#if not i can go to walmart but its all the way across town and its ugly out...

[esspurrr]

bracing myself to spend $100 william dollars at target today

[swappermanent]

Twin Switcheroo

You always hear about identical twins pulling the ol’ switcheroo on their parents or teachers—pretending to be one another just for the thrill. Nobody could tell them apart, so no harm, no foul, right? Well, my brother Aidan and I did that too. Only problem? We’re fraternal twins.

And when I say “fraternal,” I don’t mean the kind where people squint and say, Oh, I can kinda see it if I tilt my head. No, Aidan and I look nothing alike. But somehow, we pulled it off. Not because we were convincing actors, mind you, but because we had something most kids didn’t: the swapping stone.

It all started when we were nine. One of those sketchy, seasonal fairs had rolled into town, the kind that takes over the Walmart parking lot with creaky rides and booths full of cheap plastic prizes. Mom had given us ten bucks each to go wild, and we’d spent the better part of the afternoon losing at ring toss and inhaling cotton candy. That’s when we saw it: a grubby little booth tucked between the Tilt-A-Whirl and the fried dough stand.

The sign said “Mystical Marvels and Curiosities.” Beneath it sat an old woman with a hunched back and a smile full of suspiciously white teeth. Her table was cluttered with all sorts of junk—snow globes, “enchanted” bracelets, a crystal ball that was probably just glass. But in the middle of it all was this smooth, flat stone, about the size of a hockey puck, with strange carvings etched into its surface.

“What’s that?” Aidan had asked, pointing to the stone.

The woman’s eyes gleamed. “Ah, a powerful artifact, young one,” she said in a voice like creaking floorboards. “The Swapstone. Hold it between your hands with someone you trust, and you will trade places—body and soul.”

We’d burst out laughing, of course. It was obviously a gimmick, just like the “magic” wands she was selling for five bucks a pop. But we were nine, and the stone looked cool, so we pooled our money and bought it.

We didn’t think much of it until later that night. We were in our room, half-heartedly squabbling over whose turn it was to play the Xbox, when Aidan picked up the stone and tossed it at me.

“Hey, let’s try it,” he said, grinning.

“Try what? Swapping bodies?” I snorted, catching the stone.

“Yeah,” he said, plopping onto the bed. “What’s the worst that could happen? We hold hands and nothing happens? Big deal.”

I rolled my eyes but sat down across from him. “Fine. But when nothing happens, I get to play Xbox for the rest of the night.”

“Deal,” he said, holding out his hands.

We pressed our palms against the stone, and for a second, nothing happened. Then—

A rush of heat. A flash of light. And suddenly, I wasn’t looking at Aidan anymore. I was looking at... me.

“What the—” I started, but the voice wasn’t mine. It was Aidan’s. I scrambled to my feet, staring down at hands that weren’t my own, arms that were bulkier than I remembered. Across from me, Aidan was doing the same, staring at my scrawny frame with wide, disbelieving eyes.

“No way,” he whispered. “No freaking way.”

We spent the next ten minutes testing it out, poking and prodding at each other like scientists examining an alien specimen. Eventually, we figured out how to switch back—just hold the stone again and focus on wanting to return. The rush of heat came back, and just like that, we were ourselves again.

After that, we couldn’t stop using it. At first, it was just for fun—swapping bodies to mess with each other or pull harmless pranks. But the more we used it, the more blurred the lines became. I spent so much time walking around in Aidan’s body that I’d catch myself forgetting who I really was.

“Sometimes I feel like I am you,” I admitted one night, lying on my bed with the stone resting on my chest.

“Same,” Aidan said, tossing a baseball into the air and catching it. “It’s weird, right? Like, if someone asked me to describe myself, I’d probably say... you.”

We kept it a secret, of course. Our parents were none the wiser, just like all the clueless parents of twins who love a good switcheroo.

---

As much as the lines blurred between our lives and as much as we got confused about who we even were, the swapping had to end eventually. Aidan and I were inseparable when we were younger—two halves of the same chaotic coin—but by the summer before high school, things had started to change.

It wasn’t anything dramatic. No big fight, no falling out. It just became... necessary. We weren’t going to be doing the same exact activities in the coming year, and keeping track of who we were supposed to be when we swapped got harder and harder. If I was going to band practice in Aidan’s body while he hit the gym in mine, the whole charade started to unravel fast.

It didn’t stop all at once, but yeah, over time, we just kinda forgot about the stone. We tucked it into an old shoebox under my bed and left it there to gather dust. By the time high school really kicked into gear, we were more focused on our own lives than playing at being each other.

Many years later, Aidan and I both graduated from the same state college—though you’d think we went to completely different schools if you compared the photos of us at graduation. I worked hard, grinding through late nights and endless cups of coffee, and graduated magna cum laude. Aidan? He did just fine, but he never stressed about grades the way I did. While I was holed up in the library, he was out partying, making connections, and leveraging his looks to build a portfolio.

At the end, I got a good job—steady pay, benefits, the whole package—but now I can’t shake this nagging question: What was I doing it all for?

The money’s nice, sure. My apartment’s not fancy, but it’s mine. I don’t have to worry about rent. But beyond that? My life feels... hollow.

I don’t have many friends. The few I made in college drifted away after graduation. And as for my health? Let’s just say I’ve let myself go. I spend more time sitting at a desk than I ever imagined, and my idea of a workout is walking from my couch to the fridge.

It’s not like I didn’t notice the weight creeping on, or how my skin doesn’t have that same glow it used to. But the real kicker? When I show people a photo of my twin now—Aidan, who’s living in New York City and working as a model—their reactions sting.

First, there’s the pause. Then their eyebrows raise, followed by an awkwardly polite, “Oh, wow. You two are twins?” And finally, the cherry on top: the sad, conciliatory look. Like I’m a cautionary tale of what happens when one twin wins the genetic lottery, and the other... doesn’t.

I hate it.

Aidan’s life is better than mine now by just about every metric. He’s got the looks, the friends, the job that sounds glamorous even if it’s exhausting. And me? I’m sitting here, feeling like the second-place prize in a race I didn’t know I was running.

---

That brings me to today.

Our parents had decided to move—downsizing, they called it, though it felt more like an end of an era. They asked me to come back and help clean out my old bedroom, and honestly, I agreed more out of guilt than a sense of duty. It had been years since I’d really spent any time in that room, and I figured the whole process would be a couple of hours, tops. Box up some trophies, toss some old notebooks, and call it a day.

But as I dug through the layers of my childhood—the faded posters, the dusty books, the crumpled notes from middle school friends—I found something I hadn’t thought about in years.

The swapping stone.

It was right there in that old shoebox, exactly where we’d left it. The smooth, dark surface felt cool against my skin as I held it, the carvings still as intricate and mysterious as I remembered. For a moment, I just stared at it, a flood of memories rushing back—late nights laughing with Aidan, testing the limits of what we could get away with, the strange, electric sensation of becoming someone else.

But then I noticed something I didn’t remember: a folded piece of paper tucked beneath the stone.

Curious, I unfolded it carefully, my fingers trembling slightly. The handwriting was unmistakable—messy and uneven, like all the notes Aidan and I passed back and forth as kids.

The note read:

We, Aidan and Griffin, agree to swap bodies forever starting today, August 12th, 2010, because we both like each other’s bodies better than our own. We also agree that if one of us wants to switch back, we must do it.

Signed, Aidan Griffin

I read it once. Then twice. Then a third time, my heart pounding louder with every word.

“What the hell...” I whispered, my voice barely audible.

The memories started rushing back, faster now, sharper. That summer before high school, Aidan and I had spent weeks talking about how different we were—not just in how we looked, but in how we felt. I remembered the way he’d always envied my leaner frame, how he said it felt lighter, faster, more comfortable. And me? I’d admired his broad shoulders, his confidence, the way people seemed to notice him when he walked into a room.

We must have talked ourselves into it, convincing each other that staying swapped was the solution to all our problems. I could almost hear my thirteen-year-old voice saying, “It’s not like anyone will know, anyway. We’ll just be... happier this way.”

And the kicker? I’d agreed to it. We both had.

I looked at the note again, my stomach twisting.

Shit.

That means... I’m Aidan.

[etraytin]

Swiftly Flow the Days

As promised, the weekend was low-key, volunteeringwise. We also stayed home from church because our church has a lot of senior citizens and even with masks on it felt better to not chance it. Instead I watched the service on my phone from my bathtub, which was admittedly far more comfortable than a pew though the acoustics were worse. Still no COVID symptoms at all though, so I'm thinking we're good.

Even so, kiddo and I wore masks today as we went out volunteering again, this time delivering food and water from the United Way building to people who can't get to distribution centers. They didn't have as many deliveries for us to make as I would have hoped, but it felt good to be getting stuff where it needed to go. We also went over to the World Central Kitchen mobile HQ, which was an absolute anthill of activity in the middle of downtown Asheville. They're running a massive operation down there! We were just there to pick up some food for the volunteers at the distribution place, but it was stressful because it was so very busy and there were cars and people absolutely everywhere. Very efficiently handled, I will certainly give them that, but I was glad to grab our food and skedaddle!

With volunteering done for the day, we decided to support our local businesses and go to our favorite sushi place for lunch. We sat out on the patio for safety and got our sushi rolls and it felt very much like normal except for all the people at the church across the street stopping to get potable water from the hose and pump setup they had there. Water and power are back in most of my town, and it is very busy with people from Asheville coming up for a bit of a break and a trip to the laundromat, as well as volunteers from other places staying wherever they can find a spot. No tourists, now is very much not a time for tourists, but it still feels like high season.

While we were eating, I suggested to Kiddo that we should go visit the escape room place, because I learned that it is opening again at the end of this week. We've done most of the escape rooms they have, but there is one left that we kept meaning to get to but have not yet. He liked that idea. We talked about how he's keeping up with his boyfriend and his friends from school, and I suggested maybe his boyfriend would like to come along to the escape room. Kiddo liked that idea too, but it was only later at home that I realized Kiddo really liked that idea, but he wanted to do the escape room with his boyfriend and _not_ his poor old mom. I said that was fine and even agreed to foot the bill and drive the car, but I can't help feeling just a little bummed. Escape rooms were a thing kiddo and I did together, after all, and now things are changing. Change is important, and I think it's really important for Kiddo to socialize with his peers and develop relationships and all those vital things that are maybe even more vital when the world is turned upside down. None of that keeps an extremely bathetic cover of "Sunrise, Sunset" from playing in my mind every so often. Sigh.

Anyway, more volunteering tomorrow, back at the water distribution place. It's going to be much more chilly than last week, but we have our sweaters! I also got a pair of spooky pajama pants on sale from Walmart that arrived in the mail today (along with a whole bunch of other stuff as the post office untangles its deliveries!) They are soft and have ghosts on them and they are wonderful.

[nickgerlich]

Size Matters

The way we shop continues to evolve, but in some regards, it’s also a case of what goes around, comes around. Funny how that happens.

More than a century ago, if you lived out of town, you purchased pretty much everything from a catalog, from clothes to even your house. Sears and Montgomery Ward both sold “house kits” that, once delivered, had to be assembled much like an IKEA bookshelf. Just harder.

But even in more recent years, companies like Sears, JC Penney, and Montgomery Ward also issued an annual catalog chock full of the latest fashions. You had to make your size selection with fingers crossed. It was a crapshoot at best. And in a nod to nostalgia, J. Crew just announced they are reviving their catalog, seven years after retiring it.

Now consider e-commerce, which is basically just an online catalog. As much as people squirm and put up resistance to buying clothing online, they probably did it without question from a paper catalog. But resistance is resistance, and savvy marketers know they have to figure out a way to overcome.

Which leads us to the topic of virtual try-on. That handy size chart you see a link away from any garment you’re pondering is evolving into interactive sizing video powered by AI. Google Shopping just announced it is expanding its virtual try-on from men’s and women’s tops to now include ladies’ dresses. Shoppers can select from real models of all shapes, sizes, and colors to get a better idea of how a garment will look. And since a dress necessarily has to fit in a lot more places than a shirt, there’s a lot more consumer hesitancy to overcome.

Interestingly, Google’s efforts lag substantially behind what Walmart has already done. Two years ago the company launched its version of an AI-powered look book, but with the added twist that shoppers could upload a photo of themself and then see the garment superimposed. Thus far, Walmart’s program is only available for women’s clothing.

Wait. Isn’t that just a bit creepy? I mean, at minimum you are sharing pics of yourself, but someone else could have twisted fun at your expense.

While I am dead certain I would pass if and when Walmart adds the feature in the Men’s department, I am good with Google’s version. After all, it still beats a static photo in a catalog or on a website. Photoshoots are expensive, models aren’t cheap, and if you’re trying to be size-inclusive, you have to show the garment on both big and small people. How much better it would be if we could just let AI do all of that modeling for us, right?

There will always be risk when buying clothes sight-unseen. Colors in print or on-screen may not be realistic, and can look vastly different against various skin tones. There is terrible inconsistency in sizing across brands, even within a brand if they outsource manufacturing across multiple providers. And then there’s the fact that you are uniquely you, with all of your proportionalities. One size fits all? You gotta be kidding.

Both Google and Walmart are not perfect…yet. While we may still be going through the motions of buying clothes from afar, just like 125 years ago, the shopping proposition has gotten better. Stir in some AI, and we’re getting much closer to a fitting room experience without actually having to do it.

I’m good with that, because as far as I’m concerned, that’s the last thing I want to be doing on a Saturday afternoon. Bring it, Google and Walmart. If it doesn’t fit, I’ll just return it.

Dr “Try This On For Size” Gerlich

Audio Blog

[terrifickid]

It's not an argument for my part it's the determination of my consciousness - it's what I believe is actual or factual. Weather or not some dumb shit shits themselves at the notion is hardly stunning.

To my view.

And there in lies the crux as to just where this mine is on this damned chessboard.

What will actually happen you know?

I saved a dog in siargao rather than end my life I can die Scott free. I don't give no fuck.

Now I'm flying back to Midland from a mountain taller than Everest submerged by the wrath of the Lord upon the wicked.

What next?

Well, that's also really uncool. On the one hand, I could be framed for murder and executed for it just because a jury decided so. Irrespective of my innocence. At any time.

I don't see how that's cool. The problem is the nature of criminality forces the situation upon us all. Then an imperfect solution decimates all our lives.

So where do I wind up? It's just the spin of the wheel of barter town.

Since the choice is mine, I mean, winning without a scratch? I was never interested in that. I only really care about learning about stuff. Whatever I do or don't do or what have you how does that matter when you just get blown up by a jihadi as collateral? You're telling me it was my fault for being imperfect? That's the nature of the realm and all things cad.

So we should diagnose as invincible by structural design and do whatever. I think cloak.

That doesn't force me into any sexual encounters. Or demand I consent to anything for any reason. Or precludes me from denying all this shit I hate and won't do and won't participate in.

I think people need to get with that program. And apparently the angels as well.

Accept the way things are they say.

That's not novel. And it's not faith.

I bought that at Walmart for cheap as an experiment. The whole thing is research remember?!

I think armor is a great idea. It has some pros and cons. I don't want to carry a massive bag I have to get to the airport and slip my shit under my seat and that's stuff I got here, prompted by an odd bleed on my knuckle that was time consuming.

It doesn't chaff,. isn't stinky, is super useful and it isn't hot. It makes you look like a video game ninja and dangerous and suspicious AF. What am I going to do? Trudge it across town in and out of concealment on precarious legal grounds with a plane to catch to reclaim it 24 months later at the soonest? What if it isn't even there? I should ship the 35 dollar item for 125 across the Pacific? Or lug it back across the ocean with the rest of my actual non-experimental gear for 24 months so I can get detained or something? I guess, I could keep it as a backup or something and then wear it to Alaska? Why wouldn't I just get kevlar sleeves? And continue to learn about armor? Utilize what I already have? Where does that get me? Rich? Hassled by Alaskan state police? Why don't I just wear a big jacket than?

I'd really rather avoid people noticing me, including the police and especially crazy shelter people that will piss on you and get you fucking sick for life

This world is fucked and its not because the world is wobbly otherwise why would God cast you fucks down and smite your whole shit?

You guys are prideful.

I'm not talking to my family, it's not important. There is 1 name I answer to.

Sith cave.

[whatsemilyreading]

TITLE | anyone’s ghost

AUTHOR | august thompson

RATING | ★★★★★

goodreads | storygraph | bookshop.org

It took three car crashes to kill Jake.

Theron David Alden is there for the first two: the summer they meet in rural New Hampshire, when he’s fifteen and anxious, and Jake’s seventeen and a natural; then six years later in New York City, those too-short, ecstatic, painful nights that change both their lives forever—the end of the dream and the longing for the dream and the dream itself, all at once.

Theron is not there for the third crash.

And yet, their story contains so much joy and the glorious, stupid simplicity of a boyhood joke; the devastation of insecurity; the way a great song can distill a universe; the limits of what we can know about each other; the mysterious, porous, ungraspable fault line between yourself and the person you love better than yourself; the beautiful, toxic elixir of need and hope and want.

Anyone’s Ghost is August Thompson’s debut novel, a coming of age story about grief, surviving, first love, and coming to terms with who you are. It closely follows Theron David Alden, our protagonist and narrator, who spends the school year with his mom in Los Angeles and summers with his dad in the small town in New Hampshire where he grew up. It’s there that he meets Jackson Siegel – Jake – over the summer that he turns sixteen, the summer that changes him forever.

Readers go into this novel knowing Jake and Theron will be involved in three car accidents – the first two they survive together, and the third takes Jake’s life, fifteen-hundred miles away from Theron, nearly a decade after the two of them speak, really speak, for the last time. So it’s not his death that shakes us, takes us by surprise, but the slow, tender way that their relationship develops over that single, fateful summer, in between shifts at the town’s lone hardware store and drunken evenings spent parked at the local Walmart, Metallica and Fleetwood Mac and David Bowie soundtracking their lives. The way it shifts into something less corporeal, something solid, during a blackout in Manhattan. It’s difficult not to preemptively trace the path of their involvement in one another’s lives – though it’s predictable, it doesn’t bore. I sat up and read the second of this book over the course of four hours, cried my way through the final part, laid awake at 1:30 in the morning, unsure of how I was supposed to just…go to sleep after all of that.

To say that this book was good would be an understatement. It’s more like it completely rearranged me. Its reflections on love, on power imbalances, on grieving what you still have, on hesitancy to act for fear you’ll lose it all – all of it was so, so powerful. Theron’s internal strife, his inability in his youth to come to terms with what he feels for Jake, only later in life able to call it what it really is. It’s all what makes Anyone’s Ghost beautiful.

In the acknowledgements, Thompson thanks Metallica, The National (from whom I believe he nabbed the book’s title), Kacey Musgraces, even “Call Me By Your Name” director Luca Guadagnino, but it was the mention of Charlotte Wells, who wrote and directed the 2022 film “Aftersun,” that stopped me in my tracks and led me down (yet another) “Aftersun” rabbit hole. I know this book had to have been written before the film came out, but it’s not a stretch, I think, to be able to draw a connection – the protagonists of each living on borrowed time with their loved ones without really knowing it. I stumbled across an interview between the filmmaker, The xx’s Romy Madley Croft, and Document writer Megan Hullander, in which she writes that, for Wells, “joy and grief are inextricable,” and I think the same can be said for August Thompson. Many times throughout the novel, Theron ruminates on something similar, a string that ties it all together, that you can’t lose without having loved, that you can’t love without the promise of losing.

This also led me to a lot of listening while I was writing this review – to Metallica’s “Orion,” and to The National’s album High Violet, in particular. Almost every song on that album was a punch to the chest when I thought about it in connection with this book and its characters. From “Anyone’s Ghost”: “Didn’t wanna be your ghost / Didn’t wanna be anyone’s ghost / But I don’t want anybody else.”

Jonathan Safran Foer said this book will make you cry – and he was right. It’s impossible not to feel the emotion seeping out of these pages. The intimacy between the characters becomes an intimacy between author and reader. Their joy, rage, sorrow, wildness, all of it becomes ours. I know Anyone’s Ghost will haunt me for a long time to come. It’s out in July, and though I’ve recently become more and more hesitant to recommend books – I know we all have limited time, energy, and resources to devote to books we might not like, but fuck it. This book was so incredible, and I see it releasing in the summer to triumphant praise. It’s extraordinary, exactly as the summary of the book says. I’ve never read anything that made me feel quite like I did when I read this.

[mocharadio]

Now Playing(Title): Touching Their Boobas! (Headcanons)

Requested By: @polluxminor

Song Artists(Characters): Kaeya, Diluc, Childe, Zhongli, Xiao, and Beidou

Remix(Au): Modern Au! cause why not

Lyrics(Summary): Their reaction to you just randomly squeezing their boobs ?????? gn!reader by the way, but pronouns aren't really mentioned regardless

Explicit?(Warnings): No beta we die like Khaenri'ah, lowercase, suggestive (but nothing more than that!), they/them used for Kaeya, Beidou, and Xiao, slightly ooc but I feel like they'd act differently in a modern setting anyways

A/N: consider this to be crack, also this is under the impression that you are already their s/o (or at least their bestie) and they're fine with you doing this because it would be....very much weird if that wasnt the case!

Kaeya:

he just looks at you for a few seconds and blinks like three times in a row

you swear you can hear the blinking sound effects as he does it too

then they let out their stupid, toothy smirk and start laughing at you

"Damn shawty, you down THAT bad?"

starts squeezing their tiddies himself and talks about how nice they are

can and will defend them with his life. ESPECIALLY if you take it back and call them flat. expect all hell to break loose.

will probably bring up his ass at some point too

"Got tha fattest ass on the block babey"

please shut this guy up.

Diluc

doesnt even realize whats going on at first

like Kaeya he'll just kinda stare at you for a few seconds before it finally hits him

like a truck, too

"[Name], why are your hands on my chest"

"Man tiddies."

"I see."

he'll never tell you upfront but it flusters him a lot

as soon as you aren't paying attention to him anymore his face gets all red and he has to put a hand over his heart to make sure his HR is stable so he doesn't collapse and die

do it more often! eventually he'll crack and you'll be able to see how embarrassed he gets! its really cute :]

Childe

dont. you'll regret it

im serious this man is so extra for no reason

he can and will fake moan out loud. doesnt matter where you guys are.

in the middle of walmart? he'll moan. in your college dorm with the door cracked open and people in the halls? he'll still fake moan! he doesnt care if professor Zhongli or Albedo hears either, it is what it is.

generally speaking though he doesn't really mind, he's flattered actually!

you on the other hand will probably mind very much when it gets you kicked out of Starbucks or extra homework from your professors.

will grab your chest back though (only if you're fine with it)

Zhongli

poor peepaw.

he's so confused he doesn't know why you're just groping him like that

he thinks there's something wrong, like you're silently pleading for help or you wanna kill him.

he grabs you by the shoulders and asks if everything is alright.

yeah???? everything's okay your tits are just fat Zhongli please calm down

after he realizes you just wanted to grope him he sighs out of relief and lets you go to town

unless you don't wanna anymore, then he's cool with that too

Xiao

run. run as fast and as far away as you fucking can

they will chase your ass across the goddamn country if needed

dropkicks you (playfully)

he genuinely doesnt mind it at all it just caught him off guard and flustered them and they needed to cope somehow

after he's done attacking you like a rabies ridden raccoon though he'll calm down and just snuggle themself into your chest (if you're fine with it)

grumbles some shit like "stop being horny all the time" and "you cant just do that to me"

doesn't really mean it of course

Beidou

"This is why mom doesn't FUCKING LOVE YOU!"

in all seriousness though I feel like they'd laugh their ass off before (consensually) groping the fuck out of your chest too

she's so nonchalant about it as if you do it every single day

which you probably do, after that

teases you nonstop over it.

one day you accidentally grope them a little to hard and they just gently pick you up and tosses you onto the nearest soft surface

then she jumps onto you

small price to pay for hurting her tatas

[shurisneakers]

harmless (i)

Summary: Bucky volunteers to go stop a small time villain, but nothing can prepare him for what exactly he has to deal with. (Bucky x villain!reader)

Warnings: cursing, nonsense writing

Word count: 1.5k 

A/N: listen i just needed something to keep my mind busy and a perry the platypus!bucky and dr. doofenshmirtz!reader was the only thing i could think of. dont have any high expectations from this series, you will be sorely disappointed.

If you have any ideas for this series, lemme know!! it’d be cute to write!!

here’s my ko-fi if you’d like to support my writing <333

Series Masterlist

Bucky Barnes, for all intents and purposes, is edgy. 

His SHIELD salary is definitely enough to afford him a simple beanie, gloves even if he’s that eager. His long hair, though a spectacle in itself, isn’t as good at keeping away the cold as he claims it to be. 

It’s a personal choice, a fashion statement even, to be roaming the streets in a long flimsy t-shirt that does nothing to accentuate his broad shoulders, and tactical pants that look a little too comfortable. 

It’s cold. He says he likes it, to appease his blond haired best friend who insisted that he wear a cardigan at least. He won’t like it in a while, but he would never admit it.

The bike ride to the other side of town for a minor mission takes longer than he expected. The wind rushing by gets his adrenaline racing. 

Official missions are long and gruelling, and oftentimes not fun. But it gives him a purpose.

It’s easy, therefore, to find him brooding when he’s not on one. 

No one wants their room to be on the receiving end of Bucky’s stress-cleaning sessions. His baking is more appreciated.

So when there’s news of a small time villain creating havoc again, it made sense that he volunteered to go sort it out. No one else wanted the job. They’d all been at it before. 

SHIELD didn’t seem particularly bothered either. 

“It’s not that serious, Barnes.”

“I’m going.”

“Just stop her from doing whatever dumb plan she has today. She seems to have a new one every week.”

“Can I-”

“This is not an assassination mission.”

“Fine. Can I-”

“No.”

“Fine.”

He didn’t know what to expect. He had an idea of how they should be. Smaller villains tended to be more aggressive, vicious to prove their point. They were here to stay.

He wears his regular gear. Enough knives to make a butcher look away in shame, and guns including, but not limited to, his biceps.

He finally pulls the bike to a stop a few metres away, leaving it out of reach in case things got too out of hand. He didn’t want to have to walk back to the Tower, and his friends, as much as they loved him, would never go out of their way to pick him up. Little shits. 

The address is a dingy, plain concrete house near an old construction site. It was flat and felt more like an afterthought than an actual building. It looked more like an abandoned Walmart than an actual villain lair. 

The only entrance is the door in the front. He counts to three, lifting his leg to kick it down.

It falls down ungracefully, loud and creaky like it was bound to the doorframe by rust. 

The only light source inside is a green light. All the way at the other end on an elevated platform is a desk and a chair facing away from him. He can’t see much other than that.

Someone’s laughter comes back loud and booming. He raises his gun, feet apart in a defensive stance. 

“I’ve been expecti-” the voice pauses mid-sentence- “Did you just kick down my door?”

He looks behind him to where the wooden piece is on the floor. He certainly did.

He can finally see you as you stand up, green light illuminating your face. You reach over to the side, pressing a few switches. 

He squints when all the lights turn on, pulling the both of you from darkness. 

“Dude!” you cry out, face twisting into what only could be described as a mix of horror and disdain. “What’d you do that for?”

He doesn’t say anything but he doesn’t lower his gun either.

“You’re an Avenger, just fuckin’ pick the lock or something. This is expensive!” 

He only watches as you whine, looking beyond him at your now demolished entrance. You take a few steps closer, jumping down from the elevated platform.

“Insurance isn’t going to cover this.” You drag your palm across your fist before extending it towards him. “Pay up.”

He wasn’t sure if he heard you right.

“What?” he finally asked, voice gruff.

“All you superheroes go around, destroying walls and cars in the name of world peace like you own the damn thing. Not today, bitch boy. Pay up.”

He doesn’t have his wallet with him. He didn’t expect to need it.

“I’m supposed to be stopping you.” 

“You can do that once you pay for my door.” 

You sound resolute, unshaken. A little annoyed. There’s what appears to be a gun in your hand, although it’s unlike any weapon he’s seen before.

“What’s your plan?” Bucky looks at your hand. Your stare follows his. You lift the thing up and he tenses.

“I was going to freeze some jerk but now my plan is to get you cancelled on Twitter.” 

“Why?” his eyebrows knit together in confusion.

“Local superhero destroys property of tax paying citizen for no good reason.”

“I mean-” he shakes his head, discarding what you’re saying, “-why were you going to freeze someone?”

“Because I wanted to. But you’ve ruined the mood now, so that won’t happen.”

He blinks, lowering his weapon when he realises you weren’t making any attempt to move. “What’s your ulterior motive?”

“Nothing! I just wanted to mildly inconvenience that stupid fuck for being such a prick.”

He doesn’t know what to say. 

“Is that the freeze ray?” Bucky asks instead, raising his gun when he realises there’s a very real chance he could end up like his best friend. 

“You got a problem with it?” You hold it up carelessly. 

“I can’t let you use that.”

“That’s all you’re going to do?” you huff, “Is this what you call an intervention? This is so boring.”

“Give me the freeze ray and no one has to get hurt.” 

“No one was going to get hurt in the first place, genius. All this does is slow him down for 5 minutes so he misses the subway.”

There’s nothing technically that evil about what you’re doing. He doesn’t even know how you ended up on SHIELD’s radar. He gets why no one was particularly driven to take this seriously.

“And for fuck’s sake put that gun away. You’re not scaring me.” 

He doesn’t oblige, even though something tugs at him, telling him that you’re speaking the truth. 

“Here, take the stupid thing.” You don’t bother waiting for his response, bending over and sliding the gun towards his feet. “I’ll find another way to get back at that dickhead.”

It hits his boot with a small thud. He looks down. Its design is ridiculously comical, like you ripped it straight out of a kid’s TV show. 

“Next time, bring some drama. Wear a cape or something.” You wave him off. “Now get out of my lair. I need to fix the door.”

“You don’t have another one of these lying around, do you?”

“Why, do your friends want one too?” The glare you give him is dangerous. He doesn’t react to it. “No, it’s limited edition. I don’t build the same thing twice.”

“You have others?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know, weather boy?” A smile grows on your face, dropping as quickly as it arrives. “SHIELD will tell you if I do. Now leave.”

Bucky looks at the freeze ray in his hand. He supposes his job is done. He was told to stop you, but you didn’t seem to have any inclination to go on with your plan.

“You can ask them if you want, they know about me.” You roll your eyes. “Go ahead, call them.”

He doesn’t want to take a chance. As odd as the situation is, it’s still novel and he isn’t quite sure how to deal with it.

He tucks your weapon under his arm, pressing his phone to his ear.

“Yes, Sergeant Barnes?” Maria’s voice is crisp as ever.

“I confiscated a... freeze ray.” He feels ridiculous even saying it. “But I’m going to bring her in to SHIELD headquarter-”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“But we can’t trust-”

“We’ve been keeping tabs on her for a while. She’s more or less harmless. You can take the rest of the night off, Sergeant.”

He cuts the call, not entirely at ease with the smug, expectant look on your face. 

Still, he couldn’t disobey direct orders.

“I’m gonna... go.” He mentions towards the gaping hole in the wall.

“That would be ideal, yes.” You nod, crossing your arm over your chest.

“Okay.” He hesitates, but finally takes a step backwards. He peeks over his shoulder as he leaves, but finds you swivelled away from him again. 

He steps back outside. The cold greets him again like an old friend. The weight of his weapons feels stupidly embarrassing now. 

It’s a long drive back to the Tower. He keeps replaying the entire story in his mind. He’s unsure of whether he made the right call, but no one else really seemed to care. 

He had seen weirder things. It came with the gig.

He leaves it at that.

“How’d it go?” Steve asks him when he walks into the living room.

“T’was fine,” he answers, toying with the stupid device he took from you. Maybe he would test it on Clint. He had been getting annoying lately. Breathing too much in Bucky’s general direction.

A part of him feels guilty for his carelessness towards your building. The other part is just bewildered. 

That night he looks up the cost it takes to replace a door, making a mental note to draw some money from the ATM soon.

Next part

[slashersgostabbystabstab]

Halloween Oreos (Michael Myers x Reader)

Original Ask: How about some snack time with Micheal uwu sharing Halloween oreos with his s/o or someone me whose getting close to him. Perhaps they buy him some huehue

_____________

Haddonfield had become a rather quiet place following the Halloween murders, the following years becoming somewhat grim.

Halloween was no longer the same, or at least it was something that made the residents of Haddonfield tense up. Even after thirteen years, people were sometimes too afraid to speak the Boogeyman’s name. At least, people finally came out of their homes, as if the plague was already over with. After thirteen years, one could have said that the Boogeyman was no more.

October had finally come around, and this year Haddonfield was gifted with a veil of fresh white snow on just the third day of the month.

You grunted as you fixed the plastic bags in your hands, the mittens you wore making it somewhat difficult to properly hold them.Today was the day to go out for groceries, a task you only did every now and then due to your current living condition.

“Need help there?” you heard a voice behind you, prompting you to turn and see the cashier that had rung you up in the grocery store.

“Oh! Ah,” you gave a nervous chuckle as you once again fixed the plastic bags. “I-I can bear, thank you though.”

“I really don’t mind lending a hand, especially in this weather.”

“It’s alright.” you insisted, especially after a chill ran down your back, your eyes glancing around as an uneasy feeling came over you. “Thank you, I really appreciate it. I just need to get going right now. Somebody’s waiting for me.”

“Ah, I see.” he nodded, taking a step back as you sighed in relief. “I’ll leave you to it then.”

“Thank you, have a nice day.” you nodded as well, not bothering to watch him leave as you knew the consequences of such things.

As you headed to your car, you took notice of a news crew that had stationed itself across the road, right at a sidewalk that led to another array of stores. The crew was specifically focused on a hardware store that had its glass windows broken, even the farthest eye could see the bloody handprints that were splattered on the walls inside as well as other blood prints.

You shivered at the thought of what had gone down inside, instead focusing on the trunk of your car before loading everything inside. Not paying much attention to the camera crew, or at least not wanting to do so, you hopped into your car to drive out of town. But not before taking a good look at your surroundings, on edge about the eyes that were possibly watching your every move.

_____________

Home was a rather lengthy ride, no more than an hour’s time thankfully, but the searching for it was what made up for that isolation you required. Considering the situation you lived in, your partially preferred living arrangements lie in the woods outside of town, where things were calm and quiet.

Hopping out of your car, you felt as the snow began to fall once again. This meant that in the morning, the veil would be much thicker and there was no going out, especially as your small home was situated in a deep part of the woods.

Hearing your boots with every step, you unloaded the groceries which would definitely be taking more than one go. You made your way towards the cabin in front of you, coming to stop after walking onto the porch as your eyes caught crimson.

Right on the wood were boot prints, every single one as red as the blood from the hardware store.

Your eyes followed the trail that led to the door itself, and you took notice of it being ajar.

Dropping the bags onto the porch, you placed a hand on the door to cautiously take a step inside. The creak of the door was enough to have you jump back the slightest bit, especially as your eyes continued to examine the trail of blood that led into the kitchen.

Now, you knew not to act like a girl in a horror movie but…

“Hello?” you called out into the emptiness of your home, holding your keys close to either fight with them or immediately flee to the car. “Is that you-”

Soon enough your scream pierced the air as you jumped off the ground, this due to feeling a rough hand clasp onto your shoulder from behind.

Once you had turned around, you groaned at the sight of an older man that stared down at you with dead eyes.

“Michael!” you yelled at him, then fixing your jacket which had slightly crumpled up at the shoulder where you had been grabbed. “I thought you were someone else.”

The man before you in no way flinched, not even bothering to blink as he continued to watch your every move.

“You leave in the middle of the night without a word and leave me alone all day.” you mentioned before passing by him, knowing that he turned his entire body to always be facing you. “Well now that you’re done with scaring the hell out of me, I’m done with the groceries. Won’t need to go out until January I think. I hope so, since it’s starting to get pretty cold out.”

Michael Myers, the Shape or Boogeyman of Haddonfield, stood right at your door with not a care in the world. If anything, your door to your house, was his door to his house. It had been this way for quite awhile now.

A few years actually.

It was surprising that he was not wearing his mask, his blue and clouded eye completely fixated on your figure as you grabbed the bags right at the entrance.

Once you had grabbed the bags at the door and then the remaining ones in the car, you shut and locked the door before being followed by Michael into the kitchen.

After he had spared you years back, Michael had come to act like a cat. Always with his nose on the lookout for what it is you would be feeding him. Hilariously, that was just how Michael reluctantly came into your life.

“I haven’t prepared anything since I’ve been out most of the day.” you admitted, ever so quietly laughing at the soft groan that rumble in Michael’s throat. “I did find some sweet goodies at the market though. Especially at WalMart.”

Michael didn’t always understand the things you talked about, but he was always listening. Always watching. Learning.

“They have these new cookies for the season. The orange looks kind of funny, but I’m pretty sure they taste the same as the originals.” you mentioned as you set the groceries on the counter, looking through the bags as you began to put everything in its place. “I also got you some stuff to shave off that scruff.”

Michael’s eyes darted down in an attempt to look at his chin, instead seeing you hand placed under it as you softly rubbed your thumb on it.

“Though I have to admit that it’s starting to grow on me.” you smiled before making your way back to the groceries. “Just like the greys in your hair.”

It really had been a few years since you had met Michael, a relationship forming after a pretty good while. He was in his mid-twenties, practically a middle-aged man now who hadn’t been found by the authorities this entire time thanks to you.

As you began to prepare a hot beverage for yourself, and Michael who you knew would ignore it but drink it behind your back, you knew that Michael was watching you intently. His eyes were glued on your hands that grabbed a pumpkin you had purchased. Somehow, he had not even realized the large vegetable as you brought it in.

“Found a recipe you might like, especially for the cold.” you spoke before grabbing a kitchen knife, one that piqued Michale’s interest but was not enough to have him snatching it away due to its size. “Especially with all the pumpkins that are out now.”

To his dissatisfaction, you set the knife down besides the pumpkin on the counter before facing him.

“But before I make that, I’m gonna go change. These clothes are starting to make me feel stuffy.” you removed your jacket as you walked around the counter and out the kitchen, for once not being followed by Michael who was now focused on the knife you had left behind.

Knowing that you would be too focused on finding one of his shirts to wear, he approached the counter to take hold of the knife, bringing it to his face to admire how it shone under the kitchen light. He first held it pointing upwards, but changed it so that he was instead gripping it with the blade pointing down. His head craned to the vegetable beside him, and instinct got the best of him.

“I see you got started with the pumpkin.” he heard your voice, turning around after having jabbed the knife down into the pumpkin which had more than a simple wound.

Michael grabbed the knife once again to pull it out, his entire body facing you once again as he tilted his head at your figure.

Your eyes fell to the knife that contained a bit of pumpkin residue, even a seed or two managed to slip out due to Michael’s brute strength. Now your eyes were on his blank features, and you couldn’t help but give him a smirk.

_____________

It wasn’t often that you lit the fireplace as to avoid any attention from outsiders, especially authorities who had honestly given up on the search for Michael despite his former psychiatrist’s demands, but you believed that tonight was just the night for a warm fire.

Despite the cold weather, you only wore one of Michael’s shirts with socks, perhaps a little something on your bottom. You figured that there wasn’t an entire need for covering yourself when Michael was your human blanket, and one that refused to come off you.

With all of the day’s work done, you sat on the couch, or more like Michael’s lap as he sat on the couch. Your legs were crossed as your torso was constricted by Michael’s strong arms, his chin casually laying on top of your head as you ate the last of your pumpkin soup.

Both pairs of eyes stared up ahead, almost next to the fireplace where your TV screen was placed. You were both watching the moving pictures, or at least Michael resumed that when you made comments about the movie.

“That’s so cheesy, no girl would scream and faint on the spot if she saw a monster.” you ever so slightly shook your head, Michael’s chin too heavy to actually complete the motion. “At least, nowadays. However, that looked like that one scene from the latest Child’s Play movie where the guy has a heart attack.”

It was an old monster movie kind of night, your mood demanding it and Michael no doubt being curious. Frankenstein actually seemed to catch his attention.

The man’s eyes glanced down at you as he saw your arms stretch out with your empty bowl, attempting to put it on the coffee table in front of the couch. This of course was quite impossible with Michael holding you back, his grip on you only becoming tighter as you were managing to barely escape his grasp.

“Michael!” you groaned, pulling your head forwards until his arms made a ring around your hips after you were able to snake the top part of your body out.

As you reached out to set the bowl down, you felt Michael bury his face right into your back before rubbing himself all over and taking in your scent simultaneously.

“I just want to put the damn bowl down.” you wheezed, eventually releasing a sigh of relief when your glass bowl safely landed on the table. But it made you also pleased to have grabbed the plate you had prepared along with the bowls of soup, making sure it or its contents didn’t slip out of your hands as you adjusted your body to the former position.

Michael gave a grunt as he placed his chin on your head again, this time making sure that you had no way of escaping him.

“You wanna try one, Michael?” you lifted the plate just a bit, having Michael peer down at the plate that contained black little circles that smelled weirdly to him. “They’re the newest Oreos. The cookies I mentioned earlier.”

You placed the plate on your lap, wishing that that was enough to hold them up while you took one of the cookies and offered it up to Michael.

“I don’t have any milk right now because you’re not gonna let me get any, so take it like this.

Michael squinted at the cookie, the orange filling enough to have him blinking at least once. In this state of his, you were able to break free and spin your body in place so that your legs were no longer crossed but instead on either side of Michaels’ waist. The plate of cookies was safely put on the empty space of the couch so that nothing could fall.

Having a mind of their own, Michael’s hands wrapped themselves around you as he once again stared at the cookie.

“It’s just a cookie Michael.” you giggled, lowering it before taking a bite out of it yourself.

Michael’s eyes landed on your lips, watching the way they moved as you chewed the cookie piece. Tiny black crumbs adorned your lips, every now and then shifting the more you chewed.

You watched him as well, finding it how funny his curiosity was. So, you popped in the remainder of your cookie before eating it as well, now feeling one of Michael’s arms leave your waist.

Instead, his fingers brushed against the warmth of your skin as his nails carefully scraped your cheeks. The tips of his fingers now coming close to your lips, his index finger actually on your bottom lip before it pulled it down and open.

“Michael,” you breathed out, knowing that Michael was merely observing the crumbs left on your lips.

Blinking up at Michael, you saw as he brought his face down to yours. His lips now dangerously close to yours as he continued to play with your bottom lip, making your breath hitch as he neared more and more.

Soon enough you closed your eyes when Michael closed the gasp, but not with his lips but his tongue.

Your eyes shot open as you felt his tongue lick the corner of your lip, continuing onto your lips themselves. You placed your hands on his shoulders, gripping onto them as you felt his own twist around the shirt you wore.

Your lips had already been parted from the shock of Michael’s actions, that good enough for Michael to slip in his tongue to get a taste of your mouth.

He didn’t care about your nails digging into his shoulders but in fact enjoyed it, pressing your chest against his as his tongue continued to explore your cavern, tasting every bit he could. But before you could follow along with his treatment, Michael retreated himself and looked down at you with half-lidded eyes that matched yours. Well, his didn’t have as much emotion as yours for he was difficult to faze of course.

“Michael?” you sighed at him, thoughts clouded with what just happened. You were then snapped out of it when Michael let go of you with one hand, reaching to the side where the plate of cookies was.

He had grabbed another one, bringing up in between your faces and leaving it there for just a moment. Soon after, he brought it to your lips, scraping it against them before slowly slipping it in so that you could take a bite.

As you chewed the cookie, Michael took the other piece into his mouth, leaving the two of you with crumbs on each of your lips.

His tongue slid out once again, licking the crumbs off of his lips before you got the memo.

The flush on your cheeks was more than enough to warm you up on this chilly October night.

[ironmandeficiency]

that’s not a shirt

pairing: marcus pike / reader

word count: 1584

summary: marcus comes home from work & finds the strangest thing in the laundry.

a/n: for @autumnleaves1991-blog and her wednesday writing challenge! writing domestic marcus pike is my therapy. unbeta’d and posted from mobile (honestly my laptop is becoming less convenient to post from even tho posting fic on tumblr is literally the reason i bought it last year)

three long, miserable weeks. that’s how long marcus has been out of town for a case that had him jetting all across the country, far away from you and your comfortable bed. he’s almost never at the apartment he pays rent for every month. most of his clothes and his favorite pillow are at your place, and the small quilt his grandmother sewed decades ago is draped over the back of your couch. in everything but name, he lived with you.

when he entered your apartment with his key, he took note of the fact you weren’t there and got set to cleaning up a bit. work leaves you exhausted more often than not and he doesn’t want to leave everything undone for you to worry about when you get home.

upon first glance, he could see the laundry was half done. a heaping load of clean clothes was in the hamper in front of the dryer and there were wet clothes in the open washer. when he looked further, there was also a load in the dryer, which told him that you stayed up late to get things done then fell asleep on the couch waiting for the dryer to finish. with a fond smile, he started the dryer for a few minutes to get wrinkles out of what’s in there. when those are done, he can get what’s in the hamper unwrinkled and hung and folded.

dinner was next on the to-do list. something nourishing to welcome you home after a long day but simple enough to do while catching up the clothes: spaghetti. there’s something about his mom’s recipe for the sauce that makes his spaghetti absolutely heavenly — your words, not his — and he can’t wait to see your reaction to having marcus home two days earlier than planned along with his best dish.

in the time it takes him to get the sauce cooking and the water boiling on the stove, the dryer announces that it’s finished with the first load. he hums as he folds the bath towels and dish rags without a care in the world, making the trip to stow them in the bathroom cabinet with a spring to his step.

checks the sauce for flavor and consistency before putting the second load of wrinkled clothes in the dryer, finding it needs just a smidge more rosemary before it can be left to simmer. picks another sprig from the plant you keep on the windowsill and cuts the leaves very fine before sprinkling them in with a flick of his wrist.

satisfied with his efforts, he turns back to the laundry. he dutifully empties the lint filter (you’re adamant on emptying it after every load and the trait passed onto him) before he begins to grab things to toss into the dryer. about a third of the way through the basket, his hand grabbed onto something weirdly solid and plump.

“mroww!”

last marcus checked, shirts don’t make noises like that. he tore his gaze from the inside of the dryer to the hamper to find a grey and white kitten lounging in the hamper. the little thing was nudging his hand with their head, clearly wanting the attention of the man slowly depleting its bed. he was perplexed. you didn’t have a cat when he was last here, but there was one seeming to be perfectly content in making itself at home in your apartment.

“where did you come from?” he knew the cat wasn’t going to give him a coherent answer but he felt the need to voice his confusion anyway. the first thing to do now: check to see if it’s male or female. it’s a female, looks to be about three months old and is perfectly content with being handled by marcus.

marcus can’t recall the last time he had a pet. with him being too busy with work, he never thought it would be fair to a pet to have an owner constantly gone. he didn’t have enough stability in the past with where he lived and didn’t want to only be a half ass pet parent. the past several months, however, have been nothing but stable. not counting the seldom out of town cases, he goes to work in the morning and comes home to you in the evening, and he rinses and repeats as needed. maybe this kitten is the perfect prelude to taking the next big step in his relationship with you.

for now though, marcus doesn’t let himself get carried away with his daydreams about living with you full time. he’s got laundry to finish and dinner to cook, and now he has a sous chef to accompany him. he holds the kitten to his chest, scratching her chin with a hooked finger and melting at the way she looks up as if telling him to keep going. “alright sweet girl, let’s finish up dinner.” a soft “mrrow!” is her reply and it makes marcus huff a quiet laugh.

dinner is completed with marcus using one less hand than normal, his sous chef being fabulous company. the few times he had to use both hands, his feline friend perched on his shoulder (which he thought was the best thing ever) and waited to be held again. however this cat got here, marcus didn’t know; the one thing he did know is that it wasn’t leaving anytime soon.

the front door was unlocked when you came home and you knew with absolute certainty that you locked it before you left. your walmart bags filled with cat supplies were immediately dropped to the hallway floor as you began to inspect your front door and the area around it. marcus taught you how to spot the basic signs of forced entry (like the protective sweetheart he is) and when none of them were there, you cautiously entered your apartment, mace in hand.

the adrenaline washed away when you spotted your loving boyfriend in the kitchen, gently bobbing his head along to whatever music he had playing. one hand was stirring a pot on the stove while the other was plenty preoccupied with the kitten. shit, you forgot to warn him about the kitten before he got home!

this was the last thing you thought would be here to greet you, but it was a very welcome sight; the feline was finicky and marcus wasn’t due home for another few days, a double whammy. “i see you’ve met the kitten.” you’re honestly just thankful he didn’t get upset about the little thing. neither of you have talked about pets or whatever your living situation is becoming, so the way he seems so taken with the kitten is a sign pointing in a great direction.

when he hears your voice, marcus visibly lights up. “hi honey!” the hand with the spoon immediately drops the wooden utensil into the pot and waves at you happily. “this is my sous chef, say hello, pasta!” he grabs one of her little paws and waves it at you before resuming his stirring, a beaming smile on his face.

did he really just name the cat pasta? and how in the world is she so calm with him right now?

you found the kitten, now known as pasta, huddled in a cardboard box beside a gas station dumpster headed home from work. she was mewling her little head off back there and you were lucky enough to hear her. taking her and her box, your list of things to do was thrown out the window as you rushed her to the vet. they cleaned her up real good and schedule her vaccinations, and sent you home with a list of supplies to buy and advice on how to take care of the little thing.

she was pissed at you after the vet trip. didn’t let you pet or hold her unless she was in the mood for it and if you tried to pick her up otherwise, she would scatter and give you a glare from a safe distance away. but here was marcus holding her like a baby, and the little brat was eating it up! to be fair, you were the same way with marcus when he was being affectionate so you didn’t completely blame her.

“why pasta?” you knew that cats were more likely than dogs to have strange names. you just didn’t think your boyfriend would be the type to give a cat a name like pasta. at that rate, you might as well name a dog goose and call it a day.

he smiles at the furball, giving her a few affectionate pets while he talks. “i was cooking spaghetti when i found her in the laundry hamper, and then i noticed a little spot right on her hip that looks like penne. i couldn’t choose between the two so i went for the middle ground. is that okay with you? or did she have another-”

“marcus, i love it.” and you really do; that sentimental dork just made you love the name pasta with nothing but two sentences. “and honestly, i’ve just been rotating between baby girl, squeak toy, and dumbass since i found her the day before yesterday.”

he scratches pasta under her chin as he laughs at the thought of you calling his sous chef a dumbass. “pasta is not a dumbass! you tell ‘em sweetheart, tell them how smart you are!”

“mroww!”

“see? she’ll be the next einstein.”

marcus pike taglist: @likeshootingstarsinthenightsky @obirain @themarcusmoreno @catsnkooks @torradoza @stardustsunrisekisses @darthadeline @max--phillips @jedi-mando @darklingveracruz @andysficrecs @pedropasscals @qhbr2013 @seasonschange-butpeopledont @greeneyedblondie44 @princess76179 @kaermorons @lv7867 @whovianwar @purelypascal

[tharros-auris-black-asimi]

Call it what you want

Pairing: Alpha Chase Collins x Omega Adelaide Kane (OFC)

Summary: Three years after coming back to life, all the Omega Witch Adelaine "Adela" Kane wants is peace and quiet.

And then the Alpha Warlock we all thought was dead, Chase Collins appears and fucks up any plans for normalcy. Now they're living together to avoid the other Sons. As long as they can survive living with each other, their new lives can officially start.

So naturally, life decides to test them.

Again.

Warnings: Heavy ABO dynamics. Are you guys sick and tired of me writing for this trope yet? Lmafo. There is a past character death and reincarnation, as well as discussions of a character's death in detail, as well as toxic living environments. Discussions of adopted children and unhealthy marriages, as well as accidental murder, are discussed. Canon typical violence, although it's not very graphic. And... you know, the smut. I wouldn't call it volatile, but there is biting and animalistic behavior, cause... you know, ABO. It gets angsty at some points, so you can consider it an Angst With a Happy Ending too. This was also my first time playing around with the True Mate trope, so I hope you all enjoy!

Additional Notes: Hello all! I've had this piece of writing on my laptop for like... a year. I barely just finished it now, which should tell you a lot of where my priorities lie... anyway. I should say that I've never seen The Covenant, only a few select scenes. The main thing I got from the clips is that Chase Collins a low-key asshole, so I hope I channeled that in here good enough, lol. As always, any mistakes are mine!

If you'd like to read this oneshot on my AO3, you can read it here.

Word Count: 14,233

Odd.

This new world was odd.

That was the best way for Adela to explain it. Her alarm was telling her it was eight AM. Rudely waking her up. Adela groaned loudly, turning over and burying her face into her pillow. Not wanting to wake up. Not just yet. She wanted to go back to sleep. She didn’t want to leave the warmth of her bed. She pressed the snooze button on her phone. Slumped right back over and fell back asleep for the next eight minutes. When her alarm eventually went off again, Adela resisted the urge to throw her phone against the wall.

She wasn’t about to buy another phone again. No. She barely understood the new technology as much as she already did. Her Omega stirred within her, irritated. Irritated that she had been rudely woken up. Managing to get out of bed, the dark-haired Asian Omega made her way to the bathroom across the hall.

The home she lived in was abandoned when she first moved in. It was a big mansion that had been nestled away from the little town in the woods, and the mansion had five rooms and five bathrooms. A huge staircase. A big ass kitchen. A fridge and a freezer so huge, Adela was positive she could have fit at least three of her in there, easy. Adela had found solace in the master bedroom. She had taken out the queen-sized bed, replacing it with a humongous nest made up of the fluffiest blankets, pillows, and comforters she could buy at the local Walmart and Target.

The Asian witch still couldn’t believe it sometimes.

That she was alive.

Adela still remembered it all.

Like it was fully ingrained into her memory.

Her mind.

Something you could never forget, no matter how hard you tried to block it out.

She remembered it all like it was just yesterday.

Being hunted down by her sisters like she was a piece of meat. Being held down and stabbed to death. Because her power was too much. Because they all wanted it. Dying the first time had been so painful. All she felt was pain. All she could’ve done was scream in agony because of how much it hurt. All she wanted was for it to stop hurting. Adela thought that maybe, just maybe when she woke up, she’d be in paradise. To see and be surrounded by warmth. Maybe see a soft white light.

She had not expected to feel the pain. The gripping darkness that had kept her in its clutches. Only to wake up in twenty-fourteen. Gasping and spitting out dirt from her mouth in the woods. It had been three years since then. In these three years though... she still hadn't gotten used to it.

Out of all the places that she could’ve ended up in, fate decided to place her in Ipswich? Ipswich Massachusetts?

Fate must’ve really wanted to play a joke on her.

It had taken her two weeks in the first year of coming back to life to slowly be aware of her surroundings. To know who the current President was. Where she was. To have a stable home. To finally feel safe. Never free though. You never knew when people in your past would pop up again.

Her bathroom was pretty huge. There was a Jacuzzi tub with little antique details and a black faucet. It was an indoor hot tub, but Adela only really used that tub on Fridays when she wanted to wine down. To relax.

As Adela turned the dial for her shower to hot, she mused over what she’d buy at the market today. Maybe fruits? She had been looking at an apple tart recipe on her tablet the night before. Maybe she could get pounds of apples and freeze them. To make other apple-related food later in the week.

While Adela brushed her teeth, her Omega had fully woken up from her slumber. Her Omega yawned deeply and loudly, announcing her presence.

Well, hello to you too. Was all Adela thought irritably as she spat out her toothpaste and brushed her tongue, rinsing out her mouth. Grabbing her face wash, she stepped into the shower. At the sight of the warm water hitting her skin, Adela’s Omega purred in content.

A shower was just what they needed.

After Adela’s shower, she walked downstairs to make her usual matcha latte. Matcha was one thing she discovered she liked after coming back. It was certainly interesting. She liked drinking it. She knew it wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, though. But it was hers. The silence enveloped her as she sifted the green powder into her bowl from the mini sifter she bought a couple of months after she had moved in from Target.

Her Omega preened at the silence.

The sound of her water kettle going off made her Omega grumble. Grabbing her water kettle, Adela poured a little bit of hot water before she mixed it with the whisk. Pouring the dark green liquid into her cup, she put a little bit of sugar before pouring some milk into it. Stirring her drink with a spoon, she took a sip.

Adela hummed in content. Soon after, the smells of breakfast filled the room.

Adela was very much into breakfast. Eggs, sausages, bacon, pancakes, you name it, she loved it. Sliding the eggs onto her plate, she munched on some toast and drank more of her tea.

Once breakfast was over, Adela put her face on. Put on her moisturizer. Then her primer. And then her sunscreen. Applying her BB cream with her fingers, blending it on her face and neck, just to make sure that her face and neck were the same color. Tapped some concealer underneath her dark circles so she didn’t look so much like a zombie.

She set her face. Adela filled in her eyebrows with her eyebrow pomade. Giving her tail the heavier hand. Blending the leftover pomade into the head of her eyebrows. Adela stared deeply into the mirror as she did her eyeliner. Eyeliner pen in her hand, she concentrated on making the two wings even.

She was not looking forward to making her wings uneven today.

No thank you.

Her day would be a straight-up disaster if her wings were uneven. A total mood killer.

After she finished swiping on her lip gloss, she felt her magic pulsing out as her makeup went back to its proper places.

Soft humming noise in her ear.

It had taken her a long time to use her magic again.

Three years since coming back to life, and she still felt like someone was going to come and kill her all over again.

Adela didn’t allow her magic to linger. It was why she did the simple, mundane things by hand now instead of using her magic. Even if it got things done quicker, she didn’t want to risk it.

She wasn’t looking forward to people finding her and killing her again.

Not when she was given another chance to live, in the same body, the same face she had seen every day for the past seventeen years before brutally dying and waking up in a different state and year that she knew nothing about.

Her keys jingled as she put them in her purse. She had her bag in her other hand.

The flea market was going to be nice, by the looks of the weather today.

It was going to be a nice, sunny, chill day in town. Adela slipped her sunglasses on before she left the house, the front door locking behind her.

The flea market was alive.

It was the only way Adela could explain it as she walked around, looking at fruits and vegetables alike. The persimmons looked really good this time of year.

The March breeze rushed through her. Her Omega was very happy with the chill breeze.

Adela caught a whiff of some scent that smelled like daisies as she paid for her persimmons and apples from the vendor lady.

All around her, people were talking. She could hear the endless conversations, and she even heard a Beta speaking to her little pup to not steal an orange.

“Thank you,” she said as she offered a smile. The vendor lady nodded back at her with a smile.

“Have a good day, dear.” the vendor lady responded. Adela could only give a soft nod in response as she walked away to another vending site, looking over at the fresh honey choices.

Her Omega preened at the sight of the honey choices that the vendor had.

Adela and her Omega, you could say, had a slight sweet tooth.

There was a little doughnut vending place here too. Her Omega whispered to her as they had walked in earlier to get the blue doughnut with blue sprinkles. They weren’t quite Dunkin’ Donuts doughnuts, but they would do. Plus, they were freshly made. Hot out of the oil. Her Omega liked that.

Sweets, her Omega sighed in delight.

They even had coffee on the side. She and her Omega were really looking forward to snagging an iced coffee that came along with the doughnuts.

“… Excuse me.”

Adela looked up from where she was looking at the glass jar that was labeled Blackberry Honey. Looked to her left.

What she saw made her blood run cold.

The familiar tuff of black hair that was slightly spiked from hair gel had caught her attention. Easy-going brown eyes stared back at her. Adela caught the slightest glimpse of tanned skin. The scent of something woodsy wafted into her nose.

Son of Ipswich, Adela’s thoughts turned from panic to fear.

It was good that she had slathered some scent blockers on her gland. Caleb Danvers sniffed the air. Only to find nothing. This woman next to him looked like she was around his age. Long, dark, wavy hair that fell just underneath her breasts and eyes that were covered by sunglasses. Dressed in a dark sundress with ballet flats adorning her feet, Caleb could only blink.

He couldn’t smell her.

That was odd.

“Sorry,” Adela replied to him, hastily grabbing the jar of Blackberry Honey because that one was her favorite ever since she started coming to the flea market, giving it to the vendor and hastily bringing out a twenty from her purse, handing the money over. She chucked the jar into her bag. It was getting a little bit heavy, but nothing she couldn’t handle.

“Wait-” Caleb began to say, but Adela had cut him off.

“Listen SOI,” Adela spoke to him in a hushed tone as she leaned close to the Alpha, “I’m really sorry I bumped into you. Have a good day.”

As quickly as she heard him, Adela had vanished into the crowd. Caleb was stuck standing there, looking surprised.

Why couldn’t he smell her?

Why didn’t she have a scent?

And how did she know he was a Son?

Later that night…

Adela loved nighttime.

One, because no one would usually be out during this time.

Two, it gave her peace and quiet.

And three, it didn’t give her bad memories.

Adela had been murdered during the afternoon. She knew, because right after she had gotten her lunch, she had gone outside to get a short walk in, before being hunted and chased down by her sisters. Then she got brutally murdered.

She almost never went into the woods ever again. She remembered when she had been brought back to life, she had been in the woods. Alone. It had been nighttime. Spitting and choking from dirt in her mouth, gasping for air. Feeling the life entering her body again. Her body felt like it was a live wire, crackling with energy. Not a drop of blood on the clothes, still in the same clothes she had worn when she had died. Adela had been looking down at her clean clothes then, still in shock that she had died and come back to life wearing the exact same clothes as when she passed.

For a long time, she always thought maybe when she died, she’d see a white light. Maybe she’d see a long-lost relative.

She hadn’t been ready for the pain. It had taken her so long to die. She had been stabbed so much to the point where the blood might’ve even become cakey on her clothes. Adela was certain that she had bled to death because her death had been so slow. Her sisters had left her out there to die.

The cool air was what she was met with as she continued her merry way down the empty street. Hearing an owl hoot.

And then, all of a sudden, she stopped walking.

Something in her gut was telling her that something was wrong.

It was like when she died.

A feeling. Something rolling over her like waves crashing against the tide.

For a split second, a blast of magic echoed. Fizzing onto the road like sparks.

“Who’s there?”

“Happy to see I finally caught your attention.”

She snarled.

Straight-up snarled. Her anger had taken over for just a second, allowing her form to glow white for a few seconds. Adela’s eyes even flashed white again, like the old times.

“Fucking Christ! Can you chill with that- hold up, is that light?”

“Are you doing talking yet?” came Adela’s slightly annoyed tone. Her heart was beating quickly as she was trying to gauge out where this weird voice was coming from. It was far too deep to be one of her sister’s. There was no way they would’ve found her here, right? Unless they were more power-hungry than she thought.

Which, wouldn’t really be out of the ordinary for them, if she was going to be honest with herself.

“Listen, if you’re Lucia or Delores, please go away. I died once, I’m not fucking dying again.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about. Can you please turn the fuck around? Jesus fucking Christ. I’ve been trying to contact you for months and this is the greeting I get? Seriously?”

Another white beam smacked against what appeared to be an invisible force.

“Ow! Can you fucking chill?”  The male voice shouted.

Adela finally turned around.

What she saw made her jump back a little.

A look of shock was on her face. She stood there for a split second.

Then...

“Oh you’ve got to be kidding me!” She yelled, throwing her hands in the air in an are-you-serious gesture.

“I don’t have time to fucking deal with this!” Looking up at the darkening sky that was slowly sprinkling with rain, Adela gave it a seething glare and a snarl as she looked up dramatically.

“Are you fucking kidding me? Two Sons in one fucking day? Do you hate me?” She shouted loudly, feeling the rain slowly seep into her clothes. She even gritted her teeth.

“Is it because I slept with the two guys you wanted to sleep with?” Adela continued to scream up at the sky, “cause I told you, they asked first!”

Huffing, her eyes fell down back to eye-level. She looked at the pair of blue eyes that were suddenly watching her. A fog had appeared. It reminded her of the bootleg musicals she watched, back when she had been alive. It had seemed so long ago. Watching the smoke effects all over the stage.

It was almost like one of those cheesy rom-coms, where time had slowed to a stop as Adela frowned, walking up to the fog. A hand was extending out as her hand glowed white, like a flashlight as she illuminated his face.

She saw his blue eyes. A mop of dark hair. His pink lips that weren’t set in a line. Nor was he was frowning. He was watching, looking at her glowing hand as if she was the Second Coming of Christ or something like that.

“You’re a witch,” he breathed out. Adela withdrew her glowing hand quicker than someone saying “Oh God,” and her face blanched. Her glow had stopped immediately, and she smacked her hand against her thigh like she was afraid. Afraid of her own power.

“Yeah. And you’re a Son of Ipswich- there’s a difference,” Adela snapped back, still reeling from her magic use.

“Yeah? And what’s that?”

Adela glared.

Like really glared at him.

“One of us is going to live past thirty. And it certainly isn’t you,” snapped Adela, just for good measure, as she began to stomp off.

“Hey! Don’t leave me here!”  The male voice howled. She snapped her teeth together into a snarl as she turned around.

“For the love of fucking Christ!” She barked, “Are all of you SOI’s whiners? Does it come with the life-draining powers? Cause none of you are gonna last till thirty at this rate! God, I feel so bad for your future partners! They have to put up with whiners. WHINERS!” Adela screeched as she looked at the blue-eyed teenager.

“I’m not a Son.”

Adela scoffed. She straight-up scoffed.

“Yeah? Make your eyes go black. Right now.”

Watching as the young man let out a splutter and a scoff, Adela’s lips curved up into a smirk.

Seeing a Son of Ipswich eye's turn black was kind of cool.

Kind of.

There was a part of her that was slightly creeped out.

Just a little.

“Yeah… never thought I’d cross off Seeing A Son of Ipswich Eyes Turn Black my bucket list,” Adela remarked as she allowed herself to blink.

She wasn’t about to tell him that she was amazed.

Yeah no.

Her pride would never let it live her down.

For the sake of her pride, she wouldn’t do it.

“I’m not a Son!”  The male voice shouted again.

“Definitely whiners,” Adela muttered under her breath.

“I heard that!”

Yup. Definitely whiners. Even though he was the second Son she had just met today, she had no doubt the other Sons would be whiners too. Just like this one.

This one…

“Oh, holy shit!”

The recognition, the realization was on her face as her eyes even went wide, just to complete the package.

Oh no.

Noooo.

Not him.

Noooo.

She really wished she had stayed dead now.

“Shit, shit, shit! No! Give me Caleb back! Not him!” Adela started to shriek, even pointing a finger at the foggy figure with a pissed-off look in her eyes, pure hysteria written on her face. “Nope! I’m not dealing with another goddamn motherfucking sociopath! I dealt with that enough in my past life and I’m sure as hell not dealing with it in this one! Nu-uh! You can take this goddamn fucking sociopath and put him right back where he fucking came from!”

She cursed.

A lot.

A potty mouth.

Or a filthy mouth.

A filthy mouth that back in the day, would’ve been referred to as “someone who needed their mouth rinsed out with soap.”

“Do you ever stop talking?”  The male voice said in agitation.

“Do you ever stop whining?” She bit back just as ferociously.

The male voice had shut up.

Good. Adela thought snidely to herself. If it was who she thought it was, well, she was definitely screwed.

Definitely, definitely screwed.

“Kay, look, listen-” She saw the male figure roll his eyes, but she went on. “If you’re looking for the Sons, they still live here. So you can uh, do your thing and go terrorize them. Kay Collins? I don’t need this shit right now. I got a busy life. You go and do your… whatever evil supervillains do, I dunno. I don’t watch any of that type of shit.”

The fog settled.

She saw him clearly now.

No more of that foggy shit that covered him from her view like a stupid supervillain.

None of that shit.

She saw the dark hair. The blue eyes. The pale skin. The tattered clothing that were slightly burnt, frayed around the edges.

“Yup,” Adela chirped in a fake happy voice, sarcasm laced in her tone as she narrowed her eyes at the not-so-Son-of-Ipswich, “Definitely a supervillain.”

“I’m not a fucking supervillain.”

Chase Goodwin-Pope Collins was ready to blow a fuse. If he could. He had been totally ready to throw something at the Omega Witch in front of him, probably a rock or two. But he couldn’t.

His powers… they weren’t working.

He didn’t know why. He didn’t know how, either.

They just stopped working ever since he had vanished into the In-Between a couple of years ago.

He still hadn’t figured out how he had gone into the In-Between.

Something had pulled him in. And for a while, all it seemed he did was float in space. He did nothing. It was almost peaceful, not being able to see anyone. Not being able to do anything. He was a little mad that he couldn’t do any magic in the In-Between. Absolutely none at all. It was as if he was incapable of doing it anymore.

There was a part of him that was screaming, nay, howling in outrage at not being able to use his magic. He was a fucking Son, no matter how hard he was trying to convince himself that he wasn’t. He had gotten these powers for a reason. His mother had practically abandoned him, leaving him in the care of rich parents who could’ve cared less about him. He hadn’t been their son. All he had been was charity to them. When the car crash happened… he didn’t mean it. It had just happened. He didn’t think that they would pass. It had been a rainy night. His adopted parents had been bickering in the car, as they usually did.

Chase had just wanted them to stop.

Stop bickering. Stop arguing. He wanted that white noise buzzing in his ear to stop.

He just wanted them to stop.

And then the car had spun out of control and just like that, Chase was an orphan again.

Alone in the world.

When he had tracked down his father and put him out of his misery. And when he came to the Academy to seek revenge on the other Sons, it wasn’t out of malicious spite. It just came from the fact that he hadn’t known. When he had gotten his Powers at age thirteen, it seemed so odd. So foreign to him. After he had found his father, it was too late. When his eighteenth birthday came and he had fully Ascended, he was too far gone. He had begun to use too much.

It was like how the Omega Witch had said. He wasn’t going to live past thirty if he kept using. A Son of Ipswich powers was addicting. The more you used, the more it ate away at your life force. Pretty soon, he knew his other “brothers” weren’t going to live past thirty.

The day he had gotten his powers was the same day he had presented as an Alpha. It hadn’t been surprising, he had later on read. Sons of Ipswich usually presented as Alphas. Then came all the years of his Ruts. They had been so painful. His head would hurt. His dick would hurt. He’d feel his knot like it was second nature. Sweat, headaches, pain, all that jazz- he would get the whole entire package.

He had always felt something missing though. It wasn’t uncommon for Alphas during their ruts, or Omegas during their heats to want an Omega or an Alpha. That need to be completed.

But for Chase… that simply wasn’t it. It simply wasn’t enough. He had a deeper longing. The Alpha Warlock was by no means a virgin. He had Rut Partners in the past. But none of them could scratch that itch. Tick that itch. He always felt that he was empty. That he wasn’t meant for this Omega, or that Omega.

Adela just rolled her eyes again.

“Yeah sure,” the sarcasm was dripping from her voice as she turned around, beginning to walk off again, “Not a supervillain. You and your stupid fog.”

“Can you please stop fucking walking away!?”

Yup, Adela thought sourly to herself, definitely a drama queen.

“Why? You wanna tell me something important, SOI? Can’t you do your weird freaky magic and read my mind or something?”

“I can’t use.”

Adela definitely stopped walking after that. Not that she got really far anyway.

“What?”

Now he really had her attention.

“You can’t… use?”

She sounded so confused. Dark brown eyes found blue ones as her boots clanked towards him.

“No.”

He sounded so frustrated.

And he was.

He was so frustrated.

“I’ve been in the In-Between forever. At least it seems like that. What year is it, by the way?”

“2017.”

Chase felt like someone had smacked him right across the face.

“Ten years…” he breathed out.

He had been stuck in the In-Between for ten years. Ten years of limbo.

Adela felt something twist and turn in her. Like a knife that was plunged in her back. It felt like that same feeling she had before she had gotten murdered.

“I can’t use. I can’t use any of my magic. I don’t know why I can’t use them. But I can’t. So if I get out of here, I can’t stay here. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Her eyes narrowed at that. Just slightly.

“I promise.”

“Don’t promise me shit,” Adela bit out, trying to keep her ever-steady quickening heartbeat at bay. “The last time someone promised me shit it didn’t end well. So okay. You can’t use. Your magic’s gone. You’re defenseless. Are you gonna go all evildoer and reign hell on the rest of the Sons? You got a game plan?”

“No.”

She raised an eyebrow. She might’ve scowled a little bit too.

“No, what? No, you’re not going to attack the Sons? Or no, you don’t have a game plan?”

“Both.”

“I don’t want to attack the Sons. I don’t have a game plan. I just want to live in peace.”

Something in her hummed.

Her Omega was purring.

Adela faltered at that.

“They’ll come after you.”

“Okay,” Chase shrugged nonchalantly. Adela blinked and looked like someone had run over her cat.

“Okay? That’s it?” She echoed.

“What do you want me to say?” Chase bit out, “I don’t have my powers. Maybe if they kill me, then maybe they’ll leave me alone. Besides, I’ve never had a peaceful life. Now I can have one. Is that what you wanted me to say?”

For the first time, Adela was taken back a little bit.

Well. Out of all those things to hit her hard… she hadn’t expected that.

Not at all.

For the first time in her life, she was rendered speechless.

“What? No snappy comeback? Cat got your tongue?”

Oh, now he wanted to be sassy?

She’d show him sassy.

With the mother of all eye rolls, she let out a huff and turned around, promptly marching back to her house.

Less than a second later, she heard the whining again.

“Hey! What’re- what- what are you doing!” howled Chase. Adela just rolled her eyes again. As if that was going to help with anything.

It wasn’t.

“What?” she mocked him. “Cat got your tongue?”

Chase gritted his teeth. Adela sneered at him.

And then Chase was yanked out. Pulled out of the In-Between by some weirdo white light. Back into the mortal realm. Then he realized that the Omega Witch had pulled him out. He fell to the ground with a grunt.

Feeling the rocky road underneath him, he had to pat the ground a few times. Just to see and feel if this wasn’t a trick.

Adela was oddly reminded of herself when she had come back to life.

She had been exactly like Chase.

Tapping things, looking around at things, to see if she remembered what it was. If anything had any significance to her anymore.

She had done that for a year.

Chase tap tapped the ground a few more times before he looked up. If he wasn’t some sociopath person who tried to murder an entire coven of warlocks, Adela would’ve remarked to herself and only herself that he looked like a lost puppy. Maybe even a cute puppy.

“You… you got me out.” he breathed out. Adela’s face didn’t change. Instead, she just gave him a curt nod. “How?”

“Let’s just say I know how the In-Between feels. What, you thought you were the only one who entered some weirdo state of subconscious?”

She saw him blink.

“Yeah- it was a rough time. Don’t ask.”

‘I wasn’t.”

“Good. Now c’mon. Let’s go.”

“Go where?”

Adela had to mentally count to ten in order to not lose her shit.

“My house, smart one. You wanna fend for yourself? Or let the Sons find you?”

Chase had the decency to scowl.

He practically glared daggers at her.

Even a growl came from him. Adela just kept staring at him, her facial expression reading bitch don’t fucking try me right now.

“Fine,” he hissed. Clapping her hands together, “Cool. Follow me, Collins. You want some lasagna for dinner?”

It took three months for anything to happen between the two of them.

They were slowly slipping into somewhat of a schedule. A routine.

Chase was beginning to notice Adela’s patterns of behavior, the more time he spent with her.

One, she always woke up around eight AM. She would press the snooze button once. Then she would wake up. While Chase liked showering the night before, Adela would shower in the morning. He’d be awoken to the sounds of her making her usual matcha latte in the morning.

Her scent was one that truly puzzled him.

Chase, with his rich adoptive parents, had been around tons and tons of Omegas. Usually, Omega’s scents were sweeter. More appealing.

Adela’s wasn’t out of the question.

She smelled like vanilla. But with her magic, it made her smell like a breath of fresh air. Her scent reminded Chase of those days in his childhood when he’d open a window, and would smell a freshly baked vanilla cake coming from the neighbor’s.

Another thing he noticed about her was all the light colors she’d dress up in. Sweaters, blouses, skirts, mini dresses with spaghetti straps- she wore it all. Pastels, blush tones, pink lipgloss- it lowkey reminded him of the early 2000s. One time, she had told him that she’d be going grocery shopping and pulled on a pastel cable-knit sweater, jeans, and mouse flats. The lingering scent of vanilla cake and fresh air left Chase in a daze.

If he was going to be honest, he was starting to get used to being alive again. Actually alive.

Chase walked down the stairs after taking a shower. Adela was making her usual matcha latte for herself. Chase was more of a coffee person, he found. Pure black, no sugar or cream. The sounds of Chase getting the cup from the cupboard and turning on the coffee machine after putting his usual coffee pod in were almost soothing to him.

“So, I’m thinking of looking at this place in the woods.”

Chase cocked his head to the side.

Clearly curious.

“But you live in the woods?”

He was confused. Adela shook her head.

“Deeper than where the house is. It’s making my magic radar feel weird. I just… don’t like going any deeper into the woods.” Adela clarified for him. Chase’s head was still tilted to the side. “So… you’re afraid of going into the woods? Then why do you live in the woods?” He asked her. Adela just pinched her nose in frustration. “Because it’s not that far from town. I’m far enough from people, but not far enough where I start freaking out. That make sense?”

It didn’t. But Adela looked visibly uncomfortable. So Chase let it slide. It was why they never had tried going to that annual bonfire the community had every month. Chase still had scars from the barn. So they didn’t go.

“I guess so. Like my fear of fires. I get it.” shrugged Chase. “Wasn’t your best moment,” Adela remarked as she finished stirring her cup of matcha. “No. No, it wasn’t. Wait- how do you know about that?” He questioned. “The academy I grew up at… we learned about every any type of witch or warlock. Your kind was one we learned about. So we know your history.” Adela walked away from the kitchen into the dining room, with a confused Alpha Warlock following her.

“So- wait- what version of events did they tell you?” Chase questioned her as the two sat down at their usual spots at the table. Adela pursed her lips as she leaned back in her armchair. Summoning their plates of breakfast with a wave of her hands. Chase almost envied her, how she used her magic so effortlessly.

If he was going to be truthful, after all these months, he still didn’t know the extent of her powers. He knew she controlled light. As easy as it was breathing. He’d see her summon things, like their plates of breakfast. But never any defensive magic, like how he used to.

“You came to Ipswich. Laid low and befriended the Sons. And then you killed two people. Almost killed Caleb’s girlfriend, but my brain might be a little fuzzy on that one.” She brought her bottom lip in between her teeth. Then she let it go, showing it all pink and bitten. “You wanted to take all of the Son’s powers if I remember that part right. Whether if they surrendered it peacefully or not. Some explosion had gotten you, but the police never had found a third body. So your death was undecided. Undetermined. Obviously, I know what happened now. You got pulled into the In-Between and stayed there for ten years. You should be in your late twenties or early thirties. Earliest I’d say is twenty-eight or twenty-nine-”

“I was twenty. When I got sucked in. Into the In-Between.”

Adela stopped. She took a real, long gaze at him. Then she let out a chuckle. It didn’t sound like she was mocking him. More like it was a bitter chuckle.

“Oh, well, would you look at that. Birds of a feather really do flock together, huh?” She took a bite of her bacon.

“What does that mean? You weren’t sucked into the In-Between too, were you?”

“No. I was eighteen when I died. I'm twenty-one right now. So... technically I'm just one year older than you.” A wry smile appeared on her face.

Chase choked on his coffee. Luckily, he did not send coffee spewing everywhere. “What?” he choked. Adela sent him a bitter smile. “If it makes you feel any better, I would’ve chosen getting sucked into the In-Between any day. Death hurts like a bitch. In the academy, they would always tell you how good it would be, to pass into the other side. I thought I would pass onto the other side peacefully… like in my sleep or something. Read my cards, be surrounded by my Alpha and our pups and grand pups… but when I died, it was pain. I was in agony for so long… and then I woke up in the woods. Here. Gasping and spitting dirt out of my mouth. Now you get why I don’t like being in the woods, yeah? I died and was reborn there. Not many fond memories.”

“This… academy…” Chase trailed off, seeing Adela's vague nod, encouraging him to go on. “You… had your own coven, I’m assuming?”

To which, Adela gave a shrug.

“I mean… I guess. I grew up with four other girls. Two were Alphas. One was a Beta. Another was an Omega, like me. I haven’t seen them in years. Not since I died. I didn’t live here. To be frank, I don’t know where I grew up, honestly. It was a mansion of hell. We couldn’t get out. Not past the border, anyway. But one day, we all snuck out to a frat party. It was the first time we all felt… human. Our headmistress and teacher were mother and daughter. Both of them were honestly bitches. They were really harsh on us. Taught us dancing, taught us how to speak English. I learned ballet. Don’t ask me to dance- I haven’t done that shit in years. Anywho. They taught us everything. But they never let us out, so we rebelled. Luckily, we were fine. After we presented our individual powers though… that’s where… where I think, all of our lives went to pure fucking hell.”

She was deep in memories.

Looking. Thinking. Chase could see her eyes slowly glowing white again. It made her look ethereal, almost. All she really needed was a golden halo above her head and stupid angel wings.

“So, I guess you could call it a coven. Not a nice one. But… there were times where it was okay. I guess. Wasn’t the worst thing in the world.” Adela returned to eating her breakfast, putting a piece of her cheesy scrambled eggs in her mouth.

Chase allowed this information to sink in.

She never really did talk about herself, he realized. Other than being a pain in his ass, he really didn’t know much about her.

There was an awkward silence after that.

He only really spoke two words though.

“I’m sorry.”

The corners of Adela’s mouth twitched upwards. Just slightly.

“It’s alright. Don’t apologize. Everything’s okay now.”

When he looked at her, and when blue eyes found brown ones, something stirred within him.

Something was going to happen today.

After the awkward breakfast, the two of them got dressed. Today, Adela was wearing a cropped gold-colored sweater over one of her purple mini dresses. Since they were going into the woods together, she wore her black boots. Said boots, made Chase raise an eyebrow in surprise. It had been the color that truly surprised him.

He had never seen her in black before. She seemed to be the type of person to not even own a piece of black nor dark clothing in her life. Unlike him. Dressed in a black sweater, jeans, and a pair of Converse Adela had bought him the second night he had been here, he looked like a normal person.

For the first time in his life.

Adela caught the raised eyebrow. “What?’ she questioned him as she tied her hair back. With a gold hairband. “Never seen you in black before,” was all Chase replied with. Adela just raised an eyebrow of her own before just rolling her eyes. “Don’t get used to it,” she told him, “I don’t own much black in my wardrobe.” Chase just gave her a nod. Taking in a deep breath, she closed her eyes.

Chase felt the energy in the room change. He felt like he had just opened a window. He smelled fresh air and that crisp, fresh feeling of drinking a glass of water after being denied one for so long.

Since he was a Warlock, he could see things people couldn’t. Normal Alphas couldn’t see what appeared to be a film wash over the entire home. Normal Alphas couldn’t smell a certain smell that smelled distinctively of life. Normal Alphas couldn’t feel that energy of magic surrounding them.

Unlike his magic, Adela’s magic soothed him. It reminded him of better days, better times in his childhood. Happier memories. Playing tag with his friends on the playground. It made him feel alive. It made his head empty, and it felt like he had just drunk a glass of hot chocolate.

Adela saw the thin film-like essence of her magic sink into the house. The humming stopped. When she opened her eyes, they were white again. Glowed for a split second before returning back to their normal brown. “Okay,” she was a little dazed, “I think we should be okay now.” Her head was a little light. Chase’s arms came to her shoulders, keeping her steady.

Adela’s Omega reared her head towards this Alpha. She got up, shook herself off, and cocked her head.

For the past three months, she could not smell this Alpha.

Chase had no smell and it was beginning to aggravate her.

At first, Adela’s Omega had been confused. Why would this Alpha not have a smell?

Now she was just getting aggravated.

Sniffing again, Adela’s Omega found nothing.

Nothing!

No scent!

It was an insult, was what it was!

Adela’s Omega grumbled unhappily as Adela looked at Chase.

“Thanks.” Readjusting herself, she heard Chase ask, “What did you just do?”

“Sealed this place off. Put up protective barriers and alarms. Normal people will just see nothing. Other people like the Sons might see the house, but if they try to get in, they’ll get spit out.”

At the aforemention of the Sons, Chase found himself scowling again. Adela sent him an unimpressed look as she walked past him, towards the door. “Yeah, don’t sweat it, I’m not a fan of them either. Do more harm than good, those Sons.”

“Wait- what do you mean by that?” Chase found himself asking after Adela locked the door shut. Hand outstretched to just double check to make sure everything was under control and still in place. “Everyone always thought that the Sons of Ipswich were myths. Legends. Bedtime stories that people who aren’t you and me tell to their kids in order to scare their kids into behaving. After you showed up and fucked shit up, well, the other Sons had to take the extra liberty to shield themselves from the public. When I showed up and everything, well, I had to do the same thing. Avoid the Sons. Avoid any use of magic. It’s why I do most things by hand now. Dishes, sweeping, mopping- you get it.”

Checking that everything was in place, Adela began to walk. Chase followed.

The sounds of the leaves crunching under them were heard as the two of them walked deeper and deeper into the woods.

“… So I just had to avoid everyone. Became a homebody. Not that I care all that much- I don’t like talking to people or going out a lot anyway. But… before you I guess, I found myself getting lonely. It’s always been just me. My Omega wants a big pack, y’know? She wants to start over again. She’s more into the we-got-reborn-so-we-should-get-hitched shit more than me.”

Mentions of a pack made Chase slow down a little.

When he had been younger, Chase had thought about a pack all the time. He thought about having an Omega of his own, with his own litter of pups. Chase had grown up as an only child. He had wanted a big family then. All he had wanted back then was to be wanted.

But then his foster parents had died in that car crash. He had tracked down his biological father, and his father had told him to go to the other Sons. To get revenge for a family he was never truly a part of.

Now, as he was walking with a sweet-smelling Omega, he wondered to himself, could he truly be happy, like this? Unable to smell himself, unable to use his magic? Could he truly wake up every day for the rest of his life until he died, looking and talking with an Omega that would probably never give him the time of day?

Would that even be enough?

Looking at the dark-haired, Asian Omega Witch walking right beside him as the birds chirped happily while the sun peeked through the trees, he decided yes, yes, this would be it.

This was where he would stay.

Later that night, Chase found himself going to sleep early.

Both he and Adela were hitting the sack pretty early tonight after their little adventure in the woods. He had already showered and allowed his hair to dry off. As he laid in his bed, in his bedroom, he heard Adela spit out her toothpaste and heard her rinse her mouth. Then he heard her turn off the lights, close the bathroom door, and he heard her padding footsteps down the hall.

His door creaked open just the slightest bit. Allowing Adela to peek her head in.

“Goodnight, Chase.”

Chase lifted his head up. She knew he wasn’t sleeping. “Goodnight,” he replied. Adela gave him a little smile before closing the door. He heard her retreating footsteps going down the hall a little bit more before he heard her bedroom door opening. Then it closed.

As soon as he fell asleep, he dreamed.

He dreamed he was in the Collins mansion again. He was running down the halls, giggling and laughing. Being chased around by his Omega Nanny.

His nanny shouted something at him before the dreamscape melted and vanished.

He was falling.

He didn’t know where.

By the time his dreamscape wasn’t looking like a melting pot of colors, Chase was still confused.

Until he heard it.

Giggling.

It sounded like girls giggling. Blurs of girls ran past him. They ran through him like it was nothing.

“Come on Adela, let’s go! We’re going to be late!” He heard one girl yell from where she was standing at the bottom of the grand staircase, her arms crossed to her sides. Chase stared at the tall, blonde-haired, and green-eyed young woman who looked to be around the same age as him. All of the other girls looked to be dressed for some type of frat party.

Footsteps made him look forward again.

“Hold on! I’m coming!”

Chase swore that his heart stopped.

Deep down, he knew this was a dream.

This wasn’t real. He wasn’t actually here. But this was a memory. He was looking at an old memory.

But as he laid eyes on her, the Omega that he had been living with for months now, seeing her run down the stairs in one of her usual sweaters and skirts, slipping on her white flats.

Chase saw the girl who had yelled for her to hurry up twitch. Her lip curled a little. “That’s all you’re wearing?” She sounded very unimpressed. “I brought another sweater. A heavier one. Just in case it gets cold.” Adela replied. “No,” the blonde girl had replied, clicking her tongue in a way that made Chase feel like his ears were going to start bleeding. “You’re just wearing that?” She gestured to the outfit. “It’s comfortable, Paige.” Adela defended herself. Paige just groaned out loud. Throwing her hands up in disappointment. “Fine,” she spoke scathingly. “Let’s just go before Mistress Crazy and her daughter come back.”

Chase woke up with a gasp.

Sweat beaded down his forehead.

He had to take a second to catch his breath.

All of a sudden, his door opened with a loud smack against the wall, because his doorknob had collided against it too hard.

There she was.

Adela looked frazzled. She looked as if she had just hopped right out of bed. Her sleeping clothes, which were just a pale pink tank top and white shorts, looked wrinkly.

She was panting deeply.

Her Omega sniffed at the air.

Chase was getting up even before Adela could have recognized just what the hell was going on.

And it was there, that she smelled it.

She smelled hot green tea, and what also smelled like rain. Like she was bundled up in a comfy, fluffy sweater and her PJ’s, with a steaming cup of tea to keep her warm on a rainy day.

His scent.

Chase’s scent had returned to him.

Which meant only one thing.

His Alpha was back.

“Are you sure you know how to set this up?”

Adela was looking at the manual.

It was a couple of days after Chase’s Alpha had returned to him.

Needless to say, he didn’t know how to feel about this new development. Having his Alpha back after not having him for so long… was strange. It almost felt foreign to him. Smelling his own scent too.

Everything had just tipped its axis and Chase was getting grumpy. Adela could tell.

She peeked her eyes out. Looking at the currently grumpy Alpha who was helping set up the flat-screen TV that they had bought at Target. It was a twenty-four-inch TV. And it was on sale! Adela wasn’t about to fuck that up. Like what did he want her to do? Not buy it? It was on sale! She would not be wasting any opportunities.

“Yes… I know where each power cord goes, Chase… it’s on the manual… maybe you should read one next time instead of being a big ol grumpy pants.” Adela’s retort was just resulting in Chase scowling at her. “Well,” huffed Chase. “Ex-cuse me then, Princess.” He was feeling extra snappy and snarky today, it seemed.

Adela just rolled her eyes at his attitude.

“Oh stop it. You’re being such a drama queen. There can only be one drama queen under this roof, and it’s me, Collins. Stop trying to take my limelight, okay?”

To which, Chase didn’t say anything.

He had finished putting in the power cords where they were supposed to go. The TV had been placed on the floor, right up against the wall. The black TV was a nice contrast with the white wall. And it was a brick wall. Chase always liked brick walls.

“Is your coven still alive?”

That caught her by surprise. It had caught her off balance, off guard, even.

“I… I don’t…” came her stumbled words.

“I-I… I don’t know.” Adela finally said. Chase just cocked his head to the side like a dog looking at its master. Clearly perplexed. “I mean, I guess after killing me, I guess they’re still alive.”

“They- what?”

Oops.

She really should have told him that part.

“Yeah. They ambushed me in the woods and stabbed me to death. That’s how I died. Pretty uneventful. It wasn’t as glamorous as yours, so I’m never going to beat you in that department.” she shrugged. “Are you serious cracking jokes right now?” Chase exclaimed.

Adela expressed a deep sigh. Her hands came to massage her temples. “What do you want me to say, Chase?” she said to him. “That it hurt? That I spent my last moments screaming for help when no one came to rescue me? That yeah, my coven killed me? Is that what you want to hear? Cause if you wanted that, here you go.”

No.

No.

No, he had not been expecting that.

At all.

“If I’m gonna be honest with you… I don’t know if they’re still out there. They left me to fucking die, Chase. That should be enough to spell it out for you. Maybe after I died, they got shot at. Maybe they’re still fighting for the Supreme title. We were doing the Seven Wonders. We were almost finished with them, but then…” her gaze fell to her hands and she found them very interesting, as Adela began to fiddle with her thumbs. “Then I died. I don’t know if they ever finished them. It’s been six years. Who even knows at this point.”

“What was your coven name?” Chase asked her.

Adela only replied with one word.

“Kane.”

Later that week, Chase found himself on the laptop, researching. His fingers flew away at the keyboard. His gaze was completely focused as he engrossed himself in his research.

All the while, Adela was at the store, pushing a cart along the floors of Target, down at her phone, where her grocery list was.

A certain scent made her Omega screech.

The familiar woodsy scent was back.

Which meant only one thing.

Caleb Danvers.

Son of Ipswich.

Adela started to panic. And it caught Caleb’s attention because he turned to look at her.

The woman from the flea market.

But that hadn’t been the thing that caught Caleb’s attention.

Oh no.

It was that familiar scent of hot tea and rain. And the smell of lotus flowers and vanilla.

But the sweet scent of lotus flowers and vanilla wasn’t what Caleb was focusing on.

No.

That scent of hot tea and rain.

It reminded him of Chase. That had been Chase’s scent. But Caleb had seen him fall into the fire and vanish.

Chase couldn’t still be alive, right?

Right?

For a moment, Caleb blinked.

And Adela summoned her magic for the first time ever.

Just a little bit.

Just so she could teleport herself away from Caleb. Quietly getting the other things on her list using her summoning magic. Quietly checking her stuff out in line.

Caleb blinked again. He walked out of the aisle, seeing Adela with her groceries in her hands, walking out of the store.

He was puzzled.

He needed to see just what the hell that woman was up to.

When Adela got home, Chase opened the door.

He looked like he had been waiting for her. A look of panic was on his face.

“What?” Adela said once she got inside, making sure to shut the door behind her. Chase reached behind her, locking the door. She let out a grunt as Chase tugged her by her arm, not saying anything as he guided her to the laptop.

“What?” She said again, still confused.

“Oh my frigging God, Chase, just tell what’s going on!” Adela huffed before Chase sat her down on the couch, moving the laptop so she could see the screen.

What she saw made her blood run cold.

“Are those…” Adela breathed out in horror. “Medical records, yes,” Chase replied softly.

Adela began to scroll.

NAME: ADELAIDE EVERLY LEE

DOB: MAY 16, 1993

SEX: FEMALE

“How did you…”

“Did a deep dive into the Internet. How do you think I found my birth dad?” Chase chuckled. Although he didn’t sound humorous when he spoke about his father. His eyes turned away when she finally made eye contact with him.

Her hand reached over to his, a golden-toned hand covering his pale one.

“I felt you, earlier.”

Now she was really looking at him.

“You… felt me.” Adela couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“Yes.”

Chase was looking at her now, too.

With something she never thought she would have ever seen him looking at her with.

Compassion.

It made her Omega sigh dreamily.

“Explains the dream I had, about you a couple of days ago. Because, that was you, right? Back then?” Chase questioned, leaning back a little as he kept his eyes trained on her.

“Y-Yeah,” Adela swallowed nervously. “That was the night we all decided to sneak out to go to a frat party. Coincidentally, that was the night I lost my virginity in both holes. Well, three, considering I gave oral too. But nobody ever talks about the mouth.”

“What?”

Pursing her lips and leaning back on the couch, Adela nodded seriously. “Yeah. First threesome too. The dudes were super nice about it too…”

Chase was looking at her like she had grown another head. “What?” Adela cocked her head at him. “You’ve never had sex before?” She questioned. Her surprised face quickly turned to one of horror. She let out a horrified gasp. Even clutched her chest. “Oh my sweet Cole Sprouse, are you virgin Chase?”

“What? No!” Chase protested.

“I mean, it’s okay if you are, I mean, society’s very sex positive now. You can be as kinky as you like.” Adela nodded along with what she was saying, even though Chase was wildly shaking his head. “Okay! I get it! No, I’m not a virgin. Popped my cherry with this Omega I used to go to school with.”

“Not at the academy, right?” Adela raised an eyebrow. “Nah,” replied Chase. “It was before the academy with the Sons. My rich parents sent me to boarding schools growing up.”

“Must be nice, living with rich parents,” Adela mused as she looked back at the laptop screen, only for her amused face to change into one of longing.

“… No. It wasn’t.”

She turned her head.

Chase was looking ahead at the wall as if he was getting lost in old memories. “They never made time for me. My mom was always busy, and my dad was always busy too. They just waved me around like a fortune of goodwill. Kinda like, oh, look at us. We’re so charitable. Look at how nice we are, taking this orphan into our house.”

His hands clenched at his side. Chase’s jaw tightened. “And when we were in the car that one night… they were fighting. My parents… didn’t have a good marriage behind the scenes. They always fought, and I think my adopted dad was having an affair behind her back, too. But that one night… they were arguing and I was in the backseat and I… I just wanted them to stop fighting.”

Noticing that he was getting choked up, Chase felt a small hand grasp his, and something akin to peace flowed over him.

She was using her magic. To calm him down.

“What are you-” Chase began to speak, but Adela shushed him.

“Shhhh,” she whispered to him, “I’m calming you down now. This is about you now. Not me. Just shut up for once, Chase.”

“You’re so rude,” Chase muttered underneath his breath as he grabbed her, pushing her flush against him. Adela let out a squeak.

“You’re such an asshole,” she couldn’t help but be catty at this very moment.

“And you’re wonderful, shut up.” Chase snapped. Adela peeked her head up. “You mean that?”

His face softened.

“Yeah, you’re wonderful, Omega. You annoy me and you make me want to rip my hair out, but I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

With that, Adela buried her face back into his shoulder. Happily nuzzling her nose into the fabric of his shirt.

“Kiss me tomorrow morning?”

“Yeah.”

He ended up doing it tomorrow morning.

A few weeks later…

Everything went wrong that morning.

Chase had decided to be the first one to wake up that morning.

But when he had woken up, there was a weird fog in his mind.

Almost as if someone had pulled the wool over his eyes. Like someone had pulled the rug from underneath his feet.

He could feel something wrong deep in his gut.

But, as he was nestled with the sweet-smelling Omega next to him, he almost didn’t want to get out of bed.

Almost.

And all of a sudden, he heard knocking.

At first, they were polite knocks.

After a few times though, they became pounding knocks.

They were enough to make Adela begin to stir. With a groggy voice, “hos’ at the door… make them go away…”

“Shhhh,” Chase whispered to her as he pressed a kiss on the top of her head, “-I’m going to check it out.”

“You’ll be right back?” Adela asked sleepily. “I’ll be right back,” he promised her.

Making his way out of the huge bed, he walked down the stairs, heading straight to the door. When he unlocked the door and opened it, he was immediately blasted backwards.

Slamming his back against the wall, Chase gasped in pain.

Everything hurt.

Gritting right through his teeth, Chase managed to get up.

Familiar scents were making their way into his nose.

Familiar scents that reminded him of another time.

The Sons.

The damn Sons had found him.

Just how the fuck did they manage to do that?

“… Are you keeping her hostage, Chase?” One of the voices shouted, which sounded oddly like Pouge.

Chase tried to gasp through the pain. Between the odd fog that was making his head turn, the impact he had taken with the blow was making his head spin, and not in a good way.

Bang.

Someone screamed. Chase recognized it faintly as Tyler.

White consumed his vision for a second.

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE DOING IN MY HOUSE?” A familiar feminine voice roared out.

Adela.

Chase had never truly seen her action until this moment.

He gasped in pain as he managed to get up, albeit shakily. His head was still pounding.

Adela had woken up interrupted by knocks. Pounding on her front door. When her Alpha told her he’d go and check it out, she expected him to just go and see, and come back to bed.

He had even promised her!

However, when she heard a bang and heard him shout in pain, Adela’s Omega had screeched to her that something was wrong.

And when she heard those damn Sons of Ipswich, she knew that shit had officially hit the fan.

Her Alpha had been smacked against the wall as if he was just a rag doll, and there were people in her house. Her house! Her space!

It nearly drove her Omega insane! Her Omega was howling at the audacity of these Alphas who dared to enter her space.

Her Omega had not died and come back to life with a second chance to get her Alpha only for some knuckleheads who dared disrupt what she had slaved her ass over to gain.

Oh no.

No. No. No No.

Absolutely not.

“Holy shit! How the fuck did we not know there was a witch here?” one of them shrieked. Adela recognized him as Reid. She knew him as the stupid one.

In her opinion, anyway.

“I’m not going to ask again,” she snarled, beginning to float up as her light became more intense. She glowed brighter as her light intensified, looking more like a light beam than a glowy masterpiece. Her pupils had changed from brown to white.

“Listen, we just all need to calm down-” Caleb tried diffusing the situation, but that only made Adela snarl right through her teeth. Barking out a laugh, “Who’s we? You’re the ones who barged into my house!” She sneered.

“Okay… maybe we shouldn’t have blasted Chase against the wall,” Reid chuckled nervously. Pogue turned to him sharply. “Oh, now you think that’s a bad idea!” He shouted in his face. “I told you we should have just knocked politely! You’re the one who said, ‘We should blast the person who answers against the wall,’ like a frigging idiot!”

A deep rumble erupted from Chase’s chest.

If it had been her and not him, they would have been in two completely different places right now.

His girl could have been the one on the floor. And not him.

That was enough for his eyes to turn black. Like the good ole days. Adela felt him rising up to meet her, where she was floating, and the two of them sent the Sons flying back and right out of the house.

The front door slammed loudly and the locks turned in place. Chase heard all of the locks slide into place as he carefully floated back down. Adela did the same, but as soon as her feet touched the ground, she nearly keeled over.

“It’s alright Omega, I got you,” Chase assured her gently as Adela gulped down some air. Sweat was beginning to show on her face.

… And all of a sudden, it clicked why he had felt the fog.

His Rut.

Chase Collins was going into his first Rut in ten years.

Everything had begun to make sense.

Adela didn’t do anything as her Alpha picked her up bridal style, carrying her back upstairs, back to her nest in her room.

As Chase walked up the stairs, through that weird haze, he thought.

There was a reason why he had felt her nervousness that day she had gone to the store.

He had felt her. Even without a Bond. And then when he had woken up from his dream, his Alpha had suddenly come back?

That only meant one thing.

They were True Mates.

Growing up, Chase thought the idea of having a True Mate was just something you read in fairy tales. A myth. Something you normally told your kids to make them dream about happy things.

But deep in his gut, he knew. Chase just knew.

Opening the door to her room, Chase gently put her down. Her scent was becoming riper, and Chase could feel his cock tightening. Pretty soon, her Heat would be here, and his Rut would come to match hers. Pushing back some hair that had clumped together due to the excessive amount of sweat that had begun to build on her forehead, Chase saw that unblemished, perfectly unmarked Gland on her neck.

Just the thought of biting her, putting his Mark there, showing everyone in this damn county who her Alpha was made his cock strain against his pants even harder. It made his Alpha rumble in content.

Mark Omega. Make her ours.

Shaking his head, Chase tried to clear his thoughts that weren’t currently horny.

He didn’t need to put a blanket over her, once her heat hit, she would be sweaty and hot enough.

For now, as Chase walked back downstairs, he made sure all of the house defenses were placed. That all the protection was up.

Then, he made sure all of the doors were locked. Things were put away. Any or all plugs were removed from the power outlets.

He did not want the two of them to be disturbed when his Rut and her Heat would hit. By anything.

Chase opened the fridge.

He had a lot of work to do.

When Adela eventually woke up again, she was sweating heavier than a sinner in church.

She was sure her nest had been soaked from all of her sweat.

Her scent was so thick it was making her eyes burn.

All the while Chase had finally finished meal prepping away downstairs. Closing the fridge door, he heard movement from upstairs.

Adela’s scent was everywhere. It penetrated every space, every crevice of the mansion. All he could smell was her. All the while he knew that his girl was going to wake up, and eventually come back downstairs.

His shirt had come off after an hour. Followed by his undershirt. And then his socks. Clad in nothing but his shorts, Chase hummed as he turned around.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

His Omega was up.

Everything hurt.

As Adela managed to stumble her way down the stairs, everything in her was screaming.

Her whole entire body was hot.

Everything hurt.

Cramps hit her with every step she took down the stairs.

Her scent was so thick, so pungent that even Chase could even smell it from where he was in the kitchen.

So good. His girl smelled so good. He could smell the scent of lotus flowers and vanilla. It made him feel like he was sitting outdoors, while scents of a bakery overhead filled his nose.

Although right now though, his cock was throbbing in his shorts and he desperately wanted it to be gone. He was sure if he made another step towards her, his self-control would break and he’d pin her down and breed her until he knew for certain that he had put a pup in her.

However, the rumbling of Adela’s stomach made him snap out of that horny haze.

She was hungry. Grabbing the tongs from the kitchen drawers, he piled pasta into a bowl, finishing it by grating some cheese on top. Chase didn’t believe in that pre-shredded BS.

Grabbing a fork, he slid the bowl of pasta over to her. Almost immediately, Adela grabbed the fork and dug in. Scarfing down the pasta like she didn’t have any more time to eat in her lifetime.

Chase was surprised that she didn’t choke on her food. After she had finished two more bowls, she was content and needed no more food.

Slick oozed out of her like a fountain when she tried to stand up. Adela hissed in pain. “It hurts,” she managed to choke out, looking at him with wide eyes, all the while her naked body trembled and shook with every breath she took. Her breasts heaved. Her dark nipples were hardened to buds. She smelled so good to the point where pinning her down and breeding her was going to be a very good option.

Quite frankly, when Adela was pleading with him, tears streaming down her eyes, along with Chase’s Alpha hissing in his ear to just cut the bullshit, Chase nearly, readily agreed here and there that pinning her down would do much good. Much, much good.

So that’s exactly what he did.

Adela let out an ungodly shriek as she was pinned down to the hardwood floors of the kitchen, her back colliding on the floor. Thankfully, she was fully nude. So, Chase did not need to rip any of her clothes off. Remains of his shorts were shoved down and kicked off in his stupor.

His erection bobbed free. The crown of his cock was smeared with pre-cum, white drops oozing from his tip.

Adela was so fucking happy that her brain was currently just thinking breed breed breed because if her mind had been in her normal headspace, she would have screamed at the length and size of Chase’s dick.

Truly, she would have astral fucking projected right then and there.

Because he was huge.

To put it quite simply.

His girth was thick. He was long. Adela nearly shuddered and sobbed in anticipation. She was brought down, forced by her Omega into the basic instinct of her designation- a bitch in heat.

Adela cried out with bliss when Chase slid in, slamming into her fully. She gasped as her eyes rolled into the back of her head. Her mouth agape, no noise coming out.

“… shit,” Chase grunted out. “S’ my good girl.”

She was so warm. Her cunt was slippery with her slick, smeared all over her inner thighs. Leaning his head down, his tongue dragged up her thigh, all the way close to her slippery pussy lips that were pink and swollen. Just by the taste of her, Chase’s head spun.

Mind gone, he raised his head up from her thighs.

Adela cried out and whined when he pulled out, just enough for the head of his cock in between her lips, before he slammed right back in.

Mercilessly, he pounded her onto the floor. Not even giving her a chance to respond as he took her right then and there on the floor. He slotted himself in between her thighs, lifting her leg up to sling it over his shoulder, so he could go in deeper. So his cock could hit that perfect spot that made her see stars in her vision.

His hips slammed into hers with every single thrust, and Adela screamed when her walls clenched down onto his cock, milking him for all he had.

Screams from his Omega were like music to his ears.

Still, Chase persisted. He continued to push his ejaculate deeper and deeper into her, feeling so close to completion. It was like being able to drink a glass of water after being denied of it for so long.

Chase came with a shout. His knot caught and swelled, and the dark-haired Alpha had to plant his palms on the hardwood floor to keep himself steady when he came inside of him, her pussy greedily taking all he gave her.

“… Give me your neck…” he managed to gasp through pants, his eyes black. His eyes were wide. “Let me mark you, Omega… please…”

Please.

He had said please.

Through her lustful haze, Adela registered lifting herself up a little. Sitting up. Lifting her neck up for him, offering her Gland to him.

Like a magnet, his mouth latched onto that corded muscle. His teeth sank in, breaking and shattering the skin. Putting his Mark there. Marking her as his.

Adela cried out when he bit her. Her Omega sobbed in delight. When Chase did eventually lift his head and offer his neck to her, she did the exact same thing. Her teeth sank in, and her head eventually rose up, seeing bloody teeth marks.

She had done that. She had put her mark there. Right there. On his gland.

“I love you,” she whispered to him. Carefully, one of Chase’s hands came to stroke her face.

Blue eyes looked into brown ones.

“I love you too, Little Omega.”

A couple of days later…

Adela woke up first.

She had changed out of her tank top and shorts to one of her pastel sweaters and light blue jeans, and her bunny slippers. After brushing her teeth and washing her face, she did her skincare. Padding her way down the stairs, she began to make her matcha green latte, happily humming to some song she was currently bopping her feet to.

She was having the time of her life.

Eventually, Chase woke up to an empty nest.

He heard the music downstairs.

His girl was awake.

The wafting smells of breakfast began to make their way to his nose.

And then someone rang the doorbell.

Cautiously, Adela turned the burner flame to low. Putting the lid on top of the potatoes that she was currently cooking, she grabbed a knife from the knife block and made her way to the front door. Carefully unlocking the door, it swung open.

Caleb was met with a knife in his face.

“Hey! Hey! Put that down!” Caleb shouted, jumping back in surprise. “Says the fucking people who broke into my house!” She retorted.

Okay. They deserved that.

“We’re sorry!” Pouge cried. Adela cocked an eyebrow. And with a mannerism that reminded them of Chase, she just scowled at them.

It was then, that they noticed a bite mark on her Gland.

“Oh no… you guys are mated now? Wait…”

That had been Reid.

“Oh… no wonder you guys smelled-”

A shriek came from Tyler.

Chase had materialized from behind her, a hand on her shoulder possessively. He was deeply glaring at the four people who had broken into his house.

“Okay… we’re not here to do anything rash. We all just want to talk.” Caleb, ever the peace-maker, tried to quell the chaos. Adela was still glaring at him. The knife still being held in a death grip in her hand. Turning to Chase, the two had a silent conversation with their eyes.

Eventually, Chase turned his gaze back to Caleb.

Even though it had been seven years, Caleb still shivered a little at the sight of Chase’s eyes becoming pure black.

The curves of his lips curled up into the beginnings of a smirk. Before his smirk fell, and he glared back at them again.

“Fine. But we’re kicking you guys out after breakfast.”

“… Why are you making so many hash browns?”

Chase was sitting at the kitchen island, watching Adela, with her dark hair tied up free and away from her face so none of it could get into the food. He watched her flip it with the spatula she was using. The potatoes sizzled.

His eyes narrowed.

“… You’re not making breakfast for them, are you?” he questioned. When Adela said nothing and only picked up her matcha latte to drink some from her metal straw, the questioning look on his face turned to one of horror.

“You’re feeding them?” he exclaimed. Adela rolled her eyes. As if that was going to help with anything.

It wasn’t, but she would like to think it did.

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, Chase.” She reprimanded him.

“It could be poisoned!” Reid piped up from where he was on the couch in the living room. Three other voices shushed him. Chase gestured from where the other Sons were sitting at, basically saying, that sounds like a great idea, we should do that.

“No, we’re not poisoning them.” Adela just rolled her eyes again.

“But-”

“No. If you’re going to grump and sulk, you can join them in the living room. Maybe you’ll bond over being grumps.” She gave him one last scathing look before she turned back to her hash browns. Hissing to himself underneath his breath like a frigging toddler, Chase retreated to the living room, where all the rest of the Sons were. He glowered at each and every one of them, plopping down on one of the chairs. Grabbing the TV remote from the coffee table, Chase turned on to tune in on The Alienist.

As Daniel Brühl’s face came into view, Chase leaned into his seat.

“Oh, this episode’s actually really good…”

That was Tyler.

“Oh my god… is that an arm?”

That was Pouge.

“Shut up,” Chase just snapped.

As the six of them sat at the table eating breakfast, Chase laced his right hand into Adela’s left one.

Caleb awkwardly cleared his throat. Plopping a piece of her cheesy scrambled eggs in her mouth, Adela chewed until she swallowed it down, and looked up at him.

“So… you’re a… witch?” Caleb awkwardly tried starting a conversation. Her lips pursed to one side, Adela leaned back into her seat, gripping Chase’s hand a little bit harder. “Yeah,” she spoke. “Guess you could say that.”

“Are you a part of a coven?” Reid wondered.

“No,” was her flat response.

“Were you a part of a coven?” Tyler probed.

“Yes.”

“Were you cast out?” Pouge inquired.

“No. I was murdered.”

Caleb choked on his bacon. He had to cough a few times to regain his posture.

“What?” Four voices exclaimed. Adela just rolled her eyes again, feeling a headache coming on. She turned to Chase. “Remember the first time we met, darling? Remember when I told you all Sons of Ipswich were annoying? Are you doubting me now, my dearest?”

“Of course not my love,” Chase was glaring at her in annoyance at the look of pure glee on her face. “I never doubted you for a second.”

Adela just scoffed.

“Sure you didn’t…” was all she muttered underneath her breath.

“Anywho…” She took another sip of her matcha latte, “I got murdered by my coven sisters. Came back to life three years ago. I lived in peace until this gremlin-” she shot a playful wink at Chase, “… entered my life, and then when you-” her playful gaze turned to one of annoyance when she made eye contact with Caleb, “-came into my life… everything in my life got flipped upside down, and now I’m pretty I’m pregnant with this dramatic bitch’s pup.” she turned back to Chase.

“I’m not dramatic,” Chase huffed. “Yeah, sure you aren’t,” Adela snarked back at him.

The four other Sons watched as Chase and Adela bickered back and forth for a little bit, squabbling like an old married couple for the next few minutes.

Eventually, Chase and Adela did stop their bickering.

“Anyway,” Adela shrugged, “I got murdered by my coven sisters, landed up here, and now I’m here. I don’t know if they’re alive. Don’t ask, because he already did.” She jerked her head in Chase’s direction.

Caleb nervously nodded. “We’re uh… we’re very sorry for breaking into your house.”

“Uh-huh,” Adela nodded, unconvinced.

“We’ll leave you guys alone for a while,” Reid piped in.

“Uh-huh…” Adela nodded again, still unconvinced.

“We promise,” Tyler said seriously.

“And you’ll never come back?” Chase said dangerously, his eyes slowly becoming black again.

“Yes,” Caleb replied quickly, not wanting any bloodshed. “We promise.”

The curves of Chase’s lips began to curl into a smile.

“Good. Now finish your breakfast and get out.”

A few months later…

Spring turned into summer, summer turned into fall, and fall turned into winter pretty quickly.

Adela’s stomach had swollen and swelled, and she was beginning to show. Now, a couple of months in, her tummy was swollen with child. Her breasts became bigger as her body started milk production. Her scent became riper as she carried his pup.

Chase had gotten a job down at the bookstore. He really enjoyed helping the other Omegas and Betas who worked there and was very helpful. He also really enjoyed reading to the younger pups. Adela had started a hobby into thrifting and flipping her clothes, and even opened an Etsy shop.

But now, it was Christmas Eve.

Chase had bought home a tree a week ago, and the two of them decorated their tree. Adela even made Christmas cookies.

The smells of Christmas cookies wafting in the air were what greeted Chase when he walked through the door. Locking the front door, he took his shoes off at the front door and wiped off any snow that had gotten on his coat. He took off his coat and hung it in the closet near the door.

… Santa tell me if you’re really there… Ariana Grande crooned from the bathroom upstairs.

Oh. Adela was still awake.

Making his way upstairs, he heard water sloshing around as Adela moved. When he opened the bathroom door and peeked his head inside, Adela was in the bathtub.

He didn’t know if it was her pregnancy, but she looked like she was glowing. Her face had a lovely glow to it now.

“Evening Omega.” he greeted her. Adela beamed when she caught sight of her Alpha. “Hey,” she greeted him. “How was work?” she inquired as she got up from the bathtub, and Chase walked over so he could hand her towel to her. Wrapping it around herself gently, Chase answered her.

“Oh, work was great. The kids were great today. Some kids came for a field trip. I read Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer to them.”

“Oh yeah?” Adela hummed, interested. The two walked out of the bathroom and into their bedroom.

Chase had moved into the huge master bedroom a few months back. The guest room he had been staying in was changed to a nursery, and he had just finished building the crib for the incoming pup. The walls had been painted a sky blue with little white clouds on them. Very homey.

“Yeah. One of them asked if I could magic tricks for them though,” admitted Chase sheepishly.

Because of their Bond, Chase found himself not losing his life. He and Adela assumed it was the whole True Mates bullshit. Something about the two of them being completed with the other. Shit like that.

“And did you?” Adela inquired of her Mate as she pulled her towel down, revealing her in nothing but her nude glory as she padded to the closet to grab some clothes. Chase greatly appreciated the nice view of her backside.

“Yeah. I summoned some cards and rotated them in the air. They liked that.”

“… Then you should do magician stuff on the side,” Adela’s voice carried out from where she was in the closet.

“Extra income, you know?”

“We do love capitalism,” Chase spoke dryly as he openly rolled his eyes.

Adela scoffed from where she was in the closet.

The door opened and she stepped out in a Christmas sweater and Christmas-themed pajamas. Her hair was still damp.

“… So what’d you make for dinner?” Chase asked her when the two of them moved down to the kitchen. Adela walked over to the oven, pulling the oven door open a little to catch a little peek inside.

Wafts of garlic, bell peppers, oregano, basil, and cheese made their way into Chase’s nose.

“Lasagna, but instead of tomatoes, I used red bell peppers,” Adela replied as she grabbed her oven mitts. Opening the oven door, she carefully took out the dish and put it on the stove. Chase closed the oven door and turned it off. The smells of lasagna soon enveloped the kitchen.

“Well, we got an hour for it to cool down.” Adela offered. The curves of Chase’s lips curled into a smirk.

“Oh, I can think of many things we can do while we wait for dinner to cool down,” he growled as he practically swept her off of her feet, carrying her bridal style towards the stairs.

“Chase! I just took a bath!” Adela squealed.

“Who said you couldn’t take another one?” Chase questioned her.

She fell silent.

“Besides,” he continued with a cocky smirk on his face, “It’s always good to shower together to preserve water. And I’ve been thinking of being balls deep in my pussy all day.”

Adela nearly choked on thin air when he spoke those words.

“Asshole,” she hissed underneath her breath.

“Hmm,” was all Chase had to offer until he kicked the door to the master bedroom open, and put his Omega on the bed gently. His hands went for her pajama pants immediately, pulling them down until he could yank them off of her, and there was a loud ripping sound.

“Chase!”

“What?” He didn’t sound very sorry at all. “They were in my way.”

An incorrigible noise came from Adela.

Her shirt soon followed. Adela pulled and yanked his jeans down. Kicking the remains of a favorite pair of jeans down to the floor, Chase pulled his own shirt over his head.

A deep noise of consideration came from his mate when Adela eyed his penis with deep admiration. His dick really was a work of art.

Hovering over her with one hand gripping his erection, Chase pushed in.

Two voices cried out.

Merry fucking Christmas Eve to them indeed.

Taglist: @greeneyedblondie44, @bxnnywriting, @hawsx3

[theorichardspota]

DELIGHT: DONNA

            Do not let me trick you with details about her big love before I take her away. Donna is dead. That would be unfair, trust me. But follow me anyway-- to the porch of the house with the red door on top of the hill across the street from the post office. Donna is smoking Newports there that she buys by the carton and follows with mint Tic Tacs, the white ones. Her big black dog Ellie is laying at her feet. This porch and its table are where Donna pulls tarot cards to make a living. Delight: the porch and the door to the porch and how the screen would slam behind the last person to enter. Donna acts as mother to all of us. We make her into family, the same way the neighborhood kids do.

            Inside the porch door is the kitchen with periwinkle walls. Delight-- this kitchen. There's a print of an illustrated coyote in a suit drinking whiskey from a rocks glass on a bar patio that I have always assumed to be in Arizona. Donna moved here from Arizona. The coyote is wearing sunglasses. They are both smoking cigarettes. Donna’s laugh is warm and cacophonous with ragged edges from the years of cigarettes. It fills the kitchen, brimming, softening the corners of the room. Her voice is jagged and deep, which Donna insists is not from the smoking. Rather, from tearing her vocal cords to shag babbling in strange pitches at babies to get them to turn towards the camera while she was working at the Walmart Portrait Studio in her early twenties. The table at the center of the small kitchen is covered in paint from her daughter Raven’s acrylic portraits she does for our high school art class, and then draped over with a tablecloth of which bright elephants march around the edges. Here, at this table, on the way to the porch, we all eat the dinner Donna cooks for us. Our whole group in Kent. Donna, Raven, and I, and this gaggle of boys. 

            This kitchen is also where Donna dies.

            My mother does not call. She texts me on a Saturday morning to tell me Donna has died. The boy I’m fucking lets me wipe snot on his green sheets and lay, undisturbed, on the floor of his shower until the water runs cold. I leave to drive home wearing my clothes from the night before, sopping wet, face swollen. Delight is picking up Jennifer walking on the side of the road, her coral wedges swinging in one hand, the other with her thumb stuck out. 

            I have learned the most about gratitude when I needed it to survive. I do not intend to let gratitude be made simple like that. To be made secondary, reactionary. To be something we walk to in order to walk away from grief. Rather, grief and gratitude are different faces of the same object. It is not the grief that hurts. It is the rage that comes with grief. The rage only topples into me when I want, with my whole body, to change the truth, to try to be in control. That is when grief wants me to smash plates. But grief can be tender. Grief is constant and it is human. Grief didn't come here to barter or fight, grief came to talk and to be listened to. 

            I drive past Jennifer, but I think of Donna. I know Donna would have picked her up. I double back and Jennifer opens the passenger side door to my Honda Civic, steps in, thanks me profusely. I ask her where she is going, and she says Danbury. A town an hour south of where we are now, and forty minutes past Donna and Raven's house. I tell her I can drive her to Kent, where I'm going, no further. She asks me how I am; I lie. I ask her how she is; she starts crying. Then she starts apologizing. 

            I do eventually arrive at the white house with the red door. It is still on top of the hill. The post office is still across the street. I knock, Raven opens the door. Griffin, Tucker, and Ryan are already there. They are sitting in the living room, rigid in chairs and on the couch, breathing into the heavy air. Griffin was with Raven when it was decided Donna would not emerge from the coma at 3 this morning. Griffin drives the both of them home and they take Ellie for a walk to the pond in the moonlight. It is still warm enough to walk that September night. There is no way to tell Ellie what has happened. She is laying with us in a black heap on the floor. 

            (confusing jump, try past tense or don’t jump) Jennifer is crying because she has been abducted. Her ex-boyfriend dragged her from her apartment, drove her north out of the city, into Cornwall, and a mile into the woods, (be more specific) assaulted her, stolen her wallet and phone, and left her in the forest to walk until she could find the road. I tell her I can drive her all the way, and then I tell her Donna has died.  

            Donna's death is sudden. A double aneurysm. She is hardly over 40. 

            Grief has those funny children’s toys-- the jewel toned sticky stretchy hand you toss and see if it will grab anything, usually just the wall. It'll grasp at seemingly unrelated memories and they will ache. But if you listen to what it is seizing hold of, it is trying to tell you a story. Grief knows the secrets that our bodies keep from us. It's trying to show you the web. Grieving is how we heal. Radical acceptance acts as the cool balm-- listening to the want and knowing we cannot change anything, there is no control. I want to un-dead Donna, and I never will. There rests in wait the gratitude, which is tangled up in delight. Or maybe vis-versa? I was told once that gratitude feels good not because it is righteous but because it is a coming back to center. With the language we have-- doesn't that feel true? It isn't some euphoric high. It’s a simple calm, a forgiving softness. A joy. 

            Jennifer tells me sometimes she skips paying the bills so she can go sky diving. Instead of electricity this month, she will feel the rush of flinging herself through the air without consequence. This is how she is going to celebrate surviving. 

            I think great loss brings us to gratitude as a way out of the rage. A path so we may walk through it. Grief asks us to let the animal of it into the room, to take from our bodies what it came for, and then allow it to walk away. If we are to survive the tatters it leaves us in, we need to be able to speak to it. And grief speaks in gratitudes. What is loss but once having had something we loved.  

            We're scrambling to figure out what this means. Where do we put Raven's things? How do we pay for Raven's college? Are there medical bills left to Raven? Who takes Ellie? The house, the mortgage, all of Donna’s clothing. 

            I see Jennifer one more time when she appears a year later at the outfitters I spend summers working at. She’s come back to my town to pick up a friend who is hiking the Appalachian trail and will get to Kent today. She’s scoured the town looking for me, asking the coffee shop workers where to find me, and the owner of the craft gallery how to find Backcountry Outfitters. The town center is small. It takes fifteen minutes to walk from end to end, and she zigzags it to appear in front of me again. Her hair is shaved fresh down to the skin the way it was when I met her the year before. She is full of just as much magic. She has brought me a peacock feather. We go out for dinner with her friend and stay past the kitchen’s close, drinking and laughing. The owner comes to sit with us, she brings us beer. 

            The town starts a fund for Raven. Everyone knows her because the town is small, and Raven has worked waiting tables at the diner since high school and Donna delivered mail when she and Raven first moved here. The town organizes an evening to raise money. The shops donate art, books, pottery, chocolates to raffle off. We sell dinner tickets and serve food cooked by the restaurants. We take donations. At the event a woman I have never met tells the boys and I about meeting Donna: Donna has started delivering the mail. She carries a box to the front door and knocks. A tiny Raven is with her today—school hasn’t started for the year.  The woman opens the door and takes the package from Donna’s hands, thanks Donna, and Donna tells her, with awe, that the shade of eggplant she has painted her walls is astonishing. The woman rolls Donna’s choice of ‘eggplant’ around in her mouth like it is the highest compliment, like the word makes her feel seen. And I believe her, I understand. The story ends with the woman inviting Donna and Raven inside, they sit together and drink tea. The fund pays for Raven's college, the mortgage, keeps the electricity on in the house, covers the funeral costs. 

            Jennifer moves home to Guyana. She is married now, and still sends Christmas cards. Donna continues to appear in people like she did in Jennifer. She visits in Ross Gay's writing and in gentle baristas. I get to meet versions of her for coffee, or she descends in particular hawks. Blooms in certain roses. Jennifer calls me her guardian angel. I don't mean to be cliché when I say she is mine. Or when I say thank you for those I have loved and lost because I have loved them. I, without gratitude, do not know the range and depth of love. A portion waits in secret at the end. That first loss asking us to never again wait to find out. 

            We are at the kitchen table talking about weddings in barns. Then Raven says she wants her funeral to be joyful. Donna tells us she does, too. She tells us exactly what she wants it to look like. A pig roast, a keg, and for it to be in a barn like the weddings. Everyone is there, and there is live music and dancing. 

And three months later-- Raven does pull it all together. Donna's friend's band plays. A local restaurant roasts an entire pig on site. There isn't a keg. The funeral is on state park land so it can be in a barn free of charge, but they won’t let us drink. It’s okay, we will go to Tucker’s after to drink cheap beer. There are children playing tag. There is a table of white Tic Tacs. 

            A woman who has gone to high school with Donna gets up to tell us how they met. It's in a bathroom in their high school, and in the story the woman is not a woman yet and is supposed to be in algebra but she's crying from a fight with her boyfriend. She's been dumped before homecoming. Donna walks in, asks her what is wrong, listens, and pulls a bottle of Jack Daniels out of her bag to give to the woman, and says "I'll go with you to homecoming." And Donna does. 

[lady-divine-writes]

Kurtbastian - “Always and Forever” Chapter 2

After the death of their daughter Grace, Kurt and Sebastian drift apart. Kurt wraps himself up in his grief so tightly he starts to push Sebastian away, and Sebastian, feeling himself shoved aside when he needs Kurt most, cheats. They make the decision to start over, to leave New York City and their pain behind, and start over again in a house Upstate. Sebastian buys Kurt a "fixer upper" and gives him free reign. While redecorating the room that will be his studio, Kurt comes across something interesting underneath the wallpaper. It starts to become an obsession for Kurt - an obsession that begins to replace Kurt's love for his husband, which Sebastian is holding on to by a thread. Can Kurt and Sebastian break through the pain and the hurt and find a way to fall in love again?

Read on AO3

Chapter 2 (5061 words)

The first evening in their new house becomes a long, exhaustive dance of unpacking and cleaning in preparation for the movers to arrive in the morning. What, in the past, would have been an upbeat two-step of flirting in the hallways while lugging in suitcases, punctuated by the occasional stop, dip, and smooch, is now a formal, boxy waltz, with Sebastian giving Kurt a wide-berth whenever he hears his husband coming, and Kurt pausing in doorways, eyes darting elsewhere when Sebastian passes by.

The rush to clear the dirt away and make things suitable for the furniture they chose to bring with them affords Kurt ample opportunities to send Sebastian on a host of errands, ensuring him stretches of time that he can spend alone to reflect and think.

Consider the past and plan for the future.

Even after the furniture arrives, they should have tons of space left. They had decided not to bring everything they own with them. They aren’t selling their penthouse. Keeping it furnished for the odd trip back seems like the practical thing to do. So, they only packed those things that they absolutely could not live without. 

They didn’t bring any of the furniture from Grace's room. That Kurt donated to the Salvation Army with the exception of one item – a Winnie the Pooh lamp that he had found in mint condition, ironically, at the Salvation Army, on the day he and Sebastian found out their surrogate was pregnant. It's ceramic, hand-painted, with Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh sitting back to back as the base, each holding a handful of balloons. One red balloon, larger than the rest, contains the bulb, the colored plastic lending a rosy tint to its glow. Along the bottom edge are written the words: “If there ever comes a day when we can’t be together, keep me in your heart, I’ll stay there forever.”

Kurt’s mother had read him Winnie the Pooh books his entire childhood. He could recite most of A. A. Milne’s writings by the time he turned eight.

The year his mother passed away.

He'd read those same books to his daughter. She’d had them mostly memorized, too.

Seven hours of scrubbing, sanitizing, and (for Sebastian) racing around town wipe the two of them out, to the point where falling asleep is simply a matter of inflating an air mattress and putting heads down on pillows. They had picked up a Queen size one at a JCPenney along the way. It’s nowhere near as luxurious as the custom-made King size bed currently stuck in the back of an Allied Moving Truck, waiting to take a journey on the 495. This mattress is a tighter fit than they’re used to. It doesn’t help that the thing sinks in the middle whenever one of them rolls over. With the both of them measuring six-foot-plus tall, they have to lie in the fetal position to fit comfortably, which would require them to spoon. But Kurt finds a way to keep himself out of his husband’s arms.

The material the mattress is made out of seems perpetually ice-cold, not warming up a touch with their combined body heat, which Kurt didn’t anticipate. They have the gas and electricity switched on, but there’s something wrong with the central heating. They don’t have the requisite amount of blankets to keep from freezing, which adds to the misery. Despite being pissed at Sebastian, Kurt doesn’t have the heart to send him out at one a.m. to the 24-hour Walmart, so he closes his eyes and resigns himself to suffering until dawn.

For the next five hours, Kurt’s mind stays blank. No noise, no dreams, and no flashbacks, thank God. It’s not restful, but it’s the best he could have hoped for. The last half a year has not been conducive to dreaming. The nightmares keep coming, one after the other, the next one worse than the last, shaking him to his core until he jars awake with a pain in his chest like someone had tried, in steel boots, to stomp him into the dirt. But waking up doesn’t solve the problem. He doesn’t know what he hates worse – waking up weeping in his husband’s arms or waking up weeping alone.

Kurt’s feelings for Sebastian are complicated when he thinks they shouldn’t be. Kurt should either love him and forgive him or hate him and move on. But he loves him and hates him. His hands itch to hold him, but a second later, he wants to shove him away. He wants to go, but he can’t imagine leaving.

As much as it sucks, Kurt can’t imagine living without him.

He would prefer to go back to being shamelessly and hopelessly in love with him. Hating him has become a crutch. But it’s enough to get him through. Regardless of that fact, which should tie up the loose ends, mend the hurts and cool the hate, it doesn’t, because Kurt can’t find a way to forgive him.

A well-meaning Facebook friend had told Kurt over Messenger that the problem was Kurt’s pride had been hurt by Sebastian cheating. Push the pride aside and get over it. Ultimately, the marriage is more important. Then he said something about Kurt putting on his “big boy” pants, mentioned God, and quoted the Bible.

A minute later, Kurt blocked him.

That’s another blessing of moving - leaving behind the get over it already crowd. He hates them more than the forever sorry folks. The people who tell him to move on, to get over it, to put it behind him, don’t really care about him. They want him to stop complaining, as if they’re obligated to follow him on social media, and that puts the burden on him, in turn, to make them feel comfortable.

Maybe some of them do care, but not enough to put themselves in his shoes and understand that it’s just not that easy. Being on the outside of the swamp and looking in at a man who’s drowning, yelling at him to grab a branch and pull himself free, is different than being the man stuck hip-deep in mud that feels like cement and losing a fight that’s beyond his control.

Sometimes, as a matter of self-preservation, you simply give up.

Kurt doesn’t know who Sebastian slept with. He has his suspicions, but he doesn’t know for sure, and Sebastian won’t confirm. He says it’s because he wants to put it behind him, forget it ever happened, and that infuriates Kurt. If sleeping with another man was something Sebastian would need to put behind him, why even do it? Or (and Kurt hates himself for thinking like this), if Sebastian didn’t want Kurt to dwell on it, why not take steps to ensure that Kurt wouldn’t find out? Sebastian, of all people, should have known that this would eat Kurt up inside. It’s the kind of thing he’d never let go of. Yes, Kurt would be devastated if he discovered the cheating and the cover-up years after the fact, but he’d be in a better place to mourn his marriage apart from mourning his daughter.

What Sebastian did was selfish on so many levels.

Kurt knows that sex isn’t love, but he can't help wondering – was there a moment in the middle of all of it, caught up in the kissing and the fucking, where it felt like love?

Kurt met Sebastian in high school. Kurt wasn’t just a virgin back then. Oh, no. He had created his own category of virgin for which he could have had a cape and costume custom made – Captain Super Prude. Sex was a taboo topic for him, so much so that his high school’s chastity club hated him. 

Apparently, he set the bar too high, made them look loose in comparison. 

As much as he had fantasized about finding a special someone who would sweep him off his feet, gently usher him into manhood by making soulful but passionate love to him, he preferred not to think about it too often or too in-depth. The "talk” between him and his father was a mortifying experience.

There were pamphlets involved. 

He still has some of them.

When it came to finding a boyfriend, Sebastian wasn’t what Kurt had planned on at all. Where Kurt was attracted to debonair, old-school, gentlemanly types a few years older than himself, Sebastian was crass, rude, explicit, and a year younger. On top of that, he was (to coin a phrase stolen from one of Kurt’s best friends, Quinn) the biggest French whore of them all. Sebastian didn’t care for romance and he didn’t attach emotions to sex, but he definitely had a way of making men fall in love with him. Kurt Hummel and Sebastian Smythe were the two people in the world least likely to fall in love with one another. But according to Sebastian, he fell in love with Kurt long before Kurt fell in love with him.

Sebastian claimed that Kurt was the first man he had ever fallen in love with, and at first sight, no less.

He whispered those words in Kurt’s ear the first time they made love.

He said those exact words during his toast at their wedding.

He wrote them in every birthday, Christmas, and anniversary card he ever gave to Kurt.

He said them over Grace’s crib the night they brought her home.

“Look at this little thing, Kurt,” Sebastian had sighed, reaching out to stroke Grace’s cheek. “Our daughter. Is it ridiculous that I’ve only known her for two days and I’m already in love with her?

“Technically, nine months and two days. But, no. It’s not ridiculous.”

“I never thought I could fall so fast in love with another human being before I met you.”

“Really?” 

“A-ha.” Sebastian smiled when Grace yawned, her whole mouth moving in a complete circle before she settled down again. “I fell in love with you the second I laid eyes on you. And then, well, it was all over for me.”

Those words, the memory of that happiness, breaks Kurt’s heart. Could it be possible that, after close to twenty years of marriage, after reciting those words so many times, they didn’t mean anything anymore? Had Sebastian found someone else he could fall in love with?

Kurt has asked, but Sebastian won’t answer that question. He says it’s insulting.

Whatever the answer, he probably thinks he’s doing his husband a kindness. What he’s really doing is prolonging the torture, not giving Kurt the information he needs to make a decision that he can stand behind. Every time Kurt looks at his husband, he sees touches on his skin that don’t belong to him, kisses on his lips that he didn’t put there.

Kurt doesn’t know how to make himself see past them.

Instead, he looks away.

The second Kurt feels sunlight on his face, he’s out of bed. He grabs his messenger bag and pads down the hall to his studio before Sebastian can stir.

The room looks different with blurry morning sunlight bleeding through the windows. Kurt didn’t put black-out curtains up, and the sheer curtains that came with the house let fingers of light poke through, bouncing off the wallpaper and brightening the floor. 

Yikes.

Kurt examines the floor now that he sees it clearly. It’s a mess - the wood warped as if someone had paced it incessantly. It had been varnished at one time. Spots of resin dot the boards like oily puddles. The wood itself (some variety of walnut, Kurt suspects) has blackened to a morbid pitch with age. It sucks up the light and gives little back.

“Oh, yeah,” Kurt murmurs, pressing around the brittle edge of one spot with his toe, watching it crackle into shards. “This has to be completely redone.”

He gets stuck on the idea that this room could have been his daughter’s if she were still alive. He and Sebastian had talked about raising Grace in a suburban environment, and as much as he regrets not giving her a house with a yard and room to grow, Kurt leaned heavily on the side of staying in the city. Some of his motives were selfish. He loved Manhattan. It had been his lifelong dream to end up there. He wanted his daughter to grow up with all of the things he didn’t – culture, diversity, theaters and libraries and museums a train ride away. He didn’t want her raised around the closed, narrow minds of small-town folk. He wanted her to be an independent thinker – liberated, rational, intelligent. But he also wanted her to be compassionate and kind. He wanted her to know the world, its wonders and its failings, the way it truly was, not the way it looked on a movie screen, and long to change it for the better. They participated in fundraisers, gathered donations for the homeless, and volunteered in soup kitchens.

Grace was a pure light, a driving force that, at her age, Kurt didn’t get the chance to be.

So in honor of her, he wants his workroom to be bright and colorful - a mixture of his vintage aesthetic and her fun-loving personality. He’ll paint the walls her favorite colors, put homages to her in the details, choose the furnishings she would have preferred.

Since this will be the room he spends most of his time in, he wants it to be everything about his daughter that he adored.

He opens his bag and pulls out his phone, checking the time. 6:08. The movers are supposed to arrive between eight a.m. and ten. But movers, electricians, plumbers, and cable guys never arrive on time. He fishes out his sketchbook, sits on the floor, and gets to work jotting down a layout. First things first, he decides where his drafting table will go, where he’ll store his bolts, where he’ll put his sewing machine, a spot for a work chair, marking places here and there for personal touches like his mother’s vanity, his first-ever dress form, a few of his awards...

And photographs. Lots and lots of photographs.

He didn’t keep photographs in his studio at Vogue. He had an obsession with keeping his private life private, which he doesn’t apologize for. Since he met clients there, he liked to keep that space impersonal. Nothing to get in the way, spark a conversation that might derail the job at hand. 

Unlike Sebastian, who hung candids galore. He stuffed the most Godawful photographs from their high school and college years into collage frames and nailed them to every wall of his office, squeezing things like his degrees and diplomas into far corners so that those pictures could be prominently displayed. He said that people knew the Smythes by name and reputation. If anyone wanted to see his credentials, they could Google them. But when people walked into his office, he wanted them to know that first and foremost, he was a family man.

Sebastian knew from childhood that he would become a lawyer. He never dreamed he would be a father. 

Or a husband.

Those were the two accomplishments he seemed the proudest of.

Kurt regrets not having more pictures of Grace hanging on his studio walls, her smiling face to look at every hour of every day, watching his meetings, overseeing his layouts. She was his good-luck charm, his missing puzzle piece. She deserved a place of honor.

Now, he’ll give her one.

His stomach growls as he works. A smell from somewhere tickles his nose, and he groans. Just a few more seconds of sketching on the hard ground, and he’ll grab a bite to eat… maybe. With his ass numb, he doesn’t see a reason to get up, and bedsides, he’s on a roll. Car doors closing and constant banging echo in, and he winces, his head throbbing from lack of sleep. Dammit! If it would just stop till he finishes! It’s hard enough to concentrate as is! He hopes this is a one-time-only thing. He’d hate to wake up to that cacophony every morning. If he ever decides to go outside and meet the neighbors, he’ll have to find a polite way of asking them not to do whatever that is before he has his morning coffee.

Of course, soundproofing is also an option.

“Kurt? Kurt, are you… ?”

Kurt shifts his legs underneath him. He lifts a hand to massage his shoulders. That mattress must have killed his back. His arms ache something fierce. Sitting on this floor doesn’t help, the uneven boards digging into his legs, but it’s not an impetus for him to stop.

Just one more minute.

One more minute of sketching out this room, and he’ll join the world. One more minute to get his thoughts straight. One more minute to brush aside the things that like to torture him. Forget that his mother died when he was eight, his stepbrother when he was eighteen. Forget that his father passed away three years ago and his daughter six months ago.

Not too long after, his husband cheated.

Five.

That’s how many things he had loved in this world more than himself.

Those are the things that he’d lost.

They were the things he needed to forget in order to make it through till the evening.

He’ll replace the insulation and the drywall, smother everything in a noise-proofing compound, then paint the walls in swirls of pink and gold. He’ll do the ceiling in shades of blue, indigo, and violet, like the sky at night, and cover it in crystals to represent stars the way Grace had wanted to do with her bedroom. Kurt had promised her he would the second everything was over, when they could risk her being around the debris and the fumes.

He has never broken a promise to Grace. He isn’t about to start.

He scribbles those notes in sloppy script in the margin of his paper, wipes tears with the back of his shaking hand. He tries to focus on specifics to bring himself back from the brink of a breakdown. He needs a good cry, but he doesn’t want the comforting that will go with it if Sebastian hears him. He can’t right now. Sebastian comforting Kurt turns into Kurt comforting him back, and Kurt only has the strength to handle one outburst.

“Kurt? Did you want to… ?”

Kurt waves a hand to shoo away the buzzing beside his ear, relieved when it doesn’t take much more than that.

In order to paint the walls, he’ll have to take the wallpaper down.

That brings to mind the corner of torn paper over by the window and the word written underneath.

Darling.

That corner offends him. Kurt keeps entertaining the thought that that word has nothing to do with Sebastian, that there is another layer of wallpaper underneath festooned with line art of flowers, along with quotes from various love poems sprinkled throughout, circa 1800s. But then that would make that one tear and that one word an incredible coincidence since darling is the pet name Sebastian has called Kurt since day one. When he started doing it, every time he said it, Kurt had an urge to sock him on the jaw.

He was a pain in the ass, even back then.

Did Sebastian actually think Kurt would fall for writing darling on the wall? After the things he said? After what he did?

Kurt’s hand trembles so badly, he smudges the ink on his page. He stops writing, takes a deep breath, and counts to ten. He closes his eyes and concentrates on the sun warming his face. It’s gone now when it was there a second ago, which is disconcerting, but he has to ignore that and calm down.

He has to relax.

He promised he’d give this marriage a chance, that he’d try to make this work. Sebastian, so far, has held up his part of the bargain. He’s given Kurt space. He’s listened to him vent uncontested. He’s let Kurt keep tabs on him – where he goes, when he’ll be back, with photo texts in between to prove that he is where he said he would be. Kurt has to give him the benefit of the doubt. If Sebastian extends an olive branch, Kurt should take it.

But did he want to?

“I didn’t hear you when you got up this morning.” Sebastian’s voice starts Kurt’s hand up again. He wants to look busy. He doesn’t want to be caught in a position where he has to give his husband his full attention.

He hasn’t forgotten everything yet.

“Well, you were dead to the world,” Kurt replies, distracted.

“I’m just saying, see? You won’t disturb me. You don’t need to put a bed in here.”

Kurt bobs his head back and forth, adding a place in his layout for a foldout out of spite. “We’ll see. It’s only been the one day.”

“That’s true.” The way Sebastian says it, it sounds like a challenge. A tired challenge. Like Sebastian knows he’s already lost. “So, you like the room?”

“Yeah. I think I do.”

“And what about the rest of the house?”

He doesn’t know why Sebastian sounds like he’s asking. It’s a done deal. They both agreed on a new house. Sebastian found one he thought Kurt would like and bought it. What? Are they going to back out now and magically move somewhere else?

Will moving around from house to house solve what’s wrong between them?

“It’s fine, I guess. I don’t know. I think it’s hard for me to visualize without taking the grand tour. I’ll be able to tell better when I get started decorating.”

“Are you gonna hire that guru guy to help you with the yin and yang stuff?” Sebastian jokes cautiously. “That Kung Fu guy… what’s his name… ?” Sebastian snaps his fingers as if he’s seriously trying to remember.

“He’s a Feng shui practitioner, and his name is Carl.”

“His name's Carl?” Sebastian laughs. “No no no, his name is not Carl. Carl is the name of a dentist. He’s not a guy you call to Wang Chung your house.”

“Feng shui,” Kurt corrects again. “I hired him to help me create balance in our home.” He chuckles despite the fact he doesn’t want to find Sebastian funny. He doesn’t want Sebastian to affect him. But he’s right. The man’s name irked Kurt, too, when Isabelle referred him. “Ridiculous name or not, he seemed like a knowledgeable guy.”

“Do you think that Shaolin stuff could work here?”

Kurt pauses to give the matter some thought, and that kills the moment. The levity becomes saturated by the pain hanging in the room, and Kurt coils further into his sketch.

“That remains to be seen. But I think I’m going to try doing it for myself this time. Of course, the overall effect is going to be completely thrown to heck when you hire whoever never to decorate your office.” Kurt throws a derisive scowl over his shoulder. It misses its mark when Kurt won’t look Sebastian in the eyes.

Sebastian swallows Kurt’s scowl without thinking of a comeback. They’ve had that argument before when Kurt redecorated their penthouse. Kurt felt the need to redecorate whenever something big happened in their lives, but Sebastian’s office was off-limits, so it stayed the same. Kurt tried to find one or two things to put into his design scheme that would bring a theme from Sebastian’s office out so that the penthouse would blend, but whatever the thing he chose was – a print, a vase, an ottoman, or a coffee table – it stuck out like a sore thumb, until Kurt tried less and less.

“Can’t fight City Hall,” he’d say, returning to the business of finishing the rest of the space. Things changed around them, and yet, in Sebastian’s carefully curated world, life stood still. The last time Kurt redecorated was before Grace was born. Nothing in the penthouse matched Sebastian’s office after that.

“I want you to do it.”

Kurt stops scribbling. “Me?”

“Yeah.”

Kurt almost looks back to see if Sebastian is serious. He stares at the paper in front of him, the surface more ink than white. “Are you… are you sure? You always said that we need our separate spaces.”

“That’s only because you’re a little heavy-handed with the pastels. I trust you. Just don’t go making it all shabby chic.”

Kurt is speechless. This is the opportunity he has been waiting for their entire marriage – to decorate Sebastian’s office. Once upon a time, he saw it as the ultimate gesture of trust.

Back when he was naïve and fairly stupid.

“Don’t worry. I won’t.” Kurt debates standing up and giving Sebastian a hug or a handshake. This seems like a time that would warrant it. But when he rolls an inch to his knees, his entire body screams with pain. God, he feels old. How can he be this stiff after just half an hour?

Kurt returns to his planning. Even though he doesn’t feel prepared to leave his sanctuary, he fixes on that solid mask he’s been wearing for weeks around Sebastian. Just one more minute. One more minute, and he’ll go downstairs. He thinks he says it out loud. He expects Sebastian to go back to their room and get ready for the day, but he stays in place like a statue, watching Kurt draw, huddled over his sketchbook with his back turned to him and the door.

Kurt waits to hear the sound of footsteps retreat the way they came, but they don’t. His pencil stops above a square drawn in the corner meant to represent his stereo. He can’t continue his drawing with his husband watching, so he bites the bullet.

“Was there something else you needed?” he asks.

“They’ve… uh… got the bed in,” Sebastian says. “And the TV.”

Kurt scrunches his nose and lifts his head. What does he mean? The bed and the TV are on the moving truck. Kurt looks at his phone, resting on the floor by his knee.

“What are you talking about?” Kurt scoffs. “The movers haven’t even arrived yet. It’s only 7:15.”

“That’s right.” Sebastian speaks slowly, the way he does when he’s explaining something to Kurt that he thinks Kurt might explode over. He leans forward like he wants to come in but doesn’t without an invitation. “It is 7:15. In the evening.”

Kurt's head snaps up, eyes rolling because Sebastian is crazy.

There’s no way.

He's ready to object, but with his gaze away from his page, he notices something different about the light in the room. Instead of a soft, diffused blue, it has become a thicker yellow. Shadows stretch across the floor that weren’t there before. The room is warmer than he remembers, and the skin of his left shin, folded over his right, feels hot and irritated, like he might have gotten a sunburn.

“Evening?” Kurt shakes his head. “How can it… ? But… why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you come get me?”

“I tried. I told you when the movers arrived. I asked you what you wanted for lunch. I brought you the portable heater and put a lamp in here when it started to get dark.”

Kurt looks around. In the emptiness of the room, they’re easy to see - a plug-in heater behind him, and, in the corner of the room to the left of the door, standing straight and tall like a structural support beam, a brass lamp without a shade, filling the room with artificial light.

The first two pieces of furniture in his new studio, and Sebastian put them there.

Kurt doesn’t want them. He’d rather be cold and alone in the dark.

“We don’t have WiFi or cable yet, but I set up the Blu-ray player,” Sebastian continues. “I thought I could go get some take-out, and we could have a picnic dinner on the bed. Maybe watch a movie?”

Kurt does a 180 on his sore ass and looks at his husband (which is to say he looks at a spot over Sebastian’s head) with a mildly confused expression. He’s not really thinking about the bed or the movie or dinner at all. Even though he was hungry earlier, apparently hours earlier, he’s not hungry now. He couldn’t be less hungry. His desire to eat simply evaporated. It's been waning for weeks. Sometimes he forgets to eat until Sebastian sticks a sandwich in his face. Sebastian has become devoted to keeping Kurt's stomach full. He knows better than to comment on his weight loss, but he keeps a stock of temptable foods on hand.

He’s keeping Kurt on life support.

Sebastian stuck a spear into the heart of what they had together. Now he’s keeping Kurt alive to help him fix it.

Kurt hates that he didn’t see it that way until just now.

“Kurt? Please?”

Here’s the olive branch, Kurt thinks. He has to decide whether he’s going to take it or toss it aside.

He had promised Sebastian he’d try, and Kurt has never broken a promise to Sebastian.

No matter how much he hurts, he’s not going to start tonight.

His father always said that a man is only as good as his word.

Kurt closes his sketchbook. “Alright. I’m coming.” He tries to unfold his legs, but his knees lock up on him, and he rushes to massage the beginnings of a cramp. Sebastian looks like he’s about to spring in and help, but Kurt puts up a hand. “I’ll be a minute.”

Nodding, Sebastian takes a step back. Even with that rejection, he looks happier, more hopeful. He takes his phone out of his pocket and leaves the room. The grateful smile on his lips should fill Kurt with warmth. It used to.

But it doesn’t.

After a meal of Szechuan from a questionable establishment (not questionably clean, just questionably Chinese) and The Devil Wears Prada (a movie Sebastian swore up and down he’d never watch again), Sebastian falls asleep with his head on Kurt’s chest. And Kurt lets him, even if he himself barely gets a minute of peace.

[nickgerlich]

Going Long

I remember the very first Walmart I went into in the early-1980s. It was somewhere in central Indiana, not far from where I was going to school, Indiana University. I had heard about this upstart discounter starting to make inroads in small towns, and had to take a look for myself. It was an interesting strategy at the time, because Walmart shied away from bigger cities initially. They believed that small towns offered them a lot of upside potential, and little competition.

They were right, and the strategy worked. Just ask Dollar General, who has borrowed that page of the play book for themselves.Of course, Walmart rapidly became ubiquitous and went everywhere, especially large cities and their suburbs. There are a little more than 4700 Walmarts in the US now, and they have about run out of places to put new ones. In fact, they won’t even look at small towns much anymore.

One thing was certain about Walmart stores all along: they looked like a cheap discounter on the inside. Whenever you can look over the top of a display and see all the way across to the opposite wall, you know you have stepped foot in a discounter.

But that can create image problems, especially when rival Target has done an excellent job positioning itself as the place to go for dry goods. Target stores increasingly have the boutique-within-a-store feel.

And ever since Walmart started introducing groceries in 1988, it has seen sales of food skyrocket such that the supermarket side of the store now accounts for 58% of total sales, a statistic that was zero in 1987. I suspect a lot of people grabbed their groceries and left.

Today, Walmart is working hard to create a top-shelf omnichannel shopping experience, from a revamped website and app, to new store interiors that are designed to keep people in the store a little longer. And when people linger, they tend to spend more.From home goods to apparel, pet products, the pharmacy, and—yes—the supermarket side, Walmart is making a pitch to look a lot more upscale, and leaving the downscale look for Dollar General.

Walmart unveiled the look at more than 100 stores this week. It’s a bold move, but they have 4600 more to go, which will no doubt take time. That said, I am seeing a new side of Walmart lately. They’re aggressively going after the sale, no matter how it is made, and trying diligently to craft a seamless online and in-store shopping experience.

The latest efforts are not exactly new for Walmart, though, as they have long tried to get people to spend more instore, and particularly higher-income shoppers. Walmart has noticed more middle- and upper-income grocery shoppers in their stores, but will they cross the aisle so to speak and take a look at all of the other merchandise? It’s just that previous efforts did not work.

As part of the overhaul, Walmart is also including a “dollar store” section, clearly a stab at Dollar General and the others operating at that price point. They’re leaving no stone unturned.

It’s a big challenge to look upscale while still retaining the discount store format. Walmart is not abandoning its core customer, but it is certainly trying to attract new ones. Speaking from personal experience, I often feel “dirty” when I leave certain stores, like Ollie’s, Big Lots, Dollar General, and some Walmarts. It’s not that I am actually covered in dirt, mind you. It just feels that way, and whenever a customer has that feeling, it usually does not bode well for sales. Not mine, anyway.

It is refreshing to see Walmart playing offense. Since the pandemic, they have performed better than Target and other retailers, and rather than bank the cash, they’re plowing it back in.

I am not ready to buy clothes at Walmart just yet, although I have bought a few things at Target. I can see what Walmart has in mind. They’d like to make that sale too. Although there are some things I will not purchase there, I am up for things I don’t have to wear, like pet products, electronics, and maybe even some housewares. And just like with my groceries, I’ll use my app to pay for it all.

Well-played, Walmart. You’ve still got a way to go, but you’re definitely turning heads, mine included. You’ve definitely come a long way since the 1980s. I’m sure Sam Walton would approve.

Dr “Stay A Little Longer” Gerlich

Audio Blog

[rachelbethhines]

Tangled Salt Marathon - Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf

Ok, so I’ve tried and tried several times to get this posted, we’ll see if this is the time it goes through. Half the reason why this review series has slowed down is not just the multitude of real life stuff I have to deal with, but also Tumblr just refusing to work with me and deleting my posts. I also can’t save my work else where due to Tumblr messing up the formatting. It’s been a frustrating mess and so far no one @staff​ has come up with a tech solution or work around. 

Summary: Rapunzel helps to rebuild Old Corona, (after its near destruction from the Black Rocks) which will become the permanent home of Red and Angry, who have returned to Corona to settle down. However, she begins to notice strange footprints around the area, as well as the livestock becoming more unruly and fearful. The group comes across a monster hunter named Creighton, who explains to the group that the area is being stalked by a werewolf, who possessed one of Corona's citizens. Aiming to save this person rather than kill them, Rapunzel sets out to find who it is. 

When Was This Decided?

No seriously, when was this decided? It’s a pretty big leap go from ‘the rocks makes various towns inhabitable’ to ‘let’s rebuild!’ What’s changed here? Cause the rocks haven’t been removed and Rapunzel failed in her mission to nullify their power. In fact the rocks were not only reawaken in the second season finale but shown to be under the power of someone who’s intentions were made unclear to the heroes.

So I ask again; who thought this was safe thing to do now? What provisions have been made to accommodate the rocks? They blocked the well, remember, and destroyed the fields; how are the people getting food and water? 

And most importantly why wasn’t the audience informed beforehand? When you change up the status quo in a story you need to provide just cause to the viewers. I legit thought I had accidently skipped an episode when I first watched because this plot point was not set up properly.  

Why Were They Ever Left Alone to Begin With?

In a story where neglect is a central theme and motivating factor for all the main characters, it is super tone deaf to have those same characters perpetuating neglect themselves. The decision to live on their own should not be left up to Angry and Red because they are children. Children are not mature enough to provide for themselves neither emotionally nor physically and when placed in situations where they have to do so it psychologically damages them. Which the series already showcased with Varian so why is this suddenly deemed ok? 

This Completely Undermines the Past Two Seasons

The entire conflict of the past two seasons was the rocks forcing people out of their homes. Eugene was made an orphan from them, Varian lost his entire support group because them, they drove out the Saporians from their encampment which prompted them to invade Corona, and Rapunzel and company spent an entire year on the road trying to find a way to stop them from spreading supposedly. 

All of that has now been flushed down the drain with this decision. And its super insulting to watch because it’s the writers telling us that we’ve wasted our time caring about this plot for two years. You don’t resolve major conflicts off screen and without explanation; it’s lazy!  

Also Where Is Varian and Quirin During All This?

This is not only their home and legal charge, but it’s also the ending to their ongoing story, and they’re not even here in a silent cameo. 

Wouldn’t Quirin be overseeing the rebuilding of his town? Wouldn’t Varian be using his skills to find workable engineering solutions for them, fulling his season one goal of saving his home and making his village better with his inventions? Also wouldn’t Edmund want to catch up with his brother and help out now that he’s here? 

In fact not a single person who actually lives in Old Corona is to be found in these opening shots. 

Oh, But We Do Get Earl

Earl might be from Old Corona, or he might not be. We’ve literally never seen him before. The artists had to create a brand new character model for this character, the writers had to write new lines for him, and the casting director had to hire an actor and have him record these lines for only less than a minute of screen time, never to be seen again. Even though they legit had shepherd models already to go from season one that they could have used. It’s a waste of resources and a prime example of the mismanagement going on in this show. 

It’s Too Late In the Series to Waste Time On a New One Off Villain

Speaking of a waste, Creighton might have more story reasons to appear in this episode than Earl does but her inclusion is still a poor decision. The show already has an overabundance of villains, so many in fact that they shipped the bulk of them off in season two, and this is the final season; the season where we should be wrapping up plots and minor characters stories not kicking off new ones.

Taken on her own Creighton isn’t a bad character presa, she works for the episode, but when we could have gotten a resolution to Caine’s, Hector’s, or the Disciples’ story arcs instead it highlights how misused the series assets are. 

All This Lore Will Be Forgotten In Just a Few Episodes Time

We finally get like some magical rules and backstory only for future episodes to ignore it from here on afterwards. Red can turn into a werewolf whenever she pleases, night or day, with little explanation as for why.  

Just Arrest Her Rapunzel

You’re the acting queen. You have the power and the right to arrest or even merely detain someone who is threating your citizens and refuses to leave. In fact it’s kind of your job. You don't even have to throw her in a dungeon if you thought that too cruel. Just lock her up in a nice room somewhere in the castle until you’ve sorted out the mess yourself. 

The series wants to treat Rapunzel as the underdog when she isn’t, and her failure to wield her power effectively doesn’t make her look ‘nice’ it just makes her look stupid and grossly incompetent. This is a conflict that didn’t need to have happened and Rapunzel let it happen.  

Oh, So Now Y'all Riot

You didn’t complain when the king orphaned children with his crack down on crime. You rolled over as he dolled out overly harsh punishments to poor people who committed minor offences. You gleefully went along with the royals as they  scapegoated a child for their mistakes, even as they endangered your homes.  And ya’ll sat on your asses while invaders pulled off a coup and enslaved you. 

But this is what you get mad over? A rumor about a mythical creature existing that your princess has zero control over. Seriously? 

Man, I hate the townspeople in this show. 

Pointless Dream Sequence Is Pointless

This scene tells the audience nothing new and just wastes screen time. 

This Is the Wrong Lesson to Focus On Rapunzel

We do not tell the 12 year old to unload their phycological issues onto their baby sister!

You’re telling me parents were involved in writing this show? What the hell!?

Rapunzel you are the adult here. At 20 now you should be more adept to handle listening to the deep seated emotional traumas of a little girl than a fucking 10 year old! And if you’re not, or don’t want to, then it’s your job to find another adult who will. 

That’s the core problem with this entire episode. It treats Red’s and Angry’s problems as some eternal issue that they need to work out and not as the inherent failure of the adults around them that it is. 

It is neither Red’s nor Angry’s decision on weather or not they get live on their own. Nor is it their responsibility to be each other’s therapist. Yes, a change in living arrangements is always stressful and for children with abandonment issues it can be hard to readjust, but that’s when you need to step it up and deal with the problem; not shove it off onto the kids themselves! 

Monty Is Useless

Is this all Monty is good for? Being a red herring in ridiculously simple mysteries? Is this why we wasted a whole episode introducing him back in season one? Really?

Why Are We Still Treating Old Corona As Being Separate from Corona Itself?

Look, I get that it’s a joke, but it’s a joke that highlights how poorly thought out the worldbuilding is in the series. Is the Coronan government in charge of Old Corona or not? If so then you can just make those lease laws yourself as the acting regent Eugene. If not then Frederic shouldn’t have had any say in the matter of relocating Old Corona’s citizens nor putting a child outside of his jurisdiction under arrest.

But more importantly this is a just a repeat of that vague level of responsibility Rapunzel has for people who live off the island. She can’t order a whole village to be rebuilt while simultaneously claiming that she bares no accountability for Varian and Quirin’s problems in season one. 

Replacing Guns with Crossbows Isn’t the Safe Option That the Censors Think It Is

I find it kind of amusing that censors will ban showing a 17th century blunderbuss but allow it to be replaced by a weapon that is still mass produced today and can be bought in any Walmart across the country. Like I’m a major advocate for gun regulation in real life, but even I have to find this to be a bit silly. Crossbows aren’t some fantasy weapon. People still own and use them. But it would be seriously hard to get ahold of a working antique firearm.  

Seriously This Is How the Girls Have Been Living and the Adults Haven’t Done Anything About It Until Now?

I feel like I’m beating a dead horse by now, but it’s so engrained into the episode I have to keep bringing it up. The show itself is visually telling us that Red and Angry can’t keep living this way, but it never wants to call Rapunzel and the other adults out for not rescuing them from this life sooner. 

So All This Tells Me Is That Rapunzel Could Have Easily Checked Up On Varian In Painter’s Block, But Didn’t.

Remember they’re right next to Old Corona; meaning that Janus Point is also right next to Old Corona. Meaning that Rapunzel could easily have checked up on Varian right after Painter’s Block and choose not to. With each passing episode Rapunzel has less and less excuse for her behavior in season one. 

Yeah Remember that Plot Point That Wound Up Being Entirely Irrelevant to the Story?

In jokes don’t cover your ass when you make poor writing choices. Quite the opposite in fact as all you’ve done is remind the audience of all the various dangling plot threads that you will fail to follow up on. The disciples plot goes no where and serves no purpose, and it should not have been introduced as this big important thing if you weren’t going to do anything with it. 

Nice Idea, Poor Execution

I’ve heard fans of this episode tell me that they enjoy it because of this scene with Red. If you’re a naturally introverted person or neurodivergent and have trouble communicating at times then Red’s speech here can strike a cord. Which is cool; I’ll never deny someone’s feelings and if a piece of media speaks to you on a personal level for whatever reason that is great. What I’m here to discuss though is story structure and whether or not the story’s themes are presented well in context of what it’s set up. 

The conflict here does not work from a pure structural standpoint because it’s a surface level deflection of the real issues. Red’s problem isn’t that she is being ignored, it's that she’s been abandoned. Now communication issues can arise from that abandonment and feeling heard can be step forward in working those issues out, but Red’s central trauma isn’t going to be magically fixed by people ‘listening’ to her, i.e. being granted whatever she wants, but by providing her with a real home and with a real guardian to look after her. 

Because what Red wants on a surface level is harmful to her, and the reasons why she wants what she wants needs to be addressed more so than then sedating her angry outbursts in the moment. This is treating the symptoms not the cause.

So What Is or Isn’t Real About the Curse?

Once again, we finally get some actual lore and rules for magic and the writers are already throwing it away during the same episode they are introduced. I now have as little context for how the wolf curse works within the Tangled world as I did before the episode started. 

This Is Sweet, But Once Again Context Brings It Down.

So just to reiterate, this a surface level resolution to the conflict of the episode that doesn’t actually address anything. It might feel like an appropriate ending but only if you ignore the fact that Red and Angry are orphans who’ve been abandoned but the adults. 

Angry apologizing here to Red does not solve any of their problems, especially since Angry, as a child herself, is not responsible for her sister’s behavior, feelings, nor well being. That falls to the adults and they fail to address Red’s core issues and their own failings to her in their apologies as well. Not to mention that the very next scene undermines any optional progress that could have been made here. 

Listening to Someone Does Not Mean Giving Them Whatever They Want

This does not fix anything. Red and Angry are still left to live on their own without any real supervision. Giving them a big play house is not providing for them, it’s spoiling them. Would you let all the other orphans in the local orphanage roam free without an adult to take care of them? No!? Gee I wonder why? Could it be because letting a 12 and 10 year old raise themselves is a very stupid idea? One that will potentially damage them later in life assuming that they don't get themselves killed in the meantime. 

Moreover this is yet another example of the series overall problem with not understanding that compromise and resolving conflicts does not mean rewarding the characters at the end with everything that they want without having them work for it. That’s not how life works and it’s not how good story telling works. 

This Is Beyond Irresponsible

No! Bad Show! Bad! 

You do not get to pretend that negligence is the same thing as compromise. Yes I know Eugene said to come to him when they have a problem, but as demonstrated by this very episode children do not always know when to ask for help nor can they always find it when needed, that is why parents exist!  

Nor does the show get a free pass for turning it’s main characters into child abusers who neglected three minors multiple times now. Even when they themselves are victims of that same abuse!

How utterly blinkered do you have to be to not see the problem here? 

It’s the Return of the Pointless Parallels

Let me count the ways for how stupid this is. 

Red and Angry’s conflict has no impact on the on going narrative. Even with them now being reoccurring characters they still manage to contribute nothing to the future storylines involving Cass. 

Neither Rapunzel nor Cassandra learn anything from Red and Angry’s spat; Rapunzel because she refuses to acknowledge her own flaws and Cassandra’s not even here for any of it. 

The sister’s dynamic between Raps and Cass is not well established and the writers mange to piss all over it by series end because of gay baiting and poor writing. Therefore relying on lazy parallels to other siblings in the show to bolster this connection falls flat.  

Red and Angry’s argument has nothing in common with Rapunzel and Cass’s current fighting. One is about abandonment issues and the other is about shallow validation. Trying to tie these two themes together actually winds up undermining both conflicts. 

Red and Angry are children. Rapunzel and Cassandra are not. That very much matters. 

Red and Angry didn’t drag innocent people into their petty bitch fight and endanger them because they wanted to feel special. 

This Makes Zero Sense

I don’t know; she looked pretty happy during Crossing the Line. 

She was also able to control the rocks just fine then, so what happened? 

Not to mention soon after this Zhan Tiri is telling her she needs some sort of incantation to control the rocks, despite being able to already control the rocks.... 

It’s almost as if the writers are full of shit and don’t actually know what they’re doing. 

So Are We Remembering the Burnt Hand or Not?

Does the hand matter or not? Is it ever a motivating factor in what Cassandra decides to do? Is her waning control over the rocks connected to her burnt hand; even though having a burnt hand is what allowed her grab the moonstone in the first place? Did the moonstone heal the hand? Does Raps singing the healing incantation later on heal it? Does Cass have a forever burnt hand? 

Who the fuck knows! 

Not the writers that’s for sure, cause it never comes up again. 

Don’t introduce plot points and then not resolve them. That’s writing 101 guys. 

Wait if she needs the incantation to control the rocks and the angry thing is a lie, then how the heck is she controlling them just now? Make up your dang mind show! 

I swear I lose brain cells whenever I have to rewatch the evil Cassandra plot. It is so dumb  you guys.... so, so dumb. 

Conclusion

It’s not the worst thing ever but series has far better episodes on offer than this one. Even in a season as suck ass as season three. 

So there’s praying that this review posts this time and if you enjoy my writing and would like to support me in my projects feel free to leave a tip on my Ko-Fi. Thank you. 

https://ko-fi.com/rachelbethhines

[daydream-believin]

The Never-Ending Roadtrip (waffles)

summary: (part 1) or (part 5) <- reader joins douxie on his quest to protect nari. he’ll need company wont he. (part 6) do you like waffles? also appalachia and nj trollmarket fun. next-> (part 7)

warnings: swearing, fem! reader, maybe an alcohol mention, proof reading is for squares yo

word count: 3875

a/n: i’m sorry to anyone from PA but wtf. i also have no idea why this turned out the way it did. bon apetit.

no gif im trying to test something

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Y/n looked over at Douxie. The blue of his hair was starting to fade into a duller hue. While not as bright and bold as his personality, it was still very nice to look at. This muted blue was softer, almost comforting in a way. Y/n found herself running her fingers through it. It wasn’t just the color that was soft. Like feathers in her hand, she gently caressed the strands. The duller color made him look tired, older, and the permanent bags under his eyes didn’t help. She placed her hand on his face and ran her thumb over a said eye bag. He gave her a very subdued smile in return. His sunken eyes were so beautiful. Her favorite color. Or colors, one should say. They were like an earth toned opal. Y/n’s hand drifted down his face. She used her thumb to explore his cheekbones, tracing constellations in his freckles, and finally settled on his mouth, tracing his cupid’s bow. Douxie couldn’t help but break the stoic face he was trying to hold.

“As much as I hate to ask this, and I really do, but will you please cease what you’re doing, My Love. I’m trying to drive here.”

“Yes, I would also like to ask you to stop, miss L/n. Not wrecking the ship is worth you canning your pda for a while.” Archie added.

Y/n pulled her hand back and exaggeratedly pouted. She teasingly stuck her tongue out at Archie for good measure, but couldn’t help but dissolve into a snicker right after so it wasn’t very effective. But really, it wasn’t her fault that Douxie’s beautifully sculpted face was right there and demanding to be touched. She tried to distract herself by focusing on the scenery around them. North Pennsylvania was delightful, so it’d be a shame if she spent the whole time that they flew through it looking at nothing but Douxie. There was plenty of time for her to do that the rest of her life. It’s not like she didn’t have every freckle memorized already. Every single adorable little dot. Right, Pennsylvania. Appalachia. Y/n was a little disappointed they didn’t manage to go through West Virginia, being as north as they were. She really wanted to know what all the fuss was about. Country roads.

The mountains were hard to transverse through, so Douxie took the boat up high in the clouds. A little too high. The oxygen was thin. While this didn’t affect Archie the dragon or Nari the plant goddess, Douxie and Y/n were getting a bit woozy. Neither would get altitude sickness to the point of dying, thanks to that good ol’ curse of immortality, but their minds weren’t exactly operating at high speeds here. They passed through a low hanging cloud in a puff of fog.

Though they were over it, just being in the range of Appalachia felt odd. There was a presence that clung to the mountains. Even flying high up in the air, one felt as though they were being watched. Like the thousand eyes of the forest were upon them. Looking down below, hanging over the edge like Douxie hated her to do, Y/n saw a herd of deer that might as well be ants. Watching over the herd was a bigger, or maybe closer, stag on a peak of some sort. His antlers were covered in crimson. Y/n hoped he was just shedding.

There were pathways cutting through the trees below, some roads, some manmade trails, some rivers, some troll trails, and some deer trails. Some that wound around in endless curves, some that seemed to start from nowhere and stop at nothing, some that went round and round in a circle, and some that crossed over each other, effectively creating a maze of sorts. Y/n didn’t know why, but she was glad she was above the trees and not in them. Something within her gut told her that as beautiful as the scenery was, she did not wish to experience it first-hand. The deer below were beautiful, but there was something not quite right about them. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She wasn’t sure if she’d be able to turn down a game of ninepins either, and she could really go for a drink.

Douxie’s brain may have been foggy, but he could certainly see Y/n hanging over the edge again, tantalizing him. He couldn’t help but imagine 174 ways for it to end badly. He’d been pretty passive about this before but now that they were so high up, he had no choice but to be up front now.

“Y/n, My Love,” Y/n turned her attention to him, which also pulled her weight more towards the boat than the sky. Good. “do you mind being back near the center of the ship? I really don’t like you draping yourself over the railing like that.”

Y/n was getting sick and tired of people always trying to keep her away from edges, advising her not to climb the mountain, telling her to stay inside when there was only a light rainstorm. She could handle it. She wasn’t a fucking porcelain doll. She was not wearing a fancy gown that suffocated her, she could speak, her lips were not perfectly painted on. And she wouldn’t shatter. “Relax, Dewdrop. I’m fine. I’m not just gonna go skydiving for kicks. If anyone has had a penchant for falling through the sky recently, it’s been you, Hisirdoux. I can catch myself with anti-gravity spells, like you taught me. Besides, we walk across tall, crumbly, ancient non-osha compliant walkways all the time. You never had a problem then.”

“Well,” He huffed, “it would be one thing if I was there next to you, but I’m not, so could you please just try to stay safe when I can’t reach you?” Y/n was taken about at how quick his tone went from annoyed to desperate. She furrowed her brows. Doux sighed, “Look, it frightens me, okay. I know that nothing will happen, but what if it does? I can’t- I can’t lose you.” His tone got even feebler in his pleading. “And there’s so many ways to lose you. Especially with the Order on our tails. Please, just give me this peace of mind for at least one thing.”

Y/n stepped away from the railing, crossing over to Douxie. He opened his arm and she nestled into his side. Pressing her head against his chest, she mumbled, “Absolutely. I’ll just—I’ll just stay here then. Next to you. I’m sorry I worried you. That was the last thing I wanted to do.”

He leaned down to press a kiss to the top of her head. “Thank you, My Darling.”

~ ~ ~

The dipped down south to go through the top of Maryland and completely through Delaware to get to the south of New Jersey, in place of just going through Philadelphia. The city of brotherly love was not on the itinerary.  Philly, and the top of New Jersey, were just too densely populated to take a magic boat through. The airspace was filled with airplanes and skyscrapers. It was easier to go the roundabout way.

As they passed between Philly and Lancaster, they went by fantastically named towns such as Paradise the city, where the girls are pretty, Bird In Hand, Blue Ball, and Intercourse. Stellar. Y/n was starting to really like Pennsylvania. It was cursed ground. She made sure to get photographic evidence of every road sign. Douxie was happy to pose with them.

They took a pit stop in a town called Peach Bottom before leaving Pennsylvania. Y/n wanted to go through New Texas, since she was curious how somewhere in the original colonies could be a new Texas, but Nari could sense a river nearby, and wanted to seek it out. Peach Bottom. It was a cozy little town with a power plant that was dumping it’s waste into the riverside it was built on. Toxic river. Fun. Y/n made Douxie explain to Nari why she couldn’t get near the river or touch any of the water. Y/n wouldn’t have been able to stay as calm as Douxie could. There was nothing happening in the rural Pennsylvanian town. Nothing special about it unless you counted their countless nuclear admissions. The locals didn’t care for strangers, and that was alright with them cause they didn’t want to be here for any more than necessary for a restroom break. Dinner could wait.

The top of Maryland was great. Lots of rivers to make it up to Nari. There was just, an incredibly large walmart near the line. Just absolutely humongous whopper walmart. A leach whose name doesn’t even deserve to be capitalized, thank you very much autocorrect.

It took less than half an hour to fly right through the top of Delaware. Hi Delaware, bye Delaware.

Soon they were on the coast of south New Jersey, headed for a sleepy town called Monty. Monty was a town along the Cohansey, split across it with quite an impressive bridge between the two sides. As soon as the bridge became visible on the skyline, Y/n grabbed Douxie’s sleeve and tugged excitedly. She looked up at him with a big smile. Rest. At last, they were going to get to rest. Y/n made herself busy calling Jim to let him know that they were there so he could call someone else to let them know that they were there and to wait by the entrance for them. Neither Douxie nor Y/n had a horngazzle on them at the moment. Y/n had had one in her possession back in Arcadia, being book club buddies with Blinky, but alas that was destroyed along with their bookstore.

They hid that damn magic boat in the forest. While they did plan on staying with the trolls for a few weeks, Douxie didn’t put it back in its glass bottle quite yet, cause they were in fact taking it into New York not tomorrow but the next day. He covered the ground around it with a few more wards than necessary. Y/n threw up an illusion spell around it, as she had been all the other times they’d just left it in the woods, and thought the wards were overkill but didn’t say anything. They started on the trek to the base of the bridge.

The troll at the entrance greeted them cordially. He was a dark green color, with two massive horns resembling those of a longhorn cow, chiseled stone tattoos, and no clothes other than a tiny loincloth which made everyone but Nari uncomfortable. He let them in with flourish, as if he’d always wanted to do this and practiced it.

“Welcome to NEW JERSEY TROLLMARKET.”

Y/n was surprised at how well the town had come along within the two months the trolls had occupied the cavern. It wasn’t the Trollmarket she had known, there was no Blinky and no library, but still marvelous. The new hearthstone glowed warmly, very much alive and not making zombies. While looking pretty similar to the old Trollmarket, with a multitude of shops and homes carved into the mineral covered walls and formations, there was a sort of human touch to it now. Claire definitely had a hand in the planning and maybe the decorative features too. Or perhaps Jim. Y/n wouldn’t put it past the boy to be the one who designed the very elaborate crystal art flower bed she was looking at. Or that weirdly steampunk bridge. Funny thing, a bridge under a bridge.

Dictatious met them soon after they came in to show them around and to where they would be staying. The tour he gave them basically just included him walking them through the main street, waving his arms to various places and vaguely saying that they were shops but not what they sold, pointing out the pub, and then took them straight to their accommodations. Since the home that had been occupied by Blinky, Jim, and Claire was now empty, they’d be staying there, with the place practically to themselves. Dictatious also lived in said home, but rarely stuck around it for long now that his brother was gone.

“Alright, here’s your nest.”

Since Dictatious still slept in the nest that he shared with Blinky, he had given them Jim and Claire’s. The nests were just rocky bowls carved into the floor of the room, with a few comfort items. Thankfully, Jim and Claire had left theirs full of pillows and a couple thick cushions they must have taken from a couch. Unconventional, but better than sleeping on literal solid rock. Speaking of couches, there were way too many couches spread across the apartment. This entire place only had two rooms, a large living area and a nestroom, and yet there were five couches. Not to mention the extra-large easy chair Dic was currently lounging in. Okay, so one of said couches was technically a love seat, but still. There was no kitchen, which was surprising due to this being Jim Lake Jr’s home, and no table besides the one that three of the sofas were gathered around and a paper-covered work desk against a corner. There were glowing crystal lamps all throughout, lighting the house. All in all, interesting interior design decisions. The kids had definitely been trying to make it a more homey human dwelling but had limited options.

Nari nestled into the nest, happy that there were no blankets to smother her. Not even a minute passed and she was out like a light. Douxie and Y/n sat on one of the couches in the nestroom, watching the veggie lady snooze. Archie made himself comfy in Douxie’s lap, who absent mindedly stroked his familiar’s fur. They were underground now. Surrounded by inorganic matter. Some of that inorganic matter could fight, would be willing to fight, would probably be disappointed if there wasn’t a fight. The little devil on Douxie’s shoulder wasn’t really having to work hard. His stomach growled. They had opted to just not stop for dinner in favor of plowing right through their trip route. It was late, and dark, and Douxie really just wanted them to have a roof over their head before midnight. And now they did.

He looked over at Y/n. They had been a couple for an entire day now and he had yet to take her on a proper date. What a bad boyfriend he was. It’s not like Archie would want to come with them or anything either, since he filled himself with birds that didn’t know what hit them while they traveled. The dragon had even caught a hawk at one point, which wasn’t as impressive as it sounds, since Archie was a much faster flyer. He would be happy to watch Nari for them, surely. And Dic had given them a horngazzle so they could come and go as they pleased. It was settled then.

“Arch, watch Nari for us, please, we’ll be back in a pinch,” He grabbed Y/n’s hand to pull her off the couch, “C’mon, My Love, we’re going on a date.”

~ ~ ~

Turns out the only thing open past midnight in small town New Jersey was a waffle house. The perfect date. Y/n had thought it funny to watch Douxie try and deactivate all the fresh wards he had put around the boat. He had to be careful where he put his feet, and it was like he was doing a silly little dance. Ward trap ballet of his own barely thought-out design. At one point he stepped backwards to admire his work, triggering the ward behind him, and Y/n had to free him from the net. Lucky it was just a net one.

Entering the waffle house, they slid into the nearest booth, the one near the jukebox. They ordered what else but waffles. The food of kings and hungover college kids. Not just plain waffles, though. Douxie got chocolate chip and Y/ got strawberry, and they were going to combine them to make chocolate covered strawberry waffles. Everyone knows chocolate covered strawberries were the most romantic food, why else would they push them so hard around Valentine’s.

Douxie leaned in with his head in his hand. “So, tell me about yourself.”

Y/n laughed, decided to play into this bit. “Oh, I’m just a California lass, on her way to New York. Things have been crazy lately. Went to a very convincing renaissance faire, I’m harboring a fugitive, my roommate keeps hitting on me. Very stressful.  Sure am lucky I came across you, Mr. Handsome.”

“Lucky indeed.” Doux snickered.

Y/n pointed to the jukebox behind Doux, which he twisted around to see. “Have you ever heard ‘Last Night I Saw Elvis At Waffle House’?”

“No?”

“Oh, it’s a banger.” She got out of the booth and put a coin in the juke, making her selection. She slid back in with a Cheshire cat grin and Doux was kind of scared now, actually. As the current song ended and the song that they were waiting for began. Well, it was a song. About seeing Elvis in a waffle house. With a country tune he supposed someone thought was catchy in order for them to have recorded this. Douxie didn’t know what he had expected.

“Uh, wow.”

“Yeah, Ain’t it something. I loved this song when I was knee high to a grasshopper. All the waffle house jams really.”

“Your aunt let someone bring you to a waffle house? That’s not very proper.” Douxie chuckled.

“Oh, no, actually. Um, this was before my dad passed and my mother, ah, slipped.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Douxie rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m sorry I mentioned it.”

“No, no. I’m fine Dewdrop. I can talk about it, really. And, like you said the other day, I’ve been focusing on the Now Love.” The silly waffle house themed song was still playing despite the air of seriousness that had fallen over the duo. It helped keep Y/n from getting too sad and dwelling on the memories she had just brought up. It was comical, really. A waffle house song keeping her grounded. She rubbed the palm of Douxie’s hand. “I still mourn my family, but it’s been so long that the pain’s but a dull ache now. As long as I don’t think too hard about it. If anyone knows about mourning it’d be you, Doux. I can’t imagine meeting hundreds of friends over my lifetime just to watch them all grow old and die while you just have to go on living.” She paused, eyes drifting downwards, “But I suppose that’ll be my fate anyways.”

Douxie reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “It’s actually not that bad, once you get used to it. You just have to enjoy every bit of time you get. That’s what makes other magic friends so valuable, there are some permanent players on your team.” He let his hand linger under her jaw, pulling her face closer to his, “You have me. We have each other. We’re family. We always have been.”

“So I hate to interrupt, but, waffles.” The server put the plates she had been holding down onto the table. Douxie and Y/n pulled away from each other quick as lightning, sitting up straight in their seats. “Again, sorry guys.”

“Thank you.” The two chorused to their fleeting form in embarrassment. Their faces were fire engine red. Archie was right, they did get a little carried away with the pda. It may have been 12:28am in a waffle house but they were still in public. Grabby hands needed to be kept to themselves.

After dinner, neither Doux nor Y/n could bring themselves to go home quite yet, despite the nagging feeling to return to Nari. They loitered around woods, unsure of what to do. Leaning against the parked boat, Douxie got an idea. He put on the music on his phone, turning the volume all the way up and positioning it so it’d put out a better sound the best he could. The playlist he selected was actually the one he had of songs that reminded him of his beloved. Copying what Y/n had done last night, he held out his hand.

“Come on, dance with me, My Darling.”

Douxie twirled Y/n around in the night breeze that blew through the trees. This song was much faster than the one they danced to last time, and there was more energy between them. Y/n’s laugh echoed through the forest. This was a lot of fun, she could do it all night. Honestly, she could do anything all night if it was with Douxie. He lifted her up, like she weighed nothing. Seriously, how strong was this noodle armed wizard. She threw her arms around his neck, looking down to meet his eyes, a rare thing. Y/n kissed his nose, eliciting a happy giggle from his mouth.

He should have put her back down by now. Instead, he still held her up, transfixed by her face ringed in moonlight, like a halo. She noticed the awestruck look on his face, kissing him properly, yet it did nothing to pull him out of his stupor. He had one thought running over and over in his mind. Marry me. But, he couldn’t say that. A proposal had to be special, not after a waffle house date. Their first date, mind you. He couldn’t possibly jus-

“Marry me, Dewdrop?”

Well apparently he couldn’t but she absolutely could.

It took him a moment to take in her words, shocked out of his overthinking. The biggest grin spread across his face as he giddily spun her around in his arms. He finally put her feet back on the ground, crashing his lips into hers. Y/n brought a hand up to drag through his hair and left the other to slide down his back. No battle for dominance, Douxie’s tongue was definitely the one leading here. He just couldn’t believe it. It was if she had read his mind. It was still hard for him to believe she wanted him in the first place, but this much? If this was the afterlife he must surely be in heaven. One makeout session later, Y/n rasped “So I’m guessing that’s a yes?”

“Let’s sign the papers tomorrow.”

~ ~ ~

Despite the uneasy feeling they had both had about leaving Nari alone for so long, she was perfectly fine. In fact she hadn’t even moved an inch form the spot they left her in. Like they never left at all. Archie was asleep on that couch, as peaceful as ever. They’d tell him the news in the morning.

Y/n climbed into the nest and dragged Douxie down with her. After getting comfy on the array of cushions, he opened his arms and she nestled into his chest. She could feel his hands rest on her back. Perfect. It was calming, listening to his heartbeat, being lulled to sleep with the rhythm that gave proof that her beloved was alive. A steady beat that reassured her he was there, he was there. He wouldn’t leave her again.

*** check notes for chapter illustrations lmao