#it's not my fault she's so prolific

[ghuleh-recs]

every day this month I'm going to recommend a different spooky ghost fic! today's rec is:

Cirice - @ghostchems - E, 3.5k

you are searching for inspiration at the site of a local urban legend but something beckons to you

“Perhaps, I will show you some mercy, then.” His breath is hot on your ear before his mouth moves lower to your neck. You brace yourself against the wall as your heart starts to thud in your chest. Conflicting feelings run through your mind, fear and attraction mixing in a way you have never experienced before.

𖤐 you know the drill--bookmark, read, leave kudos and/or comments!

(browse the other rectober posts here.)

[ohnoitstbskyen]

100 songs to get to know me

I posted this image over on the bluesky, and it got like 100 likes, so now here we are. I was going to write them all up here, but Tumblr imposes a 10 video limit on embeds per post which I find infuriating.

So! You can read the first ten entries here, but you can read the entire list here: https://tbskyen.bearblog.dev/100-songs-to-get-to-know-me/

1. ABBA - Lay All Your Love On Me

I genuinely don't quite know if my enjoyment of ABBA is something I came by honestly, or something which is simply genetically engineered into my Scandinavian soul. I remember hearing my mom blasting their songs on the home stereo in my childhood, and the association has put permanent nostalgia blinders on me for all of ABBA's greatest hits. Still, I think the beat is undeniable and the mournful tone of the chorus adds some real melancholy to the dramatic plea at the core of the song.

2. Afenginn - Oestrogenmanipuleret Basilisk

Afenginn describe themselves as "bastard etno-punk" which is probably as good a description as you're going to get. There's a lot of klezmer and eastern European folk influences here, but what is more important about Afenginn's best songs is that they go hard as f*ck and it's an absolute blast to dance to them at a show. They played this the first time I saw them live, and the rhythm comes back every time I hear it again. Good times!

3. Afenginn - Ralli in D Minor

With 100 slots to fill, I am giving myself permission to allocate two slots to Afenginn, and for the same reason. Ralli in D Minor is less of a dance tune to me, and more of a headbanger, but with a sufficiently loud subwoofer and a game crowd, you could f*ing mosh to this.

4. Anamanaguchi - Prom Night

I discovered Anamanaguchi as the composers of the title track to the Nerdist podcast back in the day, and being unfamiliar with the concept of chiptunes, I was drawn in initially by the sheer novelty of hearing the squeaks and bloops of my gaming childhood employed towards rock tunes and combined with "real" instruments.

Beyond the gimmick, though, Anamanaguchi won me over fully with the Scott Pilgrim game soundtrack, and then 2013's Endless Fantasy, where the gimmick of chiptune nostalgia noise (at least for me) finally coalesced into something that felt entirely like its own thing. Plus I'm a sucker for exactly this kind of bright dance pop, and Bianca Raquel's vocals here are a perfect match for the tone of the music.

5. Jennifer Hudson - Memory

2019s Cats is a fascinating fucking disaster. Tom Hooper is the worst director of musicals in my living memory, the abuse of the VFX staff extended beyond brutal crunch and absurd challenge imposed by a director who had no idea what the hell he was asking them to do all the way into an astonishingly arrogant and condescending joke from Rebel Wilson and James Corden at the expense of workers who were the last people at fault for the disaster that the movie became (look in the fucking mirror, Wilson and Corden, your performances were rancid).

Still, the silver lining of Cats is we got to hear Jennifer Hudson shake the world on its foundations with her rendition of Memory. I don't give a shit what anyone says, this performance is transcendent and no amount of institutional failure can dim its quality.

6. Annette Bjergfeldt - Min Bærende Bjælke

Annette is one of my mother's oldest friends, and a prolific singer-songwriter now turned author. I've been going to her concerts since I was a little child, and while I am absolutely not the target audience for any of it, it has stuck with me as part of my musical vocabulary deep into adulthood.

She has experimented with brass band accompaniment a few times, but for my money, nothing quite comes close to the floating, optimistic vibe of Min Bærende Bjælke. It sounds like a very particular kind of lasting romance, which of course is also what the lyrics are about.

7. Hozier - Blood Upon the Snow

We'll get more than one Hozier song on this list, but Blood Upon the Snow stands out to me as a song which easily transcends the videogame soundtrack promotional tie-in nature of its conception. Bear McCreary's hurdy gurdy and lyrics about surviving through adversity by holding on to existence with your teeth and nails... yeah, it hits with me. There's something real in that.

"The trees deny themselves nothing that makes them grow, no rainfall, no sunshine, no blood upon the snow." Something about that feels real.

8. The Beatles - Something

idk if I really need to write anything about George Harrison's most famous love song that hasn't been written more extensively by a million dad-rock enthusiasts before me.

I will say, this is one of the few songs I listen to regularly that justify the expensive audiophile headphones I invest in. There's a LOT to hear on a good, lossless, original mix of this song, if you're the kind of pervert who gets off to listening to a song a hundred times to focus on different parts of the soundscape. (it's me, I am the pervert)

9. Blink-182 - Adam's Song

I discovered a lot of my music taste as a young man from extremely low-resolution AMVs that my friend used to download off sketchy file-sharing sites. Blink-182 entered my musical lexicon through the one above, specifically, piggybacking off of my teenage love of Dragon Ball.

I never really grokked what the lyrics were actually about, until relistening to the song years later, but something about the minor-key wail of the thing really sat with my angsty teenage soul and has stuck with me ever since. I cannot listen to this song without that music video playing in my head, the song will forever belong to Vegeta.

There's remastered versions of this AMV out there, apparently, but if it's not 144p with tinny audio, it's just not right. That's not what the song is supposed to sound like, not to me.

10. Blink-182 - Miss You

Blink-182 is one of those bands I discovered via anime AMVs and listened to obsessively for a period as a teenager (The Offspring will show up later on this list), and then fell entirely out of touch with for years until discovering much later in life that they did, in fact, keep releasing music. I Miss You from their self-titled 2003 album felt, when I discovered it sometime in the early 2010s, like a much more mature and interesting sound from a band which had gotten stuck associated with my adolescent superpower kung-fu fantasies which I was, at the time, feeling a bit embarrassed about.

The song had a resurgence on TikTok a little while ago as a meme template, which made me listen to the albums again, and rediscover yet again that Blink-182 is, in fact, still putting out albums.

---

The rest of the list is here: https://tbskyen.bearblog.dev/100-songs-to-get-to-know-me/

[therealvinelle]

Why does Edward use his "old fashiodness" as a reason not to have sex before marriage bc people in the 1900s totally fucked

Yes they did, they also did other things they weren't supposed to.

Sex outside of marriage and promiscuity has been stigmatised since marriage was invented, and remains so in many cultures in the world today. Anthropologically, marriage has been a tool for men to own women and ensure heirs, and for women to be provided for (And for this reason is tied to the concept of property).

It is only recently in the West that this changed (and even then promiscuity remains a looked down upon trait), and that change is closely related to the financial liberation of women: if Elizabeth Bennet can find herself gainful employment and earn as much as any man, there is no need for her to be married and Mrs. Bennet doesn't mind not having any sons. Likewise, women can't leave relationships if they'll be out on the streets: the steep rise in divorce rates in the 20th century was a direct result of women's financial independence.

Edward lived in a world where women were not financially independent, and if a woman had a child outside of wedlock, both her and the child would live in shame. It's not even long ago, when my great-grandmother was little there was a girl staying at her aunt's house who was pregnant and who lived there, cooped up in a single room until she had the baby, so the people where she ordinarily lived wouldn't find out she'd been pregnant. This was in the 1920's. There were also women's houses (I don't know what you would call them in English) were pregnant unmarried women would come to live until they'd had their children, at which point they returned to wherever they'd come from and the children were adopted out. This meant their lives didn't have to be ruined. My grandmother remembers such houses being prolific even in her childhood, and that was in the 1950's.

The men were not looked well upon either, because if you don't marry the woman it usually means you were already married, or you simply didn't want to take on responsibility: either way you thought a woman getting pregnant, losing social standing and prospects and endangering her health (childbirth mortality rates only began dropping in the West around the 1930's) because you wanted to get rocks off was an acceptable quid pro quo. It's not a good look. (However, the father is not the one stuck with the nine month pregnancy and human child, so a child outside of marriage still had worse consequences for the mother.)

Edward having a deep rooted refusal to sleep with Bella without marrying her first isn't something I'll fault him for, especially not when Bella immediately got pregnant, proving that these things do happen when you least want them to. If I lived a hundred years I imagine there would be deep rooted notions my much younger peers would consider archaic that remained with me as well. Maybe I will be saying "Well when I was young, we kept our cats indoors!" while people just stare because there are no cars on the streets and the birds all died, let the damn cat enjoy the grass. Or "Well, in my day I took one shower each day! And sometimes- I took two! All of it in drinking water, hahaha!" will be a wasteful and shocking statement that appalls and embarrasses the children.

Culture and norms change when society changes, is what I'm saying. This can be for the worse and for the better (and I'm always slightly terrified when people assume that the world will continue to change for the better through some natural default. We in the Western World have been on a positive trajectory in terms of civil rights for the past century, that is great, but societies have made progress before and seen that progress be lost), in terms of women's sexual freedom it has been for the better since Edward's time.

Financial independence, abortion, and tireless feminists fighting for social change are what we have to thank for marriage no longer being socially required for women who wish to be sexually active, and even then I have to wonder - say the next United States election is won by a certain someone who seems uninterested in preserving the democrat process in the country, and the House and Senate majority is Republican. Abortion rights would not be strengthened in that scenario, but more likely further gutted, and recovering them would be very difficult if the concerns about the Republican candidate's antidemocratic alignments should be correct. You could also start getting worried about things like sexual education. Say ten, fifteen, twenty years go by. How do you imagine that's going to change the reality of young women who have sex outside of wedlock and got pregnant, and now can't abort the child? And what ripple effects do you think this might have?

To put it this way, looking at a different civil rights issue - I'm young, I'm under 30, yet I remember growing up barely knowing what "gay" was, just that it was a schoolyard insult (where the insult worked because the boy being bullied also didn't know what "gay" was, and tentatively said "... yes?" when asked if he was gay), and now schools draw rainbows and participate in Pride. Culture has changed tremendously, it's a very happy change, but I won't presume gay rights have come to stay and can't be taken away (just look to what's happened in Poland), nor will I presume these changes can't happen quicker than one would expect. I similarly will not presume women's rights are iron clad.

And should things go very awry, then men like Edward who don't have sex with women unless there's a wedding ring in place will be the good eggs.

In other words I'm very "But why were they different?" about things that were different about the past.

(Also I do not want to fearmonger. So, to be clear: I don't think The Handmaiden is becoming reality in the States tomorrow if the Republican side wins the US Election, I don't think we're all being shipped off to the gulags. I do however think that the belief civil rights gains are ironclad and a done deal is a terrifyingly naive one, and betrays historical and contemporary ignorance. Society will change, that's inevitable, and complacency risks that chance being for the worse.)

[dapper-lil-arts]

I'm invested now, why don't you like fluttercord?

Okay, here we go then, why don't I like one of the most famous and prolific ships on the fandom?

First of all, there's a major power imbalance at play, you know, chaos god that can reshape mind and reality with a snap of his fingers matched with a regular pegasus girl, and an drastic age difference (which could be discarded cause Fluttershy's an adult, just worth a mention.)

But the primary issue comes from the canon itself, especially with how they came together. Fluttershy was just shafted for her full responsibility to be to make sure Discord gets better; Something that already was a strange choice of Celestia (like girl why are you throwing a random mortal you dont know that well onto a godlike chaos being even you struggled with? It reeks of writers already having come up a solution and not wanting to build a foundation to lead there.) and canon proves again and again that if discord doesnt have fluttershy around, he will make bad choices and hurt people, something that gets proven again and again all the way to gen fucking five. That's textbook codependency and it makes it even more weird by the incredible, terrifying power imbalance. Discord isnt just an alicorn, hes the only one of his kind because of how powerful he is, and his powers are insanely dangerous to have on a relationship with a mortal. Like, you saw how he was when he was jealous of Fluttershy for having a diffrent friend. Can you imagine what he'd do if somebody flirted with her? (even if they weren't dating, if Fluttershy said she got a girlfriend or whatever, Discord would straight up throw rainbow dash on a labyrinth of infinite agony)

I think my primary issues come from the canon because he is always abusing his powers, never using them wisely, and always causing trouble (WHICH WAS THE ORIGINAL POINT OF EVEN BRINGING HIM BACK TOO)-- And the ratio of slaps on the wrist lower dramatically by the end (the final conflict is entirely his fault purely because he thought having a conflict would be cool)-- All of which just makes him untrustworthy to be on a relationship with a mortal hes obssesed with. He'd be like a yandere boyfriend exept a chaos god, which, yikes!

Srsly the fact that cozy glow the toddler gets sent to hell and turned to stone instead of the chaos god that sponsored her is just plain WEIRD. It's a writers problem.

There's a reasons why Alicorns have to ascend, earn their power-- And why they tend to abuse it less. Being born with power just begets a diffrent attitude towards it; Which is smth that the writers do interpret quite well, with how Discord acts. he has no empathy, he doesnt need to care, because reality is his to shape, and then boom, teaching someone to be better just became a lot harder. Good character! Very funny, very well designed and voiced-- But goddamn he's weirdly written as a ""Good"" guy.

Now lets finally turn to the woman in the relationship. because Fluttershy is a normal mortal gal with a normal mortal life with her own needs, which generally shouldn't have to involve her entire life or routine on making sure a godlike manbaby does the right thing with his powers. it doesn't feel like the kind of thing that has any consent to it, after all, discord doesnt need to ask for anything, he can just do. (THANKS FOR THE IDEA CELESTIA) It just reeks of a kind of misoginy-ass writing where the woman has to bend over backwards for the man.

Its like the shy pegasus was just. Set up for LIFE on this strange relationship. Its kind of creepy.

And Fluttershy just deserves better than him in my opinion; And she can do better, too. Also it doesnt help that you know-- 99% other ship with fluttershy dont have any of these issues lmao. Even canon Rainbow Dash would treat her better, so i dont bother with Fluttercord ever!

[bamboozledbird]

IGNITE: A Teen Wolf S1 AU // Chapter 1 / Next

Characters: Stiles Stilinski, Sheriff Stilinski, Reader (You) Pairing: Eventual Stiles x Reader, but man are we talking slow burn Word Count: 4.8k Warnings: Canon typical gore/violence, parental death (rip to your fake mom), descriptions of burning, depictions of depression (apathy, dissociation, 'numb little bug' vibes) Tags: Canon has been lovingly scrapped for parts, author is a chaotic bi and it shows, prolific overuse of the em dash, the slowest of burns i fear

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

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

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

Maybe, the real question is how long will they want to? Chapter Summary: After your annual interrogation with Sheriff Stilinski, you meet his son who turns out to be very handy with jumper cables and incoherent babbling.

A/N: Does this look familiar? It should lmao. I gave into the peer pressure. All the messages and requests were too powerful. Here is a reader version of my ofc season 1 fic. Obviously some things have been removed to get rid of specific names/descriptions, so you want to read the full thing you can read the og version and check me out on ao3 (dork_knight)! For the sake of not clogging tags, I'll probably just do my reader version on tumblr and the full oc lore version on ao3 from now on. xx

Some say the world will end in fire. Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire.

Before your mother’s death, you would have picked fire. Every single time. 

You never liked the cold; never really had to get used to it growing up in central California—but the crux of your argument, the twisted logic behind it all, was that most burn victims died from suffocation before they felt the flames. A small mercy, really, in the face of unspeakable tragedy. 

In the end, however, statistics were just numbers, your mother didn't die from smoke inhalation, and there was no mercy in burying a parent before you were old enough to have children of your own. Nothing ever ended poetically off the page. Death was just death, and it was always ugly. Someone should really tell that to Robert Frost, you mused, biting at a raw hangnail.

The medical examiner said the actual cause of death was pulmonary edema; at least, that was his best guess based on the state of the body. He didn’t say that she felt everything, her skin peeling back into her flesh, her flesh liquefying into fuel, her joints flexing into contorted pleas until the fire incinerated her last nerve ending. He didn’t have to; you connected those dots all on your own. You’d been twelve at the time, not an imbecile. 

“I’m sorry to drag you through this all again.”

You flitted your eyes away from the flickering lightbulb above Sheriff Stilinski’s head and met his gaze; it was nauseatingly sympathetic. Your responding shrug was a small, little thing—more like a twitch in practice, “Not your fault.” 

Your yearly visits to Sheriff Stilinski’s office were solely your father’s doing, even if no one wanted to admit it to your face. Most mayors would use their political power to get their child out of a police station, not into it, but perhaps he stopped being your dad somewhere between the funeral and now. 

“If you could start—”

“From the beginning,” you smoothed your thumb in small circles over the armrest of your chair, attentively tracing patterns into the polished wood, “I know.” This was, after all, the fourth anniversary of your first interrogation. You’d become somewhat of an expert at being a useless witness. You picked at your uneven cuticles before continuing, “Mom put me to bed around 10:00—which was kind of late for a school night, honestly, but she let me stay up to finish another chapter anyway.” The right corner of your mouth twitched for a brief moment, “Nancy Drew: Password to Larkspur Lane. I told her that forcing someone to go to sleep in the middle of a mystery was specifically forbidden in Geneva Protocol II.” Your mom had been far too indulgent of your lip on most occasions, but that night she didn’t smile at your snarky aside. She let you finish the chapter because she was too tired to argue; you could tell. At the time, you saw it as a victory. Now, it kept you up at night, the drooping lines of your mother’s mouth spilling over the pages of whatever book you were trying to read.

You bit down on your tongue when a stray splinter snagged against the soft pad of your thumb, “Dad was out of town, so it was just the two of us. Mom always put me to bed when Dad was gone; said it was the only way she could get to sleep. Had to make sure my window was locked.” You paused for a long moment: everything went dark after this. Your mother kissed the top of your head, murmured, ‘Love you,’ turned out the light, and then that was it. You woke up in the hospital, and your mom was dead. 

A bead of sweat dripped onto your top lip. The air in the Beacon Hills police station was, without fail, sticky with heat and body odor—and it wasn’t just the oppressive Californian sun. Even in the winter, a person could choke on the stifling warmth. Idly, you wondered if it was a matter of interrogatory tactics or budgetary constraints. 

“And then,” Sheriff Stilinski prompted gently, though you both knew how the story went from here. You had told it to him and a dozen other officials at least a hundred times in the last four years. 

You bit down on your thumbnail and winced when your teeth snagged on the tender nail bed, “And then nothing. I opened my eyes, and a nurse said that you found me on the front lawn.” 

“You don’t remember how you got outside?” 

You shook your head, staring past the Sheriff's shoulder. Large pieces of dust floated through the air, highlighted by the slivers of light trickling through the blinds. Suddenly, you had a newfound appreciation for the lack of fans in the room. 

Sheriff Stilinski cleared his throat and rubbed his hand over his jaw, “You don’t remember saying it was an angel?”

Blinking slowly, you looked at the grim line of the Sheriff’s mouth and gripped your knees tightly, digging your fingers into fragile skin until your wrist cracked, “I should, right? I was twelve. I should remember something—that’s what everyone thinks. That’s what my dad thinks.” Your eyelids fluttered to a tight close, and your voice went so quiet you could barely be heard over the hum of the copier outside the door, “He thinks it was me. That’s why he makes you question me every year.” Copper flooded your mouth as the soft lining of your cheek split under the brunt of your teeth, “He thinks you’ll finally figure out how I did it.” 

You were scared to open your eyes as the silence stretched between the two of you. You’d danced around the subject before, hinted and spun around the heart of it, but you’d never truly discussed how it looked from the outside. Sheriff Stilinski had been kind enough to give you a few different excuses over the years: trauma, head injury, oxygen deprivation, just plain ol’ grief—but whatever caused your temporary amnesia wasn’t so conveniently explained. In fact, currently, you had no explanation at all. When you finally peeked through your lashes, clumped together with frustrated tears, you couldn’t quite figure out what expression the Sheriff was making. He leaned back in his desk chair and frowned, “I’m sure he doesn’t—”

“He does,” you cut him off. Your eyes went flinty, irises darkening to something far more ashen with the resolve of your anger. You never had any trouble reading your father’s face; the disgust was thinly-veiled between the flickers of fear. 

Sheriff Stilinksi leaned forward so that you had no choice but to look him in the eyes. They were kind—more tired than usual, but still kind. They always were. That was one thing you remembered from that day, waking up in the hospital to Sheriff Stilinski’s kind, watery blue eyes, just before the entire world fell apart. His voice was gentle, but firm, when he finally spoke, “I don’t.” 

You nodded numbly and pulled at a fraying string on the hem of your denim skirt until the thread snapped. 

“I mean it, kid. They couldn’t identify the source of the fire. They couldn’t even find an origin point; no twelve-year-old could pull that off.”

You chewed on your bottom lip, “Could anyone?”

Sheriff Stilinski’s brow furrowed, and his mouth screwed up into a crooked line, like he was chewing on his words and deciding if he should swallow them or spit them out. “I wish I had all the answers for you. I really do. Not knowing, it’s worse than any truth.”

You blinked up at him for a moment, once again taken aback by his raw sincerity, and swallowed hard. He wasn’t the one who was supposed to have the answers; he was the one who was supposed to ask the questions. There was one failure in his muggy office, and it wasn’t the Sheriff. “It’s okay,” you said quietly. “Not your fault.”

He looked like he wanted to argue the point, but whatever he wanted to say was interrupted by the sharp ringing of the phone on his desk. “I have to take this, but if you remember something, or if you just need to talk—”

“My dad spends a small fortune on a psychiatrist and a behavioral therapist for that,” you stood up quickly, shouldering your bag. You forced the corners of your mouth into a small smile, tight at the edges like a sheet that had been stretched too thin, “But thank you. For everything.” 

The Sheriff’s gaze darted to a framed photo on his desk. You had seen it before, on one of your many visits to his office. It was of a boy—his son, you assumed—he looked like he was around five or six at the time. He was grinning, wide enough to show off his missing incisors, and his fingers and wrist were stained cotton-candy blue from a melting popsicle. You must’ve been that happy once, right? In the beginning, everyone was unencumbered by the weight of imminent mortality. Maybe that’s what Sheriff Stilinski was thinking, too. He looked away from the photo and gave you a small smile, “Don’t be a stranger, okay?”

You gave a half-hearted wave before wrapping your fingers around the strap of your backpack and walking to the parking lot. 

Outside, the sky was grim, a mocking reflection of the dour expression on your face. The spite in your eyes hardened when big, fat raindrops splattered against the apples of your cheeks. For a moment, you just stood there, glaring at the rain and cursing the cosmos for their utterly unamusing sense of humor.

A jeep pulled into the parking lot, and the squealing engine startled you back into reality. The search for your car keys was, of course, a considerable endeavor. Nothing could be easy. Not here. Not today. Not ever, you thought. A bit melodramatic maybe, but the weather was certainly ripe for a bit of self-pity.

You stacked your textbooks and binders onto the hood of your sedan, haphazardly throwing your jacket on top of the pile to protect your painstakingly penned Kafka essay from the rain. By the time your fingertips brushed against the cool metal of your car keys, your hair was damp and curling at the ends. 

The momentary relief was short-lived when you pressed the unlock button five times and the accompanying beep didn’t sound, not even once. For an absurdly long minute, all you could do was rest your forehead against the driver’s side window, breathing heavily until condensation gathered next to your mouth and the drizzle speckled dots onto the sleeves of your thin cotton shirt.

“If you’re trying to charge the battery through osmosis, it’d probably be more effective to smash your head against the hood.”

You jumped, and then flinched again when your keys clattered against the ground. You caught a glimpse of the phantom speaker in the side-view mirror; bizarrely, he looked just as surprised as you felt. You turned around, trepidatiously—objects may be closer than they appear n’all—and tried to swallow your rapidly rising heart. 

“Sorry,” the boy pulled the hood of his sweatshirt down and had the decency to look contrite, “big mouth.” He rubbed a hand over his chapped lips. “It’s a real problem. It’s so big, actually, that my foot just slides right in there like…all the time,” he gestured animatedly with a flat hand, a quick sliding motion, like a fish through water.

You blinked at him, slowly, and bent down to reach for your keys, “Might wanna see someone about that. Sounds unsanitary.”

“Eh, it’s hardly the worst thing I’ve put in my mouth,” he said, eyes widening into horrified round circles the second he stopped talking. A faint flush creeped up his neck to his ears, and your heart dropped back into your chest. Slashers and ax murderers didn’t blush. Probably. You hadn’t ever met one, but it seemed like sound logic.

“Choking hazard,” you hummed, leaning back against your car. Your fingers traced a small dent in the door, the cause long forgotten, “It’s definitely still a choking hazard.”

The boy grinned before fixing his expression into something on the cusp of severity, “I’m about 95.7% sure that anything bigger than a fist is completely mouth-safe.” He held up his fist and nodded sharply, “Make that 98.3% sure.”

“98.3?” your brow arched.

“Maybe even 98.9.” 

The buzz of a lamp post hummed above your heads as you stared at each other with little smirks until the quiet made you sink your teeth into your bottom lip and big-mouth drum his fingers against his forearm. 

“So,” his sneakers squeaked against the slick asphalt as he shifted his weight, “you need a jump?”

You pursed your lips and ran your eyes over the front of your car, “I might give osmosis another shot. 30 seconds is hardly a fair trial.”

“Of course,” he hummed, “you gotta be fair.”

“We are in front of a police station.”

“Well,” he scratched his cheek, “it’s not a courthouse.”

“Technicality.” You were slightly horrified when you finally noticed that you were smiling. The sensation felt like it had escaped straight out of the uncanny valley and latched onto your face like a parasite in need of a host. It only took two weeks for muscles to atrophy; years must have completely decimated the fibers in your cheeks. “I guess I could use a jump. If your offer was an offer and not a hypothetical.” 

“Smart choice.” The boy rapped his knuckles against the hood of your car and said, “Steel’s probably pretty low on the permeability scale.”

“As opposed to a skull.”

He snorted and then nodded towards the large lump of books and papers covered by your freshly dampened jean jacket, “You should probably move your stuff. Y’know, ‘cause of the very un-permeable battery.”

“There’s that,” you sighed and started stuffing your things back into your backpack, shaking it violently until your notebook finally slid past your chemistry textbook, “and flunking English isn’t high on my list of things to do this weekend.”

His gaze flickered back and forth, rapidly cataloging every corner and crevice of your face. You tilted your head, brows pinched, and stared back at him with your arms crossed tightly over your chest. His eyes, you noticed, became a peculiar shade of brown in the yellow glow of the setting sun and the fluorescent light of the lamppost. More like honey, you realized, more like honey than irises. Something finally clicked behind them. "You,” he pointed aggressively, “you go to Beacon Hills.”

You pushed his finger away from your face with your own, “Safe bet, considering there’s exactly one option for the next 2,000 square miles.”

“You’re kind of a smartass, you know that,” he muttered. He struggled with the trunk of the jeep parked next to your car, cursing under his breath until he finally wrenched it open with an almost guttural grunt.

Your lips parted briefly, and then you grinned drolly. It was refreshing, not being treated like some fragile little creature who would buckle in the knees—or possibly set something on fire—at the slightest confrontation. “Kind of?”

“Total.” He nodded decisively before sticking his head and torso into the depths of his trunk. “Completely, entirely, and wholly a smartass.” There were various clanging sounds until he re-emerged with a pair of jumper cables, “Never noticed that in class. You don’t really…say anything.”

You bit back the snark poised on the tip of your tongue. When people looked at you, the only thing they saw was the worst thing that had ever happened to you. You were the daughter of the woman who burned to death on Cedar Street; your mom died, and you were there. It seemed like that was all you would ever be in Beacon Hills. 

In the grand scheme of things, it was better to be no one. 

High school had been your chance to slip into social obscurity—more kids, more drama, less discussion of homicide by arson—so you took it, wholeheartedly. You kept to the corners of classrooms, away from extracurriculars, and your mouth resolutely shut. 

“I try to exclusively bring the smart and leave the ass at home,” you finally replied.

The boy’s eyes drifted downwards for a moment, and his voice did a funny, squeaky thing when he said, “I should give that a go sometime.”

“10/10 would recommend. No one bugs you—and teachers never throw erasers at your face.”

“So you do remember me,” he grinned a little and rolled up the sleeves of his sweatshirt before unlatching the jeep’s hood and propping it open.

Slanting your head, you watched his profile. There were moles scattered across his cheek and neck, and his angular jaw clenched as he struggled with the knotted cords in his willowy fingers. “Vaguely,” you said faintly. It was coming back to you in pieces. That was life after twelve for you: bits and pieces. Everything was made up of the disquieting moments when you surfaced from the haze and into the present. It should’ve felt like a lungful of air, but it didn’t. It always felt like choking. 

He wiped his grease-smudged hand on his jeans and then extended it towards you, “Stiles.”

You took his hand, despite the strange formality, and shook it—mainly because of the black streaks staining his pants. “Y/N.”

His fingers twitched a few times when he connected the clamp to the coordinating battery terminal, and your eyes widened. You held your breath in your sternum until you registered that he hadn’t been electrocuted. He was just naturally tweaky, you concluded. It was either that, or he had jumped one-too-many engines in the last 24 hours…unless it was hidden option C, and he was actually tweaking. Unlikely, given he was on his way into a building teeming with cops, but far stranger things had happened in Beacon Hills.  

You sighed a little as you listened to the rain patter against the asphalt and the roof of your car, rubbing your palms over your arms until the goosebumps prickling along your biceps receded into your skin. Stiles looked back at you again, and his mouth wormed its way into a little frown. His head disappeared into his trunk, and after a moment a lumpy maroon mass hurtled towards your face. You caught it before it could smack into your nose, and you clutched at the soft material until you realized that the projectile missile was actually just a sweatshirt. 

Stiles was staring at you when you looked up from your hands. A small, unsure…something squirmed over his face, and you felt a little stupid, just standing there, hoodie limp in your arms. It happened a lot—more than it should after so many years. The invisible quicksand materialized in the strangest, most insignificant moments. You blinked, completely brainless, at simple questions, stared aimlessly into your closet until your second alarm startled you into snatching the first shirt you came across—clasped at a stranger’s hoodie until the rainwater pooled on your lashes dripped into your eyes.

Robotically, you thrust your arms through the sleeves and tugged it over your head, “Thanks.” The sweet scent of grass clung to the fabric, and there was something earthier underneath it, something like evergreen. You smiled slightly, combing your baby hairs behind your ears, “I guess I forgive you for attempting to blind me in the process.”

Stiles’s shoulders unwound as he scoffed, “That was an excellent throw. First-line material, honestly.”

You looked at him and tilted your head, eyebrows crawling towards your hairline, and Stiles sighed loudly, “Okay, so I’m not an ‘athlete’ or whatever—but I’m working on it. You’ll see—you’ll all see.”

You hummed softly, unconvinced but grateful enough to not comment further. Another bout of silence fell between you, but it wasn’t so restless this time—even after Stiles torpedoed his body through his passenger seat. He fought with his keys for a while until the correct one slid into the ignition. 

The jeep’s engine hummed pleasantly in the background as you let out a soft sigh, dropping your head back against your car window. The rain had stopped somewhere between trying to unlock your car and now, but you couldn’t quite recall when. The chill wasn’t so bad, you realized, without your foul mood casting a shadow over your head.

Stiles landed back on his feet and leaned against the jeep. You could feel his gaze on you again. A tickling sensation trailed down your spine as you fiddled with your keychain. You took a step backwards and bit your bottom lip, “I should probably try start my car…y’know, before you throw something else at my face.’”

He nodded, taking a step towards his jeep, “Solid plan. A tire iron was next.”

You slid into your car and stared at the steering wheel, forgetting to laugh at his joke. You wrapped your fingers around 10 and 2 and silently called upon every deity you’d ever heard of to end your suffering. Stiles seemed nice enough, but you seriously doubted your smalltalk capabilities were up-to ‘ride home’ standards. Perhaps, you should revisit your resounding dedication to atheism, you thought, as the engine sputtered in protest a few times and then came back to life. 

Stiles flashed two thumbs up through the window. The smile on his face was positively goofy, but his dismount from the jeep was somehow even goofier. He stumbled over his large feet a few times before regaining stability. You bit back a smile when he shot you another thumbs up, this time through the dash as he removed the jumper cables from your car’s battery.

He wiped his hands off on his jeans again; at this point, you were convinced that they were beyond saving, but Stiles didn’t seem concerned. He tapped against your window before stepping around the open door, “You should probably let it run for a while. Take the scenic route home; enjoy all the Beacon Hills hotspots open past 8:00 pm on a weeknight. I personally recommend the Rite Aid or Walmart.”

You snorted, “Maybe I’ll swing by the Preserve. I hear the woods are especially beautiful in the foreboding darkness.”

“Don’t.” Serious was an odd look on Stiles’s face. You decided that you much preferred the goofy grin. “Don’t go anywhere near the Preserve. It’s officially cordoned off—totally locked down, quarantine-zone-central. Something about flesh-eating, parasitic plant life.”

“As completely real and unobtrusive as that sounds,” you drawled, “don’t worry about it. Literally every single person in town knows about the body they found in the woods.” It was bound to happen, small town and all—and ‘woman dies in deadly animal attack’ was the most interesting thing that had happened in Beacon Hills since the intersection got a Target two years ago. “I’ve seen every installment of Friday the 13th and The Blair Witch Project. If I’m going to be murdered, I refuse to also be humiliated by a cliché C.O.D.” 

The manic expression on his face softened to a relieved smile and then again to a little smirk, “So what’s a certified fresh murder, then? Not that I doubt the depths of human depravity, but I think society killed off originality a few centuries ago.”

You thought back to a house fire with no origin, accelerant, or discernible cause. Apparently, not. “You know what they say,” you sighed, “life finds a way.”

Stiles tilted his head, “And death.”

“And death,” you agreed, staring at a small chip in your windshield. The cracks had just begun to spiderweb out from the pit. 

Stiles looked like he wanted to say something, and he looked so much like the Sheriff with his face twisted around thoughtful contemplation that you couldn’t believe it had taken you this long to make the connection. The boy in the photo had grown up. How unfortunate for him. Stiles swallowed whatever it was that was lingering on his tongue and shut your door. He leaned his elbow against the window frame and cocked his hand in a stiff little wave, “Seeya at school. I’ll bring something fun for target practice—maybe grapes. You like grapes? Don’t answer that—I’ll surprise you.”

You put your car in drive once Stiles was safely a few feet from the wheels and gave him a dry smile, “The anticipation is killing me.”

What a scary place to be, you thought as you watched Stiles disappear in your rearview mirror. Anticipation. Hope. Life. You were chronically good at surviving; cockroached your way out of every horrible thing life squashed you with. Lately, all you could do was cling to your heartbeat and the warmth of your skin, until you were barely more than roadkill. A walking carcass was a far cry from living, but death would not stop for you, so you stopped looking for him. You kept treading water, took your pills, stopped existing—you were a lot like Schrödinger’s cat that way: too stubborn to live, too stubborn to die. You didn’t know what to do if someone unsealed the box and forced you to choose. That was the trouble with possibility; it required far too much uncertainty.

Your dad’s SUV was parked in the garage when you finally pulled into your circle driveway. It was a rare sight; your dead battery had disrupted your usual routine. You were supposed to be safely tucked away in your room after an early dinner—take-out usually, sometimes a quesadilla if you were feeling exceptionally inspired—by the time your dad got home from work. It was dysfunctional in every sense of the word, but it was the only way you could function in the same space. 

He used to stare at you from the other end of the dinner table: not eating, not speaking. The only way you knew he was alive was the slow rise and fall of his chest. After a while, he moved dinner to his office. ‘Working dinner,’ he’d say in passing, ‘budgets are due.’ Eventually, he stopped coming home altogether. It was better that way, you thought. You loved each other better from afar, where the power of nostalgia could cloud all the present unpleasantries. You wondered what he saw when he looked at you now. You wondered, and you desperately didn’t want to find out.  

You shouldered your backpack and made sure your car lights were off twice before quietly creeping into the mudroom. You could hear the buzz of the microwave as you toed off your sneakers and tried to discern the smell emanating from the kitchen. Something with garlic and tomato. Bona Vita, probably. Your dad loved their al pomodoro. 

You tried to make yourself as small as possible as you skulked into the kitchen, shoulders hunched to your ears and grip tight around the strap of your backpack. Your dad’s back was to you; you could see the wrinkles in his collar from where he tugged at it when he was agitated. He stopped stirring his pasta once you reached the island. 

“Did…” your dad trailed off for a moment, still facing the kitchen counter, “did everything go alright with the Sheriff?” 

You shrugged even though he couldn’t see you, “I guess.”

“It’s just,” he rubbed at his jaw and looked down towards the oven, “it’s almost eight. I was wondering…worrying.”

He still wasn’t looking at you. You stared at the back of his head and sucked your bottom lip between your teeth. Look at me. Your brows pinched, and your back molars ground together. Look at me. 

“I called him. Sheriff Stilinski. He said that you didn’t speak for long.”

“Didn’t have anything new to say,” you shoved your hands into hoodie pockets, realizing belatedly that you forgot to give Stiles his sweatshirt back. Another problem for another time. 

“That’s not what I—” your dad grasped the lip of the counter and hung his head like it suddenly weighed too much for his spine, “I was wondering what happened to you.” 

“Oh,” you shifted your weight onto your other foot, “dead battery. I think it was the door light.”

Your dad nodded a little, “Do you need someone to pick up your car?”

“Got a jump from a friend.” Not a friend, not really, but you supposed it was the closest you’d come to one in the last four years. That was just a little too sad to say out loud. 

“Good.” He nodded again, “Good.” 

You nodded because it seemed like the only thing to do and slipped towards the hallway. You’d taken no less than five steps out of the kitchen when your dad said, “You could call me. Next time, you could call me.”

Maybe. Maybe you could if he would look at you.

[genericpuff]

I feel mean criticizing an author's old work that they've deliberately buried, but sheesh the dialogue in Rachel's old stuff is really stilted. As awkward as LO's writing is, it honestly does show some improvement, so like...good for Rachel I guess?

I mean, it hasn't really improved though? Normally no, I wouldn't criticize someone's older work because by the virtue of something being old, it will naturally be improved upon and shouldn't be judged against what's created in the present (trust me, as someone with work from 10 years ago that hasn't aged well, I get it LOL).

But what's in the present... has all the same issues. I think it's easy to convince ourselves LO's writing is "better" because it relies on Greek myth to piece itself together, but when you aren't filling in the blanks for her based on assumptions made from the source material (which you shouldn't have to do) her writing in LO still doesn't have much to offer. Like, can we really call this an improvement?

If anything the writing in LO got even worse over time because it started to feel like ChatGPT was writing the dialogue and the narrative was crumbling under the weight of Rachel's lack of foresight / planning ahead.

I mean, just to get my point across, let me ask you one simple question: What is the actual theme of LO? What is the conclusion it comes to by its end to contribute to that theme?

This isn't me trying to minimize whatever improvements she may have made between the past and present, I just don't see those improvements, and there's a lot more to suggest that she was a lot more prolific 20 years ago as an artist than she is today. All of that stuff about Persephone / herself being a "workaholic" is based on stuff she went through 20 years ago that she doesn't even put on display now because it's all buried in deactivated Tumblrs and LiveJournals. But that's besides the point.

I think at best the "improvement" simply boils down to "at least she finished this one". But that's not necessarily a good thing because it's clear LO went on longer than it ever should have and that the only reason she even made it this far was because she was bound to a contract through WT. I guarantee you if it weren't for the success that WT's gave her through constantly advertising LO everywhere (and the fact that LO fit a very specific niche that was popular at the time) she would have ended LO ages ago, because just about every series she's done up until this point have been passing fancies that she's bounced between while still retaining a lot of the same tropes and crutches she always has.

LO is about a naive valley girl with mommy issues who goes to school to better herself. This is also the plot of The Doctor Foxglove Show. And while comics like Castle Castle, Woman King, and The Maiden don't involve school settings, they do still center around "girlboss" characters who hate their parents. LO isn't really an "improvement" among these tropes, just another rehashing that's hidden way better because 1.) she put it behind the veil of Greek myth and 2.) she's done everything in her power to hide the fact that she's been writing about the same pink-haired girls with mommy issues and trauma from evil men "except for that one guy who's perfect in every way" for 20+ years now.

And that issue of stilted dialogue goes way beyond even the comics. Read transcripts of her interviews or the Q&A from the end of the series that she did in her Discord and you'll see she has a really hard time finishing the thought she started on. I'm sure a lot of this can be chalked up to her ADHD / dyslexia, which is totally valid, but it just goes to show she hasn't done any work to actually improve her work in spite of her hindrances. She doesn't know how to separate Internet trolls from valid criticism and she seems to absorb any and all criticism as "proof" that she's better than everyone else, actually, and it's not her fault that other people are stupid and don't get her "vision". And I'm not pulling this assertion out of thin air, she's displayed this exact behavior before both within the LO fandom as well as her pre-existing fandoms around her other series.

Like, I can totally get the sentiment that "hate mail is a sign of success" and turning a negative into a positive, but there's a difference between deflecting hate mail from trolls and deflecting genuine criticism that's meant to identify your weaknesses and help you grow. That's what makes it all the more telling that she's built an audience around protecting and enabling her weaknesses rather than celebrating her strengths and empowering her to do better. She can't fall back on Webtoons as the only excuse for why the writing in LO is bad, her writing has always been like this and I feel like that's half the reason she's trying to hide it.

[mabelstone]

hello babie

little angst fic in light of the new matt pics? gruffy stubborn horknee matt? a little christmas miracle?

love u miss u

hi sugarpie miss u more

hope this suffices <3 i couldn't think of a 'christmas miracle' i am sorry xx maybe i'll write a soft christmas fic after this

18+ ofc, you know me by now

Nobody Compares to You

matt stone x reader

word count: 2.1k

***

Being with a prolific near-billionaire with a ridiculously successful TV show and a close-to cult following has its downsides. The copious amounts of groupies, stalkers, etc, etc. Not to mention that he's the textbook definition of a workaholic, which often meant you would go days without seeing each other due to your conflicting work schedules, despite sharing the same bed each night.

You knew this going into your relationship with him and you swore you wouldn't have it any other way.

That was until you found out about the new hire at South Park Studios. A painfully beautiful, bubbly young woman around your age, funny and oh, so intelligent. To your dismay, everyone in the studio had grown very fond of her, including your beloved boyfriend. The part he failed to mention was that she was now his personal assistant, hence why she would text him at inappropriate hours and was practically glued to him each time you visited him at work on one of your days off.

You could look past the groupies and die hard fans as you knew they wouldn't ever stand a chance. But a young woman so full of life, someone who made Matt cackle the way only you and his friends could unearthed something deep inside you. An unmistakable hatred for this girl, though she hadn't done anything wrong, per se. This created a rift in your relationship with him, and though you wanted to blame her, it was painfully clear that it was your doing.

One day you'd surprised him with lunch, taking in a container of his absolute favourite meal that you'd slaved over all morning.

"Oh, thank you, gorgeous," he'd kissed you tenderly, though his words to follow suggested he wouldn't be eating it any time soon. "I wish you'd called... Belle and I just got Chinese, I'm stuffed."

Your smile faltered, peering over at the twiggy blonde tapping away at her laptop with her long, neon orange nails. "I wanted to surprise you. My mistake."

Belle looked up intermittently with an unreadable expression, "yeah, so sorry. What was your name, again?"

"Y/N," you shot her a fake smile that was about as friendly as a kick to the jaw. He mustn't talk about me often. "Ah," was all you could muster, a pang of disappointment flooding your veins.

"I'm sorry," he frowned lightly, a gentle hand taking yours. "I'll have it for dinner! You know me so well."

"So you'll be staying late again?"

"At this rate, it's a safe bet," he smiled sympathetically. He looked tired, no surprise. You sometimes selfishly wished that he'd get a bad cold or something so he'd be forced to stay home with you. "I'm really sorry."

"Meeting in five, Matt," Belle spoke up, her tone a lot friendlier than it was with you.

"I'll get out of your hair then." You didn't say bye, instead speed walked to your car, fuelled by your rage toward his assistant.

Matt: Not even going to say goodbye to me?

Matt: This isn't my fault

You: i just didn't know you were having lunch dates with your assistant

You cursed yourself straight after your message sent, realising just how ridiculous you sounded. Like a jealous teenage girl.

Matt: Lunch date? You mean having lunch with your coworker is now considered a date?

You: does she even know you have a girlfriend?

Matt: Do I really have to share my personal life with my assistant? She does, yes. What has gotten into you?

You: she gets to spend every minute of every day with you

Matt: So this is about her? Don't be so jealous, this is a work relationship.

Matt: Gotta go.

Your eyes blurred with tears as you drove home in silence, your jaw ticking in frustration. You couldn't help but wonder if you were in the wrong. Surely he would have had to pick her as his assistant, right? Why couldn't he have picked a man. Or, as awful as it sounds, a girl who wasn't so attractive. Or maybe a girl who wouldn't have graduated the same year as you.

He got home at 11pm, a bit earlier than you had anticipated. You couldn't sleep though, your mind running wild at the possibilities. With all the time spent with her and away from you, would he fall for her? Would he stop loving you? Was she planning to whisk him away from you? Was your little argument today just pushing him further into her arms?

He walked into your bedroom and didn't say a word. He walked straight into the ensuite and locked the door before you had a chance to speak, closing your mouth immediately.

When he came out, he looked visibly more relaxed, newly grown out curls dripping beads of water onto his skin. He sat in front of you on the bed, only a towel keeping him decent.

"Care to tell me what that was earlier?" His voice was stern, eyebrows slightly raised.

"You tell me," you tone was unwavering as well, arms folded across your chest.

"I wish I could," he huffed, the frustration clearly creeping back. "I can see that you're jealous. But I think theres a bit more to it, isn't there?"

"I miss you."

"Of course I miss you too. But I have to go to work. I can't control the hours!" He raised his voice slightly. Maybe there was more to this for him, too.

"We haven't had sex in two weeks, Matt," you sighed, looking toward the ceiling as that awful, sad feeling reared its ugly head again. "You used to want it- need it, every second day, at least."

"We haven't had time!" He sighed now, running a hand over his face. "I've had to... deal with it myself."

"Does your assistant have to be there for that too? Does she add it into your calendar?" You bit, meeting his eyeline again, that now had narrowed on you, angry brows knotted together.

"You are a brat, you know that?" He spat, appearing as if he were about to double over in anger.

"I'm a brat, huh?" You laughed humourlessly, shaking your head at him. "I spent all morning cooking for you. Every day I do all the cleaning after I've been working all day. I iron your clothes for the next day and have them ready for you every night before I even think to do anything for myself. Before I even have dinner!"

He just stared back, not interjecting for a change. His expression softened as he let you get it all out.

"I have done that for you for four years now! Four years! But I'm a brat, huh? All because I miss you and yes, I'm upset that you have a pretty new assistant. I'm upset that she spends all day with you, gets to have lunch and sometimes dinner with you. She gets to eat and laugh with you, all the while I come home to our house alone. I go to sleep alone and wake up alone. Do you know the things I would do to have lunch with you just once a week? The fact that I'm even explaining myself is ridiculous, I-"

Your rambling was cut short but warm lips pressing gently against yours. Your hands instantly found damp curls, fighting the urge to cry at the fact he was finally at your fingertips, and not when he was snoring beside you in the small hours. He was finally there, finally, you had his undivided attention.

His fingers quickly hooked into your panties, pulling them off in one autonomous motion. He wasted no time disconnecting your lips, positioning himself between your thighs. His warm tongue flitting over your clit sent a shockwave of electricity through your body, a sharp gasp from your lips piercing the overwhelming tension in the room. You grabbed a fistful of his hair without a second thought, grinding down onto that beautiful face. The coarseness of his beard scratched your inner thighs, sending a chill down your spine. With your eyes screwed shut, you moaned his name just as you had imagined for nights on end, his own groan vibrating against your core. You opened your eyes when you thought he'd pulled out your vibrator, soon realised it was just his phone buzzing somewhere on the bed spread. He didn't slow his motions, continuing to lick dizzying stripes across your clit. You felt around for his phone, wishing you hadn't when you saw her caller ID on the screen.

"Are you fucking serious?"

"Mm, what?" His voice was muffled against you, only pulling away when you pulled your hips away. "Oh, come on. I can't control when she calls me, babe. It's probably something really important."

You realised you weren't angry at him, but absolutely livid with her. You just had a gut feeling about her. You knew girls like her, you could tell from he minute you laid eyes on here. She just wanted to climb the hierarchal ladder that was your beloved boyfriend. Unfortunately he was going to have to figure that out on his own. You couldn't help but give him the cold shoulder that night.

***

Things had slightly improved between the two of you. You'd been intimate more frequently, things often getting so steamy that one time he'd bent you over the kitchen counter, resulting in very burnt chicken for dinner.

For the sake of your own sanity, you'd stopped torturing yourself with your imagination over his beautiful assistant. He loved you, he was as faithful as they come.

Matt: I'll be home in 30 xx

He'd messaged you that two hours ago. You were worried you'd have to start calling police stations, but he finally responded to your missed calls with another text.

Matt: Long story. Talk soon.

He returned home an hour later, the door slamming behind him. You startled from where you sitting on the couch, having stress drank through half a bottle of red wine at this stage. He scooped you up from your position on the couch, eliciting a loud squeal of surprise from you, followed by the thunk of your wine glass hitting the carpet, effectively painting the rug crimson.

"Don't worry about it," he breathed against your skin. "Missed you," he trailed kisses along your jaw and neck, your breath hitching when he would hit your sweet spots.

"Mm- what happened at work? Where were you?" You grabbed his jaw in an attempt to slow him to no avail. He continued to carry you to the bedroom, physically in front of you, but mentally somewhere deep between your thighs.

"Don't worry about it," he echoed, placing you down onto the bed. You felt a little worried - he only got like this if something really stressful happened. He was usually great at talking about his feelings, especially when something happened at work.

He continued to kiss down your body, trying to strip your clothes with such haste you could barely keep up.

"Babe- stop. Stop." You huffed, finally getting a grip on his tireless wrists. "What happened? Were you with her?"

Then he came back into his body, eyes narrowing on yours. "We're seriously still on this?" He groaned, sitting back on his knees. "I fired her."

"Fired her?!" You couldn't hide the surprise in your tone, but masked the happiness very well. "Why? I thought she was a hoot, no?"

"I don't want to talk about it right now," he sighed. Catching your expression, he realised you weren't going to let up until you had the full story. "Jesus- okay, she tried to make a move on me. Happy? You were right." He rolled his eyes.

Now you were beaming. You thought you'd be more upset, but his obvious disgust debunked that thought immediately. "Say that last part again."

"You were right," he rolled his eyes again, playfully this time. "Now take off your clothes."

"Yes, sir!" You laughed too, stripping off your clothes so fast, you'd miss it if you blinked. Immediately, he was on top of you, a growing hard on pressing into your thigh.

"Nobody compares to you," he mumbled against your lips, stripping his boxers without taking his eyes off you, drinking you in. "Nobody."

His words warmed you to your core, words you didn't know you needed to hear. Despite the intensity leading up to this moment, he slid himself in slowly, stretching and filling you inch by glorious inch. You arched your back into the feeling, bare chests rubbing against one another.

"I love you," you breathed, grinding gently into him, both of your hips connecting in slow synchronicity. His warm arms surrounding you, pulling you impossibly closer.

"I love you," he kissed you slowly, "so, so much."

You felt more connected than you had in weeks, months, even. And in that moment, you too though, nobody compares to you.

you know me by now. no proof reading sozzy and this ending sucks balls... but its dry out here

[deansmom]

The fact that the spn fandom is entirely incapable of a nuanced discussion involving Dean and the relationship with his mother shouldn’t surprise me as much as it did when I came back to fandom, and as much as it still does when I’m forced to see it with my own two eyeballs

Mary Winchester was a person before she was a mother, and I’m going to be so honest with you, I think by the time she died, John didn’t like who that person was. So I think when she died, he did what a lot of people do, which is put the person they lost on a pedestal. And that’s who Dean grew up hearing about, that’s what all of his memories of his mom were contextualized with, this person who didn’t exist. And so then his mom comes back and I think it’s very, very clear to Dean almost immediately that this isn’t the same person John told him about.

In the real world, we have no context to draw from and nothing to compare it to, the experience of getting a dead parent back and to be part of your life again. We can’t know how he felt beyond what we were shown in canon - So of course Dean is thrilled, but he’s also a Winchester and deeply traumatized, and tries so hard to make it seem normal and not internalize his complicated feelings about her and her being alive. He’s dealing with:

Grappling with losing the mother he was told she was and resenting mary for it because she’s standing in front of him

Realizing that John robbed so much from him by denying him the version of his mother who feels like looking in a mirror

The guilt of how and why mary is there

Trying to reconcile his feelings of resentment and anger that he knows should be directed at John, but John’s not there, so they end up getting directed at mary, and feeling bad about that

A deeply traumatized inner child who has his safe person back, and just wants his mom to hold him and tell him it’s going to be okay, but he knows that isn’t fair to ask of her

And meanwhile mary was dealing with

✨trauma✨ from being brought back to life

Having to confront her own failures as a parent (which is silly it’s not her fault she died but y’know, feelings tend to be silly)

Having to reconcile her toddler with the man in front of her who’s older than her being her son

Seeing so much of John’s worst qualities in both of them and recognizing the trauma of a shitty dad

The fact that they had this idea of who she was, and it’s nothing like her at all, and trying to understand why John would lie to them while also probably coming to terms with what looks like confirmation of her own worst fears about who she was as a parent

I cannot stress this enough: the last time her feet touched the ground, she had been married, with a new baby, and a 4 year old, she wasn’t a hunter, John barely knew about hunting, and it was the 80’s. She woke up in what, 2017 and her husband’s dead, her babies are grown men (again: older than her!!!) and the most prolific hunters in the world. Oh, also, angels? God? The afterlife?? Funny story! Like I’m sorry, you wanted her to have well-adjusted coping skills for that????

The Mary hate just gets me because she’s Dean in a different font, and so many of y’all hate her for such superficial bullshit that you could let go of if you took 5 seconds to think about the situation critically for both of them. The only bad guy here is, was and will always be John Winchester. John was there, but Mary tried her best. Mary tried to do what was best for them when she left, because she didn’t want to damage their idea of who she was anymore than she had. Mary literally died trying to save Sam from the destiny that heaven had written for him - John couldn’t be bothered to think about his kids.

And if you think that Dean ever genuinely hated Mary, your critical thinking skills need some work. The thing that prompts his speech in 12.22 is Mary saying to his younger self, “I only want good things for you, Dean. I'll never let anything bad happen to you.” So he says

I hate you. And I love you. 'Cause I can't – I can't help it. You're my Mom. And I understand...'cause I have made deals to save the ones I love more than once.

I forgive you. I forgive you. For all of it. Everything. On the other side of this, we can start over, okay? You, me, Sam. We can get it right this time. But I need you to fight. Right now, I need you to fight. I need you – I need you to look at me, Mom. I need you to really look at me and see me. Mom, I need you to see me. Please.

Translation: “you’re right. I resent you for not being the person I was sold, I resent you for your death being the thing that ruined dad, I resent you for being the touchstone for so many of heaven’s plans for us. I resent you because you’re here, and John isn’t, and it’s easier to hate someone tangible than someone dead. And if I hate you, it’s only because I can see so much of myself in you, and I’m so incredibly angry that John treated us the way he did. My whole world, my whole identity revolves around you being someone that you never were, and wrapping my head around that is scary, but when I pull my head out of my ass and look around, you were just a kid. And you did your best, you’ve always tried to do what’s best for me and Sam, and I don’t hate you. I don’t know if I like you right now because you’re a stranger, which is scary - but I love you. So please, mom, I’m sorry that I’ve been taking my bullshit out on you. Just… try. For me. Please.”

Anyways!!! You guys don’t deserve Mary.

[tgrailwar-zero]

*stares at the PRIVATEER*

(A long time ago, back on the Moon, wasn’t she one of “our” servants?)

(Well. We’re on live TV. No need to cause or broadcast a public incident.)

Looking at her, you didn't get the sensation that she was one of yours.

As you stared at the ADMIRAL's face, her features, her scar… it seemed to trigger another faint vision. A feeling of deep rage. Of endless resentment. A 'memory’, or something resembling it at the very least.

It bubbled from deep inside of you as you once again remembered a time you fought alongside Izou. The memory and the emotions with it grew more and more potent.

Pride. Excitement. Confidence. Hope.

After all, 'You' had summoned the prestigious Okada Izou, one of the most prolific killers in human history. A warrior with immense adaptability and skill with the blade. This was a Servant primed for covert operations, for taking down enemies swiftly and quietly. You could fight a perfect, stealthy war.

And yet somehow- 'You’ had lost.

The Servant had cheated, clearly.

S█████ M████, a Master and famed 'Game Champion' on Earth, had started the Grail War strong. Rather than direct combat, he and his Servant gathered treasure and materials, focusing on hoarding precious items first and leaving the other Masters at a deficit. So, a small alliance between some Masters was developed to take out the 'Champ' before his advantage grew to troublesome heights.

Obviously, with 'Your' professional Assassin, 'You' were the perfect candidate to take out this nuisance before it became a problem.

…And yet, the attempt had failed. Miserably.

'You' were captured along with your Assassin, unceremoniously tied down and dragged to the bow of a ship. The 'Gaming Champ' wished to make an example of just what would happen if he and his Servant were messed with.

MASTER OF RIDER: "Rider, it's time! In this digital world, I'm on top! So let's show the others what happens when you come at the king! El Draque, finish them off while everyone's watching!"

'EL DRAQUE': "As you can see, my little Master is a real piece of work. But hey, for villains like us, flamboyancy is ideal. Don't take it personally... it's just war."

MASTER OF RIDER: "H-Hey! Don't call us 'villains'! We're just playing the game better than the others! Now quit talking and finish them already!"

'EL DRAQUE': "Aye, aye. You've done well paying me, so I'll do whatever you ask, Master."

With that, she drew her flintlocks, pointing one at the back of your head and one at the back of the Assassin's. In the last moment, your Assassin had tried to strike, cutting free from his bonds and going for the throat of his adversary. But--

Bang.

…The flash of steel ended up being slower than the pull of the trigger. A coin flip, made in an instant, that had landed on the losing side.

It wasn't your fault. The Enemy Master wasn't better than you. He wasn't stronger than you. He wasn't more talented. He wasn't. He couldn't be. That Servant must have been using a cheat skill. You had summoned a prime Assassin, so how... how?!

'You’ were a great wizard, and had lost to a pathetic Master and a pathetic Servant.

Failure. Loss. Hatred. Failure. Loss. Hatred. Failure. Loss. Hatred. Again and again and again.

Those feelings swirled and bubbled, locking together as 'You’ found yourself spiraling deeper and deeper into death and darkness…

The crash of ocean water shook you out of it, as you found yourself back on the deck of the ship.

MUSASHI: "Eyes up, Masters! We've gotta focus!"

[rebouks]

Previous | Next

Transcript:

Mikaela: WOAH! Look at all those tattoos! Joslyn: How many times do I have to tell you not to point? Mikaela: But look!

Oscar: Impressive, huh? Mikaela: Yuh! How many do you have? Did it hurt? Did you pass out?! Oscar: [chuckles] Lots, yes, and almost.

Mikaela: So cool. Joslyn: Sorry. Courtney: It’s fine.

Joslyn: I just thought I’d check-up-… Oscar: Uh-huh. Joslyn: Hah, half true; let’s talk.

…

Oscar: What’s the point? She already spoke to Bruno, it’s not like I can add much more. Joslyn: She’s more interested in you, to be honest-.. wants to talk to you off the record. Oscar: That’s.. weird.

Joslyn: Maybe it’d offer you some closure? Courtney said you’ve been struggling-… Oscar: Doesn’t she have a job to do? Joslyn: It’s not an overnight thing.

Oscar: I’ll talk to her when it’s over, how about that? Joslyn: Norma’s been in this line of work for over thirty years, Oscar; that someone could take down such a prolific organisation almost singlehandedly-.. it’s unheard of.

Oscar: [snorts] It’s not that impressive. Joslyn: Debateable-.. either way, she’d like to apologise for the fact that it wasn’t picked up as well. Oscar: And whose fault is that?

Joslyn: I’ll admit that I could’ve done more.. but I chose to put my family first, and I know you understand that. Oscar: Hm. Joslyn: I get that you’re suspicious of them, but they’re not the enemy you think they are.

Oscar: Neither is the mailman, but I ain’t about to tell him my life story. Joslyn: I think you’d feel better if you met her; I promise she’s on our side-.. think about it? Oscar: I might.

Joslyn: Courtney has her number, okay? Come on, you… Mikaela: Your baby’s kinda cute, but I prefer your cat. Oscar: [laughs] Thanks.

[Quiet parental muttering about not saying everything that pops into your head without thinking first…]

Oscar: You’re just as cute as Lou, aren’t you?! [Robin babbles enthusiastically as he’s swung into the air, reaching for Oscar’s stubble] Courtney: What was all that about?

Oscar: Norma wants to talk-.. I think he’d love it if I grew a proper beard. Courtney: Are you going to? Oscar: Maybe next winter, and I guess I’ll think about the Norma thing.

[ava-du-mortain]

I would love to know about your DnD characters!! (My first one sort of became a chaos gremlin unintentionally because of who I am as a person lol.)

SDFSDLFH oh BOY I get to talk about my tabletop characters. (I have so many but I'm gonna talk about the ones that fall on the Chaotic Gremlin Spectrum)

Shireen:

Ok so my very first DnD character ever is a teenager named Shireen. She's a gnome grave cleric of Segojan Earthcaller. She had a spiritual weapon which was a mallet shaped like a duck made out of solid diamond that she thwacked enemies with (and often to the chagrin of our barbarian, got the final blows). Shireen's weapon of choice is a hand crossbow which is attached to her arm prosthetic. She is naive to the ways of the world and often tries to talk her way out of situations where it is absolutely not possible to talk her way out of it. She eventually became like a daughter to her grumpy barbarian and blood hunter companions.

Evuné:

I partook in an All Evil campaign where I played as Evuné (Or Evil Anya as we called her). She is a changeling profane soul blood hunter. Weapon of choice being longswords and her stupidly high deception skill. Her whole deal is she is a sleeper agent for a hostile nation and is stealing the identity of a different PC of mine (Anya) in order to get by. She is arrogant, annoying, and lucky when it counts. One of the most powerful NPCs in the setting has it out for her because she openly mocked the king in the middle of a royal procession and she has evaded him through sheer luck alone (many fortuitous Nat 20s)... oh and also she's wanted for many murders, but like it's not her fault they had stuff she wanted.

I later also played as her in BG3 as a Minthara-romancing Dark Urge.

Nima:

She's the character I'm playing in the currently active campaign I'm in. She's another profane soul blood hunter, but not evil. Her weapon of choice is an ancestral bow passed down to her by her mother. She is a hobgoblin who accidentally made a pact with a Devil and is too proud to admit that her patron isn't THAT BAD. She got kidnapped by her patron's enemy, another Devil who is threatening to enslave the entire world, and Nima's father, a prolific adventurer and also deadbeat dad, traded himself for her, allowing her to go free. So now she's autistically making her way through the world to defeat this devil and I guess also rescue her dad eventually whenever she gets around to it.

Ellie:

She's not a DnD character, but rather a character from a different tabletop system called Quasar, which is Sci-Fi Fantasy themed. She is a hacker and roboticist who is, secretly and unbeknownst to her, an Android (She believes herself to be human and presents herself as such). Her weapon of choice is explosives. Lots of them. And turrets. She also can sabotage enemies by hacking into their equipment. She has no qualms over using her powers to doxx rich people and blackmail people who get in her way, but she will never cross any lines if it makes things more difficult for her friends. She is an essential part of her party because she owns the van spaceship and also she once installed a sense of taste onto her android party member so it could taste the blood of its enemies.

[scoutvox]

Desecration [Pt 2]

[x]

"That's not fair, you know."

The deer half-breed kicked a rock a few feet ahead of him, pacing along the length of the courtyard. The centre was often quiet at dusk, allowing Vox and Dario to enjoy the departing light of day in solitude. "You have so much here."

"Do I really?" The boy carved at the wood in his left hand with a fairly dulled blade. His words carried a defeat not uncommon for him. "I can't expect you to be there every time I get into trouble, which is more reason for me to leave."

"You think I would be at all equipped to help you out there?" Dario pressed the bridge of his nose with his fingers. "Not to sound ungrateful, it's sweet of you... but things aren't going to get better here for me."

Vox sighed, falling back onto the grass behind him. Dario wasn't wrong; the Triumvirate continued to dominate the socio-political climate in High Central, and the hostility towards half-breeds bloomed in droves with each passing day.

"Not with the "Grand Illuminar" in power." Vox's words were laced with venom as he swung around air quotes - while not directly impacted by the regime, it wasn't difficult to notice the growing divide within their community. "I already made up my mind anyway, pal. You're stuck with me, remember?"

The stag chuckled, knowing there wasn't anything he could say or do to stop the boy. Loyalty to a fault was a double-edged sword.

"My burden to bear."

--

The scout shook his head, turning to face Dagny.

"The Grand Illuminar." Vox cleared his throat. "Kezia. She worked with Darien during my younger years here in High Central. I can't speak too much on what happened after I left, but she's about as dangerous as it gets."

Vox moved in closer to his son, maintaining some distance but wanting to be nearby in the event of the worst.

"You need to be careful, Liam. She didn't become one of the most prolific figures in High Central by doing nothing."

[mamamittens]

I hope you enjoy Zelda!!! But I do have an ask platonic wise if that’s alright, so sweet child of mine is obviously a reader who’s like 18 to young 20’s I’d say. How would the story have gone if the reader was like way younger? Like a kid the navy came across with the devil fruit abilities, would things have gone down differently, and if so how much? (As everyone kinda sees reader as a kid anyways.)

But I hope you enjoy the game- my sisters got it and I haven’t heard from her since she got it so I’m guessing that it’s amazing

Well, a lot of the story is out of Reader's hands as someone that's kidnapped for literally all of it. So plotwise it's not that different. They wouldn't go to the labs as a kid either because they're not old enough to properly test outside of the field. They don't know how to explain their power or do anything, so real life is the best teacher still.

But for starters there probably would have been at least one more marine at the starting incident. Kiddo would be treated... A little better but not really by their partner since the blow to the ego of knowing you 'awesome power' is because of a tot.

Marco would have been quicker to just snap them up without knowing about the devil fruit after Williams smacked the baby like a dickhead.

Reader as a kid would be a lot faster to cry and get overwhelmed but genuinely believes they're 'meant to do good' in the Marines. Just really sad baby hours that they can't seem to 'do it 'right'' when really it's their partners getting pissy about a literal child being valued more than them.

"Mm not supp'sed ta talk to pirates. Even if they have a cute dog."

Marco smiled softly, crouching down to whisper in the kid's ear.

"If anyone asks, it's all my fault, cause I'm a big mean pirate, yeah?" He suggested playfully, picking them up into his arms while Stefan barked for attention.

The kid giggled, bouncing excitedly as they waved at Stefan who licked their fingers with every hop.

Kid reader would also attach faster to positive attention without the knowledge an older reader would that they're still a prisoner. Though they'd get scared easily and freak outs mostly involve getting upset that they can't leave to go back to their 'job'. By the time plot catches up, reader will mostly have let go of being a marine or having forgotten entirely. Liking being on a big ship where everyone is nice all the time and doesn't snap at them for things outside their control.

Teach would have convinced them that they're playing a hide and seek game seeing as it's the easiest route. Taking them around the islands to distract them from the fact that this 'game' sure is taking a long time.

Meeting Luffy is more positive cause they think his fruit feels cool but no one gets why they keep making drum sounds while playing with him--not that Teach let's it go on for long. He knows Ace is closing in at that point.

Triggering the Dial Down is due to finding out the truth and that Teach hurt Thatch. Wanting to 'ground' Teach from the neat powers he's used prolifically all this time. And then probably not totally understanding what Akainu did at first by melting his head.

Poor Ace and Marco will be so horrified when the last they see of little reader is just a sobbing child, wailing before accidentally "over locking" Akainu's fruit and blasting off.

Still gets saved by Mao and found as word gets out about a miraculous rescue of a child via sea king.

Reader is very tired and more than a little injured when they show up and take the tot home.

Aside from that, a lot more carrying around at every opportunity. Hugs and affection since reader isn't as against it. A lot easier to distract from negative situations and likely didn't realize they'd been drugged so Thatch isn't bullied like before.

Might keep the title thing cause it's funny to think of them trying to argue with a child who just thinks they're cooler than the actual name.

"Sweetie, call me Thatch, please! Or at least big brother! Oh! Just call me big brother!" 🥺

"But your title is soooo cool! Twin-Blade! Twice as sharp and a-sim-metric-al!" 🤓

"...T-Thats nice sweetie but... I wanna be big brother..." 😭

"What about calling me, Pops or Oyaji?" 😃

"But you worked so hard on your moose-stache, Whitebeard!"😃

"Wait! If you're my dad, would I grow big and tall like you!?" ☺️

"...y--" 🥺

"Don't lie to the baby, Oyaji!!!" 😡

(Zelda is going great btw! Ask your sister about Zelda going 'my people need me' on the Hyrule tower. I legit started laughing. Zelda's unexpectedly a damn troll and I love it)

[somechillthoughts]

ok this is my first ever tumblr text post (or whatever u call it) but i wanna just ramble about something interesting i like of always sunny.

(btw i'm not that far deep into sunny either, i just know a lot from clips and compilations)

one thing that always interests me when discussing sunny through a queer lens is that charlie is one of (if not the only) member of the gang that doesn't really lean that heavy into patriarchal, toxic masculine stereotypes unlike the rest.

dennis is a prolific sex addict who uses sex as a way of dominance over women and to fuel his egotistical behavior, constantly using women as sex objects and trying to portray himself as "the leader" of the gang (which he kinda is).

mac's constant inner fight with his own sexuality and religious/conservative upbringing made him conceive this persona of what a man is supposed to be. he shows off this posture of machismo that is clearly all a lie to keep his true emotions and feelings coming out, not to mention him trying to get his father's attention throughout his life made him adapt a lot of his harmful traits as well.

dee being the only women of the group has its faults surrounding herself with men who don't treat her at all good, but she's always able to throw that same shit to the other women in the show who she seems to think are competition, competing for male validation and a way of feeling superior to women beneath you.

frank is the oldest and more traditional of the gang, constantly displaying bigotry wherever he goes, this including instilling patriarchal and misogynistic tactics cause he doesn't know better (or just doesn't care). his constant homophobia towards mac in the early seasons to then his coming out episode is clear of a sort of insecurity and this old school way of thinking of how men should be.

but charlie? he's a whole different case all together.

ofc all the gang is bigoted, especially when it comes to misogyny and following patriarchal ideals, but when it comes to charlie, he doesn't really exude that kinda idea at all, maybe not even to the same extent as the other men. he's seen as the more open and comfortable in his masculinity, not really trying to be this macho man that he knows he can't be. he's very open with being effeminate, not afraid to question gender, and wouldn't mind partaking in roles that are specifically meant to be for women. (he even crossdresses for fun and to go to the bathroom). this could just be because alot of sunny fans like to headcanon him as non-binary/trans (which i also do as well), i think it could go deeper than that.

now, ofc with that being said, the others in the gang sometimes don't follow the same rules they put on for themselves (dennis wears makeup, mac's motherly nature, frank able to express his emotions with others, dee's camaraderie with other women at times) but it's usually one-off moments and sometimes doesn't even last a season, while charlie's like this (from what i know) throughout the whole show.

idk i just really like always sunny and the show is incredibly gay once u start digging for it and i like the charlie headcanons alot so yeah. sorry if this didn't make sense. i will probably do a remake of this when i actually finish the show but who knows. lemme know what y'all think

[romanarose]

You know who’s cool as hell? @toxicanonymity

Like, Name a more prolific writer in the fandom!!!

TLOU has been out a year and a few months only and toxi literally has DROVES of stories!!! Each one of the joelkemon have several to dozens of parts, big and small!!!!

And the fucking BROTHEL!!! I’m losing it, it’s so funny to see the different Joel’s interact!!

Ability to create OC’s???! 10/10 Carter my beloved take me away from all this. Would leave Joel for you.

Seriously, who the hell else has the creativity to take a joke post that mentions cellmates nephew AS A JOKE and turn it into Jailbird, a story so many people love???

and!!! If Joel isn’t your thing there’s The Raid, which!!! Steve!!! My love for Boyd Holbrook is all her fault. Steve and Javi and the sexual tension with reader!!!! (Steve and javi should fuck btw but that’s just me)

Pedro ain’t your thing?

Like slashers?

TOXI HAS SLASHERS!!

(Even a slasher Joel!!!)

But most importantly!

All of us can attest that toxi is a great friend and CC a very supportive writer in the community. She’s recced TWW mutiple times and never fails to rec stories of mine and others if someone asks for recommendations.

Seriously blessed to have her in my life as a friend and as a member of this community ❤️❤️❤️

[bamboozledbird]

IGNITE: A Teen Wolf S1 AU // Chapter 1

Characters: Stiles Stilinski, Sheriff Stilinski, Original Female Character Pairing: eventual Stiles x OFC, but man are we talking slow burn Word Count: 4.9k Warnings: canon typical gore/violence, parental death, descriptions of burning, depictions of depression (apathy, dissociation, 'numb little bug' vibes) Tags: canon has been lovingly scrapped for parts, author loves lesbian poets and it shows, prolific overuse of the em dash, the slowest of burns i fear

Summary: Four years ago, Drea Dickinson's entire life fell apart. Her mom died, her best friend replaced her, and all she could do was watch listlessly while everything else burned down around her. All she wants is to forget and maybe get through her sophomore year without flunking chemistry and completely unraveling at the seams—a seemingly impossible task with the sudden appearance of ghosts from her mother's mysterious past and a hair-raising beast ripping people apart all over town. It would be easier to pretend if she hadn't accidentally entwined her life with the most interrogatory bastard in town. She could have gone her whole life without meeting Stiles Stilinski, and she would've been perfectly fine, but now she's stuck knowing that she's made her bed in the fragile, breakable bones of the boy with all the answers. Chapter Summary: After her annual interrogation with Sheriff Stilinski, Drea meets his son who turns out to be very handy with jumper cables, poetry recitation, and incoherent babbling.

A/N: This is an entirely selfish project. This rewrite has been so incredibly nostalgic, and I may or may not have cried a few times because the TW era was such a special time of my life. To be 17 again, sigh. I wrote a very bad version of this in 2014, and I cannot believe it has been 10 years!!! I'm almost 30! Impossible! The 10-year anniversary is entirely coincidental but still a wonderful, serendipitous happenstance. I'm re-watching the entire series with my little sister, who is coincidentally 17, and good god I just miss the TW, TVD era. Bring back the cheesy teen monster shows that give perpetual fall vibes PLEASE. You can also check me out on ao3 (dork_knight)!

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

Some say the world will end in fire. Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire.

Before her mother’s death, Drea would have picked fire. Every single time. 

She never liked the cold; never really had to get used to it growing up in central California—but the crux of her argument, the twisted logic behind it all, was that most burn victims died from suffocation before they felt the flames. A small mercy, really, in the face of unspeakable tragedy. 

In the end, however, statistics were just numbers, her mother didn't die from smoke inhalation, and there was no mercy in burying a parent before you were old enough to have children of your own. Nothing ever ended poetically off the page. Death was just death, and it was always ugly. Someone should really tell that to Robert Frost, Drea mused, biting at a raw hangnail.

The medical examiner said the actual cause of death was pulmonary edema; at least, that was his best guess based on the state of the body. He didn’t say that she felt everything, her skin peeling back into her flesh, her flesh liquefying into fuel, her joints flexing into contorted pleas until the fire incinerated her last nerve ending. He didn’t have to; Drea connected those dots all on her own. She’d been twelve at the time, not an imbecile. 

“I’m sorry to drag you through this all again.”

Drea flitted her eyes away from the flickering lightbulb above Sheriff Stilinski’s head and met his gaze; it was nauseatingly sympathetic. Her responding shrug was a small, little thing—more like a twitch in practice, “Not your fault.” 

Her yearly visits to Sheriff Stilinski’s office were solely her father’s doing, even if no one wanted to admit it to her face. Most mayors would use their political power to get their child out of a police station, not into it, but perhaps Mayor Dickinson stopped being her dad somewhere between the funeral and now. 

“If you could start—”

“From the beginning,” Drea smoothed her thumb in small circles over the armrest of her chair, attentively tracing patterns into the polished wood, “I know.” This was, after all, the fourth anniversary of her first interrogation. She’d become somewhat of an expert at being a useless witness. Drea picked at her uneven cuticles before continuing, “Mom put me to bed around 10:00—which was kind of late for a school night, honestly, but she let me stay up to finish another chapter anyway.” The right corner of her mouth twitched for a brief moment, “Nancy Drew: Password to Larkspur Lane. I told her that forcing someone to go to sleep in the middle of a mystery was specifically forbidden in Geneva Protocol II.” Her mom had been far too indulgent of her lip on most occasions, but that night she didn’t smile at her snarky aside. She let her finish the chapter because she was too tired to argue; Drea could tell. At the time, she saw it as a victory. Now, it kept her up at night, the drooping lines of her mother’s mouth spilling over the pages of whatever book she was trying to read.

Drea bit down on her tongue when a stray splinter snagged against the soft pad of her thumb, “Dad was out of town, so it was just the two of us. Mom always put me to bed when Dad was gone; said it was the only way she could get to sleep. Had to make sure my window was locked.” She paused for a long moment: everything went dark after this. Her mother kissed the top of her head, murmured, ‘Love you,’ turned out the light, and then that was it. Drea woke up in the hospital, and her mom was dead. 

A bead of sweat dripped onto her top lip. The air in the Beacon Hills police station was, without fail, sticky with heat and body odor—and it wasn’t just the oppressive Californian sun. Even in the winter, a person could choke on the stifling warmth. Idly, she wondered if it was a matter of interrogatory tactics or budgetary constraints. 

“And then,” Sheriff Stilinski prompted gently, though they both knew how the story went from here. She had told it to him and a dozen other officials at least a hundred times in the last four years. 

Drea bit down on her thumbnail and winced when her teeth snagged on the tender nail bed, “And then nothing. I opened my eyes, and a nurse said that you found me on the front lawn.” 

“You don’t remember how you got outside?” 

Drea shook her head, staring past the Sheriff's shoulder. Large pieces of dust floated through the air, highlighted by the slivers of light trickling through the blinds. Suddenly, she had a newfound appreciation for the lack of fans in the room. 

Sheriff Stilinski cleared his throat and rubbed his hand over his jaw, “You don’t remember saying it was an angel?”

Blinking slowly, Drea looked at the grim line of the Sheriff’s mouth and gripped her knees tightly, digging her fingers into tawny skin until her wrist cracked, “I should, right? I was twelve. I should remember something—that’s what everyone thinks. That’s what my dad thinks.” Her eyelids fluttered to a tight close, and her voice went so quiet she could barely be heard over the hum of the copier outside the door, “He thinks it was me. That’s why he makes you question me every year.” She pulled the sleeves of her jacket over her fists and gnawed on the soft lining of her cheek, “He thinks you’ll finally figure out how I did it.” 

Drea was scared to open her eyes as the silence stretched between them. They’d danced around the subject before, hinted and twisted around the heart of it, but they’d never truly discussed how it looked from the outside. Sheriff Stilinski had been kind enough to give her a few different excuses over the years: trauma, head injury, oxygen deprivation, plain old grief—but whatever caused her temporary amnesia wasn’t so conveniently explained. In fact, currently, she still had no explanation at all. When she finally peeked through her lashes, clumped together with frustrated tears, Drea couldn’t quite figure out what expression the Sheriff was making. He leaned back in his desk chair and frowned, “I’m sure he doesn’t—”

“He does,” Drea cut him off. Her eyes went flinty, deep brown darkening to something far more ashen with the resolve of her anger. She never had any trouble reading her father’s face; the disgust was thinly-veiled between the flickers of fear. 

Sheriff Stilinksi leaned forward so that she had no choice but to look him in the eyes. They were kind—more tired than usual, but still kind. They always were. That was one thing Drea remembered from that day, waking up in the hospital to Sheriff Stilinski’s kind, watery blue eyes, just before the entire world fell apart. His voice was gentle, but firm, when he finally spoke, “I don’t.” 

Drea nodded numbly and pulled at a fraying string on the hem of her denim skirt until the thread snapped. 

“I mean it, kid. They couldn’t identify the source of the fire. They couldn’t even find an origin point; no twelve-year-old could pull that off.”

Drea chewed on her bottom lip, “Could anyone?”

Sheriff Stilinski’s brow furrowed, and his mouth screwed up into a crooked line, like he was chewing on his words and deciding if he should swallow them or spit them out. “I wish I had all the answers for you. I really do. Not knowing, it’s worse than any truth.”

Drea blinked up at him for a moment, once again taken aback by his raw sincerity, and swallowed hard. He wasn’t the one who was supposed to have the answers; he was the one who was supposed to ask the questions. There was one failure in his muggy office, and it wasn’t the Sheriff. “It’s okay,” she said quietly. “Not your fault.”

He looked like he wanted to argue the point, but whatever he wanted to say was interrupted by the sharp ringing of the phone on his desk. “I have to take this, but if you remember something, or if you just need to talk—”

“My dad spends a small fortune on a psychiatrist and a behavioral therapist for that,” Drea stood up quickly, shouldering her bag. She forced the corners of her mouth into a small smile, tight at the edges like a sheet that had been stretched too thin, “But thank you. For everything.” 

The Sheriff’s gaze darted to a framed photo on his desk. Drea had seen it before, on one of her many visits to his office. It was of a boy—his son, she assumed—he looked like he was around five or six at the time. He was grinning, wide enough to show off his missing incisors, and his fingers and wrist were stained cotton-candy blue from a melting popsicle. She must’ve been that happy once, right? In the beginning, everyone was unencumbered by the weight of imminent mortality. Maybe that’s what Sheriff Stilinski was thinking, too. He looked away from the photo and gave Drea a small smile, “Don’t be a stranger, okay?”

Drea gave a half-hearted wave before wrapping her fingers around the strap of her backpack and walking to the parking lot. 

The sky was grim, a mocking reflection of expression on her face. The spite in her eyes hardened when big, fat raindrops splattered against the apples of her cheeks. For a moment, she just stood there, glaring at the rain and cursing the cosmos for their utterly unamusing sense of humor. A jeep pulled into the parking lot, and the squealing engine startled her back into reality. 

Unfortunately, the search for her car keys was a considerable endeavor. Typical. Drea stacked her textbooks and binders onto the hood of her sedan, haphazardly throwing her jacket on top of the pile to protect her painstakingly penned Kafka essay from the rain. By the time her fingertips brushed against the cool metal of her keys, her hair was damp and curling at the ends. 

The momentary relief was short-lived when she pressed the unlock button five times and the accompanying beep didn’t sound, not even once. For an absurdly long minute, all she could do was rest her forehead against the driver’s side window, breathing heavily until condensation gathered next to her mouth and the drizzle speckled dots onto the sleeves of her thin cotton shirt.

“If you’re trying to charge the battery through osmosis, it’d probably be more effective to smash your head against the hood.”

Drea jumped, and then flinched again when her keys clattered against the ground. She caught a glimpse of the phantom speaker in the side-view mirror; bizarrely, he looked just as surprised as she felt. She turned around, apprehensively—objects may be closer than they appear n’all—and tried to swallow her rapidly rising heart. 

“Sorry,” the boy pulled the hood of his sweatshirt down and had the decency to look contrite, “big mouth.” He rubbed a hand over his chapped lips. “It’s a real problem. It’s so big, actually, that my foot just slides right in there like…all the time,” he gestured animatedly with a flat hand, a quick sliding motion, like a fish through water.

Drea blinked at him, slowly, and bent down to reach for her keys, “Might wanna see someone about that. Sounds unsanitary.”

“Eh, it’s hardly the worst thing I’ve put in my mouth,” he said, eyes widening into horrified round circles the second he stopped talking. A faint flush creeped up his neck to his ears, and Drea’s heart dropped back into her chest. Slashers and ax murderers didn’t blush. Probably. She hadn’t ever met one, but it seemed like sound logic.

“Choking hazard,” Drea hummed, leaning back against her car. Her fingers traced a small dent in the door, the cause long forgotten, “It’s definitely still a choking hazard.”

The boy grinned before fixing his expression into something on the cusp of severity, “I’m about 95.7% sure that anything bigger than a fist is completely mouth-safe.” He held up his fist and nodded sharply, “Make that 98.3% sure.”

“98.3?” Drea’s brow arched.

“Maybe even 98.9.” 

The buzz of a lamp post hummed above their heads as they stared at each other with little smirks until the quiet made Drea sink her teeth into her bottom lip and big-mouth drum his fingers against his forearm. 

“So,” his sneakers squeaked against the slick asphalt as he shifted his weight, “you need a jump?”

Drea pursed her lips and ran her eyes over the front of her car, “I might give osmosis another shot. 30 seconds is hardly a fair trial.”

“Of course,” he hummed, “you gotta be fair.”

“We are in front of a police station.”

“Well,” he scratched his cheek, “it’s not a courthouse.”

“Technicality.” Drea was slightly horrified when she finally noticed that she was smiling. The sensation felt like it had escaped straight out of the uncanny valley and latched onto her face like a parasite in need of a host. It only took two weeks for muscles to atrophy; years must have completely decimated the fibers in her cheeks. “I guess I could use a jump. If your offer was an offer and not a hypothetical.” 

“Smart choice.” The boy rapped his knuckles against the hood of her car and said, “Steel’s probably pretty low on the permeability scale.”

“As opposed to a skull.”

He snorted and then nodded towards the large lump of books and papers covered by her freshly dampened jean jacket, “You should probably move your stuff. Y’know, ‘cause of the very un-permeable battery.”

“There’s that,” Drea sighed and started stuffing her things back into her backpack, shaking it violently until her notebook finally slid past her chemistry textbook, “and flunking English isn’t high on my list of things to do this weekend.”

His gaze flickered back and forth, rapidly cataloging every corner and crevice of her face. Drea tilted her head, brows pinched, and stared back at him with her arms crossed tightly over her chest. His eyes, she noticed, became a peculiar shade of brown in the yellow glow of the setting sun and the fluorescent light of the lamppost. More like honey, she realized, more like honey than irises. Something finally clicked behind them. "You,” he pointed aggressively, “you go to Beacon Hills.”

Drea pushed his finger away from her face with her own, “Safe bet, considering there’s exactly one option for the next 2,000 square miles.”

“You’re kind of a smartass, you know that,” he muttered as he struggled with the trunk of the jeep parked one space to her right until he finally wrenched it open with an almost guttural grunt.

Her lips parted briefly, and then she grinned drolly. It was refreshing, not being treated like some fragile little creature who would buckle in the knees—or possibly set something on fire—at the slightest confrontation. “Kind of?”

“Total.” He nodded decisively before sticking his head and torso into the depths of his trunk. “Completely, entirely, and wholly a smartass.” There were various clanging sounds until he re-emerged with a pair of jumper cables, “Never noticed that in class. You don’t really…say anything.”

Drea bit back the snark poised on the tip of her tongue. When people looked at her, the only thing they saw was the worst thing that had ever happened to her. She was the daughter of the woman who burned to death on Cedar Street; Drea Dickinson’s mom died, and she was there. It seemed like that was all she would ever be in Beacon Hills. 

In the grand scheme of things, it was better to be no one. 

High school had been her chance to slip into social obscurity—more kids, more drama, less discussion of homicide by arson—so she took it, wholeheartedly. She kept to the corners of classrooms, away from extracurriculars, and her mouth resolutely shut. 

“I try to exclusively bring the smart and leave the ass at home,” Drea finally replied.

The boy’s eyes drifted downwards for a moment, and his voice did a funny, squeaky thing when he said, “I should give that a go sometime.”

“10/10 would recommend. No one bugs you—and teachers never throw erasers at your face.”

“So you do remember me,” he grinned a little and rolled up the sleeves of his sweatshirt before unlatching the jeep’s hood and propping it open.

Slanting her head, Drea watched his profile. There were moles scattered across his cheek and neck, and his angular jaw clenched as he struggled with the knotted cords in his willowy fingers. “Vaguely,” she said faintly. It was coming back to her in pieces. That was life after twelve for Drea Dickinson: bits and pieces. Everything was made up of the disquieting moments when she surfaced from the haze and into the present. It should’ve felt like a lungful of air, but it didn’t. It always felt like choking. 

He wiped his grease-smudged hand on his jeans and then extended it towards her, “Stiles.”

She took his hand, despite the strange formality, and shook it—mainly because of the black streaks staining his pants. “Drea.”

Stiles’s brow wrinkled, “I thought it was Andy.”

Drea hadn’t been Andy for what felt like a very long time. Four years, in fact. There were several reasons: her mom called her Andy, and she wanted to become someone else, anybody else—but ultimately the deciding factor was ‘Andy Arson.’ The nickname stuck around far longer than she thought it would. With a last name like Dickinson, Drea really thought the tweenager taunting would go in a different direction, but thirteen-year-olds had a knack for latching onto a person’s deepest-seated insecurities. Middle school, she mused, was a tragedy all on its own. 

“Nope. Just Drea.”

Stiles examined her face, and she saw that flicker in his eyes again: the light of recognition. “Well, Drea’s cool, y’know, in comparison.” His fingers twitched a few times when he connected the clamp to the coordinating battery terminal, and Drea’s eyes widened. She held her breath in her sternum until she registered that he hadn’t been electrocuted. He was just naturally tweaky, she concluded. It was either that, or he had jumped one-too-many engines in the last 24 hours…unless it was hidden option C, and he was actually tweaking. Unlikely, given he was on his way into a building teeming with cops, but far stranger things had happened in Beacon Hills. 

The longer she remained silent the more parts of his body started to move. Stile squeezed and unsqueezed the black clamp in his hand and drummed on the side of her car with his unoccupied fingers, “Like, Andy—no offense—doesn’t exactly strike fear or confidence in the heart. I mean, I wouldn’t trust Officer Andy to save my ass in a shoot-out, and I definitely wouldn’t trust Dr. Andy to cure my unknown, incredibly rare, incurable disease.” 

“No one could cure your incurable disease. That’s quite literally the entire definition of the word.”

“Sure,” Stiles connected the last clamp and glanced at her over his shoulder, almost checking himself in the chin with a large shrug, “but I’d buy that Dr. Drea could.”

Her mouth parted for a second, and then she closed it before she could say something impulsive. “That’s not even how it works; I’d be Dr. Dickinson.” 

Stiles winced, “Brutal.”

“Yeah,” Drea sighed and rubbed her palms over her arms until the goosebumps prickling her biceps receded into her skin.

Stiles looked back at her again, and his mouth wormed its way into a little frown. His head disappeared into his trunk, and after a moment a lumpy maroon mass hurtled towards her face. She caught it before it could smack into her nose, and she clutched at the soft material until she realized that the projectile missile was actually just a sweatshirt. 

Stiles was staring at her when she looked up from her hands. A small, unsure…something squirmed over his face, and she felt a little stupid, just standing there, hoodie limp in her arms. It happened a lot—more than it should after so many years. The invisible quicksand materialized in the strangest, most insignificant moments. Drea blinked, completely brainless, at simple questions, stared aimlessly into her closet until her second alarm startled her into snatching the first shirt her fingers came in contact with—clasped at a stranger’s hoodie until the rainwater pooled on her lashes dripped into her eyes.

Robotically, Drea thrust her arms through the sleeves and tugged it over her head, “Thanks.” The sweet scent of grass clung to the fabric, and there was something earthier underneath it, something like evergreen. She smiled slightly, combing her baby hairs behind her ears, “I almost forgive you for being a dick about my name.”

Stiles’s shoulders unwound as he scoffed, “At least people can say it without seizing.”

Drea looked at him and tilted her head, eyebrows crawling towards the bridge of her nose.

Stiles waved his hand in the air and extrapolated, “My full name is—just trust me. Dick jokes aren’t the worst thing in the world.”

“No,” Drea chewed on her lip, “they aren’t.”

There was a moment in middle school where she was tempted to plant the seed of something incredibly stupid and irresistibly raunchy, something like, ‘Andrea wants ‘Dickinsideher,’ because even that was better than a name with matricide as the punchline. But it didn’t take when Jared Cartwright soft-launched it in PE, so Drea seriously doubted it would ever catch-on from the target herself.

She cleared her throat, “But they are almost as bad as stye jokes.”

“Uh, absolutely not. Eyesores are nowhere near as gross as dick’n nu—” Stiles coughed, throat bobbing as he swallowed, before finishing his sentence with an audible question mark, “…phallic imagery.”

Drea pursed her lips, “Pus beats penis on the ick meter by at least 23 points.”

Stiles’s eyes glimmered in the fading light, “23?”

“Maybe even 24.”

Another bout of silence fell between them, but it wasn’t so restless this time—even after Stiles torpedoed his body through his passenger seat. He fought with his keys for a while until the correct one slid into the ignition. 

The jeep’s engine hummed pleasantly in the quiet as Drea let out a soft sigh, dropping her head back against her car window. The rain had stopped somewhere between trying to unlock her car and now, but she couldn’t quite recall when. The chill wasn’t so bad, she realized, without her foul mood casting a shadow over her head.

Stiles landed back on his feet and leaned against the jeep. Drea could feel his gaze on her again. A tickling sensation trailed down her spine as she fiddled with her keychain. It was old, a gift from her parents on some birthday she couldn’t remember. Paint had chipped off in most places after thoughtlessly throwing her keys every time she came home, but she could still make out the M and Y of the orange ‘Mystery Machine’ logo.

Stiles hummed for a moment and then said, “I’m Nobody. Who are you?”

Drea stared at him and waited for the punchline. It didn’t come. Instead, he shifted from one foot to the other and fumbled over each following syllable. “You know, like…Dickinson,” he waved his hands around, seemingly searching for some sort of cosmic relief. “I thought it would better than a dick joke, but upon some seriously belated reflection, I realize that you’re probably tired of corny assholes qu—”

“How dreary,” Drea interrupted, quietly but loud enough to be heard over the rumbling jeep, “to be Somebody.”

Stiles’s jaw snapped shut; it was his turn to blink at her stupidly. He smiled a little and ran his hand over his buzzed head, “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She didn’t know what she was agreeing with, only that she wholeheartedly did.

“I forgot that part.”

Drea clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and shook her head, “It’s the best line.”

“It might have something to do with my species landing somewhere between microscopic bacteria and radioactive cockroach on the high-school social food chain,” Stiles said dryly. His face remained impassive, like he was talking about something benign as the weather. 

Drea tilted her head a little and a timid smile unfurled over her face in time with the swell of familiarity blooming beneath her ribcage, “Then there’s a pair of us.”

His cheeks dimpled when he smiled back at her, “I do remember that one.”

“Well,” Drea slid her hands into her back pockets and shrugged, “it is the best part.”

Stiles squinted at her and then laughed.

Drea felt a bit like laughing too, so she swallowed thickly before she could choke on the impulse. She took a step backwards and curled her fingers around her keys in her back pocket, “I should probably try start my car…y’know, before you start reciting, ‘I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain.’”

He nodded, taking a step towards his jeep, “Solid plan. ‘Because I could not stop for Death’ would be next.”

Drea slid into her car and stared at the steering wheel, wrapping her fingers around 10 and 2 and silently calling upon every deity she’d ever heard of to end her suffering. Stiles seemed nice enough, but she seriously doubted her smalltalk capabilities were up-to ‘ride home’ standards. Perhaps, she should revisit her resounding dedication to atheism, she thought, as the engine sputtered in protest a few times and then came back to life. 

Stiles flashed two thumbs up through the window. The smile on his face was positively goofy, but his dismount from the jeep was somehow even goofier. He stumbled over his large feet a few times before regaining stability. Drea bit back a smile when he shot her another thumbs up, this time through the dash as he removed the jumper cables from her battery.

He wiped his hands off on his jeans again; at this point, she was convinced that they were beyond saving, but Stiles didn’t seem concerned. He tapped against her window before stepping around the open door, “You should probably let it run for a while. Take the scenic route home; enjoy all the Beacon Hills hotspots open past 8:00 pm on a weeknight. I personally recommend the Rite Aid or Walmart.”

Drea snorted, “Maybe I’ll swing by the Preserve. I hear the woods are especially beautiful in the foreboding darkness.”

“Don’t.” Serious was an odd look on Stiles’s face. Drea decided that she much preferred the goofy grin. “Don’t go anywhere near the Preserve. It’s officially cordoned off—totally locked down, quarantine-zone-central. Something about flesh-eating, parasitic plant life.”

“As completely real and unobtrusive as that sounds,” Drea drawled, “don’t worry about it. Literally every single person in town knows about the body they found in the woods.” It was bound to happen, small town and all—and ‘woman dies in deadly animal attack’ was the most interesting thing that had happened in Beacon Hills since the intersection got a Target two years ago. “I’ve seen every installment of Friday the 13th and The Blair Witch Project. If I’m going to be murdered, I refuse to also be humiliated by a cliché C.O.D.” 

The manic expression on his face softened to a relieved smile and then again to a little smirk, “So what’s a certified fresh murder, then? Not that I doubt the depths of human depravity, but I think society killed off originality a few centuries ago.”

Drea thought back to a house fire with no origin, accelerant, or discernible cause. Apparently, not. “You know what they say,” she sighed, “life finds a way.”

Stiles tilted his head, “And death.”

“And death,” Drea agreed, staring at a small chip in her windshield. The cracks had just begun to spiderweb out from the pit. 

Stiles looked like he wanted to say something, and he looked so much like the Sheriff with his face twisted around thoughtful contemplation that she couldn’t believe it had taken her this long to make the connection. The boy in the photo had grown up. How unfortunate for him. Stiles swallowed whatever it was that was lingering on his tongue and shut Drea’s door. He leaned his elbow against the window frame and cocked his hand in a stiff little wave, “See ya in English, Dickinson—both of you.”

“Awful,” Drea’s nose scrunched as she buckled her seatbelt, “terrible, dreadful. A solid 25 on the ick meter.”

Stiles grinned and held up his hands, “I’ll think of something better by Monday, promise.” 

Drea put her car in drive once Stiles was safely a few feet from the wheels and flicked her damp hair over her shoulder, “I dwell in Possibility.” What a scary place to be, she thought as she watched Stiles disappear in her rearview mirror. Possibility. Hope. Life. She was chronically good at surviving; cockroached her way out of every horrible thing life squashed her with. Lately, all she could do was cling to her heartbeat and the warmth of her skin, until she was barely more than roadkill. A walking carcass was a far cry from living, but Death would not stop for her, so she stopped looking for him. She kept treading water, took her pills, stopped existing—she was a lot like Schrödinger’s cat that way: too stubborn to live, too stubborn to die. She didn’t know what to do if someone unsealed the box and forced her to choose. That was the trouble with possibility; it required far too much uncertainty.