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kareofbears · 3 years

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plainly in truth, chapter 5/5

"Without you around, it's sorta like stuff is just kinda...bleh."

Or: hiding, confiding, and misguiding.

read the final chapter below or the entire work on ao3

—

“Help us, Saras—” a stream of coughing rings out, eating up the rest of the words.

“What the hell happened!?”

“I don’t know! One minute he was kicking ass, and the next—”

“He’s down! Oracle, scan him for signs of life.”

Their voices sound far and muffled, like he was under a foot of ice.

“He’s alive, I know he is. Kikur…” More coughing, wet and almost retching. “Dammit!”

“Skull hasn’t moved in ages and we pumped him with more Diaharan than we know what to do with!”

“Then why isn’t he moving?”

He feels like he got hit with back-to-back garbage trucks, all fully loaded with an entire city’s trash and was going eighty down the freeway.

“I...I don’t know…!”

“Why not? Why the hell not?”

“Joker!”

“Unicorn—” Actual retching comes this time, sporadically. “Why isn’t—!”

“Please stop! You’re only going to get yourself hurt!”

“Akira. Quit it, or I’ll cast a Dormin so strong you’ll wake up next year.”

A groan escapes his lips, and all arguing stops.

“Oh thank god,” Makoto’s voice sighs in relief. “Skull? Can you hear us?”

“Skull?” A leather-clad hand touches his cheek. “Are you with me?”

Ryuji suddenly bolts upright. “Konoe!” The whole world lurching sideways but he ignores the nausea. “Where is he?”

“Gone,” Yusuke replies. He’s looking slightly better than when he last saw him, able to stand on his feet again. “Disappeared, just like the rest of them. In no small part thanks to you.”

“It was more than that,” Haru disagrees. “It was nearly completely thanks to him. Your last battle with him was quite a spectacle.”

“It really was,” Sophia agrees. “You got hit near the end, though.”

“Oh,” he forces a laugh. “My bad. Must’ve worried you guys. Thanks for the heal.”

“‘Thanks for the heal’?”

Any levity that was present gets sucked away as Akira pulls his hand away from him, expression unreadable. “It wasn’t just a heal, Ryuji. It was a Recarm.”

He winces, eyes darting away. “That must’ve been scary for you,” he mutters. “Sorry.”

“I’m not interested in an apology. I’m looking for an explanation.”

“What am I supposed to explain? He caught me off guard, it happens. I might be good, but I’m not getting out of a fight with the creator of the Metaverse Part Two without a scratch.”

“It was a scratch. I’ve seen you take bullets better than that,” Akira says flatly. “The strangest thing about all this is that I think you knew about this. I think you knew what would happen if you got hit, no matter how light it was.”

Do not panic. Do not panic. “Spit it out. What are you trying to say?”

“I think something’s up and you’re hiding something from me.”

“Guys,” Futaba whispers. “Don’t fight.”

Akira turns on her, taking in her expression for a long moment before his eyes widen. “You know about it,” he realizes.

“What?!”

“You knew that he changed, and you didn’t tell me.” His eyes flashed. “Futaba, he could’ve died, and you didn’t say anything.”

“Stop it.” Ann’s voice was low and hard. “Don’t take out what you’re feeling on her.”

Looking away from Futaba, Akira scans each and everyone of their faces, and it dawns on him. “You knew.” Hurt takes up every syllable, heavy but small at the same time. “You all knew, and nobody told me. I can’t believe this.”

“Don’t get mad at them,” Ryuji snaps. There’s no way he’s letting his friends take the fall for his own actions. “You’re getting worried over nothing. I took a hit—that’s it. Bad guy defeated, let’s move on.”

“I’m not moving on if people on my team, people that I thought I could trust are hiding things from me,” he insists. “Especially you. Dammit, Ryuji, I thought I could trust you!”

His stomach doesn’t twist. Instead, a gigantic pair of scissors made up of Akira’s words goes ahead and snips off his stomach from his intestines, and he’s free falling with nowhere to crash land.

“What the fuck else do you want from me?” Everyone but Akira flinches at his words. “I beat Konoe, didn’t I? You were worried about that, you wanted to retreat because you thought I wouldn’t be able to do it, but I did it!”

“What I want from you is to be safe. That’s it.”

“But that shouldn’t be the only thing you want! Don’t you want us to win? Don’t you want us to be able to finish what we started?”

Akira shakes his head, frustrated, and starts rummaging through his pockets.

“What are you doing?”

“We aren’t fighting here.” A Goho-M flashes in his palm, and before anyone can say anything, they blink and suddenly they’re at the entrance of the Jail again. “Everyone, get out.”

Ryuji glares at him as the rest scurries to the entrance as quickly as possible without making it look like they’re making a run for it. Akira stares back.

“...Fine.”

The familiar but unpleasant swirl between the transition of the Jail and the real world takes over them, feeling their cells tear apart from each other before instantly clicking back into place, and then they were at the foot of the Tenboto tower.

Akira’s eyes don’t leave his. “Everyone who isn’t Ryuji, go find something else to do. We need some time to talk.”

Nobody questions it except for Futaba. “Um, do you want me to take—”

He shoves his hand in his pocket and throws his phone at her. Usually, the rose gold shade always makes him crack a smile, but he doesn’t even look at it this time. “Here.”

When she still doesn’t leave, Akira spares her a glance. “What is it?”

“Don’t...don’t be too harsh on him.”

“Don’t push it. I’m still upset that you didn’t say anything about this.”

Futaba’s head falls downwards as she walks away, Sophia in tow.

“So?” Ryuji crosses his arms. “Are we good?”

“No, we are not good, Ryuji. You argued with me over something stupid, spat in my face and deliberately went against with what I knew would be better for all of us, and worse than all of that, you knew that your defense is down by an insane amount.”

“Who cares if it’s down! Get the fuck over it, we already won.”

Akira's jaw goes slack. “Who are you? Why are you acting like this? What’s gotten into your head that you’re trying to pretend that I don’t care about your health and your safety?”

“Because you shouldn’t,” he insists. “You’re slowing the rest of us down by doing this whole hero schtick—if you just focus on what we need to do rather than something like my god damn endurance then things would go so much faster!”

“I don’t give a shit about efficiency, and do you have any idea what it even means for you to have a drastic change in your Persona? Or are you just looking for another stupid thing to argue about?”

He draws back, shame instinctively bubbling at the implication. “No, but it can’t be that damn important for us to be fighting like this.”

“Personas are the strength of the heart,” Akira roughly prods at his chest. “Whatever you’re feeling, whatever you believe in, your Persona would reflect that.”

“Okay? So what?”

A shift overcomes his expression, and Akira closes his eyes. When he speaks, it’s like he’s an ethereal being rather than a boy his age. “You seek power, correct? Since your name has been disgraced already, why not hoist the flag and wreak havoc?”

“The ‘other you’ who exists within desires it thus,” Ryuji finishes, frowning. “Why do you have that memorized?”

“Because I’ve memorized everyone’s awakenings, and because I think that’s the reason why you can’t take a hit anymore but you can throw a punch the way you can,” Akira shoots back. “You awakened your Persona to ‘wreak havoc’ on the people who piss you off, right?”

“Yeah.” His patience is waning thin. “What’s your point?”

“What if that feeling—rage against corrupt adults, your need to wreak havoc on them—what if that gets flipped around and you direct that on yourself?”

“What?” Ryuji shakes his head. “Is that even possible?”

“I can almost guarantee it, because your stats are shuffling like crazy. Your endurance is down, yeah, but do you know what skyrocketed in its place? What nearly tripled?”

“My strength?”

“Exactly. Look, I don’t know what happened, but something has shifted in your heart enough to make you believe that it’s more important to be strong than to keep yourself alive.”

Akira shoves his glasses higher on his nose, and Ryuji swallows when he sees his hand shake. “Tell me. Please. I won’t get mad, or disappointed, or whatever you think I’ll feel if you tell me. I just want you to be honest with me. I want us to work this out.”

It’s the way he says it, like it’s really that simple. Like the two of them can take on any problem together, no matter how big it is, because it’s them. They’re two pieces of a puzzle—they can only ever see the bigger picture when they both click into place. It would be easy, because Akira makes it easy.

A droplet of rain lands hard on his shoulder. He opens his mouth.

“Just because I’m not telling you something, doesn’t it mean gives you the right to hound the fuck out of me until I cave.”

Akira recoils like he’s been slapped in the face. “I just want to understand.”

“And I just want you to leave me alone, okay?” He wipes away the rain from his face only for it to be replaced almost immediately. “You don’t—you just don’t fucking get it, Kurusu. You have no idea what it’s like being a piece of shit, you have no idea what it’s like being a moron, with everyone hating you—”

What? He doesn’t mean that. Of course Akira gets it. That’s how they got to know each other in the first place.

“You don’t know what it’s like to hear so much shit about you wherever you go—”

That’s not true, either. Why is he saying this?

“To have no one even take a look at you, to be a ghost, to not even exist anymore—”

Are you kidding? That’s all Akira lives through in his hometown.

Ryuji levels a gaze at him, chest burning. “You don’t know what it’s like being nothing,” he finishes.

Akira stands there, staring at him, refusing to wipe the rain away from his face. His mouth opens, before closing again, and shakes his head. His movements are jerky and stilted.

When Akira looks up, his eyes are empty. “You don’t know a single thing about me.”

He turns around and walks away without another word, leaving Ryuji to stand alone, drenched in the rain and feeling like gasoline is eating through his chest, and all he can do is burn.

Osaka has bright lights and has the scent of mouth-watering in its every nook and cranny, but the only thing Ryuji can process right now is the squelch of his socks with every step he takes.

He’s only vaguely aware that he’s moving, traversing through Dotonbori in a hazed state. It’s like his consciousness left his body, trapped and distant, the burning in his chest turned into something smoldering, filling his entire being with suffocating smoke.

Ryuji’s spent who knows how long staggering through the streets, unfamiliar sights with unfamiliar people, and none of it has the same excitement that normally comes with them visiting a new place. The rain hasn’t let up, and his t-shirt has long since been soaked through. His body is still crazy sore, with his ankles begging for rest, but the idea of stopping makes him nauseous.

A large body hits his shoulder, and it nearly knocks him sideways. “Watch where you’re going, dumbass.”

“S-sorry,” he manages, but the stranger is already gone by the time he finishes.

Ryuji scrubs his eyes and looks up, surprised that he isn’t horrifically lost. He’s at one of the dual bridges in Dotonbori, a place that he recognizes because he and Ann stuffed their faces with so much takoyaki they could barely breathe afterwards.

His body sags against the bridge’s concrete railing, exhaustion making itself known, forearms pressed in an odd angle that he knows is going to leave weird patterns etched into his skin. In his pocket, his phone buzzes angrily, but he ignores it.

He scrubs his eyes again, harder. He hasn’t cried, which sucks. In fact, he hasn’t even felt the familiar panic build up in him, and he didn’t even know it was possible to miss that feeling. The feeling of something other than the gaping hole inside of him, only getting bigger.

For the first time in his life, he wishes he was angry, just so he can stop feeling this never-ending plane of nothing.

That’s a lie, actually—there’s some anger, too. A lot of it. At himself.

His phone buzzes again, and Ryuji can’t even muster a meager response. I’m fine, don’t worry, is what he’s supposed to say.

Bullshit. All he can ever do is say bullshit, over and over again.

Pressing his forehead against the edge of the concrete, he grits his teeth, staring down at his hands, miserable and desperate for something to take away this gnawing feeling inside of him, eating its way through his gut like an insatiable parasite. He tries focusing on the waves lapping against the stone below him, on the pitter-patter of the rain that’s coating his skin, on the chatter from the people behind him, but he can’t because all he can see behind his eyelids is the hurt in Akira’s face and the crack in his voice when he spoke and it’s Ryuji’s fault because he fucking sucks and he’s incapable of keeping anything good in his life and he’s trying to cry but it’s not coming, why isn’t he crying, please let him get some fucking relief, why can’t he cry—

A shadow casts over him, and he’s about to move out of the way when shoes enter his periphery. Standard sneakers except for colorful beads tied into the shoelaces.

“Yo,” Futaba greets, holding an umbrella over him.

Ryuj tries for a laugh, but it comes out hollow and pathetic. “You track my phone?”

“No.” There’s a pause. “Akira mentioned that you have a thing for bridges.”

His heart goes utterly still, before beating into overdrive. “Leave me alone,” he finds himself saying. “Just fucking get out of here, Futaba.”

“No.”

“No?” It’s sick how fiercely glad he is to be able to grasp onto anger like a lifeline. “I don’t want to be around anyone, don’t you get it? Leave me alone, Jesus, I thought you were supposed to be the smart one in the group.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“And why not?”

“Because you didn’t leave me, even when I really, really wanted you to.” The gaze behind her eyes is unreadable. “You dragged me out of my tomb, screaming and kicking, but you didn’t let go.”

His lungs tightened up. “I don’t want to be around anyone right now,” he says weakly.

“Then I’m not here.” Futaba readjusts her grip on the umbrella, careful that he was still covered. She trains her eyes on a random point in the distance, away from him. “No one’s here. I’m just another stranger, and you’re just some guy who’s talking to the rain.”

They stand there for a while, unspeaking. Each passing second lets the aggravation seep out of him, bit by bit.

“Can…” he tries eventually. Maybe he can let it out, just a little bit. Enough to stop the boiling froth from spilling over the pot, maybe the water would stop rising. “Can I ask you a question?”

When she doesn’t answer, he looks down into the black water.

“What’s it like hating yourself?” he asks. “Like, really, really hating yourself. All you want to do is hide, in your room or away from everyone else. You don’t want to die, you don’t want to disappear, either. You just want to...stop. To the point where you don’t even know what you want anymore—do you want to just keep hiding? Do you want to tell everyone, to finally let someone know? To let the one person who fucking matters know what’s happening to you?”

A boat passes underneath them, and he can see a couple drinking together, laughing. “Isn’t it so embarrassing? You failed so fucking much, and you’re only making it worse by hiding it from everyone. You hid it so much, you were so unwilling to let them know, that you actually ran the damn risk of them leaving.”

The last of Ryuji’s resolve, weak as it was already, crumbles. Something inside Ryuji cracks, and his eyes are wide, so wide they might roll out of their sockets. “I couldn’t tell him, Futaba,” he rasps out. “I couldn’t—what if he leaves me? What if I lose the only damn thing that made my life something worth getting out of my room for? What’s going to happen when he realizes I’m nothing more than the kid with the fucked up leg who failed high school?”

Futaba continues to listen in silence, unable to hold back the streams of hot tears running down her cheeks.

“He loves me,” he says this with an unshakeable force, an unforeseen barrier unwilling to be broken down by anything. “I know that for a fact. But—” he sucks in a breath, and before he can stop himself, he leans his body over the bridge.

“I’m so fucking selfish!” he yells. “I can’t! I can’t tell him! I can’t face another failure, I can’t do it, it’s going to kill me, I swear to god. I failed myself, I failed all of you,” he wildly gestures at her. “I failed my mom, but I can’t fail him. Not him, anyone but him.”

“Sir Sakamoto Ryuji.”

He turns his head to her with a crumpled expression, and she wipes her face with her sleeve before grabbing his hand, pulling him away from the bridge. Ryuji is too surprised to resist. ”W-what?”

She doesn’t turn back, and despite her hoarse voice, her words don’t shake. “I will not let you continue your great sin of wrath unto yourself. You cannot,” she tugs harder, and he stumbles forward. “You cannot keep yourself in this, this darkness of hatred and anger, and thus I, Sakura Futaba, a member of the Phantom Thieves, have decided to intervene.”

“Was—” It took a lot of effort, but he composed himself enough to keep up with her short legs. “Was that a calling card?”

“You’re damn right it is, with or without the fancy paper.” Futaba glances back, and her eyes are shining and determined. “I wasn’t ready at all when you guys showed up in my room to take my heart, but good thing you did, because that was exactly what I needed. So here I am dragging you out, kicking and all. You’re going to tell Akira—”

“I can’t,” he pleads, weakly crossing the street when she keeps pulling. “Dude, I just told you why I absolutely cannot.”

“You’re going to, and that’s final.”

“No!”

And to his absolute shock, she stops in the middle of the road, expression defiant. Cars honk and flip them off, but it does nothing to deter her.

“Get out of the way!” he screams, roughly pulling at her, but Futaba doesn’t budge. “Get off the road!”

“Welcome to my ultimatum: I’m not moving until you go to him!” she points directly at him, ignoring the way headlights flash over her and puddles splash on her shorts. “You say he loves you? Cool, now prove to him that you love him.”

Ryuji rolls up his sleeves. “I’m going to carry you off of the street, you gremlin.”

“Try me, because I’m going to scream so loud,” she says seriously, and he knows she is.

“You’re insane!” he yells back, because she is.

“And you’re a moron, and it’s not because you couldn’t do academic whatnot!” Her glare is hot steel and he’s nothing more than a warm stick of butter. “He’s known you since day one, has seen you at bedrock level, and he’s still following you around like you’re some kind of queen bee and he’s the hive. You’re going to talk to him, or I swear on my mom’s grave that I’m going to jump in front of a big truck and you’re gonna have to be the one to explain to everyone why I died.”

Screw it. He rushes forward, picks her up and, because she’s never been one to back down in anything, she screams from the top of her lungs until he eventually sets her down on the other side of the road.

“Hey!” she stomps her foot. “That’s cheating!”

“Are you out of your damn mind?”

“No more than you, you clown!” she yells. “Why don’t you want to tell him?!”

“I already told you why!”

“Then what if he felt the same? What if this happened to him, and he kept it from you this entire time?”

The thought is enough to make him feel uneasy. “He doesn’t feel the same.”

“But what if he did?” Futaba insists.

“Then of course I’d want to know,” he answers before he can stop himself, and quickly adds, “But he doesn’t.”

“If he was, though, then you—” she prods his chest. “Are hurting him. You’re hurting him, and I thought you loved him, and I thought you didn’t want to disappoint him. You’re a gigantic hypocrite, and screw being a bad boyfriend,” she spits the word as if eager to rid it off her tongue. “You’re being a really freaking bad best friend.”

They stare each other down, with Futaba breathing hard and him, completely unseeing.

“You’re right.”

“I’m always right,” she says immediately. “But elaborate.”

“I’m being a really, really bad best friend.” His fingers make their way to the root of his hair and starts pulling. “I made this entire thing about me, and my problems.”

“To be fair, they were pretty big problems.”

“Yeah but...holy shit, I completely—I completely forgot that this trip is about Akira and to make sure that he’s smiling, and happy, and stress-free and—I fucked all of that to hell.”

“You did,” she agrees, relentless. “Totally screwed the pooch, but hey, you know what? There’s a big plus sign to all of this:” Futaba throws up jazz hands weakly. “You can still fix this!”

“I can still fix this…” he repeats, in a daze, and he slaps his face with both hands. “I can still fix this, dammit! This isn’t going to be another failure; I’m going to take this,” he wildy gesticulates around himself. “And shred it down so Akira doesn’t have to worry anymore. I’ll talk to him, he’ll understand, and we’re going to have a fan-fucking-tastic rest of the summer vacation, even if my life is horrible and falling apart.”

She nods enthusiastically. “But we can all fix it together once we get back home. One step at a time. First,” she levels him with a look. “You’re going to talk to Akira.”

“I have to. He’s had my back since day one, and I promise I’d do anything for him.” Even if it means showing himself, every ugly part of himself, to the most amazing person that’s ever walked on planet earth. The panic twitches inside of him, coming alive again, but he doesn’t push it away. He lets that feeling wash over him, that adrenaline, and he starts jumping on his feet. “I’m going to talk to Akira,” he announces, looking around to see any place that Akira’s eye might catch. “I need to find him, ASAP.”

“Say no more.” She pulls up her phone. “This won’t take more than two minutes.”

Glancing around wildly, something catches his attention, and he grins. “No need. I know exactly where he is.”

“You do?” A hard slap lands on his back, pushing him forward with a yelp. “Then go! Run to him! Get out of your tomb, Ryuji! I’ll see you on the other side!”

He takes a few steps forward, before turning around and quickly taking Futaba in a hug. “Love you, shorty,” he says seriously.

“I love you too.” She hugs him back tightly before letting go. “Get out of here before you find a new insecurity to change your mind.”

Ryuji opts to ignore that last bit and sets off, sneakers slapping the wet concrete as he runs, Tenboto Tower already in his sights.

“Akira!”

Everyone jumps as he slams the glass entrance open, loud and unyielding as he runs past tourists, wildly taking in each of their faces and pausing at none of them. He sucks at everything—at school, at being a good friend, at basic communication. But this? Facing public humiliation in front of strangers?

“Akira!”

He can do this any day of the week.

Nervous employees start to approach him and Ryuji books it before they can get close. Not on the ground floor, but he knew that before he even came in here. Elevator, he thinks, skidding to a halt to see that it’s already six floors up. It would take too long.

Letting out a sharp breath, he lets his feet take him to the stairwell, apathetic to the fact that he’s about to sprint up eighty-eight meters.

He’s an idiot. A moron. World’s biggest buffoon. That doesn’t surprise anyone, least of all him.

The soles of his sneakers squeak as it slaps against concrete stairs, using the railing to propel him up faster.

And he hates it. He fucking hates being the dumb one so much that it hurts.

A couple that was making out screams when he barely dodges them, and he doesn’t even have it in him to be embarrassed.

He wants nothing more than to bury that part of him. Shamefully, completely. Like a corpse, or some ancient artifact. Gone for the rest of time.

Sweat streams down his back and it’s gross and he doesn’t care, not one damn bit.

But if burying it means destroying what he built with Akira? If scrambling to hide actually makes things worse when the only thing he wanted was to preserve what the two of them have?

His throat is drying up and he can feel his thighs about to split in half, but he keeps going, keeps running.

Then screw it—the whole world is about to know what a big failure he is.

Ryuji bursts through the door to the top deck, gasping for breath and dozens of heads turn to him. Gulping down as much air as his lungs can take in, “Akira!?” he booms, and he knows he’s being an asshole but he doesn’t care right now.

Nothing happens. He grits his teeth and starts running again, soaked shoes ruining plush carpet as he looks for a familiar patch of messy hair. Ryuji evades tourists left and right, around gift shop stalls and hundred yen telescopes, ignoring the picturesque view from the huge glass windows. Just like he thought—from up here, it looks eerily like you were overlooking the entire city of Tokyo if you were desperate for any sense of familiarity.

And that’s exactly what Akira had needed at the time.

Come on, come on. He’s about to hit a full circle around the observation deck and he still hasn’t spotted him. I know you’re here. There’s no way that you’d be anywhere else in the city.

Ryuji takes in another breath, ready to yell out his name for the upteenth time, when he sees an open balcony, nearly empty except for a boy leaned over the parapet, eerily still and barely underneath the glass covering above him.

Despite his earlier fervor, Ryuji slows down to a walking pace, chest heaving and feeling like his heart is going to burst.

It’ll be okay. It’s him.

He takes his place beside him, mimicking his pose, leaning over the cool metal railings. Akira doesn’t even look up, which is what he deserves, really. The wind is light, and the city sparkles below them.

No games. No bullshit. Just him and his best friend.

“I failed second-year,” he says. “And also I think I’m at a real, real low point in my life.”

Akira’s face flits in mild surprise, but Ryuji doesn’t stop, doesn’t want to give himself an out.

He starts from the very beginning—from getting called into his homeroom, to Ushimaru giving him a look that said he expected this because that’s ‘just the type of student he is’, to hiding it from his mom, from Ann, from him. He tells him how being alone is tiring, but being with people is exhausting.

And the tears. The minute he started talking, the tears came and kept coming no matter how many times he wiped it away. At first he thought it was from humiliation, at the guilt from keeping it from Akira. But after a while, he realizes that keeping this huge, weighty, life-altering secret from Akira was hurting him, too. It’s like the entire sky got lifted off of him, and he can finally breathe again. For the first time, he feels relieved.

Akira stands there, silent the entire time, not looking at him but he knows he’s soaking in every word that he’s saying.

Ryuji stands up straight and faces him. His voice is barely above a whisper, used up and crackled like dried out stone. “Akira, I’m so, so sorry. I said horrible shit and I kept you in the dark for so long, and-and I forced everyone not to say anything because of my own issues, and I could’ve—” he flinches when he remembers feeling his life deplete out of him from a single hit. “I could’ve died, dude. And I kept it from you over something so petty like being bad at algebra. I know I shouldn’t have kept it from you. I know that now, and hindsight is a bit of a bastard.” He looks down, sees people from below, small as ants. “There’s no good excuse, I get that. It’s just...I was fucking terrified, dude. Of whatever you see in me fading away once you see me for what I actually am.”

Ruffling his own hair, he lets out a long breath. “Alright. I’m done. It’s your turn, if you want it.”

“Is that really how you feel?” Akira asks, emotionless.

“With my entire body.”

His feelings are twisted together between shock that he actually did it, and earth-shattering fear that something bad might happen. No, Akira would never in a million years openly mock him, but he can easily imagine a small, faint smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. An it’s okay. I get it. A shallow hug and a kiss on the cheek. An obligatory comfort that Akira feels he has to give but Ryuji never wanted.

But what he didn’t expect was for Akira to suddenly start laughing.

Ryuji stares in shock as his shoulders, always straight back, hunches in on itself, shaking uncontrollably, hands instinctively flitting to his mouth but unable to hold in the snort that escapes through his lips.

“Uh,” he asks, confused. “What?”

“I—” Akira tries, but doubles over, gripping the metal railing. “Give me a second, sorry—”

They stand there for a few long minutes, Ryuji bewildered and Akira laughing harder than he’s ever seen him. Whenever he looks like he’s about to finish, Akira gives him a look, and starts laughing uncontrollably again.

Eventually, he sobers up enough to resume his earlier position. “Ryuji,” the smile is still stuck on his lips. “I love you.”

“...Okay?” he replies, still lost.

“And I’ve been in therapy since April.”

The entire world halts to a grinding, screeching halt.

“You’re—” Ryuji fumbles. “You’ve been in what?”

“Therapy.”

“Why?!” When Akira raises an eyebrow at him, he backtracks a little. “Okay, I didn’t mean to say it like that. It’s just...surprising.”

He can’t even imagine what kind of metaphor he’d have to use to begin explaining the complexities of a Persona and Palaces. “Is it tough trying to explain all of this?”

“It’s not about the Metaverse or anything,” he says, and, with the slight mirth still stuck on his features, “It’s because I’ve been depressed for a few months now.”

About a trillion questions want to fly out of his mouth right now, but he settles on one for now. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Akira looks up, staring at the few specks of stars that still poke out despite the light pollution of any big city in Japan. “I just think,” he starts. “That I’m really, really lonely.”

Before Ryuji can say anything, he cuts him off with a look. “Please don’t blame yourself.”

“I won’t.”

“Good,” he says, relaxing. “Because it’s not your fault, or anyone else’s. I’ve just…It’s been hard, going back to that life after living such a good one in Tokyo. When I finally came back home, it’s like I was stuck in a time loop. Every day that I stay there,” he stares down at his hands. “Is another day that everyone’s moving on without me.”

Ryuji nearly bites his tongue off in an effort to hold himself back. Move on? Without Akira? Not a snowflake’s chance in hell.

“It didn’t help that no one would even look me in the eye there,” he continues. “It got to the point where the days just blended together, the same cycle of nothing, the same day of being alone, over and over again. Worrying about being forgotten, being trapped and stuck.” Akira’s pale cheeks turn red. “Eventually, my grades started dropping,” he admits. “My parents noticed, because of course they did, and…”

Akira curls his fingers around the bar. “They threatened that they wouldn’t let me go if it stayed down.”

“Son of a bitch,” he hisses, unable to help himself. “What the hell, man?”

“I know,” he agrees. “Bad move on their part, considering that it got even worse after they said that. It’s...it’s actually why I’m getting tutoring now. Not necessarily for Tokyo U, but I really do plan on going to a Tokyo-based university. Because if I don’t…” he trails off.

“I am the only person in the world who isn’t allowed to say this, but,” Ryuji shakes his head. “Why didn’t you say anything, Akira? I could’ve visited you more, or had more phone calls, or, I don’t know. Something to help.” To help you the way you helped me.

“Good question,” he muses, slightly amused. “Alright. Imagine this. You’re a new kid in town with a criminal record. Everyone hates you, more than they usually do, and you were starting to accept that your life is just going to be like this. But suddenly, a guy comes barreling into your life.” Akira’s expression softens. “He’s loud, tough, and extremely cute, and next thing you know, he became your best friend. You don’t know what he sees in you, you don’t know what you did to make him approach you in the first place, but the only thing you know for sure—”

“Is that you’re never letting him go,” Ryuji finishes for him. “Even if it means hiding yourself away, yeah?”

Ryuji’s gazing down at the city beneath them, unseeing. He can’t react the way he wants to, but what the fuck.

Akira is the best person he’s ever met and he’s pretty sure at least twenty other people scattered around the streets of Tokyo would agree with him on that. Yet he hid such a massive secret from Ryuji because he thought that Ryuji would leave him? That’s beyond ridiculous. That’s messed up, that’s—

Ryuji looks up to see that Akira’s already looking back at him, a knowing look in his eyes.

“Yup,” Akira tries to pull it off like he was scratching his cheek, but the shine of the tear makes it obvious. “You got me.”

Finally, Ryuji cracks.

“I’m—” he chokes, wracked with grief. “I’m so fucking sorry. I am so, so sorry, you were going through so much and I didn’t even—”

Akira takes a step back, shocked. “Why are you the one apologizing? I’m the one who was too busy wallowing to notice that you had changed enough that your Persona—”

“Because you’re depressed, and I should’ve been there to help you!”

“And I said that it was never your fault!”

“That doesn’t matter, I should’ve helped you go through that, wait outside the clinic with you, I don’t know!”

“And I made you think that I would have left you if you failed high school, which is insane—!”

“Kurusu, I lied to you. I lied to your face, I said so much shit, I jeopardized the entire team all because I didn’t want to lose you—”

“Don’t,” he pleads. “I know why you did it, but me? I don’t have an excuse. I’m your leader—”

“I’m your partner—”

“I’m your best friend—”

“And I didn’t notice!” they both finish in unison, distraught and breaths heaving, hearts pounding in time with each other, always together.

And then they both laugh; it’s teary, wet, and they probably look insane to any tourist ten feet from them, but they’re cracking up because it’s hilarious. It’s absolutely hysterical that either of them ever believed that they would leave the other over something so stupid as their own perception of themselves.

Ryuji sobers up first, grin so wide that it’s hurting his cheeks. “Can I apologize one last time?”

“No,” he says, voice tender. “I’ve heard enough sorrys to last a lifetime.”

“Come on! Just one more!”

“Just one more,” he relents.

He throws his arm around Akira, squeezing him tight against his side. “I’m sorry that I’m apparently the most good-looking guy you’ve ever seen that you instantly fell in love with me.”

“Dammit,” Akira tries shoving him off weakly. “I knew you were gonna use that against me.”

“Damn right.” He kisses his forehead, gentle despite the rough grip.

“Can I apologize too?”

“Copycat. You can apologize once.”

“Okay.” Hugging Ryuji’s torso, they’re close enough that neither can feel the chill of the wind. “I’m sorry this happened to us,” he says seriously.

Pulling back, Ryuji frowns. “Dude!”

“I know, I know, what a downer. But it’s true.”

“It’s true,” he agrees. “But we can work on this. Together, this time. Like a couple of smart, capable people.”

“That sounds fantastic,” Akira murmurs before leaning forward and catching his lips. He tastes like rainwater and heat. He can feel his own lips twitch into a smile, and the vibration of Akira’s chuckle against his throat. It’s familiar, memorized, but he still makes sure to relearn it every time.

They kiss so deep that the hole inside Ryuji’s chest is full enough to burst.

“Kaboom!” Futaba had said.

The booming sound of a firework rings from up top, illuminating their faces in bright colors in the night. It reflects shades of red, yellow, blue and pink all over the surface of the water like paint buckets that got toppled over in a kindergarten classroom.

Ryuji’s chin is tilted up, watching them explode and take over his entire view of the sky. It’s almost blinding, but he can’t peel his eyes away from them even when he can feel them drying up.

It’s the last day of summer—his worst nightmare.

A purple one sparkles, the sound of the explosion delayed by half a second. He leans his head against Akira’s shoulder, lip quirking up when he feels weight pressing against the crown of his skull.

It’s the last day of summer, but he can’t feel anything but the warmth at his side, fingers intertwined with his, the ringing in his ears. Everything feels more real than they had in the last few months, the haze shifting away, the fog thinning out.

His heart beats strong in his chest. A hand squeezes his tightly.

Kaboom.

The sweat on the back of Ryuji’s neck is thick as he climbs the stairs into the attic of Leblanc, the heat just as intense as it was this time last year.

Stray beams of light poured in from the open window of what has turned into a study cave for any of the thieves to use—cram books of trigonometry to art theory lined the shelves, the walls lined with study good luck charms that they had hoarded from any shrines that they had visited, and day-old tea cups and coffee mugs littered the desks.

Amidst all of that sat Akira, elbows propped up on the table, expression serious. “Happy last day of school,” he says, voice monotone, staring at the thick, impressive envelope in front of him.

“‘Happy’ my ass,” Ryuji flops down on the seat next to him, wood creaking under the sudden weight, nodding at the parchment. “Is that it?”

“If it isn’t, it’s going to be one insane train ride back home to get it.”

“I don’t know how you did it, man. I would’ve torn that thing open the minute I got it.”

Akira gives him an alarmed look. “You didn’t—”

He puts his hands up in surrender, holding a much thinner, yet somehow just as weighty sealed envelope between his fingers before throwing it down with the other. “I didn’t.”

“Good.” Akira doesn’t quite relax, but he lets out a breath. “So.”

“So,” he repeats, a little wobbly. “Moment of truth, huh? Either you got into school…”

“And you passed second-year.”

“Or we don’t.”

The silence that follows is heavy, contemplative, coating the air with something thick and hard to swallow.

Ryuji slams his hand on the table, gut twisting and knotting tightly. “Let’s fucking do this.”

They both reach forward to their corresponding envelopes, hands shaking but neither comment on it. Akira opens his first, and Ryuji very nearly bites it open just to get it over with. He’s suddenly glad that he’s sitting for this. His knees would’ve given out for sure.

Eventually, he finally gets it out of the envelope. His vision blurs as he starts scanning through the letter, eyes flitting all over the page looking for a few choice words, and his breathing stops cold.

He raises his head in time with Akira, and their eyes are wide. A wind chime clinks somewhere behind them.

“I got in,” Akira whispers.

“I passed,” Ryuji whispers back.

They stare at each other for a moment, before they explode.

Immediately, Ryuji jumps out of his chair and lifts Akira clean off his seat. “You got in!” he cries, and he’s not even embarrassed at the horrendous crack in his voice. “You bastard, I knew you could do it!”

“You passed,” Akira throws his arms around his neck and clings, so tight he can barely breathe. “I knew it, I could feel it, I knew you had it!”

Ryuji grasps the back of his hair, still spinning. “I’m so happy for you, I’m so happy for you,” he chants, his entire body feeling weak with relief and unencumbered joy but he knows he’d never drop him. “You fucking did it.”

“And you fucking did it!” He starts planting kisses on his head, his cheek, his shoulder, wherever he can reach. “You worked so hard, and you—” another kiss, this time right on his eyelid. “You did it, and I am so, so, so proud of you.”

With whatever last strength Ryuji has, he spins double-time, yelling at the top of his lungs: “Tokyo University, baby!”

“Third-year!” Akira tries, voice barely above his normal volume. “Third-year!”

He sets him down, and the grin on his face is wider than it’s ever been. Ryuji feels like he can eat the entirety of Yongen in one try. “You are—” he holds Akira’s face between both of his hands, face inches from his. “The smartest person on the entire fucking planet.”

“And you—” his eyes are bright, so bright. “Need to call your mom.”

“Shoot!” Ryuji slaps his forehead. “Totally slipped by me. Uh, I’ll—”

“Bathroom works, and Soijro locked up the cafe for us.”

“Boss is the best. I’ll be back,” he turns, headed for the stairs.

“Wait.”

Ryuji looks back only for a hand to hold his nape, pulling him forward. Akira kisses him, still smiling. When they pull away, he says, in a crystal clear voice, “I love you, I love you, and I’m proud of you.”

He could barely reply past the lump in his throat, wanting nothing more than to bury himself in that sentence. “I love you,” he manages. “Don’t go anywhere, okay? I want to keep talking to you.”

“Of course,” Akira says, and Ryuji slips out of his grasp before he can do something stupid, like cry. Again.

Cracking the door open to the tiny powder room of Leblanc, he leans against the wall and catches his expression in the mirror—grinning and flushed with pleasure. It’s a good look.

He hits the speed dial on his phone, and his mom picks up almost immediately. “Did you get the letter?” she rushes out. “Whatever happens, you’re still the best son I could ever ask for, you hear me?”

“Ma,” the reflection’s grin grows impossibly wider. “I passed.”

The screaming from the receiver is loud enough that he had to pull it away from himself, wincing but laughing at her reaction. “I knew it!” her voice sounds years younger. “I knew you could do it!”

The wall is cool behind him, and he shoves his hand in his pocket, embarrassed. “Thanks, ma.”

“Of course, Ryu! Are you happy?”

“Am I happy?” he blinks. “Well, yeah, of course.”

“That’s all I ever wanted,” a noise that sounds suspiciously like a sniffle sounds through. “You could’ve stopped going to school entirely and as long as it made you happy, I’d go along with it.”

Air catches in his throat, awe-struck. He knew how she felt, but having her tell him at face value is something else entirely.

Ryuji’s about to answer when a cascade of voices and footsteps suddenly flow into the cafe, just outside the powder room.

“Akira,” Makoto says gently, audible through thin walls. “Did…?”

He doesn’t catch a reply, but screams and cheers fill up the cafe, dust falling from the ceiling as people start jumping up and down.

“I can hear your friends celebrating from here,” his mom chuckles. “I’ll let you go. Let’s get dinner when you get home, okay?”

“That sounds great,” he says, coughing, brushing the flecks of dried wood off his shoulder. “I’ll see you when I get home.”

He hangs up, sighing happily. After mentally preparing himself, he throws the door open, doorknob slamming against the wall that he prays didn’t leave a dent.

“Is that him?” Haru’s voice flows from above.

“That’s him,” Akira confirms.

Ryuji takes the steps two at a time, welcomed by the sight of everyone clinging to Akira with overjoyed expressions, and they quiet down when they see him.

Ann takes a step forward, gently letting go of Akira’s shoulder. “So?”

He takes a deep breath, makes a big show of kicking the floor boards, before looking up.

“Yeah, I did it.”

An eruption of pure noise goes straight into his eardrums as he’s tackled by arms and bodies, knocking him to the ground. Everyone’s yelling, some are crying, and he can understand exactly zero of what they’re saying but he hugs back as best he can. Through the cracks of shoulders and hair and necks, he can see Akira watching them all in amusement.

With no small amount of struggling, Ryuji wriggles a hand free and extends it to him. Akira doesn’t hesitate to take it, but yelps as he proceeds to get tugged right into the middle of the pile, crashing into three other people and loving every second of it.

Delusion is a real funny thing in hindsight. How could he have ever thought that he had nothing to be proud of? That his list of accomplishments added up to exactly nothing?

Yusuke is reciting victory speeches from wars won long ago while Makoto is listing off scholarships he can apply for in his third-year. Futaba is repeatedly hitting his shoulder, shrieking in his ear while Haru is quietly telling him how proud she is of him. Ann’s already pulling Shiho on speakerphone, and Akira has a look in his eye, a fondness that tells Ryuji that there’s nowhere else he’d rather be.

The room is full, and the sun is still streaming through, warm and inviting. He wishes that Ryuji from a year ago could see this, see his friends that are still by his side, that will always be by his side, and rest easy.

#p5 #p5s #ryuji sakamoto #akira kurusu #plainly in truth #fic tag #mine #persona 5 #persona 5 strikers #akiryu #pegoryu #chapter five huh? we actually did it.#shes completed babey

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supernaturallyobsessedchic · 4 years

Text

Emergency! Part 1

Part 1 – Plane Crash

Summary: Dean and Cas are partners at Fire Station 51’s paramedic squad and are responding to their first of many. A plane crashes into an apartment complex, multiple fire stations respond to put out the fire and rescue any victims trapped. But RN, Y/N Y/L/N, happens to live in the very complex involved in the plane crash. Though unharmed, she commits her time to aid and assist in the victims coming out of the building and the plane. The rescue turns sideways on Dean when a beam drops onto Dean, damaging his oxygen tank, he quickly turns into a victim as he quickly succumbs to smoke inhalation and becomes Y/N’s patient.

Warnings: Mild angst (relationship), slight language, fluff?

Square: Firefighter!AU ( @supernatural-jackles Tell me a story Bingo)

Word Count: 1,784

Mobile Masterlist

Series Masterlist

A/N: DOA = Dead on Arrival. Y/L/N = Your last name. But I hope you guys enjoy!

She got up at her usual time of 5am to be at the hospital by 6:30am.

Not much of a coffee drinker, she just got her a mug filling up with soda, the soda being her caffeine for the day.

She got into her scrubs, grabbing her nametag, pens and her personal notepad.

Ready to hit the road before traffic begins to pick up on the freeway in Los Angeles, she grabs her wallet, phone and keys she locks up to leave for her day at work as a Registered Nurse at Rampart emergency hospital.

Just as she got to the street to her car, there was a loud noise growing louder. She looked in the direction of the noise to see a plane, crash landing into her own apartment complex.

Ducking beside her car at the impact of the plane she was also thankful for her timing.

Quickly she dials 9-1-1.

Dean got up at his usual time of 4 in the morning to begin his 24-hour shift at the station.

Dean is a paramedic and squad member at station 51.

He pulled his truck into the parking lot, still trying to wake up.

His partner was already there.

“Cas, do you ever sleep man?” Dean asked.

“Slept on the couch again.”

“Are you and Hannah okay?”

“No, we had a big fight again last night. I don’t know what I can do for her anymore.” Cas says, defeated.

“Just end things man, you need sleep, and you need some peace of mind. I got room at my house for a roommate if you need a place.”

“Thanks Dean, but I already had plans of ending things with Hannah, last night was just the nail in the coffin of yet another failed relationship.”

“She failed it man, you did nothing wrong.” Dean encouraged.

“Thanks man.”

Dean offered a kind smile and a pat on Cas’s shoulder.

“Ready for another long shift?” Cas asks.

“As ready as I’ll ever be, my dad here yet?”

“Yeah, he’s in the office why?”

“Wonder if he got the invite to Sam and Jess’s wedding.”

“Bought damn time that kid popped the question honestly.”

“I know, he and Jess dated for what seemed like forever.”

“You really think they’re still sore at each other, I mean John of all people should know he can’t control what his kids want to do.”

“Yeah, I don’t know, that’s why I was gonna ask if he got it.”

Cas nods.

“I saw you put in for a three-day weekend, what’s going on?”

“Just wanting to take a trip out to the campgrounds outside of town to the family cabin, Dad says the deck could use some work and I was gonna kill two birds with one stone. Camp out and help dad fix up the deck.”

“That sounds cool.”

The fire stations alarm sounded.

“Truck 27, squad 27, engine 47, squad 47, Engine 51, squad 51, structure fire at Purgatory Apartments 1366 south Millard Ave.”

“Lots of trucks and engines responding, must be big.” Cas states. Jumping into action.

“Must be.” Dean says running to the squad truck, jumping into the driver seat, Cas jumping into the passenger.

Dean turned the keys in the ignition, roaring the Ford Truck to life, and turning on the lights and siren. Heading out onto the road, with the firetruck, Engine 51 following behind.

“This is RN Y/N Y/L/N, I have multiple victims at 1366 Millard Ave. A plane crashed. 3 already DOA, I need help right away.” She says into the phone.

“We’re working on it; we already have multiple firestations responding to your location. Just keep aiding in the victims as best as you can Ms. Y/L/N.” dispatch for 9-1-1 says.

She continued chest compressions on a victim and did 2 rescue breaths. And checked his pulse, still no change.

She sat her phone off of her shoulder and on the ground, so she could focus on reviving the victim.

One more attempt at cpr, she checks his pulse, still no change. Placing his hands over his chest, she says a silent prayer.

“I’m sorry.” She tells the people watching over her as she worked.

“Where is your help?” a lady asked furiously.

“They’re on the way, LA Is a large ass city, and you know how traffic is in this town.” She says.

She was already frustrated with the losses she didn’t need an attitude from anyone.

The sound of wailing sirens in the distance brought relieve to the nurse as she worked tirelessly on the victims.

Engine and squad 27 and 47 being the first on the scene.

“There are people trapped in the buildings, and there were about 45 passengers on this flight. 4 are DOA so far.” Y/N stated to the captain of the two fire stations as they approached her.

“Alright, I’ll send my guys in.” Captain of station 27 stated.

“I’ll let the other stations as they come in to assist.” Captain of station 47 stated.

Another fire engine’s siren wailed as it approached.

The men jumping into action.

“Winchester!” the captain of station 47 shouts as he approached engine 51.

“What do we got?”

“Unknown number of victims trapped in the complex, 45 passengers or so from the plane. 4 of them were DOA. Oh, and she’s a nurse, thought I’d mention that she could help us out.”

“Right,” John Winchester, captain of station 51 agreed.

“Alright guys, we got to work fast, there are people trapped in these two buildings, we need to clear them out. Tran, get the engine ready so we can use the hose. Gabe, and Michael, work on the fire with the other stations, Benny, Raph, and Charlie, aide the paramedics, either from 27, 47 or Dean and Cas, we need to save as many as we can, alright?”

“Yes sir.”

“Get to it.”

Everyone went to where they were instructed to. Dean and Cas got their equipment from their truck and went into one of the buildings, full fire fighter gear.

“Dean!” John called out.

Dean stops, giving John his attention.

“Be safe in there son.”

“I will dad. Don’t worry.” He says, running in.

There were a good handful of people able to move and get to safety on their own, and another handful Dean and Cas had to carry out of the building.

One woman, sprained ankle from trying to escape hastily, as Cas carried her out she nearly flew out of the man’s arms.

“My daughter, she’s in her room!” she cries out.

“I’ll get her, Cas, get her out of here.”

Cas nods, doing as told.

Dean inspected the rooms, finding a seven-year-old girl, hiding beside her bed covered in a wet blanket.

“Hey, I’m Dean, I’m gonna get you out of here.”

The girls nods.

Dean kept a protective arm around her as they exited her room.

A beam creaked, and gave way above Dean, hitting his back.

He heard a loud pop, like a large pop can exploding.

He found it hard to breathe through his oxygen mask.

Taking off his mask and tank he saw rupture in his tank.

“Shit.” He hissed.

His lungs were quickly taken over by the smoke, he started coughing immediately.

He noticed the girl was already gone.

He tried to get up to hurry and save himself but he felt a sharp pain in the back of his leg.

He looked behind him, he saw the beam pinning him down by his leg.

Overcome by the coughing, his world began to turn black.

Y/N finished placing a splint on the womans ankle when a child ran up to her and the group of firemen.

“Jamie! Baby!” her mother cried out, holding her arms out to her daughter.

“Mommy!” she cried.

“Where’s Dean?” Cas asked.

“A beam fell down and knocked him down. He’s stuck.” She says.

Without another word exchanged Cas took off to the apartment they rescued the woman.

The fire was slowly getting under control and it was easier to see inside the apartments. Cas was able to spot Dean out in the apartment easily.

He laid on his stomach, still and unmoving. Cas can see the beam pinning against Dean’s thigh.

He saw the beam was not supporting much of anything. He ran out, seeing Michael carrying an axe.

“Mikey, I need that!” Cas shouted.

“What’s up?”

“Dean’s stuck.”

Michael ran towards Cas and he saw Dean, inspected the beam. Saw the same as Cas, the beam not being much of importance to the structure, he begins working on breaking the beam in half.

The wood was badly damaged by the fire, he was able to break it in three strong hits.

Once he was free, Cas picked Dean up and carried him out over his shoulder fireman carry style.

Once he reached the nurse, she prepared an area she could work on Dean.

“Is he breathing?”

“He didn’t have his mask on, the tank was damaged.” Cas answered.

“More than likely smoke inhalation, lay him here and I’ll start working on him.

He did as told, laying him flat on his back.

She checked his pulse, and breathing, matching up to the fireman’s statements. And began chest compressions.

After 35 chest compressions she gave 2 rescue breaths. And checked his breathing, he’s breathing but it was shallow.

She placed on an oxygen mask over his mouth.

After ten minutes or so of the mask being on him, he began having a coughing fit as the air returned back to his lungs.

“He’s gonna be okay but we need to get him to the hospital, need to check out that leg.” Y/N said.

The men and women of station 51 nodded, agreeing with the nurse.

Later that night as she made her rounds, she walked into Dean’s room.

“Good evening Mr. Winchester, how are you feeling today?”

“Sore.”

“That’s expected having a beam pin your leg down, and the smoke inhalation.”

“You saved my life, thank you, Miss….”

“Y/N, Y/N Y/L/N. And it’s no big deal, all part of the job.”

“Right, saving people.”

“The family business.”

“You’re family work here?”

“Yeah, my mom was head nurse at this very hospital, and my dad was a neurologist here. I was basically born and raised here.”

“Nice, my dad’s captain of station 51.”

“Awesome. But other than that, no pain at the moment, you don’t need anything?”

“No, just a number.”

She smirked, with a nod.

Writing on her notepad, her number. She ripped the paper out, handing it to him.

“Call me sometime, Winchester.”

He held the paper, unable to hide the wide grin.

“Definitely will.” He says as she walks out, continuing her shift.

Are you excited yet? I’m posting as I write this, probably a bad idea, but story of my life. Like what I got so far? Let me know, ask, reblog. Feedback is fuel. :3

Dean girls:

@pandazombie69, @luci-in-trenchcoats, @supernatural-jackles, @becs-bunker, @jayankles, @mlovesstories, @winchesters-favorite-girl, @jeaniespiehs20, @akshi8278, @lyarr24

Copying and reposting someone else’s content is plagiarism and illegal. This work is property of supernaturallyobsessedchic. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. These works contain material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of these works may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher. An electronic reference link to the original posted work may be provided for purposes of promotion or assistance of publication by the readers discretion, if proper credits are given to the author in the re-post. 3/18/2021

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shakspeare · 4 years

Text

faith is the ache

→ dean/cas fic → circa season four. it’s the emo soldier of god for me. → this is 90% kink y’all, most definitely rated r. → ao3 link here if you’d rather read there → first time destiel writer the renaissance rly hit hard

Cas and Dean’s first kiss is a battlefield kiss.

It’s raw and desperate and bloody, torn from Cas’s lips like salvation, a prayer. Dean’s never been a praying man, but if this is faith, he’s a goddamn saint. He can taste blood on Cas’s tongue, feel Cas’s breath through his ribs, rushed and angry and brutal.

This is faith.

Faith is the way his fingers feel like they’re about to break. Faith is the way he’s holding Cas to him the same way he’d hold onto his gun. Faith is Cas’s eyelashes, dark and wet, ghosting against his cheek. Faith is every stolen breath and broken bone, every stabbing pain, every gasp, every tear, every loss.

Faith is the ache.

The world burns red through his eyelids; he opens his eyes. Releases his angel.

“Sam!” he roars, spinning on his heel, staring into the fray. The woodland’s half on fire, some demon coughing up its guts at his feet. He slams his heel down on its throat, scanning the tree line.

“Sam!”

“Let’s move!” Sam’s spat out of the forest like a rocket, tearing over the waste ground between them. Dean doesn’t need telling twice. He hauls Cas to his feet and they run.

The forest blurs past them in shadow and ash. The night’s dark; freakishly so. No stars. A volley of sparks explodes in the air above their heads; they flinch, keep running. Things had gone wrong, gone very badly wrong. Dean stumbles on the broken earth, curses under his breath. It was a trap, that should’ve been obvious. He was off his game.

“Dean?” The angel’s voice is curious, not yet practised in concern. Dean jerks his head; keep moving.

“I’m fine,” he barks, and Cas turns, keeps going.

“Here!” Sam’s voice comes low through the trees, and Dean gives a sigh of relief. He thought they’d overshot by a mile, but the Impala is just visible in the darkness. Least something’s gone to plan. His heart’s hammering against his ribs and something feels really wrong there. Broken, he’s guessing. He drops into the driver’s seat, fumbles for the keys. Half a second to breathe, and then he’s gunning baby’s engine to freaking Timbuktu. He reaches out to yank the door shut, but Cas is there, suddenly, holding it still. He stares down at Dean, eyes wide, hair going every which way.

“I’ll lead them off,” he says, and his voice is rough and low. “I doubt we will go undisturbed.”

Dean blinks, Cas takes a step back—

“Wait, Cas!”

He tilts his head, frowns at Dean. Dean gives himself a shake; man, he’s losing it.

“Get in the car.” The angel looks at him almost pityingly.

“No, thank you. I’m much faster out of it.”

“I’m not offering you a lift, you goddamn hippie,” There’s something moving in the trees. He slides the key into the ignition, keeps his voice low.

“You going off alone, that’s exactly what they’ll be expecting.” Castiel hesitates, still staring at him.

“Get in the damn car!”

Cas slides into the backseat just as he guns the engine and the angels break the clearing; the Impala snarls and jerks forward over the rough earth, spraying up dirt and stone in her wake, and if he said that didn’t satisfy him to hell, he’d be lying. He yanks the steering wheel hard left, spinning them out onto the freeway, and in 30 seconds he’s put miles between them and their heavenly little tete a tete. Cars flicker past either side of them, and Dean’s eyes flick up to the rearview. Cas’s baby blues are fixed firmly on the road ahead, that little frown quirking his brow.

“So it was a trap,” Sam grimaces, running a finger down the gash in his arm.

“Woah, dude!” Dean exclaims. “Upholstery, blood; blood, upholstery!” Sam ignores him, reaching out a bloody finger and daubing some hokey symbol on the passenger side window.

“Angel proofing, dumb-ass. They won’t be able to find us.”

Angel proofing. Right. Dean grumbles under his breath. It’s not the worst idea in the world. The pain in his ribs flares and he winces.

Yeah, they need some off-radar time.

“Check the map,” he nods at the roadmap on the floor at Sam’s feet. “Find us somewhere to crash. My four hours is calling my name.” His eyes flick back up to the rearview. No reason why.

***

The nearest motel’s about an hour’s drive. Sam falls asleep in his seat; Dean flicks on the radio. Adrenaline’s coursing through him like a freight train; it always does, after a hunt. He flexes his fingers against the wheel, shifts in his seat. Feels good. Feels strong.

His lips are burning.

“You ok?” The words come out a little gruffer than he’d intended. He clears his throat, keeps his eyes fixed on the road. It’s just the polite thing to do. Ask. For a minute he thinks Cas might’ve angel-ed out, but then—

“I am uninjured.” Right. “Great.” He drums his fingers on the steering wheel, itching to do… something. He needs a drink. A sleazy bar. Pounding music.

“But I… feel strange.”

He can’t help it; he glances up at Cas’s reflection. Cas is gazing out at the night, frowning.

“Strange how?”

“I should have known it was a trap,” Cas murmurs. “There were warning signs. I failed to notice them. I failed to keep you safe.”

“Guilt. That’s called guilt, Cas.”

Cas sighs.

“It’s not a big deal, no one got hurt.” He ignores the stabbing pain in his side; he’s had worse. “Everyone make mistakes. It’s uh, human.”

Cas’s searching gaze meets his and he swallows, looks quickly back to the road. Jesus. A scattergun of images flicker past in his mind’s eye; Cas, bright-eyed, burning, in the split second before he kissed him; Cas, in the barn, sparks exploding in the air around him, hair lit up like some dollar store invocation of Jesus Christ; and another, something he’s not sure he’s ready to think about yet; Cas, with bruised lips, shirt collar open and staring at him like he’s seeing for the first time.

Yeah, he’s itching to do something, alright.

“Dean.”

He jerks out of his reverie, slides the steering wheel left a little, keeps them straight. Eyes on the road. Get it together. Right. He shifts a little in his seat, pretends like Cas’s gaze isn’t burning a hole in the back of his neck. His cock twitches in his jeans.

“Alright!” He clears his throat, reaches over to the radio. “If you’re gonna slum it on earth with the rest of us, you gotta live the whole experience. Guilt, shame, the whole nine yards. Now this,” he raises his voice over House of the Rising Sun, “this is a whole experience of it’s own.”

Cas frowns a little. Dean sighs, leans back in his seat. Resists the urge to shift his hips, let the denim friction graze his dick. Jesus Christ, there’s something in the air. He risks a glance at Cas again; he’s gazing out his window now, thank god, watching headlights flicker past.

Alright. It’s not like he hasn’t been with men before. It’s no big deal, right? Except — and this is the kicker — sucking some trucker off for twenty dollars is pretty fucking different. Isn’t it? His heart skips a little in his chest, imagines Cas looking down at him, Cas running deft fingers through his hair. Yeah, it’s different. Different like, there’s a part of him that wants to pull the car over and get on his knees right now. He remembers the heat of Cas pressing against his chest, rough and aching; remembers the sting of his angel blade, caught between them and digging into his side.

Is Cas thinking about it? Do angels get turned on?

He’s not even sure why he did it, why he stepped over the angel Cas had just gutted and wrapped his fist in Cas’s shirt. He remembers the last time he had sex; in that strip joint with some hooker — he’d barely started railing her when all hell broke loose and he and Cas had to book it out the back. Does this feel like that? His dick twitches at the memory; the chick buck naked and spreading her legs, widening her come-fuck-me eyes. He frowns, shifts, remembers the puzzled expression on Cas’s face before he kissed him.

Nah, this is different. He doesn’t know why — the chick was hot, Cas is hot, his dick’s sure as hell into both. But it is. It is different.

Cas is still silent in the backseat. What’s he thinking about? I feel strange. Probably still grappling with his newfound guilt, whatever that feels like for an angel. I failed to keep you safe. Dean snorts. Right. Safe. When has anyone ever worried about his safety before? He barely worries about it himself. His mind fritzes for a hot second; faceless men in truck stop bathrooms; this week’s monster, teeth bared and barrelling out of the darkness; dad, waking him up at three in the morning and thrusting a sawn-off into his hands.

Safe doesn’t figure. It just doesn’t. And if he slammed on the brakes and insisted the angel in the backseat fuck him in the next lay-by, there’d be nothing safe about that either. He shifts, presses his dick against the rough fabric of his jeans. A single streetlamp bursts overhead as they fly beneath it, and in the shower of sparks, he sees Cas, bright blue eyes, one hand gripping the back of Dean’s neck like he owns him.

They make it to the motel somewhere round two in the morning. Seeing Cas properly for the first time since he kissed him is a freaking test. It starts to rain as they haul their bags out the trunk, and Cas has done nothing to fix his shirt, where Dean had wrapped his fingers in his collar and claimed him just hours before. He looks a goddamn mess. Dean swallows, slams the car door, wonders if there’s a bar anywhere nearby. Cas maintains his angelic silence as they cross the lot, stumble into the motel reception. Sam stays awake just long enough to check in, scrawl a bunch of sigils on the window, and then collapse on his twin bed, shoes on, dead to the world.

Dean slings his duffel onto the vacant bed. He’d gotten a twin room on autopilot, hadn’t even thought about it. Now it feels weird. He clears his throat, gives himself a shake. Tries to ignore the ache in his throat. God, he needs a drink. Or something.

Cas is stood at the window, gazing out at the blinking neon sign. White Rose Motel.

“Uh, Cas— ” Cas turns, looks at him expectantly. “What are you, uh—”

He was going to ask what Cas was gonna do all night, going to ask if he wanted his own room, hell, maybe angels like their privacy, he doesn’t know. But Cas is gazing at him, throat exposed, and Christ, he doesn’t remember the last time he wanted to fuck someone this badly. Dean glances at Sammy, passed out on the bed, and clears his throat.

“Outside?”

Cas narrows his eyes a fraction, and then nods, the tiniest movement. He closes the space between them, and when he presses his hand to Dean’s shoulder, Dean’s knees almost give way.

***

The air vanishes, twists; rain glitters on the sidewalk; the night fills Dean’s lungs, and he can’t wait, can’t wait another goddamn second. His fists find Cas’s shirt and he seizes him, pulls him close; his head collides with the wall behind him; the pain in his ribs flares like an open wound, and he doesn’t give a damn, doesn’t give a damn about anything. He’s done thinking. Sex is sex, and he’s a freaking cowboy. He needs this.

He can taste Cas’s blood on his tongue, feel Cas's lips against his, rough and punishing and claiming. Mine, mine, mine, and oh god, he wants to die here. Suddenly, Cas’s hand locks onto his wrist like a vice, and he steps back; Dean’s eyes snap up to meet his; strange, blue—

There are unspoken questions in Cas’s eyes, in the persistent frown that quirks his brow. His grip tightens on Dean’s wrist, and he presses Dean back against the wall; he can feel the damp coming through his shirt, feel the rain, soft, on his forehead. Dean can’t remember the last time he was this turned on; he doesn’t want to stop, to think, he just wants Cas—

“Cas, please—” It falls unbidden from his lips, and in the silent seconds that follow it feels like heresy. He’s hard as hell, and the angel at his throat is looking at him like he wants to tear him apart, and god, if that doesn’t turn him on more. Dean finds his voice, chokes out a word.

“Please.”

Cas’s fingers wrap around Dean’s throat, and he can’t tell if he’s about to kiss him, or kill him, or both—

Then Cas kisses him and he moans; a prayer that’s snuffed out by the press of Cas’s mouth against his own and suddenly he’s desperate, starving; his hands find the back of Castiel’s neck and he holds him to him, panting, pressing into Cas’s kiss like he wants to die on the altar of his lips. He gasps into Cas’s mouth, inhaling liquor and salt and copper. Cas shifts against him, open palm against his chest and—

The pain in his ribs flares suddenly, sharp and hot.

“You lied,” Cas whispers. “You’re hurt.”

Dean nods, doesn’t know how he manages it, but he does.

“Ah— yeah. It’s nothing. It’s nothing, Cas.”

He doesn’t want this to be over, he can’t have this be over, not yet. Cas passes a hand over his ribs, gazing at Dean like he’s lost in thought. Dean winces as his hand slides across the break; he can’t help it. Cas’s eyes flicker silver.

“You should let me heal it.”

“Right. Yes. Okay, Cas. Heal it, please— and then—”

“Pray to me,” Cas murmurs.

“Wh— what?”

His eyes are gleaming, hair lit up by the street-lamps, glittering with the fallen rain. He looks fucking otherworldly, divine. He loosens his grip on Dean’s throat, and suddenly he’s full of something Dean doesn’t recognise. All he knows is that he craves it, needs it, dark and bright and strong and holy.

When he falls to his knees, it doesn’t feel anything other than right. He doesn’t question it, doesn’t think. When Cas runs his fingers through his hair, tilts his chin up to the sky, the ache in his chest subsides. The rain continues to fall, and the cold is creeping into his bones, but he doesn’t care. This is different.

He prays. He wants to. He wants Cas to be his, and he wants to be Cas’s, forever. Cas whispers to him softly, voice almost lost in this hiss of the falling rain. He lets him drag his tongue over his cock, lets him taste it, kiss it, and then — once he’s asked and begged and prayed a hundred times — Cas answers his prayer, thrusts his cock between his lips. He tastes like ichor and iron and wine and his fingers wind a little tighter in Dean’s hair. Dean’s never wanted to please someone this badly in his goddamn life. He’s good at sucking cock, he knows he is, but for Cas, he wants to be better than good. He wants Cas to need him, to know him, to never leave him. He runs his tongue down the length of Cas’s cock, wraps his hand around the base. He drags his tongue over the head, slow and rough and teasing. He keeps his eyes on Cas’s. When his cock hits the back of his throat, Dean feels like he’s about to fucking ascend. When Cas pulls him to his feet it feels like rapture. His legs are shaking; he all but collapses against him, his angel, and then Cas’s lips find his and Cas holds him up, pressing softer kisses on him now, sweet and deft and silent.

“Good boy,” he murmurs, and Dean feels lightheaded.

“Yeah?” he manages to breathe, in between Cas’s soft, persistent kisses.

“Yes,” Cas murmurs simply. “That was good,” and Jesus Christ, why does hearing that drive him crazy? Cas’s hand finds the tear in Dean’s ribs, palm like an open flower, and there’s a moment, warmth, and the pain is gone. Dean moans into Cas’s kiss, keening, presses his hips against him. For a moment Cas pulls back; Dean’s left breathless, aching, Cas’s fingers tracing the line of his jaw. Then the air around them rents itself in two, and suddenly Cas’s lips are on him again, but the world is upside down; the wall is gone; the air is closer, drier—

He tries to right himself, get purchase, and realises he’s flat out, sheets beneath his head. Cas’s had is still at his jaw, gentle, kind, and he realises with a lurch that the angel is fucking straddling him. He gasps, pressing up into Cas’s kiss so hard he can feel the bruise it’s going to leave on his lips.

“Where—” he manages to breathe out, the last vestige of his dignity wondering where exactly they are, though right now he’s so turned on he’d gladly beg Cas to fuck him in front of a freaking bar full of people — his dick twitches in his pants at that thought and he thinks he notices Cas’s eyes darken — that’s a thought to explore at a later date —

“An unoccupied room. This motel is not popular,” Cas murmurs, his lips grazing the hollow of Dean’s throat. His hands find Dean’s, loosening his grip on him, and Dean whines in protest; he wants to pull him closer, find some goddamn friction, never let go.

“Quiet,” Cas murmurs. His hands slide along Dean’s wrists, guide them up over his head, press them into the mattress, and Dean’s breath comes out in a little stutter. Cas blinks at him with those fucking weird, cosmic eyes, and then he’s closer still, pressing little butterfly kisses to his neck. Dean tilts his head back to the stars and gasps. The ache in his chest feels like holy fire, and he forgets everything — god, girls, demons, devils. All he can be sure of are the hands on his wrists, the mouth at his throat, the blood on his tongue, the split in his lip.

“Dean,” Cas’s voice vibrates, soft, just by his ear. A shiver runs down his spine; his eyes flutter shut.

“Yeah?”

“Are you sure?” Cas’s weight shifts slightly; Dean opens his eyes.

Cas’s eyes are bright in the shadows; he’s tossed his coat aside. There’s still blood on his shirt, staining the white, patterning his throat. He can see it when Cas looks away, lifts his chin and gazes across the room He shifts beneath him, a little, til his cock is pressing into Cas’s thigh.

“What?”

“Are you sure?” Cas’s gaze meets his, and there’s no challenge, no threat. Dean’s stomach flips over when he recognises the glimmer in his eyes. There’s no challenge because it’s all possession. Quiet, unyielding, simple. As if it’s all there is.

He swallows. “Yes. I’m sure.”

There’s a split second where Cas doesn’t move, only blinks at him, and he grinds his hips up into Cas in frustration, voice coming out in a whine—

“Please.”

And then Cas’s kissing him like he’s about to die. The press of his body against Dean’s is like a blessing, something otherworldly and dangerous and close to god. Dean can’t think, can’t breathe, can only arch up into the angel at his throat and pray, a broken string of words and sounds and promises that tumble from his lips without thought. When Cas lets go his wrists, his hands tangle in Cas’s hair, trace the curve of his jaw, the hollow of his throat. Cas’s shirt is gone, and he jerks his own off over his head, rough and careless, and when Cas’s palm presses against the brand on his shoulder like it’s a prayer, a rite, some secret sacred invocation that only they know, only they will ever know, Dean loses his mind, desperate, aching—

Cas draws back for a split second. His hair is tousled, his skin like marble in the half light. Dean’s heart is hammering like it’s going to leap out of his chest; he gasps, breathes, collapses back onto the bed.

“Cas,” he whispers, hands restless, reaching. “Come back, come back, please.”

He feels Cas’s weight shift, move, and when he opens his eyes Cas is beside him, eyelashes ghosting against his cheek. His lips press softly against Dean’s jaw, just below his ear, and suddenly Dean’s eyes are wet, and he has no idea why. His hands find his belt; he slips free of his jeans, his pants. He knows what he wants, and he doesn’t want to stop, to think. The air is warm against his naked skin but he feels vulnerable, strange; he rolls towards Cas, shields himself against his body.

Cas catches his chin with the pad of his thumb; soft, tender. He traces the sides of his body with the tips of his fingers, and his eyes are dark, brilliant, and Dean’s trembling because this is different, this is different from any guy, any girl, anyone he’s ever been with before. No one has ever looked at him like this before. The way Cas touches him, it’s like he’s the one who’s divine.

Cas presses him gently onto his back with a kiss, reverent, and his hand drifts down, over his stomach, his hips, finds his cock. He drags his fingers along the length of it, slow, playful, and Dean whines into the kiss, pleading. Suddenly his dick is slick, wet, and he moans, twisting in Cas’s hand.

“How—” he gasps, and Cas’s voice is just a breath in his ear.

“I’m an angel, Dean.”

When Cas pushes his legs open, and slips between them — when he trails kisses down Dean’s stomach, runs his tongue down the crease where his thigh meets his hip — when he kisses Dean so hard he draws blood, and then slips his fingers into Dean’s mouth — Dean’s gone. He can feel his own cock leaking against his stomach, so exposed and vulnerable and untouched. He needs this, needs Cas to touch him, hold him, want him. He swears out loud when Cas’s spit slick fingers slide between his asscheeks, tease at his hole. He pushes into his touch, craving more, needing to feel—

And then Cas’s tongue grazes his cock, his thigh, his asshole, and he’s trembling, bucking on the bed beneath him; his hands find Cas’s shoulders and he grabs him, pleading, as Cas’s tongue, hot and wet and obscene, teases at his fluttering hole. Cas’s gaze flicks up to meet his, eyes glittering, lips bruised, the column of his throat stark in the half light, and Dean is suddenly hit by the fact that this is an angel, this is not a man, this is an angel, a soldier of god, a force of nature, divine and unknowable and sacred. Cas slips up over him and presses a kiss against his open mouth, presses his palm against his aching dick, and slowly, agonisingly, pushes his cock inside him.

Dean’s lost. His throat is tipped back to the stars, stars obscured by a plywood and mortar and brick. He rocks onto Cas’s cock, and Cas whispers in his ear; soft, calm, quiet, tender. He moves slowly, gently, like Dean is fragile, sacred. Like he matters. He presses kisses to his lips, his throat, his shoulders as he pushes deeper in, as Dean gasps and presses up to meet him, wanting, always wanting. His hand grips Dean’s cock, thumb flicking lazily over the head, smearing pre-come and Dean could swear he’s enjoying this, toying with him, making him wait. He whimpers beneath him, tries to arch his hips in time with Cas’s lazy, teasing thrusts.

Cas lowers his mouth to Dean’s ear, whispers, his voice rough.

“Wait.”

Dean can’t wait, can’t think about anything but the ache between his thighs, the gentle fingers teasing him, the fact Cas pushed in even further as he whispered wait, bottomed out, flush against Dean’s prostate and just holding him there, not moving. He shakes his head, protests, tries to grind into Cas’s palm, but Cas tuts, sighs, brushes his thumb across his lips.

“I told you to wait.”

“Please, Cas— I can’t wait, I— please—”

Cas’s eyes are bright, searching.

“What do you want?”

“You know, Cas— you—”

“I want you to say it.”

“Please— Cas, please—”

Cas’s gaze flicks down, over his throat, the expanse of his chest, his leaking cock. He shifts, and Dean moans beneath him. His hand comes to meet Dean’s jaw, dragging the pad of his thumb down over his lower lip, gazing as if he’s curious, thoughtful.

“I want you to say it.”

His voice is low and rough and it sends a shiver down Dean’s spine. He’s a mess; he needs this, like he doesn’t remember needing before; and the fact Cas wants him to say it is somehow even better, even more—

“I want you to fuck me. Please. Please.”

Cas doesn’t move, still watching him, as if lost in thought. He twitches his hand a little around Dean’s cock, rubs his thumb over his aching head, and something in Dean snaps, and the words tumble from his lips before he can stop them—

“I need you to fuck me, Cas, I need it, I’m begging you, I need it, I need you, I need you here, please, god, please, Cas, please, please, just fuck me, touch me, make me yours, I can’t—”

And then his words are cut off by Cas’s kiss, hard, rough, dominant; one hand on Dean’s throat, the other like a vice around his leaking cock, and he’s fucking him so hard Dean cries out, sound lost on Cas’s lips. Dean wraps his legs around him, pulls him closer, closer, closer, and Cas’s hand finds his shoulder, palm like fire against Dean’s brand. Dean’s hips stutter and he gasps, his cum hot and wet against his ribs. Cas’s mouth is at his throat, his lips, and then he pulls Dean toward him, Dean’s forehead pressed against him as he comes, head tipped back and moaning, eyes lidded, lips parted, dishevelled and messy and divine and his.

***

He falls asleep in his arms.

There is a split in his lip; Cas brushes it softly with his finger. His healing touch is light, deft.

He moves very little; he doesn’t want to wake Dean.

Sleep. It looks peaceful. The warring emotions that usually colour Dean’s brow have all but faded. For a brief moment, Cas considers closing his eyes; perhaps there is bliss in the wilful dulling of the senses.

But that would mean taking his eyes off Dean.

Anger — unfamiliar, strange — courses through him; he had failed last night. Failed to protect the man who sleeps, now, mercifully whole, in his arms.

He would not make the same mistake again.

Dean turns in his sleep, turns toward him, nestles into Cas’s chest. His eyelashes flutter against him, his breath warm on Cas’s skin.

Cas feels — peaceful. Anger, guilt, joy; the messy milieu of human emotion is startling and strange. But this is different.

He knows this. The ache in his chest, the fire that burns. Faith. It is, perhaps, the only thing he has ever truly known. And for millennia, he had never questioned where to place it.

Dean murmurs in his sleep, and Cas traces his fingers over his chest, sweet and gentle and slow. By morning, there are a hundred Enochian love letters patterned, invisible, onto Dean’s ribs.

The stars fade, and the sun rises, and Cas watches over Dean.

This is faith.

#destiel #deancas #destiel wedding #deancas wedding #dean winchester #cas #castiel #supernatural #bi dean #dean is bi #bi!dean #supernatural fic #spn fic #supernatural meta #destiel is canon #fic #mine

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madyxtothemax · 3 years

Text

The Pit Stop - Part One with @MyArrowBends

Atticus:

-After a few days, the roads and sights began to blur together. Each truck stop was the same. The coffee all tasted the same and the bathrooms were all equally disgusting. I had enjoyed the solitude at first, but was now beginning to get a little stir crazy, and despite having bought a thicker foam for the bed, it still wasn’t the greatest sleep I’d ever had.

As I crossed into California, I found myself craving human interaction, and more important than that, I had decided one way or another I would be sleeping in an actual bed tonight. As I gassed up at another same looking, shitty coffee making gas station, I didn’t bother checking google for any nearby hotels, figuring I’d stop when I grew tired and see what was close at that point.

The hours passed and the sun was inching down toward the horizon with a speed that my van couldn’t seem to match. Dusk had settled and on the horizon I could see a cluster of lights that belonged to a city. I wasn’t sure which one it was, it didn’t matter. I had stopped paying attention to the names at this point since I didn’t really have a destination in mind. I would know when I was ready to stop and until I felt that feeling, I’d keep driving west.

As the city lights grew closer, that same feeling of from earlier in the day returned. I was ready to find a motel for the night, maybe even somewhere I could grab a drink and a greasy burger. The potential for brief human interaction had a grin pulling the corners of my lips up.

Still, I avoided searching something out on my phone, wanting to see what I could find on my own. Exiting off the freeway, and making my way toward the city, my eyes searched the buildings as I passed them by. Disappointingly, nothing much seemed to be open...at least nothing that grabbed my attention or sparked any interest. I wanted to find something local, I wasn’t interested in any kind of franchise. Those places were not geared toward any kind of interaction, speed and efficiency was their purpose.

Finally after a few turns bringing me deeper into the city, I spotted a neon sign. The bright OPEN flashing in the door was the only invitation I needed. Admittedly, I wasn’t paying proper attention because I was still needing to keep an eye on the road, but as I pulled my van over to the sidewalk and looked up at the sign to fully read it, I couldn’t stop my laughter as it filled the quiet around me.

A tattoo shop.

I was not a collector of skin art, even though I liked it, I had never really felt a desire or pull to permanently mark my body with any sort of image. But I could see people inside, and I could go in and look around. I could get that human interaction I was craving even if I had zero intentions of getting a tattoo. Yeah. I could do that.

Twisting the key in the ignition to turn off the engine, I unbuckled my seatbelt and made my way toward the door, noting the time on the door before opening it. I paused to check the time on my phone...they weren’t too far from closing. Perfect. Just enough time to have myself a casual conversation with someone about something I’d never follow through on before finding myself some food and a bed to sleep on.-

Madyx:

<I’d woken with it, the unshakable intuition alerting me that something was on the way. Something for me to attend to. Something significant. Someone to benefit from my unique abilities. Something to shake up the doldrums of a monotonous wave of months.

As the hours in the day had passed like any other with a few window shoppers, bookings and not much more, whatever I had been anticipating hadn’t materialized. My intuition wasn’t normally so off, in fact I momentarily wondered if I’d pissed off the wrong people and lost my privileges. But, nah, I couldn’t shake it, even as the hours ticked down to less than fifteen minutes before the neon went dark.

Having just finished with the people who’d shown up to book a session with Jordan, I was relegated to the idea I’d served as a glorified personal assistant for the day. Hell, I hadn’t even done a single piercing, let alone expressed anything in ink. At least Jordan would be pleased with what I’d lined up for her; a lot of people looking to lose their memories and oh-so-many willing to accept whatever consequences came with those choices.

I had my back turned as the group of three left, the bell chiming their exit. Oddly, the shop didn’t feel empty; I wasn’t alone after all.

Turning, I was unsurprised to see a guy had wandered in just as the others had left. First impression was strong: he looked road weary, like he’d been places, but he wasn’t weighted by fatigue - nope. He wore whatever travels he’d been on with an earnestness. He wasn’t unkempt, but it looked like he hadn’t had a shave in a few days, and there was nothing that could have been done to conceal that he was damn gorgeous. I’d need to see more skin to know if there was any ink hidden under the clothes, and there were no visible piercings… visible being the operative word…

Right.

I detoured my thoughts from veering in the direction of the gutter and noted the feeling that surfaced during the day had morphed into something more tangible.

Well then.

I walked his way, which conveniently enough, was in the direction of the sign that was about to go dark. He, whoever he was, already had an unspoken invitation to stay as long as he liked.>

Hey man, anything I can help you with?

Atticus:

-As I stood at the door, hand gripping the handle while sliding my phone into my back pocket, I looked up in time to see three people headed my way. I swung the door open and held it for them, offering an easy smile as they passed and spoke with an excitement I suddenly realized I wanted to feel. Seeing it on others left me no choice but to notice that I was heavily lacking that type of emotion in my own life. Sure, I had bought my van and felt the excitement and when I hit the road, it was there. But it was surface level excitement.

I wanted to feel the rush of doing something impactful in my life. I still wanted to have some kind of human contact, and while my opinion and lack of desire to ink my skin hadn’t changed in the thirty seconds it took for me to hold a door open and walk inside the shop, I was definitely more open to suggestions.

The guy who was working had his back to me. That was fine, he was busy and I had all the time in the world to wait to be noticed. Rather than doing something obnoxious like clearing my throat, I turned and began to look at the flash on the walls. Each page was neatly framed and hung with obvious care. Not a single one was off kilter. It made me smile. Anyone who paid this much attention to detail truly cared about what they did. I was envious of their passion.

I didn’t even have artwork that had hung on the walls in my office back in New York. Maybe if I had, my attitude toward being stuck behind a desk all day would have improved. Likely not.

As I scanned a page filled with anchors, ships and pinup girls, a voice was directed at me. I had been so lost in my head, I forgot my entire reason for stepping into a shop I had no business being in. Turning my attention on the guy, I paused at his question. Shit. Instant attraction. I couldn’t remember the last time that had ever happened. My dick twitched as if to say, SURPRISE I still work! I felt completely disarmed. A fraud. An imposter. I couldn’t help the laugh that was two parts guilt and one part eagerness.

“...anything I can help you with…”

Was there anything he could help me with? ...yes there certainly was, but I really didn’t want to admit that or what my initial reaction to him had been. My eyes searched his face first and then his gaze as it remained on me. His eyes were warm and welcoming the way my beloved hoodie felt each time I put it on.

I was taking too long to answer but he didn’t seem to mind considering I was one of those assholes who showed up 15 minutes before closing. Remembering my entire reason for coming in here, to have a conversation with someone, I lifted my hand to the frame on the wall I had been looking at and grinned lazily at him, one side slightly higher than the other as I answered his question with one of my own.- Do you know who drew these?

Madyx:

<The closer I got, the better my last call was looking. He appeared to be admiring what he saw on the wall which was a lift to my confidence after a day of nada. I was starting to pick up on the energy he was throwing off, and it was coming through strong. He was rife with a quiet excitement, like he was flirting with epiphanies and on the edge of taking chances. I was feeling it on a vibration much higher than my norm. Instant clarity. I relaxed into myself after his arrival helped me shake that unrequited anticipation I’d battled all day.

When his eyes flicked off the art on the wall to me, I was ill prepared. His steel-blue irises were rimmed in navy, and subtly backlit; his gaze flecked with mischief. The cut of his jaw was a visual temptation outfitted with an infuriatingly attractive amount of scruff. His laugh broke me out of my preoccupation. It was telling, but only thanks to my extra sensory skills.

His grin though… that was what slayed me where I stood. Crooked and slow, even stretched his lips were full and fetching. Literally, I couldn’t have hand-picked the features of my non-type type more perfectly. He was exactly what I liked in a guy, at least physically.

The lift of his hand to indicate the frame on the wall brought up my stare. A confident grin preceded my answer.>

That would be me. But those are some of my more generic samples. I’ve got a book you can check if you’re in the market. Unless you’ve already got something specific in mind?

Atticus:

-The weight of this guy’s stare left me feeling some kind of way. At first, I thought I might be getting one of those he’s into you vibes, but then he answered my question and doubt began to creep back in. Maybe he was one of those people who were far too perceptive and he could smell the scent of wannabe all over me.

No, I didn’t have anything in mind. I wasn’t interested in getting a tattoo, which was how I felt before I opened the door. I just wanted to have a conversation. Seemed the only way for me to do that without him getting annoyed that I was wasting his time so close to the end of the day was to keep looking at his work. I could do that, wanted to, actually.

I shook my head, answering as honestly and non-committal as possible as his gaze hit me with a pointed once over. All right. I knew that look. I had given it out a time or two myself. I felt more confident as I found my voice again.-

No. I don’t have anything specific in mind. I’m not exactly the type to just fill my skin with ink. -I paused and considered how my words sounded then quickly added to it so as not to insult the guy who clearly had no problem filling his own skin with ink which I suddenly wanted to check out every bit of.- I mean, not without research, that is. I’d love to see your book.

-As he guided me to where a few different books sat on top of the glass countertop, I noticed each one had a different name on the spine. The one he gave me said Madyx. I grinned at him again and flipped open the cover. There were pages of photos of tattoos done on people. Some pages had drawings, too, and I took my time looking at each one. The silence between us was comfortable and easy. When my eyes landed on a particularly colourful image that took up someone’s entire back I paused to study it.- Wow. This one must have taken quite a while. Your work is incredible, Madyx.

-I chanced a glance his way as I said his name so he knew I wasn’t just blowing smoke up his ass, before looking back down and flipping another page. I was beginning to feel like I was leading him on knowing I wasn’t going to be in town long enough to commit any kind of time like that, even if I did want ink. Which in the three minutes since I last asked myself, still hadn’t changed. I couldn’t pull the trigger on something that permanent. Plus, a tattoo that large would have taken more than one session, I knew that much. As I shifted from foot to foot, trying to figure out how to let him know I was sorry to have wasted his time, the light caught something below the glass counter. It was a showcase of sorts filled with what I assumed was body jewelry. My stomach lurched and adrenaline surged through my veins. I’d always been interested in getting a piercing, maybe...it was far less permanent than ink and wouldn’t take even a fraction of time.-

Do you only do tattoos? -Sliding the book to the side a little, I checked out the display of hardware with more than the curious interest I had previously given to his artwork.-

Madyx:

<Gorgeous seemed to be stalling. I sensed a reluctance I couldn’t quite define. I was starting to think it was definitely his first time, or maybe he was just feeling out the idea. BULLSEYE. He admitted as much by answering that he wasn’t the type to fill his skin with ink, but I wasn’t offended, nope. His eyes seemed to reflexively land on my own collection of pieces, and I wanted to invite him to gawk with those blues all he wanted.

I didn’t care if he didn’t want any work only that it might end up in him leaving sooner rather than later. I was not down with that. I almost missed when he caught his self-perceived fuck up, but was nearly punch-drunk when he took me up on the offer to check out my book. Normally I wouldn’t waste someone’s time if they weren’t actually intent on letting me scratch my artistic itch, but he didn’t seem in a hurry to leave and, duh, same page.

I handed off the book and he seemed to be truly checking it out. There was an excitement for me, one I hadn’t quite tasted. It was a thousand flavors, custom made...meant for me. Yeah, this was hitting way below the epidermis, into the bone, and below the belt, too. When he stopped on the page he did, my gut twisted in the best way, he just so happened to land on the favorite piece I’d ever laid down in ink. It had been inspired by Klimt’s “The Kiss” per the patron’s request, but with several liberties worked into the artistic elements. Instead of an obscure male and female, it was clearly two males. It had morphed from a symbolist piece to something more sci-fi and steampunk. There were three dimensional aspects and an inordinate amount of intricate details, like any provoking piece, it begged look after look. In total it had taken 36 hours in six sessions. I would have got lost thinking about it if something else hadn’t caught my attention - my name. The intention in his tone was unmistakable. Now we were getting somewhere.

I didn’t even care that we didn’t discuss that tatt he’d stopped on, it was logged into the distant past when his attention shifted to the display of body jewelry. I walked to the opposite side of the counter, light shining up from the backlit case, we were closer to face to face and hell-to-the-yes; I saw the change in his posture. We were REALLY getting somewhere.

I handle the piercings, too. <clearing the space of the books for the full view> But before we get to that, we need to level the playing field. Got a name or should I just call you gorgeous?

Atticus:

-Generally speaking, I was not always very quick to pick up the cues when someone was flirting with me. It usually took a couple of are they or aren’t they moments before I caught on and then properly joined in on the exchange of the flirting game. Tonight it only took me two of those moments. First when I caught sight of him looking me over and then again, just now when he called me gorgeous.

My grin at Madyx was instant and interested as I answered, holding out my hand to him for a shake, as proper dudes do.- Atticus.

-When his hand slid into mine, I gave it a solid squeeze, and chanced a light brush of my thumb over the back of his before releasing it. His hand was warm and slightly rough on the palm, not at all unpleasant, the kind of hand that knew how to do hard work and wasn’t afraid of it. Not at all like my paper-pushing, then couch lazing hands. The most work mine had been doing lately had been flicking a signal indicator for left and right.

As I returned my attention back to the display of body jewelry, I briefly thought about the other places I might enjoy the rough grip of his hands and damn near groaned. My dick was more than on board and before I could pitch any kind of tents of embarrassment, I considered piercing the damn thing just to get it to go back down. As far as ideas one might think about to initiate a cooling down effect on their body, this one should have worked for bringing my semi back to completely flaccid. Should have.

It didn’t.

The more I imagined Madyx jamming a needle through my most sensitive flesh, the more my pulse quickened and the more I discovered that I liked the idea. Fuck. Guess my body had decided for me. I now only needed to man up and tell the guy what I wanted. Vocalization time. If I couldn’t ask for the damn piercing, I did not deserve to have his hands on me, and that, judging by the sinking pit my stomach had just become was not at all what I wanted.

Given how everything else I had done since rolling into this town has been on impulse decision making, I let my mouth run without much consultation with my brain, and hoped for the best.-

I’d like to be handled. -Welp. That was a wide open innuendo of his own words that couldn’t be taken back now. Guess I wasn’t going with my usual subtle approach, then again, nothing about this encounter was close to my usual.- A piercing, maybe two? Do you have time tonight? I noticed the sign said you were closing right away. I can always come back tomorrow if you need to close up and get out of here...

-I wouldn’t keep him if he had somewhere else to be, but I really didn’t want to wait until tomorrow, I was too afraid of losing my nerve or even worse, waking up having decided I suddenly wanted an entire back piece devoted to body piercings. I shuddered at that particular thought before shaking my head, waiting to see if he was game for some over time before I even broached the topic of where I wanted him to pierce me.-

Madyx:

<There was the grin again, but this one drew me in like it was baited with something addictive. I wanted a taste. I also wanted to hear him say my name again, that was until he told me his.

Atticus.

As if I wasn’t already in deep shit with the grin, he had to go and share a name with one of my favorite literary characters. I wanted to roll it around in my brain on a loop, then say it out loud so I could see how it would feel in the slide off my tongue. I swallowed thickly and dropped my hand into the one he offered for a shake, setting off a chain reaction I had in no way expected.

Our hands fit like they belonged to each other, his warmth matched mine but his skin was smoother, more pliant. My eyes hit his just as I felt the subtle stroke of his thumb on mine. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end, and an electrifying buzz scaled my spine, then split and radiated north, east, south and west. My heart started to race in an erratic beat against my rib cage. When heat balled in my gut and prickled along the underside of my dick, it finally registered what was going on. Pleasure had always been my gift, but I had only played delivery boy and spectator so I hadn’t immediately recognized my receptivity. And it was specifically something about him…. I could feel his desire commingling with mine, the energy and tension between us behaving like a magnet...SNAP.

Shit. For the first time in my life I was on the other side of the glass I’d always looked through. He was human, it shouldn’t be possible, but his singular, innocent touch had been undeniably thrill inducing. My mind and body were both fully engaged. If it wasn’t for the loss of his hand and his next words, I probably would have stood there in silence like a mooning asshat…. Lost in his eyes and all that.

But, HELLO, he wanted to be handled. I crossed my arms casually over my chest and couldn’t suppress the sideways smirk that came on quick. I’d handle him all he wanted, and with curiosity layering on top of the attraction to him, I wasn’t going to be shy.

I kept getting hit with solid signals from him, they were unlike anything I’d ever felt, and somehow I knew he was also outside of his norm, but completely natural. My attention perked when he brought up piercings and something about coming back tomorrow.

Time to perish that thought.

Shaking my head, I dropped my hands in a wide sprawl on the display case, leaning towards him.>

I’ve got the time and my place is just upstairs. So what do you want, Atticus? <The question was meant to be overt and open ended. And if I loved learning his name… saying it packed a thousand times the punch.> And for the record, I’d love to handle you. <It was shameless and I was not at all sorry.>

Atticus:

-He lived upstairs...I laughed at the immediate thoughts that came to mind then shook my head slowly, speaking quickly before he could get any kind of insulted.-

Seems for the moment we are neighbours, Madyx. -The hand that had just held his, because of course I would now be differentiating my hands by whether or not they had touched him, lifted and I thumbed over my shoulder to my van parked out front. As his eyes moved to where I had indicated, I stared at the way his lips curved up at the corners and my fingers twitched at my sides wanting nothing more than to touch him again.

Since it was generally frowned upon to yank a guy I’d just met over the counter and kiss him without giving him any kind of forewarning or chance to stop me, I cleared my throat and attempted to redirect my wayward thoughts back to what we had been talking about. He’d asked me a question and the proper thing to do was answer it. What did I want?

I knew what I wanted… HIM. But that wasn’t what he’d been asking no matter HOW suggestive his voice had sounded to my ears.

In my early twenties I had looked into piercings, researched all the types and varieties a guy could get as a means of using the knowledge to impress this one chick I had liked when I overheard her talking about how hot guys who had them were. It even worked, up to a point. Turned out, simply knowing about piercings was much different than actually having them, and when she discovered I didn’t actually have any, her interest in me wavered and she quickly moved on. At that point, I didn’t see the need to get anything done since I had started out wanting to impress her, my intentions had been shallow, and lacked the intent to follow through. But now...now, my intentions were less fueled with wanting to impress someone I was attracted to and more about self-discovery.

Tonight, the idea of getting a piercing made me feel more alive than I had in years. It was the right reason to pull the trigger on this. The gut churning excitement was the same I felt when I had called the number on the FOR SALE sign that had been hanging on the window the day I decided to buy my van. I was immediately grateful to the chick of my early twenties for having inspired me to do all that research, even if her rejection had been a blow to my fragile, immature ego.

Was I being impulsive now? Absolutely. But I already knew I wouldn’t regret this which was why without any uncertainty colouring my voice, my gaze found Madyx’s and I grinned confidently as I told him exactly what I wanted.-

I’d like the first two rungs of Jacob’s Ladder.

-I knew what I was asking for, and I hoped like hell the nickname for frenum piercings hadn’t changed in the years since I had done all that research. If it had, I fully expected him to laugh in my face and tell me to get my wannabe ass the hell out. I held my breath, and counted the thuds of my pulse as they wooshed in my ears feeling less and less confident in my answer as the seconds passed by that it took him to speak.-

Madyx:

<There were several impulsive words trying to fly off my tongue, but I was biding my time. I glanced past him when he indicated he was my neighbor, noting the tell tale silhouette of his VW bus. Currently nomadic, likely sleeping on a less than comfy mattress in the name of experience. The mentality someone must possess to live on impulse was a turn on, and it worked in my favor. Without knowing it, he was feeding me information and arming my artillery with all kinds of weapons to extend the night…because without explanation, I just wanted more with him. More time. More touch. MORE.

Atticus was setting off signals like flares in a moonless night, the attraction was undeniably mutual. I knew it, but did he? He would, I wasn’t letting him out of my company without shooting my shot. . My sensory grid was lighting up in a bright spectrum of greens, this was something fae only experienced in the rarest of circumstances. I knew what it meant but couldn’t delve into all that mythology on the spot.

Fuck that. I was just going to go with it.

And then he said it. What he wanted.

I knew there was more by the way his eyes flicked over my lips and the unequivocal energy that told me he was using restraint.

My brows shot up in reaction. My grin stretched a little wider. My dick bucked in my jeans clearly in support of this development. I toed the line of professionalism in my day to day operations, but this was beyond that. I couldn’t stop thinking about getting his cock out of his pants. With a casual swipe of my tongue between my lips, I opened the case, pulling out the options so we could get down to business. I knew he wasn’t going to run. I’d bet on it.>

You have piercings I can’t see? Or do I get first honors?

<fingering a few of the barbells to draw his eyes down, even though I loved the heat of them on me> Are you thinking the same size for each? Or a descending size? Grooved balls? <I smirked, couldn’t help it> Smooth?

We’ll get to gauge when I see what we’re working with, Atticus.

Atticus:

-Just as my lungs were beginning to burn for fresh oxygen, he spoke, and I exhaled slowly, controlling myself from letting out a sigh of relief so as not to let on how unsure of myself I had been feeling. There was no laughter or smirking from him that told me I had used an outdated slang. Excellent. I was starting to feel less and less like a poser with each follow up question he asked. He was very clearly taking my request seriously though I was not blind to the less than subtle moments of flirtation he was allowing to slip out with each exchange between us. And I was about to let him see my dick. I almost laughed. I held it in. Barely.

It was my turn to speak. Right, he needed answers. I could give those. With a grin and a rub of my hands together I chuckled as I got the first question squared away.- No. I don’t have any other piercings. You’re my first, Mad.

-My eyes dropped down to the tray of hardware he removed from the display case, ears working overtime to hear each of his rapid fire queries that I was delayed in noticing I had already shortened his name from Madyx to Mad. Both suited him, but if he was about to get face up in my junk without it being sexual I figured it was all right for me to shorten his name without expressed permission, that was how nicknames were supposed to happen anyway.-

Size. I hadn’t really considered that when I went and got overzealous with my request for two piercings. -Laughing low, my eyes moved between the various sizes of barbells he was showing me before making up my mind with ease.-

I want them to be the same. As far as accessories go, I’m a bit of a minimalist and the idea of gradually increasing seems a bit pompous if not arrogant to me. I can only imagine the size needed at the base if I went and got the great idea to complete the ladder. FUCK. -A shudder of regret for future me shot down my spine then ricocheted straight into the tip of my dick. All previous arousal swifty vacated my body and in a hurry. Decision made.- Yeah. definitely the same size. And smooth.

I also know enough from my research ages ago to know I won’t be looking to stretch out the gauge, either. No matter how fast these particular piercings tend to heal, I don’t want my dick to become a branch of a Christmas tree, sagging under the weight of a too heavy ornament. God, can you even imagine?! -The mental images that began to fill my mind had me laughing again.- Otherwise, any other decisions needing made, I will heed to your expert opinion.

Madyx:

<I caught his exhale and something about it felt like he was relieved, as if he’d just confessed a long held desire for the first time, and maybe I wasn’t so off the mark as he answered that I was his first. I didn’t have time for a smart ass remark about popping his cherry because of what he said right after.

Mad. He called me Mad. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, as if a hand had ghosted upwards, calling it to attention. The sensation carried up into my scalp, and even to the tips of my ears. How was it that something so damn simple was so affecting with him? It wasn’t the first time since he walked in my shop, and the longer he stayed, the more I was convinced there was more of it in store.

I took him in as he weighed his options out loud, none of his choices surprising me. I figured he’d want something understated, but I didn’t want to assume out loud and then have him reveal his elaborate plans for a rainbow ladder with alternating barbells down the back of his cock. That would have been a grave mistake!

I laughed my ass off when he referenced a Christmas tree sagging under the weight of a heavy ornament from sizing up the gauges, unable to stop myself.>

If the piercings look like too heavy ornaments and your dick a limp tree after piercings, then someone doesn’t know shit about shit when it comes to proper technique.

You’re in good hands, Atticus. I promise you that. <I flicked my eyes up to hopefully catch his, and thankfully I didn’t miss my target.> First, proper frenum piercings need to hit at the right depth to avoid that unfortunate look. Second, and counterintuitively, because of the skin, we’ll want to use a heavier gauge. With a lighter weight, during the healing process, it would push towards the surface, also resulting in the wrong appearance and a damn inconvenient dangling effect that could lead to unfortunate zipping incidents.

<Laughing, it was a feat to drop my eyes from his as I started selecting options to suit his taste>

You’ll want to consider width dependent on your head. Sight unseen, I think this brushed steel goes with your vibe.

You also have options when it comes to the size of the balls. <smirking, I laid a few out> You don’t have to decide standing here, we’ll bring them over to my station and you can see what looks right to you.

You ready? Need a beer? Something stronger? <My mouth on your cock to ease any nerves? I kept that last one on lockdown, lifting a brow, as I anxiously waited for his reply>

Atticus:

-My previously lost arousal was swiftly returning, and reaching tenting trouble territory when Madyx promised I’d be in good hands. Wouldn’t I just love to be in his hands. I stared at them while he sorted through the barbells, selecting some he thought would work. Long fingers, nimble and sure in their movements. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Now was not the time to learn I had a kink for hands, I’d never felt that way before, maybe they were just his hands I was lusting after, particularly when paired with this whole conversation that felt heavy with an undercurrent of attraction. I couldn’t deny it was flowing in both directions. He was making it pretty obvious, where I would have normally brushed it off as him being friendly in the beginning, I’d have to be blind to not see it now. I was damn sure seeing it.

Things were about to get very awkward if I didn’t get control over my body. I was a magnet drawn to a piece of metal, desperate to move closer, to obtain that satisfying click when the connection was finally made.

What was my life right now?

How could, of all the places I decided to stop on a whim have this guy right here, and have this kind of mutual attraction happen so effortlessly. I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt that way toward someone and have them return it. Years, for sure. Many years. My eye was not exactly particular, it checked out chicks and dudes equally, but it took a lot to make me want a second glance.

Then he had to go and talk about ball sizing while smirking at me. I was starting to suspect he was playing with me. Cat toying with a mouse. Taunting my dick with his innuendo, coaxing it to come out of hiding and play his game. Did I want to? DUH. There was no denying how much I wanted to do just that.

But how does one go from piercing consultation to...Hey, you give me a boner, wanna hook up? Yeah…..no. He was hot, and there was no doubt in my mind that he was hit on all the time. Likely every day. I was certain of it. I didn’t want to be just some lame customer who was looking for an after hours special with the good looking tattoo shop guy.

Could I be any more of a cliche. I prided myself on being nothing of the sort...well I kind of was with my current on trend living in a van and travelling lifestyle. The only points working in my favour there was that I hadn’t documented a single moment of it outside of the memories in my mind. I wasn’t the next Van Guy with the Instagram worthy morning shots overlooking the ocean while holding a cup of coffee and casually displaying my abs for more likes. A thirst trap, I was not. I had higher standards than that.

Questions were being sent my way. Was I ready? What a loaded thing to ask, I laughed and hoped it didn’t sound as choked off to him as it did to my ears.- Yes. I’m ready. I’m good on the beer, for now. I think.

-I laughed again, this time it felt a little looser passing over my lips and I looked down at the tray of jewelry once more then looked back up at him, eyes finding his. Before I could stop myself, words tumbled out without much control over the content or how they’d be received, now was not the time to have shame or embarrassment, I needed to know if the situation in my jeans could be salvaged.- I once read that when getting dick tattoos, you had to be hard the whole time. Is the same true for piercings?

Madyx:

<The energy smacking me around was nothing I’d ever come across. Fuck. It was inexplicably intense, like we were plugged into each other and exchanging a charge. I was still mind-blown by what he was putting out. His subconscious and deep-seated pleasures were stimulating mine, as if they were dependent on one another. When I caught moments of him looking at me, my body reacted and my heart was thumping, driven by the physical and not so physical. I shut-up the internal analysis as much as I could and focused on what was in front of me.

Atticus was definitely anticipating, his excitement laced with nervousness inciting my extra fae receptors into overdrive. He covered pretty well, but his flustered laugh made me want to drop my jeans on the spot. I was stoked he’d declined the drink, especially since he’d slipped with the “for now.” Bingo. That was enough to confirm he wasn’t looking to bolt after I got up and personal with his cock.

The jewelry out, I let my attention land squarely back on him while he entertained what I’d displayed. It gave me a chance to scope the strong, lithe line of his back, and the sharp cut of his scruffed jaw. Hell, with every fresh recognition of his attributes, his hotness was intensifying right along with my craving for a thorough taste. While I had this fuck-me revelation, he was quiet, probably thinking about the dual-punctures I was about to put through his cock. I knew something was coming but the smirk that happened when he asked his question could not be helped.>

I’d like to see someone keep it hard through an entire inking. It only needs to be up for the stencil portion of the tattoo, after that there are creative ways to stretch a dick for the shading. As for you… <pursing my lips then rubbing them together> I’ll get the job done either way, as long as I can pinch the skin, I can pierce it. Generally, there’s more to work with when it’s not at attention. Chew on that and follow me.

<My smirk widened just before I broke eye contact and grabbed the tray of jewelry. Cocking my head in the direction of my station and the chair that would have him slightly reclined when he planted ass in it. I set the tray down and waited for him to get situated while I snapped on my gloves. When I turned around,shit, my eyes went straight south where it was hard to miss what was happening behind his zipper and before I could blow it, my eyes shot back to his. I couldn’t seem to stop doing that. I also couldn’t repress the urge to set him at ease and give him something to grab onto during this prelude to a pierce.

Playing it cool, casual, intent on finessing my approach, I took a seat on my stool, which kept us at eye level with one another. I knew he wanted this in my bones, but I was feeling the nerves from the risk of it. I stepped over the edge and took the cliff dive, the words passing over my lips as I felt a rush from the free fall.> How about you don’t leave after we’re done with business. <It was a question, but the way it came out sounded more like a statement. Unintentional. Organic. Assured. I dropped my eyes to his cock before they raked back up his body...to his suckable throat...his full lips...and back home to his grey-blue eyes.>

Atticus:

-“Chew on that and follow me.” Shit. He knew. He had to. There was no way he couldn’t tell I was already sporting wood. When he turned his back to me and headed to his station, I tried to chill myself the fuck out. Naturally my eyes landed on his ass and the fire that was in my veins ignited to an inferno and I knew there would be no way to get the blood to vacate my cock. This was going to be embarrassing for at least one of us in a couple of moments.

Did it matter though? I was just passing through town, at least that had been the plan when I entered the shop. I came in here looking for a conversation with another person and now I was about to leave with some metal accessories. I shook my head as I took a seat on the chair he wanted me in and took a few deeper breaths trying to slow the thundering of my heart.

I wasn’t shy about my body, never had been, but damn if I wasn’t worried about how he’d react when he took notice that I was more than eager to have his hands on me. Could I explain it away with a joke about being a masochist? Maybe, but it wasn’t true, not by the definition of the word.

As I spent precious time fretting in my mind he had turned around from setting down the tray and...YEP. I watched as Mad got himself an eyeful and like the professional I already figured he was, his gaze moved right past my crotch and straight up to my face.

He didn’t laugh. Or smile or even make a comment. The flirting that had been so natural halted. I didn’t know what to do with that. I was suddenly feeling overheated in my hoodie while worry about insulting him began to cycle through my mind, of course that was when things started to chill out for me in trouser tent town. I reconsidered the whole masochist angle again just to try and break the silence but shook my head to myself. It wouldn’t matter in a day or two or a week. I’d carry on with my drive and he’d have a story to tell his coworkers tomorrow. I was fine being a laughable story.

Before I could find something casual to say, he sucker punched me with that line of staying after he was done and I briefly wondered if he was trying to throw me a bone because he felt sorry for me. I didn’t think so. The tension between us had been palpable from the start. I nodded at his non-question.- Yeah. I’d like that. Though we both know you already know that I would.

-I laughed low as his eyes did another sweep and the previously cooling jets fired right back up again. Jesus. When did I become a thirteen year old boy seeing his first dirty magazine. I reached up behind my neck as I sat forward in the chair and pulled my hoodie off over my head, draping it on the arm of my chair, leaving me in my well worn white tee that was underneath.

There was no point in trying to hide shit, the elephant in the room had been noticed, spoken about and well acknowledged, not to mention Mad was about to shake hands with the trunk. I blew out a breath, feeling all embarrassment sliding away as easily as I had taken off my hoodie, and grinned at him.- Let’s get to you shoving some needles through my family jewels so we can have that beer you mentioned.

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refinedbuffoonery · 4 years

Text

I + Can’t + Lose + You (3)

Read it on A03.

Filler chapters are so hard to write, y’all, so this chapter is real short. The next update will get back to the actual plot, so you’ll get to see Riley and Mama Colton in action. Thank you to all the people who hyped me up to write this one. Your support is invaluable. I love you. :)

*****

Riley and Mama were in the absolute middle of nowhere when the last radio station died. They hadn’t seen any signs of civilization for two hours, and it would be at least two more before they reached Phoenix. Periodically, a car drove by or a tumbleweed rolled across the road, but seeing anything else out the window was asking too much.

Riley let her mind wander as she drove down the long, straight road; now was as good of a time as ever to think through the software she’d spent the week debugging. She’d fixed most of the issues, but the solution to one last error dangled just out of reach.

Heat waves rippled off the road, and Riley snapped her attention back to driving, squinting slightly to see through the wavy mirage.

Mama turned down the volume—just static now anyway. “I’m sorry for the way my son treated you. You certainly did not deserve it.”

Well that was unexpected. Riley appreciated her words, even though she was long over Billy Colton.

“Is there a new man in your life?” Mama asked. Riley blushed, just slightly. “So there is,” she said knowingly. The woman didn’t miss a thing. “Well, who is he?”

Smiling to herself, Riley let her biggest secret spill. “He’s Mac.”

There it was.

She finally admitted it aloud to someone other than Mac, and even that confession didn’t cover the full scope of her feelings. Bozer had figured it out forever ago, but it wasn’t the same as her actually telling someone. A weight lifted off her chest.

“MacGyver.” Mama said his name in that rolling, overly-Southern way she always did. “A lucky man. What makes him so special?”

For some reason, Riley felt safe sharing with Mama, so she did. “He wants to make the world a better place,” she said. “He’s selfless, he doesn’t have an evil bone in his body, and he’s the smartest person I’ve ever met.” She glanced at Mama before continuing. “Mac makes me want to be better. To do good. I—” her words died in her throat.

Mama knew she’d been to prison but not the full story of what landed Riley there. Riley didn’t feel like rehashing the parts of her past she’d rather not think about.

“Go on,” Mama murmured.

Riley flexed her fingers around the steering wheel. “I wasn’t always that way.” That was all she was willing to say on that matter.

“I see. I don’t know who you were before”—before you went to prison, she didn’t need to say—“but the woman driving my truck is a fine human being.” Mama cracked a grin. “You should really meet her.”

Riley snorted. “I should, should I?”

They passed the time in peaceful silence. Riley figured the older woman had fallen asleep, but not long after passing a sign reading sixty miles until Phoenix, she drawled, “Do you trust him?”

Riley frowned at the context-less question. “Trust who?”

Mama shot her an exasperated “who else?” look. “MacGyver! Who else would we be talking about?”

Oh. Riley answered, “I trust him completely.” She’d trusted him from the moment he picked the locks on her handcuffs all those years ago.

“Good. Now, does he trust you?”

Apparently this car ride was now an interrogation. “Yeah.”

“Do you love him?”

“Yes.” Of course she loved him...how could she not?

“Are you in love with him? Those are two very different things, you know.”

Riley did know. “Also yes.”

“And is he in love with you?”

Taking a deep breath of too-warm air, Riley said, “Honestly, I don’t know. I think so?”

Mama narrowed her eyes, evidently realizing Riley’s situation was more complicated than she let on. “What makes you so sure he’s the one for you?”

Riley paused before answering. She had to get this right. Not only to appease Mama, but to know, without a shadow of a doubt, herself.

“Because he’s always there for me,” Riley started. “When shit hits the fan, I can always count on Mac. As long as he’s around, I never have to face stuff alone, and I do the same for him. It’s us against the world, not me against him, you know?” Riley smiled. “I’ve never seen my life flash before my eyes more times than when I’m with him, but he’s somehow still the safest, most trustworthy person I know.”

Riley waited. And waited. And waited.

After taking far too long to think it over, Mama seemed satisfied with Riley’s answers. “I’m glad you found each other.”

*****

Mac needed gas, but with the truck in cruise control he could make it all the way to Indio before he had to stop. In the meantime, he couldn’t blast the radio loud enough to drown out the horrible what-if scenarios running through his head.

He would find Riley and bring her home. That much Mac had reassured himself about—at least enough to stave off the Riley-is-dead nightmare scenarios. He’d get there. Until then, she was plenty capable of holding her own.

But even when he did get her back...god they’d made such a mess. Ever since that damn undercover mission to Monte Carlo, Riley shied away from Mac’s touch. They used to be in each other’s personal space all the time, but now there were walls up between them that never existed before.

Mac wished Monte Carlo had never happened at all.

He hated everything about the way the confession happened—the screaming, blowing their covers, it piggybacking off other emotional trauma. Knowing she reciprocated his feelings was everything, but not when the cost was no relationship and a wide chasm between him and his best friend. He’d rather still not know and wait for the right time for a quiet, loving confession.

The truck dinged as the gas light came on. “Shut up. I know,” he groaned. A green sign read ten miles until Indio.

Are you sure we aren’t making a massive mistake?

We can’t do this.

Mac refused to believe they already blew their chance at happiness. They just needed to try again. At least neither of them had said, “I love you.” They still had that. When the right time finally came—a quiet night at his house, sitting by the firepit, watching the city lights below—they would try again, this time leading with soft expressions and those three little words.

He could try again. He would try again.

As Indio rolled into view, Mac turned off the freeway at the first gas station he saw. It was practically empty, so he started filling the tank and headed inside the convenience store in search of a snack.

He settled for a king-sized Reese’s and an iced green tea. Placing his snacks on the counter, Mac greeted the cashier with the standard, “Hey, how’s it going?” and was caught completely off guard when the scrawny teenage boy’s face lit up and he launched into a story about some pretty woman who fixed the security camera.

Following the kid’s gestures, Mac spied the camera in the far corner, lens smashed out and wiring sticking out the front. He walked deeper into the store to get a closer look. Whoever fixed it wired a cell phone camera into the camera hardware—exactly what he would’ve done.

Wait.

Mac whirled on the cashier. “Can you describe the woman who fixed that?”

The kid—Marco, his nametag read—frowned. “Uhh how do I know you’re not some creepy stalker or something?”

“If the woman who fixed that was the same woman I’m thinking of, I’m her best friend.”

“Just checking, dude!” The kid shrugged. “She was hot, man. Black hair, big eyes, Van Halen shirt. I think she was with her mom.”

Her mom? Mac filed that bit of information away for later, but that was Riley, alright. If she had time to fix a gas station security camera with pieces from her phone, then she was safe, at least for now. Mac breathed a sigh of relief. Her phone died because she broke it. “Thanks, man.”

“No problem.”

Mac raced for his truck. The cashier called after him, but Mac couldn’t hear the kid’s words over the ones repeating in his mind. Riley’s safe.

Riley’s safe.

#beth writes #i+can't+lose+you #macgyver #macriley #macgyver fanfiction

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hypnoticwinter · 4 years

Text

Down the Rabbit Hole part 1

It's five in the afternoon just outside of Corpus Christi and I and my poor old Elantra with the broken AC are stuck in a traffic jam because some dickhead decided he wanted to cut across five lanes of traffic and got mangled by a semi truck. And then the jam’s compounded by all of the damn lookie-looes slowing down to a crawl as they squirm through the two lanes still open, the metaphorical arteries of the gigantic beast that is the United States highway system, trying to get a good look at something gory on the way home.

I'm slowly melting into my seat, barely able to keep my eyes open. I keep glancing over at the water bottle I'd set snugly into the passenger seat, my cupholders being full with spare change and old receipts and little mini bottles of hand sanitizer, but just the way the sun's reflecting off of it makes me sick thinking about how warm the water would be by now.

I'm a few cars back from the wreck now. A police officer, looking sweaty and tired, steps out into the road, stopping traffic to let a couple of paramedics cross. A loud radio ad is playing in the car next to me and I look over. The guy in it looks about as done with this as I feel. I smile to myself, go back to watching the wreck.

The paramedics have stopped now and are talking to the policeman in the middle of the road. He looks annoyed, gestures at the cars ahead of him. One of the paramedics shakes his head and points back towards one of the cars.

The radio ad ends and the throbbing beat of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" comes on and I find myself singing along under my breath without even thinking about it.

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray

South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio...

Another paramedic joins the group in the middle of the highway and then they hustle over to the wreck. The police officer gestures and we move fractionally forwards, then stop again. The asshole in the giant pickup truck ahead of me has decided to stop and watch them peel the door off the crushed sedan like the scab off a fresh cut. I can see something pink and fleshy and hurt-looking inside, where the driver's seat ought to have been, and I look away quickly.

We didn't start the fire

It was always burning since the world's been turning...

I end up meeting the eyes of the guy in the car next to me. He's bobbing his head along to Billy Joel and gives me a somewhat sheepish, embarrassed look. He's balding, looks about forty. A tired, haggard, sweaty face. I roll my eyes and smile at him and he smiles back. Someone behind me honks and I twist backwards and give him the finger, really slam it at him against the dirty rear window. We're rolling forwards so slowly that it's absurd to even honk, just people blowing off steam. I suppose on some level it's equally absurd to give him the finger for it, but whatever.

Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball

ARPANET, Free Tibet, what's in Mystery Flesh Pit?

Buddy Holly, Ben Hur, space monkey, Mafia

Hula hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go...

Wait. What?

Now that we're past the wreck the highway widens out. More lanes open and the guy next to me merges over to the left. Billy Joel's voice disappears into engine noises and honks and the sound of the wind whipping past my open windows, but I still keep thinking about the lyrics I had just mouthed along to.

What the hell is a Mystery Flesh Pit?

I glance over at the phone sitting in its holster on the dash but something about the way the car I’d just past had crunched in on itself like a discarded candy wrapper makes me think better of it. I shift a lane or two to the right, get in line for my exit, and then I'm off the freeway. I make every light on the way to my apartment, all four of them, and it's just enough time that I forget about the line in the song. I jump into the shower and let the cold water run over me for fifteen minutes, which turns into thirty, which turns into forty-five, which turns into an hour.

When I get out I'm shivering but the warm Texas air blowing through my open window wraps me up like a warm hug, and I shrug into a flannel shirt, leave it unbuttoned. I put my cigarette out, leave it crumpled in the ashtray, stifle my coughs. I’m still not used to smoking this much. I eye the half-empty pack laying on the table but I let it alone.

The letter I received yesterday is on the kitchen table where I'd dropped it. The envelope is still on the floor somewhere. I think about going back and reading it again, or going and finding the envelope and throwing it away, but I don't want to. There wouldn’t be a point.

My phone buzzes; I see the name of the contact and let it ring. I don’t want to talk to him.

Outside, down in the courtyard, an old man is taking his dog for a walk. There is a vast darkened array of clouds closing in from the east and it already smells like rain, the wind is carrying it. I might take a walk too, later tonight.

I go back to the dresser and take my shirt off, slip a bra on, and then put the shirt back on. I almost light another cigarette, then I stop myself.

What the hell is Mystery Flesh Pit?

I had almost forgotten. Almost, but not quite. Billy Joel got stuck in my head and while I'd been puttering I'd hummed along until I got to that verse.

I shake my head and go get my laptop, type it into google half-expecting to find a porn site. A few travelogue type posts, a Wikipedia page...I click on that one and get hit with a redirect. Permian Basin Superorganism Containment Area? ("Mystery Flesh Pit" redirects here. For the defunct U.S. National Park, see...)

I read the page, and then I stop. The growing sense of unease I felt while I devoured the Wikipedia article is now almost too much for me to handle.

This can't possibly be real. This has to be a prank or something, some kind of internet joke gone out of control. I click on the link to the National Park and see pictures, too many and too high quality to be faked. It's like something out of a Michael Crichton novel but it's real. It has to be.

The Permian Basin Superorganism (Immanis Collosseus), I read, is a subterranean organism unique to modern biology, being the sole occupant of the Phylum Immanemqa. The organism was discovered by a pilot well drilling crew in 1973; later efforts were made to expose more of the organism through drilling and surface mining explosives. The Permian Basin Superorganism is notable for its immense size, being the largest living animal on the planet, its equally immense age, and for the degree and sophistication of human exploitation concerning the animal, culminating in the opening of a National Park largely within the creature’s body, allowing visitors to descend within the Permian Basin Superorganism and…

I read about gullets and bones and digestion, about an ancient animal of some kind living baked into the stone and earth outside of Gumption, Texas. I read about the sheer enormity of it, I read about how a mining company turned it into a tourist attraction, splitting its throat wide open with metal retaining walls and letting people ride an elevator a thousand feet down into its insides. I read about ballast, some kind of secretion exuded by the creature that acts as a kind of panacea, healing afflictions untouchable by conventional medicine. They made great baths out of the glands that produced it, let people bathe in its diluted aphrodisiac waters. I read, finally, about the 2007 disaster that closed the park, when a pump failed to activate and drowned the thing, making it wake up – god, wake up? – and swallow almost seven hundred people, making it spew caustic vomit so high into the air that there are still pockets of it being found here and there nearly a hundred miles away, burning into the ground and poisoning water tables. And the way they managed to get it to go back to sleep is classified by the US Government. Did they nuke it? Christ, Gumption is only...okay, well, it's about five hundred miles away, so I guess I'm a little less concerned, but, god, this happened in the same state as me and this is only the first time I'm hearing about it. July Fourth, 2007...

I realize after a moment, with a strange little knot in my stomach, that actually, I did hear about it. I wasn't in the state in 2007. It was four years ago, I'd just gotten out of school and I was still in Oklahoma, but I remember my parents telling me about an earthquake at midnight that they'd felt, that woke them up, knocked a couple of things over. I had never known...

I feel a little like I've just woken up and gone to the bathroom and looked outside and all of a sudden the sky is a bright green, and everybody I ask about it just looks at me really strangely and says that it's always been green.

I google my way all over the internet, looking at photos people have taken decades ago on their family trips, hosted on filesharing sites or on ancient GeoCities-era pages. I see smiling families, people in hiking gear, people swimming inside biological hot springs, people digging pitons into great sheer walls of flesh, not minding the blood that gushes out. I see a shaky video someone's taken of their television, of CNN back on the Fourth of July, 2007, I see a vast bloody pit, carved into the great flat nothing of central Texas.

I feel like my head is spinning. I get up, get away from the computer, grab another cigarette and smoke it slowly, standing on the balcony, looking out over the sprawling cityscape in the general direction of Gumption, Texas, or at least where I think it should be. If north is that way, then…

Alright. It's real. There's enough evidence, photographs, videos, spread across so many different web sites that it would be impossible to fake. I look up an old rating list of National Parks, making sure that it's from around 2004 or so, and find Mystery Flesh Pit near the bottom. The tiny two-sentence blurb describes it as "strange," "horrifying," and "easily skippable," so I guess that could also explain why I had never heard of it.

And, of course, the ballast. Some kind of miracle liquid. I read on Wikipedia that they’d tried to synthesize it after July 4th, after the supplies had been cut off, but no matter how molecularly perfect they could make the compound it was so much drossy bathwater, without the power to cure even a hangnail. It has to come straight from the source for it to be any good - who knows why.

There is a slow, anxious curl unwinding in my stomach, and for a moment, I fear the results it may lead me to.

I look at the map I'd opened in another tab again; Gumption, Texas; a tiny little county named after a tiny little town, or so I've heard. Now that I’m thinking about it, I vaguely remember passing through Gumption once, very briefly, during a family road trip back when I was six, but I don't remember much more than that. The only reason I even recognize the name of the town is because at the time I thought it was a funny name and I kept saying it to myself after I'd asked my mom what the word on the sign meant when we drove into town. Welcome to Gumption. Did it have more, perhaps? “Home of the Mystery Flesh Pit?” I don't remember visiting the Mystery Flesh Pit National Park, that's for sure. I think that would have stuck with little six-year-old me.

I eye the scale on the map, use my fingers to estimate the distance from Corpus Christi to Gumption.

It'd be a solid day of driving, seven or eight hours on the road, not counting breaks for food, sleep, restroom. I grimace at the computer screen, then zoom the map out. Lubbock, though...I could take a plane to Lubbock. That'd be, what, like two hours? Maybe? And then rent a car, drive down to Gumption...

I swallow, then laugh at myself. Why bother? I think. Why bother driving down to look at some fences and security guards? It's closed off, the Wikipedia page said, nobody in or out, just some scientists and a sedative plant. The fun stopped when it woke up, back in ‘07.

Flights are cheap. Ninety-nine dollars, ninety-five dollars. I start to type in the address to check my bank balance, then stop, fold the computer closed. I want a cigarette.

On my way out to the window my foot brushes against the envelope I'd left discarded on the floor and again I think of picking it up and putting it away, and again I leave it there. It doesn't really matter.

It'd be a horrible waste of money, probably. And I doubt I'd find anything really meaningful. Even if, you know, I use the excuse of going and looking around so I could write a story on it or something, I don't know if Jim, my editor, would really care that much. From what it seems, Mystery Flesh Pit is ancient history.

I take another look at the sheet of paper sitting on the table, curled over on itself like a dead spider. Fuck it, I think, then repeat myself out loud. I stub out the cigarette and go retrieve my cell phone, look up the phone number for American Airlines out of Corpus Christi airport. Fifteen minutes on hold later I am the proud owner of one business class ticket to Lubbock, Texas, leaving in four hours out of gate nine. I hang up the call and say "fuck it" aloud again because it makes me feel a little better, and then I go pack.

The plane ride is okay. Security was a bear and a half but it always is. I realized from the pleasant-unnerving swooping sensation in my stomach when we took off that it had been long enough since the last time I'd been on a plane that I had forgotten what it feels like. I was lucky to grab a window seat next to a little kid and his father; they didn't bother me as much as I'd expected. Once he turned to me to show me something on the handheld video game he was playing but his father quickly intercepted him and apologized to me; I was a little put out, honestly, I would have wanted to look at it. I'd forgotten to stick a book in my carry-on so I had been stuck staring out the window, and about a half hour in the plane had angled in such a way that the setting sun was glaring me right in the face and daring me to enjoy the scenery, so I did the most sensible thing I could and closed the shutter and tried to fall asleep. I think I managed to do so about fifteen minutes before we landed, which lead to me letting out a rather embarrassing yelp when the landing jolted me awake. The kid and his dad looked at me and I blushed, mentally kicking myself for blushing, but I smiled at them and shrugged and said that I'd fallen asleep and we had a laugh about it.

Lubbock is alright, I guess, if you don’t look at it too closely or stay too long. I rent a car at the airport and drive into town, and consider driving to Gumption that night, but I decide after some deliberation that it'll be better to do a little reconnaissance here first, if I really am going to make a story out of this. Am I? I've been treating that as my excuse so far and yeah, I brought my voice recorder and my camcorder and my DSLR and plenty of memory cards and extra batteries...but I guess I hadn't really taken it seriously.

The city's very alive at night, more so, it seems to me, than Corpus Christi, but I also don't get out very much back home, so maybe my perception is skewed. Everywhere I look there are clubs and shows and bars and things, and then, as I pass into the seedier areas, huddled groups of people spotted here and there. I imagine they’re eying me as I drive past and I tamp down the little curl of fear rising in my stomach.

I find a Motel 6 and then I try to find a Waffle House, but seemingly there aren’t any in Lubbock. I settle for someplace called The Pancake House, and then in a couple of hours I feel better, and then a couple of hours after that I finally manage to fall asleep.

I wake up having slept like the dead. I think about going someplace for breakfast but think better of it after I sit up too quickly and my stomach gives an uneasy lurch in protest. I get dressed leisurely – it is my weekend, after all. For a moment I even manage to fantasize that I'll be able to catch a flight home in time to make it to work on Monday but then I laugh at myself, which I seem to be doing quite a lot of lately.

Barely a hundred miles away, Mystery Flesh Pit is waiting for me. I don't know what I'll find there – personally, I feel rather certain it'll be a hell of a let-down – but it feels nice to have a purpose for once, to feel as though my life is being put to some kind of use other than to see how many cigarettes I can smoke in a single day and still retain some dignity.

It's nice to not have to think.

I take a breath and throw some clothes on and get started on the hard part.

* * *

The guy mopping the floor at the bus stop:

"Excuse me, sir? Do you know anything about the Mystery Flesh Pit Disaster of 2007?"

"The what?"

Businessman on the street, approached while tying his shoes:

"Excuse me, sir? I'm doing some research on the Mystery Flesh Pit disast –"

"I'm sorry, lady, I don't have any money."

Lady at the counter of the pharmacy:

"Excuse me, ma'am? I'm trying to find out some information on the Mystery Flesh Pit, do you have a moment to talk about it?"

"Sure, honey, but I'm afraid I don't know that much about it. That was back in, what, 2003? 2004?"

"2007, actually. Did you ever happen to visit while the park was still operating?"

"It was a park? I just remember something about some sort of tunnel collapse."

"Right. Thanks for your time."

Guy at the 7-11, asked while filling up the tank on my car next to him:

"Hey, dude, you know anything about the Mystery Flesh Pit?"

"Went there once when I was a kid. Pretty cool. Why?"

"I'm a reporter, doing a story on it. You remember the disaster that closed it down?"

"It's closed now? That's lame. What happened?"

"Thing woke up and ate everybody."

"For real?"

"Yeah. I've been asking around, like nobody's heard about it. Kind of surprising."

He taps his finger to his chin. "You know," he says thoughtfully, "it has been like five years since then."

"Four years."

"Even so. People don't have any kind of attention span any more."

His pump clicks off and so does our conversation.

Yeah, alright, maybe it isn't a very representative group, but it seems like nobody cares. Is that reasonable? Well...seven hundred plus people died, most in pretty gruesome ways, according to Wikipedia. Then there were the, god, the thousand or ten-thousand-plus people affected by the vomit and ejecta scattered hundreds of miles away. I’m not sure. You'd expect that apathy from the rest of the nation, maybe, I don't know why somebody in Arkansas or Kentucky or Illinois or wherever would give a fuck if they didn't personally know somebody who was affected, but here? Just a hundred miles from the place or so?

Maybe they did a really good job of cleaning up the cities, maybe it's only the little towns and places where the legacy of it has really clung on. I know there has to be a story, somebody who was there, somebody who saw it. That jerky camcorder video of CNN is a start, but something real, something visceral, in the words of a survivor...

That was the one thing I didn’t find much of. No memoirs, no autobiographies, just a few mentions here and there but nothing like a back-to-front story of what that night was like. That is what I’m really after.

I put my cigarette out in one of those trashcan-cum-ashtrays that dot the corners of every city I've ever been to, Lubbock no exception. I get in the rental car and again forget that it has crank windows instead of buttons. "To the library, and step on it," I giggle to myself as I pull out into traffic. I feel a little lightheaded and I remember that I never bothered to eat anything.

Perusal of the newspaper archives at the Mahon Public Library downtown confirmed what I'd already assumed – that there was no big government coverup, there was no conspiracy of that sort. The disaster at the Mystery Flesh Pit was capital-letter Very Big News for about a month, back in 2007, at least in the area. The stories towards the end of the month cast a little light on why it didn't last, though – it wasn't ongoing, it was just sort of a one-and-done thing. Yeah, finding the caustic vomit everywhere kicked up another stink a week or so later but the Powers That Be seemed to get that under control fairly quickly, at least in more populated areas. After that there were grumblings about disclosure and fault and blame and all that, and quite a few articles about Anodyne Mining or whoever going bankrupt but by the end of the month, aside from a few overly sentimental memorial pieces dedicated to delicately sidestepping the exact causes of death of the people they were memorializing, the news had moved on.

A librarian pokes around the corner with a cart and smiles at me; I smile back at her. She's young, pretty, long skirt, dark eyes. I scoot forward so she can pass behind me. I read on for a while, the faint swish of her skirt and the slim sliding sound of books going back into shelves registering dimly and pleasantly in the back of my mind. I put the paper down and stretch a little, and then I notice she's glancing over at me. I smile at her again.

"Doing some research?" she asks, and I nod.

"Yes," I say. "I'm a reporter for a paper in Corpus Christi and I'm doing a story on the Mystery Flesh Pit. Have you heard of it?"

As soon as the words pass my lips there's something dark and guarded lurking in her eyes that makes me perk my ears up. She waits a couple of seconds before she answers, clearly thinking of what to say, of how much to tell me. I mention, after a moment, that I'm surprised that so few people here in Lubbock seem to really remember it or care about it, and she nods, leans up against her cart.

"It was a big deal for a while," she says, gesturing to the stack of papers next to me, "but after that I guess it just wasn't exciting any more. The only people who really remember it are out in all the small towns where it really affected them. Here, in Lubbock, they just had vans working overtime to clean everything up and then it was easy to forget about. Every now and then I hear about them finding another pile of that vomit somewhere just...festering away out there in the desert."

"Were you there?"

"No," she says, "but my brother was."

"I'm sorry," I tell her. I want to reach out and touch her or something but I don't know if she'd appreciate it, so instead I keep my sympathy subdued. "Is he - ?"

"No, no," she says quickly, "he's alright. He was a park ranger there, he just…happened to be working that night. He, ah...it really fucked him up for a while," she says finally, giving me a grimace. "We haven't talked in a long time."

"I'm sorry," I say again. "That must have been hard, for both of you."

"Yeah," she says, cutting her glance downwards. "He always said some strange things about the disaster, real Alex Jones type stuff. But he just couldn't, you know, move on at all. We got in a big fight about it and, well, that was that."

I wonder what to say for a moment before I cross my legs, set the newspapers aside. "You must have gone there, then, while it was still operating."

"Yes, plenty of times."

"What was it like?"

She laughs softly. "God, that's such a...like, where do I even begin, you know? Have you been to many other National Parks?"

"A few," I tell her. "Not as many as I'd have liked. Crater Lake, Devil's Tower, Badlands, Petrified Forest..."

She laughs. "Real Midwest girl, aren't you?"

"Hey, Crater Lake is in Oregon, that's not the Midwest."

"I wasn't knocking it. Um. Well, it wasn't like any other park you've ever been to, I can guarantee that. It was like, you drive up to it and you park and you walk up these stairs to get to the main observatory building, and you get in there and you look down and there's just...skin. In a hole in the ground. It was extremely disconcerting. From that distance it didn't look real, it looked like it was plasticine or something, like it was a model. And there was something...I don't know, kind of lewd about it?"

"Lewd?"

"Yeah. The way they were spreading it open with these giant metal, like, flanges or whatever, and how it was all raw and pink around the opening...Freud would have had a field day with it. Made you feel like you were watching a gynecological exam."

"I still kind of can't believe they found this thing and thought opening a theme park was the best thing to do with it."

"It was the 70s, I guess." she shrugs. "Place is old, you know. Anyway, once you actually got down into it, it was...it was an experience. You rode this giant elevator down and they had a massive visitor center something like 1200 feet down inside the thing's throat, and you could look out the windows and see all this flesh outside. It was honestly like something out of a movie, it was so surreal. I went there a bunch of times with my brother cause he got an employee discount and I could get in for five dollars and I saw at least ten people have panic attacks and hyperventilate."

I think about my next question for a moment. "Would you say overall that it was, you know, a negative thing? Like, the park on the whole."

"No, absolutely not."

"Why's that?"

She licks her lips. "I think that it's really easy to forget how small we are. We've done all these great things, we've built civilizations, we've put people on the moon, we're exploring the bottom of the ocean, I think humanity in general likes to think that we have everything figured out." She shrugs. "The Mystery Flesh Pit is a really good reminder that we know basically nothing. I mean, they were studying it but they knew practically nothing about it, not how big it was, not whether there were more creatures like it elsewhere in the world, not where it came from, not even if it was awake or if it could move or what the thing looked like as a whole. I think what they ended up doing with it was stupid as hell, but as far as the experience of actually going down inside of it and walking around on a trail and, I don't know, watching macrobacteria roll past outside the fence or seeing something really weird moving around down there and seeing the park ranger guiding you not know what it is either, that's an experience I genuinely wish everybody got to have. It'll change your life."

"How did it change yours?"

She laughs. "Besides, you know, everything with the disaster and my brother and all that shit? Just going down there really made me realize who I was."

"How, exactly?"

She shakes her head. "Like I said, I figured out just how small I was and how – I don't know, how insignificant we really are. These days whenever I get worried or bothered or I stress out over something I think about standing there in the elevator looking up through the glass ceiling and watching the light get smaller and dimmer, like I was falling into a bottomless pit, and I find peace."

"Seems like an odd way to find peace."

"Different strokes, right? Anyway. I really ought to put these books away. Was there anything else you wanted to know?"

I think about it for a moment, then shrug. "I'm planning on heading down to Gumption tomorrow, aside from the pit itself is there anything else I ought to check out?"

She lets out a low whistle. "I think you're going to be very disappointed. They don't let anybody go to the Pit any more, it's all sealed off, has been for years. And Gumption, well...that town has seen better days. I'll give you a tip, though, even though maybe I shouldn't. Look for my brother there, I know he still lives in town. I can't give you his number or his address, unfortunately, because I don't have them any more, but I know for a fact that he works at the only gas station in town, a 7/11, so ask around there and you'll be able to find him. His name's Peter; I'd tell you to tell him I sent you but I kind of get the feeling that might not get you very far."

I thank her for the tip and set the newspapers aside. If I head out tonight I might be able to get some good shots of the fence around Mystery Flesh Pit. I think of it, of the sunset, then discard the thought. Forget it. I'll need a whole day to really dig into it, I think. And more's the better. I have plenty of batteries, I have plenty of storage. Easy girl, there's no rush. Assuming they let me just walk up and start filming, but if I really hype myself up I can half-believe I could talk my way into at least getting some shots of the fence, at the very least.

"Oh, and one last thing."

I blink, look back up at her. She has a faint smile on her face, probably from watching me zone out, that fades quickly. "Don't stay in Gumption too long."

* * *

The drive down to Gumption is dusty and hot and boring. I get about halfway before I realize I'm not driving my poor old Hyundai, I'm driving a rental car, and that it has a functional air conditioner, and then I feel very silly, for though the wind certainly felt nice on the whole I would have much rather just rolled the windows up and sat in the cool air. I see a grand total of four other cars, all coming from Gumption, on the two-hour drive. It's mostly a straight shot but my phone tells me to take a county road that turns into just a dirt track towards the end that, after a little meandering, plops me out onto a back street of Gumption, Texas.

The research I'd done suggests that at one point Gumption had been a bustling little town, fuelled by the Pit’s tourist draw, and initially its size would indicate that it still is. But as I drove slowly through the empty streets, the general air of disrepair and decay became more and more apparent. I see a couple abandoned houses, and not the foreclosed sort with realtor's signs out front, but straight-up shattered-glass, boarded-windows, holes-in-the-roofs abandoned. The ones that weren't just looked sad, like no one was taking care of them properly. The cars parked on the street are all at least five or six years old, as best as I can tell. I see only two people out and about while I'm driving around at 15 miles an hour, getting some video footage, cruising down the middle of the road, eyes flicking between the empty street ahead and the screen on my camera. One, a youngish-looking black guy, keeps his head down and doesn't look at me, and the other, an old man in a wifebeater mowing his lawn, stares at me all the way down the street, until I turn the corner and pull onto the main road.

There's the 7/11. I'm tempted to head to it right away but I refrain, look for a diner or something, but the ones around look about as welcoming as the rest of the place. There's a McDonald's but it's so small it doesn't even have a drive-through, which is something I'd never seen before. There's a drug store and a liquor store and one of those tiny little storefront churches, something something Starry Wisdom. I think about going to McDonald's but instead I pull a u-turn and head back to the gas station. The clerk, a haggard-looking woman, doesn't look up from her magazine when I walk in. I wander to the back and grab a Coke out of the fridge unit. The credit-card reader is broken so I have to dig around in my wallet and find some bills. The entire exchange continues without any speech at all until I work up my nerve and lick my lips and ask her if there's a hotel around here somewhere.

She looks at me for a few moments and then jerks her head towards the road. Her voice sounds like a frog croaking. "There's a motel down the road a ways. When you pull out take a left and turn at Third street."

"Thanks."

"No problem."

"By the way."

"Yeah?"

"Can you tell me when Peter works?"

I had to think for a moment to remember his name. I have it written down in a notebook but it's out in the car. Her eyes flash a little more lively. "Who's asking?"

I think of what to say for a moment before I shrug. "A friend."

For a moment I think she's going to tell me to fuck off, but something in my face must have convinced her. "He's off today. Come in tomorrow at eight or nine at night, he'll be here. He works graveyard most days."

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it."

I walk out the door and the heat hits me like a thrown punch. I blow a breath out and lean up against the rough cinderblock edge of the gas station building and drink my Coke.

It's four in the afternoon and it'll take me maybe half an hour to drive down to the Mystery Flesh Pit. It'll be cooler, too, in the evening, and if this town is any indication I doubt there'll be much of a line. I wonder where the people who work there live; maybe they have a dormitory there or something. Clearly they don't live here. Maybe there's some little patch of suburbs somewhere, behind those hills over there, perhaps, where all the people are, but it's four in the afternoon and I've seen a grand total of three other cars driving around, so maybe not.

The guy at the motel gives me a nicer greeting than the lady at the 7-11 did, although not by much; at least I get a few dirty molars of a smile out of him as he hands me the key to my room. I had to wake him up from his nap at the front desk in order to get the room to begin with, and though I tried to do so as gently as I could he still started and almost fell out of his chair.

"Here for the Pit?" he asks as I'm about to leave, and I turn back, glance at him.

"Yeah," I say after a moment. "Just going to see what's there now."

"You're heading over now?"

"Yes."

"Huh," he grunts after a moment. "Most of you folks don't do that 'till dark."

I frown. "Us folks?"

"You know, you..." his eyes roam over my face and his mouth drops open very slightly. "Oh," he says heavily. "Never mind."

"What?"

"Nothing, ma'am. Now if you'll excuse me –"

"Wait, hang on –"

"You have a good day now, ma'am."

He disappears into the back room and I stand there, glaring at the door as it swings shut, key still looped around my finger. I have half a mind to vault the desk and head back there and demand to know what the hell he was talking about, but I take a deep breath and let it out. What could he have meant? Maybe he thinks I work over at the Flesh Pit or something, although that wouldn't explain why they only head over after dark...that doesn't make sense. Tourists, maybe? But that doesn't make sense either.

I chew on my lip for a little while and then shake my head, push the door open and let the heat swallow me up again. There's no sense brooding on it; the only thing to do is to move forward.

* * *

The drive down to Mystery Flesh Pit is, if it were possible, even hotter and more boring than the drive down to Gumption. The heat is pounding on the window and begging me to let it in so I turn up the AC, trying to drown it out, but it's no use. No matter where I put my arm the sun is pouring down on me, and if I leave it still for more than a moment I get that unpleasant prickling sensation that tells me I'm starting to burn already. I've already got a pretty terrible driver's tan from the ride down but this is just overkill.

No cars pass me on the long road that my phone assures me is the way to the Permian Basin Superorganism Containment Corporation. It's only wide enough for one so if someone did come by someone's going off the road. Hopefully not me, as this rental Toyota is not built for that sort of thing. It's already been complaining at me creakily and jostling me around. I'll have to get it a car wash or something when I get back to Lubbock, whenever that ends up being. I didn't read over the rental contract very closely but I'm pretty sure if I bring it back this dusty there's some kind of fee.

You can see the outline of the plant, growing larger up ahead. It looks unassuming, exactly like any other indecipherable cluster of industrial buildings you'd see along the side of the highway, all greyish-white, tubes and pipes and tanks and corrugation, warning signs and fences and barbed wire, power lines and scaffolding and light poles, all clustering out of the ground like mushrooms after a cold rain. The guard in the gatehouse is watching me as I pull up, but I turn off the road, turning the car around so I'll be ready to go whenever I need to, well away from the road so anyone trying to get in or out can get by without any trouble.

The sign on the fence broadly proclaims that this is the site of the Permian Basin Recovery and Superorganism Containment Corporation, and says that the administration building is to the right, along with the barracks, infirmary, commissary, and so on.

I get out, shut the car door, take my camcorder with me. I keep it on but held low, taking a shot of my feet. I wander up to the gatehouse and the guard steps out, hand on the butt of his pistol, resting loose but confident. He has an MP helmet on and I wonder whether the National Guard is in charge of security or something, and then I wonder if I'm about to get got for trespassing. Surely there'd be more of a commotion if I was, right?

The guard has a sharp face but disconcertingly watery eyes. "Hi," I tell him.

"This area's off-limits to civilians, ma'am," he tells me.

"I'm not trying to get in," I assure him. "I'm a journalist, I just want to take some photos. Is that okay?"

He relaxes a little, points up and down the fence. "Right now," he says, "you're on public land. You go over that fence, you're trespassing on Federal land. Understand?"

"Yessir," I grunt, reflexively. Some old habits never die.

"You can take photos of whatever you like except for people inside the fence, understand? Before you leave I will check your camera."

"Yessir."

"Any questions?"

"Can I take a photo of you?"

"Am I inside the fence?"

"No."

"Then yes, you can."

I bring my DSLR up, snap a picture of him. He gives me a cheesy grin. I look at the display and then back up at him. "You blinked."

"Better take another."

I do so. "You know," I say to him, "this is a much more civil interaction than I expected it to be."

He pauses, halfway back to the guardhouse, to shrug at me. "You're just lucky that the government doesn't also own the land around the park. On most military bases it's like that, you know, they own a hundred-foot radius out from the fence, but here it's different."

"Cause it used to be a National Park?"

"I believe so."

"Do I have to stay in your sight or anything?"

He shakes his head. "No, there are cameras. Just make sure you don't touch the fence, it's electric."

I look at the sign on the fence again; I'd sort of skimmed over it before but a few more things catch my eye this time, especially the bright red one proclaiming that it's charged to 10,000 volts. I whistle. "Y'all really don't want people getting in, huh?"

"It's dangerous."

"So I've heard. Want to do an interview?"

"Can't do that, ma'am. What paper are you with?"

"Corpus Christi Star-Tribune."

He raises his eyebrows. "You're a long way from home. What brings you down to Gumption County?"

I briefly explain what got me interested in the Mystery Flesh Pit and he nods. "Lot of people seem to have forgotten about this place. It's for the best, I'd say."

"Care to elaborate?"

"No, ma'am," he says, but not unkindly. "I can't talk to reporters."

"Come on," I wheedle. "Who'd know?"

"We're on camera," he repeats.

"Fair enough," I shrug.

He gets back in the guardhouse and I run a hand through my hair and turn my attention to the fence. I take a shot of the gates, of the fence, of the signs on the fence, of the great bulging buildings visible through the fence. I get a nice one of the fence extending along into the horizon, a great metal wall bisecting the flat, hot plain of West Texas earth, extending into infinity, it seems, a shimmer of heat distortion bubbling off of it down in the distance. I get another good one of the sun dipping downwards behind the plant, swallowed by it, casting shadows across my face, long spidery ones that scrape the ground. Then, once I'm at about fifty-percent capacity on my memory card, I put the camera away and sit there on the trunk of the car, kicking my heels idly against the gravelly ground, taking it all in. I read the sign again and I call out to the guard. After a moment he comes out of the gatehouse again.

"What is it?" he asks.

"What's that sign mean?" I ask him, pointing to it. He turns, looks at it.

"I don't think it's very ambiguous," he tells me, and I roll my eyes.

"No, I'm serious. What the hell does it mean? 'Over 500 people die each year attempting to commune with the Organism?' What does that - ?"

"Ma'am, I really can't talk about it."

I look at him carefully but he seems serious, and the sign, well...it's a sign on an electric fence on federal property, so surely it's serious as well. I turn my camera back on and snap a photo of it, then I realize that there's a bit of background noise, coming slowly closer. It's the rumbling of an engine.

There, down the road, is an unmarked white Econoline van. It flashes its brights at me and I step out of the road, let it pass by, while the guard at the gate straightens his uniform. It pulls up to the gate and the guard leans in. He and the driver have a brief conversation before the guard steps back and reaches into the booth to open the gate. The gate opens but the driver of the van sticks his head out, looks back at me. He has a jowly, bristly face, about two five-o'clock shadows away from a beard, and a large bald spot.

"And you, what are you doing here?" he calls, and I get up, a little surprised to be addressed so abruptly. The guard comes out in a hurry, shaking his head.

"Sir," he starts, but the guy in the van isn't having any of it.

"Shut up for a second," he says. "Lady, what're you doing out here?"

"I'm –"

"Sir, you really shouldn't –"

"Look, lady," he says, gesturing me closer. "Things don't have to go this way. There've been a lot of advances with medical technology that can really help you out with those urges. There's –"

"Urges?" I ask. I get a prickly feeling all up and down my spine, like I'm hearing something I ought not to.

"Sir," the guard says, urgently now, "she's a reporter."

The man's mouth snaps shut so quickly he might as well have been a cartoon character. He flushes an angry red and glares at the guard as though he wants to say something but he just ducks his head back through the window of the car and drives through the gate, which closes after him. I shake my head.

"I suppose," I say after a moment, "that you aren't going to tell me what he meant?"

"Not a chance."

"Well," I say, getting up and stretching, "it's been fun."

"You have a good night now."

"Am I going to get a visit from the Men in Black at my hotel room later?"

"I wouldn't worry about that."

"Riiiight." I waggle my eyebrows at him. "That's exactly what they'd want me to think."

He laughs. "Good luck," he tells me.

"I get the feeling I'll need it."

"You’ll be fine," he says after a moment, but I do not feel reassured.

* * *

I drive back to Gumption with the setting sun blazing in my rearview mirror. It slips out of view entirely and coats the sky in dusky purples that quickly fade to black, and then it's the figurative middle of the night. One-handed I manage to wriggle a cigarette out of the pack on the seat next to me and transfer it to my mouth and then feel around for my lighter, and then I groan and pull over. The guy at the rental desk at the airport had seen the pack of cigarettes in my hand while I was filling out the paperwork and told me very strictly that I had better not smoke in the car and I, of course, had managed to forget completely. It's a good thing I remembered before I lit up.

The night is cold but not unbearably so. I spend a long time there, leaning against the trunk of my car, cigarette in my hand but forgotten momentarily, staring up at the sky. There's so little light pollution out here that I can see what feels like all of the stars, practically, great scattered dustings of them sweeping across the whole of the night sky like someone had tossed them there. There's the Big Dipper, there's Orion, there's the Little Dipper... I think that bright one is Mars, maybe, it looks a little reddish. And that cluster there must be the Pleiades.

I take a breath and blow it out and realize exactly how tired I am. It's somewhere lurking in the back of my skull, right behind my eyes, coiled around my neck. If I closed my eyes I'd probably be able to fall asleep out here, right on the hood of the car.

I crack my neck and wince. The moon's bright and full tonight, at least, so I can still see the barren terrain all around me.

I consider the cigarette for a moment before I throw it to the ground and crush it out. I don't normally litter, really, I swear, but the exhaustion creeping over me is making me not care.

There's a long drainage ditch along the side of the road here, terminating in one of those white-concrete tunnels disappearing into the dirt, its mouth wide enough to swallow me whole if I felt like going down there. I stifle a yawn, kick a rock down into the ditch, and traipse around the side of the car, get in and start it up. From where I parked it, the headlights angle downward enough to reveal a sliced-pie cut of the inside of the tunnel and there, inside it, I see for only the briefest second a pale, wide-eyed face staring at me, along with a dark-jacketed body and a hand, curled there on the floor of the tunnel like a spider before, in a flash, the man retreats into the darkness deeper in the tunnel and is gone.

I can feel my heart beating out of my chest and I realize my mouth has dropped open. Real animal fear has seized me and my rational mind cannot jerk back the reins. I put the car into gear, fumbling first and sticking it in neutral, and then push the pedal all the way to the floor and roar off into the dark.

I was very lucky that there was no one trying to get to Mystery Flesh Pit that night, for I probably would have flipped the car trying to go around them. The closer I get to Gumption, the slower I drive, until finally I manage to get myself to stop the car just outside of town. I pull over again and get out, curling my lip at my shaking hands, and light up another cigarette.

It was just a homeless guy, hiding in a drainage ditch. I probably spooked the fuck out of him, pulling up right there on top of him and hanging out. He must be wondering what the fuck I was doing out there. Probably scared him more than he scared me.

Why did I wig out so bad anyway? I like to think I've got a pretty good nerve. Well, stress is a good excuse, I guess. Or perhaps it's because he was simply hiding down there, unknown, unnoticed, the whole time I was sitting there on the hood of the car, completely oblivious. He could have rushed out and attacked me, if he'd had the guts to, and I wouldn't have been able to do anything about it.

I take another drag at the cigarette and glare up at the stars again. Ursa Major, Orion, Pleiades. Sometimes, when it's quiet like this, I allow myself to think about what the coming year, or possibly years, if I'm lucky, will be like.

Whatever.

I crush the cigarette out and drive back into town, head back to my motel room. I feel better once I've showered and put on some shorts. I get into bed and pull the covers up, and even though they're the scratchy, weird-feeling covers used in seemingly every cheap motel in America, regardless of location, I drift off to sleep easily enough.

Continue with Part 2

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#writing #mystery flesh pit #writeblr #Michael Crichton #thriller #novel #alt lit

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anonfanfic · 4 years

Note

If you want a prompt for small town AU, what about clexa getting out of town for a day and either taking a road trip or heading to a city close by? That way they can have some time to themselves

Clarke woke up to a beam of warm golden sun hitting her face. She closed her eyes tightly and stretched her stiff muscles. She breathed a deep sigh of relief out of her nose as her fuzzy mind remembered it was Saturday and she didn’t have to rush off to school.

She rolled over and grabbed her phone from her nightstand, unplugging the charging cord and trying to get her bleary eyes to focus on the much too bright screen.

Lexa’s name appeared in a text notification and Clarke sat up in bed, a rush of adrenaline coursing to each of her limbs as she unlocked her phone and read the waiting message.

‘I need to drive into the city to pick up a part for my truck. Can you come???’

Clarke felt an extra surge of energy pulse in the pit of her stomach as she thought about a full day away from everyone, but Lexa. She pulled back her blankets and nearly toppled out of her bed as she started getting ready for the day. She threw her pajamas somewhere near her hamper as she thought of what lies to tell her mom to let her go into the city for the day.

She finished dressing and looked at herself in the mirror. Clarke wanted to look cute, but not like she was trying too hard just for a trip into the city.

Clarke ran down the stairs two at a time and had to slow herself before she walked into the kitchen. She worked hard to keep her face neutral as she did a quick scan of the room, but only saw her dad sitting at the table sipping a cup of coffee and looking over some sort of playbook. No doubt trying to plan some sort of offense for the big football game the coming Sunday.

“Where’s-uh-where’s mom?” Clarke tried to sound as casual as possible while she walked over and grabbed a glass from the cupboard next to the fridge.

“She’s in appointments all day today. She mentioned us ordering pizza, so you know it’ll be a long day.” Jake Griffin didn’t really look up from the page he was taking in. So he missed the grin that pulled at Clarke’s lips hearing that her mother would be gone for the entire day.

“Do you think you’d be okay on your own?” Clarke opened the fridge and grabbed the orange juice, turning around to see Jake was no longer looking at the papers in front of him. He only had eyes for his daughter.

“Why? What do you have planned?” Jake reached down without looking and grabbed his coffee cup to take a sip without breaking eye contact.

“A couple friends were talking about going into the city. I was going to see if I could go with them.” Clarke poured the orange juice and gave a shrug of indifference as she finished speaking. She didn’t want her dad to know she was dying to go. She hoped he would think she didn’t mind either way.

Clarke put the jug of juice back in the fridge and turned to see that her dad was once again looking down at his papers.

“Will you be back before curfew?” He asked, reaching over and taking a long sip of coffee.

Clarke almost choked on the mouthful of orange juice she had just taken in with her excitement to respond.

“Yeah-yes. I’ll be back way before curfew. I swear.” Clarke tried to cover her sputtering cough with her sleeve.

“Fine, leave me by my lonesome.” Jake joked, waving his daughter off to go have fun.

Clarke downed the rest of her juice and laughed. “Yeah, like you won’t be locked in your study going over game tape for tomorrow.” Clarke felt like she was floating as she walked back toward the stairs to go tell Lexa she could go out.

“Hey!” Jake called, right as she got to the doorway. Clarke’s heart stopped and she turned to look at her dad who was looking at her with disappointment. “Who raised you?” He asked, pointing to the glass Clarke had left on the counter.

“Oh, sorry dad.” Clarke felt a rush of relief wash over her as she walked over to grab her glass and rinse it in the sink.

“Have fun, see you later tonight,” Jake smiled, as Clarke walked by and out of the kitchen.

Less than 20 minutes later and Clarke was driving down the main freeway out of their town and to the city. It was like Clarke could finally breathe once they left the town’s limits.

Clarke felt pressure on her thigh and looked down to see Lexa’s hand resting there. She smiled, looking out the window at the long stretch of nothing that was between them and the city. It was the most peaceful she had felt in months. The town had become so suffocating and home was no different. There was no escape from the walls as they kept closing in on her.

“Whatcha thinking about?” Lexa asked, giving Clarke’s leg a squeeze.

“How damn good it feels to be out of that fucking town.” Clarke moved her hand on top of Lexa’s and laced their fingers together.

Lexa smiled and picked up their intertwined hands and brought them to her lips, placing a kiss on Clarke’s hand.

“I’m glad you came.”

Clarke moved over as far as her seatbelt would allow and rested her head on Lexa’s shoulder. She closed her eyes and listened to the soft sounds coming from the radio and Lexa’s rhythmic breathing just above her. If she could bottle this moment and live it whenever she wanted to, she’d do it in a second.

“You gonna fall asleep on me?” Lexa chuckled, moving her shoulder to make Clarke’s head bop a bit.

“No, no.” Clarke opened her eyes and smiled moving back to her seat and squeezing Lexa’s hand. “We just don’t get many moments like this. When we can feel…”

“Normal?” Lexa finished Clarke’s sentence.

Clarke hadn’t really let it hit her until she heard Lexa say it. They weren’t allowed to be themselves in their town. They were always hiding and forced to be ashamed of loving each other. Clarke didn’t want to feel that way, it wasn’t fair to not feel comfortable in your home.

“Yeah...it sucks.” Clarke’s mood shifted and she felt like she was being dragged down a mountain hitting trees and rocks all the way down.

“Hey, don’t let those fuckers get in your head today.” Lexa reached over and grabbed Clarke’s thigh again. “They don’t get to have today, it’s ours.”

Clarke gave her head a shake and tried to push those thoughts out of her head. Lexa was right, they didn’t get to ruin their day.

“I’m back. Let’s have a good day.” Clarke looked over and smiled at her girlfriend.

They drove for a little while in peaceful silence. Clarke played with the fingers on Lexa’s free hand as the city came into view on the horizon.

Lexa parked the car on a side street just off the main drag of the city.

“I need coffee before we do anything else.” Lexa hopped out of the car and reached for Clarke’s hand. She instinctively pulled back, looking around to see that no one around them was even paying attention.

“Sorry,” Clarke looked back to Lexa who still had her hand outstretched. “Force of habit.”

Clarke reached out and took Lexa’s hand, feeling her heart flutter as they started toward the coffee shop. It was a freeing feeling to walk down the street, their hands intertwined swinging between them and no one giving them a second look. They could be invisible here, just blend in with the crowd.

They grabbed coffee and sipped it as they walked around on the beautiful, sunny Saturday.

Lexa found a park a few blocks away from the coffee shop and they decided to spend some time together out in the warm sun. It was just on the verge of fall so the air had just a little bite to it. Clarke loved this type of weather.

Clarke leaned over and pressed a kiss to Lexa’s cheek. “Can we just stay here?”

Lexa reached over and put her arm around Clarke’s waist, moving her closer as they sat on the grass.

“You mean live here...in this park?” Lexa laughed. “I mean it may not be great once winter hits, but if you’re here then I’m here.” Lexa kissed Clarke’s lips, lingering for a long moment before pulling away.

“Listen, I’ve wanted to ask you something for a while now. I’m just not sure how you’ll feel about it.” Lexa adjusted her position so she was looking directly at Clarke.

For some reason, Clarke felt her heartbeat start to pick up. She had no idea what Lexa was about to ask her, but her brain was thinking of all the worst case scenarios.

“O-Okay.” Clarke’s voice caught in her throat. Her mouth was suddenly painfully dry.

“I know it’s a long way off,” Lexa started, reaching down and starting to pull out blades of grass. “But with it being so close to the end of the school year....and we were already both accepted to college...I was thinking maybe we could go to prom together.”

Clarke’s jaw went slack as Lexa finished speaking. She hadn’t even thought about prom. There was still nearly a full school year to get through before prom.

Clarke let herself imagine getting to go to prom with Lexa. Picking out their outfits, taking pictures out by the lake, dancing together in the gym with stupid decorations hanging around them. It would be amazing, but not possible. It would be too easy for people to talk and if word got back to her parents, they’d find a way to keep her out of college. They’d find a way to lock her in her room and away from Lexa forever.

“I don’t know…” Clarke pursed her lips together, trying to push the happy images from her mind. Her only goal was getting out of their town so she could finally be with Lexa and her parents wouldn’t be able to stop her.

“Nevermind..” Lexa cleared her throat and tossed the clump of grass she had pulled out next to her. “It was a stupid idea, forget I mentioned it.”

Clarke saw a few red splotches appear on Lexa’s cheeks. It had been hard for Lexa to ask her about prom. She knew the risks just like Clarke did. Maybe it wouldn’t matter once it was time for prom.

“No, no. Don’t say that. It’s not stupid.” Clarke took both of Lexa’s hands and waited until her girlfriend looked up and locked eyes with her. “I want to go to prom with you. I just don’t want to risk our future for one night. You know what my mom is capable of and I don’t want her fucking this up for us.”

Lexa relaxed a little as Clarke spoke. She wasn’t shooting down Lexa’s idea, she just wanted to be safe about what they did while they were still in town.

“Let’s say if we think it seems like a good idea at the time we do it. If not, we have our own afterparty on prom night.” Clarke wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.

Lexa laughed and Clarke watched the rest of her hesitation melt away.

“Deal.” Lexa reached over and kissed Clarke. “But I’m getting you flowers either way.”

Clarke smiled against Lexa’s lips. “Deal.”

#clexa #clexa fanfic #clexa fanfiction #clexa prompt #prompt #clexa smalltown au #clexa modern au #small town au #smalltown au #god it's been a while #but i'm back

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jlalafics · 5 years

Text

“You, soft and only, you lost and lonely”-an Everlark Halloween fic

This isn’t technically scary, but I was going for supernatural rom-com. Hopefully this lived up to that.

Happy Reading!

Summary: Peeta couldn’t remember who he was. However, he knew he didn’t want Katniss Everdeen invading his apartment. Based on the movie “Just Like Heaven”.

__________

Daylight licked me into shape

I must have been asleep for days

And moving lips to breathe her name

I opened up my eyes…

-The Cure

_________

Peeta hated driving in the rain. However, what he hated more was breaking promises.

Not to mention, Alba would never forgive him if he didn’t show up and she would get his sister on him as well.

Making a sharp right leading to the freeway, Peeta looked down at his pager quickly to make sure that there weren’t any pages coming in. Finding it completely silent, he turned up the music on his radio and prepared himself for a night of lectures and meatloaf—

He never even noticed the truck barreling towards the passenger side of his car.

++++++

“Cole! It’s time for dinner!”

Katniss set down the bowl of mac and cheese—her son’s favorite—onto the beautiful cherrywood dining table. She had been lucky to score an apartment so close to her new job and even luckier that it came fully furnished. Hopefully once everything slowed down, they could actually find time to make it a home.

Her son rushed into the room, all smiles and a G.I. Joe action figure in tow. “I’m starving…but can I eat in my room?”

“Are you not finished unpacking?” Katniss asked the young boy, her hand pushing his dark locks from his stone colored eyes.

“No, I want to eat with my new friend,” Cole informed her with a beatific smile. “He likes mac and cheese, too.”

Katniss nodded in understanding. Cole was getting to the age when imaginary friends came into play. Also, for now, he was the new kid in town.

“Does your…friend want a bowl as well?”

“Yes, please.”

Taking a bowl from the open moving box, she scooped a spoonful and handed the bowl to her son.

“That’s not going to be enough, Mommy,” he replied. “He’s a big guy, you know.”

“Oh—” Katniss scooped a little bit more. “How about this?”

Examining the bowl, Cole nodded in approval before taking the bowls and rushing down the hallway toward his new bedroom.

“Here you go, Pe—”

He shut the door before Katniss could catch his words.

“Huh…it’s a he.”

Scooping a bowl for herself, Katniss settled in for a lone dinner of mac and cheese.

And, maybe a glass of wine.

++++++

It was during her fourth glass of wine that Katniss started to get curious about the previous owner. Cole was long asleep—after three stories and one lullaby—and in his own words, dreaming of going to Hogwarts instead of a regular old school.

Katniss couldn’t recall when she had told him anything about Harry Potter.

She began to peek around each room, pulling drawers open, and peeking into cabinets. When Katniss went into the master bedroom, she went immediately to the closet—a tiny thing, really—and looked inside. There was a single shelf at the top and a rack below it. She reached up, her hand moving over the dusty surface when she felt the familiar coarseness of paper.

Pulling it down, Katniss looked at the crayon scrawling of two people, a little girl and a man in a meadow with a house in the back. The sun, of course, was obscenely large.

“Why do children always draw the sun so big?” she whispered, her fingers tracing the writing on the picture’s corner. “From Alba…”

“What are you doing in my bedroom?”

Katniss whipped around at the deep timbre of a man’s voice, her heart practically exploding from her ribcage.

There was no one there.

“Shit,” she breathed out. “How much wine did I drink?”

The windows were shut and there were no vents that might allow a neighbor’s voice to invade her bedroom. Katniss walked out of the room, quickly checking on a serenely sleeping Cole, then down the hallway towards the living room and kitchen.

Nothing but deathly silence.

Going back into the kitchen, her eyes focused on the wine bottle, still mostly full. She felt her anxiety abate and her hand reached for the bottle—

“Do you really need a fifth glass?”

“Okay.” Katniss put her hands up in surrender; the wine was obviously laced with something. “I’m going to bed.”

That would be the last time that she would buy wine from a discount mart.

++++++

The girl was a damn lush.

The boy, Cole, was not so bad.

He watched her from…wherever…take over his apartment with tacky plush pillows with generic sayings and frilly pillows on his king-size mattress. The quilt—he cringed thinking how somewhere his Calvin Klein sheets were probably lying in wait—was multi-colored and so…old.

She was preparing dinner—lasagna—and he was suddenly aware that he could not smell the melted mozzarella that accompanied the dish, nor could he feel the heat emanating from the oven as the woman leaned down to pull out the steaming tray.

He had to admit—she had a nice ass.

Somewhere in the distance…there was a faint beep…then he could feel it.

He was fading again.

Peeta was no more.

++++++

“You look horrible.”

Katniss turned to her fellow nurse, Johanna, and glared.

“Gee, thanks. You’re making me feel real good about the transfer.” However, she went to the coffee machine across from the nurses station. “I haven’t been sleeping well since the move.”

“What? Is the place haunted or something?” Johanna sat down at her computer to begin her reports.

“Maybe.” Katniss took a long sip from the scalding coffee; she was going to feel that later. For now, she needed it to get through her shift. “Sometimes, I think I’m hearing things…but I don’t know if it’s the wine or stress. Also, lately I’ve been feeling…judged.”

Johanna raised a brow. “How?”

“Like there’s this aura of disapproval in the apartment,” Katniss explained.

“So, your apartment hates you?” Johanna supplied. “I’m sure that you’re just settling in.”

“Probably,” she responded. “I mean, it would be really uncomfortable if someone was there during my ‘lonely’ nights.” Her cell phone started ringing from her scrubs and Katniss looked at the screen. “It’s Cole’s school.” She picked up quickly. “Hello?”

“Miss Everdeen? This is Alma Coin, Principal of Panem Elementary. We have a…situation with your son and we’ll need you to come immediately.”

Katniss felt a prickle of fear rush down to her stomach. “Is Cole alright?”

“Other than the cut lip, he is fine,” the woman assured her tersely.

“I’ll be right over,” Katniss assured her and hung up. “Shit.” She turned to Johanna. “Cole is in trouble.”

“Go.” Johanna waved her off. “I’ll find someone to cover you today.”

“You’re the best,” Katniss told her gratefully.

“No, I’m just the head nurse,” her friend replied. “Go!”

+++++++

Katniss opened the door to their apartment, leading her son in quickly. “On the couch. Now.”

Cole flopped on the couch, arms folded and his late father’s scowl on his face.

“Now…” Katniss joined him on the couch. “Can we talk about why you hit that boy?”

“He was making fun of one of the girls in my class,” Cole explained. “So, Peeta told me to hit him.”

“Peeta? Is he another boy in your class?” she asked curiously.

“No. He’s my friend,” her son replied. “The one who plays action figures with me.”

Her spine stiffened at the thought of Cole’s ‘friend’.

“Sweetie, you can’t blame what you did on your invisible friend,” Katniss explained as calmly as she could.

Cole shot up from his seat. “Peeta is real! He’s my only friend here!”

“Well, if that’s the kind of friend you have, then I don’t think you two should be friends anymore,” she responded firmly.

“I hate you!” Her son’s face was wet with tears. “I wish we never came here! Daddy would have never made us leave our house!”

Katniss knelt before him, her own mouth beginning to tremble.

“I know.” Her hands went to Cole’s shoulders. “I wish we could’ve stayed, too—”

Her son let out one plaintive sob before turning and running off towards the hallway. Katniss cringed hearing the door of his bedroom slam shut.

“Don’t cry,” she hissed to herself.

The tears came anyway, and Katniss angrily wiped them away. She hated herself for letting things get all out of control…for losing their house to pay off Gale’s medical bills…for losing her job because there weren’t enough hours in a day to be a widow and a newly-single mother—

Getting up, her feet took her to the kitchen where her shaking hands reached for the fridge door, ready to open the Moscato chilling in the back—

“If I knew you well enough, I would probably tell you that you have an obvious drinking problem.”

Katniss jumped, turning quickly to find a sandy-haired man standing in her kitchen.

++++++

“H-How did you get in here?”

Peeta searched his mind; he couldn’t quite figure it out. He just blinked and suddenly he was watching the boy’s mother reaching into the fridge for one of her many wine bottles.

He shrugged. “Not sure. What I do know is that you’re squatting in my apartment.”

“No, it’s my apartment,” she said in a tight voice. “Now, how did you get in?”

“How one usually gets in,” Peeta told her. However, he felt at his pants pocket and couldn’t find his keys. “Where are my keys?” He glared at the woman. “What did you do with them?”

“I didn’t do anything!” Katniss replied. She reached into the pocket of her scrubs and pulled out her keys. “But I have my set…” Backing herself against the kitchen counter, Katniss reached behind and, feeling around for the first solid object, presented it to the man before her. “Now, get out of my house or I’ll—”

Peeta smirked. “Ladle me to death?” He approached her boldly. “Also, that’s my ladle.”

Without thought, Katniss swung and Peeta reached to block her hit.

Only he couldn’t.

Because the head of the ladle went right through his hand.

His blue eyes widened in shock. “What the hell?”

Then, just like that, Peeta disappeared.

++++++

“Explain this to me again?”

Katniss, her grey eyes wide with terror, stopped mid-rock on the couch before looking to Johanna.

“There was a guy in my apartment, and he said that it was his…so I reached for the first thing I could find—a ladle—and it just went right through his hand!” She took a sip of water from the glass that she held; there was no way that alcohol would be touching her lips tonight. “Then, he vanished!”

“Katniss.” Johanna sat down next to her, eyes roving over her trembling friend. “You’ve been going through a lot lately, with the move and Cole trying to adjust. I mean, have you been getting any sleep?”

“I sleep…kind of.”

“And, have you been drinking more than usual?”

Katniss tried not to think of the condescending ghost who scolded her for her nightly wine glasses.

“Not more than usual,” she informed Johanna.

“I think you might need to see someone…like a priest or a counselor...or just anyone to talk to,” Johanna told her gently. “These hallucinations are not good for you.”

“He’s not a hallucination,” Katniss argued.

Johanna looked at her doubtfully. “Maybe not. Either way, this isn’t healthy.” She stood up. “You need some more time off—get this situation figured out and get back to work okay. I’ll just let the hospital know that there was…a home issue.”

Katniss nodded tiredly. “Thanks.”

Her friend went to the door before suddenly turning to her.

“You know, if this ghost is real, then there’s a reason he’s stuck here,” Johanna said. “You might want to figure out what it is if you want some peace of your own.”

Katniss snorted in response. “Great—a week of exorcisms.”

“Or watching Ghost Whisperer,” Johanna cracked. “I’ll see you in a week.”

Her friend closed the front door behind her, leaving Katniss to the silence of her apartment.

Getting up, she went to check on Cole and found him fast asleep. Walking into his room, her hand found its way to his soft locks and Katniss leaned down to press a kiss to his temple.

“Mommy?”

“Hey kiddo.” She smiled gently at him. “Just checking on you. I know that our last conversation didn’t go so well.”

“I’m sorry.” Cole’s eyes shone up at her and he blinked, letting his tears fall. “I miss Daddy.”

“Oh baby…I miss him, too,” Katniss said thickly. “But he wouldn’t want you to be sad.”

“He wouldn’t want you to be sad either,” her son told her.

“So, we’re just going to have figure out how to get out of the sads, right?” Katniss pressed a kiss to his cheek, blowing a raspberry and making Cole giggle. “Tomorrow, we’ll start to make some plans—maybe decorate your room and make this place our own?”

Cole nodded excitedly. “Yes, Mommy!”

“Now back to bed.” Katniss pulled the blanket over his shoulder. “Tomorrow is a new day.”

She gave him one last kiss before getting up.

As Katniss reached the doorway, something came to her mind.

“Cole?”

“Yes, Mommy?”

“What does your friend Peeta look like?”

“He has yellow hair and blue eyes…he’s tall, but not as tall as Daddy was.” Cole looked at her, his eyes beginning to droop as a yawn escaped his lips. “Why?”

“Just wondering. Good night, sweetheart.”

Closing the door behind her, Katniss went to the kitchen.

Was she really going to try this? This would really solidify that she was most likely having a mental breakdown.

Taking a deep breath, Katniss closed her eyes and called out, “Peeta?”

Nothing.

“Peeta? I’m sorry for trying to hit you with a ladle…” She walked around the kitchen, trying to see if she could catch a glimmer of a spirit. “I think you know my son, Cole. He gave you mac and cheese.”

Silence.

Katniss went towards the fridge.

“I think I’m just going to have one glass of wi—”

“There you go again with the booze!”

Got him.

Turning, she found herself looking at what seemed like a solidly formed Peeta. He wore a simple pair of dark grey slacks and a white button-down shirt. The sleeves were rolled up and she looked at his forearms to see if there were any distinguishing features.

Katniss could see nothing but smooth skin and faint blue veins running along to his wrists.

“I’m Katniss.” She sat down at the table next to the fridge. “You must be Peeta.”

After a moment, Peeta nodded. “I am.”

“What’s your last name?”

He looked at her for a moment and in the depths of his cerulean eyes, Katniss could practically see him searching for the answer.

Finally, Peeta replied. “I don’t know.”

“Have a seat.” Katniss gestured at the chair across and was surprised when he easily joined her. “I think I can help you find out what’s going on. However, I think you’re just going to have to acknowledge and accept one thing—you’re dead.”

++++++

Dead?

He couldn’t be!

“How can I be dead?” He looked to the woman in front of him. “I have no recollection of it happening or any events leading up to it.”

“The dead often don’t know that they are,” Katniss replied calmly. “I think that what you need is…to go into the light.”

Peeta looked around in confusion. “What light?”

“You don’t see any sort of portal?” she asked. “Like something from above…or below?”

“No and definitely no,” Peeta argued. “I’m not dead.”

“Then why can’t you tell me anything about yourself?” Katniss’ eyes, smoky and deep, peered deep into whatever kind of being he was. “Can you remember anything from the past few days?”

“No.” He sunk into his seat. “It’s like I’m here…and then I’m not.”

Katniss looked at him with sympathy. “Maybe this is limbo?”

“Or maybe I’m not dead!” he burst out.

“Okay…okay—don’t wake Cole!”

“Cole is your son.”

“Yes.”

“And, where’s his Dad?”

Katniss’ eyes shone with pain and he wanted to shake himself for being so crass.

“He’s wherever I guess you were supposed to go,” she said somberly.

“I’m sorry.” Peeta attempted a smile. “Cole’s a good kid.”

“By the way, thanks for telling him to hit that kid.” Katniss glared at him. “I had to miss a day of work to get lectured by his principal.”

“That kid was being mean to A—” He stopped and she straightened, watching his expression. “It’s like the memory is there, but I just can’t reach it.”

“So, you have some sort of ghost amnesia.”

“I’m not a ghost!”

“Okay, a corporal being amnesia,” Katniss said, trying to maintain peace. “I have some time off because my friend and co-worker thinks I’m delusional—thanks a lot—so maybe I can start asking around the building about you.”

“That sounds good.”

“Hey Peeta?” Katniss’ expression suddenly flushed. “You haven’t watched me at other times, right? Like not on Wednesday nights around 11:00?”

“No.”

She breathed a sigh of relief.

“But your vibrator is pretty loud so I really wouldn’t need to look to know what you are doing.”

Katniss scowled; her face bright with embarrassment. “Damn you!”

It probably wasn’t the best time for him to mention the few times that he may have peeked in during her shower time.

++++++

“Oh, the guy upstairs.” The woman leaned against her doorway in thought. “Yeah, I don’t recall ever seeing him. Actually, for a while, I didn’t even know that someone lived up there.”

“Well, thanks anyway,” Katniss said before she bid her goodbye. She looked to the man beside her. “Did you talk to anyone?”

“I don’t know,” Peeta replied with a shrug. “I think I’m a friendly person.”

Katniss didn’t even attempt to hide her eye roll. “I’m sure you were.”

She walked up to the next door and knocked.

The man who suddenly stood before them seemed to be glistening, his upper body highlighted and contoured to show every single abdominal muscle on his golden skin.

“Hi!” He gave Katniss a bright grin, revealing straight, blindingly white teeth. “How can I help you?”

Katniss started. “Oh…yeah hi. I just moved into the apartment on the third floor and was wondering if you knew anything about the guy who lived there.”

“I think I ran into him once…seemed like the kind of person who was just too busy to give anyone else a second thought…” He thought for a moment. “A little cold, too.”

“Hey!” Peeta was genuinely offended. “Doesn’t anyone have anything nice to say about me?”

“Like he was someone who’d kick a puppy?” Katniss asked, a gleam in her eye.

“Exactly!” The man let out a riotous laugh. “I’m Marvel, by the way.”

“Katniss.” She shook his hand. “I’ll see you around.”

“Maybe we could have dinner sometime,” Marvel suggested.

“Really? This guy?” Peeta scoffed. “Yeah, he’s jacked but who the hell is walking around shirtless and oiled up on a weekday afternoon?”

“I’ll think about it,” Katniss said congenially.

“She has a kid!” Peeta yelled into the man’s ear.

Marvel touched at his lobe. “Weird. Got a buzzing in my ear…” He smiled easily. “I’ll see you around.”

“Better go add more oil to your arms. You’re starting to look less than perfect,” Peeta called out.

The door closed and Katniss turned to him. “Are you seriously jealous?”

“Of the meathead?” He shook his head vigorously. “Never.”

Katniss laughed as they continued down the hallway.

“I have to pick up Cole. I don’t know the whole logistics of ghosts, but can you leave the building?”

She walked out of the front door and held it open for him before walking down the stairs.

Peeta easily followed her onto the sidewalk.

“I guess I’m okay.”

The two began their walk and Katniss examined the man beside her. He seemed so real. The light of the sun still hit his skin and she could see that small glisten of sweat above his upper lip. In death, didn’t bodily functions usually cease?

“What if I was a horrible person?” he suddenly asked. “Nobody in my own apartment building knew me. I didn’t participate in any neighborhood events or even open my door for trick-or-treaters. What kind of person was I?”

“I think you would be in a much different place if you were bad,” she told him. “We will find out who you are. Maybe I could call the landlord.”

“They would never give that information,” Peeta replied. “Confidentiality and such.”

They reached Cole’s school, sitting on a bench just across the street.

Panem Elementary was a beautiful building, all brick with its old school bell still hanging in the tower.

Peeta could appreciate old architecture—

A girlish laugh…crayon drawings…golden hair…

��I think I just had a memory.”

Katniss looked to him in shock. “Of what?”

“They were like flashes…of a laugh…golden hair…drawings—”

“Hi Mommy!” Cole rushed over to them, a bright smile on his little face. “Hi Peeta!”

“Hey kiddo,” Katniss stood up and took his hand. “You ready?”

Cole nodded but not before waving at the girl across the street, who waved back.

“Alba!”

The girl turned at the call and joined her mother, disappearing into the crowd of children.

++++++

“Maybe we could look around here?” Katniss said as they stepped into the apartment. “Can you tell me if the layout of the furniture is the same?”

“What are you doing?” Cole asked as he took off his jacket.

“Your mommy is trying to help me,” Peeta told him. “I think it looks the same…there were some photos on the mantle.” He struggled to remember what was in those frames. “I think they were a dark wood with carved designs along the borders.”

“That’s a start,” Katniss mused. “How about the kitchen?”

The trio went to the kitchen and looked around trying to see if there was a semblance of anything that spoke of the man who once lived in the apartment. Peeta surveyed the room, moving along the l-shape of the counters then to the fridge.

He turned to the mother and son. “Nothing.”

Katniss gave him a sympathetic smile.

“Don’t worry.” She tapped her finger to her chin before pressing the pad of finger to her lip in thought. “I tried the landlord and he hasn’t been very helpful. Maybe I can do some internet research or ask my realtor…”

“Why don’t you look in the drawers?” Cole asked suddenly.

“I’m pretty sure they’re empty—or they should’ve been,” Katniss replied as she headed towards the closest drawers to her. “I mean, I haven’t been able to unpack everything but—”

She stopped suddenly at the piece of paper laying plainly inside the empty drawer.

Peeta joined her. “What is it?”

“A note.” She frowned as she picked up the paper. “I don’t know if this is your writing, but it’s atrocious!”

“Hey!” Peeta looked at the chicken scratch. Yes, it wasn’t the best penmanship, but he was feeling very attacked for someone who wasn’t sure if he was alive. “I might’ve been in a rush.”

Cole pulled his mother’s arm so he could see the note. “Is that a 2 or a 3?”

“I’m not sure,” Katniss replied and held the note to Peeta. “You try deciphering this.”

Peeta examined the words in front of him. “It says, ‘Buy wine. 14…2 Sun Valley Way’.”

“That’s not too far from here.” Katniss gave him an encouraged smile. “See? We’re getting somewhere!”

“Thanks to Cole.” Peeta looked down at the boy. “Thanks bud.”

“No problem.” Cole beamed up at him. “Will you help with my homework?”

“Sure.” Peeta looked to her, his blue eyes warm. “Thanks.”

She nodded, her face flushing. “Of course. We’ll go tomorrow after dropping Cole off at school.”

Peeta’s hand suddenly reached forward, stopping short of touching her hair.

He stepped back, eyes darting down. “There was some hair…out of place.”

Katniss tucked it quickly behind her ear. “Better?”

His eyes met hers. “Lovely.”

“Peeta…stare at Mommy later! Word problems wait for no one!”

Cole rushed off to his room.

“I better go.”

“Sure.” Katniss went to the fridge. “I’ll get dinner started.”

Peeta walked out of the room and she opened the door of the fridge, leaning in to look for a semblance of something to make for dinner.

And, to cool herself off.

++++++

Katniss stepped out of her car, looking around the neighborhood and then at the house in front of her. It looked like every other house on the block; two-storied with brick steps leading to a wide porch. There was nothing decorating the steps unlike some of the other houses sporting ghoulish decorations—Halloween was coming up in only two days.

“So, should we go up?”

She jumped at Peeta’s voice. “Shit—you need to stop popping up like that!”

“Sorry.” He grinned roguishly at her. “It comes with the spirit territory, I guess.”

Together, they walked up the steps and at the top, Katniss knocked on the door.

They waited hearing quick footsteps heading towards them.

Peeta let out a quick breath. “Here goes.”

The woman in front of them took them both by surprise—blonde, buxom, and wearing a crop top and leggings. “Hello.” She flashed a sparkling white smile at Katniss. “How can I help you?”

“Uh…I was wondering if you know a guy named Peeta.” Katniss looked quickly at the man next to her. “Blond, cerulean eyes, has a cute, crooked smile…”

Peeta smirked. “You think my smile is cute?”

“I know a lot of guys, sweetie,” the woman in front of them replied. “I don’t usually know them by name, though.”

Katniss looked to her in confusion. “Excuse me?”

“Listen, I’m not sure what your husband may have told you, but Cashmere does not do refunds,” the woman continued, her eyes narrowing at Katniss. “I did my service, discreetly I might add, and I was owed the money. I keep a quiet living in this neighborhood and don’t appreciate being harassed.”

She slammed the door before Katniss could say anything else.

“Oh my God…” She turned to Peeta. “Did you pay that woman for sex?”

“I don’t know!” he yelled as Katniss stomped towards the car. “I don’t remember anything!”

“You don’t remember if you were a pervert?” Katniss glared at him as she opened her door. “I mean, how could you not remember those tits?” She got inside her car and slammed the door shut. “They didn’t move at all…”

“Are you seriously jealous of that woman?”

She started, seeing Peeta suddenly sitting in the passenger’s seat.

“No…I am not jealous of Cashmere’s perfectly manufactured body. I am perfectly happy with my normal-moving boobs.” Katniss started the engine roughly. “And maybe I don’t have abs—but I really like fries and am way too busy to do crunches.”

“Hey.” Peeta raised his hands in surrender. “I agree. I like your regular boobs. Feel free to stop wearing bras in front of me.”

Katniss chuckled in spite of herself. “You really are a perv.”

Peeta grinned. “But you love that about me!”

She let out a peal of laughter before pulling out of the parking space and driving away.

The occupant of 143 Sun Valley Drive stepped out of her house, going to her mailbox to take out the mail. A gust of wind hit, causing blonde tendrils to fly in all directions and she quickly tucked her hair back. Her eyes went to the car heading out of the neighborhood.

Cashmere must have had another visitor.

++++++

“That’s not right, Mommy!”

Katniss looked up at Cole. “I’m not an artist, sweetheart.” She continued her work, biting her lower lip in concentration.

“What are you doing?”

She jumped, streaking the green shirt and then glared up at the man before her.

“I thought I would get more used to you just popping up like that!” Katniss groaned, looking down at the mess before her. “This doesn’t look good at all.”

Cole nodded. “I agree.”

“It doesn’t look so bad,” Peeta said as he examined her work. “Just add some shadowing here…here…and here.” He turned to Cole. “What are you supposed to be?”

“The Hulk!” Cole told him excitedly. “And, he has lots of muscles!”

“Okay, that explains why your mother is painting abs on your shirt.”

“Yeah, we’re going trick-or-treating!” The boy was practically bouncing. “Can you come with us?”

Peeta looked to the woman currently contouring the set of pecs on the shirt.

“If your mom says it’s okay.”

“Sure. I could use a second set of eyes on Cole,” she told him. “There.” Katniss held the shirt up in triumph. “Now, it just needs to dry.”

“Thanks Mommy!” Cole exclaimed. “I can’t wait for tomorrow!”

The boy rushed off to his room, shirt carefully held out so it could be hung to dry.

Katniss pushed herself up onto the couch and smiled ruefully at Peeta.

“This will be the first Halloween that he’s gone trick-or-treating since Gale,” she explained. “We’ve been kind of hiding out for the last two years. I wanted him to have something special and handmade.”

“Can I ask what happened?” Peeta said gently. He sat next to her.

“He just started to get these really bad headaches…” Katniss wrapped her arms around herself. “Then one day I got a call at work that he had a seizure—and before I knew it, he was gone.” She trembled, pulling herself in. “And we were alone.”

“It was tumor, wasn’t it?”

Katniss nodded as she sniffed back her tears.

“It grew quickly and just took over before we could even try to fight it.”

“I’m so sorry, Katniss,” he said softly. Something ached seeing her so broken. “I just wish there was something I could do.”

“It’s alright,” she replied. “Just you sitting here is enough.”

Peeta felt tongue-tied as he spoke the words that he knew that he shouldn’t speak.

“I wish…I wish I could just…hold your hand…or let you cry on my shoulder.”

They fell silent.

Katniss shifted, moving closer to him.

“I wish that you could, too.”

++++++

The streets were littered with children. They had decided to come to neighborhood where the infamous Cashmere resided since it was apparently the place to be when it came to trick or treating. However, Katniss made it a point to avoid that side of the street altogether.

“Okay, I didn’t prepare for this craziness,” Peeta said as they moved past a set of crayons followed by a man in a ketchup bottle costume. “This is ridiculous.”

“Well, this is Halloween with a kid,” Katniss replied, twitching her painted nose.

“What are you supposed to be?” he asked, eyeing her all-black ensemble.

Katniss shrugged. “A cat…or a mouse?”

“Mommy, I’m going there!” Cole pointed to the house with fake webbing on its hedges and ghoulish pumpkins along the staircase.

“Sure. Just wait for us,” she said before sprinting up the staircase to join Cole, who was already ringing the doorbell.

Peeta joined seconds later as they waited for someone to answer the door.

The door opened and a little blonde girl greeted them. She was wearing a pair of child-sized scrubs, a stethoscope around her neck and a head covering atop of her golden hair.

Something jarred Peeta’s senses.

“Trick-or-treat, Alba!” Cole greeted the girl happily.

“Alba Grace—I told you to wait for me before opening the door.” A pretty blonde-haired woman with bright-blue eyes greeted them with a wide smile and a bucket of candy in her hands. “Hello!” She put a handful of treats into Cole’s bag. “Cool costume.”

“Thanks,” Cole said shyly.

“I know her,” Peeta said suddenly.

Katniss fought the urge to look at him in front of the woman and her daughter.

“Mommy, Cole was the boy who protected me when Charlie Banks was being mean to me,” Alba informed her mother. “Cole punched him and almost got in big trouble—but not as much trouble as Charlie did.”

The woman looked to Cole. “Thank you so much.” Her eyes went to Katniss. “I’m really sorry that Cole got in trouble.”

“He was just doing what some other kid told him to do,” Katniss muttered. “I’m Katniss Haw—Everdeen.” She let out a breath before starting again. “I’m Katniss Everdeen.”

“I’m Prim Masters,” the woman introduced herself. “Why don’t you come in? It’s just me and Alba for now. My husband, Cato, is an EMT and doing a late shift so he could have the day off tomorrow.”

“Come on, Cole. We have brownies!” Alba reached out and took the boy’s hand to pull him in.

“I guess we’re coming in.” Katniss said with a smile.

“Of course! Welcome!” Prim stood aside to let her in.

Peeta walked past the woman and a wave of familiarity hit, followed by a hard pounding in his ears.

“I know her, too,” he told Katniss.

They walked into the living room to find Cole and Alba sitting on the couch, brownies in their hands. As Peeta entered the room, he felt Alba’s eyes on him. She suddenly stood up to grab another brownie. However, instead of eating it, she placed it on a paper plate on the coffee table before meeting his eyes.

“I like your costume, Alba,” Katniss said.

“Thank you,” Alba replied sweetly. “I’m a doctor—like my Uncle!”

“Alba…” A pained warning came from Prim and Peeta felt the need to protect the grown woman.

The girl ignored her mother’s call and jumping from the couch, she took Katniss’ hand to pull her toward the mantle. She pointed to the set of photos, stopping at a picture of Prim and a young man in scrubs, grinning from ear to ear.

“See—this is my Uncle Peeta and my Mommy on his first day at Panem Hospital!”

Katniss froze seeing the photo and picture frame that surrounded it—dark wood with carvings along the edge of the frame.

++++++

“No wonder I told Cole to hit that kid,” Peeta said later that night. “I needed to protect my niece!”

“Prim looked shocked at the mention of you,” Katniss said as she opened her bedroom closet. “Honestly, I am too.” She turned to him, a piece of paper in her hands. “The first night that I heard you I found this.”

Katniss presented him with the drawing. “It’s from Alba.”

Peeta looked at the drawing over her shoulder and smiled.

“I remember this. Prim sent this to me last Christmas. Alba wanted me to remember her, so she drew a family picture,” he explained. “I couldn’t come home last year. I was always busy…and I think that’s why they moved here—so I wouldn’t be alone.”

“That must have been the reason that you were bringing wine to their house.”

Katniss laid back on her bed.

“Prim was very evasive about your whereabouts, but she looked upset.” She turned to the opposite side where Peeta perched himself. “What if you are dead?”

“Then I figure out why I’m here,” he told her simply. “You’re not going to miss me, are you?”

“I might,” she admitted, suddenly avoiding his gaze. “When Gale died, I lost everything. We had to sell the house and leave everything behind because of all the medical bills and funeral expenses. We weren’t prepared for the unexpected. I lost my job because I didn’t have enough accrued hours to go on leave to take care of everything.” Katniss let the tears fall. “It was a very low point for us.” She took in a shaky breath. “Then by some miracle, three months ago, Panem Hospital offered me a job—and I was able to get this apartment. It was like someone was watching over us.”

“I think it was Gale,” Peeta said softly. “Maybe he’s looking out for both of us because he knew that we needed help during this…transition.”

“Maybe—but Gale had a jealous streak so I don’t know why he would pick someone like you,” she retorted.

Peeta chuckled. “So, he was not into blonds?”

“He probably wouldn’t have picked anyone so McDreamy-ish.” Katniss looked to him, a grin on her lips. “Oh, just admit that you probably fancied yourself Panem Hospital’s version of Derek Shepherd!”

“I watched that show once and was a little intimidated by how good Patrick Dempsey looked.” Peeta shifted, resting back against the headboard. “No one really looks good in scrubs—except for you.”

Katniss smirked. “You like nurses?”

Peeta shook his head. “Nope”

She frowned.

Their eyes met and his mouth fell into that easy smile that shook Katniss to the core.

“Except the one lying next to me.”

++++++

Katniss returned to work the following Monday. Over the weekend, she and Peeta figured that he would come along so they could try to get information about what may have happened to him. They separated in the lobby where he would try and gather details about his time at Panem Hospital.

“It’s good to see you back,” Johanna greeted her when she reached the nurses’ station. “How are you feeling?”

“Better,” Katniss replied.

Truthfully, she felt much better.

She and Cole had an actual dinner last night, courtesy of the Mellark roast chicken recipe that Peeta happened to know by heart. Then, while he watched Cole, Katniss got to actually take a quiet bubble bath followed by her first restful sleep in a long time.

Johanna moved closer to her. “And…the ghost?”

Katniss could suddenly feel Peeta next to her.

“Johanna, was there a doctor named Peeta who worked here?”

Her friend’s face went stark white. “How do you know Dr. Mellark?”

“That’s my last name!” Peeta shouted. “I am Peeta Mellark!”

“Well…the ghost…is him,” she told Johanna. “How do you know him?”

“I don’t know him…but I know of him,” her friend replied. “Saw him around once in a while with his mentor.” Johanna’s dark eyes bore into her. “Is he really here?”

Katniss looked over to where Peeta stood right behind Johanna. “He’s right behind you.”

“Then how many fingers am I holding behind me?” Johanna retorted.

“Two,” Peeta told Katniss.

She met Johanna’s gaze. “Two.”

“How about now?”

Peeta was lightning fast in his response. “Five.”

“Five.”

Johanna was looking a little doubtful. “And, now?”

Peeta guffawed. “She’s giving me the middle finger.”

Katniss crossed her arms. “You’re giving him the finger.”

Johanna almost doubled over. “You can see a ghost.”

She nodded. “I can see a ghost.”

Johanna looked around.

“Well, sorry for messing with you, Dr. Mellark…also, sorry for checking out your ass that one time.”

Peeta smiled. “Tell her it’s okay.”

“He said it’s okay,” Katniss assured her. “Now, can anyone give me any information about him?”

“It was all very hush-hush, but you should go speak to Dr. Abernathy on the twelfth floor,” Johanna informed her, her eyes somber. “Just…take care, okay?”

++++++

“This doesn’t look good.”

They were watching one of the nurses speaking quietly to Dr. Haymitch Abernathy, Peeta’s mentor. The tall, dark-haired man looked at her before nodding at the other nurse.

“Why?” she asked Peeta quietly.

“They’re giving you that look like they’re about to tell you that I’m dead,” Peeta told her grimly.

The man approached, looking her over, before holding out his hand.

“I’m Dr. Haymitch Abernathy,” he started. “Before we go on, how did you know Peeta?”

“Tell him that we were involved,” Peeta said quickly. “He won’t tell you anything unless we were…intimate.”

“My name is Katniss Everdeen.” She shook the man’s hand firmly. “I’ve known Peeta for awhile now. We were…” Her face went warm. “Intimate.”

“That’s surprising,” Dr. Abernathy said. “I’ve known Peeta for a long time and he never mentioned you or any other personal relationships.”

“It was an on and off thing,” she explained. “I was living somewhere else with my son and just recently came to Panem. Can you tell me what happened to him?”

“There was an accident,” the man began. “Peeta was leaving the hospital about three months ago and…”

Suddenly, Peeta remembered.

He was on his way to Prim’s house to celebrate her official move to Panem. He had checked his pager and then turned up the radio as he made his turn. He remembered not looking forward to Prim’s daily lecture on meeting the right girl.

Then, there was the crash and…nothingness.

The loud thumping in his ears interrupted his memories…and he was moving…gliding…

Peeta blinked and when he opened his eyes, he was staring at himself.

In a hospital bed.

++++++

“Oh my God, you’re real.”

Peeta turned to see Katniss approaching his unconscious form.

“That’s me.” Peeta smiled dolefully. “Live and in living color—kind of.”

She approached his still body, her eyes roving over him. “You truly are a handsome man.”

“Better than Marvel?”

Katniss looked over at him, giving him a wink.

“Way better. When you’re awake, we can compare biceps—oiled up and everything.”

He looked over at the machines he was hooked up to. The machines were standard ones, measuring his heart rate and brain activity, while his stats were being recorded daily in an open notebook next to the ventilator.

They didn’t look good.

“Katniss, I don’t know how much you know about patients in a state such as mine but being in a coma for this long is never good,” he told her. “Day by day, my body becomes more dependent on these machines.”

“Then, try to get yourself back in there!” Katniss urged. “Dr. Abernathy only gave me a few minutes and we have to try to give you whatever chance we can.”

Peeta looked at her helplessly. “I’m afraid.”

She sat down in the chair next to his bed and looked up at him. “Why?”

“If it works, what happens…to us?”

“Us.” The word trilled in her chest like a songbird. “I didn’t know there was an us.”

“I didn’t think it could ever be possible,” Peeta admitted. “But…” He knelt before her so that he could meet her eyes. “…for the longest time, the only thing that I’ve wanted is just to hold your hand.”

“Then try, Peeta,” she pleaded. “Try for us.”

Peeta nodded resolutely.

Turning to the body in the bed, he carefully placed his hand over his physical hand. However, his hand just seemed to pass through, and he couldn’t feel…anything.

“It’s like there’s no connection,” Peeta told her. “What if I can’t get back?”

Katniss shot up. “No. You’re still in there,” she told him resolutely. “Close your eyes.”

He quirked a brow but did what she asked of him.

Carefully, she went to his bedside and took his hand. His skin was warm and when she reached to his wrist, Katniss could feel the strong pulse of the man in the hospital bed. There was still life and fire in him, but they just needed to find the key to making him whole once again.

“Katniss…” His voice trembled. “I can feel you.”

“You see?” Katniss turned to him. “There is still a connection to this body.”

There was a knock on the door and Dr. Abernathy stepped inside. “Miss Everdeen, I’m afraid your time is up.”

“I’m going to stay,” Peeta told her. “And, I’m going to figure this out.”

“Alright.” She gave his hand a squeeze before meeting his eyes. “Come back to me, Peeta.”

++++++

Peeta wasn’t sure how much time passed once he and Katniss separated. After she left, he had continued to try to anchor himself to his body even trying to lay his spirit self into his physical self. It did nothing but discomfort him.

He watched the array of doctors come in to check on his progress. They shook their heads at his dwindling body functions and lack of response. Sometimes Dr. Abernathy would come in, pulling up a chair close to his bed after his shift was done. The man would simply sit, clasped his hands together, and just…pray.

Peeta was surprised and touched by his mentor’s dedication to him. After, he would give Peeta’s hand a gentle squeeze and go home to his dear Mrs. Abernathy. Effie, Haymitch’s wife, came by in the daytime to knit by his bedside and chide him for his lack of a social life when he was not comatose.

“I met the nicest girl for you,” she told him one day. “Johanna, the Head Nurse on 8 introduced us, and she is just lovely. Her name is Katniss and she has the prettiest shade of grey eyes.”

Oh, he remembered those eyes. Peeta ached to see them.

His favorite days were when Prim and her family came. Cato, his brother-in-law, would talk to him about the latest comings and goings during his shifts. He had known Cato Masters since his family had moved into the house next door to theirs. They would build forts together in the fall, went to the local pool in the summer, rode their bikes around the town in the spring, and build snowmen in the winter.

Then years later, when Peeta returned from his freshmen year of college, Cato had fallen in love with the girl next door.

During visits, Prim was the one that would get all the reports from his doctors. Most of the time, it would be Haymitch who would talk to her since he was practically their surrogate father since their parents had long passed.

The rest of the staff was a little afraid of Prim; she looked sweet with her round blue eyes and golden hair but had a mouth on her that sent people running. She was especially this way when it came to Peeta’s care.

She really was the best sister.

Alba would sit with him, telling him stories about her days at school. Sometimes, she would sit and draw or read from one of her assigned books.

Today, she leaned forward into his ear.

“Cole really misses you,” she said—but her gaze went directly to where he stood across from her.

“Tell him that I miss him,” he replied, not even sure if Alba would be able to get the message. “And, his Mom.”

His niece simply nodded.

“No!”

Peeta turned to see Prim sitting at the adjacent table with Haymitch. He hadn’t even realized that Haymitch had come in, so focused on Alba and her revelation about Cole.

“My brother would never decide on something like this,” Prim insisted. “He would never just decide to leave me alone.”

“I know he wouldn’t,” Haymitch replied patiently. “However, when doctors are employed by this hospital, they are required to make medical plans which include life-sustaining policies and that’s what Peeta did. He did require a three-month wait before we ceased life support.”

Peeta froze. “It can’t be three months.”

“I’ve pushed to three and a half, Prim,” Haymitch explained. “But, the board—”

“The board wants to pull the plug,” his sister said tersely. “Well, what if we have him moved?”

Peeta walked toward them. On the table was a closed folder, his name written on it.

“There were stipulations on that, too,” his mentor continued. Haymitch moved the folder towards Prim. “But from what I have read, he didn’t want you to suffer financially. He recognized that private facilities can be expensive.”

Prim looked to Dr. Abernathy. “What do you think? And, don’t tell me what you want me to hear.”

Haymitch sat back for a moment, hands clasped in front of him as he thought of his answer.

“Based on the numbers and his progress, I would say that it would be best to acknowledge his wishes and let him go. Personally, I want to keep him with us forever.” Haymitch cleared his throat and Peeta could see the anguish in his eyes. “I’d do anything to get him back to us, Prim…but I know, more than anything, Peeta would hate to know that we’re all in pain. So, I can’t give you a definite answer.”

There was a knock at the door and Cato entered. He immediately sensed the heaviness in the room.

“What’s going on?” He moved towards them, placing a kiss on top of Prim’s head.

“Maybe you two should talk this over,” Haymitch said as he stood up. “I’m so sorry, Prim.”

With one last nod, Peeta’s mentor left the room.

Cato sat down on the now-empty chair, taking his wife’s hands. “What happened?”

Prim burst into tears, crumbling against him.

Lost in their pain, they failed to see Alba’s trembling mouth as she sat next to Peeta’s bed.

Peeta rushed over, kneeling before his teary-eyed niece.

“Alba, I don’t know if you sense me or hear me or even see me,” he told her. “But I’m going to find a way out of this. I promise.”

He had to get to Katniss before Prim made a decision.

“Alba…do you understand?”

Slowly and with her head down, Alba nodded in understanding.

“I’ll be back,” he assured.

Closing his eyes, Peeta thought of his safe place…of dark waves and captivating smoky eyes…and of mac and cheese…and action figures on the carpet…and of that longing of just being a lifetime away from even holding her hand…

Then, Peeta was gone.

Alba looked up, scooting herself off the seat before going to her parents.

Placing a hand on her mother’s shoulder, she offered her a smile.

“Uncle Peeta will find a way out of this. He promised.”

++++++

“Come on, kiddo.” Picking Cole up from their couch and turning off the television, Katniss headed down the hallway. “Time for bed.”

“I’m not sleepy…”

She could already feel Cole drooling on her shoulder.

Walking into his room, she placed him gently on his bed before pulling his blankets over him. Giving him a quick kiss, Katniss backed out towards the hallway before turning off the light and closing his bedroom door.

Entering her room, she closed her door and grabbed a set of pajamas from her dresser. It was another early night in—another quiet one, really. She missed the laughter that once filled their apartment when Peeta was present, but Katniss wanted to give him the time he needed with his family.

She sighed, pulling her shirt off and reaching to the unclasp her bra—

“Katniss!”

Peeta was suddenly standing in front of her.

“Peeta!” She took the shirt thrown on her bed and pressed it to her chest. “What are you doing here…in my room…while I’m half naked?”

“I’ve seen your boobs,” he told her easily. “Accidentally ended up in the bathroom during one of your showers.”

Katniss quickly pulled her pajamas on before turning back to him. “What’s going on?”

Peeta sat down on her bed, telling her about his past plans regarding his medical treatment and sustaining his life. Then he explained that Haymitch had extended his stay for as long as he could, but the board of directors were pushing for Prim to make a decision.

“I mean, I could understand from their perspective,” he said after he was finished. “I am dead weight.”

“Not funny,” Katniss told him. “You gave most of your life to that hospital and now they’re treating you like you’re just squatting in their hospital room! Not fighting for your life!” She sat down next to him. “Now what do we do?”

“Just hope that Prim decides against it,” he told her. “That she gives me more time.”

“She’s going to,” she said. “I’m not letting you go without a fight. I lost one man to a tumor and I’m not losing another because Prim is being pressured.”

Peeta smiled at her vehemence. He was sure that if he wasn’t so…corporal that he would be able to feel his heart pounding at the sight of her, all fire and beauty wrapped in cotton pajamas. He would feel the breathlessness and anticipation of feeling her kiss.

He would feel all of this because she was just so…her.

Peeta had to ask. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I love you.” Katniss said it with no hesitation. “Because when we were apart, the thought of not seeing your crooked smile really broke me.”

“Damn.” He took that feeling in and it was almost as if he could feel the blood rushing through him. “I better wake up.”

Katniss snorted. “Why?”

“Because I owe you one hell of a kiss.”

++++++

Taking a deep breath, Katniss hesitated as she stood in front of the hospital door.

“Katniss.” She turned to the man standing next to her. “This is not going to be easy.”

“I know.” Katniss knocked on the door. “But I have to try for you…and for us.” She pushed the door open and peeked inside. Prim was sitting at the chair next to Peeta’s bed, where his motionless body lay.

The young woman turned as she approached.

“Hey Prim. Don’t know if Dr. Abernathy mentioned this, but I work here, and I just wanted to check in with you.”

“Of course,” Prim replied hoarsely. It was apparent that she had been crying, her eyes bloodshot and cheeks rosy. “I guess he told you about my brother.”

Katniss nodded. “I actually stopped by, a few days ago. I know your brother.”

The woman looked to her in surprised. “How?”

“Tell her we took a class together at Penn,” Peeta said.

“We took a class together at Penn,” Katniss told her, biting her lip. She really hated to lie to Prim, especially with everything happening.

“Oh.” Prim smiled softly at her. “I thought you might’ve dated. You look like his type.”

Katniss felt her face heat up. “I don’t think he would’ve given me a second look.”

Peeta gave her a smile. “I would’ve looked.”

“Anyway,” Katniss continued. “I just wanted to say that, if possible, that you give Peeta some time. He’s in there, I know it—”

“It’s been so hard.” Prim’s mouth trembled and she took a breath. “On our family…on Alba…on me…” She looked to her brother. “And, I read over his plans…it’s what’s right.”

Katniss felt her chest tighten. “What are trying to say?”

“I signed the papers,” Prim told her hollowly. “About an hour ago. We’re going to do it tomorrow morning—while Alba is in school.”

“Why?” It came out louder than Katniss expected, and Prim jumped in surprised.

“Because he’s suffering!” Prim turned to her brother’s body. “Being in that body is like being in a prison!”

“Prim, I know you don’t want to hear this, but Peeta is here!”

It came out without a single thought, but there was nothing more Katniss could do.

Come hell or high water.

“He is here and he is begging you to not do this…” Peeta stood motionless, next to his sister as Katniss continued. “I know I sound crazy but it’s true. I moved into to an apartment and it turned out it was his. Then, he just started appearing. I mean, he’s standing right next to you.”

Prim turned quickly and Peeta moved closer to her. “Prim, listen to her. I’m right here.”

They went silent as Prim processed Katniss’ words and for a moment, Katniss thought that the woman might believe her.

Until Prim looked up.

“Get out,” Prim said coldly. “It’s obvious that you need help, Katniss, and if you value your job, I suggest that you never come in this room or near my brother again.”

“Please—”

“You have ten seconds, or I will call security.”

++++++

“Now what?”

They returned home, worried that Prim would make good on her words and contact security.

On the couch, Peeta inched closer to Katniss, the longing to hold her hand overwhelming him. He could see her suffering and it made him think of that same look in Prim’s eyes as the two women talked in his hospital room.

Everyone was suffering because of him, but he wouldn’t let that happen anymore.

“I think we just…let go,” he replied tightly. “I don’t want to spend what time I have left here fighting.”

Katniss brushed away her tears quickly. “Okay. What do you want to do?”

Standing up, Peeta nodded towards the hallway. “Come with me.”

She followed stiffly as he led her into the bedroom. “What are we doing?”

Peeta went to the bed, patting her side of it. “Lay down.”

Katniss let out a wet laugh. “I’m sorry, but nothing is happening in that bed.”

“Yeah, I think the small problem of me not being able to touch you is going to negate whatever you had in mind.” He laid back on her other pillow. “I just want to pretend for a moment.”

Katniss went to her side of the bed and laid down. She turned to him. “Pretend what?”

“That we’re just a regular couple coming home from work and relishing that time that we have together before picking up our kid at school,” Peeta said. “Maybe we’re trying to figure if sex is possible before then.”

Katniss chuckled. “Maybe not. I like to take my time.” She sighed. “A make-out session would be more in our favor.”

“I never really took that time, you know,” he told her. “To sit down and have a relationship, to focus on just a kiss. I regret that. I never took the time to fall in love and now you’re here—and it’s too late.”

“I thought this was pretend,” Katniss admonished. “Stick to the script. Just lay here and pretend to be in love with me!”

“Katniss.” Peeta reached, his hand just a brush away from the tip of the braid she wore. “Who’s pretending?”

++++++

“Peeta, why did you decide to become a doctor?”

Cole stared up at him with those doleful eyes, Katniss’ eyes, from his bed.

“Well, I wanted to help people,” Peeta said. “I wanted to make an impact on the world. I guess that’s what being a doctor meant to me.” The boy nodded in understanding. “But making an impact in the world is not just having the big, fancy job. People make an impact in even the smallest ways.”

“Like what?”

“Like you, Cole—you saw me when no one else could,” he told the little boy. “You trusted me without thought even if I might have steered you wrong. I hope you know that it takes a lot to have such amazing faith in people. That is your impact on people—your faith in the good of people. Promise me that you’ll always remember that, even when you become old and grey.”

“I don’t want to be old and grey!” Cole protested.

“That’s my biggest wish for you,” Peeta told him thickly. “To become old and grey, to live the life that wrinkles your skin and puts laugh lines on your face. I just want you to really live until your skin is fully lived in. You understand?”

The little boy nodded solemnly. “I think so.”

“Just remember everything I told you, okay? Lock it up and when you have a little boy of your own, you tell him everything I told you.”

Cole smiled tiredly at him. “Thanks, Peeta.”

He closed his eyes, memorizing every bit of this moment. Peeta would be sure to tell Gale all about his son—wherever he ended up.

“Your father is very proud of you.”

The young boy was already asleep.

Standing up, Peeta turned and found Katniss in the doorway, dressed in her scrubs. “What are you doing?”

“Come on. Johanna is already here,” she simply said.

Together they walked to the living room and Johanna jumped up from the couch.

“Do you really want to do this?” The woman asked worriedly. “You’re risking a lot.”

“It’s just something that I have to do,” Katniss replied. “School is at 9. Feel free to use my bed. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

Resignedly, Johanna nodded once more and taking her keys, Katniss stepped out of the apartment with Peeta in tow. Her silence was enough for him to know that it would be in vain to ask where they were going or what she was planning to do.

Once they were on the road, Peeta had an idea of where they were going.

“Why?” he asked her.

“Because…no one should be alone at a time like this,” Katniss replied as she made a turn into Panem Hospital.

In her scrubs, Katniss looked like any other nurse coming in for a night shift. Security didn’t bat an eye as she walked past them and continued, occasionally, watching the monitors.

Katniss entered his room easily. The night nurse had already done her rounds according to the chart at his bedside and, unless there was a sign of distress, she wouldn’t have to check in until the end of her shift.

“Why are we here?” Peeta asked as she sat in the chair next to his bed.

“Like I said—no one should be alone at a time like this,” she whispered. Her eyes went to his body and carefully, Katniss reached for his hand. “Your hand is warm.” She examined his hand, her eyes caressing his skin. “There’s a scar here.”

“Friend nicked my skin while we were ice skating,” he told her. “Just barely missed slicing off my hand but got that sliver of skin. I remember how much it hurt; how red the blood was against the ice and I was afraid…but this feels a lot scarier. Not really knowing what happens on the other end.”

Katniss stood, bringing down his bed railing before perching carefully at his side.

“Don’t be afraid.” Her hand reached to his cheek, feeling that bit not covered by his breathing mask. “Even if it was just for a moment, we really had something. People go their whole lifetimes never feeling the way that we do. I was lucky. I’ve had it twice.”

“I’ll have you with me,” Peeta promised. “Always.”

She looked to him, not even bothering to hide the tears running down her cheeks.

“Always.”

++++++

Someone was shaking her awake.

“Katniss, you need to get up—now!”

Blearily, she opened her eyes to see Johanna looking down at her.

“What?” she asked.

“They’re coming, Katniss.” Her eyes shot up to where Peeta stood in front of the bed. “Prim and her husband, Haymitch, along with the rest of the medical team. It’s time.”

“We really need to leave,” Johanna urged. “Your job…your license is at stake!”

Katniss stood up; her eyes resolute. “No. I have to see him to the end.”

The door opened and Dr. Abernathy stepped in along with Prim and Cato.

Prim looked furious. “What are you doing here?”

“I was just about to take her out, Dr. Abernathy,” Johanna told the man. She looked pleadingly at Katniss. “Let’s go, Katniss…you’re not part of this.”

“I am part of this,” Katniss replied. “I love him. I’ve loved him for as long as I’ve known him—maybe even before I knew him…” She looked to Dr. Abernathy and then Prim. “Please.”

“Please,” Peeta whispered into his sister’s ear.

Prim blinked, her eyes suddenly widening before she turned to Peeta’s mentor. “What do you think?”

He stared at Katniss for a long moment. She stood firm, relaxing against Johanna’s hold.

“I think…that she needs to say goodbye as well,” he concluded. “But I’ll need her resignation immediately after this.”

“Fine,” Katniss responded.

The medical team entered, beginning the removal of Peeta’s IV and monitors. Prim rushed forward, sitting at her brother’s side while Cato stood beside her, an arm around her shoulders.

Katniss remained behind, her Peeta standing in front of her.

“Don’t watch this,” he told her. “Keep your eyes on me.”

The team shut off his ventilator and Prim wailed as they removed his breathing mask.

Still, Peeta remained right in front of her. “Sweetheart, just keep looking at me.”

Katniss felt her chest tightening, her breaths growing shallower. “Don’t go…”

“The breathing tube has been removed, Dr. Abernathy,” someone from the team reported.

“This is it,” she told him, not caring if anyone heard her. “After this—”

“It’s okay.” Peeta reached for her. “Because you’re going to be my last vision in this life—I’m leaving looking at the woman I love.”

She could see him growing dimmer as his time neared.

“I love you, Katniss…always.”

Katniss nodded, the hot tears burning her skin. “Always.”

The heart monitor let out the flatline signal.

Her eyes remained on him as he began to fade into nothing, that crooked smile of his the last imprint on her heart.

Katniss was faintly aware of everything going on around her, her eyes still trained on the spot where he stood.

Somewhere in the distance, Johanna was trying to pull her away…Prim was crying into her husband’s shoulder and Dr. Abernathy was recording the time.

Still her eyes remained on where Peeta last stood.

‘Beep…beep…beep…’

“Doctor!” someone shouted. “We’re getting something!”

Katniss’ vision cleared and she looked to see Prim peeking down at her brother.

“Peeta?” Prim whimpered.

The room stilled, the only sound the sudden steady beeping on the heart monitor.

A cough erupted from Peeta’s chest and she felt Johanna’s hands drop from her shoulders in shock.

Dr. Abernathy rushed to the bed where Peeta was slowly moving his head. “Peeta, can you hear me?”

Then, “Of course…I have perfect hearing.”

Prim burst into tears, pressing her face against her brother’s chest while Cato gripped the railing as he wiped his eyes. Dr. Abernathy was shouting orders to the medical team, his hands shaking as he began to examine his student.

And, Katniss—was now just a stranger.

“Let’s go,” she told Johanna.

Her friend looked to her. “Are you sure?”

“I don’t belong here anymore.”

++++++

Three Months later…

“Alba said her Uncle Peeta was asking about you.”

Katniss looked at her son as they headed home. It was strange; three months had passed, and it was like Peeta had been a dream to her son. He never mentioned him anymore nor did he say anything about ever seeing him.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Cole replied. “She said that he asked her if she ever saw you when you dropped me off.”

“That’s interesting,” Katniss responded. “Anything else?”

“Yeah. Alba said he asked if you looked alright,” her son told her.

“What did you tell her?” she asked curiously.

“I told her that you look liked…Mommy,” he replied. “And, that we were spending a lot more time together since you don’t have to go to work anymore.”

Katniss had turned in her resignation that very day per Dr. Abernathy’s stipulation and she hadn’t looked back. In truth, it would have been too strange to be at a hospital where she’d be known as that nurse who spent the night with a comatose patient.

She had saved a good amount of money, so they were okay for the time being—or until Katniss found something where they didn’t need references.

“Hey look!” Cole pointed ahead. “It’s Alba’s Uncle.”

Katniss froze seeing Peeta standing in front of their building steps, his gaze trained on her.

She could feel her heart beating in her ears as they made their way closer—closer to him.

Peeta smiled at her son. “Hey Cole!”

Cole grinned up at the man. “How do you know my name?”

He looked to Katniss in question and she shook her head.

Recovering quickly, Peeta gave him an easy smile.

“Alba has mentioned you a few million times. You two sit next to each other, right?”

“Sweetie, it’s getting cold. Why don’t you go up while I see what Mr. Mellark wants?” Katniss handed her keys to Cole. Hopefully, she didn’t look as shaky as she was feeling. “I’ll be up in a few to start dinner.”

“Okay, Mommy!” Cole waved to Peeta. “See you later!”

He rushed up to the main door but upon reaching the top, Cole suddenly looked to the man.

“Do you like mac and cheese?”

“Love it,” Peeta told him.

Content with his answer, Cole walked into the apartment building.

Peeta approached her. “You disappeared on me.”

“I had to give you that time with your family,” she said, her eyes on him. “I had months with you.”

Peeta looked healthy and strong…and so alive. Katniss could feel that familiar pulsing in her body in his presence. Somehow, all he had to do was stand next to her and she could already feel herself coming undone.

“Plus,” she continued. “I promised Dr. Abernathy that I would resign if they let me stay during…the procedure. Also, your sister thinks I’m a nutjob and everyone knows me as that nurse who was in love with the coma guy.”

“Prim doesn’t think you’re a nutjob,” he assured her. “In fact, once I explained everything, she went to Haymitch and demanded that they get you back. You’ve been dodging his calls.”

“I’m on a different path now,” she said wryly.

“So, I’m not the only one,” Peeta said.

“What do you mean?”

“Well…” He sat down on the apartment steps, patting the spot next to him. Katniss joined him and Peeta scooted closer to her. “I’ve spent so much time saving lives that I think it’s time for me to focus on my own life. So, I’m currently living at my sister’s house since my apartment is now occupied and trying to find my new happiness.”

“Hmm…” Katniss nodded thoughtfully. “Any ideas?”

Peeta reached over, taking her gloved hand, and removed the covering finger by finger. Her hand unclothed, he intertwined their fingers and she gasped at the rush that filled her.

“Felt that too?” Peeta looked down at their joined hands. “I feel like I’ve been waiting a lifetime to do this.” His gaze went to her and he reached, cupping her cheek. “Also, I remembered something.”

Katniss leaned into his touch. “What?”

“I owe you one hell of a kiss.”

Then, his lips were on hers.

Her arms wove around his neck as Peeta deepened the kiss—this honey thick kiss that made every part of her come to life, that made her long for more. When he groaned into her mouth and swept his tongue along hers, Katniss shivered in pleasure feeling his hum against her lips.

It was all real. He was real.

Tears filled her eyes at the thought that once-upon-a-time, the thought of even a small touch was impossible.

Finally, and reluctantly, they pulled apart, both breathless.

“How was that?” Peeta gasped, his cheeks pink.

“I think we should continue this at my place,” Katniss told him. “After Cole has gone to bed.”

“Well, you are technically squatting in my apartment,” Peeta said as he helped her up. “So, you owe me.”

Katniss grinned. “How about your own side on my bed and all the mac and cheese you can eat?”

“Throw in a first date, a few make-out sessions, accepting my proposal, and a kid or two and we have a deal.”

Turning to him, Katniss pressed a kiss to his lips. “Deal.”

Hand in hand, they made their way home.

FIN.

The title comes from the lyrics of “Just Like Heaven” the song from which the movie title was taken from.

Anyways, Happy Halloween!

Till next time,

JLaLa

#octoberlark 2019 #octoberlark2019 #Everlark Halloween #Everlark fanfiction #Everlark #justlikeheaven!Everlark #supernatural romance everlark

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