it.

It had only been a week but in this job that felt like years.

"Yep here I am, no need to worry. I know how much you all missed me." I said with a laugh while sitting down at the round table, Spencer going to grab our coffees.

"Can't argue with that, lover boy over there has been lost without you." Emily said with a laugh smiling at me.

Everyone else had taken their seats as Spencer sat next to me, sliding my coffee in front of me with an excited smile.

"Well as much as I wouldn't use the word lost I have missed having you around here." He blushed lightly, trying to speak in the least awkward manner as he could.

I knew he had missed me at work, everyday he came home to our apartment he'd be glued to my side explaining every detail of the case he'd just gotten back from, wanting to hear my opinions and spend time with me.

As much as hearing about work took away the point of taking time off from it watching Spencer ramble on passionately and excitedly to me was nice.

Plus if I'm being honest with myself I'd be bored without it.

"Six women have been found dead in a suburban town in Texas, all between the ages of twenty to thirty and have appeared within forty-eight hours of each other." Hotch explained whilst Penelope showed the pictures of the crime scenes behind him.

"All girls were found within sixteen hours of being deceased and had already been missing for more than a day, meaning he keeps them before murdering them. He has stabbed them all once in the abdomen, careful not to hit any vital organs so the body doesn't shut down. Instead he stabs them to leave them to slowly bleed out." Penelope added whilst handing folders of information out to everyone.

"So it's likely he already has another girl with him now?" Rossi asked with a frown as he flicked his folder open.

"More than likely yes, and with and increasing confidence and skill set we can only assume he's going to continue at a quicker or more brutal pace the longer he's able to." Spencer added, looking to the group with a smile that matched nothing that he just said.

I sighed and looked at the images in front of me, at least this case seemed fairly simple in comparison to some of what we've had to face.

~~~

"This guy is most likely a social younger man who holds enough respect and familiarity within the area for people to feel comfortable enough to get into his vehicle alone at night. He doesn't force his victims to comply they willingly trust him until it's too late due to his natural charm and charisma. Then he holds them for a day before killing and disposing of them. He doesn't hurt them in their time of captivity, meaning he most likely feels remorse or is unsure of his actions, but the thrill of the kill is to enticing for him to let them go. He's confident within his ability to kill, shown in the slow and precise manner he takes in the murder. He is most likely a local who has lived here his whole life due to his knowledge of the area and the trust everyone has toward him. He also appears confident in his ability to not be caught, since he dumps the bodies rather than hiding them. He believes he's more intelligent than most people and above the law, and his high IQ helps fuel this narcissistic ideal he has of himself. That is all thank you." Hotch walks away from the room of police officers who were noting down his profile, gesturing to Emily, Rossi and Derek to follow him into an interrogation room.

I jumped up from the table I was sat on and gathered my notes from next to me.

"I just don't understand how we could have such a sick individual in our community doing this to women. It's just shocking to me." Officer Davis said from beside me.

He was the head officer on the case and the chief of police in this town, he'd been assisting me and Spencer in the last few hours with trying to create an idea of where to begin looking.

"Yeah it always comes as a shock when a member of your community causes something like this." I offered him a small smile whilst gathering my stuff to head over to Spencer, Officer Davis following closely behind me.

"I just can't believe something like this could happen here."

"Can you think of any groups of people within the community that hold a lot of respect and trust? Like public speakers, church groups, large charity groups or public helpers?" I asked him flicking to the page of possible careers I had, smiling at Spencer as I settled my stuff next to him.

"Well apart from the obvious like the police and fire force, I couldn't think of anything. We're quite a religious area but none of our churches have any well known priests that everyone would know, we have too many churches and priests for people to form personal connections with. Although we do have a large neighbourhood watch group. They do nightly patrols in cars around the streets and main roads. They're a very large group of people."

Spencer's head shot up at the last bit. "Do they have a known leader people would know? Or any type of uniform they wear to be recognisable?" He asked Davis while scribbling something on his whiteboard.

"Not uniforms no. Although, the patrol cars they use do have these stick on lights they use to be recognisable. Pauls the leader, he tells people when their needed for patrol."

"So our unsub could be a patrol member, approaching women in his car so they know he's apart of the watch group and trust him enough to get into the car without any hesitation!" Spencer said turning to Davis "I need a list of names of the leaders of the group."

I opened my phone, calling Penelope "I'll get a list of the people on patrol the nights that these girls were taken, see if there's anyone that was working every night."

~~~

Less than a day, that's all we had to find this woman before it was too late.

I was stood in an office with Spencer and Rossi, bouncing ideas off of each other, hoping something stuck.

"Penelope got him." Derek said with a smile walking into the room.

"Paul Fredrick, thirty-five years old, lived here his whole life, was arrested ten years ago for an assault against an twenty-one year old woman, and in charge of the neighbourhood watch patrol schedule." Spencer read from the paper Derek just handed him.

"Hotch, Emily and that detective are already heading there. We need to go this girl probably hasn't got that long left." Derek said gesturing us out of the door quickly.

~~~

"He's confessed." Spencer said with a smile, kissing me on the head as he took a seat next to me.

I'd been sat in this empty office in the police station for an hour now, something just doesn't feel right.

"Really? Doesn't that seem strange to you? I mean according to the profile this guy is confident and intelligent. Surly he wouldn't confess after an hour of interrogation." I bit my lip lightly as I re-read my notes again and again.

"Well sometimes the profile isn't completely correct. Plus they found the girl in an abandoned warehouse a ten minute drive away from his house." Spencer shrugged "he isn't as confident as the profile indicates, he was also quite anxious and stressed when confronted which was surprising, but the evidence points to him and he's confessed. All of the logic adds up."

"I guess. I just don't feel right." I sigh and look up to him with a frown.

He matches my expression and stands up, kissing my forehead lightly before collecting his stuff. "You probably just need some rest it's been a long weekend. The plane leaves in an hour, I'll go collect our stuff for us."

He gave me one more smile before leaving the room. As I glanced after him I saw the rest of the station basically empty and the time was three in the morning.

With another sigh I gathered my stuff and headed out the door. Maybe ten minutes outside in the fresh air would chill me out.

"Everything alright?" A voice from behind me asked, making me jump.

"Davis hi you scared me." I said with a laugh, holding the door for him as we both walked outside. "Everything's okay yeah I'm just rethinking the case."

"What's bothering you about it?" He asked, lighting himself a cigarette.

"I don't know, the whole thing just seems off, I mean why would Fredrick confess so quickly? He doesn't match the profile at all, he's awkward and of a lower intelligence. I just don't see how he could do this alone. Plus why would he take these woman to an abandoned warehouse that could be accessed to the public or the police whenever rather than his own house? He lived alone in an remote area with no neighbours. It just doesn't add up." I shrugged and pulled my arms closer to me since the cold was nipping at my arms.

All of a sudden I felt a blunt pain hit the side of my head.

~~~

(Spencers pov)

"Everything alright kid?" Derek asks me with a concerned look.

"Yeah, I'm just worried about Y/n." I reply, fidgeting with my fingers as I talk "She's been questioning the case and I'm starting to think she might've been onto something."

"What do you mean?"

"Well didn't Fredrick seem odd to you? He had a low IQ and no charisma at all, even if you knew of him I doubt many people would willingly get into his car. Plus he transported the girls for no reason, he put himself at risk by doing it in that warehouse rather than his own home. There's no way he could've done this alone."

"What are you getting at here kid?"

"Well didn't he come across to you as more of a submissive personality?"

"You think we have two unsubs here? A team?"

I shook my head quickly calling Y/n as I spoke. 

"No not a specifically a team. A dominant who lured the girls and killed them, and a submissive who picked the girls out, disposed of the bodies and took the fall. It would make sense, Fredrick was to easy to find, this unsub would be to intelligent to be this simple. Fredrick was on patrol the nights the girls were taken, he most likely saw them first and then alerted the other unsub of them so he could then take them."

"Well if this unsub was so intelligent how come it was so easy to find his partner?"

The phone rang out, that's strange Y/n always picks up.

"He wanted us to. He pointed us in that direction to throw us off, he didn't need Fredrick and he knew he would stay loyal if he was caught. He wanted us to catch Fredrick so we'd leave."

Derek's eyes went wide as he got his phone out of his phone to call someone.

"You know who told us about the neighbourhood watch and the list of likely suspects?"

Derek asked with a frown.

"Davis."

~~~

"Has anyone seen Y/n?" I asked as I walked into the room that the rest of the team were in.

They all looked at me with worried expressions as Emily handed me my bulletproof vest.

"According to the CCTV she was last seen leaving the station with Officer Davis" Hotch said clearing his throat, trying to remain stern and collected even though he was as distraught as the rest of the team.

"What?" my face fell as I scanned the room, everyone either looking away from me or straight at me with concern. 

Derek's phone beeped and everyone's heads snapped up to look at him as he stood. "Pen's got an address, lets go."

~~~

"FBI!" Derek yelled as he kicked down the door, letting himself into the house as I followed behind, gun trained ahead of me.

"What am I looking for here Reid?" he asked, clearing the first room.

"A basement most likely." I said walking ahead, spotting a door that appeared to be heading downstairs.

I nodded my head toward it and Derek went ahead, opening it slowly and walking down.

I followed close behind him, a loud smash was heard from in front of us and before I could even see Derek shot, leaving Davis on the floor.

"He tried to run, threw something glass at me." Derek said, gesturing to the blood from the new cut on his arm.

"Can you see her anywhere?" I pushed in front of him as he flicked on the light switch.

I scanned the room before my eyes landed on her figure in the corner, laying on the floor looking pale and bleeding from somewhere. "Y/N!" I ran over there, putting my gun away as Derek called for a medic through the radio.

"Hey your going to be okay. I'm so sorry, I should've listened I'm so sorry. Y/n please. Come on open your eyes. Please..." I felt Derek's hand on my shoulder as I started to cry.

Before I could comprehend what was happening a group of medics came in and surrounded her, Derek pulling me out of the room.

~~~

I paced the hospital waiting room floor, it had been hours and we'd heard nothing.

Emily was asleep on two chairs. Hotch was sat looking at the floor, tapping his foot anxiously. Rossi had been standing up to speak to the receptionist every ten minuets, and Derek had be constantly picking up calls from Penelope who had kept ringing for updates despite Derek promising to call her as soon as we knew.

And I had basically paced a hole through the floor.

"Reid sit down and eat something. Stop punishing yourself." Hotch said with a frown.

I shook my head and continued pacing. "I can't, I should've listened to her, or stayed with her. I didn't even try first aid I just froze when I saw her..." I replied, voice cracking.

A doctor cleared his throat behind us "Y/n L/n?"

We all looked up at him with matching worried expressions.

I held my breath as we waited for him to say something.

"She was stabbed in the abdomen but luckily suffered no trauma to any organs. She's lost a lot of blood but she's going to be okay. She's just woken up so she's a bit out of it but she can take one visitor."

I felt my whole body relax as I took a breath.

"She's okay?" I asked again with a shaky breath.

Derek put his hand on my shoulder and nodded with a smile "She's going to be okay kid."

I let out a little sob and nodded my head with a small smile.

"Reid you should go see her, let her know we're all here." Hotch said patting my other shoulder.

I nodded at both of them and followed after the doctor, taking a seat next to her bed, holding her hand in mine as carefully as I could.

She opened her eyes, slowly turning her head to look at me.

Somehow she was still smiling as bright as ever, provoking my face to mirror hers on instinct.

"Hey you." she said with a small laugh.

"Hi." I kissed her knuckles, a few tears escaping my eyes as I looked at her.

"Why're you crying? I'm the one who's be stabbed dumbass." she joked with a small laugh, causing me to chuckle.

"I love you so much, don't you ever do this again. I really thought I'd lost you. I don't know what I would've done."

"I'll try my best to stay alive then, just for you Spence."

She smiled sweetly at me with another small laugh, I admired her face for a second before leaning in to kiss her lips softly.

[deliciousangelfestival]

Tears In His Ferrari - 10

Character: Bucky Barnes x Farmer!Reader

Summary: Bucky Barnes, used to a life of luxury, takes on farm challenges in a bet with his father. Mud-stained Ferraris and a rustic farmhouse lead to unexpected personal growth, guided by the stern mentorship of Y/N, a farmer making his city-boy life difficult.

Theme: Fluff, Slice of Life, Heart-Warming.

Main Masterlist || If you enjoy my work, please consider buying me a coffee on: Ko-fi 🙏🏻

Thank you to anyone who gave a like, reblog, and left a comment. It motivated me to write more. 

Chapters: Chp 1, Chp 2,Chp 3 , Chp 4 , Chp 5 , Chp 6 , Chp 7 , Chp 8 , Chp 9 , Chp 10 , Chp 11 , Chp 12.

Bucky's heroic story of helping Toby's grandmother and bringing her to the hospital with his red Ferrari became the talk of the town.

The next day, he went to the fresh market with Y/N's parents to buy fruits and flowers.

He was planning to revisit Toby’s grandmother. He didn’t know why, but he felt a sense of melancholy toward elders, especially since his own grandparents had passed away before he was born.

As Bucky looked at the oranges, the locals greeted him warmly, especially the elders.

One grandfather said, “Thank you for helping Toby's grandma, young man. Here's some fresh corn and potatoes for you.”

Bucky smiled warmly and replied, “Oh, yes, we should help each other.”

Another grandmother approached him and said, “Are you the Barnes kid who helped my friend? Here's an orange for you.”

The kind old lady handed him baskets of oranges, her eyes twinkling with gratitude.

Then he felt someone tap his shoulder. He felt like a big shadow towering over him. It was Thor.

Thor exclaimed, "Buddy, you were a great help yesterday. Here, I'll give you my biggest catch today."

Bucky widened his eyes in surprise. "Oh no, it's alright. Urghh."

This was the first time in Bucky's life that he carried a heavy fish.

With each step he took, someone would greet him and give him something. He had never experienced this sense of community back in the city, and he appreciated how supportive the locals were of each other.

Samanta chuckled upon seeing Bucky looking clueless. “You've become the local celebrity.”

Bucky blinked in surprise. “Really?”

“Yup. Oh, my daughter just called. Some people are at your farm.”

“That's right. I have to go back.” Bucky clapped his hands excitedly. He suspected that what he requested from his dad had arrived.

He stepped on the gas and drove fast to his place. When he arrived, he saw a few teenagers and kids standing near his house.

Y/N was also there, looking a bit overwhelmed as she guarded the youngsters from entering the house.

The truck stopped, and Bucky got out of the car.

He greeted Y/N with a smile. "What's up?"

Y/N sighed in relief. "They want to see your car, but I thought they needed your permission first."

The group of youngsters looked at Bucky with puppy eyes. In a second, he remembered being a young kid, also interested in sports cars when his dad brought him to the F1 race car. The experience was amazing, and it made him fall in love with fast cars.

As a fellow car lover, Bucky welcomed them. "It's alright. Do you want to see what it looks like inside?"

"Yeah!!" The youngsters cheered in excitement.

Bucky showed them his Ferrari car and enthusiastically explained the engine and the machinery.

Y/N observed Bucky, who looked genuinely excited. She remarked, “You've become the celebrity.”

Bucky chuckled, unable to contain his enthusiasm. “I can't help it.”

“By the way,” Y/N continued, “your father sent a pick-up truck. I didn't know you needed another one.”

Bucky's eyes lit up. “It's here? Yes! And it's not for me.”

“Then for who?” Y/N inquired, curiosity piqued.

🏥

At the hospital, Toby was speechless when he saw the pick-up truck. It looked brand new and far superior to the old truck they had to sell to pay his father's debt.

He walked around the truck, inspecting it from front to back, then turned to Bucky and enveloped him in a grateful hug. “Thank you, bro,” he said earnestly.

Bucky returned the hug with a smile. “You're welcome, buddy.”

After Toby rushed back to the hospital to share the news with his grandfather, Y/N approached Bucky. “That was really nice of you,” she remarked.

Bucky nodded, a sense of fulfillment washing over him. “I realized how important a car is for Toby. He needs it to drive his grandma and carry boxes of honey.”

With the means to help, Bucky felt compelled to use it.

Y/N smiled warmly. Witnessing Bucky's generosity and compassion, she couldn't help but admire him even more.

Bucky's generous gift quickly spread throughout the town, making him the hottest topic of discussion. Suddenly, he found himself at the center of attention, not for his wealth or status, but for his kindness and willingness to help others.

The children in the town looked up to him as a cool role model, inspired by his actions to make a positive difference in the community.

With Toby's grandmother gradually improving, and Toby himself working diligently to sell honey at markets and to local households, the spirit of gratitude and determination seemed to infuse the air.

Despite initially finding farming challenging, Bucky began feeling accepted and belonging in his new life.

Though he still encountered difficulties, he realized that the rewards of helping others and being part of a close-knit community far outweighed any hardships he faced.

Bucky hadn't opened his social media for a while since he was already busy with farming.

******

His story has also spread widely on social media. However, it wasn't Bucky who initiated it.

But who did? Of course, it was Kate. She inserted herself into Bucky's story as if she were a part of the effort to help him.

During her live session, she recounted the events with a touch of theatricality, emphasizing her own role in the act of kindness.

"And that's when Bucky and I sprang into action," she exclaimed dramatically, her eyes sparkling with manufactured emotion. "Together, we rushed Toby's grandmother to the hospital, our hearts filled with determination to make a difference!"

Her viewers were quick to shower her with praise, captivated by her portrayal of a compassionate and selfless individual.

"You're such an inspiration, Kate!"

"Wow, I had no idea you were so involved in charity work. You're amazing!"

"Thank you for using your platform to spread awareness and help those in need. You're truly making a difference!"

With each compliment, Kate's smile widened, basking in her audience's admiration as she skillfully crafted her image as a philanthropic icon.

She kept smiling as she scrolled through the comments until she noticed someone mentioning "What about Y/N?"

Kate's smile faltered, and she let out a sigh.

"What's wrong?" inquired one of her viewers.

Kate sighed again. "Well, we only know what people choose to show us on the outside, not what's really going on behind the scenes."

The viewers were intrigued. "Is this about Y/N?"

Kate hesitated, then replied cryptically, "I don't want to name names, but let's just say there's someone who's been quite influential in Bucky's life, and it's had some unfortunate consequences for my brother."

"Your brother, the celebrity chef Paul?" another viewer asked.

"He can't cook anymore because of a car accident, right?"

The comments continued to pour in, each one adding to the speculation. It was precisely what Kate wanted. She leaned back in her chair, a satisfied smirk playing at the corners of her lips as she watched her fans dissect the situation for her.

Glancing down at her ruined shoes, a reminder of her unexpected encounter with the mud earlier, Kate clicked her tongue in annoyance. "Never underestimate me," she murmured to herself, a hint of determination in her voice.

🏎️

Bucky, who had been feeling clueless, had just finished cleaning up the sheep's stable. He made his way back to his house to freshen up.

Archie, the puppy, had eagerly awaited his return, wagging his tail excitedly. "Woof."

"Hey, buddy, I missed you too," Bucky greeted, bending down to pet the eager pup.

Once inside, Bucky headed straight to the sink to wash his hands, feeling the grime of farm work clinging to his skin. As he scrubbed, he couldn't help but notice his phone incessantly buzzing with notifications.

"What's going on?" Bucky wondered aloud, setting down the soap to check his phone. He was met with a flood of messages and tags from various people. Among them was a tag that caught his attention: #Y/N and Paul.

Curious, he clicked on it, and his screen filled with photos of Y/N dressed in a chef's outfit, standing beside none other than Paul, the celebrity chef who also happened to be Kate's brother.

Bucky's heart sank as he read the accompanying captions and watched a reel detailing Paul's accident, along with rumors suggesting that it wasn't him driving the sports car, but rather a woman whose name was still unknown.

His thoughts racing, Bucky was startled when he heard a familiar voice behind him. "Here's the dinner."

He nearly jumped out of his skin, turning to find Y/N standing there, a concerned expression on her face as she looked at him. "What's wrong?" she asked, noticing his troubled demeanor.

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If you've been enjoying the content, I've set up a Ko-fi account.

Your support through tips would mean the world and help me keep creating.

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[bamboozledbird]

IGNITE: A Teen Wolf S1 AU (Reader's Version) // Prev. / Chapter 3 / Next

Characters: Stiles Stilinski, fem!reader, omc, ofc Pairing: Eventual Stiles x Reader, but man are we talking slow burn Word Count: 6.2k Warnings: Canon typical gore/violence, parental death (rip to your fake mom), depictions of depression (apathy, dissociation, 'numb little bug' vibes) Tags: Canon has been lovingly scrapped for parts, author is a chaotic bi and it shows, prolific overuse of the em dash, the slowest of burns i fear

Summary: You can always smell ash long after the fire is gone. Perhaps, that’s why you still can’t breathe without choking on the past. It’s been four years since your mom died. Four years since she burned alive. Four years since you didn’t. You survived, but they must have buried your heart with her because most days you feel like a shadow, some horrifically sad creature caught halfway between a ghost and a lamb for slaughter. 

You can’t scrub the bitter smell of hospital from your memories, not even with denial. Maybe, that’s why death and disease follows Stiles wherever he goes now. It’s been eight years since his mom died. Eight years since he didn’t. Eight years since he decided that he wouldn’t let anyone he loved die ever again. He survived, but Scott’s new-found abilities and the murky world they’ve been dragged into is making it pretty damn hard to keep his promise. 

Time never stops turning. The grief never dissipates. Children soldier on—but in a town where all the monsters under the bed are real and old family skeletons rattle in every closet, how long can two fragile, breakable humans survive? 

Maybe, the real question is: How long will they want to? Chapter Summary: More information about the animal attack comes to light. You can’t decide if you're more scared of the monster or becoming friends with someone new. 

A/N: You can also check me out on ao3 (dork_knight) for the full lore version!

You were surprised to see your dad’s car in the garage. He wasn’t supposed to be off work for hours, and he certainly never came home early on weekdays. You would be more nervous if there was anyone left in your life to grieve. It was just the two of you now. Your mom hadn’t ever talked about her family; you weren't even sure if she ever had one, and Grandma and Papa Dickinson died before you even had the chance to remember them. You wished, sometimes, that there was someone else in the house. Someone who could fill the cold silence and closed doors. Someone who might chase away the ghosts lingering in the long halls and photographs on the walls. It was a futile dream. You were going to die in this house, and someday a new family would chase your family’s shadows away with laughter.

You felt a bittersweet sense of déjà vu when you walked into the house and saw your dad sitting at the kitchen table. The kitchen was his spot before everything went wrong. He puttered around the island in the mornings with his thermos of coffee and tablet, somehow knowing exactly when to flip the bubbling pancakes on the griddle without glancing up from whatever NPR article he was reading. He only looked up from the screen to kiss your mom on the cheek and give you a side-squeeze until you whined about your inability to breathe. 

That was a long time ago, you reminded yourself as your dad looked up from his iPad. It’d been four years, but he still hadn’t quite figured out how to hug you and the kitchen never smelled like pancakes and cinnamon syrup anymore. “How was school?” your dad finally said after a long moment of uneasy eye-contact. 

Your brow wrinkled, and your head canted slightly, “You really want to talk about my day?”

“Of course,” your dad paused and rubbed his hands over his face, “but there is something important I wanted to talk to you about.” His stubble had grown out enough that you could see where the brown was starting to gray. He looked so old for a moment, and you weren't quite sure how to feel. You never did around him. 

Frowning, you sat down in the chair across from him, “Did someone die?”

“No,” your dad quickly replied, and then he sighed, “well, yes.” He set his iPad to the side and took his thick reading glasses off, “You know about the animal attacks.” It wasn’t a question. You figured that was how this would go; it was easier to pretend you didn’t exist if he monologued to the spot on the wall just over your shoulder. “Sheriff Stilinski and I agree that a curfew is the best course of action, considering the situation we’re in.”

Best course of action. You chewed on what was left of your nails and resisted the sigh budding in your chest. So, this was a council meeting too. You just didn’t get a vote. “Okay.” 

“Okay.” Your dad blinked a few times and rubbed at his jaw, like he’d been expecting you to fight him on it. Most of the fight fizzled out in you a long time ago; it was just easier to pretend. You got that from him, you thought. You inherited your dad’s love for mystery novels and his ability to deny reality straight to its face, and that was where the similarity ended. Your face, your skin, your heart—your exhausting curiosity—that was all your mom. It must be why your dad couldn’t keep his gaze on you for long. He ran his fingers through his short crop of dark hair and said, “Anyone under the age of 18 needs to be home by 9:00 every night.” 

“Fine.” It wasn’t like you had much of a social life anyway, and the curio shop you worked for closed long before dark. “So,” you fiddled with the edge of a decorative bamboo placemat that hadn’t seen a plate in years, “do the police have any idea what kind of animal’s going all Pac-Man on people?”

Your dad stared at you for a moment, a deep divot developing above the crooked bridge of his nose. You looked down at your hands and mumbled, “The vampire Pomeranian, not the wimpyass circle.”

His mouth tugged a little, and you would’ve sworn he was fighting a smile if everything else in the world didn’t directly contradict the theory. “Not exactly.”

“Which means…” you shook your head a little and tugged your fingers through your unruly hair, grimacing a bit as they snagged on a few knots where your hair had frizzed together, “they’ve ruled out tiny bloodsucking dogs, or they’ve narrowed it down to a few probable options?” 

He paused for a long moment, and you pulled your shins to your chest, focusing on the tips of your sneakers hanging off the edge of the wooden seat. You turned your cheek into your kneecaps and waited for your dad to make an excuse and leave. You’d pushed. You always had to push. 

“There were wolf fibers on the girl.”

You whipped your head up from your knees, eyes wide and mouth slightly parted. You were a little embarrassed that you were more stunned by your dad sharing confidential information with you than a wolf migrating to central California for the first time in over a hundred years. “And the bus driver?”

“He’s still…unresponsive. Stilinski is looking into the possibility that he was attacked by the same animal.” 

“Huh,” you said quietly, eyes glazing over as you considered the possibility.

“Regardless, you need to be home before dark until they catch the damn thing,” he leaned back against his chair, tipping his head back with his bottle of Miller High life. The golden liquid sloshed back and forth with the strength of his swallow. It was the first time you’d seen him drink since the funeral, but you knew about the empty bottles he threw away in the trash outside. Over the years, the number varied; you noticed a significant increase around anniversaries, birthdays, and Christmas. You left extra take-out in the fridge during those weeks, always his favorites, and they were gone in the morning. You twisted the pendant on your necklace and made a note to order Little India’s tandoori chicken after your shift.

“I have to work tonight.” You said quietly, nibbling the bed of your thumbnail, “I’m off at 8:00.” 

You both dreaded and longed for your boss’s absurd take on the situation—though boss wasn’t quite the right word for Maggie Sinclair. Despite the fact that she owned Curio Killed the Cat and approved your paychecks, Maggie was the least authoritative person you knew. You’d say Mags was like an older sister, but older sisters generally didn’t require so much supervision around open flames and sangria—and anything else sparkling enough to distract her sporadic focus. Your mom used to look out for her before she died; you supposed Maggie was just another thing you inherited from her. Your favorite thing probably, but that was something you’d most likely take to your grave.

Your dad’s face went blank for a moment, as it always did when he was reminded of anything remotely related to your mom. It was easier for him, you thought, to pretend that she never existed. You couldn’t even be bitter about it; you hadn’t even cried at the funeral. You cried much later, of course, but by then the pity well had run dry. Nobody cared how you coped, so long as you coped quickly. You’d wasted those precious first few months of constant consolations with numbness, with monotonous, 'Thank you,’s and, 'It’s sad, but I’m okay,'s and then, eventually, everyone stopped asking if you were okay. Time passed. You didn’t touch any of the casseroles in the fridge. People moved on. You lived in the wake and pushed people away with an acrid bite that would disappoint the resurrection right out of your mother. Your dad was just coping. You both were. 

“Right,” he cleared his throat, “come straight home after.”

You shouldered your backpack and stood up, “Always do.”

You still didn’t know how Maggie met your mom, given the 15-year age gap and their vastly different…everything, but Maggie had been in your life for as long as you could remember. You spent so much time in Maggie’s store after your mom died that you figured you might as well get paid for shelving spell books and grimoires while you were there—even if you did think that most of Maggie’s customers were totally off their rocker. Of course, in-person customers were a rare oddity in Curio Killed the Cat.

The store was always slow on weekdays, weekends too actually. Most of Maggie’s business was online; she shipped ‘haunted’ and ‘magical’ artifacts all across the globe to e-goths with bad backs and Wicca wannabes. Truthfully, Maggie didn’t really need your help running the storefront, but she claimed she enjoyed the company—even if said company was bitterly sarcastic and hypercritical of the product she was stocking. 

“Hey, Mags,” you called. The bell on the front door tinkled in the background as you shoved it open with your shoulder. You paused to scratch under Maggie’s ancient tabby’s chin until he let out a sawing purr. You weren't exactly sure how old Gizmo was, but he behaved more like the taxidermied animals on the walls than the stray cats that lived in the small alley behind the store. 

“Maggie’s head popped up from the circle of book-stack pillars surrounding her. A few of her black curls frizzed out from her bun like a chaotic springy bow and her sweater swallowed her whole despite the relatively warm evening. “Babe,” Maggie placed her hands on your shoulders and grinned at you with a little too much teeth, “thorn in my side, light of my life.”

You lifted the large pair of acrylic glasses from Maggie’s nest of curls and then slipped them over her rounded nose with a reluctant sigh, “What?”

“Glasses. That was next on the agenda.” Maggie blinked owlishly behind her lenses as her eyes adjusted, and then they lit up with whatever it was she’d miraculously remembered, “I am so delighted to see you.”

“It’s Monday.” Gizmo curled around your leg and meowed pathetically until you bent down and lifted him onto you shoulder, “I work Mondays.”

Maggie rolled her eyes, “I’m aware; I made the schedule. The Concerta isn’t completely defective.”

You grinned a little, and Gizmo kneaded your chest in agreement, “So: You’re delighted to see me.”

Nodding rapidly, Maggie picked up a lavishly bound book from one of the stacks of new inventory. It was so tall that it reached her chin, and there were four more just like it in the back. “I need these stocked for realsies,” Maggie said, blowing off the thin layer of dust that had started to gather on the cover. She dropped the book back on top of the pile with a loud thump and carefully avoided knocking anything over on her way to the front of the store, “And I’m currently in the middle of a bidding war.”

“Haunted or historical?” you grabbed the clunky price gun off of the tarot card display.

“A little of both actually,” Maggie hummed, fiercely focused on the computer screen. Her nose was almost smashed against the monitor.

You set Gizmo down on the floor, patting his head tenderly when he let out a disgruntled whine and clawed at your thin knee socks. Eventually, the effort became too much for his poor paws to bear, and he waddled off towards one of his many nesting spots. “For you or for the store?” you pulled the stepladder away from the wall of stone runes and protection charms and plopped yourself down on the top step.

“For you, actually,” Maggie grinned a little and winked, “don’t say I never gave ya’ nothing.”

“Wonderful,” you dropped your chin into your cupped hands, “a poltergeist bonus.”

Maggie huffed and shoved the sleeves of her hand-knitted cardigan up to her elbows, “It’s not actually haunted. Not really. It’s like…a spirit router, basically. Whatever. It’ll make me feel better about you walking around with a rabid Cujo on the loose.”

“Aw,” you smirked good-naturedly and slapped a price tag on a book entitled ‘Heal the Witch Wound Inside’—$35.99, and for what? You were too amused to point out the redundancy of rabid Cujo. “You got me a guardian angel.”

“Trying to,” Maggie corrected her under her breath, “but MagikMike9917 is a persistent little bitch.”

You laughed and slid ‘Witch Wound’ into the self-help section, “Just get me a mini-taser; they come in some real cute cases now.”

“Mhm.” Maggie briefly glanced over in your direction and then abruptly whirled her head back towards the thick book in your hands, “Not that one.”

You narrowed your gaze as you examined the cover of the book more closely. You had to admit, it was beautiful. The leather was a deep burgundy, and the spine was hand stitched together with gold thread—but it was the carving on the front that really caught your attention. There were two wolves etched into the leather. Their howling snouts pointed towards the full moon above their heads, and their tails entwined around the roots of a large tree sprouting into the sky. Ornate symbols framed the borders of the scene, and a few scattered jewels glinted in the light. It must have taken at least a week to finish. 

You held up the book, your brow curved into a high arch, “This for me too? ‘Cause I’ve already seen The Witcher; pretty sure I got the gist.”

Rolling her eyes, Maggie reached blindly for her soup mug of passionflower and mugwort tea. The smell of it was truly rank, but you had grown accustomed to the musky bitterness over the years. “That one’s already sold. They should be dropping by to pick it up anytime now.” She raised her cup towards you, “I told you bestiaries are essential reading.”

“For dungeon masters, maybe,” you hummed as you studied the cover again. The red and citrine jewels in the wolves’ eyes seemed to be winking at you when the light hit them at the just right angle. 

“Which is an essential contribution to society,” Maggie punctuated her sentence with a loud slurp. 

Your lips gave way to a small grin as you set the book to the side. You’d stocked around half the stacks of books when the front door chimed for the first time since your shift started. You looked towards the door and squinted at the increasingly familiar smattering of freckles and moles, “Are you stalking me now? I will tell your dad; I’m not above snitching or stitches.” 

Stiles blinked a few times and then shook his head, holding up his hands, “I swear on my jeep this time it’s a coincidence. I ordered something here like a week ago.”

You folded your arms over your chest, “And your jeep is sacred, is it?”

Stiles nodded solemnly and rested his hand over his chest, “The sacredest.” 

If the muttered cursing and aggressive sipping was anything to go by, Maggie was too busy with her eBay war to be of any help with inventory. Stocking would have to wait. You stood up and glanced over Stiles’s shoulder, “Where’s your sidekick?”

Stiles squeezed one eye almost completely shut and looked off into the void with the other until realization dawned over his face, “You mean Scott?” He snorted and shot you a grin that was loaded with self-pity, “I’m usually the sidekick reference. Always, actually.” 

You nodded and looked down, searching for the culprit of the little head butting into your shin. Gizmo was probably the most ineffective, geriatric guard dog in the entire animal kingdom, but you appreciated the effort. You scooped him up into your arms so that he could better inspect the strange boy who’d invaded his den and nuzzled your nose against the black stripe on top of his head. “They do tend to never shut up.” 

Stiles looked like he wanted to argue—a frequent expression of you were beginning to realize—and then his shoulders slumped in defeat, “Holy shit, I’ve been type-casted.”

“You could do an arthouse film,” you tilted your head, “show people you’ve got range.”

Stiles nodded, considering the idea, “My charming wit and boyish good looks are really holding me back.” He stooped down to scratch behind Gizmo’s ears. Gizmo bristled for a moment, eyeing his hand suspiciously, but he eventually flopped back in your arms after a few curious sniffs. “No one takes me seriously.”

“Uh huh.” You watched Stiles pet Gizmo and tucked a strand of your hair behind your ear, trying to remember the last man Gizmo hadn’t bit. You couldn’t recall a single one. Warmth enveloped your face when Stiles looked up and met your gaze. He didn’t appear to think much of it, just turned his eyes towards the ground and stroked Gizmo’s little gray toes. 

You set Giz down, despite his pathetic protests, and turned towards the stockpile of inventory, fighting the urge to bite your nails to the quick, “So, what’d you order, boy wonder?” You looked over your shoulder when Stiles didn’t answer. He was smiling a little, mostly to himself, with his hands shoved in his pockets. Your brows quirked, “What?”

“Nothing.” He groaned a little when you kept looking at him, your brows still cocked, and then shrugged with his hands still fisted in his jacket pockets, “It’s just not so bad, the sidekick thing. It’s not so pathetic when you say it like that.”

You swallowed, a little startled by his honesty even though you were the one who’d insisted upon it. “Order?”

“Right,” he nodded a few times and rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s a thickass book, wolves on the front, about yea big,” Stiles held his palms almost six inches apart from each other. “Please don’t make me say the name; I’m pretty sure it’s Latin.”

You grabbed the bestiary you’d set aside earlier and looked at the cover again; there was a small inscription just below the tree roots. “It’s Greek, actually.” You brushed your fingers over the indented letters, “φυσιολόγος.”

Stiles shook his head and took his frustration out on the air with a dramatic jerk of his hands, “In English?”

“The Naturalist,” your lips curled into a shrewd smile, “so sorry we don’t carry it in Japanese.”

Stiles pursed his lips and snatched the book out of your hands. “Hilarious. Truly. I don’t just watch anime, y’know. I also like…” he trailed off and scratched at the nape of his neck, “very cool, normal things.”

“Such as?” 

He pulled a face that was distinctly reminiscent of a little kid sticking their tongue out, “Such as shut your face.”

“Wow.” Shaking your head, you returned to your task of shelving books—this one was about the spiritual properties of mushrooms—and made a popping noise with your tongue against the top of your mouth, “You better hope there’s an English translation in there ‘cause consider my mouth officially shut.”

“I’m not an idiot,” Stiles continued quickly, words almost overlapping with the speed of his tongue, before you could take advantage of such low-hanging fruit, “I made sure I could read it before I bought it—being comprehensible is literally the least it can do for 50 bucks plus shipping.” He shook his head and held up the book, “Can you believe the library wouldn’t order it for me?”

“Imagine that,” you chided, “and with all the demand for vintage bestiaries too.”

He dropped his order on top of a rickety writing desk that supposedly belonged to a Beacon Hills’ heretic who died in the 1800s—at least, according to the tag hanging from one of the drawers and Maggie’s generous interpretation of her family history. “D&D is coming back in a big, big way,” Stiles pointed at you and winked with obnoxious flourish, “just you wait.”

You smirked, pointedly ignoring your recurrent childhood obsession with Egyptian and Roman mythology, and smacked the side of the price gun until the sticker tape unjammed, “My instinct is to make fun of you, but I’m afraid the hypocrisy will catch up with me.”

“What?” Stiles glanced around the store and smirked, “Are you one of those new-agey astrology, crystal nerds? How many fingers is my aura holding up right now?”

You gave him a flat look and reached for another book. “We don’t sell crystals, actually. They aren’t that common in ritualistic spell-casting.”

Stiles blinked slowly, “You’re joking.”

“Wish I was.” You still weren't entirely sure if Maggie actually believed in all this spiritualist-mythical bullshit. She contradicted herself constantly, and often said things just to make your face pinch in disbelief, but at the same time she still insisted that you keep a protection charm bundle under your bed. The smell of the divination tea, at the very least, was great at warding off unwanted chitchat. “Animal blood is the main ingredient in most of ‘em.”

“That’s…repulsive,” Stiles cringed, restless fingers meandering towards the shelves of books next to you. He pulled out a small illuminated grimoire and flipped through the yellowing pages, pulling a face every so often at some of the more unsavory hex materials. 

You pried the book from his fingers and slid it back into its correct slot. Maggie didn’t actually ask you to organize them; her exact words were, ‘Slap a sticker on ‘em and stick ‘em on a shelf,’ but the idea of such a chaotic setup haunted you until you finally reshelved them all with a revised, occult-specific Dewey Decimal System. “It’s actually just corn syrup and—”

“100% authentic dove juice,” Maggie interrupted from behind the front counter without removing her face from her monitor.

Stiles jerked his head to the side, evidently just realizing that there was someone else in the room with you, and then swiveled back to you with his face stretched out in a toothy grin, “That dove juice discount must save you, like, so much money.”

You watched Stiles, warily and wearily, reach for a meditation journal from one of the heaps by your legs, “I have to stock that.”

Stiles turned the journal over in his hands, “Lemme help.”

You huffed deeply and gestured to the diligently organized bookshelves, “I have a system.”

He gave a staunch shake of his head and hunched down so that he could read the small stickers on the spines, “I owe you—for covering for me.”

You took the journal from his hands and squatted down to the bottom shelf. You quickly found the guided meditation section and managed to squeeze the bulky notebook between ‘Walking the Pagan Path’ and ‘Warding Your Mind' with some aggressive wiggling. You looked up briefly and met Stiles’s eyeline. He was especially lanky from this angle. Lanky and soft, with his layers of sleeves and rounded features. You tucked a loose curl behind your ear and looked back at the line of jewel-toned spines, “How is he? Scott?”

“Better.” He tapped his fingers against the top of the bookshelf to a rhythmic beat that felt familiar, “Exposure therapy is a real pain in the ass.”

“I thought it was ‘low blood sugar.’”

“That too.” Stiles leaned over your head and grabbed another book, and you shivered the soft cotton hem of his jacket skimmed over your face. “He’s hemophobic and breakfastphobic,” he said as he handed you the book. You hummed softly in appreciation as he continued, “It’s a vicious cycle, actually. Dude would totally fall apart without me.”

“That’s nice.” You tipped your chin up towards him and grinned, “Totally bogus, but still nice.”

“I told you.” His smile was smug, but somehow still dopey enough to be charming, “I’m a nice guy.”

Your thighs started to ache from squatting in the same position for so long, so you dropped onto your knees, shivering as your bare skin pressed against the cold hardwood floor. “I’m still not sharing my sacrificial blood discount with you.”

“Guess I have to get a job here, then,” Stiles shrugged and leaned against the bookcase, jerking back a bit when he turned his head and came face-to-face with a yellow-eyed taxidermied owl. He turned it around until the glass eyes were safely pointed in the opposite direction and said, “That way I can drive you nuts all day long and become a master wizard.”

You clicked your tongue; the cluck rang with saccharinely sweet pity, “Sucks that you’re only qualified for the first part.”

“Yeah? How’d you get the job, then? You clearly don’t respect the craft.” Stiles ran his spindly fingers along a row of spines, and you wondered if he could play the piano. He certainly had the hands for it. 

“Mags knew my mom, so…” you chewed on your lip until the metallic tang of copper burst on the tip of your tongue. You abruptly returned your attention to shelving the Wicca section and fiddled with the spines until they were all perfectly in line with each other, “It’s more nepotism than anything else, but I do take the history books home sometimes.”

Stiles looked at you, and the prickling sensation of being seen started slithering through your nervous system again. It took you a few tries to get Greek and Roman Necromancy to slip into the small gap on the shelf in front of you. Stiles crouched down next to you. His mouth was twisted around a sly smile, but you could see the earnestness in his eyes, “Witch training?”

You grinned a little, grateful for the out, “Hardly. I just like the lore.”

“Yeah,” Stiles’ gaze drifted towards the book he ordered; the wolves’ gleaming eyes were almost hypnotic, “me too.” 

“I’d hope so, for 50 bucks.” you nudged his knee with your elbow, and he swayed precariously on his perched toes and then shot you a glare that lacked any actual malice. “There are cheaper D&D monster manuals, y’know.”

He snickered and elbowed you in the ribs, gently but his bony limbs were sharp and unforgiving, “I knew you were a nerd.”

You were tempted to rebut the accusation, but he already had far too much evidence to the contrary. At least, he didn’t know about your Data/Geordi fanfiction phase—and no one ever would, you thought darkly. You’d have to kill them, probably, or at the very least flee the country.

“At least I’m not a sucker.” You stood up and brushed off your socks, though there was nothing to be done about the red indentations on your kneecaps from kneeling on oak flooring for so long, “Just how easy would it be to convince you to drop another 50 on a replica Byzantine amulet?”

Stiles held out his hand, shaking it in the air incessantly for far too long. You tilted your head and tried not to smirk at his predicament. The longer you watched him struggle, the more pathetic his pleading became. Eventually, Stiles groaned and pushed himself onto his feet with exaggerated effort, “Obviously not very. Evil spirit didn’t even crack the top 20 on my suspect pool.”

“Got it.” You propped your arm on top of an antique guillotine, bent elbow crooked along the wooden pillory. Stiles stared at the rusted blade and then gawked at your arm. He looked like he was a few seconds away from shoving you out of the way, even though the edge was dull with age and safely secured to the iron frame with thick rope. Rolling your eyes, you stepped away from the antique and trailed your fingers over a less forbidding oddity. 

You spun the brass globe a few times and said, “So silver bullets, then? I’m sure there’s some kind of bulk-discount we can work out.”

Stiles’ eyes snapped to your face, “What?”

“You know,” you gestured towards the order he abandoned while buzzing after you like an especially tenacious mosquito, “for all the werewolves running around town. Thought you’d already know that, being a wannabe wizard n’all.” 

“Right.” Stiles’s jaw shut with a click as he ran his hand over his head, “Duh.” He rubbed at his bicep and swallowed a few times before clearing his throat, “Didn’t get to that chapter yet. Clearly, I’ve got a lot of studying to do before I graduate from apprentice to master.” 

You squinted at him, mulling over if you should call him out on his odd behavior or just chalk it up to his usual weirdness. Maggie materialized behind you before you could do either. She placed her hands on your shoulders, squeezing softly, and then shuffled you to the side so that she could join your little circle, “I’m strictly anti-gun violence; the NRA hates me—but we do carry wolfsbane essence.”

“Don’t say essence,” you grimaced.

“We have some wolfsbane goo in the back.” Maggie pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and pivoted back to you, “Happy?”

“Not even remotely.” You turned towards Stiles, finally grateful for his presence. Usually, you were on your own in your never-ending believer versus non-believer disputes, and Maggie was somehow under the impression that she wasn’t massively outnumbered beyond these four spooky walls. Oddly, Stiles looked lost in thought. The one time you needed his dismissive snark, and he just had to actually consider the opposing side.

“Is this like the dove juice thing?” Stiles watched Maggie’s face closely, astute eyes tracking every minute twitch and flicker in her expression. It was easy to make out all the different pieces of Sheriff Stilinski in his face like this. You could see the calculations running behind his eyes, the strings coming together, the chess pieces moving. The effect was startlingly piercing. “Or is this actually the real deal?”

You stared at him, face scrunched in bewilderment, but Maggie was undeterred, “We only sell the real deal in the back, to the honored few.”

Stiles looked towards you, his right brow raised. You sighed, folding your arms over your chest and flicking your hair over your shoulder, “Real useless, but…yeah. The plants are real I guess.”

Maggie winked, “I’ll even give you the friends and family discount.”

You scoffed, “We aren’t friends.”

Stiles frowned, momentarily distracted from his intense investigation of Maggie’s body language, “We aren’t?”

You licked your rapidly drying lips and shook your head slightly, more confused than indignant. Truth be told, you’d expected him to agree with you. You hadn’t known each other for long, and he seemed to be more interested in your connection to Lydia than forming one with you. You hadn’t even considered the possibility that he wanted to talk to you about anything else. It’d been a long time since anyone wanted to, that’s all. The friends who hugged you at the funeral, they stopped coming around a long time ago, and they still avoided you at school—like you were contagious, like you’d leak radiation and your misery would metastasize in their bone marrow. You still woke up crying sometimes, throat claggy with stubborn shadows, choking on the hollow bones of picked-apart memories—too busy shoveling dirt to consider tomorrow. 

You scratched at your arm absently and rolled your eyes, slowly, so that everyone could see how utterly unaffected you were, “It’s a couple hundred bucks for a few millimeters of emulsified weeds. If we were friends, I wouldn’t even let you buy something so stupid.”

Stiles’s frown quickly curved into a crooked grin, boyishly charming and vexingly sure, “Sounds like that’s exactly what you’re trying to do.”

Maggie reappeared through the door to the back room, locking it with one of the many keys dangling from her strawberry lanyard. You didn’t have a clue when she’d disappeared to begin with, but the vial clutched in her hand was far more interesting. It was filled with a thick purple liquid, so dark it was almost black. Maggie held it out to Stiles and laughed at his inquisitive stare, “It’s on the house this time, ‘cause you’re such good friends with my darlingest girl.”

Eventually, Stiles took the vial from her hand. “Yeah, darling,” Stiles smirked and rolled the vial between his long fingers, “‘cause we’re such good friends.” The liquid sloshed slowly, a little like a lava lamp, and you kind of wanted to stuff it down his throat.

“Careful with that,” Maggie blinked at you behind her thick lenses. She wasn’t grinning or winking. It was a little eerie to see her so still, like her body had been snatched by a pod person and it was trying to mimic casual human behavior. “It's potent stuff. Shish-kebab a were with that, and they’ll be dead by sunrise—humans too, obviously, so please don’t stick it in your mouth.”

“If you can even get that close,” Stiles muttered to himself as he held the vial up to his pinched gaze.

“To a werewolf,” you deadpanned, looking between the two of them, searching their faces for any indication of irony. Bat-shit. Your grand total of two friends were both certifiably batty.

Stiles was too busy looking at the back of Maggie’s head to absorb your mockery. Your brow furrowed at the intensity of his stare until your attention was diverted to the dusky orange cast over his skin. You glanced out the window; daylight was rapidly fading. Was it really already almost 8:30? “You should probably head home,” you raised your chin towards the door, “if you don’t want to run into the big bad wolf with a purple goo heavy arsenal.” 

He let out a little laugh, more like a breath really, and muttered, “You have no idea.” Your forehead crinkled as you parsed over whatever the hell that meant, and Stiles shoved the book he ordered into his already overcrowded backpack. “I’ll see you at school.”

Your chin bobbed as you gave him a little nod. You lifted Gizmo from his bed of tasseled meditation cushions, for your own comfort this time, and nosed into his matted fur. Maybe, Stiles was just…really into larping, or maybe he was just…a really dedicated collector of supernatural keepsakes—because there was absolutely no way that you just naturally attracted delusional conspiracy theorists. You’d already met your quota of one the moment you were born. 

“Get home safe.” Stiles’s voice pulled your face from Gizmo’s neck. He lingered against the doorframe, clutching his backpack strap. The corner of his mouth cocked into a tight smile, “No more dead batteries after dark, okay? I’ll kick your ass if you get eaten.”

You took a moment to smile, but once you did, it unfurled over your entire face like sunset coating the store in a golden glow. The corners of your eyes crinkled as you shook your head a little, “I’ll try to restrain myself from killing any more cars.”

“Friends,” Stiles grinned and pointed at you, “we’re totally friends.” He ducked out the door before you had the chance to disagree, but you couldn’t decide if you really wanted to this time. 

You almost dropped Gizmo when Maggie bumped you with your hip. “Who the hell was that?” 

“Stiles. He’s…” you waved your hand in the air and eventually settled on, “a friend.”

Maggie stroked the gray fluff on Gizmo’s cheek, cooed when he rubbed his face against her palm, and then pursed her lips, “Uh huh.”

You shrugged and buried your nose in Gizmo’s neck again, taking solace in the fact that at least half of your face was hidden by silver fur, “So he’s more like a fungus in my life.”

Maggie’s grin was insufferable. Her cheeks dimpled, and her eyes nearly disappeared into happy little crescent moons, “Uh huh.”

You glowered at a stuffed crow perched on top of a water-logged armoire; there was a shine in its beaded eyes that appeared a lot like laughter. “You are the single most irritating person I have ever met.”

It was an admirable trait, never getting upset, never getting offended—but at the moment you wished that Maggie wasn’t so idealistic. She simply gave you a smile that was annoyingly wrought with meaning and took Gizmo from your arms. “Whoever the hell he is, he’s right. Get your ass home before the Wolf Man bites it.”

Maggie wiggled her fingers in the air, and you shoved them away from your face. “I’m going. I’m going.” You paused at the door, gave the store one last look and Gizmo a little good-bye wave, “Seriously, mini-taser, Mags. Prime shipping’s gotta be faster than the spirit realm.” At the very least, a taser might actually have a chance against whatever carnivore was hell-bent on ruining your sophomore year.

[ladykailitha]

Batshit Soulmates Part 9

We have just a tiny little epilogue after this that will be released next week and then this story is done. I know I tend do to happy endings, but this is more ambiguous (and hopeful) and with the epilogue I'm not nice. So if you want to stop here, you absolutely can.

In Medias Res| Prologue|Pt 1|Pt 2|Pt 3|Pt 4|Pt 5|Pt 6|Pt 7|Pt 8

We get everyone safe and sorted. And Steve's the one to break it to Wayne about Eddie.

****

The hospital was in chaos when Steve arrived. Whatever had happened, had torn the town literally asunder.

Lucas ran up and threw his arms around him. “She died! I could feel her die! Then she came back, but my mark–”

Steve had shown up at the hospital after hiding Eddie at his place until the whole murder charge thing could blow over.

“Hey, hey,” Steve murmured softly. “Let’s see it.” Lucas refused to let go, so Steve gently steered him over to a set of chairs and sat him down on one.

He knelt in front of Lucas and gently removed the shoe, followed by the sock. Lucas’s skateboard wasn’t black, like it would have been had Max actually died, but it was a sickly green and pulsed eerily.

“Oh, buddy,” Steve said and threw his arms around the young boy. “I’ve never see a mark do that, have you had it looked at by a doctor, yet?”

Lucas shook his head. “I’m afraid of what they’ll tell me.”

Steve nodded, but before he could open mouth the sound of cries erupted from behind him.

Steve turned around to see Charles and Sue Sinclair standing at the front doors to hospital. He barely managed to move out of the way before Lucas’s parents scooped him up.

“They tried to kill Erica and Max!” Lucas wailed. “So I hit him. Hit him until he stopped.”

Sue took his face in her hands. “Are you okay?”

Lucas nodded, but held up a bandaged hand. “Hurt my hand, but I’m fine.”

Sue nodded. “Is Erica okay?”

“Mama!” a voice cried out and Charles suddenly had an armful of Erica.

“Baby,” he whispered, “are you okay?”

He pulled back to look at his daughter, she had bruises on her face and arms but she didn’t appear hurt beyond that.

A doctor came over. “Are you the little girl’s parents?”

Charles nodded. The doctor preceded to go over her injuries and said that Lucas was quite the little hero taking care of his sister the way he did.

“How’s Max?” Charles asked, Lucas knowing the doctor couldn’t answer, not without speaking to Susan Hargrove first.

“She won’t wake up,” Lucas sobbed.

Sue hugged him tightly. “Her body needs to heal whatever was done to her, so it’s shut down until it can function. Okay, baby?”

Lucas nodded.

Steve watched the touching scene in awe. He was about to go home back to Eddie when he came face to face to an angry looking Robin.

“Robin!” he cried and swept her up in a hug. “You’re safe. Is Nancy okay? Max got hurt, but Lucas and Erica are going to be okay.”

“Nancy is fine,” Robin said, “and I did hear about Max. I hope she’ll pull through.” She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. “But where do you think you’re going?”

“Back to my soulmate?” Steve asked with a lopsided grin.

“Not until you get your sides patched up properly and you get your back looked at.”

Steve opened his mouth to argue but knew it was futile. With a sigh he dug into his wallet and handed her a dollar. “See if you can get some quarters so you can let my soulmate know I’m getting looked at?”

She took the dollar and nodded. She spotted a vending machine and got a candy bar and the change she need for the pay phone.

Steve went up to a nurse and pulled up his shirt. “I need medical attention?”

She looked at the oozing bandages and then back up at him. She let out a long suffering sigh. And she told him to follow her. Steve did as he was told.

As she was stitching him up, she noticed the bats on his right forearm. It was pulsating black.

“You got yourself a truemate?” she asked.

Steve looked at the bats and nodded.

She chewed on her lip a moment and then said, “It’s that boy, isn’t it? The one everyone says done those murders?”

He just looked away.

“I’m not a superstitious woman,” she continued, “but my daddy was medical examiner for years, and let me tell you, there is no way one person could have done the damage the cops are saying was done to those poor kids.”

“You don’t think he did it?” Steve asked warily.

The nurse shook her head. “No I don’t. And you shouldn’t either. All this nonsense that Carver boy was spouting about your boy having demon powers or some shit, then why were there any survivors? If he could kill that McKinney boy with his mind than why did Carver and that other boy live to tell the tale?”

Steve just blinked at her in astonishment.

“And if Chief Hopper had been alive he would have put a stop to this bullshit before it even got going,” she insisted. She tapped his arm. “There, you’re done. I’ll have a doctor come in and subscribe you pain killers and give you instructions on how to take care of it.”

She yanked off her gloved and nodded curtly before vanishing out the door.

Steve didn’t have to wait long for the doctor to arrive. He went over how to take care of the stitches, when to come back and have them removed, and how to apply the lotion on his back to prevent scarring.

He nodded, taking the papers the doctor gave him as he wandered back out to the hospital waiting room.

There Robin was waiting for him, arms crossed, glaring at her parents. Almost as if she was daring them to deny her this, but from what Steve could tell, they were quietly waiting, too.

Steve called out to her and suddenly he an armful of his best friend.

“Careful,” he muttered. “I’ve got stitches now.”

She smacked his arm. “See? I told you needed to see the doctor. Now let’s get you home.”

Robin’s mom slipped into the driver’s seat of Steve’s bimmer and drove him to the pharmacy to get his medicines. Then she drove to his house where Robin and her dad were waiting.

“Take care of yourself,” Robin said into the huge, but gentle hug she gave him. “I want twice daily updates and if I miss one, I will hunt you for sport.”

Steve gave her a jaunty salute. “I’ve got someone who will take good care of me.”

“He better.”

Steve slipped into the house and sighed in relief as the pain in his arm subsided entirely. That meant Eddie was here.

And sure enough, Eddie came out of the front room and kissed him deeply.

“Are you okay?” he asked, cradling Steve’s cheek in his hand.

Steve nodded, leaning into the warmth of the touch. “I’ve got stitches and pain medicines and weird smelling lotions for my road rash.” He paused for a second. “Can it still be called road rash if I didn’t get it on a road?”

Eddie just shrugged. “I mean when you get it on a carpet it’s called rug rash, so...”

Steve frowned. “Rodent rash? Because bats are flying rodents?”

Eddie threw back his had and laughed. “Yeah, babe. Rodent rash.”

He bullied food into Steve and got him to lay down and sleep. It was a good thing Steve slept on his stomach as it was considering how torn up his back was.

Eddie radioed everyone he could reach and told all the news as far as Steve knew it.

Max’s condition was the biggest loss felt by everyone. Knowing that Lucas and Erica were fine, that Steve was fine, that settled a lot of the nerves that had been sparking through the Party.

Now all they had to do was wait.

****

Steve woke up the next morning to Eddie watching the news in the front room.

“What are they saying?” he murmured as he sat down next to him on the sofa.

“An earthquake,” Eddie murmured. “A fucking big one. Never mind there aren’t any tectonic plates for there to be an earthquake, but whatever.”

Steve didn’t know what he meant but nodded along anyway.

“How are you feeling?” Eddie asked after a moment or two of them just watching the videos of the destruction of their small town.

“I’m alright,” Steve said, leaning his head on Eddie’s shoulder. “I’m just glad you’re safe.”

“How’s Lucas?”

Steve sat back up. “He’s fine. Or as fine as he can be considering. His soulmark is still there, but it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. It looks like a zombie or some shit, all green and pussy.”

Eddie grimaced. “That sucks.”

Then an ad came on saying for all those that need aid or for people who wanted to donate to come to the high school.

“I don’t have much of my own,” Steve murmured, “but I think I want to donate.”

Eddie nodded.

They went up to Steve’s bedroom and began sorting things. Clothes he didn’t wear anymore or didn’t fit for one reason or another. Steve really didn’t have a lot to give considering his parents took away anything they thought he had outgrown. Even before he had actually outgrown it.

Eddie’s heart ached for this boy who waited his whole life for someone to love him unconditionally. He made a vow then and there to be that for Steve.

****

The next day had Steve picking up Robin and Dustin to go to the high school. He pulled up next to Nancy and she got out of her mom’s car.

They all unpacked their donations and went in.

Robin and Steve went up to volunteer. She lady in charge eyed them warily but put Steve in charge of sorting the clothes and putting aside the stuff that was unusable. Then she put Robin with Vickie at the sandwich station.

Steve couldn’t hear what the two girls were saying but judging from the bright smile on Vickie’s face, and soft, shy smile on Robin’s that they had finally got on the same page.

Steve smiled and looked down at the little bats on his forearm. It was a little dark, but not the massive wound from their run in with the Upside Down.

Perhaps it was the danger they both were in that made it so angry.

Steve looked up and saw Wayne Munson taking down a missing poster for Eddie. His hand went up to guitar pick necklace that Eddie had given him when he got home from the hospital.

Suddenly he had an idea.

He got one of the stickers they were using to mark the non-clothing items for donation and stuck it to one side of the pick. He wrote something down really quick and walked over to Wayne.

“Mr Munson?” he asked gently. Even though he was sure of who he was because Nancy had described him, he didn’t want to presume.

Wayne looked up at him, his bloodshot and weary. “Yes, and you are?”

Steve closed his eyes and opened them slowly. “I’m Steve Harrington, your nephew is–was my soulmate.”

Wayne’s hand went to his mouth as tears threatened to spill.

Steve handed him the pick. “He sacrificed himself to save a lot of people, Mr. Munson. He was so brave. I think he’d want you to have it.”

Wayne nodded and Steve went back to sorting the clothes. He watched as Wayne’s rough fingers caught on the sticker on the back and turn the pick over.

His eyes went wide and met Steve’s. Steve winked but went back to working as if nothing had happened.

In as tiny writing as Steve could muster, he wrote: ALIVE, SAFE, HOME

He hoped it would give Eddie’s uncle the peace he needed for the time being.

****

Epilogue

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[queenie-ofthe-void]

Tiger Club (part 2)

Steddie || ~1.6k words || rating: M || tags: single-dad steve harrington, teacher eddie munson, teacher chrissy cunningham, eddie and chrissy are best friends, steve harrington is dustin and max's dad, dustin and max are twins, meet cute, humor and fluff

Part 1 || Part 2 (you are here!) || Part 3 || ao3

~~~

Weeks go by, and Eddie always seems to miss Steve’s pick up days. Chrissy’s only seen him a few times, but both her and Eddie have been privileged with the presence of almost every other adult family member in the twins’ lives.

Aunt Robin picks them up most days. She always feigns exasperation at Dustin’s boundless energy and Max’s sassy jokes, but laughs every time they tackle her to the ground. Eddie was surprised to find out she actually lives with the kids and their mysterious father. He considered asking her more about the situation, but decided it wasn’t his business. 

However, he did find out from Chrissy that Robin and Steve went to the same high school but ran in different crowds. The two reconnected working at Hawkins Hospital, Robin as an interpreter and Steve as a paramedic. They bonded over a particularly difficult patient who’d come in through Emergency and didn’t want someone like Robin working with him, not realizing– as Robin had joked– that Steve was someone like Robin too. 

The more Eddie learns about the duo, the more it reminds him of his relationship with Chrissy. It’s at least a small comfort to know they’re not alone in this backwards town.

Aunt Nancy and Uncle Jonathan are the next most frequent visitors. He learned Nancy is a journalist at the Hawkins Post, but is looking to get hired working remotely at a bigger paper like The Chicago Times or Indianapolis Journal. Jonathan is a free-lance photographer, sometimes working for Nancy or the Post, but mostly shoots weddings and family photos. They seem nice enough, although he once caught Jonathan checking him out in the same way Robin had, glancing between Eddie and his own wife with a smirk on his face. 

The nerve of these people checking him out, leaving him flushed and spluttering when they aren’t even interested.

Hell, he even got to meet Dustin and Max’s grandparents before meeting their mysterious and elusive dad.

“Munson,” Jim Hopper, Hawkins Chief of Police, the twins’ adopted grandfather, scowled at him. He looked about the same as the last time Eddie had seen him, maybe a few more greys in his mustache and lines around his eyes. Easier to see the fine details when Eddie’s not cuffed in the backseat making faces at him in the rearview mirror.

Jesus Christ, is he lucky Hopper only ever brought him back home to Wayne for dealing instead of throwing him in a jail cell for the weekend. Eddie was twenty the last time the Chief picked him up, almost a decade ago now. He practically tossed Eddie in the backseat, drove them both out to the quarry, sat him down, handed him a beer, and explained in fine detail the differences between being a juvenile delinquent and an actual felon. Needless to say Eddie quit dealing and decided his calling was more educational.

“Oh Hop, leave the poor boy alone.” The small woman next to them playfully back-hands the Chief’s beer belly to get him to back off. “I’m Joyce, the kids’ grandma. And you must be Mr. Munson! We’ve heard so much about you.”

“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Hopper,” he says, unsure of how to navigate this extremely awkward interaction. The Chief’s stern glare hasn’t left Eddie’s face since he stepped out of the car. “I, uhh, wasn’t aware that you had family, Chief?”

The man grunts, but uncrosses his arms, shoving one hand in his front pocket and wrapping the other around his wife. “Steve’s not my son, but I’ve been looking after that boy since I picked him up for his first speeding ticket. Just a few years before the kids, back when he was dating Nancy.”

“Wait, wait, wait a second,” Eddie interrupts, shocked “Nancy, as in Auntie Nancy and Uncle Jonathan?”

“Jonathan’s my boy,” Joyce answers Eddie’s slack-jawed confusion. “Nancy and Jonathan met just after her and Steve broke up, but they’re all still good friends, obviously.”

“Yeah, obviously.” Eddie zones out a bit, trying to connect the dots in the tangled web of Max and Dustin Harrington’s family life. “Wait, wouldn’t that make Steve my age? And if you raised him–” he points to Hopper accusingly– “then that means he went to school here. With me. So why don’t I know him?”

But Hopper’s already shaking his head. “Kid went to the private school two towns over. Parents have an estate on the opposite side of town from Forest Hills, just barely inside my jurisdiction. I’m not surprised you two didn’t cross paths, he was only ever here for sports, which–” he gestures at Eddie’s everything, and yeah, Eddie gets it. But an estate?

This is the most information he’s been able to dig up so far. He looks back to the playground where Chrissy is still trying to rally the twins’ spilled bags. It’s an opportunity Eddie refuses to pass on.

“And the twins?” He turns back and just catches the end of a silent conversation between the couple, eyeing each other while glancing at Eddie. They stop when they notice him watching, and Hop sighs.

“Dustin and Max came around just after his senior year. The kid was set up for a full-ride to Indy on a swim scholarship his dad paid for. The mom was a girl he met at a party, and he didn’t see her again until she dropped them off on his doorstep. Parents kicked him out, then I took them in. Same week I picked you up for the last time,” Hop adds on with a laugh, like this entire conversation is chock full of cosmic coincidence. “What a hell of a week.”

Eddie tumbles the new information in his head over and over throughout the next few days. He feels himself growing bitter that someone like Steve Harrington exists. Someone who sounds too good to be true. Fake, like the many charming princes and noble knights he’s woven into his campaigns over the years. Except it’s hard to deny when it’s not just the kids, and Auntie Robin, Uncle Jonathan and Aunt Nancy, or hell, even the grandparents. 

It’s Chrissy. Every time Chrissy gets to talk to Steve, she raves about him until Eddie starts fake gagging just to get her to stop. She typically rolls her eyes, but he’s sick of hearing about how great this guy is and at this point, he’s not even sure if he wants to meet him. No one’s this great.

“Don’t you think it’s weird,” Eddie rants, like he has been for the past ten minutes, “that he can’t even be bothered to pick up his own children? And it’s like you’ve said, Chris, even when he does pick them up he’s always late! What kind of father is that, really?”

He’s halfway through his second margarita, and he’s lost track of the conversation entirely, not sure how they transitioned from Chrissy’s hinge matches to Steve fucking Harrington. Again.

Chrissy frowns at him, and yeah, he might’ve went a bit too far there. Maybe he’s a little sensitive about topics revolving around bad dads.

“Just because you’re hungry doesn’t mean you get to be a dick, Eddie,” she shoots back, pushing the basket of chips closer to him as they wait for their food. “It’s not my fault you decided to switch to detention yesterday and missed him because you were cold. I told you it was going to be chilly out and you still didn’t wear a jacket.”

“I was wearing a jacket, Chris,” he pouts.

“An actual, warm jacket. Not that threadbare, leather monstrosity you got from Goodwill for ten dollars. Just because you cover the holes with patches doesn’t mean the holes aren’t there.” 

He lets out an undignified shriek, but she continues on to the actual conversation, used to ignoring his dramatics. “You know it’s not the same as with your dad, or mine. Steve really is a great guy, even if you refuse to admit it. I think you’re just jealous you haven’t met him yet.”

“Of course I want to meet him,” he snaps back, but Chrissy just grins in response. “I have to listen to everyone talk about how great he is, and I’m just supposed to believe it all on face-value? Honestly, I’m sick of hearing about him, and if we keep talking about this it’s gonna ruin my buzz.”

Eddie refuses to believe a former trust-fund kid who hosted parties at his estate just to act like a fuck-boy actually leveled up to become a loving single father who’s adored by his family and friends, saves literal lives every day, and is one of the only queer people in this god forsaken town. 

Not that he spends his free time thinking about a random guy he’s gathered enough general information on to build a well-rounded NPC. A disowned nobleman cast out from his kingdom into squalor. With the help of the lonely prince’s new found family, he redeems himself by serving as Hawkins’ most beloved Paladin. 

Again, not that he’s actually building this character for next year’s campaign or anything, it just goes to show how much people won’t stop bragging about this guy, and Eddie’s over it.

“You’d really like him,” Chrissy says, putting an end to his stewing. She’s smiling like maybe she knows something he doesn’t, and it reminds him of the same smiles he’s gotten from Robin and Nanna Joyce.

“Yeah, well I’d actually have to meet him to like him.”

[cecilysass]

The Penultimate Partner Episode: Analyzing the Second-to-Last Episodes of Seasons 3-7

So I was thinking about the show’s tendency to do an episode that is explicitly about the Partnership—about the deep abiding bonds between Mulder and Scully—right before the season finale.

This doesn’t seem to happen in season 1 and 2 (the penultimate episodes are Roland and Our Town, respectively, which don’t seem to play the same role). And something different is happening in season 8 and 9, so I don't think they fit as well.

But during the show’s peak popularity, seasons 3-7, the second-to-last episode seems to be setting up baseline emotional stakes for whatever plotline is about to hit. These episodes are giving us the state of the partnership, reminding us how devoted they are to one another. They also tend to have to do with one or both partners having a distorted perception on reality that requires the other partner's intervention in some way. I’m calling them the Penultimate Partner episodes.

So can we look at the themes of each of these Partnership episodes and see development over time? I think yes. It’s gonna be long. I rewatched them all, so buckle up.

Season 3: Wetwired - partnership as trust Season 4: Demons - partnership as loyalty Season 5: Folie a Deux - partnership as shared madness Season 6: Field Trip - partnership as touchstones Season 7: Je Souhaite - partnership as happiness

Season 3: Wetwired  (right before Talitha Cumi)

This episode, like several in the Penultimate Partner episode category, involves a X-file that distorts perception. Because Scully can’t trust her own senses due to the mind control, she also can’t trust Mulder, calling into question the key tenet of their partnership. (And by season three, they have definitely established trust as the bedrock.)

Her gradual mistrust of Mulder in this episode is tense and painful; you can see on her face how much she argues with herself about it even as her mind is tricking her. Others who fall victim to this mind control phenomenon wind up murdering their romantic partner, but in the end of the episode, when they’re discussing what happened in the hospital, they both seem pretty unsurprised that Scully’s paranoia focused on Mulder. They both know, late season three, how crucial trust is between them. They understand that it’s Scully’s worst fear that Mulder would betray her. It’s not even news to them.

What Mulder’s worst fear might be is also hinted at, although it’s unsaid. He’s furious that her life is put at risk by the mysterious informant. When Mulder believes Scully may be dead and he’s going to identify her body, his reaction is chilling. He seems to completely shut down emotionally, not even showing any reaction to the Gunmen. Tellingly, when he is offered a choice between getting answers and going to ID Scully’s body, he doesn’t hesitate—he chooses Scully. (Sometimes people claim Mulder doesn’t show this kind of commitment to her until much later, even until Home Again in season 10, so it’s interesting to see it so unequivocal here.)   

I want to say that Scully’s anxiety about trusting Mulder in this episode is foreshadowing aspects of the cancer arc in the next season, but I don’t think that’s really what’s happening. This episode seems more like an entirely season 3 cap to the Anasazi / Blessing Way / Paperclip storyline, especially the murder of Melissa. Scully’s paranoia calls back Mulder’s in Anasazi, and Scully explicitly blames Mulder for her sister’s murder when she’s drawn a gun on him. Even just the fact that we're there with Maggie, who has a picture of Melissa displayed prominently, tells me that loss is supposed to be on both partners' minds. (Actually, the interaction between Mulder, Scully and Maggie is pretty amazing in this scene; they’re an emotionally complex trio who seem to be communicating on some other level. I love how when Mulder and Maggie are talking to freaked-out Scully they almost sound strangely unreal, almost like they really are speaking falsely. It allows us to imagine the scene as it looks from Scully’s point-of-view, as a massive betrayal.)

Wetwired is, technically, a mytharc episode, as this whole mind control thing seems to tie back into X and the Syndicate. Personally I think the episode’s ending, emphasizing the mytharc-related plot and X’s involvement and whatever tf was happening there, was a little misguided. For my tastes they would have done better to play up the more personal, character-based themes a little more. But I also think this episode was the first real Penultimate Partner episode, and it was setting some patterns that were going to be expanded on.

Season 4: Demons (before Gethsemane)

From the cold open, we can already tell this is already a more personal episode than Wetwired. Mulder is the one having perception problems now; he wakes from a disturbing dream, covered in blood, muddled memory. This is also technically a mytharc episode, but much more concerned with direct impact on character than Wetwired was. 

Scully instantly rushes to Mulder’s aid—walks right into his shower, for heaven’s sake—and absolutely never wavers in loyalty to him, even when he looks real, real guilty and a "rational" person would be suspicious. She is in fierce, must-protect-Mulder mode throughout this entire episode, from the moment she shows up palpating his head with her hands to her back-off behavior with the cops to her badass cold “I know what you do” comment to Dr. Goldstein. She also helps Mulder see through his distorted perception, telling him "this is not the way to the truth" as he holds a gun on her.

In this Penultimate Partner episode, we see something more than simple trust going on, although there’s trust, too. Maybe the word is loyalty or devotion. We see Mulder coming apart and Scully completely and utterly devoted to him. It’s actually very clear foreshadowing for the following week’s episode, Gethsemane. Mulder isn’t stable, and he needs Scully to keep him from “los[ing] his course,” as she says in Demons’ end narration. Gethsemane will follow up on the Mulder losing-his-course idea, and also will explore the idea that Scully’s bottomless support of Mulder isn’t always good for her. (This idea is voiced especially by Bill.) 

There are some ways in which this episode is a neat little bookend to Wetwired. In Wetwired, Scully flees to her mother’s house, desperate and paranoid; in Demons, Mulder, similarly unhinged, seeks out his mother at her house. In Wetwired, Scully sees things that aren’t there, and in Demons, it’s definitely implied that Mulder may be seeing things in his past that weren’t actually there. In Wetwired, Scully pulls a gun on Mulder, and in Demons, Mulder pulls one on Scully. 

I adore this episode, even though it’s definitely vulnerable to the critique that Mulder acts like a self-obsessed loon and Scully a hopeless enabler lol. Especially because it comes before the Gethsemane / Redux three parter, I wish the episode would have explicitly connected his behavior to the cancer arc, as I feel like that would have made his wild choices seem more understandable. If he felt like he needed to find answers faster because he knew Scully’s time was running out and he saw it all tied together with her fate, then we would get why he was acting so rashly. It would also tie more nicely into Gethsemane, which misleads the audience into thinking Mulder has killed himself, in part, because he believes she’s been given cancer to make him believe. But again, I love this episode. Scully showing up and putting that blanket around Mulder when he’s shaking. Her hugging him at the end when he’s desolate on the floor. This shows a partnership that’s been through Paper Hearts and Memento Mori—that’s moved beyond trust alone.

Season 5: Folie a Deux (before The End)

This is another episode about perception—about one partner seeing things the other can’t. Unlike in Wetwired or Demons, however, in this episode the altered perception actually represents the real truth, something everyone else fails to understand. The episode plays around with the tropes of earlier episodes like Wetwired, at first encouraging us to think that it's a delusion that Pincus is a monster, but then convincing us, through Mulder’s eyes, that the delusion is actually reality.  

As other people have observed, this episode ends up being a nice little metaphor for the whole show: Mulder knowing what no one else does, being ostracized and considered insane, asking Scully to find evidence to corroborate him and ultimately convincing her to believe him and see what he sees. Their partnership is, quite precisely, a madness shared by two. 

It’s a monster of the week, not a mytharc, so there’s no distraction of elaborate mytharc plot, just characters and monster. And this is a Vince Gilligan operation, so our focus is definitely on character. From the first scene with Mulder and Scully, we sense that we’re going to be talking about the partnership. Skinner gives them an assignment in Chicago that Mulder doesn’t think is worth it, and he complains in a particularly self-centered way to Scully, which she observes (“You’re saying I a lot.”) The episode is going to be very explicit that while Mulder might be monster boy, they are in this unhinged partnership situation together. Another important moment comes later, when Scully is calling the perp crazy for thinking he saw a monster, and Mulder says, “Well, I saw it, too.” Scully’s careful about-face after that, her delicate avoidance of implying she thinks Mulder is actually crazy, is part of the dance they’re doing at this late season five stage of their partnership. She doesn’t quite believe him, but she doesn’t knee-jerk not believe him either. 

And the foreshadowing of what’s to come in this one, whoo boy. Most obviously, we must acknowledge that 1013 knew exactly what they were doing when Mulder tells Scully “you’re my one in five billion.” A mere seven days from now, a mysterious beautiful ex who believes his theories is going to show up to immediately cast doubt on that claim. And this episode is also toying with the question of whether Scully actually does always back Mulder up when it’s important, when she has to accept she saw something illogical. At the end, does she tell Skinner she actually saw a giant bug in Mulder’s hospital room? We don’t know, but I think it’s implied she doesn’t. That’s all presaging what will happen in The Beginning coming off of Fight the Future. It’s Scully’s little way of resisting the madness, but it also hurts Mulder and damages the partnership, which will be a problem in season six. 

Season 6: Field Trip (before Biogenesis)

Full disclosure: this is my favorite episode. So I’m going to make some big claims about it. This is the ultimate Penultimate Partner episode—the one that best knits together what it wants to say about their partnership and what it wants to establish for the finale. It's a monster-of-the-week episode (another Vince Gilligan ep, with John Shiban) but refers to the mytharc often. It’s also one of the best episodes about their partnership, period. 

This is yet another episode about distorted perception. This time, however, under the influence of a giant mushroom, both partners are unable to perceive clearly, to determine what is real and what is a lie. And when they’re confused, they critically turn to one another to help them see what the truth is.

Coming off of season six, the partnership is rocky. Mulder is frustrated that after so many theories of his have borne out, he still can’t get the benefit of the doubt from Scully, something he explicitly says in the dialogue here. Scully has felt like she’s not been trusted or heard, like Mulder has turned to others (Diana Fowley, for example) rather than his partner.

This is an episode about how they absolutely need one another to be able to make sense of the world—that individually each of their points-of-view are not enough. In Mulder’s hallucination, Scully accepts his claims about alien life forms too completely, not applying enough skepticism, not pushing back against him. In Scully’s hallucination, a world without Mulder, everyone is unacceptably unquestioning of the status quo, refusing to dig deeper, lacking Mulder’s critical acumen and drive. Neither partner likes the feeling of being unopposed, and it makes both of them suspicious about the hallucination’s reality. They may think they want their own view to prevail, but they need one another to be a whole person.

The theme of what’s real and what’s not – and needing one another to discern the truth–is exactly what is picked up and developed further in the Biogenesis-Sixth Extinction-Amor Fati arc that follows this. Scully’s skepticism has to stretch to incorporate more of Mulder’s worldview to make sense of what she sees in the Ivory Coast, and of course, Mulder calls on Scully’s worldview to see through his misleading dream world in Amor Fati. In fact, you could argue Field Trip is really about the idea that Mulder and Scully are one another’s touchstones—the people they need to know what’s right and real. 

Incidentally, this episode also plays around with some of season 6’s other subtextual throughlines: Mulder and Scully’s anxieties about possibly entering a non-platonic relationship, their unease about what a normal, domestic life might even be for them. For the entire episode they’re directly compared and juxtaposed with the Schiffs, a young married couple who died on Brown Mountain. The Schiffs are a tall man and a redheaded woman. They even die hallucinating lying together on a hotel bed after she asked him to “hold her” (although I do seriously doubt 1013 was intentionally foreshadowing a full year ahead). The last shot is of Mulder reaching out to take Scully’s hand across the ambulance, suggesting a kind of partnership beyond just, you know, partnership. Which takes us to the next season.  

Season 7: Je Souhaite (before Requiem)

Truthfully, I don’t think this episode fits quite as well in the Penultimate Partner category. It doesn’t share some of the same traits as these other episodes—it’s not quite as notably about perception, for instance—and it’s not fundamentally about the partnership in the same way. But it does end up commenting on their partnership (even their relationship, really) as part of its theme, so I think we can include it—especially because its position right before Requiem ends up being important. 

Je Souhaite (btw, written and directed by Vince Gilligan) has a bit of an unsettled feeling to it because it was kind of treading water, waiting to see what happened with DD and the series. Nothing too monumental could happen with the partnership or the plot because it wasn’t clear to anyone what would happen next with the show: whether it would end or continue, whether DD would be involved or not.

So we have a story about Mulder and Scully making peace with not having a significant impact on the world—e.g. not bringing about world peace, not introducing invisible bodies to science. Instead, they are content to delightfully share a beer and comment that they have made one another “pretty happy” (as Scully says about Mulder). Through the jinni character, they seem to take the lesson that they can enjoy being with one another, accept the simple happiness that their relationship brings them. Rather than wish for success that comes too easily, they take joy in the little things with one another.

Comparing this episode to the Penultimate Partner episodes that come before, we can really see how Mulder and Scully’s dynamic has evolved by season seven. We have a Scully who is much more open to supernatural phenomena, for example, and whose skepticism seems more like a reflex or a defense mechanism now. Scully’s move towards belief is partially reflected in the plot of the episode: the X-file here really isn’t even science fiction. It is just straight up fantasy or magical realism. Aside from Scully's brief mention of a disease to explain what happened to the mouthless man in the cold open, no plausible scientific explanation for the jinni's long life or wishes is really even floated.

Scully is delighted by the discovery of the invisible body, and Mulder is visibly delighted by her delight. He’s also frustrated by her retreat into doubt when the body disappears, of course. But even the reversal into her old skepticism is half-hearted, as she soon after she's engaging in discussion with Mulder about what his final wish was. This is consistent with the overall blurring of the old hardline believer-skeptic dynamic we see in season 7. It’s also peeking ahead to Scully’s coming role as resident basement believer in season 8. 

The last scene, with the beers and Caddyshack, is meant to be a callback to djinni Jenn’s comment that she wishes she could “live my life moment by moment... enjoying it for what it is instead of... instead of worrying about what it isn't.” Mulder, we see, is taking a cue from her. (And good for him, as we almost never see these characters do this. Except on rare baseball-related occasions.)

However, this episode’s position right before Requiem—and right before the events of season 8—ends up giving this scene a real bittersweet bite. We know, after Requiem, that they were probably a romantic couple at this time. We know, after Requiem, that this time is going to be their last happy time together for a long while. Later in season 8, we learn that one lingering wish of Scully’s in season 7 is that she wanted to conceive a child with Mulder. And of course we know, after Requiem, that she gets her wish—but with a vicious catch, with a terrible side effect, much like what happens with the jinni’s wishes. 

So that’s my academic thesis on that. I know others have pointed out the existence of this type of episode before. What did I miss? Do you think I am wrong to leave out seasons 1, 2, 8, and 9? Why do we think these episodes focus so much on distorted perception? Interested to hear others’ thoughts (if they make it through this lol).

[kas-eddie-munson]

final part of my disabled steddie AU~

Note that this part has implied child abuse/neglect

i also posted the completed story on AO3

Part 1 ~ Part 2 ~ Part 3 ~ Part 4 ~ Part 5 ~~~

Christmas came and went.  New Years.

Max was released from the hospital.

Eddie was worried about her.  Her mom still lived nearby.  He never saw either of them around, at the store, in the neighborhood, hanging out with the other kids.

Until he overheard her mom on his porch one night with Wayne and another neighbor, having a conversation he wasn’t supposed to hear.

Eddie told Steve, who told Hopper.

Max stayed with the Byers family, after that.

Eddie visited her, sometimes.  She was pale, hair cut short, almost like El’s used to be.  She had a power chair, but it was harder for her to get in and out than it was for Eddie with his, so she stayed in bed most of the time.  She acted different, moreso than she did in the hospital.

She was silent.  Eyes sunken, vacant.

Jocye’s eyes were big, frantic, round the clock.  Her other kids were withdrawn.  He wondered if things didn’t work out, where else Max would go.  Did she have any other family?

Would that family be worse?

Eddie thought about about that conversation on the porch a lot.  It flashed through his head without permission.

What Wayne said.  Or more accurately, what he didn’t say.  What he didn’t do.  Wayne’s house had been a refuge for Eddie his whole life.  It was starting to feel more like a cell.

He supposed he was lucky to have a cell at all.

~~~

Eddie called Steve late one night.  Asked if they could drive somewhere together.  It took a while to get the words clear enough through the static of the phone, but Eddie was more patient than he used to be, these days.

Eddie gave instructions and Steve drove, landing them in a mostly empty parking lot on the outskirts of town.  It was a post office, he was pretty sure.  Closed.  It was quiet out here.

Steve helped Eddie into his chair, and Eddie lead the two of them to the edge of the road, bending over carefully and grabbing a handful of chunky gravel.

“Wayne taught me to drive here, years ago now.”

Eddie threw a small rock from his pile down against the pavement.  Steve picked some up and did the same.

He told Steve about Max, in more detail than before.  What her mom said about her.  How their neighbor consoled her through it, told her she was a good mother, that it was ‘complicated.’

It was okay to just let Max wither away, he supposed.  Because it was complicated.  Because it was harder, now.

As though Max wanted to be stuck like this.  Unable to take care of herself even though she knew how.  Even though she’d probably been taking care of herself longer than kids her age should.

How he was still worried.  How the Byers couldn’t seem to keep up with her care, either.  How unfair it was that she was stuck like this.  He threw one rock so hard against the ground that it shattered.

Steve told him he was worried too.

He took Eddie’s hand and squeezed it.

~~~

Steve made some phone calls, with Robin’s help.  Finally got ahold of Owens.

Max had a nurse visiting her most days, now.

~~~

Max opened up slowly.

January bled into February bled into March.

She told him more about what happened with her mom.

He told her it wasn’t her fault.

The Byers house was easier to navigate, now.  The result of more phone calls.  Sometimes, El told him, Max asked to play cards with her.

~~~

In April, Steve told Eddie how tired he was.  How his hearing aids didn’t help, much.  How it still sounded different, now.  How much effort it takes to hear.

Eddie held his hand this time.

~~~

On the Fourth of July, Steve took Eddie back to that parking lot.  He set up a picnic blanket and a lawnchair, and Eddie sat next to him while they ate watermelon.  Sometimes they’d spot fireworks in the distance.

Eddie kissed him, and he tasted like something he could trust.

~~~

Max asked Eddie, one day, in almost a whisper, “How do you live like this?”

It didn’t hurt the way it did when strangers asked, when they told him they wouldn’t bother to keep going in his place.  He knew it was different, with Max.  He knew when she said ‘you,’ she didn’t mean Eddie.

He thought about it.  Eddie didn’t want to lie to her.  Tell her that it was easy, or that it would all work out when he didn’t know that it would.  Eddie still couldn’t go out in public most places. Sometimes it took him a week to recover from a good day.  Sometimes he felt so separate from the rest of the world he ached with it.

He decided on, “sometimes, people help you.  Sometimes, they stay.”