#id call parking but they’re closed. BECAUSE OF THE STORM.

[badolmen]

*last winter* *never got ticketed/severely buried/otherwise had a problem with parking in my designed disability spot even during storm warnings*

*this year* noooo don’t park in the disability parking spot 🥺🥺🥺 I’ll have to have you towed!!!! Drive up to the sidewalk across the lot 💞💞💞 and I’ll plow around you ☺️☺️☺️ haha sorry don’t wanna bury you so I’ll call to have you towed instead if you don’t 💜💜💜 thanks oxoxox

[xkaileo]

Hi! For the one shot request, would love to see something with animals - saw a very cute prompt when I googled ideas (I have so little creativity which is why I read so much!) where one of them works at an animal shelter and the other comes in to pet the cats when they are sad. Maybe something along those lines? Thanks so much for considering! ❤️❤️❤️

Ahh I'm so, so glad you sent in this request! I had a lot of fun writing it, honestly.

Growing Felines

"I'm not going to make it in today, it seems," Shisui said over the line. "The snow's just too thick, and my car won't start." Oh, Sakura could not believe this. She'd struggled to make it here through all of the snow, and now she was stuck here alone?

"Damn," she said over the phone. "Kakashi can't make it in today, either." Sakura wasn't a fan of working alone at the shelter, but it seemed she had no choice today. Her coworkers, Shisui and Kakashi, were stuck at home in the snow, and Sakura was the only one who'd managed to make it to the shelter for the day. Curse her managerial position! With the weather outside getting worse, she felt she would be staying overnight with the animals to make sure it didn't get any worse. They tended to get upset when the weather turned sour like this.

"You gonna be okay there by yourself?" Shisui asked, a hint of concern in his voice.

"Yeah, yeah, I'll be fine. Maybe one of the volunteers will make it in, so I won't be on my own all day." Part of her was hoping that she might see that one volunteer today… There was one boy that always came in. Sasuke Uchiha. He was quiet, withdrawn, and rarely talked, but Sakura noticed when he was with the cats, he seemed to smile a lot. She'd never asked why he came so often, but he was one of their most active volunteers. He never seemed to have much to say, though.

"Hmm… maybe." Sakura frowned at the tone in his voice. "Well, good luck, Haruno!" With that, Shisui hung up the phone, leaving Sakura wondering just what crazy idea Shisui had. She knew Sasuke and Shisui were related, but… no, it couldn't be that. Could it?

Shaking the thought off, she went to do a headcount of all of the cats, making notes as to which kennels needed a bit of cleaning and the conditions of the cats that they'd noticed were ill. Most of them were doing much better, and there weren't any that had severe conditions that would need immediate veterinary attention. Hana lived not too far from the shelter, but if Sakura could avoid having to drag Dr. Inuzuka out into the snow for anything, she would. They'd just have to make do with phone consultations if they had any questions.

---------------------------------------------

Sasuke hated the snow.

He hated it because it reminded him of that day. After all, he'd been stuck there for days and days. The memories plagued him for years. A snowstorm where no police could get out, and a poor, tormented little boy stuck there with his murdered parents because no one could get out there to help him. Sure, years of therapy had made him better than previously, but days like today were days that he wanted to be out of the house and distracted.

Even despite the terrible weather.

Thus, he made a point to bundle up well and make his way to his truck, thankful it had four-wheel drive that could carve through the snow with ease. He'd just go for a drive around the city, pick up a few things, and come back. No other plans. Why bother with them? He would've preferred not to talk to anyone today anyway.

As if on cue, while he was sitting in the driver's seat waiting for his truck to warm up a little more, his phone rang. He pulled it out, frowning at the caller ID. What the hell would Shisui want today? Shisui was one of the few people who knew what today was, and yet he was calling? He should have known the kind of mood Sasuke would be in. Sighing, he opened the phone and held it to his ear.

"What?" He asked, clearly grumpy.

"Ouch, don't bite my head off, cous'," Shisui defended over the other line. "I just wanted to ask you something. Just a little personal favour, if you could." A personal favour? Today? Well, in all fairness, Sasuke was one of the only people who had a vehicle that could traverse through weather like this.

"What do you want?" He wasn't going to give Shisui an answer just yet. He'd hear him out, at the very least.

"Look, you know how garbage my car is in this weather. I'm stuck at home, and so is Kakashi, according to her. Sakura's at the shelter all by herself. Could ya check on her, maybe?" Wait… Sakura. That was the girl that worked at the shelter with him. Sasuke bit his lip, contemplating. Sakura was tough… she could handle things there on her own, probably.

"Sasuke~" Shisui's teasing voice rang in his ear. "I know you like her~."

"Shut up," Sasuke bit back. "I told you that in confidence." He hadn't even meant to, but Shisui, annoying as he was, had managed to get it out of him. Now he hadn't stopped teasing him about it. Then again, what wasn't to like? Sakura was cute, she was nice, she was friendly, sweet, warm, welcoming… All traits anyone would like in a girl like that.

"C'mon, Sasuke. At least check on her. You don't have to stay if you don't want to. But I am genuinely worried about her being there all alone." Sasuke drew in a deep breath, closing his eyes and releasing a sigh. Alone. Sakura was alone right now. He couldn't ignore that. What if something happened? What kind of a person would he be if something happened, and he could have done something about it?

"Fine. I'll check in on her. I'll text you. Bye." He wasn't going to listen to anything more Shisui had to say; he'd probably just tease the hell out of him. He turned on the four-wheel drive and kicked it into gear, making his way down the rural roads until he reached the shelter, swearing as he tried to find a place to park. He could see Sakura's car, but by now, the blizzard had covered it in snow; she had no hope of ever making it out of the parking lot. Shisui was right; it was worth coming here to check on Sakura if she was all alone.

Stepping out of his truck, he squinted through the snow to try and make out the door, barely able to see it through the blistering snow. He managed to move forward, checking back occasionally; the moment he couldn't see his truck, he was finally able to see the door, breathing a sigh of relief. He found it was open, struggling to pull it open against the wind and drifts that had practically barricaded it; there was at least a foot-high drift in front of it. He made it in, hearing the door slam behind him as he stared at the pink-haired girl sitting behind one of the computers.

After checking the kennels, Sakura made her way back to the main desk and worked on some paperwork when she saw a shadow outside the door. She shielded her eyes as a mess of black hair, blown around by the snow, covered the boy's face as he struggled to make it through the door. She could feel her heart pounding; who would have dared to come out in this weather? Was it someone… untrustworthy? And here she was, all alone…

He pulled his scarf down, brushing snow off his shoulders and stamping his boots to loosen the snow out of the treads. She was uncertain about his intentions but came around the desk with a concerned expression.

"Are you crazy?" She asked, mouth agape in shock. "The storm's--"

"I could ask you the same thing," Sasuke replied dryly. He unzipped his jacket, glad it was warmer inside. "You're out here all by yourself?" Okay, so maybe he had a point. She was a little crazy to have come out here on a day like today. What made her even consider it? There was no way she was going to make it out of there on her own. Hell, he wasn't even sure his vehicle would make it out of there, but he could deal with that later. He'd figure something out.

"I had to come in! Someone had to look after the cats…" She couldn't have just left them on their own. They could have gone without food or water for days, and she couldn't have that happen. Sasuke could understand that; he was only a volunteer who came to visit the cats when he was lonesome, partly at the behest of his cousin Shisui. As they stood there, the power flickered for a moment, drawing both of their attention.

"Oh, no," Sakura griped, scrambling back to the computer. It had been just a brief flicker, so the backup battery had kicked in, but she needed to get the paperwork done fast. She hit the save button, realizing she probably wouldn't have time to finish it all. At least she was caught up to a certain point; she could do it when there was more power. If the power was flickering, that meant they would lose heat… and she would have to make sure there was extra insulation.

"Look, um… I appreciate that you're here, so… do you think you could help?" Sakura's eyes were pleading. He'd planned to turn around and leave, but he couldn't ignore that look. He'd never been quite this close to her; she was prettier than he remembered. Her skin was fair, and her hair looked soft; her bangs framed her face while she'd pulled the rest up into a high ponytail. She wore red glasses as well; he could swear he'd seen her without them before.

"Sure." He knew they weren't leaving from here, but he wasn't about to say that just yet. She didn't need to know that he'd come out here almost entirely with that intention, nor did she need to know that he'd come in through that door, intending practically the same thing. He made sure to lock the door for them to leave. That way, nobody else could come in through the door unnoticed.

"Okay. We'll carry the blankets up from the basement and start packing them around the windows to keep some of the cold air out. I think there are towels there, too, so we can use those. Then we'll put some of the smaller ones inside the kennels for them to curl up under. After that, we'll make sure their food is good and boil water to keep in thermoses to top it up as the water starts to freeze. Let's see, there are six thermoses, but they're all about two litres each, so…" Sakura started doing some math in her head as they moved down the stairs, whispering to herself under her breath.

Sasuke was listening, but… he was also busy paying attention to her. Standing behind her, he could just faintly smell her shampoo as the hair in her ponytail swayed back and forth with each step. She was… kind of short, too. She had to be almost a foot shorter than he was, maybe a touch less. She also seemed to like the colour red… He could tell by the fact that she always seemed to have something red to complement her outfit. Today, it was her hair tie and her shirt; other days, it was a red headband she wore, and in the summer, he often saw her wearing red sandals or sneakers.

He followed her to the basement, following her directions to grab blankets. They made their way to the singular room that housed all the cat kennels, stuffing blankets and towels against the windows. They then moved to open each kennel individually, carefully stuffing more blankets in and refilling each of the cats' water dishes before closing them in. After that, they were left with a few more blankets as the lights went out on them, the sudden darkness surprising Sakura.

"Sasuke? Hold on-- I have a flashlight," she called, scrambling in the bag that was at her feet. She fumbled with the flashlight; Sasuke could hear where she was and crept toward her in the dark, hoping he might find her before she had to use the flashlight. As she finally found the button and turned it on, Sasuke was nearly right in front of her, causing her to squeal in surprise and jump back, startling a few of the cats.

"Sorry," he reassured, raising his hands. "I didn't mean to startle you." Sakura could feel her heart pounding in her chest, though she breathed a sigh of relief. Unfortunately, she only had one flashlight, though she had quite a few sets of batteries they could use. With the power out, their heat would be out; the building was well insulated, and they'd done extra work, not to mention there was enough food if they were stuck for a day or two--something Sakura made extra sure of during the winter months, given the shelter's location--but hopefully, they'd at least be able to shovel their way out.

"Come on. There's probably enough hot water that we can make some hot cocoa if you like." She led the way out, Sasuke following not far behind her as they found the small kitchenette. Sakura found the hot water, prepping herself a tall mug of cocoa.

"Is there any tea?" Sasuke asked, doing his best to peer into the cupboards in the dim light. "I'm not really a fan of cocoa." More accurately, he didn't like anything sweet.

"Yeah, um, there's some black tea up in the cupboard here, I think." Sakura pulled the tea down and got a mug ready for him, pouring the water over it and putting the lid on for him. She grabbed a couple of packets of honey and a couple of sugar packets for once it had steeped, grabbing a couple of snacks for the both of them as well. She opted for a few things in the fridge likely to perish first; without power, the food in there would go bad first.

They made their way back to the cats' room, stopping by one of the visitation rooms to grab a couple of bean bag chairs to sit on. If they were in the room for the cats, they could at least monitor them in case anything went wrong. Sakura handed him a small bag of chips, giving him a warm smile.

"So… you decided even in the snow to come out and visit the cats?" She was pretty curious about the reasons he'd come out. He heard the question but wasn't sure if he wanted to answer. He chewed his lip, contemplating whether he should tell her the truth or not.

"Yeah… something like that." Sakura found his mysteriousness a bit intriguing. He'd barely said a word to her any time he'd been here, except one or two in greeting or passing. She was often busy with paperwork while he was just there to visit. He spent more time talking to Kakashi and Shisui than anything. This had to be the most he'd ever spoken to her at all.

Sakura set the flashlight between them, facing upward so they could see each other. She was doing her best to read him, but she couldn't get much. Even his facial expressions gave nothing away, but he seemed… awkward. The way he spoke, it was like he was trying not to admit something. It intrigued her. She wanted to know more about him. That, and… she might have thought he was a little attractive.

Okay… a lot attractive.

"...Shisui called me," Sasuke admitted. "He said you were here alone, and… that he'd like it if I could check on you." He sipped at his tea, pleased with how it had steeped; he preferred it black and unsweetened. "I have a pretty big truck, so I was the only one able to make it out here before the snow got bad." So much for that now. His truck was probably half-buried, too. He was glad for the darkness in the room; Sakura couldn't tell that his cheeks had tinted a faint pink colour.

"You came all the way out here just to check on me, then?" Sakura felt her face heat up, at a loss for words. He nodded, which left her speechless; he looked away out of embarrassment, making her heart beat a little faster.

"Oh, wow," she commented, internally scolding herself. Talk about a lame response! "So, um… I'm guessing your truck is probably stuck now, isn't it?" Sakura reached for one of the blankets, wrapping it around herself as she shivered. She could notice the difference when the heat wasn't blowing from the vents. It was still more than warm enough, but she missed the warmth.

"Yeah. It's stuck." He didn't have to see it to know it. "So I'm… just as stuck here as you are." He didn't mind it. She seemed like good company, if nothing else. Shisui had probably planned for this. Shisui seemed to like to play matchmaker once in a while.

Sakura laughed awkwardly. "Well, um… I guess it's a good thing this wasn't like, a date or something." Oh, she was just digging herself deeper and deeper, it seemed. If Sasuke hadn't been so good at maintaining his composure, he might have choked on his tea at that statement. A date? Yeah, it… would be a pretty lame date. Wasn't it kind of like one, in a sense?

"Mm… I wouldn't really know." He sipped his tea. "So… Sakura, what do you do other than… work here?"

"Oh, not much, honestly. I live with my friend Ino, who's going to school to be a fashion designer, so I tend to, um… end up having to model whatever designs she has a lot of the time. She pays me a little for that, and I get a lot of free clothing out of it." Sasuke saw her shiver and reached for two more blankets, wrapping one of the smaller ones around himself then throwing the larger one over her before wrapping one half over himself.

"It's warmer if we're both under it." He was a little chilled, but he wasn't about to admit it. Looking at her… He could imagine her being a model. She was pretty. Very pretty.

"What about you?" Sakura asked, moving a little closer as he'd instructed. It was warmer with both of them under the blanket.

"I… write music." He'd thought about going to school for it, but it was easier to do it from home and do his research. Cheaper, too; he lived on a large acreage he'd purchased with an inheritance from his parents. With the house and the rented farmland, plus the hefty life insurance money he'd spent years living off of, he could spend years living out there. "Not much else. I live alone just down the road from the shelter, actually."

"Oh, really?" That wasn't what she expected. Musicians were always exciting types. "So you just come to visit the cats when you need inspiration?" It made sense to her. Creative types always looked for inspiration in the strangest of ways.

"No." Why did he find it so easy to talk to her? Something about the way she spoke made him want to open up to her. He chewed his lip like he was trying to hold back his words, but it was no use. "I come when… I start to feel like I'm too alone at home."

Sakura suddenly felt sad. "You don't live with anyone there? Not even your parents?" An acreage like that, she would have assumed he still lived with his parents. Maybe not a wife--they were far too young for that--but not even his parents? That seemed odd to her.

Sasuke shook his head. "I… they're not… around." He couldn't open up that much, but by his expression, Sakura figured it out. He didn't have to say anything more. There were one of two options there: either they were dead, or he never spoke to them any longer. She reached up from underneath her blanket, reaching underneath his and gently rubbing his shoulder. He looked at her, staring down not at her hand but her face. She was… quite close. She'd been the one who brought up a date. Was she… possibly interested in him? Had she said something to Shisui at some point?

Sakura saw the change in his demeanour, heart thumping in her chest. They were close, faces almost inches apart; it was like he was leaning down toward her. She'd heard Ino talk about this kind of feeling, but… she'd never experienced it. Well, they were alone, basically in the dark… What else were they going to do? They couldn’t let the cats out of the kennels, at least not unless they were strictly holding them. At least some of the cats were able to visit one another across their enclosures.

He was so close to her, his face only inches from hers. He could see her eyes in the dim light; green eyes were the rarest colour, and hers sparkled a bright jade colour. He wanted to kiss her, but… was it appropriate? Should he? No, maybe not yet. This was the first time they were really having a conversation. He wanted to know her better first.

“So…” he cleared his throat and moved back a bit. “You live with your best friend, you said? Anyone… else you spend time with?” He felt it was too tacky to ask her if she had a boyfriend or girlfriend. Sakura was a little miffed he moved away, but she’d just have to deal with it.

“Oh, no, not really. Well, there are a couple of girls we hang out with as a group, but… not anyone otherwise. No boyfriend, either. What about you?” She was a little oblivious to his prying.

“Mm… I have a friend, Naruto, but we haven’t talked in a while.” Wait, Naruto… why did Sakura recognize that name?

“Hold on. You mean Naruto Uzumaki?” It couldn’t be the same one, could it? Sakura remembered him. Ino had dated him at one point, in the last few years of high school.

“Yeah, Naruto Uzumaki.” Sasuke rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “We, um… we were foster brothers for a while until I moved away in high school. I haven’t seen him since.” Naruto had been annoying, but they’d looked out for each other at least. He’d yet to try and reach out,m. “Then there’s also Karin, Suigetsu, and Jugo.” Wait… Karin. Karin was a girl’s name. His girlfriend, maybe?

“Oh, so… is Karin your..?” Why did her heart drop at that idea? Him being taken was… a sad thought.

“No. Ex, actually. High school.” He hadn’t been as invested in that relationship as Karin had. He’d felt it was unfair to her and broken things off, though he knew she still pined for him. She seemed never to let him forget it. One day she’d have to, but for now, he could ignore her.

“Oh, I see.” That was a relief. An ex she could handle. Just as she opened her mouth to ask another question, a loud crash came from outside in the hall. It sounded like it came from the supply room, but Sakura wasn’t sure. Had someone broken in? Worry crept up in her spine as the flashlight started to flicker.

“What was that?” She whispered, instinctively huddling a little closer to him. He looked out toward the door, frowning and unconsciously moving closer to her as well.

“I don’t know. Do you have extra batteries for the flashlight?” He reached for her bag, digging through it in an attempt to find them before the flashlight died.

“Yeah, um, inside the pocket there.” She helped to hold the light for him, unscrewing the back and pulling out the old batteries. He took the flashlight and inserted the fresh ones, breathing a sigh of relief as the light flicked back on without issues. He stood up, turning to Sakura for a moment.

“I’ll go check it out. Wait here.” He was about to take a step before Sakura stood, shaking her head.

“Can I come with you?” It wasn’t an offer but rather a question. “I— I don’t want to sit here alone.” She was sure the cats would be fine, but it would be a problem and a half if someone had broken in. Sasuke hesitated before reaching for her hand, grasping it and nodding.

They made their way out into the dark hall, Sakura sticking close to him as they worked their way to the storage room. Once they opened the door, they were hit with a blast of cool air, and from what Sasuke could see, it looked like one of the windows had cracked. Something had hit the side of the building—a tree, it seemed—and a part of one of the branches had cracked the glass.

“Just a broken window, but not too badly. Is there some tape here?” He rooted around for something, anything; duct tape would work best. Sakura found a toll and handed it to him, giving her the flashlight so he could reach up and tape the glass. It would be enough to hold until a technician could adequately repair the window. Sakura shivered in the cold as he worked, wishing it wasn’t so chilly. He was done quickly, grabbing a few boxes to put them in front to help insulate.

“Come on. Let’s head back.” He could tell she was cold; he made a point to snag a couple more of the blankets to wrap them both in. Once they were back in the kennel room, he wrapped her in one blanket, then wrapped two of them around them both, keeping her closer for warmth. It wasn’t cold in the shelter yet, nor was it likely to get too cold, but it was better that they stay warm than try to warm up.

“Here. Stay close.” He could feel his cheeks burning with embarrassment. “We’ll, um… we’ll stay warmer if we share body heat.” That sounded creepy, but how the hell else was he supposed to put it? He kept an arm around Sakura, making sure she was close to him. Sakura could feel herself nodding and agreeing, leaning against him and glad for the warmth he provided.

“Thank you,” she said, her lips forming a small smile. “I-I mean, not just for this right now, but I mean… for coming out when Shisui asked. I probably wouldn’t have gone to investigate that window if that happened while I was on my own.” She was thankful he’d come. It meant she had someone to talk to, someone who could hold a conversation. Talking to cats was fine for a little while, but they didn’t make for too many intellectually stimulating conversations.

“Yeah,” he responded softly, shifting so he was more comfortable. He was pretty comfortably warm; a nap would have been pretty nice right about now. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. What else were they going to do as the storm raged on outside? Well… there was at least one thing he wanted to confess, but… maybe not yet. Maybe after the storm was over, he could ask to spend more time with her. That wouldn't hurt, would it?

Hours passed as they chatted idly, listening to the cats and hoping the storm would slow down soon. There… wasn't much to talk about. Sakura did most of the talking, chattering away for a lot of it, and while he contributed, he preferred to listen. He liked the sound of her voice. It was something he could get used to hearing.

"Sasuke?" She asked, drawing him out of his thoughts. She'd asked a question, but he'd been too busy thinking about her to listen to what she'd asked.

"Hm?" He tilted his head to the side curiously.

"I… I know we should stay close for warmth, but… Are you tired at all? I thought maybe the bean bag chairs, we could, you know, lay them out kind of like a bed? A nap wouldn't hurt." Oh. A nap. Now that she mentioned it, he realized he felt a little tired. It probably had something to do with sitting in the dark for so long; the room had stayed warm, and while they could hear a few of the cats padding around and mewling, most of them seemed to have gone to sleep. They understood they were in a safe, warm environment, especially with Sasuke and Sakura sitting there with them.

"Oh. Yeah. We can." He stood up and lifted the more oversized blanket off himself, wrapping Sakura in it. He dropped the one he was wrapped in to the floor, grasping the bean bags and thinking about it logically. If they laid them primarily flat, and one of them--probably Sakura, since she was lighter--laid down on them first, they could be adjusted to form a comfortable bed. He pulled them together and instructed Sakura to lay down, and she did so; once she was comfortable, he settled in beside her, reaching for the flashlight to keep it close. They'd turned it off a few hours ago to save the battery, preferring to listen to each other talk.

"Hey… Sakura?" Sasuke at least wanted to ask her one thing before they fell asleep.

"Mmm?" He could tell she was sleepy, and he wondered if she'd even remember what he was about to ask.

"I was wondering." Wondering was putting it mildly. "You… mentioned you didn't have a boyfriend, and I know this isn't an ideal situation, but…" He bit his lip, trying to squelch the nervous feelings that were creeping up. "Do you think maybe… you'd want to do something a little more appropriate after?" He grumbled. That sounded… not right. "Another time, I mean." That sounded better.

Sakura was too sleepy to hear his entire statement, but she caught parts of it. He wanted to hang out again after the storm let up? It sounded like a great idea to her. She couldn't put her finger on why he was asking if she had a boyfriend, though. Why did that matter? She was too tired to comprehend what he was asking entirely.

"Mm… sure. That sounds like fun." Her voice was quiet, notably half asleep. Sasuke was relieved to hear that. He suspected she might not have got the entire question, but it was enough. Even if it was platonic… He would like to spend more time with her. Why not? She was fun, energetic, animated, and could carry a conversation all by herself, and didn't seem bothered that he contributed little.

Hours passed, the storm raging on outside as they both slept, only being unceremoniously awakened as the lights in the shelter came to life all at once, nearly blinding them out of sleep. Oh, that was unpleasant as hell! The sound of the furnace going again caused them both to sit up, rubbing their eyes and trying to open them. Sasuke felt that usual grumpiness coming on; he hated being woken up when he wasn't ready to get up. His gaze turned to Sakura, who was sitting up on one of the bean bag chairs, rubbing her eyes and trying to straighten her hair. Cute, he thought to himself, rubbing a hand over his face.

"Looks like the power's back." That meant they should be able to leave.

"What time is it?" Sakura's phone had died overnight, so she had no way to contact anyone. Sasuke checked his, seeing the time. It was about six in the morning, but the shelter had notably cooled.

"It's about six," he confirmed, putting his phone into low battery mode. "Come on. We can probably get out of here now. With the power back, the cats will be fine." That was one bonus about their furry friends: they were more equipped to deal with the elements than their human caretakers, even in a cooler environment. It was still dark outside, but at least they'd be able to head home and get some proper sleep.

"Oh, well, that works. Let's top up what the cats have for food and water for the day, and we can head out… assuming we're able to even get out of here." She was pretty sure her car was snowed in; she'd parked right up against the building in the hopes that she might be able to avoid her vehicle being buried. That didn't seem likely. How silly of her to have done such a thing.

They changed the water and litter boxes in each kennel, then refilled the cats' food bowls before doing another double-check around the place. With everything seemingly in place, Sakura grabbed her keys and jacket, putting away the blankets and bean bag chairs before meeting Sasuke in the entryway.

"Okay. Let's see…" She opened the door, unsurprised by the pile of snow that was in front of it; it had to be almost up to her knees. Peering out, they could see that the storm had lightened considerably; it was still snowing, but it was more of steady snow than a blizzard. Her car was up against the building with snow piled up almost to the windows; the drifts had blown up against it, making it look worse than it was. Sasuke's truck was parked further up, and with its raised wheels, it had been spared the brunt of most of the drifts, though it was still going to be a challenge to get out.

"I… don't think we're getting my car out," she admitted. "Well… If you want to head home, that's fine. I can wait here and shovel my car out once the snow stops, or I can call Ino to come to get me." It was better than nothing.

"Don't be ridiculous," Sasuke scolded. "I'll drive you home. It's fine. The roads probably aren't cleared yet, but that shouldn't be a problem." He pulled out his keys, indicating for Sakura to lock up the shelter before trudging through the snow. He made sure to walk ahead of her, doing his best to flatten the snow so the drifts would be easier for her to traverse. He looked at his truck, then at her… Ah, with the way his truck was lifted and the fact that he hadn't put steps on his truck yet...

He followed her around to the passenger side, opening the door for her. "Just stand there," he instructed, and she did as he said. Damn, she was practically going to have to crawl into his truck; it was so high up, and she couldn't even reach the handle at the top to pull herself up into it. Without warning, she felt hands on her waist, causing her cheeks to flush as Sasuke lifted her high enough to reach the handle.

"I, um-- I-I got it," she stammered, holding on for dear life as she swung into the seat. He closed the door behind her before coming around to the driver's side to start the truck. Well… Days like today were why he had a vehicle like this; on an acreage, a tiny little car wouldn't do. He needed to be able to get down his driveway through crappy snowstorms. The truck flared to life, and he immediately put it in four-wheel drive, carefully wedging himself out of the snowdrifts. They took it slow down the road, Sasuke following Sakura's directions back into the city and to her house.

The streets were deserted. Vehicles could be seen abandoned along the freeway, along which they crawled at about a quarter of the speed. They made it to one of the smaller residential areas to a little townhouse; one vehicle could be seen parked out front, and there appeared to be a space where a second was usually parked. He pulled in front of the small driveway, putting the truck in park before hopping out and around to the passenger side to help Sakura out. Once she was safely on the ground, he looked down at her, taking a deep breath. This was his last chance to be direct.

"Sakura?" He asked, reaching a hand up to rub the back of his neck. Sakura could see just how nervous he was; he seemed… awkward, in a sense.

"Hm? What is it?" She was genuinely curious. He'd been too kind to her yesterday, coming to check on her; she could at least hear out whatever it was he had to ask.

"I was wondering… Would you maybe like to go on… a proper date, another time?" He knew that what they'd done wasn't exactly a date, but it was close enough, right? His offer shell-shocked Sakura; that was not what she'd been expecting. A date… a proper date. He wanted to go on one? And with… her, nonetheless? Had she been totally out of it all night? Well… now that she thought about it, there was that one time where she was pretty sure he was about to kiss her, but he'd backed off.

"Oh, um… I think I'd like that," she admitted, her posture turning shy as she looked away. She knew she was blushing, but she couldn't help it; he had an air of aloof mystery surrounding him, and she wanted to learn more. She wanted to know more about him specifically.

"Great. I'll… I'll call you." He had her contact number from a pamphlet he'd been given when he'd signed up as a volunteer; he could get it from there. There was one last thing he wanted to do, too. Stepping forward, he raised a gloved hand, stopping before taking off his glove to touch her face. Her cheek was warm and soft, fitting gently into his palm. Sakura felt herself freeze at the gesture, glancing at his hand before looking up into his face.

Sasuke leaned down, gently pressing his lips against hers. He kept the kiss brief and chaste, but… Damn, he'd wanted to do that since yesterday. Running a thumb over her cheek, he smiled and stepped back, bidding her farewell. Sakura waved and hurried inside, doing her best not to slip on the ice patches she was sure were hidden under the fresh snow. Once he saw she was inside, Sasuke put his truck into gear and drove off, and for once… he was driving with a smile on his face.

Sakura stepped in the door to the townhouse and was met by her blonde friend standing in front of her like a mother about to scold a child.

"Oh, you have some explaining to do, Forehead. A lot of explaining. And I want it to start with hot stuff out there who just kissed you in the driveway."

[plush-rabbit]

Can I Ask You Something?

| Part 10 |

There’s an odd thing about what happened that night. How he came to you unannounced without explanation, how you were sick to your stomach and feared that no one would hear your last breaths, how you touched him on your own will, letting your fingers rest upon his bare skin and craved his touch afterwards. But at the same time, your smiles were smaller and seemingly more tired than what he’s seen before and you made sure that space was between the two of you, eyes always watching him or more specifically- his hands. You hardly took your eyes off of them, always trailing them, always watching how they clasped around items with a finger held upwards, reaching out. You thought back to when you first saw him, furrowing your brows and sucking in your bottom lip when you successfully remembered that he had done that the night of the first hang out. You chastised yourself and wondered how you could be so blind, but only shook your head afterwards. No one immediately thinks that they’re friend could be a criminal. You thought of it as a tic or something, thought that perhaps he just grew into the habit and it stuck. You never would’ve realized that- It doesn’t matter. No amount of reasoning to yourself could ever make you feel better, could ever make you free of guilt. You know who he is and yet you haven’t gone off to report him. You kept his secret with tight lips and nervous laughter and a sickness that only faded when you slept.

You were interested in him, fascinated and grew a false image of him in your mind where he was someone good. You liked talking to him, liked telling him about your day. You liked how he looked on camera with dim lighting and shadows across his face. You liked how he talked and laughed at a poor attempt at a joke. You liked him. But now you feared him. You feared his wide smile, his hands, his eyes. You were terrified of him, never wanting to take your eyes off of him and his hands. His eyes weren’t red like rubies, they were red like fresh blood. His dry skin wasn’t just dry skin, it was clawed and red, angry and bloody. His hands weren’t long and careful, they were sharp and precise.

You had gotten lucky that time. You swallowed whatever you could in your dry mouth, more out of habit than anything else and kept your breath even, trying to calm down the storm brewing inside of you. Anytime you scratched at your skin, you would pull away, shaking and nervous, eyes glancing around the room as if you’d find a pair of eyes watching you. It was all too reminiscent of him. Touching your own wrist with the hand that touched his, made your skin burn. If you closed your eyes, you could feel his skin underneath your touch, the warmth of it, the coldness beneath it. It both terrified you and made you crave more all at once. He was a friend before and now he’s different. He’s different in your eyes but the same to the rest of the country.

The day outside was nice. A blue sky with white fluffy clouds that looked like they belonged on a painting with leaves that fluttered to the ground and twirled in the air in little spirals. It was a nice day, perfect to clear your mind and try to put any negative thoughts to the side. With heavy steps, you dragged yourself to a walk around the park, trying to stretch your legs and hoping that video you saw online about walking and anxiety was an actual thing and not some sort of placebo.

It’s working. Kind of. You think the fresh air definitely helps clear your mind but the churning mess in your stomach continues. It worked in the beginning- the walk. It helped you clear your head and when you listened to a playlist, you were able to daydream about anything else that was able to take your mind off of him for a moment. You didn’t want to think about him right now, he had already plagued your mind at every other hours of the day. You just needed a bit of time where you could feel yourself unwind without the constant fear of getting sick and spewing whatever you had in your stomach.

You never wanted to fear him. You wanted to be his friend, you wanted a friend that you met online and that’s it. You didn’t want whatever complicated entanglement of emotions this was. You just wanted for things to go back to normal.

But it never could and you think that’s the worst part of it all. He’s always going to be tainted in your mind.

There was only one saving grace to this entire ordeal- he cared for you- somewhat. He hadn’t killed you (yet), he showed his face to you, and he let you touch his neck and wrist without turning you to dust. You were fine. You were still alive and he had made sure that during his last attack, you were home.

You’re relieved. You’re disgusted. Your face heats at the thought of him. You fume when you remember who he is. You’re a tangled mess of emotions and whenever you try to detangle it, it causes you more pain and sickness. You wonder if he’d allow you to leave him. You wonder if you’d even have the courage; if you’d even want to.

The music fades and is replaced with a shrill ring that makes you flinch and answer quickly.

“Hello?”

“It’s me,” his voice is gruff.

“You’re gonna need to be a lot more specific than that,” you tease, easily falling back into your olds ways. It’s easy to do this, easy to hear his voice and think he’s just another friend.

“Funny.” You can practically hear him roll his eyes. When you remain silent waiting for confirmation, he sighs. “Tomura.”

“Now was that so hard?” It’s so much easier to pretend that he’s still Tomura.

“Yes,” he growls. “You knew it was me.”

“Eh,” you shrug, turning on your heel to walk back to your apartment. “I hadn’t looked at the caller ID when you called so I was like only ninety percent sure it was you?”

“That’s dumb. Why hadn’t you checked?”

“I was listening to my tunes and then the ring was super loud and painful and I really didn’t want to hear it anymore.” You always were so open with him and now that it counts to keep quiet about your life, you can’t seem to shut up. “Anyways, what’s up? It’s pretty early for one of our calls.”

“Is it?” You hear him hum. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“You hadn’t checked the time before you called?”

“I was ninety percent sure it was late when I called,” he said sarcastically.

You rolled your eyes. “Anyone ever told you you’re funny?”

“I think I’m hilarious.” He sounds so smug on the other line.

“Oh of course you are,” you smirk and skip over a crack on the sidewalk. “Whenever we talk, I’m always in stitches.”

“Are you being sarcastic?”

“Perhaps,” you purse your lips.

“I’ve made you laugh.” He pauses. “Have I?”

“Hm… I’m sure you have during one of our calls,” you stick the tip of your tongue out. “I’ve made you laugh,” you point out.

“That’s because whatever comes out of your mouth is ridiculous.”

“Wow,” you can feel your grin growing. “Just wow. Going right for the jugular, huh?” You scoff, and bring a hand up to rub at your neck, fingers freezing when they feel your pulse underneath.

“I’m not wrong.”

“You know, you’re not being very nice right now.” Your hand twirls the headphone wire around a finger. “I almost have half the mind to hang up,” you joke.

“Are you going to?” Overhead a bird chirps, fluttering onto a tree branch and hopping over to a nest. The bird flutters away when another comes onto the same branch. You try to follow it with your eyes but lose it as flies beyond your sight.

“No. I like talking to you,” your smirk grows, “even if you don’t make me laugh.”

“Fuck off,” he growls.

You give him a small laugh and it slowly fades away. You can hear him boast about how he made you laugh, poking fun at you and sarcastically repeating your last statement. You hum in response to him. The laughter that had bubbled out of you was sweet and light but you still feel sick.

“Yeah,” you speak softly, “you made me laugh.” It’s a rollercoaster of emotions with him, you never know what to feel and what to expect. “But I still think I’ve made you laugh more.”

“Tch. Whatever.”

“So like I mentioned earlier, it’s early for one of our calls. What’s up?”

You hear him clear his throat. “I don’t know,” he says. “I think I just wanted to talk to you.” The sentence makes both your heart full and ache all at once.

“Oh. That’s… unusually kind of you to say.”

“Shut it dumbass,” he says in a low voice and in the distant you think you hear a door slam.

“What? You said it!” You shake your head. “You’re not usually so nice to me—”

“Yes I am,” he argues.

“Tomura, you literally called me a dumbass.”

“It’s a nickname,” he argues.

“Nickname?” You say in exasperated voice. “You know, I’m not having this conversation.” You take in a deep breath. “For what it’s worth, I like talking to you too. You’re fun to talk to and uh, believe it or not, you’re interesting to be around,” you exhale and the knot in your stomach has loosened.

“What are you doing?” He changes the conversation and his voice is tight.

“I’m walking home. I went for a walk around the park to clear my head a bit.”

“About?”

“Just… too many thoughts, you know?”

“I guess.” He takes in a sharp inhale and gives a weak cough. “Do you want to talk about it?” He asks hesitantly.

“No, no. It’s fine. It’s uh, remember that thing I cried about when you came over last?” You can feel your face burn in embarrassment. You still hadn’t gotten over that you actually cried in front of him.

“Yes.”

“Just about that. About them,” you whisper out.

“They sound like a dick.”

Your laugh is humorless. “No. They’re- They’re really cool. They’re a bit rough around the edges but I like them. They’re really- They’re really something special to me.”

He’s silent. “Well if they ever piss you off—”

“What?” You smirk. “You’ll kill them for me?” Your stomach drops. “It’s just a little friendly squabble,” you speak rapidly, shaking your hand in front of you, your steps hurrying. “It’s just a lot on me, seriously.” The thought that he would potentially kill for you (Is it even for you? Did you jump to conclusions prematurely?) makes you queasy.

“Whatever.” You don’t miss how he doesn’t deny your little “joke”. “If you really have a problem with this person, I don’t see why you don’t just talk to them or drop them.”

You wonder if you can be truthful with him. You wonder if he could or would ever be truthful with you. You sigh. “It’s not easy. I- I really like this person a lot. He means a lot to me and I know- or at least I want to believe- that he doesn’t mean to hurt me but, you know. Sometimes things happen on accident.” You kick a stray rock and watch it bounce off of the sidewalk and into the murky water on the side of the road.

“If he’s hurting you—”

You interrupt him. “I don’t think he’s aware that he’s hurting me- on accident or on purpose. He- He doesn’t know that I know something—” you’re pushing it— “but I can’t tell him that I know.”

“Why?”

The view of your apartment grows closer. “I don’t think he’d be very happy with me,” you speak gently, voice strained. “I think… I think best case scenario, he won’t care and we can still be friends. Worst case scenario—” you remember his long, thin hands with cracks in them— “he could kill me.”

“What?” He seethes out.

You jump and halt in your steps. “Tha-That’s like worst case scenario though!” You’re quick to rectify your mistake. “I uh, usually overthink things and my mind likes to think of the absolute worst outcome possible.”

“If he—”

“He means well. At least I think he means well.” You wonder how long you can go with describing your predicament until he catches on. “I just… I found out something I shouldn’t have. And,” you lip quivers, “I messed up is all.” You can hear the beginning of a word on his tongue, ready to start his sentence until you cut him short once again. “Can you promise me something?”

“What?” There’s curiosity and gentleness mixed into his voice.

“You have to pinkie swear about being honest or I won’t tell you.”

“We’re over the phone?”

“Just you know hold it up,” you hold your pinky up and you’re reminded of him again, “and curl it. It can be our thing. All friends have a thing.”

“You’re being childish.”

“Tomura,” you whine.

He clicks his tongue. “Fine. I pinkie promise,” his voice is mocking but you take it.

“Did you do the curl thing?” You still have your pinkie curled in front of you.

“Yes,” he grunts out.

“Okay,” you take a hop in your step and climb the staircase to your apartment, peeling paint falling from the rails from under your touch on the railing of the stairs. “Will… Will you promise that you’ll never be mad at me?”

He’s quiet for just a moment, and you lean against the railing of your apartment, watching people walk below you. Your finger scratches over the peeling paint and you sooth it over with the pads of your fingers.

“I can’t promise that.”

You can feel your heart stop. “Why?”

“You’ve pissed me off before, I’m sure you’ll do it again.”

You nod into the receiver. It’s a still moment between the two of you. Somewhere above you, you hear a door click close with heavy steps that fade away. There’s laughter and shouts around you, fast climbing of the stairs and whistling. There’s life around you and on the other sound of the phone is someone who brings death.

“Yeah,” you speak softly, “I guess that makes sense.” You wonder if he ever did think about killing you.

“What about you?” He asks, his voice serious. “Will you ever be mad at me?”

The setting sun casts orange across the sky, mixed with hues of blue and pink. Shadows stretch long into the road below and it seems that with the fading daylight, people match the mood that is outside, their voices are quieter, with the sting of coming cold nipping at their skins and cold winds that make their clothes flutter. “I don’t know. I think fights in friendships are normal so I can’t exactly promise that.”

“So we’re going to fight?”

If you focus, you think you can see your breath in front of you. “Maybe.” Your phone buzzes in your hand. “I hope not.”

“Are you home?”

“Yeah, I got home a bit ago.” Your hand grips the railing and your knuckles turn white. “Right now, I’m just outside.” Somewhere, you can hear the barking of dogs and the honk of a car. “Do you want to have a video call? It’s been a while since I’ve seen you,” you turn around and open the door, goose bumps ride your skin and you bring a hand to soothe over your chilled skin. “If you want, you know,” you add.

“Sure,” his reply is quick. “Let me just get set up.”

“Yeah, same. See you in a bit then.”

You shut the door and your press your back against the wood. The flat is dark, weak strays of sunlight peek through the blinds and share a bit of its warmth and guidance. It’s dark inside, and for a moment you’re alone. The noise from the outside is gone. There is no noise and only fleeting sunlight which is overpowered by the shadows. You’re still for a minute. And then you take a deep breath with closed eyes and hold it for a few seconds, letting it go slowly. You peel yourself off of the door and make your way inside.

__

He waits for you to accept his call, His hands reach over to his face, clawed and extended but he stops an inch before he can feel his skin. Red eyes dart over to the corner of the room where an old blanket is clumped and hiding something.

It’s your gift to him.

It holds a few creams of different scents, one with no scent, a few soap bars that were in the shape of macaroons and one in a rectangle that smelled of the night after rain. It was a sweet, personalized gift that you had given him, complete with a note that read:

To Tomura,

Hope this makes your skin feel better! Tell me if it doesn’t and I can try new things to get you:)

With love Love,

Your friend

He can’t remember the last time someone wrote him a note or had even given him a gift. It all remains untouched. He picked everything carefully out of the bag the night he returned home, and dragged a finger across the edges, carefully minding the placement of the rest of his hands. He told himself, he won’t ever use it- it was all too precious to him. If he used it, it would run out and he would be forced to throw your gift away.

He couldn’t promise you that he won’t ever get mad at you but when he looks at the thin, tearing fabric that protects something that you had given to him, for him, he makes up his mind. He won’t ever be mad at you. He can’t hurt you. He’ll lay waste to society and make sure that you remain untouched. There’s warmth in his chest as he carefully walks over to wear the bag sits, how his hands carefully remove the tissue paper and he moves at a slow pace until he picks the note up and places it next to him. The blanket shrouds the gift, protecting it poorly from wandering eyes and he grabs the note and makes his way back to his seat.

He folds it open and lays it to rest next to the monitor, watching as it tries to flutter to a close only to be opened back up with a fold in the opposite direction to make sure it stays.

“Love,” he whispers. It’s a foreign word on his tongue. It’s a deep, meaningful word and he’s sure he’s felt some form of it before. To his sensei, to Kurogiri, to the League even if he won’t admit it out loud. But it’s all felt different. Was it devotion? A sense of familiarity? Camaraderie? None of it ever gave him this feeling. It was as if he were on fire whenever he saw you; he needed to hear you, needed to know that you were still oblivious and cared for him. And you do- if the present is anything to go by. He’s going to do his best to make sure no harm comes towards you. You already have someone who’s hurting you, but if he acts on it now then you’ll push yourself away from him, your attention won’t be on him- you will be busy mourning and sobbing over someone who isn’t him.

He’ll bide his time if it means that you’ll stay with him in the end.

A soft ringing fills his room and he jumps. He runs a calloused hand through his hair and lets out a breath, his heart pumping erratically and with shaky fingers, he clicks the accept button.

You fill the screen with wide eyes and bottom lip that is bitten between teeth. There’s a soft light that fills the room and he sees that you’re in the living room.

“Tomura, hey,” you breathe out, a lopsided smile taking over your features. “What’s up?”

He fights off the grin that comes naturally when he talks to you, allowing a smirk to replace it as his canine glints. “Nothing, really. I finished all my games so there’s not much for me to do now.”

“Whoa!” Your eyes light up and you stand straighter with your hands in loose fists- you were so easy to impress. “You finished all of them? Even the one where you had trouble with the final boss?”

He rolls his eyes. “Yes, even that one.”

“Did you look up any cheat codes?”

He narrows his eyes and you and scratches at his upper lip. “No. It just some grinding is all.”

“Oh okay.” Your hands loosen and arms are crossed against your chest. “So now you don’t have any games to play?”

He shakes his head with closed eyes.

When he opens them, the corner of your mouth twitches and he narrows his eyes by a fraction. “So why don’t you go out and buy more? If you want, I can tell you a few of my favorites so we can talk about them together? Or,” you glance to the side, “we could go together? Like a—”

“Like a date?” He raises a brow.

Your face flushes a darker shade and you quickly turn your head to the side, your lips pulled into a thin line with furrowed brows. “Ye-Yeah. Like a date.” You clear your throat, when you look back at him you have a shaky smile on and your voice wavers. “You know- if you wanted.”

He slumps against his seat and lets out a sigh. “I would have declined.”

You let out a deflated “oh” and shuffle awkwardly in your seat. Your lips are downturned and he feels a sting in his chest.

“I hate public spaces. I already told you,” he says hastily. “I would prefer to just order the game online or something else.” Something else is breaking into a store and taking what he wanted. “But I suppose I would take your suggestions,” he says with a silvery voice.

“I guess that makes sense.” He frowns when your voice is still low and disappointed. His hand reaches towards cheekbone, eyes darting across your features and meeting your eyes. He narrows his eyes when you keep focused on his hands and sighs with annoyance; he brings his hand down and curls his hand into a fist. “My tastes are pretty different compared to yours. That game we used to play was the first- er, action game, that I played.”

You still won’t meet his eyes, keeping them focused on literally anything else.

He clenches his jaw and fights back a groan. “I still wouldn’t mind hearing about the games you play.”

“Nah, we probably don’t like the same things,” you wave a hand in front of you; “I shouldn’t bored you with my stuff. How was your day today?”

You’re quick to change the conversation, leaning forward with an expectant smile while you wait for him to answer your question. “It was fine. I just stayed indoors.”

“Right,” you roll your eyes with a smirk, “I forgot that you didn’t like the outdoors.” You smirk falls a bit before it’s picked back up.

“It’s stupid.” The corner of his lip twitches upwards when your attention is focused on him. “All those fucking heroes waltzing around and—”

“Okay, I get,” you snap. He gives you a look and you clamp your mouth shut. “I just,” you chew on your bottom lip, “you don’t like heroes or the outdoors, I get it.”

“What’s up your ass?” His eyes dart to the corner where your note lays still and uninterrupted.

“Tomura,” you scold.

“What? You’re snappy. What is it?”

You bow your head and the arms crossed in front of you move to wrap themselves around you. “I’m not snappy,” you say defiantly, puffing out your chest. “It’s nothing, I just- I get it. You mentioned before that you didn’t like heroes and you don’t like public spaces. I get it.”

“I can’t vent to you now?” He tilts his head and his leg jerks you flinch away from him.

“It’s not that,” you reply meekly already losing your bravado.

“Then what is it?”

When you look up at him, he can see your eyes shine and you blink back the tears away. Did you want to cry? Did he make you want to cry? “It’s just- I don’t want to get into politics right now. Okay?”

“You think talking about heroes is political?”

Your face is flushed and you lean away from the screen. “Of course it is,” you spit out, your face pulled into a grimace, looking down at your lap as if you were ashamed to speak against him. “I don’t want to fight.”

“Are you going to hate me if we do?” You shake your head no but it isn’t enough for him. “I can’t hear you.”

When you look up at him, his breath comes to a halt. Your face is stoic and your arms have fallen from the self-hug. “No,” you look to the side and lower your head slightly. “I’m not gonna hate you Tomura. I just don’t want to fight.”

“I don’t want to fight either.” It’s the truth. He doesn’t want to make you fear him. He doesn’t want a reason to hate you- you’re something good in his life, something pure and untouched and right now, you’re iffy about heroes but he can change that. He can do so much good for you but it’ll just take a bit of time.

“I’m sorry.” You look at him with wide eyes and a lowered head, like a dog that’s getting reprimanded by its owner.

He bites down on the inside of his cheek and lets it slip once he can taste blood. “Are you okay?” He has to play it safe, he can’t scare you off. He doesn’t know when or if he’ll ever reveal himself, but he can’t scare you off.

You give out a scoff with a small smile gracing your features. “Yeah, I just, sorry. I’ve uh- It was a long day is all and I’m sorry I snapped.”

“No harm, no foul.” When you look at with raised eyebrows and the smile that has now fallen, he bites back a curse. “I didn’t mean to upset you.” He scratches at his forehead and unclenches his jaw.

He wonders if you would have left him if the fight had escalated. He hates what you make him feel, what you make him do. If you were anyone else or if it was early on in the relationship, he would’ve ended you right then and there. But instead, he gave you half-assed apology and felt bad about making you feel small.

“It’s… been a rough day is all. I shouldn’t have snapped and yeah. It’s behind us,” you tell him, giving him a halfhearted smile.

“Yeah, I guess it has,” he breathes out, leaning against the seat. “So was everything else about you day as bad as right now?” He jokes, a smile quivering on his lips before it falls and he has to force himself to smile.

“Right now it isn’t bad. We had a little disagreement but that’s all it was,” you retort. “It’s going to happen Tomura but I’m never going to—” You stop yourself and click your tongue. You look away from him, from the monitor in its entirety and you stare off into the distance. “I don’t think I could ever hate you.” You sound melancholic when you speak, your shoulders slumped in defeat and though he feels thrilled at hearing those words, feeling light and his muscles twitching with excitement, he can’t help but hate the way you look so exhausted. But in a blink of an eye, you’re back to smiling, and if it was any earlier on in this relationship that you two held, he wouldn’t have noticed how the smile didn’t reach your eyes but now, he swallows when you still hold sadness, when the smile isn’t a full curve but gentle and fragile, as if it could break with one wrong word.

He can’t bear to see you like that. He can’t bear to know that you’re hurt because he snapped at you and fuck! It’s all so complicated with you.

“I can tell you about my day,” he says with a hand clenching around the other, “in detail if you’d like,” he adds, looking down at his lap.

“Really?” Your eyes are wide and finally your smile does reach your eyes. He’s sick to his stomach when he realizes that he wants more of it, that he needs to see you smile more. You’re happy because of him. Everything about you is so easy.

“On one condition,” he holds up a finger and misses the way your eyes go wide. He looks at you expectantly.

“What is it?” You say in a weak voice.

“You have a picture of me right?” His chest is tight; it feels as if an immeasurable weight is resting above him.

“Yeah,” you say with a puzzled tone. “Why do you ask?”

“Because,” he can feel his throat tighten, “I don’t have a picture of you. So, you know.” He rolls his hand and looks off to the side, face burning with a bright shade of red.

“Aw!” He flinches when you coo, your voice already high, coated with a teasing tone. “Do you want a picture of me? That’s so cute!”

“Shut up.” He tries to sound threatening but it only makes you laugh more.

“No! Come on! It’s cute. You of all people want a selfies of your bestest friend,” he cringes at the word, “Big, bad—”

His eyes snap towards you where you have teeth bitten down on your bottom lip. “What?” He asks, eyes narrowed and calculating as they search your face.

“You know,” your voice cracks and you clear your throat, “you said last time that your scar made you look scary and I,” you trail off and you look terrified. He’s about to open his mouth when you beat him to it. “I told you it was cute but you- you had said it made you look scary and I thought teasing you about you being all scary like would be funny. It- You aren’t ba- scary. You’re cute.”

He’s still tense. Cold eyes still analyzing you but you flinch and can’t meet his eyes. You look scared and he can’t bring the thought to life.

“Tomura say something please,” you sound like you’re about to cry.

His eyes dart to your lip that wobbles and he clears his throat. “Are you going to send me a picture or not.”

He breathes a sigh of relief when you nod vigorously. “Of course!” Your eyes finally meet his. “But I want to hear you talk first. And then I’ll send it. I promise,” you hold out your pinky and he scoffs at the childish act but does the same, smiling when you curl in your small finger and mouth the word “promise”.

He feels sick. There’s a burning sensation that floods his body and threatens to consume him and leave nothing but ash in its wake. But when he looks at you, when you smile at him and urge him to talk, he feels calm, the white, hot fire inside of him has simmered and his mind is clear of any fog. He nods and takes in a deep breath. In the corner of his eye, he catches the word “love” written in your handwriting.

Talking to others is tiresome but it’s doable. He knows what to say before he’s had a chance to even think about it. But when he talks to you, he has to watch his words, has to think first and make time for the next anecdote. But you listen to him and take in every word, you never stop smiling at him, often chuckling and inputting your own thoughts. You engage with him. You treat him like a person. You’re complicated. He’s complicated. This entire relationship isn’t meant to last- wasn’t meant to last as long as it has. But it’s still going, you’re still answering his calls and he’s still answering your messages. Feelings don’t come easy to him, you don’t come easy to him but you still welcome him with teasing remarks that no one else would have dared to make.

You make feel as if he wasn’t bred for hatred. You make him feel as if he’s supposed to want more than what he currently wants. He doesn’t hate you. He doesn’t hate the things that you make him feel. It’s new and sickening. It leaves him confused but when he spends a few hours hearing your voice, he feels calm, relaxed and he ends up craving more and more at the end of it.

“I like you,” he blurts out, face immediately burning and the need to put on Father greater than any other need. His hands curl into sharp talons and they slowly inched upwards to his neck, ready to claw and free the blood that burned his body.

You look taken aback with eyes wide and mouth parted. He wishes you would say something. He wants- needs you to at least do something other than gawk at him.

And then your face closes, your lips meet and break out into a grin that reaches your eyes which shine with an emotion he’s unfamiliar with. “I like you too Tomura. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You mean a lot to me.” Your eyes dart to the bottom edge of the screen where his hands can barely be seen. “We’re close. At least I think we are,” your shrug and look away from him, “so it’s okay to be a little vulnerable around each other.” You meet his eyes. “Okay?”

You’re being vague. He doesn’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. He doesn’t know if “like” is even the correct word. He enjoys being around, talking to you- he likes it when you smile at him and when his name rolls off of your tongue like it was always meant to. He does like you. And he doesn’t know how you feel about him. You didn’t reject him so that’s a positive direction. You didn’t laugh or hang up the call, you reassured him, you told him you liked him. You were vulnerable in front of him, you let him know it was okay to be vulnerable.

He doesn’t know if he should thank you the vagueness or scowl and throw a tantrum like he once would have. The aforementioned behavior that he once did brings a burning flame to him.

“Thanks,” he says softly, rolling his tongue in his mouth.

You look at him in confusion and your smile is small but holds no animosity towards him. He doubts it ever will. You called him cute, you’ve kept this friendship going, you’ve done so much already and he can’t thank you enough.

“You’re welcome Tomura” you whisper back to him, leaning your head against the couch and he has the urge to go to you right now and- Nothing. He can’t do anything with you. Yet. But he will one day. He can lie to you but he can’t lie to himself and for now, your note will suffice, the scents that you picked out for him will fill his senses, apple and vanilla, honey and mint will invade until he’s grown sick of them.

When the call ends, a black screen in front of him and his reflection stares back at him. You had called him cute. You smiled at him with this softness that he’s only received from you. Everything that he’s received from you is his first time- your gentle touch on his neck, one that you asked for and reached with slow fingers that seared into his skin and memory, your hand upon his wrist when he could see that you were nervous, shaking and mouth parted open with bitten lips as you were falling apart before his eyes.

You chose to hold onto to him- to touch him. You reached out towards him- you always did. He’s not going to tell you who he is, not until he can make sure that you won’t betray him. He’s going to keep you close and blind, make sure that you trust him with everything that you have before he can even mention who he really is.

There’s a knock on his door and he immediately shuts off the monitor. “What?” he calls out, turning his head a fraction of an inch to the side.

“Have fun with your little meeting?” His voice is gruff and he smells of smoke and tobacco.

“Plenty,” he responds too quick for his own liking.

“Look I really don’t care about your personal—”

“Is there something you needed?” Shigaraki bares his teeth at the intruder. “Make it quick.”

“Just wanted to tell you that we’re all getting a bit antsy.” Hands drum against the doorframe. “You’re the so called leader so go and I don’t know, calm their minds.” He leaves without waiting for a response, leaving the door open and suddenly Shigaraki feels exposed.

He rises slowly and cracks his neck, jaw twitching and suddenly his eyes are cold and he places a cold hand on top of his face and walks out the door, closing it shut with a soft click.

__

At the end of it all, you’re a hypocrite. You’re terrified of him- you want to continue to have him in your life. You’re sick at the thought of him- you adore talking to him. You were never good at making decisions, always too curious at what the options held, always too nervous to seek something out. You don’t want him out of your life, but you know that having him in your life will bring nothing but heartache and regret.

He likes you for now. Right now, you’re entertaining to him. But it’s always going to be a countdown until he grows tired of you or until you prove to be a threat. Him going out of his way to meet you is a big enough of threat to himself but your entertainment value must outweigh that. And it does- for now.

With shaky hands, you raise your hands to wrap themselves gently across your neck. You swallow and you can feel the movement underneath your thumbs. You can feel your pulse light and steady, your eyes burn with unshed tears and you wonder how long you have until the timer reaches zero and your hands are replaced with his.

Your phone buzzes against the bed and you’re choked up, slowly bringing your hands away from your neck with a tear that burns down to your chin and marks your shirt. You pick your phone up and a ghost of a smile spreads across your face.

Tomura:

[Thanks again for the skin care things]

Your heart skips a beat and you let out a sob with a hand covering your mouth and dull nails digging into your skin. You like him and fear him. There’s too many emotions that overwhelm you and you don’t know what to do.

You take in a deep breath and for a moment, everything is still and calm. Your tears disappear and you stand in front of the mirror fixing your hair and smoothing over any strands. You crawl back into bed with your back against the head board and you scroll through your phone, finding the app with the cute filters and once clicked on, you have the phone faced towards you, scrunching in embarrassment when you’re shown in an unflattering angle. You look for the right filter and once found, you give a smile and a peace sign.

Blood pumps loud and your heartbeat louder. You attach the picture in a message and send it to Tomura with a winking emoticon as the written message. The message is sent and now there’s nothing you can do.

Your stomach churns and twists into a tight knot. You hold your hand against your mouth and walk to the bathroom. Your hands grip the counter and eyes are red and there are tear tracks that mark your face. Your bottom lip trembles and you wish desperately that he would call you so you could forget all of these feelings for just a second. There’s a pounding in your chest and you can taste acid in your mouth while your eyes are rimmed red and soon your vision blurs and you’re spitting bile mixed with salvia down the drain.

Tagged:

@suneaterofthebig3 @ maxinekotodama

@rogueofbullshit @ juiccy-rollss

@loveableasshole @lilgaga98

@yul-is-sparkling@noonewouldlisten25@noodlenerd101

@localdisaster@snackgod@iikillerkitteh

@drapetomaniaac@shigaraki-is-my-master

@rekoii@ txmaki0 @katelyn-cuteson

@bat-eclecticwolfbouquet-love

@justoneofthosepeople @bloodyantichrist

@maxinekotodama @avada-kedavra-1998

[idkxwriting]

Treacherous - Chapter 15

Author: idkhaylijah

Pairings: Elijah Mikaelson x Reader, Dean Winchester x Reader

Word Count: 3.8k

A/N: Sorry I couldn’t post earlier this week! Here’s a chapter for you :) I hope you enjoy. I think there’s only one left after this... If you’d like to be alerted anytime I post a new chapter/new work, follow @idkhaylijahwrites​ and turn on post notifications :) Thank you for reading, and giving me feedback, it means a lot! <3

Chapter 14  -  Masterlist

Damon hit reject on his phone again, turning it off and shoving it into his back pocket.

“Stefan again?” Y/N asked.

He grunted, pulling the grate off the wall in the walk-in freezer, and urging her to get in. “Yep. They’re onto us, so we’ve gotta keep moving,” he said. They had been holed up at the Grill. Two demons, a witch, and a vampire later, they were already exhausted. It seemed Empusa was just as ready as they were, her supernatural army thirsting for revenge and all too eager to find Y/N.

She climbed in the hole into the underground tunnel system, Damon dropping in behind her. “Which way?”

He tilted his head in the direction of their route, the only way to get through town without being seen - their best chance at catching Empusa by surprise. Damon had tortured the vampire that had attacked them at the Grill for information about where to find her before ending his life, and they were on their way to the graveyard.

“Why does it always have to be the graveyard?” He had complained.

“It has to be the graveyard,” she had said, inexplicably knowing it’s where it would all end.

They moved through the tunnels mostly in silence, Damon leading the way.

“Do you ever think about dying?” Y/N asked after a while.

Damon shrugged. “It’s not really on my to do list…”

“Yea, but even you aren’t entirely invincible. Don’t you ever wonder what happens to us after we die?”

“No,” he stated matter-of-factly. “No, I don’t.”

She continued to follow Damon in silence, and when they reached their destination, Damon turned to her. They stood in an old crypt, and even in the darkness she could see the dust and decay that littered it. She was beginning to breathe heavily, and he took her hands in her face. “Hey,” he reassured her. “I don’t know what happens next,” he paused. “But I believe no matter what comes after all of this, we’re all okay in the end.”

She nodded, trying to convince herself that he was right. “We’re all okay,” she repeated.

He pulled her wrist up, glancing at the leather bracelet. “Y/N, if you need me to, I can compel you...take it away so you don’t have to be afraid.”

She shook her head adamantly, stepping back from him. “I can do this, Damon.” She closed her eyes, picturing everyone she cared about. The people she had loved, the ones she was lucky enough to know.

She thought of Elijah, and Dean, and how some people go their entire lives without ever falling in love.

She could do this. She woulddo this. For all of them.

She gripped the knife that sat at her hip, hooked in her belt, and took a deep breath. “It’s now or never,” she said with determination. “Let’s go.”

Damon’s eyes held a sadness in them, but she also recognized respect. He could be an ass, and he was often selfish, but she knew deep down, if their roles were reversed, he’d face his fate.

“Okay,” he said, pushing the heavy stone of the crypt aside so they could exit the tunnels.

*****

It didn’t take long for the Winchester’s to piece together that Y/N was at the cemetery, and judging by the trail of bodies and the silence throughout town, whatever Empusa had planned had already started.

The rain picked up in intensity as Dean drove, his rage warring with his worry. Sam had tried to reassure him a few times on the ride over, but quickly gave up when he was met with a short and clipped tone, if he bothered to answer at all.

Stefan’s phone buzzed and he glanced at the caller ID. Alaric.

“What did you find?” Stefan asked urgently.

Dean watched his face in the mirror with worried curiosity.

“What do you mean?” Stefan asked, sitting up with alarm. “Alaric, if she does that…”

The muffled voice continued.

After a few more moments, Stefan ended the call and sighed. “A little digging and it turns out we were right, Empusa needed Y/N in Mystic Falls after all. Her vessel is falling apart, she needs a new body.”

“Y/N…” Sam said.

Stefan nodded grimly.

“Alright, so let’s go gank this bitch, first.” Dean’s eyes flicked to Stefan in the mirror again when he was met with silence. He turned to Sam, his brows knitted together. “What?”

But he already knew. He had known the second he saw Elijah, cold and daggered. There’d only be one reason she would have betrayed Elijah like that - only one reason she would have left without filling Dean in on the plan, because she knew whatever she had come up with, he and Elijah would have been the ones to stand in her way.

She had no intentions on surviving.

It was why she had told him she loved him. Why every piece of him screamed that she had been telling him goodbye back at the house.

Stefan cleared his throat uncomfortably. “There’s only one way to kill her…”

“The knife…” Dean said hopefully.

Stefan nodded, but his face fell. “The knife needs to be used on Y/N.”

Dean’s knuckles tightened around the steering wheel, the pain in his chest sharp.

“But if all she needed was the knife, what’s stopping her from doing it now? She’s had the knife for days…” Sam trailed off.

Stefan sighed. “It’s not just the knife. They need a celestial event…”

Dean gripped his chest as the discomfort continued to grow. “So what, she’s waiting for a full moon or something?”

Sam shook his head. “Or something just as powerful that the magic can be pulled from. That’s why Empusa is waiting at the graveyard. Mystic Falls is full of ley lines, it’s why it’s basically a magnet for the supernatural. And they all converge…”

“Let me guess,” Dean interrupted. “At the graveyard?” He coughed, the pain growing sharper, and quickly. One hand gripped his chest, and he knew it wasn’t just heartache anymore.

“Exactly,” Stefan said, leaning forward with concern as Dean’s coughing worsened.

“Dean?” Sam turned, his eyes questioning.

He slammed on the brakes, swerving the car off the road before throwing it into park. His hand flew to the door handle and he swung the door open, doubling over out the side of the car as the coughing became overwhelming, blood spattering the pavement beneath him.

“Dean!” Sam was up and out of the car, but Stefan beat him to it.

As he coughed, he felt the thick blood in his throat blocking his airways, and he dropped on all fours. Stefan pulled him up, trying to support him, but he shook his head, his words of warning trapped in his chest.

Sam’s eyes went wide and realization dawned on him. “He’s been hexed,” he explained. “Help me find the bag!” He began tearing through the car, searching for the small hex bag that he knew had to be there.

Dean gasped for air, feeling as though his lungs were being torn to shreds inside of his chest.

“Check the wheels,” Sam shouted, and Stefan searched frantically.

“Got it!” Stefan exclaimed, finally finding it wedged near the gas pedal. He tossed the bag to Sam, who already had a lighter ready. They burned the bag, and in it’s ashes Dean felt relief.

He coughed some more, spitting the blood from his mouth, the coppery taste still on his tongue. Stefan backed away, letting his brother help him up as he regained control of his thirst.

“Witches,” Dean groaned. “I fucking hate witches…”

“You okay?” Sam asked, getting him back on his feet.

Dean nodded and waved him off. “Let’s go,” he mumbled, already exhausted.

“Why don’t you take a minute,” Stefan suggested.

Dean ignored him, dipping to get back in the car.

“Dean, he’s right…”

Dean stopped his movements, slamming the car door in frustration. “Because we don’t have the luxury of taking a minute!” He bellowed. “Now get in the damn car!”

Sam shot Stefan an apologetic glance, who nodded, knowing there’d be no changing the hunter’s mind. They got back in the car silently, Dean’s rage hanging heavy over them.

*****

When they arrived at the graveyard, they parked, all of them out of the car before Baby’s engine had fully quieted down. Thunder crackled and the wind whipped through the trees, an unsettling feeling in the air.

There were signs of a fight, branches broken, a bloody stake. Stefan knelt over the body of a newbie vampire, and grimaced.

“Staked?” Sam asked.

Stefan shook his head grimly. He turned the body over, and the Winchester’s saw he had been drained of blood. “Empusa’s feeding on her own army,” he explained.

“She needs power,” Sam muttered.

Dean sighed, exasperated. “Well this is just great. Where the hell is Y/N?”

Stefan held his hand up, quieting Dean as he listened. “She’s close…”

“You can hear her?”

While he could hear a fight in the distance, but it wasn’t what had alerted him to Y/N’s presence. Stefan’s eyes darkened and his face fell. “I can smell her.”

Dean didn’t wait as he moved further into the woods with urgency, following the trail of bodies left behind.

They heard the fight before they saw it, and when Dean finally caught a glimpse of Y/N, he sprung into action. He tore through the demons and vampires that had been closing in on Y/N and Damon in the distance. He killed without question, his body moving on muscle memory, his only goal to get to her.

“Y/N!” He roared, his angel blade slamming into another chest with all his force.

But the storm drowned out his voice, and her focus remained on the vampire in front of her. She hunted with skill, but even across the way he could tell fatigue was setting in. Her movements were less graceful, and her breath came in heavy pants. Her limbs looked heavy as she swung, using her body to force a stake into a vampire’s heart.

Dean sidestepped another monster, vaulting himself over the stone markers of the grave in front of him and sprinting towards her, reaching her just in time as a demon flashed it’s black eyes and grabbed her from behind, putting her in a chokehold.

She struggled, throwing her weight against him, and just as she looked like she couldn’t fight much more, Dean ripped the demon off her back, stabbing him without mercy.

She turned, gasping for breath. Her eyes were tired, her hair messy and matted with sweat and rain. Her shoulder hung low, and he knew from the dark stain on her shirt that her wound from the other night had opened again. Her forehead was caked in blood and mud, her lip bruised, but through all of that she smiled at him.

It hit him with such force, he felt his heart stop.

When it beat again, it pushed through all the frustration and anger he had felt at her being there at all.

“Thanks.” She pushed the hair out of her face, her sleeves muddied. “What are you doing here?” She asked as she caught her breath.

He turned so they stood back to back, but it seemed the fight was already dying down, the thunder with it, while Sam and Stefan cleaned up the few stragglers. “What am I doing here?” He growled and rounded on her. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Damon stepped between them. “I had it handled.”

Dean’s eyes narrowed as he took in the oldest Salvatore. “Had it handled?” He shouted. “You have her out here on a damn suicide mission!” Dean shoved his chest. “I should kill you,” he gritted through his teeth.

Damon gripped his neck and squeezed, an angry scowl on his face.

“Dean!” Sam shouted, rushing towards his brother.

Stefan approached cautiously, his eyes fixed on Damon.

“Damon let him go!” Y/N pulled on his arm, but his grip didn’t waiver.

His ice blue eyes remained fixed on Dean, and he tilted his head. “I would love to see you try,” he grinned, pushing the Winchester aside.

Dean gripped the angel blade. He had never staked a vampire with one, and he wasn’t sure if it would work on Damon, but he was beginning to think he might be willing to risk it. He shoved at Damon, opening his mouth with a retort when a familiar and refined accent cut through the arguing.

“Always bickering like children…”

They turned to see Elijah walking towards them, his hand in his pockets as if unbothered by the entire scene.

Y/N gripped the blade, her temper rising at the imposter before her. “Show yourself!” She screamed, furious that Empusa would dare to show herself as Elijah.

The figure before her only smirked. “Why? You have the blade, just end it…”

She white knuckled the hilt, all of her exhaustion leaving as a new wave of adrenaline rushed through her bloodstream.

“Or perhaps you can’t,” the monster tilted it’s head, Elijah’s eyes staring at her with pity. “See that’s the problem with you humans, always letting your emotions control you. You know I’m not him, and yet you hesitate.” Empusa turned her attention toward Dean. “I wonder if she’d have the same hesitation if I took your form.” A cold laugh escaped her hips. “Perhaps we should let her choose which one she’d prefer bloody and broken…”

A cloud of dark smoke rose up, until Elijah was gone and a clone of Dean stood before them, angry and ready for a fight.

Y/N grit her teeth, but before she could move Stefan rushed forward, Damon quickly behind. They charged Empusa, and Dean gripped her arm, holding her in place. He reached under her jacket, knowing it was where she had stashed the blade and pulling it from her belt before she could react, charging at Empusa.

He didn’t know if it would kill her, but he knew he couldn’t let Y/N die, so he had to try. Empusa was fast, snapping Stefan’s neck and disarming Dean with little effort. She flung Damon aside with the flick of her wrist. She turned the blade, aiming at the hunter, but Damon was back on his feet, stepping into it so the blade ran through his own chest instead.

Y/N lunged forward, her rage driving her as she watched Damon drop, sputtering blood. Empusa kicked Y/N to the ground, her head hitting with a thud. Sam was already on the move, helping his brother up. Dean lunged once more, the angel blade slamming into her shoulder

Empusa laughed and pulled the angel blade from her shoulder, the wound disappearing before their eyes. She snapped the blade and dropped it to the ground, rounding on Dean. She gripped him by the chin, a mirror image of him staring back at him, and lifted up. “You can’t save her, Dean,” his own voice spoke. “No one can.”

She tossed Dean aside like he was nothing, moving with lightning speed to grab Y/N, her arm wrapping around her neck painfully.

While she had had Dean, Sam moved towards Damon, ripping the blade from his chest with force, knowing the vampire would eventually recover. He gripped the blade, turning his attention back to Empusa. “You won’t kill her,” Sam moved toward her slowly, trying to keep Empusa talking as his brother got back up. “You would have done that already…”

Empusa’s eyes narrowed mischievously. Teeth bared, she placed her fangs along Y/N’s neck, daring Sam to continue.

“You harm one hair on her head and I swear I will tear you apart,” Dean yelled.

Empusa’s hand shot out and Dean’s neck strained as he was lifted in the air by an invisible force, his breath coming in short gasps under the pressure.

“No!” Y/N shouted, but the grip on her neck tightened, choking out her protest.

Dean slid forward until Empusa could grip his chin. “I’d like to see you try.”

Y/N struggled in her grasp, aware that the body pressed against her was in the shape of Dean, but all wrong. She reached for the small knife she kept tucked under her jacket, knowing she only had one shot. But as she moved Empusa threw Dean, knocking him against a gravestone before gripping Y/N's wrist, forcing her to let the knife drop to the ground.

She tightened the hold she had on Y/N even harder, her fingers digging into the knife wound at her shoulder, tearing open the few remaining stitches and causing her to cry out. She turned her attention to Sam and smiled. Her shape shifted until she was no longer in the form of Dean. “Give me the knife, Sammy.”

Sam's stance faltered as he stepped backwards in shock at the familiar voice. He had known it was Empusa, but still, the likeness to John Winchester standing before him was uncanny. He swallowed nervously, trying to gain control of his emotions.

“Give us Y/N and we’ll give you the blade,” Dean bargained, standing slowly with a heaviness in his limbs.

“Now that just defeats the purpose…”

“How so?” Sam asked.

“Oh come on, son,” she continued to impersonate John. “That big college brain of yours couldn’t figure it out? She’s the soul stone. If I use the blade, I get a new body.”

“And you need a new body…” Sam said, trying to keep her talking until they could come up with a plan. “You can’t survive without her.”

“That’s why I had all those visions of me as a ripper,” Y/N choked. “It wasn’t me, it was you the whole time…” Her heart ached at the love she had let go because she thought her fate would have her turned into a ripper. She grew angry as she realized it wasn't her own life she was seeing, but what would be if Empusa would win.

“You have no idea, sweetheart,” Empusa laughed.

Y/N’s hands pulled at the hold trying to breathe. “Go to hell,” she growled.

“I’ve done that a few times now,” Her attention turned towards Sam, the vision of John still unnerving him. “Sammy, give me the blade. That’s an order.”

“You sick son of a bitch,” Dean gripped his ribs with one arm, his free hand pulling his gun, aiming it right between Empusa’s eyes. Between John’s eyes.

“Come on, Dean. You wouldn’t shoot your old man now, would ya?”

Sam gave Dean a knowing look and began to spread out, creating a wide berth around her, Sam readying himself to attack.

Dean saw Damon stand once more and Stefan begin to stir out of the corner of his eye, but remained focused on Empusa. He cocked the gun. “You don’t know me that well…”

Sam nodded, and Damon rushed towards Y/N as Sam tossed the blade toward him. At the same moment, Dean’s finger pulled the trigger when suddenly everything stopped. Damon and the Winchester's were unable to move and the bullet dropped to the ground.

“What the hell?” Dean grimaced, trying to move, but his body was stuck.

Sam struggled in his own place, unable to move.

They both heard a snap, and turned to see Damon's neck broken and his body drop, revealing Crowley standing above him. He kicked the blade towards Y/N. “Now!” He shouted.

Y/N dropped her head and used all her strength to slam it back into Empusa. She loosened her grip just enough for Y/N to lunge forward and reach for the blade. Empusa growled, turning and dragging Y/N with her by the hair, forcing her to scramble to move with her. As they moved she shifted back into her own true form, a hideous thing. Her skin was sickly grey, her nails long and stained. Her hair was dark and straggly, matted down in grease, and her eyes lifeless and cold. Her teeth were shaved down into sharp points, jutting in several directions.

She screamed in frustration, loud and painfully shrill, adjusting her grip so she was holding onto Y/N’s arm, her free hand waving toward Crowley. He flung backwards, an invisible force shoving him aside as though he were nothing.

“Crowley, let me go or I swear I’ll gank your demon ass myself!” Dean roared, pushing all his weight forward with no success.

Crowley gripped onto a headstone, pulling himself up.

“You son of a bitch!” Dean screamed.

The demon shook his head, his eyes telling Dean it wasn’t him that had frozen them - it wasn’t him holding them back.

“Dean,” Sam’s voice sounded defeated, and Dean turned to see Cas, a look of regret in his eyes.

“Cas?” Dean’s voice gave away the betrayal he felt, and Cas gave him an apologetic look before turning back to Y/N with determination.

He glanced at her and nodded. Dean followed Cas’ gaze to her, wondering what on earth was going on.

Empusa faced them once more, and laughed maniacally, her hand gripping Y/N’s neck and her nails digging in as she pulled her so her back was to her chest.

Y/N winced, but she kept her eyes trained on Dean. She wasn’t afraid, but she looked sad, like she was sorry. She mouthed as much to Dean, as she carefully raised the blade.

“No!” Dean pushed with all his strength, but still he was immobile, the scene playing out before him in slow motion as he was unable to stop it.

A tear rolled down Y/N’s cheek, and she nodded at him, as if saying it was all okay.

He continued to fight, desperate to get to her, furious as his own body betrayed him.

Her eyes never left his as she shoved the blade into her body, and through her own heart.

Empusa let out a blood curdling scream, her face twisting and she stumbled forward.

Dean screamed, hating that he couldn’t get to Y/N. Hating the way her eyes remained on him, calm and sure even as the blade pierced through her skin, tearing through her muscle and stabbing through her heart. He hated the way her lips turned up in a broken smile, her mouth filling with blood as her eyes glistened, the fight finally over as Empusa’s body turned to ash, the blade dissipating with it.

Cas released them and when Dean could move once more he lurched forward, losing his balance as he tried to keep up with his own efforts. He found his footing once more and rushed to her, catching her as her knees dropped the ground. Her body sagged into him, and he struggled to keep her held up, one hand banded around her back, the other pulling her face to look at him, only she didn’t respond. “Y/N! Y/N, stay with me!”

His voice was hoarse and he glanced around for help. “Cas! Do something!” He shouted angrily. He turned to Y/N again, pulling her in, his hand gripping her shirt at the shoulder, bunching the fabric in his fist. He pressed his lips to her hair, and he sat back on his heels, rocking her into him, knowing she was already gone.

The world around him went silent. He sensed the others surrounding him, but didn’t, or couldn’t, acknowledge their presence. He registered his brother’s hand on his shoulder, but felt no warmth or comfort.

He was empty.

As empty as the shell of a body that rested in his arms. Y/N was dead, and for the first time in a long time, he wished he was too.

[emmy-writes-sometimes]

Mess Is Mine

Someone requested Sebastian Stan as a father figure after him finding something out about your family. I twisted it a little to make it different from the Chris request I did recently, so I hope that’s okay! 

-

           “Hey, Y/n?” You took the walkie talkie from where it laid beside your thigh upon hearing Sebastian’s assistant’s voice. You were the lowest of the low on set – the assistant’s assistant. And you thought it would just be getting coffee, but it had turned into an actual friendship. People even joked that you were Sebastian’s kid, even though you weren’t related. When you were on call, though, you were the runner.

           “Yup?” You asked in return, sitting up from where you were doing school work on your laptop.

           “Can you run to wardrobe and grab an extra jacket? Seb ripped it again. I think we can still shoot, but just to be safe we want an extra..”

           “On it,” you responded, standing up and starting the walk across the lot. You tucked the walkie talkie back into your pocket, grabbing your phone as a notification popped up.

           2 dead in crash on I-285; delays expected until night.

           You thought nothing of it – you just scrolled up to get rid of the notification and continued walking over to wardrobe. By the time you were walking back with Sebastian’s black jacket on your arm, the costume dust getting all over your own jacket, you were getting a call from your older sister. Part of you wondered why she even bothered calling – it wasn’t like you were close. She was 33 and couldn’t care less about what you were doing. You were seventeen, almost eighteen, so by the time you had fully formed memories she was gone. She probably didn’t even know you were doing an internship.

           “Hello?” You asked as you raised the phone to your ear. You used your other hand to grab your ID badge, knowing they’d want it to get you back onto set. You heard your sister talking to someone else for a second, and rolled your eyes.

           “Hey, Y/n,” she said quietly. You stopped walking. Something was wrong. You didn’t know her that well, but you knew her well enough to know that she had the exact same voice your mom did when something went wrong.

           “Can this wait? I’m at work, I’m heading onto the stage in a second and I don’t know if they’re shooting.” You weren’t lying – they put everyone on the oldest stage, and the red light barely even worked so you could potentially get yelled at for walking on set while you were on the phone.

           “No,” she responded with a sigh. “It can’t. You, um, you might want to sit down for this.” You were getting annoyed – why was she being so dramatic? But at the same time, your heart was starting to race and you couldn’t help but feel a sneaking suspicion that she wasn’t being dramatic at all.

           “I’m sitting,” you lied. The only place to sit was a curb.

           “Mom and dad got in a car wreck earlier,” she said. “And neither of them made it.” Your heart stopped. You felt like you were on the receiving end of a sucker punch. “They called me because they couldn’t find you at school, and since you’re not eighteen yet…”

           “No,” you responded. “No. This isn’t happening.”

           “I’m sorry, honey,” she sighed. “I really am. I’ll be there later tonight so we can talk things out, okay? The police are at my house still.”

           “Okay.” Your voice was hollow and scratchy as you hung up, putting your phone back in your pocket. You wanted to curl up in a ball and cry, but nothing came. It didn’t hit you. But you could feel the blood drain from your face as you went on. There was nothing you could do. Absolutely nothing. So you just kept on. It didn’t make sense to leave, but it didn’t make sense to stay. So you just went on, handing your ID to the security guard, and walked over to where the director was calling for a cut. Sebastian’s assistant was nowhere to be found, but you held up the jacket and it caught his eye. Something else caught his eye, too, as he walked over.

           “Hey, what’s wrong? You look shaken up,” he asked as he looked you up and down. “You look like you saw the ghost over on stage 5.” You shook your head, offering him the jacket.

           “No,” you lied, “I’m fine.” You weren’t. You weren’t fine. You wanted to go home and have your parents be there, have your dog be there, have everything go back to normal. But it was impossible and you knew that. It wouldn’t hit until you were at home. Right now you were just too numb to tell anyone anything.

           “Are you sure?” You nodded, but it wasn’t convincing. “You literally look like you’re about to pass out.”

           “I’m fine.”

           “No, you’re not.” You weren’t in the mood to argue, and after he took the jacket you crossed your arms against your chest, looking down at the concrete floor. Tears finally started coming to your eyes, but you shook it off.

           “Just a rough day. That’s all.”

           “Rough day, my ass. Go home. We’re almost done for the day anyway. Just go home and pet your dog or something, okay?” You nodded. You weren’t in the mood to argue. You weren’t in the mood to do anything. Sebastian pulled you into one of his famous bear hugs, and you knew that later you’d get a text from him to check in. He was too nice. Maybe you would tell him then. But right now, it didn’t even make sense to you.

           You sniffled and calmly walked to the walkie-talkie charging station, putting yours back. Then you walked out to the parking lot and got into your car. It was only when you started the car that you realize 285 was your way home. If you drove that way, you would see…

           You took the long way home that day, and waiting for you was your sister’s car in the driveway.

-

           Just checking in. Is everything okay? You stared at Sebastian’s text as you emerged from your shower, the shower your sister had forced you to take when she realized you were going to have a breakdown in the middle of the living room. It was overwhelming. The news sucked, sure, but it threw everything into limbo. And by the time the crash had cleared, their names had been released, and you’d turned off everyone on your notifications list except for your emergency contacts. Those happened to be a few people at Marvel, your parents, and your best friend who’d texted you a storm too.

           You didn’t want to speak to him, for the first time in forever. You didn’t want to talk to anyone. You didn’t even want to talk to your sister or her husband, who, as nice as he was, had no idea what was going on. You just wanted things to go back to normal.

           “I made some mac and cheese,” your sister said as she walked up the stairs to see you standing in your robe. “Thought you should probably eat something.”

           “Thanks,” you replied with a sniffle.

           “And I was thinking that maybe it would be a good idea if I came to stay for a while. Just until your internship’s done.” You sighed. You didn’t want to talk about it. You didn’t want to talk about anything. Your head was pounding. Your heart hadn’t stopped pounding.

           “I think I just want to go to bed.” You knew you’d hurt worse if you refused the food, but you didn’t care. You wanted out. You needed out.

           “I’ll have some breakfast for you in the morning, then,” she said. She knew it wasn’t worth fighting over, so she didn’t. She just let you go back to your room. You turned off your phone before putting it on the charger, making sure nobody would wake you up. You weren’t ready for the outpouring of support from people you hadn’t spoken to in months. You weren’t ready to face the next day, either, or the next one. Part of you thought you should go ahead and have your resignation ready because your sister would probably want you to come live with her an hour away, or your school would want you to live on campus. Your life as you knew it was over, and part of you was mourning that more than you were your parents. But you knew that wasn’t true, either. This was just how you worked. You set your alarm, early enough to go to an office and tell someone you were leaving, and shut your eyes.

           The next morning you went straight to the producer, ready to hand in your ID badge. Maybe you were being irrational, but it felt like the best thing to do was end your internship early and take the rest of the semester to adjust. Adjust – meaning watch your entire life change without being able to stop it. But, to your surprise, the door was closed. Someone was meeting with him already. You took a seat outside the door, trying to pretend like you weren’t supposed to meet your sister in two hours. You used the time to scroll through messages, responding with hearts or thank-yous, as the depth of the situation settled in again, and barely even noticed when the door opened.

           “Y/n!” You looked up to see Sebastian, worry in his eyes, as he emerged from the office. “Thank God, when you didn’t respond last night…” The producer smiled at you, motioning for you to come in.

           “Seb?” You asked him, looking up at him. He could tell something was still wrong. “Can you come with me?”

           “Yeah,” he said softly. His eyebrows furrowed in confusion, but he followed you into the office. The producer looked you up and down – you were wearing open toed shoes, the first sign that you weren’t planning on working. Sebastian didn’t seem to notice it.

           “Y/n,” the producer started with a sigh. “I heard about the accident last night.” You looked down. “Is that what this is about?”

           “Yeah,” you replied.

           “Accident? What accident?” Sebastian asked, looking over at you. “Are you okay?” You sighed.

           “My parents got in an accident yesterday,” you muttered. “And they didn’t make it out. I was planning to quit today because I probably won’t even finish out the semester, but…”

           “Don’t worry about that. We’ll honor your internship for next semester. Just take whatever time you need.” Time. Like that was going to fix everything. You stood up, and Sebastian just followed you.

           “What?” He spoke too loudly when you went into the hallway, only realizing if after. “Sorry. What? You’re quitting?”

           “I have to go live with my sister,” you said. “Who I barely even know. She lives an hour away, so I can’t finish the semester and I definitely can’t keep working. I didn’t respond to your message because I didn’t know how, because it’s not like I can just say…”

           “Come here.” Sebastian interrupted you and pulled you into a hug in the middle of the hallway. “Come back with me.” You sniffled and nodded, and after following Sebastian out the main door you walked to his trailer. He started scrambling around as you sat down, readying a cup of the peach tea he knew you liked.

           “You don’t have to…” You started. He wouldn’t hear of it, though, and got you the tea anyway. You had to admit that you felt better here. With him. Being around him was more comfort than being around your sister. Sebastian felt more like family than she did, and maybe it was because you’d spent so much time with him, but ever since you met he always joked that you could be his kid because you were so alike.

           “I’m not gonna tell you I’m sorry, because I’m sure you’ve heard that enough.” He gave you a little smile and sat down beside you on the bench seat, handing you the cup of tea. It definitely wasn’t the first time you’d come to his trailer to cry.

           “Yeah,” you sighed. “I don’t really believe it yet. I just… It doesn’t seem real. And I don’t think it will for awhile.”

           “It never does.”

           “I feel like I should be crying all over the place but I’m just not.”

           “Everyone reacts in different ways. But I don’t think you should just stop living your life.”

           “I don’t have a choice. I have to go live with my sister until I turn eighteen. Which is only a couple months, but…” Sebastian shook his head. You took a sip of tea, not even realizing how hot it was. It burned your throat, but it felt good.

           “What if you don’t have to?” He asked. “Hypothetically. What if you had a place to stay here to finish out the semester? And then next semester you could live on campus?” You looked over at him.

           “Sebastian, you don’t have to do that.”

           “I want to. I wanna help you through this. I wanna help take care of you. If that’s okay with you. And, besides. I have two extra bedrooms so you can pick which one you like better.”

           “This is such a mess, and you don’t...”

           “Yeah. But I want to, kid.” He wrapped an arm around your back and pulled you into a hug. “You’re my kid who isn’t really my kid, remember? Your mess is my mess”

           “I remember.” 

           A/N: This is literally such crap and a terrible ending but school has rly been kicking my ass and gave me such bad writer’s block, sorry to whoever requested but I really did try 😭💕

[ispyaespa]

RETRIEVED: Pretty Little Problem

TW: Spy actions, False identities, Model behaviors, Girl x Girl competition, Competition, Kidnapping, Missing persons, Decoy, Language, Insults about appearance

DATE: 21.07.24

LOCATION: [Redacted]

AGENT: Ningning

“Hang on, when do I need to enter that code you wrote down for me?”

Ningning closed her eyes and took a deep breath as she collected her thoughts. She liked Karina-unni and thought she was so cool for handling stressful missions under pressure, but technology wasn’t always her strong suit, especially when it came to coding and programing. She opened her eyes and turned to face the young woman who was driving her to the event. 

“There should be a room where you can do things like print off tickets, research local places, etc.,” Ningning told the older girl. “You’ve got Winter in your ear to help make sure you’re alone when you start entering the code. All you have to do is go to the main page for the competition, right click on the page, and select View Source Code. It will show this screen of weird commands in a boring font and you enter that code I wrote down for you after [BODY]. Got it?”

Karina winced behind the wheel as she neared the hotel and convention center where the modeling competition was being held. A week and a half ago, the 5th winner of a modeling contest went missing and the company claimed that she had a mental breakdown and stormed out of the company building. Naturally, their agency didn’t believe it and sent the aespa team to investigate. Karina was supposed to be the decoy, except her Mandarin was rusty, which meant Ningning had to sub in for her. 

“Do you need me to come with you for the registration?” Karina asked as she pulled up to the loading area for the convention center. 

Ningning shook her head and turned her head as an event staff member opened her door for her. She thanked him and exited the car, leaving Karina to find parking and the computer room in the hotel. 

“Welcome dear, do you have your ID and paperwork?” a woman at the check-in asked. 

Ningning nodded and she produced her paperwork and the fake ID with her persona for this mission: Liana Zhou. She felt someone brush up against her and turned to see a taller girl tossing her paperwork at another person seated behind the check-in table. 

“Meilin Cao, you should know me from my IG,” the taller girl announced with a haughty look. She glanced at Ningning and snorted as she turned away. “I swear the people they allow in here...”

Rude, Ningning thought as she accepted her contestant number and ID back. She listened to the woman’s instructions on where to go next and she politely thanked the woman at check-in. 

                                                           *****

“You’re barely tall enough for print ads,” one girl remarked to someone else after Ningning joined the waiting room filled with contestants. 

The other girl bristled at the comment and threw something back about the speaker’s zit that was on her cheekbone. Another contestant noticed Meilin enter the waiting room and she huffed, crossing her arms over her chest. 

“Great, now the IG bitch is here,” the contestant muttered under her breath. “Well there goes my chance at the modeling contract.”

I never want to become a model for real, Ningning thought as she tried to tune out the other competitors. 

She heard the loudspeaker crackle, then a male voice asked for contestants 45-80 to come to the stage. Ningning looked at her number and realized that meant she was part of group being called. She straightened up and lined up behind some of the other competitors, following them in a straight line to the stage. 

                                                          *****

“How the f- does she do it?” Karina hissed under her breath as she tried to type the code word for word into the source code. Her eyes darted back and forth from the scrap of paper to make sure everything was correct, then she hit Save, before exiting the source code. The page refreshed and Karina peered at the contents of the page, which revealed a different name than the modeling agency promoting this contest.

“Winter, you seeing this?”

“Yeah I remember them from a past mission,” the quartermaster replied from her controls. “They ought to call themselves HYDRA at this point.”

“I’m guessing that’s a comic book reference?” Karina sighed. “Sorry, my mom wouldn’t let me read them or watch the movies.”

“Yeah they’re the bad guys and they exist throughout history,” Winter summarized. “Where’s Ningning right now?”

Karina checked her watch and realized that the younger agent would probably be on stage at this moment. She cleared her browsing history and left the Computer room quickly, in search of the convention center.

                                                          *****

“Without further ado, let’s get that envelope,” the announcer prompted. He waited for the judges to pass him the envelope with the result and he carefully opened it. The card slid out of the envelope with ease and he beamed as he stepped forward and read off the winner’s name: Meilin.

Ningning applauded with the other girls and bit back a wince as she watched the conceited IG influencer step forward to be acknowledged as the winner. Well, this wasn’t how it was supposed to go – Winter and Giselle had researched the past winners and tried to help Ningning prepare so she could be picked and taken like the other girls. Her outfit had concealed trackers in them and her shoes had the tools for self-defense and picking locks. This meant they were going to have to improvise. 

Before the other competitors could exit the stage, a loud beeping sound emitted from overhead, before the sprinklers went off. The room filled with screams and shrieks as the others tried to run off stage to avoid getting wet, and the judges tried to get everyone to calm down. Ningning pretended to be upset by the sudden incident, using her arms to cover her head, but she spotted the announcer dragging Meilin away through a side door.

While everyone else was distracted, the agent made her way to the same side door and tried to find where the announcer had taken Meilin. She heard Karina in her comms and she softly whispered that she was in pursuit. 

“Try to cut them off,” she urged the older girl as she heard Meilin complaining loudly about being manhandled. She slowly walked in the direction where she heard the voice and adjusted her tennis bracelet, which was really an electrocution whip that could shock a perpetrator out for an hour and a half.

“We need the announcer alive Ningning,” Winter reminded the agent in her communication. “Giselle is very interested in getting him to talk.” 

Ningning promised she would do what she could as she neared the area where the announcer and Meilin had stopped. She concealed herself behind the bin for towels and heard the IG influencer yelling at the announcer to explain himself. Then she heard a loud slap and the announcer barked at the victim to shut up. 

“Ningning, I’m on the other side of the door, about 2.5 feet from where you and the victim are,” Karina confirmed. “You gotta flush him out so I can get him.”

Think girl, think! Ningning thought as she tried to come up with a good excuse for revealing herself. Then it came to her – why not copy some of her jealous competitors and get close enough to the announcer to knock him out?

Silently she managed to get behind a wall and she slowly straightened up and angrily emerged from her place. She walked toward the announcer and Meilin, yelling that this contest was a joke in rapidfire Mandarin.

“I was led to believe this is for a prestigious modeling agency that was looking for rookies! She shouldn’t have won – she has a social media presence on Instagram!” Ningning shouted as she neared the pair. She pointed a finger at the announcer and screamed that he better tell the judges to recount their votes because they got the wrong winner. 

“She’s a cheat! She’s an influencer and that is an automatic disqualification from the contest! Technically she’s a freelance model already!” Ningning added. 

“Maybe you weren’t picked because you’re not model material,” Meilin shot back, despite nursing her bruised cheek. 

Ningning stiffened and got up in Meilin’s face as she demanded that she wanted the taller girl to repeat her sentence again. The announcer had been silent and stunned up to this point. Remembering he was only here for Meilin, he resumed his professionalism and tried to separate the two women civilly. 

Ningning shoved him hard in the direction of the door where Karina stood on the other side. “This is between us, not you! Make yourself useful and get the judges STAT.” 

The announcer tried to approach Ningning again and this time she smacked him with the back of her wrist, the tennis bracelet engaging and shocking his cheek. The former convulsed for a moment, then slumped against the door, unconscious. 

“Should I pull the door towards me?” Karina asked via her communicator.

[dragonstoravens]

Babylon Vol. 1: A Different Normal, A Modicum Of Restraint

[ID: a blue patterned banner with text reading “BABYLON.” End ID.]

(We’ve got a long one for you today, since the plot is kicking off for real now. Hope you enjoy chapters 6 and 7, we’d love to hear any thoughts or comments!!!)

6. A Different Normal

A fancy black car-- not quite a limo, but close to it, and clearly fully automated-- was waiting in the otherwise empty parking lot when Azure’s dropship landed. She could see a figure leaning against it, shadowy in the low evening light, but she recognized the distinctive braid tucked behind one ear. Something sparkled in it, matching the tiny gemstones in his ears that he definitely hadn’t been wearing last time she saw him. He was dressed casually for now, in a white undershirt and black slacks, which made sense since she had his suit. He looked up as she landed, raising one hand slightly in greeting.

She stepped out of her drop ship, long, high-slitted dress glittering in the orange light of the streetlamps. The champagne color had been her brother’s doing. Apparently, it contrasted nicely with the natural tan of her skin and the golden tones of her red hair. She carried a matching suit in a clear bag over her shoulder. Performing something like a saunter to cover the horrible wobble of her heels, she called to him and waved as she approached. "Hey!" 

It was hard to tell in just the light from the fast food sign, but for a moment it looked as if his cheeks had darkened a little when he saw her. By the time she reached him though, he looked about as she remembered him- calm and collected.

“Hello. Thanks for coming, you look… very nice.” He opened the side door of the car for her. 

She stepped into the car, hair brushing his arm as she drawled out, "Thanks Hotshot, y'ain't so bad yourself. Brought your suit, fresh outta tailorin’. Matchin' and everythin'." 

She had argued with her brother on this for hours, whether or not they needed to match. Crimson insisted it was like marking territory, and wasn’t that his whole goal, to look off-market? Azure didn’t care much for the idea of metaphorically pissing all over her only off-ship friend just to save him from some overzealous mogul parents. But then again, that WAS what she was supposed to do, so the little champagne number was donned and the matching suit tailored to fit with little argument once she’d given in. 

She was here now, freshly showered so the engine grease took a backseat to the perfume for once (not that the metallic tang truly left, Crim tried to no avail). Her hair was in shiny curls, carefully separated to look effortless. She laid the suit in the back of the car and made herself comfortable, crossing one leg in front of the other and hoping Trinity wasn’t observant enough to notice just how high the slit in this dress went. Or how uncomfortable these shoes were. Or how…sticky this lipgloss was.

The car ride wasn’t terribly long, but it was long enough for her to ask him the last few questions she had about this and pull out the small add-on she’d been working on. “It’s a short range mental comm link. You plug it into your cybernetic port. It transmits clear and intentional thoughts as auditory stimulation and gives a sort of emotional backsplash to help with tone comprehension. I thought maybe it’d help in case I goofed up real bad or maybe if you wanted me to fill you in on some weird cybernetics detail in case that ever came up.”

“Ingenious.” He pulled his collar aside, exposing the edges of the trinity knot tattoo on his back, and plugged in the attachment. He blinked, and smirked over at her. You take the front seat, I’ll put up the divider and change in the back. That dress is really— “Uh, did that work?”

She nodded, quirking a brow to signify she’d definitely heard that. All of that. “Like a charm. If you gotta put a ‘stop’ at the end of your sentences like a telegraph or somethin’, that’ll guarantee end transmission for that instance. You know, for future champagne dresses.”

“...Got it.” He looked down, trying not to meet her eyes, and almost immediately back up again as his gaze hit the high slit stretching up her thigh… almost to her hip. Ok, definitely needed to stop that train of thought before it even left the station. He grabbed the suit and climbed into the back. “Anyway, I’m going to change. I can quiz you on the way there, have you looked over the messages I sent about the forks?”

    “We’re startin’ with forks?” she whined, averting her gaze from anything that could feasibly be considered the divider. “Yeah, I read them. Pull from the outside and move in, don’t drink the lemon bowl.”

“Right. We’ll make a socialite of you yet.”

    Entering one of these champagne shindigs, as Azzy referred to them on the way there just to get a rare laugh out of him, was one hell of an ordeal. There was the occasional photographer and way more security than she thought they needed. Her legs were going to give out from beneath her. There were so many people. Why were there so many, there didn’t need to be. She kept her head high and her eyes forward as she tried not to accidentally send Trinity her repeating heels-walking mantra and breathing pattern. She failed miserably, her panic and counts to four seeping into his head. He had tried to set his hand on her shoulder, but she felt bold with nerves and settled it on her hip herself, just above where the skin peeked out. Something in her felt fear and decided it was always better to double down. Probably shouldn’t be afraid of some skin, hotshot. She hoped it went through as smoother than she felt, because she felt terrified. 

The only mental response she received was a general feeling of slight annoyance and displeasure, half joking, about equivalent to a casual flip of the bird. Besides the awkward positioning of his hands, he seemed at ease here, at least outwardly. It made sense that he’d be used to this kind of event, but she could feel his vague frustration with the whole affair. He scanned the room, checking out all those surplus guards, as they entered into the main hall. She felt his hand settle more securely on her waist, his fingertips slightly warm against her skin, and watched as a smile came over his face in obvious answer to the raised eyebrows and whispers directed his way as a few of the other attendees noticed his new companion. The smile was an unfamiliar one, to her, like a classy version of a customer service smile, but no one else seemed to detect any insincerity. She supposed it made sense, if that was all they ever saw of him.

    She smiled up at him, kind of crooked because that’s the only kind she really had. Her heart was beating a little faster than she was used to, but that would level out soon. She scanned the room herself, making note of the attendants. Glad to know these haven’t changed much since I was a little kid. She laid her hand on his upper back, asking something inane out loud to cover for the fact that this was the best she could really do at reassurance, which she tried to send his way with some kind of success. She wasn’t used to this many eyes on her, and was honestly grateful for his hand on her hip. It grounded her as she desperately fought the urge to turn around and walk out right this instant. Too much noise, too many people. He was warm? And kind of gentle. Pleasant. Much better than the crowds. Crowds were always bad. Trinity was at least sort of nice, in his own weird way.

Trinity could feel her anxiety through the comm, and hoping to more easily guide her through the crowds, he slid his arm back around to be positioned between them, maneuvering her own arm through it. Her hand wrapped around his bicep, and he tugged her close to his side more easily this way, without having to grab his friend by the waist. 

It’s alright, most of them are more interested in me than you. He smirked slightly as he responded aloud as well, the slight change in expression clearly just meant for her. Besides, there’s only two or three I actually have to introduce you to. They’re gossipy enough to do the rest for us. 

Azure had been about to say something back about the crowds or the incessant gossip, but instead she paused in her seemingly endless spinning thoughts to give his arm just a slight squeeze.

“Oh my god,” she muttered, out loud but mostly to herself, “Oh my God, you work out.”

He blinked and turned to look at her, mildly baffled. At least the nerves had abruptly disappeared. “...You’ve SEEN me shirtless,” he said, quietly enough that only she would hear it. 

“I don’t see jack shit that ain’t numbers ‘n wires when you’re in that chair, so sorry to break it to ya dear.” She squeezed again, smirking. “God damn. Impressive.”

“Get it together,” he grumbled, rolling his eyes slightly, but he sounded more amused, or vaguely pleased, than annoyed. He smiled politely at a passing couple and switched over to the comm. Don’t you have a boyfriend?

He’s bi and he’s got eyes, he’d say it too if he was here. She thought of Turq, waiting back on the ship for her to return and tell him all the terrible ways she’d been bored out of her skull. For just a moment, she smiled to herself, and then she caught sight of the sheer height of the ceiling and the number of bodies beneath it and clung ever so slightly more steadfast to her lighthouse in this heavily perfumed storm.

She swallowed the thick feeling in her throat and shook out some small sparks from her hands behind her back, joining in the small talk in small starts and quiet stutters. She was initially going to try and hide the accent, fearing it would make her sound less educated than she was, but that went out the window when she realized the sheer amount of talking these people did. Besides, the number of races, species, and languages floating around the room made it pretty easy to blend in. It seemed to be mostly terrans, but not without plenty of notable exceptions. She found herself mentally repeating names and trying to tie them to faces so she wouldn’t forget for later, really only succeeded in projecting her mnemonic devices to Trinity on accident. “Jerry the Gerbil-faced Gent” wasn’t something she was proud of, but he heard it anyway.

I’ll tell you if it’s one you really should remember, he managed to send, with a clear feeling of suppressed laughter, but he does look like a gerbil, right? The few guests Trinity engaged with for longer than it took to exchange pleasantries were, he explained, donors or investors, gossips they were relying on to get her ‘gala name’ around, or even one or two people he told her were Decent, or at least interesting to talk to. 

    In Azzy’s head, Camilla Garza was a pleasant-but-opinionated woman who knew how to walk in heels and didn’t need Trinity but liked having him around. But, as he identified the people who’d be doing the heavy lifting of making her known, she found the character rapidly shifting, then nearly fading away under the weight of having to be seen so much all at once. She found herself being more uncomfortable being someone else than she thought she’d be, still nervous to say the wrong thing but with an added layer of a falsified history to remember. Her mind wandered to making fun shapes within circuitry boards, like dogs or clouds as she fought her oncoming shutdown. She had thought the shell of someone else would give her the courage to do some talking, but really it made her more nervous she would make too big a misstep and she withdrew in response. So, she settled on being as much herself as she could manage while feeling like she was wearing someone else’s skin in the form of lace and chiffon. It couldn’t stop her wandering mind, but it kept her closer, at least. Trinity seemed more at ease when she said something quintessentially Azzy in any case, and was quick to cover for her if she needed it.

 The first part of the evening, mingling before the food was served, went by faster than she’d expected, although she did have to suffer through a few seemingly endless discussions of money and business. Her mind wandered to the pleasant drape of fabric along the hip of some woman in red, then to her most recent inventions, only returning when Trinity asked for some small tidbit of info on cybernetics he didn’t understand or remember. He assured her she didn’t have to stay glued to his side if she didn’t want to, and pointed out the punch table and some younger guests who’d be safe enough, and more interesting to talk to. It would be easy enough to find each other again or call for backup with the comm link, separating a little wouldn’t harm them any.

Really, she’d have done anything to avoid the 50 year olds and their incessant need to talk about colonies and funds and stocks whether he offered her an out or not. She was pretty sure most of these windbags were some type of war criminal, too. His offer pulled her out of a reverie made entirely of the form and function of cartilage and whether something inorganic could replace it. She nodded to her not-date and made her way to the huge table of refreshments. Wonder if they’ve got e-z cheez and some club crackers, she joked into the comm as she approached the table, making small talk with some other attendees she thought looked like they might also be a little in over their heads.

I’d say rich folks prefer difficult cheese, and maybe country club crackers, came the response through an undercurrent from his out-loud conversation, something only identifiable as “taxes” personified.

She laughed at his joke and one that had been told to her over the snack table at the same time, and she was sure he could hear her even halfway across the room. That was one thing she hadn’t quite been able to practice away: her laugh sounded like something always on the verge of becoming a snort, no matter how hard she tried to keep it at a giggle. Slightly embarrassed, she looked around the room to see if it was worth being self conscious or if she could get away with it this once. She chanced a look up into the balcony, and her heart leapt higher into her throat. 

A figure cloaked in black with something very suspiciously gun-shaped in its arms stood atop the balcony and hidden in the shadows, aiming. Breathing. Time stood still. Every sound except the beating of her heart went silent. She excused herself blankly, confused but jumping into action without thinking. Her eyes drew lines from the barrel to the floor, leading her directly to Trinity. A whole platoon of guards outside and someone had snuck in an entire sniper rifle. She began weaving her way back to him with a small plate of food and a glass of champagne. Her eyes tracked the balcony figure the whole time. They didn’t see her. She felt each footstep like an earthquake. Her head the whole time calculated angles and forces and possibilities, the distance between her and Trinity, between Trinity and the balcony, the speed of a bullet and the likelihood she might be too late. By the time she reached Trinity’s side with the plate, she knew she’d been spotted. The figure on the balcony twitched, minutely. Her brother’s voice rang out in her head: “Look for the hesitation. For most of us, there’s just a little.”

Now. That twitch was the hesitation. Her hands sparked a little, and somewhere in Trinity’s peripheral vision, something glittered. Somewhere in front of him and off to that same side, the air was suddenly warm. Azzy pushed a glass into his hand, bent down to adjust her shoe strap, and proceeded to slink away so she could have an anxiety attack in peace. Thought you looked hungry.

He acknowledged her briefly, but otherwise seemed occupied with his conversation. He hadn’t noticed a thing. Her relief that he was unbothered was unparalleled, but not very long lasting. She looked at the bullet in her hand, stopped in its tracks by a cybernetic field. Testing hadn’t proven it to work while fully invisible all the time. She’d gotten lucky, that ability could have caused a stir, and that was the absolute last thing she wanted. 

The figure who had fired was no longer on the balcony. She returned to her conversation partners, mind a little more than slightly preoccupied, but it wasn’t like it mattered much. She’d just stopped a bullet, she was torn between relief her friend was okay, joy her hard work had worked in a field test, and horror that she’d just had to stop a bullet at a fancy dinner. Let them brand her as a little shy. It wasn’t like it was untrue, anyway. Her fingers worried at the crystal stem of her glass while someone asked her name for the fifth time. The figure never returned to her sight. She worried nonetheless, cutting transmission to Trinity’s communicator every minute or two so that her brain couldn’t give her away. He didn’t like these things, there was no sense making them worse for him with scary things like assassination attempts.

She was snapped out of her dark mood a little while later by a terran man who’s toupee was about three incredibly distracting inches off center. Surely, Trinity had something in place to keep himself alive at these things. A vest, at least, maybe someone casing the joint for him. She could relax, definitely. She had to relax, or he’d know and she wasn’t certain what she’d do if he asked. It wasn’t like they were super close, they mostly just fucked around and made jokes when they weren’t working. It occurred to her that she might have ended up taking that bullet for him, if the field hadn’t worked. Best to maybe play it cool. Topsy-turvy toupee at your four o’clock. Don’t look too quickly, he’ll notice. She tried her best to sound mirthful, normal.

Azure, that’s the CEO of Lighthouse Industries, a very important name in manufacturing circles! Have some damn respect. His mental voice was mock-offended. Call him MR. Topsy-turvy toupee.

Of course, of course, my bad. She sent back from her new spot against the wall, glass of wine in hand as she watched the party continue. Mr. Topsy-Turvy Toupee has a delightful taste in married women. His head was treated to the image of a shapely ass in a blue dress. She sent an apology immediately after, but she wasn’t sure he could hear it through his own silent mental laughter. Across the room, she watched him twitch slightly, as if covering a cough, but she knew. A grin split her face as she watched him try not to laugh. Keep it together Jericho, or they’ll find out you’re having fun.

Don’t you know? Rich people aren’t allowed to act like they have emotions. It ruins the illusion of the million-credit stick up each and every ass.

This time, she actually snorted. She turned her laugh into a cough as well, though not as successfully, and then someone somewhere rang a bell. Dinner, said Trinity in her head.

Come ‘n git it, she drawled in his, moving near him to walk to wherever the food was. Think I’ll be able to eat as much as I need to discreetly or am I limited to one serving like everyone else? She was kidding, of course. She had eaten a full meal before this to account for any surprise need to use her cybernetics. And she was glad she had, but it was still good to account for deficit. Because using them the way she had this evening had definitely caused a deficit, however minor.

Well… he hedged, sounding slightly regretful, there’s some bullshit about eating like a bird, and the portions won’t be huge anyway. But at least there’s a million courses. I’ll make sure no one judges you for eating everything. 

    A small wave of gratitude reached him just as she did, her hand sliding up his arm to rest in the crook of his elbow. Eatin’ like a bird’s bullshit anyway, these motherfuckers ever met a seagull? Ravenous bastards.

He chuckled aloud, quietly enough that only she could hear it, but it gave his face a genuine smile that could be seen by anyone who’d care to look. He pulled her in close and ushered her over to the table, pulling out her chair for her. She looked confused for a moment, glancing up at him through her lashes with her brows knit together before remembering that this was something people did sometimes. When they, y’know, cared. And were polite. And weren’t exclusively sitting on mess hall benches when they ate meals with you. She didn’t try to mask the blush on her cheeks. It’d help sell the bit, anyway, if she looked embarrassed. She muttered a “Thank you” and sat.

True to his word, he set a precedent for her to be able to finish her food at dinner and even get more, by requesting a second helping from the kitchen. Azure nodded her head in thanks and let him know she really owed him one before tucking into the food as quickly as she thought was acceptable in her present company. There were a few whispers and confused glances, but after a moment some started to follow suit, many of the young women looking actually relieved that they didn’t have to be the one to breach unspoken tradition just to be able to eat until they’re full. Dinner otherwise went off without any huge mishaps (Azzy wasn’t perfect at eating fancy dinners but with a poker face like hers, it didn’t really matter), although there must have been something odd with the comm links. There was a brief feeling of darkness in the back of Azzy’s mind for a moment after the extra food had been brought out, but a glance at Trinity revealed nothing but a genuine smile as he chatted with her and the other guests seated near them. He even snagged a bite of food off her plate at one point, to the amusement of the couples around them. He smiled at her as he chewed, a mischievous glint in his eye replacing any darkness she might have thought was there before. She bumped her shoulder into his, protective of her food and also in an attempt to gauge if anything was still off. A shake of her head was all it took to dispel the odd feeling of foreboding, and she tried to focus on how to answer a few of the more personal questions posed to her.

Quick, remind me how we met?, She pleaded, feigning interest in a conversation to her right that was rapidly approaching pulling her in. And if you make a joke about your eye, I swear to God I’ll drink the fingerbowl.

There was a brief moment before he replied, but his mental voice sounded perfectly normal. Well shit, there goes half my repertoire. But I suppose I can control myself, since the eye’s a secret anyway. Out loud, he seamlessly joined her conversation, leaning over to put an arm around her with a fond smile, and began telling the story they’d decided on to the gaggle of socialites on her opposite side. She smiled up at him, leaning into his arm, even chancing a little peck on his temple. Nothing big, a brush of the lips against his face, small stuff. She wondered how people could do this all the time, the physical interaction and the talking and the being so on her feet all the time. She was so nervous, watching his face with concern displayed as placid adoration. She kept her worry that maybe that was overdoing it to herself. However, the mental request to stop never came, and in fact Trinity seemed to allow himself to relax a little closer to her when she made the first move.

    She filed the fact that this was evidently the new ceiling for their comfort with one another away and tried to ignore the heat of his body on her back. Conversations swirled around her, some going over her head and others offending her with how little the speakers actually seemed to know about the topic at hand. There were so many people. There were so many eyes. How do you stay here through all this noise? She asked, initially intending it to be the beginning of a joke but deciding a genuine question was due every once in a while. My head hurts from the 47 different topics. And what’s a mutual fund? This dude just offered me his and I’m not certain if it's an innuendo or not.

I know. I learned to deal with it young. Plus, you have to learn when to put yourself above a conversation, tell them with a look that they don’t deserve your attention right now. Before she could unpack that sentiment, there was another soft bell, and he stood. Perfect timing. There’s just dancing now, and then you never have to come to one of these again.

    She was almost saddened by the idea of not doing this again, until she looked around and saw just how big this hall was once again. The place was packed, and now she had to move around in it. Her shoulders tensed a fraction, fingertips sparking slightly before she shook it out. Unbidden, the memory of the bullet currently settled in her pocket rattled through her brain and she had some second thoughts, mind racing and looking around once more for dark figures on balconies. Spotting none, she allowed herself to be led to the dancefloor while she regulated her breathing. Shoulders still tense, she looked up at him again. I gotta warn ya, Crim said this was harder in heels, and I wasn’t great in boots.

It’s alright, I’ll lead. We can start slow. He paused, hands hovering near her, not quite touching her despite the fact that he’d had a hand on her waist without a problem for most of the night. ...May I?

Sure thing, Hotshot. She fixed him with another crooked little grin, this one much shyer than some of the ones previous. She tried not to look at their feet. Well, her feet. He smiled and put his arms firmly around her, steadying her as the music began to play. He might have been holding her a little closer than normal, but once they began to move it was clear why- this close, his feet were the only ones she could really step on, and he could hold her up if she started to wobble on her heels. 

She glanced down more often than she probably was supposed to, and she was definitely unsteady on her feet more often than her steps could be classified as sure. He looked down at her and saw her tongue poking out a little at the corner of her mouth, gears turning behind her eyes. The comm she had forgotten to cut off notified him of the various patterns she was trying to trace in her head-- the beat of the music and her heart and the movement of her feet and the other couples, over here was a mental map of the entire building, and from the sound of her thoughts she couldn’t seem to figure out what orientation was up. She was overthinking it, and really badly too. 

“Az.” He spoke out loud, quietly enough that only she could hear him using that name instead of Camilla. “Tell me something about cybernetics. Or memes, or something.”

She startled, her eyes locking with his as she froze. A question died on her lips, and she took a deep breath before she began speaking again. “The current core tenets of cybernetics and cyber-biotics research make the assumption that a person with a brain is a person piloted by electrical impulses-”

Was the beginning of Cybernetics 101 really the thing he had wanted to hear? Probably not. But, as she rambled on, the intensity behind her eyes softened, and she could be led around the dancefloor to the sounds of her own musings about whether electrons could really be made solid, or if they already were solid. He nodded along, and occasionally added a chuckle to make the act more effective, as if she was telling some entertaining story rather than reciting the first chapter of a textbook. Eventually she broke away from reciting basics and asked him a real question. Her eyes never left his face as she asked his preference with a grin: “Platinum or steel plating on auxiliary processor casings, and why’s it obviously steel?” 

“Well besides the expense, there’s durability to worry about,” he shot back. “Platinum’s good for about two minutes, so you can say the word ‘platinum’ in your elevator pitch and sound fancy.” It was easy to fall into their typical banter, now that the music and the movement of couples around them left them space to talk normally without worrying about keeping up appearances for the other guests. She laughed at his jokes while telling a few of her own, steadier on her feet and seeming like maybe she’d somehow gotten used to being here. She’d even forgotten the risque height of the slit in her dress. His hands were warm, and she didn’t really mind as long as she didn’t focus on it too hard. It crossed her mind that maybe she and Turq should dance sometime. It was nice, just to be in someone else’s orbit.

Time seemed to slip by once they got the hang of gliding around the floor together, and by the time the orchestra was playing its last song, Trinity was more comfortable holding her than he’d been all night. He found himself already feeling her absence the next time he went to an event like this- he couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually had fun at one of these. The thought almost surprised him. He had enjoyed it, despite everything, even despite what had happened at dinner, and he smiled down at her as he escorted her out to the waiting car as the night drew to a close. He opened the door for her once more, and once in the safety of the car with its tinted windows, they could both finally fully relax.

Stretching out as far as she could, Azure slouched back in her seat while trying to mind where her skirt fell. Her shoulders sagged and she realized just how much tension she’d been holding in them. Absently, her hand went to the small bump in her pocket and she frowned, fishing the offending object out. She cleared her throat, willing it to open enough to let her speak. Her mouth felt so dry.

“How much personal security do you usually have at these things, Trinity?”

“What?” He half turned to face her with a shrug. His hair was starting to come undone from its neat braid, falling over his forehead and cheek in soft waves, and he looked more relaxed than he had all night.  “Well, there’s guards and security at most of them. I don’t usually bring my own detail, they tend to get in the way. But I’ve gotten fairly good at taking care of myself. ...Why do you ask?”

“You might want to look into bringin’ one or two personal guards, at least to conduct an initial sweep or somethin’, since the ones they already have failed so badly.” She fidgeted at the idea of trying to make suggestions on things she didn’t know about. Whether she liked it or not, she’d found a soft spot for Trinity over the course of their short friendship and especially this strange event. She thought she mostly saw him as the guy she sent stupid jokes to because he had a legacy piece of tech from her mother, but circumstances like this often don’t leave much room for analysis until much later. She pressed on. “You could’ve died.” 

His easy smile dropped, and he fixed her with an odd look. “You noticed that?”

She held her hand out, the bullet shining in her palm as she shook slightly. “I stopped the bullet myself.”

His eyes widened a fraction, before he could school his expression back to its resting state. His voice softened slightly, like he was trying to calm her. “Right, of course. You stopped it, of course you noticed.” He was clearly hiding something, but trying to keep her from worrying about it. She’d never be able to explain how she knew, she just did. Her dark eyes bored into his as she took the communicator out of her neck. Might as well let him know she’s not relying on the communicator to tell if he’s lying, present him an unspoken dare to tell the truth anyway. 

“Trinity, what’d I miss?”

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, pushing the loose strands back out of his eyes. “There was poison. Just in my food, one of the extra dishes they brought out, and I filtered it out just fine. It’s nothing to worry about. I even checked yours— it looks like they were only targeting me, and without much luck.” He tugged at the collar of his shirt. “I was wearing a bulletproof vest, too. I’m used to this. Anyone in my position would have to be. I wouldn’t have a life if I dragged guards everywhere that someone might try to kill me. Hell, I’d have to take them to the bathroom.” His voice was incredibly calm and casual for someone talking about multiple, apparently regularly occurring, attempts on his life. She didn’t know she could want to shake someone so violently. He was technically right, there wasn’t much opportunity to do anything if you had people guarding you constantly. That didn’t mean she liked what that meant. She dropped the bullet into his lap, treating it carelessly for how much it clearly bothered her. She was no longer shaking, but something pulled at her heart, made her lungs feel strangled. She wasn’t angry, it was something else. She’d done it again. The stupid ship, it was making her even softer than she already was. She couldn’t leave this alone. It’d never sit right with her. Her teeth ground together as she compared her options. Her jaw tightened, a stubborn look giving her rounded face a harder edge.

“Let me come with again.” The words tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop them. She might regret the hell out of this. “It wasn’t so bad, and you can’t cover your face in kevlar. My brother could have made that shot with his eyes closed.”

He tilted his head at her, confused, and more than a little unsettled by the comment about her brother. Vigilante, fashion designer… sharpshooter? “I… are you sure? Of course you could come if you wanted, but this really only needed to be a one time thing. I’ve survived 22 years without you, I’ll be fine.”

“It’ll make me feel better.” Behind her eyes was a raw emotion he’d never seen before. She probably wasn’t aware it was there either, she did a piss poor job of hiding it. She really was a truly terrible liar. “And anyway, how’s it going to look to have a girlfriend one time and then not again? They’ll all talk and then it’ll be back to square one for you, and then we went through that whole thing for fuck all in payoff. Please, just...just one more time, at least. We had some fun, right? It might even be worth it, and it wasn’t so bad for me to be planetside for a night.”

He smiled at her, shaking his head slightly to concede defeat. “Ok, I yield. It was definitely better with you there. If you’re sure you want to, I’ll ask you next time an event comes up. Fair enough?”

She nodded curtly, the tight feeling in her chest subsiding with each subsequent breath. “Fine by me. Gets me off the ship.” A crooked, shaky smile.

“Sure. It was… nice to have you there, anyhow. Makes it more bearable when you have someone to make fun of the whole thing with.” He returned the smile, much calmer than hers, and reached out to give her shoulder a quick squeeze. “Maybe it’ll be better next time, who knows?” His tone didn’t seem to hold out much hope for that.

She laughed, a little, but this one didn’t sound like it was even close to becoming a snort. “I’ve got to go, Crim’s got my dropship ready for me.”

The car started up, heading for the drop off point, where Trinity watched her walk back into her small ship the same way she’d exited earlier that evening, the sway of her hips a little more genuine and steady. A recurring date. This one was going to be a little harder to explain to his sister.

7. A Modicum Of Restraint

    Azure glanced at her messaging screen. It had been a bit since she’d told Trinity she’d be more than happy to be his fake-date for another event or two. Mostly, she was worried about him and the apparently frequent attempts on his life. But, some small part of her, locked away with childhood toys and dreams of being a member of alien royalty, had a good time. Who would have thought? Maybe the thing she’d hated about fancy dinners as a kid had been the people and not the dinner itself.

[Azure] hey, am i tagging along for the next event, or did you decide to spring for those juice pouches instead?

Her own message glared at her. She wondered if maybe she should have just waited for him to text her. Maybe he didn’t have as much fun as you did. He said you only had to do this once, why are you asking for a second crack at it? You’ve said yourself you hate fancy parties.

She groaned and cursed herself for being so...herself. It wouldn’t be that hard to be a little more open about how worried she was, and besides, he had already told her the same night that he’d bring her again. But it had been some time and he had behaved just as usual, as though she hadn’t been there when he could have died. Twice. I’m going because he could have been seriously hurt if I hadn’t been there last time. I saw that fucking angle, there was no way he was coming out of it fine, I just need to go one more time to check. Somewhere in the back of her mind, an unfamiliar concern tried to rear its ugly head, but she ignored it in favor of stubbornly pressing the bullet issue instead.

Finally, while she stared tight-lipped at the screen, those little dots appeared. 

[Hotshot] Right- if you still want to come I have your plus one paperwork all set. Is your brother making us match again?

Relief bubbled through her, a release of tension that started in her gut and ended in her jaw finally unclenching. 

[Azure] I think it’s his favorite way to coordinate two pieces. What’s your favorite color? We’ll do that one.

[Hotshot] I don’t really have a favorite color? Guess I’ve never thought about it.

[Azure] ah, you’re too rich to see colors like us common folk, I see how it is hotshot.

[Hotshot] More like I wore shades of black and grey for a long enough time as a teen that I never picked one. What’s yours?

[Azure] What if I said I wanted to talk more about your emo phase instead? And not the reason I picked my name.

[Hotshot] So it just happened to be blue and you got lucky with the theme you all have going on?

[Azure] It happened to specifically be that shade of blue, and Crimson got really unlucky. Don’t change the subject, tell me about your Dark And Troubled Past.

[Hotshot] It’s just blue. There’s not that big of a difference between them.

After a moment there was a second message.

[Hotshot] And I will not be doing that. Suffice to say I had an eyepatch anyway so I figured I might as well lean into the look.

[Azure] I’d have gone for more of a pirate thing, really just go nuts.

Her bubble stayed for a few more moments. 

[Azure] I’m sorry for asking, though. I forget that people off this gloomy piece of metal have tragic pasts they don’t want to talk about too. 

She was being dramatic, but the apology was real.

[Hotshot] You don’t need to apologize, all you did was ask about my teen goth phase. A pirate phase would’ve definitely been more interesting. Anyway, do I have to pick a favorite color now so your brother can start working his magic?

He might have been deflecting a little, lightening the mood, but she wasn’t going to call him on it this time. 

[Azure] It’s either you pick a favorite, or you have to get used to that boring champagne color in varying levels of opacity and form. If it was up to Crim I’d wear that dress and those heels every time I walked out anywhere more important than a grocery store.

[Hotshot] God forbid.

She could practically taste the sarcasm. This was a man whose version of casual was a button down and slacks, after all. 

[Hotshot] Fine, I guess maybe some sort of blue or green? Let’s go with green since I guess you’ve got blue covered.

[Azure] Green. That’s a fun challenge, I think that technically clashes with my hair. He’ll love it.

She stretched a little as she typed up her next message, happy to finally have something to plan for.

[Azure] I’ll have it sent to you this time so that you won’t have to change in the car.

[Hotshot] I’ll look forward to it. And this time I’ll make sure you’ve got all the food rules memorized. We don’t need a repeat of the caviar incident.

[Azure] Listen, the bowl came with a spoon. I used the spoon on the contents of the bowl. What do you want from me.

[Hotshot] A modicum of restraint, perhaps?

[Azure] Trinity Jericho, you can’t ask me to rewire my whole brain like that. We’ve only just met.

[Hotshot] You rewire your brain every other day and message me about it. I have a picture of your nervous system from a week ago. It’s probably completely different by now. I don’t know where I’m going with this, but I’m right.

[Azure] Incredibly rude of you. I have a doctorate. I needed that caviar for tongue science.

[Hotshot] Well I hope you’re happy with your scientific discovery that straight caviar is a crime against humanity and taste buds. Did you solve universal climate change with that data?

[Azure] No, but I did learn that your pointy fancy shoes really hurt when they connect squarely with my shin under the table. And that with an unwavering poker face, you can get at least three others to try anything. :)

[Hotshot] You’re lucky I like having you around. I can’t believe I agreed to this. I’m creating a monster.

Taglist (ask to be added or removed!): @charlottedotexe @glitterandstarshine @rainbowcoloreddays @the-starlight-chills @erased-in-stone

General: @elywritesbydarkness @residentofthedisc @humour-and-hyperfocus @skyfirewrites

[nickelkeep]

All the Femslash Fics are written by yours truly in 2019. They’re listed in chronological order, starting with the oldest. Time After Time - Jody/Donna - 600 words Jody is having a rare night alone at home. It's something that she normally enjoys, but she's finding herself rather lonely for once.

Silver and Sunset - Jody/Donna - 1,073 words Jody and Donna get to spend some time together at Donna's place, away from the girls, their jobs, and most of all hunting... right?

Fire and Brimstone - Lilith/Ruby - 1,874 words - Explicit Ruby has been captured by Lilith's Minions. How far will Lilith go to get the information she needs?

Sage and Luck - Charlie/Rowena - 553 words Charlie and Rowena are helping the brothers with a case when Charlie hits a dead end and a headache. Rowena offers her assistance.

Treble and Ink - Pamela/Charlie - 793 words A new shop has moved in across the street from Charlie's Comic Book shop. Dean convinces her to go check it out.

Cypress and Pomegranates - Rowena/Billie - 726 words Rowena has been looking for an answer to Dean's Michael problem. Frustrated at a lack of a solution, she lashes out.

Secrets and Flowers - Jody/Donna - 2,447 words Donna suggests that Jody picks up Gardening as a hobby. She agrees, but only because Donna says that she'll pick out the flowers for the garden. Donna picks out a unique grouping of flowers that Jody gets to decode.

Push and Pull - Jody/Donna - 999 words Jody and Donna take a rare girl's night out to a dance club. Jody isn't the biggest fan of dancing until Donna shows her why she should be.

Emerald and Gold - Charlie/Dorothy - 1,834 words After the War in Oz, Charlie volunteered to go capture her ID. She figured that it wouldn't be a walk in the park, but what happened was anything but expected.

Lightning and Bottles - Charlie/Dorothy - 570 words Charlie experiences her first storm in Oz, and Dorothy teaches her a little bit about the weather.

Pride and Revelation - Charlie/Dorothy - 1,311 words Charlie is in love with her roommate, Dorothy, but the feeling isn't mutual. Things get a little weird when Dorothy asks if she can tag along to Pride.

Sight and Circumstance - Tessa/Pamela - 1,320 words Every Reaper is Assigned a Medium. That Medium helps the Reaper with difficult souls that don't want to cross. In return, the Reaper protects the Medium. Pamela will always remember how she met her Reaper.

Lipstick and Liquor - Claire/Kaia - 720 words - Character Death Mention It's been almost a year since Kaia's death and Claire is still missing her and longing for her.

Leftovers and Valentines - Jody/Donna - 908 words Donna doesn't like the fact that she's alone for Valentine's Day, but won't admit it. So she covers by working a Double so others can have the day off.

Hunter and Witch - Mary/Rowena -1,615 words Mary doesn't like how close her boys are to Rowena. She doesn't understand why it gets under her skin, until the witch starts to get under hers.

Before and Always - Charlie/Dorothy/Gilda - 914 words Charlie finds out that her two best friends are dating. While they're explaining what's going on, Charlie reminisces about their past.

Poppies and Mahonia - Charlie/Dorothy - 964 words More Tales from Charlie and Dorothy's time in Oz. Dorothy finds Charlie's curiosity adorable and explains how some of things work in Oz.

Timing and Opportunites - Jody/Donna - 1,793 words Donna never realized that Jody would change her life in such a way. Donna's memories of how she and Jody went from Friends to Lovers.

Serpents and Grace - Anna/Ruby - 1,070 words Anna is approached by a demon with information that the Angels should have. The introduction to questioning her superiors is a lesson she didn't expect.

Crimson and Cracks - Charlie/Rowena - 1,247 words - Character Death Mention Rowena is holding the rift open for the Winchesters to come back from the Alternate Universe. The last thing she expects is to see the face that has been haunting her dreams.

Visits and Bribes - Pamela/Charlie - 2,036 words Dean, Sam, and Charlie have hit a roadblock on their case. Charlie suggests calling in the medium that the brothers knows. They do, but the medium needs a little persuasion to make the trip.

File and Agency - Charlie/Dana Scully (X-Files) - 2,387 words Agent Scully is stuck on desk duty when another FBI agent comes in demanding what should be an unknown file.

Judge and Executioner - Anna/Ruby - 1,052 words Anna continues to meet with the demon who provided information about the start of the apocalypse. Continuation of Serpents and Grace

Run and Gun - Jody/Donna - 647 words Jody and Donna are lounging around when Sam calls them and asks them to take on a hunt.

Stars and Wishes - Charlie/Dorothy - 657 words Charlie experiences homesickness while in Oz

Magic and Technology - Charlie/Rowena - 1,789 words Rowena is brought to the Men of Letters Bunker for help translating a spell. She meets Charlie for the first time, and they don't exactly see eye to eye.

Salt and Burn - Jody/Donna - 413 words A quick snippet into how Jody and Donna work on a hunt together.

Death and Taxes - Anna/Ruby -1,269 words Third Part of the Serpents and Grace story. Anna and the Demon continue meeting, and consequences catch up to them.

Every Little Thing - Charlie/Rowena - 6,353 words Dean gives Charlie a cassette tape that was found after clearing out a coven. When trying to play the tape, she and Rowena wind up with more than they bargained for.

Head Held High - Charle/Dorothy - 897 words - With Fan Art! When Dorothy gets a letter from her council, she and Charlie learn about Earth and Oz's politics.

Snow Globe - Charlie/Dorothy - 1,223 words Dorothy, finally able to celebrate Christmas, surprises the person who made it all happen with a gift of their own,

[overly-rustled-jimmies-blog]

September 25th, Night shift

    I bought Dominoe’s beforehand for everyone because I was sick of eating chicken, and I figured everyone else was too. So I spent some time waiting for that before work while listening to Joji’s new album (absolute banger btw), and I went to the KFC parking lot after they gave me the pizzas. My coworker/ friend Lenny, which isn’t his real name, was already there so we chilled in his van listening to ICP for about 15 minutes before we went inside to start our shifts. As soon as we walk in it already looks like everyone is in a state of chaos; there’s 3 big bucket meals on the screen and only one is packed, the morning shift people almost immediately clock out when they see us, and our boss Jack is just standing in the office looking confused.

   I clocked in and they told me to start collecting at drive-thru ASAP and so I did. The guy at the window had to have been waiting at least 10 minutes which is a horrendous time - we try to aim for under 3 minutes at KFC - but luckily he was understanding and not much of a dick. At the KFC I work at the cash drawer is by the window as well as the bags so it’s always congested when it’s busy cuz I’ll be trying to get change while someone is getting utensils and condiments and the person taking orders is trying to pass by to make a lemonade. It’s always hell in the morning but it was only like that until we got the bucket meals out. After that there was a moment of peace, I was able to stock some things that I knew we’d need later on and just bullshit with my coworkers. It lasted about 10 minutes, and this was just the calm before the storm.

    We were slammed from 4:40 p.m. until we closed at 9 and then we had one more guy that came at 9:05 that we had to serve. Most customers were decent people but I dealt with my fair share of dipshits and Karens. It’s KFC policy that if your order is over $25 and you pay with card then I need to see your ID, I don’t like it either but if you just show me your ID and the names match then we’re good. Hell if you’re nice and the names don’t match I’ll still accept it, it’s the people that don’t want to show their ID that make me suspicious and/or are the biggest fucking assholes we get. Today there was only one thankfully but she had a sob story about how she thought she left it at children’s hospital even though the closest one to us is a good 10 hours away. I told her I can’t accept it without the ID and guess who magically found her ID not even 10 seconds later. She wasn’t too much of a problem other than that but I’ve been at KFC since June and that’s just something that always irks me.

    We had this bitch that said her kid didn’t like his Gatorade so she wanted something else instead, at first I kinda chuckled and asked if they wanted water instead and they kept insisting they had to get capri sun or they’re calling my boss because they’re related and shit and at this point I couldn’t give a shit so I let my coworker Sarah deal with them. Probably the worst people we had all night tbh, and I’m pretty sure the kid didn’t care and they just wanted to be difficult. They ended up getting their capri sun, no straw of course, and when they sped off I yelled “BITCH” at them and I just really hope she heard. 

    A few cars after her we had a customer who had at least 11 different meals spread across 2 tickets with 9 drinks and when she got to the window we could see the car was packed with at least 7 kids in the backseat alone. The driver was under 21, I know because I had to ID her for the first order and she looked baked as fuck. I should mention we’re in Colorado so we get high people all the time which is whatever but when you’re behind the wheel high as fuck with a clown car full of kids, that just don’t seem right. Lenny wanted me to get her license plate so he could report her and he did, he went to the bathroom right after and called dispatch to tell them about potential child endangerment. They said they have a BOLO (Be On the Look Out) for her car now.

    I should mention my aunt is a manager and she was the manager for the night and I could write a book about the things she does wrong at work that irritate me but she’s the best night shift manager because she’s very relaxed. I have 2 other managers, one is a bitch and the other is nice but also takes her job seriously. My aunt just kinda doesn’t give a shit which is nice sometimes but when we have a line that wraps around the restaurant and she’s already taken 3 minutes packing one large coleslaw, I kinda get angry at her. I had a different aunt come through drive-thru and order from the passenger seat, never fucking do that by the way, and I didn’t recognize her until she got to the window. So I said on the headset, “Oh god I’m so embarrassed, that dumb bitch is my aunt” and my manager aunt says, “Who?” on the headset, and with no hesitation I said, “You”. She handed that joke to me on silver platter, Lenny nearly choked on his pizza because he was on his 30, and it was probably the best thing to come out of tonight.

    All in all, it was a shit night but it could’ve been shittier if I had a different manager so I’m not too mad I guess. It was a Friday night so I should’ve expected it but Fridays are also some of our slowest days sometimes. I have another night shift with Lenny and my aunt tomorrow so that’s nice. Before that I have to lend some Japanese learning books to an acquaintance, friend? I’m not too sure. I don’t know him that well and we’ve hung out in a group once or twice but he’ll talk to me in Facebook replies for hours on end. Kind of a strange relationship but I’m just happy to help. It’s already 2 a.m. and I still haven’t taken a shower so I think I’ll go do that and then pass out on the couch because my room is still a mess. I’ll see you tomorrow

[szopenhauer]

Would you ever chew gum after someone else already has? noooo, yuk

Earrings or a necklace? necklace

Have you ever wished on 11:11? I do smth else/have different tradition

Have you ever listened to the Goo Goo Dolls? Iris, even recently

Have you ever watched Lost? nah

Do you have pictures of your exes? I think I deleted them

Do you have Ozzy Osbourne on your mp3 player? I don’t listen to him but I liked to watch Osbourne’s family tho

Do you read romance novels? the only one I could count as a romance was Five feet apart

Did you draw pictures for your crushes in preschool? no :o

Have you ever not asked someone out cause you were scared of rejection? yep

Have you ever liked someone just because of their appearance? had some crushes like this, especially celebs lol

Pink or green? green but pink with green looks interesting

A bracelet or a ring? depends

Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter? LOTR

By airplane or bus? bus

What’s the last thing you binge watched? She-ra

Do you watch youtube videos or tv shows more? yt videos

What are you tired of right now? everything

Have you ever gotten rid of something and then regretted it? If so, what?  several things, personal

How does your stomach feel right now? silence before the storm?...

Do you live in an apartment that has inspections? I don’t live in an apartment

Do you hate taking naps during the day? yes and no

Who in your immediate family has the best natural hair? my grandma has, she never got grey hair nor dandruff etc.

Do you know anyone who thinks they’re more talented than they are?   obvi

What is the origin of your last name? polish?

Have you ever been inside a Victorian mansion? I wish

What was the most boring field trip you ever went on? hmm...

What are your favorite types of videos to watch on youtube? music videos, thrift hauls, interiors, fashion, funny stuff...

What’s a DIY craft project you want to try? I’m not into DIY

Are you a hoarder? yep

Do you ever call yourself stupid in your head? often

If you were to start a collection, what would it be? not counting those I already have? for example - znicze

Would you ever give your daughter the middle name Marie? I could, especially if it was a boy :P as it’s legal to call him Maria if it’s the middle name lmfao

Do you have a relationship with God? some sort of it

Have you ever “fired” a doctor? could say so

Who is the prettiest Asian youtuber that you can think of? I don’t watch any Asian youtubers

What was the temperature where you live today? less than 30 Celsius but it felt colder

Is your sleep schedule all messed up? umm...

Did you wear green last St. Patrick’s Day? I don’t celebrate this 

Food: Are you adventurous or do you stick to what you know? stick 

Do you know both of your biological parents? I do

When was the last time you wrote so much your finger ached? last night

Do you store a lot of pictures you’ve taken that no one else has seen? ppl close to me saw them

When did you first start using the internet? regularly or very first time?

Do you prefer tents or staying in hotels? prefer hotels

Do you have any family traditions for certain holidays? Which? personal

Do you enjoy clowns / street performers or are they creepy to you? some I like

Have you ever had a teacher who would just babble about nothing? for example - we had a priest who was always talking about war times or his night dreams :D

Do you ever look at a word and think that it looks odd? hahaha it happens

Did you ever dream about being an animal? plenty

Which vowel occurs most in your whole name? A

What’s your favourite colour on a dog? dunno

Do you prefer Skirts or Dresses? dresses, I can use them as tunics

Have you ever been told you are fake? once :(

Can you do cartwheels? not well

Do you like the name Sara? no longer...

What’s your first name without an r, e, s or l? doesn’t change

What’s your age plus two divided by 4? 7.5

Do you know someone named after a month (April, May, June)? used to know May

Stop typing. What do you hear? someone is mowing grass as every other day ugh...

What was the last book you read that also is a film? Five feet apart

How often do you get a new purse or a new wallet? whenever I feel like it but I thrift them so it’s not like I spend lots of money

What is the most money that you have ever spent on getting your nails done? few PLN for a nail polish and done them myself lol

Does it matter to you if your girlfriend drinks? I wouldn’t date an alcoholic, someone who is drunk a lot and then do stupid stuff, pukes, have hangovers often, spend all their money on alcohol, smells like it, gross!

Has a little kid ever fallen asleep on your lap before? nah, just cat

If you heard your best friend’s significant other was cheating on them, would you tell them? Even if you couldn’t prove it? I’d mention that to them

Do you plan on having both your parents at your wedding? if they want to attend...

Have you ever stayed on a ride at a theme park to ride it again? nope

Where did your mother and father meet for the first time? in front of the church

Would you rather read books or magazines? depends

Have you ever had your cheek pinched? I hate that >.>

Do you own any plaid pants? I have a pair of plaid leggings and pajamas

Do you talk in your sleep? nah

Have you ever fallen off a horse? never been on a horse to fall

Can you pick things up with your toes? I do this often

If you are a girl, do you get bad PMS, or is it not so bad? my PMS were usually worse than my period

Would you rather have your shirt be too long or too short? too long

Are you the type of person who can shake insults off easily, or do they tend to stick around in your brain & bother you? stay forever

Do you like clothes with ruffles on them? usually not

Were you happy when you woke up today? I wasn’t

Have you used the opposite sex’s bathroom in a public place before? had to 

Do you rent movies frequently? I don’t have money for that

Do you quote movies or songs to answer survey questions? very rarely as it’s annoying

What is your name spelled backwards? Annazuz :3

How do you think the world will end? people will destroy it?

An alien ship lands at your house, and they want you. Do you go with them? 

If you were in a horror flick, would you be one of the first ones to die? I think I would survive or die saving someone

What movie has been taken WAY too far, as far as sequels go? most of them but it’s more shows’ thingy

Do you get a fake Christmas tree each year, or a real one? fake, I’m against using real ones

How long would you have to know someone before tying the knot? it’s not about length of time that much

Would you embarass yourself if you met your favorite celebrity? probably :x

If a person had a glass eye, would that scare you? no idea, hope not as I don’t wanna make them feel bad, sorry in advance

Are you a twin? am not

Do you get paranoid that someone’s looking at your through your window? my neighbor sometimes does so...

Mountains, oceans, or forests? forests

When was the last time you “de-haired” your hairbrush? recently?

Are any of your great grandparents still alive? they’re all dead

Where’s your significant other? visiting her dad

How much blankets do you sleep under? 1-2

Is a hair dryer a necessity for you? it is

If you were atop a tall building, would you throw stuff at people below? don’t do that!

Do you believe we really landed on the moon? I don’t give a shit

Name a movie everyone else thought was funny, but you couldn’t stand: majority of comedies tbh

What topping do you HATE on pizzas? same, I’m more into simple food

Got any interesting wigs? bunch

Can you resist temptation? most often

Would a credit card get you into trouble? if I lost it, I would be paranoid about it 24/7, omg I just got scared I’ve lost my ID and bus card 

Truth or dare? truth?

Which is more annoying: sequels or prequels? *shrug*

Do you use rechargeable batteries? when I did they were blowing up, didn’t charge back or smth like this so I prefer normal ones thank you very much

Describe the chair you’re sitting in. Is it comfy? it's so old there’s barely anything left to sit on but I have no cash for a new one nor can get that kind of chair anywhere so... 2 pillows under my butt have to be enough

What would you do if you thought someone was following you? try to lose them

[andrea-lyn]

Malex prompt! Slowly getting to know the love of your life better as friends is perhaps the most awkward time to have to pull off fake dating for the investigation, but needs must.

“I don’t understand why you can’t go,” Michael feels like he’s losing his mind, because Alien Club is a) way too populated right now and b) telling him that he and Alex need to go undercover at some alien collector’s house the next town over. He gestures wildly to Noah and Isobel. “You two are actually married!” He’s shouting now, but he knows it’s a front for his panic.

Better to be angry than to let anyone see how much he’s freaking out about the fact that they want him and Alex Manes to pretend to be a happy married couple interested in some items for their home.

“Because he knows me,” Isobel counters. “Not to mention, of the three of us, you’re the one with the power to manipulate security cameras and pick locks with his brain,” she snaps. “So, your choice of spouse. Do you want Valenti, who can defibrillate a security guard if things go wrong…”

“Hey,” Kyle cuts in. “I’d make a very convincing loving husband.”

“Or you can pretend to be married to Max?”

“That’s not an option,” Max informs the group, raising a hand like he needs to make that clear.

“What about Liz? Cameron?” Michael is starting to flail wildly with options, because he knows how this is going to end.

“Guerin, they want me to hack into the system while I’m there to plant a keylogger,” Alex sounds way too calm considering what they’re being asked to do.

It’s only been a few weeks since Alex turned up at the junkyard and told Michael that he wanted to start over and be friends. Michael’s been trying so hard to give him what he wants and needs, backing off every time things get too close or tense, trying to open up and genuinely be Alex’s friend.

He’s just not sure he can actually be Alex’s friend and pretend to be married to him at the same time.

“Then why married?”

“You wouldn’t bring a casual boyfriend to a collector’s house to buy something. He’s supposed to have actual alien artifacts, Michael, and we need to know if there’s something worthwhile there.” Isobel’s gaze is steady and she has the look in her eye of a woman that knows she’s winning the fight. “Just go in, put on a good show, and maybe we’ll learn more about ourselves. You want that, don’t you?”

It’s not a problem of want.

Michael wants everything that’s about to happen.

He wants to learn more about his past. He wants to be with Alex in a way they’ve never had a chance to be, but pretending to be married feels like skirting a huge line that feels dangerous to step over. “Fine,” he says, trying not to look at Alex (which is good, because then he won’t have to see the puppy-dog mooning eyes Alex is sending him). “I’ll pick you up at six,” he tells Alex. “This better be a good lead, Isobel.”

He storms out of Isobel’s house without looking back at anyone and heads straight to the trailer.

Once there, he opens one of his junk drawers and pulls out a ring box that he’s had since he was twenty-one. It had been a wildly stupid summer with Alex back in town. That summer, Michael had very nearly run away to UNM, begging Alex to come with him instead of going on his second tour.

He’d bought a ring. Michael Guerin, twenty-one, stupid and in love, decided that the next natural step would be to buy a ring. Only, then Alex hadn’t showed up for their date where Michael planned to ask him to run away with him. Years later, he’d found out that he couldn’t, because Jesse Manes had pulled some strings when he’d found out about Alex’s plans, making sure that he’d be required on base.

Michael had put the ring away at twenty one and never brought it out again. At least, not until tonight, because he’s supposed to be playing married.

He taps the box against his chest a few times, his mangled fingers clasping it tightly, and he stares out the window, trying to figure out what you wear when you’re trying to impersonate a married couple.

He has a hard enough time impersonating a normal human being most days, how’s he supposed to do this?

Michael turns off the part of his brain that does feelings and heads to the meet-up point for six, getting in Alex’s car because apparently his beat-up Chevy doesn’t carry the right impression (thanks, Isobel, for that encouraging text).

“You ready?” Alex asks.

“Fuck no,” Michael responds, “but if this guy has anything that belongs to us, I need to know. What do you want to say if he asks about our history?”

“I made us up a background that should hold,” Alex says, as they start driving to the next town where David Trapper lives. “Let’s keep it pretty close to reality? We met in high school and started dating there, off and on. When DADT got repealed, we decided to get hitched, and now we live in Roswell.”

The way he says it is clinical and official, but even that is more than Michael’s ever thought he’d get from Alex. “Okay,” he says, tapping his fingers on the dash to get out some of his nervous energy. “And uh, our names?”

“I took yours. Alex Guerin is the ID he’ll find if he looks me up, which I anticipate him doing.” Alex is doing his Listen To Me, I’m In The Air Force voice, which means they’re about 0010 minutes from Michael being given an order that will get him embarrassingly hard. “I’m not going to mess this up for you.”

“I never said you were,” Michael replies heatedly. “This isn’t me freaking out because I don’t think you can do it, Alex, you have to admit this is awkward. We’re playing pretend. You broke us up, twice, I slept with Maria, now you want to be friends and the first thing we do is decide to get fake married to look into alien artifacts.”

Alex shakes his head in disbelief, but he’s smiling, so clearly he understands how weird this is.

“It’s not, admittedly, how I expected us to start over, but is it so bad? Friends investigate things together. They go out for drinks every few days to decompress and talk about their day. We’ve been doing that. It’s been nice, even.” Alex shrugs as he takes the turn down the long driveway of the address they’ve been given. “Maybe this is a good test for us.”

It’s dark, now that they’ve arrived and it doesn’t help with the ominous mood that’s been creeping up on him the last few minutes. Alex parks a fair distance away as they both peer out the windshield at what awaits.

The house is a creepy looking mansion in the dark and Michael hates it. He thinks he’d hate it even if he didn’t know the guy inside was collecting artifacts like it’s some creepy kink. It’s that gaudy flaunting of wealth that makes him sick, the same as it always did when he was a kid.

“Hey,” Michael murmurs, heart racing as he digs out the box from his pocket. “Gotta sell this, right?” He opens it and it’s probably sad to be as proud as he is about the fact that he doesn’t fumble the ring, but he manages to get it out and offers it out to Alex.

He’d fashioned himself one from some scrap metal and he’s hoping Alex doesn’t look at the ring too long and hard to notice that the platinum band doesn’t match the stainless one Michael’s wearing.

Luckily, Alex says nothing, even if he does give Michael a wary look as he slides it on, his eyes softening. It looks like there’s something on the tip of his tongue, though, but Michael can’t cope with a fake marriage and a mission in the same night as hearing real feelings, so he gets out of the car before Alex can say anything.

He’s pretty sure that Isobel didn’t think about the tension between the two of them when she’d sent them on this little mission of hers, because already he feels like they’re fucking it up. He comes to a stop outside the steps to the porch when he sees a figure standing there.

Someone’s been waiting for them.

Michael tries to convince himself this isn’t like an awful horror movie, and turns to find Alex using his crutch as he makes his way to Michael’s side.

“Mr and Captain Guerin,” David Trapper greets them from the porch of his lavish estate, and Michael threads his fingers into Alex’s hand not just to sell the bit, but because he could use the support. “Please, come in. Isobel mentioned that you had come into some money recently and were interested in seeing my collection.”

“We’re aficionados,” Alex smoothly agrees, giving Michael a nudge to get him moving. “We’d heard that you were intending to sell some of your items and were interested in seeing what you have to offer.”

“I do love to show it off. Please! Come in!” Trapper encourages. “I have the best collection of items I’ve purchased this side of Roswell, but I’m always willing to part with one of them for the right amount of money.”

Michael presses his lips together and tries very hard not to think about sending one of the suits of armor telekinetically flying into Trapper’s face.

Rich asshole bastard.

“Here we are,” he says, ascending a flight of stairs and leading them down a long hallway, with wood floors and heavy oak paneled walls. Everything here is behind a case and looks to have its own security measures. “Seventy years of collecting has yielded this, my own personal monument to our little green friends.”

It’s insulting, is what it is. Michael’s never been green, if you exclude the time he gave himself accidental acetone food poisoning by combing a bottle of it with some really bad sushi.

As much as he’s predisposed to hate this man and his house, his collection is actually incredible. Sure, there’s a few pieces of useless meteorites, but the technology looks genuine and he’s seen copies of the memos on display on the dark web, including the original transcripts from Brazel.

Michael drifts away from Alex’s side to keep going down this rabbit hole, barely paying attention to the small talk Alex is offering to keep Trapper occupied.

Considering he thought this place was going to be a bust, he’s quickly learning how wrong he is. The sound of a phone ringing cuts into his focus and he turns to watch Trapper taking a call, wishing he could listen in on whatever it is he’s being told, but he doesn’t seem keen to even be near them while he talks.

“I have to take this call, you two stay here, enjoy the Alien Wing,” he says, ducking out to the main foyer and leaving Alex and Michael alone.

The minute he’s gone, Michael shorts out the security cameras. “Asshole,” he grumbles, but his eyes are fixed on the various display cases on show, wondering how the hell he got his hands on these items, but the real prize possession seems to be at the end of the hall, with three times as many alarms as anything else. It looks like a glowing piece of the ship, but the placard makes him sick when he realizes that it’s alien in nature, but it’s not mechanical.

It’s organic.

He stares at it for a long time, his brow furrowed.

“Michael?”

“Organ from the 1947 alien autopsy,” he reads, staring at the iridescent shimmering before him, wondering if it belonged to a family member, a friend, a guardian, or someone else all-together. Did this person die to protect him? He’s staring at it while Alex starts to jimmy the panel loose, hooking up his device so he can hack into the security system.

Glancing up as he works, Alex looks worried from what Michael can see out of the corner of his eye. “It’s real?”

“I think so,” Michael says, feeling numb. He can’t explain why he thinks he’s so sure, but there’s a connection and a pull towards it.

Alex finishes with the software he’s sending, a conflicted look on his face as he presses in close to Michael, a hand on his hip. “Hey,” he murmurs. “You know we can’t take it. He’ll call the cops and that’s the last thing we need.”

“I know,” Michael replies, but it’s monotone, like he’s on autopilot.

“Michael…”

“I know,” he snaps, because he does. He has to leave this place because this is only recon and he’s not allowed to use his power to smash the glass and take back this stolen piece of his history.

“We’ll come back.”

He knows, but it doesn’t make it any better. “What do you want to tell him?” he asks, searching Alex’s face for advice and finding a flood of warm sympathy there. Maybe they’re pretending to be hitched, but he’s pretty sure Alex has nailed the whole ‘support your spouse’ part of this. “What should be we be making an offer on?”

“The memos,” he says. “We don’t want him thinking we’re into the alien stuff just yet. I’ll tell him we’re going to go home and think about it, then we’ll make sure he’s not connected to the government in any way.” He steps into Michael’s space so he catch his eye, clearly trying to calm him down. “Okay?”

It’s really not okay, but what choice does Michael have? He rips his gaze away from the glowing and pulsating object, swallowing back his stubbornness so they don’t get caught.

“Okay.”

It takes another ten minutes to conclude their business with Trapper and get out of there, but he doesn’t seem suspicious and that’s all Michael can ask for. The drive back is spent in silence, because Michael can’t stop thinking about the organ in the case, and he can’t stop thinking about the rings on their fingers – fake in Michael’s case, but so real when it comes to the one Alex sports.

Once they’re back in Roswell, Michael knows that he’s going back once he figures out a decoy to swap with the items in Trapper’s care. He’s not leaving anything back at Trapper’s place, but he doesn’t need a fake-husband for that. Alex has brought him back to the junkyard and parked the car, turning to face Michael as he lifts his hand, starting to work off the ring. “Here,” he says. “Before I forget, you should take this back.”

Watching Alex pry off the ring, Michael feels a wave of courage wash over him.

He reaches out and folds Alex’s fingers over it. “Keep it,” he says.

“Michael, it’s yours, it must have cost…”

“Keep it,” he says. “But the next time that you and I do something that requires a married couple to go, I’m not faking it with you,” he warns, a promise he intends to keep. Seeing his family’s body on display like that has filled Michael with a need to make sure that he doesn’t take anything for granted. “I spent fifty years in a pod, in stasis, but I came out at the exact right time. I don’t know how, but maybe you and I were meant to. I was protected by someone, and maybe this isn’t what they intended for me, but one year more or less and everything would’ve been different. I’m gonna make it right. I’ll talk, I’ll be your friend, but one day, I’m gonna earn that ring back from you because otherwise, if I waste away my life, what does that say to the people who worked so hard to keep us safe?”

He can’t keep fucking up with Alex and he knows they’re not ready, but he really needs Alex to understand that.

Alex slides the ring back into his pocket, nodding, looking thoughtfully at him. Michael’s expecting Alex to tell him to stop being unrealistic or to stop pushing, but he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he presses Michael against the door of the truck and kisses him like they had at the reunion, crashing into each other as Alex’s fingers tangle into Michael’s hair, kissing him until desperate sounds are wrenched from Alex’s throat.

When he eases back, Alex presses his forehead to Michael’s. “I knew you were secretly a romantic,” he teases. “You’re saying we’re fated?”

“I don’t know what else to call it,” Michael admits, because he believes in coincidence, but them finding each other feels like more than that. “Come on,” he says, swallowing the lump in his throat. “We need to tell them what we found and I need to go plan a heist.”

“Not alone, you don’t,” Alex guarantees, and Michael feels his heart pounding in his chest to know he’s got a partner in crime. “For better or worse, until government agencies do us part.”

“Yeah,” Michael agrees, and he’s ready to go reclaim a piece of his history, with the best fake-husband ever at his side.

[pandemicthestory]

10: confused

Fake it til you make it.

In the middle of the City, fairly close to the Academy, there is a chrome-colored building that is taller than almost all of the rest. Night and Sugar stand in front of its doors, wondering how they’re going to get in.

The building is called “Mecca.” It’s filled with headquarters for top companies--mostly builders, but also fashion and interior designers, medical technicians, and game developers. Thousands of civilians report here for work 5 days a week. But since it’s Friday, as soon as it’s 5 o’clock, these workers will leave their desks and head to the top floor. 

At the top floor of Mecca is LOUNGE, an exclusive night and day club where windows are always blacked out and the passing of time can’t be measured. A night club meets speakeasy meets casino, this is where the elites go to unwind. After a long week’s work of building, the business men and women of Mecca can swipe their membership card at the top floor and indulge themselves in the darker parts of life. 

And this is exactly where Sugar intends on taking them.

“There’s no way we’re getting in.” Night mutters, hitting his forehead with his palm. This situation feels seriously illegal and seriously stupid. As he and Night stood at the front of this massive building, Night begins to wonder if he’s made a big mistake. 

“Hold on now, don’t give up just yet, man. Listen, the separation medical facility is in this building.” Sugar explains. 

“So..?”

“People think we’re Vacaters. So, we’ll tell security that we have appointments today, they’ll let us in, we’ll head to the facility and…” 

“And what?”

“And figure it out from there? Let’s go dude!”

*buzz*

*buzz buzz buzz* 

Suddenly, Night’s phone starts blowing up in his pocket. He can’t ignore it, because it just keeps going. 

“Hold on a second, Sugar…”

Night reaches into his pocket and sees that he has several missed texts and calls. From Julian. 

Oh god, what does he want from her so desperately? What could be so important that it can’t wait? 

This is why he’d tapped Emma’s phone. It wasn’t because he’s creepy or trying to infringe on her privacy, though, he’ll admit, that’s exactly what it looks like. No, it’s because she’s unpredictable, and surrounded by people who don’t know what’s best for her. And because he really needs her to make it here. 

JULIAN: where are u 

JULIAN: stopped by your house and u weren’t there 

JULIAN: ur mom said u were out for a walk, but i don’t think that’s true. Tell me what’s happening

(3 MISSED CALLS)

JULIAN: your friend zoe says that you’re out somewhere with her boyfriend. Care to explain? Wtf is going on...we’re leaving in a few days Emma

(2 MISSED CALLS)

JULIAN: we’re leaving tomorrow

Leaving?

Leaving where?

Night had known that Emma was planning something, just not what. Apparently Julian does. 

Sugar taps his foot impatiently while Night composes a response to Julian. With the software he installed on his phone, it will be rerouted through Emma’s number. He’ll have no idea.

“EMMA”: Going where?

A pause, and then Julian is typing. 

JULIAN: there you are. Fuck. don’t do that to me 

“EMMA”: where are we going, julian? 

JULIAN: what are you talking about? Are you trying to distract me from the fact that ur out chilling w Gabriel? The fuck?

Now Night is actually confused. Is this why she didn’t answer him? Because she was busy with Gabriel? And for that matter, who the hell is Gabriel?

What’s going on Emma? Everything you need was sent straight to your doorstep. Couldn’t have been easier. All you had to do was get the mail. So what went wrong?

Sugar yells to him, “DUDE, NOW.” 

“Ok ok, I’m ready!” Night says, while composing and sending one last text.  

“EMMA”: i’m not going anywhere with you julian. I’ve changed my mind. Don’t contact me again

Night runs after Sugar. He wonders to himself...what does such a smart girl see in such a profoundly stupid guy? Is she that starved of attention that she’ll settle for anyone who gives it to her? Note to self: that question will probably be offensive to her if he were to ask it. So he will not.

But hopefully he’ll at least have the chance. Soon. 

Sugar storms ahead, and Night basically has no choice but to follow. 

Sure enough, they head through metal detectors on their way in, and are then greeted by a squad of security guards. A guard steps in front of them. How many times is this going to happen today?

“Please swipe ID cards on the way in.” 

This guard is nicer than the last one, he said please. He’s still in the way though. Sugar steps up. 

“Hello sir, we don’t have ID cards because we don’t actually work here. We’re merely here for our appointments at the separation facility. We’re wearing our uniforms to indicate our status.” Sugar says, oozing with professionalism and aggressively overdoing it. Night fights a laugh under his breath (“merely..?”) and Sugar elbows him discreetly. The guard frowns.

“Is that so? We weren’t told of any separation appointments scheduled today...in fact, it’s rare that they’re ever scheduled on Fridays. What’s the reason you’re here for the service today instead of Monday?” 

At this moment, both Sugar and Night are hoping that the other one has more knowledge of who the hell Vacaters actually are and what the hell the separation facility actually does. Unfortunately, neither of them do. Night realizes that he’ll have to throw another hail mary pass and hope for the best.

“Well it’s because, the...service...is going to be followed by a session with some other associates at LOUNGE.” 

Now it was Sugar’s turn to try not to laugh. That was officially the dumbest ass response ever, which is why he is the resident debauchery mastermind and Night spends every night in front of a computer and a dead plant. 

Night tries to remain confident. He couldn’t bank on these guys not understanding Vacaters, like the last pair of idiots, but he gambled that he could bank on them not knowing much about LOUNGE. From the look of it, these guys don’t seem like the type to be invited to an exclusive, glamorous party. They’re wearing jumpsuits. 

“What? Really? That’s so...unusual.” One guard says. The other nods in agreement. They actually seem a bit...jealous? As in, why have these two bratty teenagers been invited to the top floor when we who have worked here for five years never will?

“Well yes, my father is a builder and it’s, uh, a sort of rite of passage for me to be vacated, er, separated, alongside him. In a celebratory way. After work.” 

If Night got away with this, he’d owe the forces of the universe one. 

The guards just nod in admiration while Sugar looks incredulous. 

“Well then, good luck young man. We hope your last night will be a special one.” 

The guards exchange nods with Night and Sugar, who head forward to the glass elevator. 

“Separation facility is on 43!” Calls one of the security guards from behind, almost wistfully. Maybe one day he’ll get the chance to see what’s up there. But not likely. 

Once inside the glass elevator, Sugar hugs Night around the shoulder. 

“Ok honestly, I’m a bit shook that you’re a bad ass. Was pretty sure that you were just a virgin computer nerd.”

Night laughs to himself. That’s all that anyone has ever expected of him. But right now, seeing himself through Sugar’s eyes as a genius lawbreaker feels good. Intoxicating, even. 

“What floor’d he say? 45, was it? Sugar asks. 

“Why not go straight to the top?” Night asks, with a mischievous grin.

He hits the number “100” without waiting for an answer. 

* * * 

Emma crashes through the front door of her house, ready to have to explain herself to her parents and hoping to get through it painlessly.

But they don’t seem to be home. “Mom? Dad?” 

They must be out looking for her. Now it all makes sense...her neurotic mother was blowing up her phone because she couldn’t even trust her daughter to take a walk around the damn block. Then her phone got destroyed in the parking lot. And now, since she hasn’t answered, they’re out looking for her. And when they eventually get back, she’ll probably be sent to prison. Cool.

Emma decides to take this time as a gift. Tune everything else out. This is her shot to save Isabel. 

Emma runs upstairs to her room and tears the cardboard off the headset. She tosses the instructions aside because she has enough knowledge to put one of these together without them. 

Does it need to be charged? It does not. It’s ready to go. 

Now, to check on the download…

7 HOURS REMAINING

She groans. It’s speeding up, but not enough. She needs to plug in now, not in 7 god damn hours. She sees on her computer that there are a shit ton of unread G-chat messages from Zoe. Ugh, she’s probably dealing with some sort of jealousy moment right now and Emma just doesn’t have time to deal with it. So she doesn’t open them. Sorry Zo. You’ll forgive me.

Emma wracks her frazzled brain--there’s gotta be a way for her to get online and contact Emma.

Wait. 

Emma runs across the hallway to Isabel’s room, carrying the headset and headphones. Isabel is still slumped over in her chair, alive, looking the same as before. Well at least she’s alive, which is cool. Emma examines the game on the computer--scanning the twisted map view of a city for any sign of her sister. None. Hm, guess it doesn’t work like that. 

Emma looks at the game settings. 

Ah, input/output. Yes. This is it. 

If she can’t join from her own game, maybe she can join Isabel’s.

Emma sits down on a pile of clothes in the back of Isabel’s closet. She might as well get comfy, she could be here for a while. She puts on thick noise-canceling headphones and the headset, and everything goes dark and quiet. 

Power on. 

Emma wirelessly connects to Isabel’s computer, then sees the icon for the Universe game pop up in front of her eyes. With a nod, she selects it.

Black becomes blue. 

Silence becomes ambient drone music. 

Isabel’s done VR before, so she expects this. She still feels excitement. This technology never ceases to amaze her. 

It’s when the feeling of the laundry beneath her fades away into a rush of cold air... 

This, she does not expect. 

[missfeisty199]

Ahhh I love when writers do these prompts! Friendlypack #9. "I can't feel anything."

Anonymous: 9 😲

((here’s to you both! :3))

#9 “I can’t feel anything.

I thank my good friend @gay-spaghetti​ for helping me out with this prompt :)

Also, this will be REALLY angsty, and looooooong! (I just had to get carried away like always haha ) 

-

Stan is currently making his water delivery rounds around the city of Los Santos. So far, things have been successful. He earns his usual good pay, and even getting some tips from satisfied customers. 

Today has been satisfactory, and he thinks to himself that it’s going to stay this way. 

He is getting back into his delivery truck when his cell phone rings. Stan takes a look at the caller ID, having the thought that another customer was calling him, eager for some refreshing bottled water. 

However, he sees that this would not be the case. 

It’s not a customer calling him. 

It’s Brenda. 

She doesn’t ever really want anything to do with Stan, and they haven’t spoken to each other in a good while, so...why is she calling him out of nowhere?

Baffled, Stan swipes his thumb on the screen and holds his phone to his ear. “Hello? Brenda?” he answers. 

“Stan,” he hears Brenda begin, “what are you doing right now?” 

Stan’s eyebrows furrowed. “W-why do y-you wanna know?” 

“Just answer the question, dumbass,” Brenda aggressively presses, which isn’t a surprise to Stan. 

“I’m currently making my water delivery runs,” Stan tells her. “I just got done with one of them.” 

There is a bit of silence before Brenda replies. “Could...could you maybe take a break...and come to Pillbox Hill?” 

Stan wonders to himself what this could be. All of their friends know that Jimmy and Stan are an item, so Brenda couldn’t possibly be asking him out on a date. Like he thinks before; Brenda doesn’t ever really want anything to do with him. 

“Brenda,” Stan starts out in a frustrated sigh, “why do you need me to-” 

“Because this has to do with your boyfriend, Stan!” Brenda shouts back, interrupting him. “He’s here at the hospital right now. He’s...not good.” 

A shiver shoots down Stan’s back, and he feels his stomach do kickflips. “J-Jimmy’s...there? He’s not good?” Anxiety builds up in Stan, filling up every surface of him. 

“Yeah,” Brenda replies. “He got into an accident on his motorcycle. They just brought him in and...he’s looking really terrible. He was wailing up a storm, so at least that eliminates one worry. You may wanna come though, Stan. I know you would.” 

Of course Stan would, and judging by Brenda’s words and the tense tone in her voice, he has to go...right now. 

“I-I’m on my way,” Stan says. He’s already putting the keys into the ignition, the screwed up jalopy of the truck sputtering alive. 

“How far away are you, Stan?”

“I’m in the Vinewood area.” Stan has one question on his mind, and as scared as he is of what answer he may get, he needs to know regardless. For his own sake. “Can...would I be able to actually see Jimmy...since he was in an accident?”

He seriously hopes, even prays, that Brenda will say yes. 

“I...I can’t really guarantee that, seeing as how fast the EMTs rushed him in.” 

Stan can hear the little bit of rare sympathy in Brenda’s voice. 

“Brenda...”

“I’ll try to see if you can though. I’ll see if I could work something out with the staff taking care of Jimmy. You just...you just focus on getting your ass over here, Stan.” 

With that, there’s a beep on the other end of the line. 

- 

Even though he drove in a gigantic delivery truck, along with being cautious about not going over the speed limit, Stan manages to reach Pillbox Hill Hospital in a matter of quick minutes. After carefully parking the truck and locking it, Stan rushes into the entrance lobby of the hospital, where Brenda is in her usual spot at the reception desk.

“Good GOD, Stan! Watch it! You almost fucking shattered the glass doors!” Brenda groans with evident irritation. 

“Just tell me if you worked something out with them, Brenda!” Stan pleads back, having no time for her sass. 

Brenda uncrosses her arms, and she scratches the back of her neck in a way that Stan reads as it not being that good of a sign. “Well, I did talk to the doctors overseeing Jimmy.”

“And?”

Brenda sighs, but...it’s not in the constant bitchy way that is familiar with her personality. However, it does sound...kinda distressed. “Look, Stan,” she says as she brings them over to the waiting room chairs to sit down. 

“The good news is that Jimmy is alive and stable, but...he’s just too banged up from the accident. All I know from what the staff could only tell me is that there was an incident where Jimmy collided with another vehicle. As they were rushing him in on the stretcher, I got a quick good look at him. I...I think Jimmy must have been dragged under the other person’s car by his legs. I...I wasn’t lying to you when I said he looked terrible, Stan. I heard his motorcycle got completely trashed even, so that should also tell you something. As we sit here and talk, they’re still taking care of him.”

The entire time Brenda is telling him all of this, Stan feels like he’s on the verge of passing out even though he’s sitting down. Things and people all around him are blurry, only focusing on Brenda in front of him and her words. “Taking care of him...how?” Stan asks. 

“They’ve got him in emergency surgery to see what they can fix up...and what they can’t.” 

It isn’t reassuring...at all. 

“So,” Stan starts out, “what you’re saying to me with all of this, Brenda, is that I won’t...actually be able...to see Jimmy right now?” His voice is cracky, and the tears are already on their way to stream down his face. 

Brenda sighs again, like how she did moments ago. “Yeah, not right now. Maybe not even until tomorrow since it’s going to be quite a while.” She glances down at the rugged floor beneath them for a minute, and then she looks back up to meet Stan’s now flooding eyes.

“I...I really did try, Stan. I know that I may not give a shit about you and your pathetic life, but...I know how important Jimmy is to it, and to you. I really did try to have them let you see him, but they needed to wheel him into surgery. They said his injuries were just too severe...even for a visitor to see him. It has nothing to do with your guy’s relationship status. It’s just...what they have to do.” 

It’s a hard truth that Stan understands, and he nods. He doesn’t blame Brenda, because even he knows there’s only so much a receptionist could do in cases like this. “I appreciate it nonetheless, Brenda,” Stan softly says to her, even when it comes out as choked up and saddened. He wipes his tears with his wrist, and he casts his eyes down to the floor. 

Then, Brenda does something Stan would never in his life think that she’d ever do - Brenda wraps her arms around Stan in...kind of a comforting hug. It overwhelms Stan so much that he returns the gesture, completely sobbing now, though he makes sure to cry into his own arms and not onto her shirt. 

The last thing he’d want right now is for her to angrily yell at him to buy her a new dress shirt. 

“Go get some rest, or go back to your runs, or whatever the hell else it is you do with your time,” Brenda tells him. “I’ll call you back the second I know he’s ready for you.” 

-

Sure enough, and as promised, Brenda gives Stan a call sometime the very next day. 

He is back at Pillbox Hill Hospital literally five minutes after Brenda had called him, and she is now escorting him into the room the staff have Jimmy. 

Stan sees that the door to the room is closed, but he notices that there is a name plaque on it that reads out ‘Jimothy Bending’. 

The two of them stop just inches away from the door, and Brenda turns her body to look at Stan. “Wait out here for a second, Stan,” she tells him before giving a couple of gentle knocks to the door. 

There is a female voice on the other end, and Brenda announces herself. She opens the door, but then quickly shuts it behind her. Stan is undoubtedly confused, but he figures this is another one of those things that’s done in a hospital, especially when there has been a subject such as a severe accident at hand. 

He can hear Brenda speaking on the other side of the door, along with the female voice from seconds ago. He doesn’t know exactly what is being said because it all sounds muffled through the thick wood of the door. Nor does Stan wish to be intrusive and place his ear to it. Brenda instructed him to wait, and so he will do just that. 

Luckily, he doesn’t need to wait too long. The door is then opened back up slightly, and Brenda peers her head out. 

“You can see Jimmy now, Stan,” she tells him. “I should warn you though, he’s...well…” She sighs. “Ya know what, just get in here and see for yourself.” With that, Brenda opens the door wider for Stan, and she steps aside to make room for him. 

Stan’s heart drops to his stomach when he gets inside. He sees Jimmy fully aware and looking back at him. He watches as his eyes light up at seeing Stan, even though there seems to be a hint of melancholy in those deep brown hues of Jimmy’s. 

That’s not what makes Stan gasp audibly, however. 

What does, though, is seeing both of Jimmy’s legs being held up by slings dangling from the hoist of the hospital bed. The entirety of his legs are also in casts, and Stan could only see a tiny portion of Jimmy’s toes. The rest upwards is just...thick castings. 

“J-Jimmy…” Stan stutters breathlessly. 

“Hello, my sweet Sunflower,” Jimmy softly greets back. There’s some sadness to his voice though. 

The doctor overlooking Jimmy, who Stan can only assume is the source of the second female voice he heard outside, steps beside the waterman. “I’m assuming Brenda has filled you in a bit on what has happened with Mr. Bending here?”

It takes a moment for Stan to reply, but he eventually does find his own voice. “Y-yes, she has.” His eyes never leave Jimmy’s though. “A-a motorcycle accident, right?” He isn’t sure if he’s asking for clarification from the doctor, or from Jimmy himself. 

“Yes, it was,” the doctor replies. “A serious one at that, as you can see from his legs. Thank Jimmy’s lucky stars that he is still with us, however!” She then glances at Brenda, and together the women turn to walk out of the room. “We’ll be giving you your chance to visit with him now. Ms. Pancake and I will just be right outside if there are to be anything you’d be needing.” 

The door closes behind Stan, who is still looking at Jimmy. 

The room is silent with just the two of them in here for a moment. 

“You don’t have to keep on standing,” Jimmy says. He gestures with his hand at the small chair next to his bed. “Although, I’m envious that you get to do so.” 

“Envious...of what?” Stan asks as he takes his seat alongside his boyfriend. Not before giving Jimmy a meaningful yet quick kiss to his lips though. He notices that they feel chapped. 

“Of...of you standing.”

“Me...standing?”

Jimmy adverts his gaze at Stan’s to look at his casted legs, and he stares at them for what feels like an extended amount of time. 

In him doing it, Stan then realizes what Jimmy could mean. His eyes widen. “You...you mean you…” 

“I can’t feel anything.” Jimmy takes a long, deep breath. When he exhales though, his breath comes out shaky...and before they both know what is happening, Jimmy breaks down in front of Stan. “I can’t feel anything in them at all! I’m paralyzed from the waist down! I can’t ever walk again!” 

“Oh, Jimmy,” Stan gasps. He sits up in his chair so that he can comfortably wrap his arms around his distressed boyfriend, to which Jimmy returns by clinging onto Stan. He continues his heavy weeping as he buries his face into Stan’s chest, already soaking his blue polo shirt. 

“The Doc says that even with physical therapy, it...it’ll be years until I could ever walk again...if that’s even possible at all! I may have to be in a fucking wheelchair for the rest of my damned LIFE!” As Jimmy says this, he wails even more into Stan’s chest.

The tears Stan has been holding in this entire time are now freely cascading down his face. He soothingly combs his fingers through Jimmy’s messy bed hair, even pressing kisses to his head. “I...I’m so sorry, Daffodil,” he mutters softly. 

“I’m gonna live out the rest of my years as a fucking cripple!” Jimmy proceeds to sob. “I’m gonna be useless! You won’t ever want me! You won’t want anything to do with me! I should’ve just fucking died on the spot if it’d save you the trouble!”

“Jimmy, don’t say that,” Stan calmly says. “Don’t you ever say things like that. It’s not true. None of that is true at all. You should be glad that you’ve survived...I know I am if it means that you get to still be here with me.”

“B-But...but I won’t be able to walk or run or even go places on my own. I’m gonna be a burden to everyone...especially you, Stan.” 

Stan sighs. “No you won’t, Jimmy. You wouldn’t be a burden to anyone, especially me. I’m going to take care of you. I’ll be there for you...through thick and thin.” 

He gets choked up, and he also feels a lump in his throat. Stan swallows it before continuing to speak.

“I help you with everything, Jimmy. With getting around, with taking care of you, all of it. I’ll push your wheelchair to wherever you need to go if you want me to. I’ll take you to your physical therapy appointments. I’ll even help you with the bathing you and dressing you up and what have you. I’ll do everything. I’ll do it all, and you won’t ever hear me complain about any of it.”

“Stan…”

“Please, Jimmy. Believe me. I’ll do it...all of it...because I love you. You know I do, baby.” 

Jimmy’s crying has subsided a small bit throughout all of their talking, and he’s just sniffling now. “I do,” he softly says. “I do, Stan. It...it’ll change our lives drastically, however. It...may even strain our relationship.” 

“You’re right. It may.” Stan presses another kiss to the top of Jimmy’s head, only this time with more love put into it. “But you know what, Jimothy? It’ll make us stronger. There will be many, many obstacles in our path...and I wouldn’t mind. We won’t go through them alone, we’ll see them through…together.” 

[pixelburied]

excuse the cropped weirdly pictures; my family/pet's foster parents are great at snapping a sneaky picture of me curled into an unattractively slouched (relaxed) fetal state. which i'm self-conscious about because it's an unattractive position for pictures even tho i am quite pretty (but they are also cropped because im just also private as hell, sorry lmao). 

bonus tho: said pet is laying ontop of me, face buried in my shoulder, twitching in her sleep as we speak!

--- but anyway. onto the actual submission:

so yeah. i saw your post! i'm here to address your call for dogs. but i dont have anymore pictures of my dog, Cash. however, i do have stuff about my cat, Allegra. 

i dont have any of them together cuz Cash lives at my family's house and Allegra lives in my apartment. and we're p sure he'd try to eat her and she'd scratch the hell out of him, so we don't try to let them meet. but, just like how Cash continued the legacy of us adopting another big slobbery dog with possessive seperation-anxiety, Allegra does fit all the criteria of those same personality traits we are such a beacon for. so i hope youll accept it as comfort nonetheless

here's a story about my cat who acts just like a anxious, cuddly, and slobbery pupper. i even bought her a pet ID tag that's shaped like a bone to honor that joke lmao) Allegra: "the honorary and tiniest mastiff" and named after the allergy medication

i got Allegra just this last year. she was a stray. now, for context: there are lots of outdoor cats in my neighborhood and they all hate strangers (they aren't feral tho, they have collars). but they all avoided my old house though because of Cash. so Allegra, newly abandoned, took advantage of that safety(?) by constantly hiding out around my family's house whenever she felt endangered

before that point tho, where i vaguely realized she existed but had no idea of what her strategy had been: i knew the cats of the neighborhood would run 15 miles away at the sound of people. but i am a small bean of cliches, so i always say "Hi kitty" anyway. even if them running away breaks my heart. and on that day, i was on my way to work for the opening shift, not early per se but i had enough time for starbucks if i wanted (and i did want) and i saw the vague mass of a cat on the lawn. predictably, i went "Hey kitty". but i also kept walking to my car due to said expectation of cats running and not wanting my heart to have that little break

and allegra did run. she just ran at me, full speed. i almost kicked this sudden HURLING THING in my peripherals like a football out of fight/flight + anxiety, except i have the aim of Charlie Brown so i thankfully missed her terribly. she was purring up a storm and crying pathetically. tho she's a Siamese, so they talk (read: complain) a lot anyway so maybe she wasn't crying. i always call her talking "crying" anyway tho cuz of the whiny pitch of it so such is a moot point. the real point was: she was ridiculously friendly

then, one morning, she was especially incorrigible. she wouldn't let me go into the car without her jumping inside too and kept scenting me, my car door, and all my equipment for this art class i was going to use for my presentation. a presentation that was a huge chunk of my grade that i couldn't be late for and Allegra was going to make late for. i had to trick her into thinking i was going to run away from my car, to which she zoomed ahead to cut me off, except i had actually done a fake-out and had really ran into the driver's seat and was already starting to slowly reverse out of the driveway. she had the sense to not go after a moving vehicle, thank god. my family texted me she cried outside our front door for hours later though. my art class that semester met once a week, so it was a 4.5 hour class that started at 7AM. and even tho that day had been a presentation day and we had less than 15 students, we still went over 3 hours. she cried during all of it. i used the "free time" to make sure i bought a cat leash and a cardboard cat carrier. but when i came back, heard no crying

i tried to get one of my neighbors to hold onto her for the afternoon. i couldnt leave her in my old house; i had family members i lived with who were terribly allergic. but i swore, so long as someone held onto her for my shift, i could take her to a shelter after. she was just so friendly and obviously new here, i just needed someone to put her somewhere safe (we lived by the freeway, by a train, by the main alternative to the freeway, and by two dog parks). but nobody really could hold onto her, so i had to hope she'd show up again when i came back from work. she didn't. i left her food out anyway.

i took her to the Humane Society Shelter closest to us because they have a microchip scanner. and she did have a chip! that was completely empty! apparently, that's a thing!! the guy there asked if i was going to keep her then, and i hadn't really thought that far. i had made the mistake of naming her and thinking she was cute, and she had done the legwork of being a cuddly motherfucker who purred constantly whenever i was around

she'd only ever appear in the early morning, when i was on my way to my shift or a midterm. about a week or two passed like this with me having no idea where she was for the rest of the day. turns out, according to said allergic family members, Allegra actually never left the house. she would hide on our roof or on our back porch's clutter or in our droopy lawn plants (like our sweetgrass) to hide from the outdoor cats or other dangers (she's a smart cat who hates the sound of cars and would hide whenever any one was particularly loud)

i'm pretty sure she's plenty well-cared for tho. in fact, i'm almost positive she's a very spoiled cat. for example, i have backups of everything x2. i have one of everything in my living area and a copy in my bedroom, should i need to close her in there when allergic family members are over (i also carry all the big allergy medication brands as a back-up in case i get a visitor who forgot to take their medication, which includes me being stocked with allegra the medication lmao) and then i also have a back-up of all her stuff in my closet should anything break. i always make sure all my windows are open when i leave for class/shifts so she can have "Cat TV" since birds do fly around the area. she has a ton of toys (she has a toy box actually) and i bought her multiple hideaways (like her shark pictured here; she also has a cactus that's pretty cute). also, ontop of having a good breakway collar, her microchip now reads my information. but yeah, im still working on the money to get her one more of everything for the house we visit for the holidays so i don't have to carry everything. i do a lot of research still-- on both cats and Siamese-- to make sure i am doing everything to make her happy, since her world is just me and our apartment now

i called out for her-- i had long since started calling her Allegra as a joke, because its a name of a popular allergy medication and so much of my family was allergic-- and shrugged sadly when she didn't come out. i had just put my stuff down to get my key out when i heard a familar crybaby. turns out, she had been sleeping in our sweetgrass and i had woken her up. she ran over and i called my family to take my things inside while i used the rest of my day to get her to a shelter. i put on a cat harness+leash before trying to out her in the cardboard box. don't buy cardboard boxes from Pet Co. they're shit. she broke out of it Alien style before i had even fully reversed out of the driveway. i had to improvise her leash into a seatbelt instead

but yeah. i say my favorite gremlin is dog-like because:

she has an overbite, so she looks like she's got her lip jutted out in a pout all the time. what's dog-like about it is this makes her slobber whenever she's excited or content (and i've grown up with mastiffs, who slobber so much you need 2 rags per room dedicated to their slobber)

hesitatingly, i called my only family member that was semi-local to see if he would be okay with fostering her until i was going to move (which was less than 6 months away) because, otherwise, i wasn't going to be able to keep her. and she was definitely going to be adopted immediately. he and his wife said of course, without hesitation. they were both huge cat lovers and they were, emotionally, my closest family members; so i had kept them in the loop about my cat quest. and they had already discussed potentially fostering Allegra, knowing my request was a possibility (read: probability). he drove over from his workplace to pick her up, with his own carrier, and drove the roughly 2 hours from our house back to his

she meows when people are at the door and greets them by begging for pets

she loves shoes. she steals my tennis shoes because she loves the laces and she will try to swat at them when im tying them. her claw getting stuck and forcing me to not continue has worked to make me late multiple times. but she also will lay down around my friends' feet and rub her face against their shoes, flipflops, and toes. one of my friends likes to joke that allegra has a foot fetish. she also can and will put her face into my tennis shoes and try to sleep like that. that's my bastard baby

i visited their house about once a week. except during finals, where i didn't visit for two or three weeks since i didnt have any exams so much as i had projects. (allegra was PISSED at me when i came back, my cuddly kitty refused to come near me and would run away when forcibly placed on my lap. she even swiped at me. by the next visit, she was grumpy but happier. by the one after that, everything was back to normal) i really liked visiting those family members too; it made us even closer. though it still annoys the male how much research i do about cat-care (as opposed to just accepting everything everyone tells me as gospel). i researched even down to "how to best pet a cat". i did this since, due to said allergic family members, i had never owned a cat and therefore didnt osmosisly process how to best care for one. i've also never been fully fauthful of people's advice that's based on "This is how we've/the media always done it". my history with mastiffs showed that not all breeds are the same and that you do have experts to utilize within your phone, and they are experts over peers for a reason. so i looked up dumbass questions like "how to best pet a cat" since i'm not an expert and Jackson Galaxy and friends are right there in my phone

she wants to play constantly. she loves tug of war the most, but anything involving chase has her going at full-speed

ive spoken to fellow cat-owners and mastiff-owners about this, and i thought this was interesting: when she isn't playing, she's sleeping. which is what mastiffs and cats do. and when i get up, she follows me. which is what our mastiffs do. and while i do stuff, she sits and waits by the doorway or else walks around my feet until i tell her to sit out of the way. which is what our mastiffs do. and then i go to sit down again, and she lays down as close as she can and goes back to sleep, which is what our mastiffs do. apparently, none of my friends cats do this; their cats just, at best, wake up to watch them leave and then their cats go back to sleep in the same place regardless of if they come back

Allegra likes to sleep at the foot of my bed for bedtime, at least for a majority of it

but, regardless if my worries, allegra seems happy! she cuddles with her claws out all the time (not sticking into my skin, just out) which is a sign of contentment. she'll also use her claws to keep me in place, like a fucking seatbelt (example pictured in post); it's where her claws will dig into the furniture and i cannot get up because of her, the possessive piece of shit. but she also gives me tons of Slow Blinks of I Love You. and she always runs to greet me at the door. and it's really funny how, anytime there's guests over, she tries to make it obvious that she's my favorite over (usually through politely tapping my leg with her paw to ask and recieve pets, and then giving everyone a very Cat Surrounded By Knives grin cuz i havent petted any of THEEEMMM lmao) she's hilarious

she doesn't like to be carried unless it means she's going with me somewhere outside the house. then she's as well-behaved as a chihuahua in a purse

she licks my hands all the time. and she licks my face to wake me up (at 4AM, Allegra, go aWAY)

she loves smelly clothes. the shoe part should tell you that much tho. for our mastiffs, we would leave them a smelly piece of clothing between washes to comfort via smell. Allegra, in a similar vein, was not impressed when i bought a laundry basket with a lid (almost carrying her to the communal laundry room once was enough, thank you!)

in the same vein as the clothes: she also loves blankets too. the more Me Smelling the blanket, the better (aka she doesn't like brand new blankets until its been like. month two or three of use). this is largely because i love blankets. but she kneads them, purring, even if im not using them. and when i am, she takes my using them as an invitation for cuddles

she sits whenever i tell her "NO" like 'who me? i was not doing a bad. i am but small creature'

she asks for a daily walk. she doesn't like the idea of being an outdoor cat. she just wants walks. like, she has lived several months not going outside and has been super happy. she made it clear on her adoption day that she was done with outside. she was perfectly content with being an indoor cat! still is, in a way! i ruined it. for myself. me. i was worried she wasn't being stimulated enough, so i experimented taking her on a walk and now i have created a monster. now she sits by the door and cries until i get out her harness and leash. which she hates her harness in a "no ball, only throw" kinda way. but she has also proven hates going outside alone since she is now ALSO scared of everything (remember those outdoor cats Allegra The Stray would hide from? how they would run away from strangers?? yeah. now that she has a Person, Allegra's turned into one of Them now). yeah.. she runs the fuck away (or as far as she can with a leash) from people she sees on her walks now. and it is pretty obvious she hates cars and dogs too, because when i have walked her outside of our new complex she is too petrified to move. like, she freezes even when just being close to a street. she likes our complex's janky carpeted hallways between the apartments, and she likes the ability to hide behind my legs. being an outdoor cat is something Allegra has decided she is not a fan of. if i try to change things up scenery-wise, she always asks to go home as soon as possible and runs into the apartment if our walks turn too much into what her life was before being adopted (aka. streets/cars, lawns, people walking). she wants walks. she LOVES and BEGS for walks. but not be outside. walks. even though she still hates her harness lmao

and that's Allegra! she's aproximately 2 years old, i've had her for less than a year, and she's assumedly a purebred Siamese cat. and she's also my ESA, or Emotional Support Animal. if applicable, a cuddly and loving pet is helpful for keeping mental health more stable. in my experience of getting one, it was fairly easy to get it permitted; especially a cat because they're super easy to get registered as compared to a dog. i am lucky enough to have regular physician as my doctor that empathizes with mental health and knows it not to be her area of expertise so much as the patient+their therapist (but also i have a history of attempted treatment on my medical record since i was 16), so my getting registered was literally just me asking for a doctor's note and her giving it to me near immediately. i can't take Allegra with me to classes or resteraunts or anything, nor do i even want to, but it forces apartments/hotels to HAVE to let me board with my ESA and to do so without an additional fee. however, i don't know if that's how ESAs work internationally or even in all of the states of America, the country where i live. but it definitely helps to have someone who needs me to get up everyday, who can never trigger me, who makes me laugh with their hijinks, and who cuddles with me regardless of if i have had a good day or bad day. Allegra is especially good at her job by being especially attentive whenever i am anxious. even if it's just me getting a little bit anxious because i'm late in turning an assignment in but have logically decided it doesn't matter because the assignment is only 2 points anyway, just turn it in late and don't focus on it; and she starts patting my leg almost continuously asking for pets inbetween rubbing herself on my legs. it's why i let her get away with never paying rent. i'm really glad she chose me. we both got really lucky with that decision ♡

i don't want to assume your situation, so i won't recommend an ESA for you so much as just remind you that they exist. i hope this all helps you feel supported and encouraged to continue to find the small wonders ♡♡♡

[babybluebanshee]

Stuff I’ve had to deal with as a city librarian, mega edition

4/? 

My boss is on vacation, and whenever he does that, a whole bunch of chaotic shit just descends on our heads at once. We don’t know if it’s because he’s not there to nip stuff in the bud or if he just has some kind of calming aura about him that keeps this stuff in check, but we dread whenever he leaves for any extended period of time. 

Since I had a few of these backlogged already, I figured I’d give you guys another glance into the weird-ass world of librarians. 

---

- A woman couldn’t access her email, and flew into a rage because she thought were intentionally blocking her from getting in so we could “hack” her. Turns out she was putting a comma between gmail and com instead of a period. She did not apologize for yelling at us.

- A man called the library and I answered. I tried to do my little “thank you for calling the public library” bit, and he cuts me off to ask for “extension 2606″. I told him we didn’t have any extensions and I wasn’t sure what he was talking about. He sighed dramatically, then handed the phone off to someone else, saying, “Can you talk to this dummy?” A woman comes on and gruffly asks if this is Charlotte. I said no, this was the public library. She just said okay and hung up. No apology there either.

- The DAR were scheduled to come in one Saturday, but never showed up. Come the next Saturday, I was walking by one of our meeting rooms, and there’s the DAR inside. Turns out they’d changed the date of their meeting without letting us know, even hanging on to the keyfab that gets you into the building before it opens. When I poked my head into the room to figure out what the heck happened, they gave me a look like I’d personally stepped on all their toes.

- A guy with a huge cowboy aesthetic came in to do a college essay for a comparative religions class, asking for my help in finding some books. I asked him what kind, and he looked around, over his shoulder like he was afraid someone would be listening, then leaned very close to me and whispered, “I don’t wanna offend you, ma’am, but I’m looking for books on paganism.” I thought at first he was joking, but his face was dead serious. 

- A woman brought back ten audio books that were soaked in Dr. Pepper. When I told her that they were wet, she looked me square in the eye, said “yeah”, then walked out. 

- A ten year old boy threatened two girls in my book club because he thought they were making fun of him, saying he “should stab [them] with a knife”. I told my supervisor, who went and talked to the boy’s mom, and apparently all she did was say, “Oh, he’d never do that.”, and went back to whatever she was doing on the computer. I talked to her later and she tried to pin it on violent video games. Needless to say, he has no been back. 

- I was helping a woman in the genealogy room, looked up, and saw a massive bug crawl through her hair. She didn’t seem to notice at all, and it was all I could do not to keep staring. 

- The poor assistant director found three used tampons out in our parking lot. 

- There was some legal kerfuffle a few months back regarding the demolition of a building that wasn’t handled properly. This dude on YouTube (his channel basically consists of him “investigating” things like this, meaning he goes into municipal buildings and harasses the staff, using their irritated reactions as “proof” they’re crooked) made a scene at city hall with the city coordinator. We were terrified all the next day that he was going to show up at the library, especially because it was story time day. He never did, but we still had the fear.

- A woman brought her own DVD (I’m still not sure why), and left it on the copier. I thought it was one of ours and someone had just left it there, and when I picked it up to put it back, she said, “Oh no, that’s mine.” I thought she meant she was going to check it out, so when she came up to pay for some copies she made, I picked it up again and went to scan it. She said, “no, that’s mine!” and it finally clicked that it was her personal DVD. I apologized and explained why I did that, and she said “I can bring in the receipt if you want.” I thought she was joking and said no, I believed her. She left, then came back an hour later, pulled me away from my shelving, just to push the receipt for the DVD in my face and say “I’m not a thief! See, I told you I’m not a thief!” 

- The amount of people who just...don’t seem to understand why we ask for their library cards is staggering. Like, people will come in without their wallets or IDs for whatever reason, and get pissy with us when we tell them we aren’t allowed to check anything out to anyone without their card or driver’s license. Like, we don’t care if you’ve memorized your number or come in all the time. We wouldn’t waste the plastic if we didn’t actually need you to use the damn things. 

- I don’t know what attracts druggies to libraries, but it’s a huge problem. The amount of unidentified pills I’ve found (including in the children’s area) is jarring. One time, the children’s librarian found the finger of a rubbed glove, tied off with something brown inside. We called the police, and it turns out that’s a popular method for transporting heroin. 

- My coworker Allie discovered a child playing out in our parking lot, occasionally jumping out into the road. She asked if his family was around, and he said yes, they were inside at one of the programs. This kid’s family had just let him wander away and into the street. 

- I came in early one morning only to discover a portion of the ceiling in the computer lab had caved in.

- There’s this very sweet Asian lady who doesn’t speak great English who comes in all the time to print off things for her Sunday school class. She asked for help one night, and after the librarian had gotten her situated, the man sitting a few computers away started making hateful, racist comments to her. She even moved to a different bank of computers, and he got up and followed her so he could keep being a dick. The lady only told us after he’d left because she felt that unsafe.

- We had another bed bug problem crop up, involving a completely different person. Guess who had to go pull all the books that we suspected to be infested. I was itchy all night.

- In honor of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, I expanded my LGBT history display from a small display case to two large tables. Naturally, bigots have been complaining about it. The worst one has been the couple who thought it was “insulting”, stormed out of the library, and complained to the city coordinator. 

- I had to make a membership for a man with a huge swastika tattoo on his arm. It was all I could do not to jump the desk and claw out his eyes.

[dreamboytranscripts-blog]

Ep. 1- Goodbye, Esmerelda Part 1

DANE: The milky way galaxy. Planet Earth. Cleveland, Ohio. Twelve-year-old Esmerelda looks out the window of her father single-engine airplane.

All of Cleveland is rolling underneath her. The trees look just like broccoli, she thinks. And the lake looks like one of her mom’s silver plates and it’s getting bigger in her eyes. And she smiles.

Now, little Esmerelda doesn’t know this probably, but a hundred years ago or so her great great grandfather John Stonefall, the oil tycoon, bought all the land currently rolling under her for a suspiciously small sum. But rather than build on the land like everyone expected, he instead had it all dug up. Leaving mounds of dirt everywhere, much to the chagrin of the locals. Petitions were signed, ladies groups had lunches. Finally, as a compromise, Stonefall filled most of the holes, built a summer home on a small piece of the land, and donated the rest of the city of Cleveland for parks.

The Stonefalls ended up liking it in Cleveland. Despite the controversy, they were happy there and they breed like rabbits becoming more and more cousins with cleaner and cleaner money. And that money eventually thinned and settled, becoming locked up in foundations, orchestras, zoos. Many of these cousins left Cleveland, but a few stayed. Their lives buoyed by the steady pumping of old trusts.

And it was one of these cousins, a guy named Roger Parring. A man made foggy from a life of never having had to know that he had never really had, who took his little daughter, Esmerelda Parring, for a ride in their single-engine airplane. Now, later on that night they will show their flight path on the news. A single red line that ends abruptly in the solid blue section at the top of the map graphic. Apparently, their engine began to malfunction as they were right over Pepper Heights and people on the news later will say they could hear it.

A sound like a saw in the sky.

But while that plane was still in the air above Pepper Heights, I didn’t hear it. I was far below, sleeping late in an old bed in my friend’s guest room. Huge white clouds were racing through the sky, making the light in my bedroom change from bright to dim to bright to dim. But I didn’t notice that either. I was deep in a dark dream.

Now, my dreams are pretty fucked up usually. Like me and my mom are astronauts and she’s floating away and I can’t do anything about it. Or like the train car I’m on is full of a thousand big, fat slow black flies landing on everybody's face and lips and they don’t notice because everyone is reading their Kindles that sort of thing. And I don’t dream about sex that often but, when I do it’s always something really awful. Like I’m at the deli and the guy behind the counter is making me fuck my cousin, Bryan, in front of a line of old ladies waiting for their hams and I can’t get hard and everybody is waiting.

Anyway, ever since I got to Cleveland I’ve been having this strange recurring dream. It always starts the same. I’m in the water. Hanging suspended and it’s deep water. And it’s dark, I can’t see anything. The water is the same temperature as my body. It feels pleasant. My hair’s just gently swaying. And then I feel a little bit of cold on my legs. And at first, I think it feels sort of nice. And then a little bit more cold and then slowly I realize, that’s something huge is moving underneath me.

I start to freak out and I start to try to get away but I can’t get anywhere. The water isn’t moving and I feel the coldness coming up more and more cold like the thing is getting closer. So I start to crash and I open my mouth to scream but the icy water rushes in. It hits the back of my throat and zooms down into my stomach. I feel it fill me up. And then it zigzags it’s way through my intestines like a cold knife and just before it gets to the back of my asshole, I wake up.

And I throw off the covers and I look down. And my dick is rock hard. Like so hard that it’s actually like bobbing up and- oh fuck I am late for work. I jump out of bed, I throw on my faded red Zenarc Corporations t-shirt and I tuck my boner into my shorts as best I can. I run downstairs and grab a pop tart and I dump a glass of water on the counter somewhere near the plants and then boom I’m out the door.

I usually walk through the neighborhood, Woodshire to York to Willowbrook to Cedar Ridge and then I cut through the woods. But not I have to run right down the main street area of Pepper Heights, Rivington Road, because I’m running late.

I get to the four-way stop and people in Ohio are way too polite for four-way stops so everyone just of sort sits there going:

“No, you go first” “Nah you go first” “No please I insist” “No please”

So I just run diagonally right across screaming. [sounds of screaming and honking cars] Now the thing about Rivington Road is that it’s a busy little street. There’s all these different kinds of food: Indian, Ethiopian, a Ramen place, a Sushi place, a Chinese food place, a toy shop, an independent bookshop, records, second-hand clothes, Peruvian imports, A head shop, a couple of bars, and even a gay bar. All in like a few blocks and it’s always crowded.  And there are so many different types of people and outside of New York, I’ve never ever seen anything like Pepper Heights. It was such a mix of people. People from every country, every income bracket. All living in the same neighborhood. It felt like some sort of lefty public tv fantasy. All these different kinds of lovely humans right here on Rivington but not a single fucking one of them knows how to walk at the right speed. “MOVE!”

I turn the corner right by the mirror store and boom. I see a truck, I almost run into it. Some sort of utility truck. It’s like parked half on the grass and half in the street. And I hear cussing coming from somewhere close.

“Cock sucker motherfucker son of a bitch”

And it sounds like it coming from above me so I look up. And there is a sort of crane coming up from the utility truck to bucket and there is a man in the bucket fiddling with the light pole but I can’t really see him because he is silhouetted by the sun but he’s just cussing up a storm. I have never heard some cuss so blatantly and out in the open and I mean this is a neighborhood. There’s like old ladies and like little kids-

[child's voice] “Move fucker!"

DANE: “Hey!”

A little girl comes out of no where she almost runs me over on her bike. Jesus. Okay, just a few more blocks. And I don’t have to run anymore I think I can just walk briskly, I don’t want to be a complete sweaty mess when I get there. And I’m only…..13 minutes late that’s not so bad. That’s close to ten minutes, it's almost ten minutes late. Okay.

I get to the side entrance, this big metal building and above the door, there is a sign that says “Zenarc Corporation: Shuttle Bay Five.” I stop for a minute. I take a breath. And then I open the big metal door. The cold air instantly hits me. The security guard gets up from his chair and blocks the hallway. He crosses his arms and stands in front of me. His eyes narrow as he demands to see my id badge.

“Really I’ve worked here for three weeks and I’m late.”

After a ridiculous amount of looking at me up and down, looking at my badge then looking back at me looking at my badge again, he lets me pass. Four more heavy metal doors and finally, I’m in the shuttle bay.

VOICE FROM OVERHEAD: “Mission Log 10182135 - Project Objective: To survey the 69 known moons of Jupiter for possible helium2 deposits. You are to report any signs of helium2 directly to your superiors at Zenarc Corporations upon debriefing. All 69 target moons are classified as lifeless but nonetheless, you are advised to keep your scanners on. Be safe and happy hunting miners.”

DANE: Okay, hold on for a second. I know what you are thinking.

Cleveland? Why Cleveland? Why did I go to Cleveland?

Well, I went to Cleveland… because I was tired. Tired in- tired in like a cosmic sense. Like a big sense. Not like a day to day tired. Not like ‘I need a nap tired’ but like ‘I need a 6-month soul nap’ tired. And my friend Emily was going to be gone for 6 weeks so she said ‘Come stay in my house, water my plants, and you can be alone’ and I thought ‘Alone. Alone time. That sounds great. What a gift to somebody who's been living in New York, especially a musician.’ So I thought ‘I’ll write an album.’ And so I went. I took my keyboard, I set it up in her living room, I turned it on, I sat on the bench and Grindr-ed. And ate my way through an Amazon shipping error of Doritos but every once in a while my free hand would reach out blindly and finger a random cord.

Grindr for some people, I think, is fun. Like they can just pop into it and then pop right back out of it whenever they’re done. But for me, I’ve never been able to stop having fun. But not in like a- not in like a ‘I’m always having fun’ kind of way. But in like a- like ‘There’s so much fun that it hurts’ kind of way. Uh, it just eats all of my time, obsessively. But after three days, I still hadn’t gotten laid and all of my white keys were orange. So I deleted Grindr again, and started looking for a job. But after literally walking into a mirror while dropping off my application at the American Apparel and being given what I thought was a rather gosh but nonetheless classic runaround by the assistant manager at the Chipotle, I was running out of options within walking distance. But I finally scored a late season job working at this tiny little neighborhood amusement park. It’s called the Pepper Heights Zoo. This place has been a risk free tax haven since before plastic was invented. It was like a nursing home for the old oil money and the zoo part was a motley collection of creatures gotten cheap for various reasons. But the most popular attraction by far, the animal on all the lunch boxes, the star, was an elderly zebra named Zoe.

Now, I don’t have any experience with animals myself so they gave me a job as a ride attendant on one of the few rides. This large indoor roller coaster called ‘Jupiter’s Lifeless Moons.’ It was right next to Zoe’s exhibit. Everyone just referred to it as ‘The Moons.’ It was a pretty tame ride actually, with a rider minimum height of only 48 inches. 44 if you had an adult. The whole idea was that it was a space shuttle that took space prospectors out to the moons of Jupiter to look for helium2 deposits. My job as an employee of the fake space prospecting company, the Zenarc Corporation, was to unload the kids, instruct them them to report any helium2 deposits during their debriefing in the next room and I had to use my most official sounding voice. And the park did a pretty good job making it all seem spacey and fun, there were flashing lights and space props. And in line, you heard a robot voice saying the mission objective on loop.

[Overhead voice plays again]

There was even, like, space adventure music playing from hidden speakers during the ride itself. That was the cool thing about the Pepper Heights Zoo. They piped in music all over the park like specifically made for the park. A lot of it was recorded years ago by these three ladies. They were sisters. The sherggeburg- the something sisters. I- I don’t know but you can buy their CD in the gift shop.

[Music fades in]

Dreamboy

Dreamboy

You’re my only dream boy

Dreamboy

Dreamboy

You’re my only dream boy

Dream fade into the night

But rather than die away

Why don’t you stay

Dreamboy

Dreamboy

You’re my only dream

Dream

[Music end]

But they also recorded a theme song for Zoe

[Upbeat(Kind of crazy) music starts]

[Sisters laughing]

Zoe, Zoe

The most amazing zebra

Zoe, Zoe

She’s our favorite friend!

La la la la..

[Music fades to background]

And since the ride shares it’s huge metal building with part of Zoe’s exhibit I did have to listen to that on loop for my entire shift. Other than that it was a pretty easy gig though, I just had to stand behind my podium and say my one line into this rank microphone that jesus smelled like a hundred summer’s worth of spit.

“Attention all miners aboard Shuttle Five. Please report your helium2 findings in the debriefing room.”

The lap bars clank open and the kids scramble out. They all run into the next room, the debriefing room but one girl lags behind. She stands there beside the track. I realise slowly that I recognize her. She has ridden the ride several times this week and she’s dressed like a Catholic school or-or I don’t know what I think they dress like. The lap bars slam down automatically on the coaster behind her but she doesn’t jump. The empty car disappears into the dark tunnel to pick up another batch of kids in the next room, leaving us alone.

“Are you okay?”

GIRL: “I’m perfectly fine.”

DANE: “O-Okay. Um, you need to report to debriefing.”

GIRL: “Please. I’m nearly 60 inches tall.

DANE: “O-oh um…”

GIRL: “I know it’s all pretend.”

DANE: “Okay, well you still have to leave before the shuttle comes back though okay?”

GIRL: “I know. I just thought I’d wait till they clear out a little. The other kids.”

DANE: She nodded towards the debriefing room but she wasn’t really looking at it. She wasn't looking at me either and she spoke like a small adult.from the 1960’s in that creepy way that kids who are raised by their grandparents sound. Her eyes settle on a far door. I instinctively step out from behind podium. Then another door opens and a man enters. He walks quickly towards me. His nice suit makes him look completely out of place but he stops when he notices the little girl.

MAN: “Oh! Hello there!”

DANE: He winks at me as he walks over to her and bends down to her eye level.

MAN: “So, tell me. Do you have any helium deposits to report?”

DANE: She says nothing. She just glares at him. It’s the kind of glare that stays anchored on his face as she walks around him and disappears into the debriefing room behind him.

MAN: “Awww. That’s a great age.”

DANE: This man is Eli Critch, the director of the Pepper Heights Zoo.

ELI: “Hello Dwayne.”

DANE: “It’s um..it’s Dane, actually.”

ELI: “Oh yes of course. I’m sorry, Dane. Dane. Dane. Dane. Dane.Dane. Dane. Dane. Dane. Dane. Dane. Dane. Dane. Dane. I knew that! Dane. Dane. How are you liking it over here at the moons?”

DANE: “Um, it’s fine.”

Somewhere else in the building the old roller coaster car makes a turn and the whole building responds with a soft metallic groan.

[Kind of a aggressive groan from the building]

ELI: “Okay. Well, I just wanted to give you an updated set of keys. Changed the locks last night. Can’t be too careful. What with the current...rigamarole situation.”

DANE: He sets a key ring on the podium. Two shiny new keys on it.

ELI: “That’s the broom closet, that’s the front of the ride and that should do ya’”

DANE: Then he smiles and there is an awkward moment where he is just smiling at me. And then the smile turns off like a neon sign and he walks away. But he stops short in the middle of the Shuttle Bay and turns back around. That green shuttle approaching light flashing on his nice suit.

ELI: “Oh, indeed. You do know that door leads to Zoe’s night time enclosure, yes?”

DANE: He points at the far door. I nod slowly.

[music change to softs casual music]

Now I’ve always loved the grocery store at night. Like a 24-hour grocery store is like my church. And it’s mostly because there are no people, yeah sure but, also because everything has been restocked and straightened and it’s perfectly neat. There’s just row upon row of brightly colored boxes with little cartoon faces all peeking out the same way. And I think it’s because everything is so neat and there are no people moving around and there’s this bouncy music playing, that if you look for it you can really glimpse the shape of a terrible screaming skull behind the gorgeous face that the grocery store. And it hits you. You are standing in a warehouse of death. A plant and animal morgue.

Tonight I want a pie. But the bakery section of the store is dark. Like the lights were out in just that corner and also the pie case, I know exactly where it’s at, I can see it from here, but it has a shorted light tonight. And it’s blinking randomly. Giving the whole bakery section sorta bad part of town feel. Now… I’m maybe a bad boy, maybe not a bad boy, depends on who you ask, but I’m certainly not afraid of the dark and I mean… sort of a rebel. I even have the cart with a squeaky wheel. So, I like squeak right over to that bakery section.

CART: “Squeaky. Squeaky. Squeaky. Squeaky. Squeaky. Squeaky. Squeak.”

Dane: And as soon as I cross the threshold, I see them. Sitting in shadow. Three little girls. Girl Scouts maybe, behind a table. About 12 years old, give or take. They had doll eyes. Over thin smiles.

GIRL: “Good morning.”

DANE: “Oh! Go-But it’s just after midnight.”

GIRL: “Technically morning.”

DANE: “Oh. That’s uh… That’s pretty by the book.”

GIRL 2: “There are enough lies.”

DANE: They’re all wearing matching uniforms? And they all have different patches and I recognize the one girl from the ride easier. It’s the girl that lagged behind and she recognizes me. And the other two are twins but with, different hair.

“Uh… Are you selling something?”

GIRL:“No. But if you would like to donate we would be most appreciative.”