#like a messed up game of telephone

[paradoxgavel]

i will admit that after rereading the pizzaplex books, I've warmed up to the mimic a little. I tried reading them in the best sorta chronological order i could figure, and that was a much more interesting way to read them than just jumping all over the place!

i'm still grumpy about the whole storyteller and mimic1 and them trying to tie the books to the games stuff, but. the mimic in and of itself is pretty fun, at least.

[monotone-artist]

[id in alt]

wanted to try doodling him in the normal canon way

[foursidecity]

I think the funniest running gag in Mort is that nobody will say morts name no matter how much he insists, and it's not that Death forgets Morts name,,,, it just get a bit confusing when your apprentice keeps saying your name in French whenever you call him

[ladymacbeths]

OH

[venus-haze]

God's Got a Sick Sense of Humor (Father Charlie Mayhew x Reader)

Summary: Your decision to dress up as a slutty nun for Halloween has unexpected consequences when you make the acquaintance of an equally attractive and disturbed priest. (AO3 link)

Note: Female reader, but no other descriptors are used. Not entirely spoiler-free, but if you’ve watched up to episode 6, you should be good! Also I couldn't find what the parish name was, so I made one up. The gif doesn't really have anything to do with the fic, I just like it🤭 Please look at the warnings before deciding whether to read this fic.

Word count: 2.8k

Warnings: DEAD DOVE: DO NOT EAT. Non-con involving degradation, rough oral sex (m. receiving); ambiguous ending.

You knew early on in the night you had made a mistake in costume choice. The vinyl skirt started pinching your waist after less than an hour of wearing it, the nipple pasties were slowly peeling off despite your best effort, and the platform heels weren’t forgiving after several shots of tequila. The vinyl habit stayed in place with the bobby pins you used, but after a while, it felt like it was cooking your head.

Your friends found your plight funnier as the night went on, cracking jokes about how it was God punishing you for wearing the costume in the first place. Lisa had little trouble with her Tinkerbell costume, a green mini-dress and sparkly heels she pulled from her closet and a cheap set of fairy wings from the same Spirit Halloween you got your costume from. Julie’s Bridgerton-inspired costume seemed a bit out of place compared to you and Lisa, but she got a lot of compliments on the details.

For the limited the fun your little desert town had to offer, something was definitely missing from the night out.

“Why did Merritt say she couldn’t make it, again?” Lisa asked, the three of you walking down the street to the next bar you’d inevitably terrorize. All the usual haunts, where the bartenders knew your order and half the patrons were people you’d gone to high school with and definitely didn’t want to see again.

You shrugged. “I texted her earlier, and she said she couldn’t make it, something came up.”

“It sucks she doesn’t hang out anymore,” Julie said. “Did we do something?”

“I mean, her dad’s in a coma, and her mom’s working all the time with those gross murders going on,” Lisa said. “She’s probably the only one keeping things together at home.”

The three of you had known Merritt for years, your friend group becoming tight-knit as time went on. Getting carted to and from soccer games turned into sleepovers and late nights getting fast food. You got to know the Tryons pretty well over the years. Her dad was nice enough, and you always found her mom funny, if not a bit overprotective, but Lois always remembered your birthday.

“I’m gonna stop by sometime this week. It’s been way too long since any of us have seen her,” you resolved.

Lisa and Julie agreed, though you weren’t sure Merritt would appreciate all of you showing up unannounced at her house. You figured you’d be better off going yourself and seeing what the deal was with Merritt.

Stumbling over your platforms, you struggled to keep up with Lisa and Julie until you tripped and nearly wiped out on the sidewalk. You caught yourself on a nearby telephone pole, the lights from the nearby buildings blurring the more you tried to focus.

“Fuck,” you groaned. “I’m gonna call it a night.”

“Are you sure?” Lisa asked.

“Yeah, I’m gonna find a convenience store and then get an Uber home.”

“We can go with you,” Julie said.

You shook your head. “Don’t end your night early because of me.”

“Alright, text us when you get home.”

When the world finally appeared upright again, you looked at the nearby street sign, recognizing where you were, at least. Not far to the nearest shop that you were certain would be open late. You checked your phone for the time and felt especially lame. It wasn’t even midnight yet.

With a sigh, you turned down the street, opening your messages to your most recent text to Merritt. Your FaceTime request went unanswered, so you opted for an audio message instead.

“Hey Mer, it’s me. We missed you tonight!” You paused awkwardly, wishing you could actually talk to her. “Look, there’s a Halloween party tomorrow night, something out in the desert. It’s not too late to get a costume. We could go to the Spirit Halloween in the old Bed, Bath and Beyond—“ A catcall interrupted your rambling. “Look, just call me or something, at least let me know you’re alright? Bye, babe.”

The fluorescent lights in the store were almost headache-inducing, but you powered through for a bottle of Gatorade and a protein bar that you hoped would mitigate the hangover you’d inevitably have in the morning. 

Gatorade in hand, you felt almost dizzy staring at the array of protein bars in front of you, wondering how there could even be so many and if they were really any different. A man walked down the aisle, standing a few feet away from you, though you didn’t pay him much mind until you grabbed a protein bar and noticed he was dressed as a priest.

“Hey, nice costume,” you told him.

“Oh, this isn’t a costume.”

You laughed. “Right.” Your inhibitions lowered, you gave him a once over, your gaze lingering on his handsome face, his muscular arms. “You know it’s a shame we didn’t run into each other earlier tonight, we probably could’ve won a couples contest or something.”

He smiled, though something flickered in his brown eyes that made your guts churn. Except, it likely wasn’t him, as you shoved what you were holding onto the shelf next to you and rushed out of the store.

You wretched, the contents of your stomach emptied onto the blacktop. Tears burned your eyes, your throat scratchy and raw by the time you were done. You felt a hand on your upper back, could barely hear the sound of a man asking if you were okay over the sound of blood pounding in your ears.

Glancing up, you were mortified to see the priest looking at you with concern, though disgust was nowhere in his expression.

He handed you the Gatorade you’d been holding in the store, apparently going ahead and buying it for you. Taking a swig, you swished some around in your mouth before spitting it on the ground. He gave you a handful of crumpled napkins as well, and you tried maintaining what was left of your dignity while getting yourself together in front of him.

You managed a mousy thanks, avoiding eye contact with him.

“Don’t tell me you plan on driving home,” he said.

You shook your head. “I came out here with my friends."

"And they just left you like this? Alone?"

"I told them I'd get an Uber.”

“They'll charge you double tonight," he said. "I can drive you.”

Accepting a ride home from a stranger certainly wasn’t the smartest choice to make, but he actually seemed to give a shit about your well-being. You agreed, if not for the fact that you were curious about him, and the horny part of your brain hadn't shut up since you saw him.

He kept his hand on your back as he walked you over to his car. Almost felt like his fingers were twitching against your skin. 

Getting into his car, you noticed the rosary hanging from the rearview mirror, a saint card clipped to his visor. 

“Oh my god, are you actually a priest?” you asked from the passenger seat as he turned the car on.

“I told you it wasn’t a costume.”

“Shit.”

“Father Charlie Mayhew, from Our Lady of Sorrows, if you don’t believe me.” He smiled, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “What’s your address?”

After giving him your address along with your name, realizing you hadn’t told him yet, you rolled the window down about halfway, finding the fragrant odor of incense and cologne a bit overwhelming for your queasy stomach. The cool night air gave you instant relief, and you laid back on the headrest, keeping your eyes closed for a few minutes. 

Father Charlie filled the quiet with a true crime podcast. Not a particularly odd choice, except that he was a priest, but Catholicism always lent itself to morbidity—his was more modern, you supposed.

“Have you heard about those murders around town?” you asked over the sound of a young woman giving the background of a triple homicide.

“Yes, our parish’s publication has been reporting on it,” he said. “I'm the editor, but one of our nuns is working closely with the lead detective on the case.”

You opened your eyes to look at him in disbelief. “Lois is working with a nun?”

“You know detective Tryon?”

“She’s my best friend’s mom,” you said. “I went to her house all the time growing up.”

“You must know her pretty well, then.”

“Yeah, Lois is one hell of a detective,” you said. “Still, I can’t imagine…whoever’s behind it must be depraved. What he’s doing—it’s not even human, it’s animal.”

“He?”

“I don’t think anyone but a man could be capable of that kind of barbarism, Father.”

“You might be right about that,” he said solemnly.

You drank more Gatorade, hoping to settle your stomach and ease your discomfort with the direction the conversation had taken. But you were the one who brought up the murders in the first place. All had some kind of religious connotation. No wonder the Catholic paper was eating that shit up. 

Catholicism was always predisposed to an especially grotesque morbidity. Open wounds considered blessings. Bones of the holy displayed with reverence. Even bread and wine transformed into the body and blood of Christ himself. Whoever was behind the recent murders was either observant or well-read.

Father Charlie pulled up to your building about ten minutes later, and you internally sighed in relief when he turned the podcast off. You couldn’t wait to get out of the damn costume and into bed.

“Thanks, Father Charlie,” you said. “I owe you one.”

“Actually, mind if I use your bathroom?” he asked.

You shook your head. “‘Course not. Come on up.”

Acutely aware of the costume you were wearing again, it was far too tempting not to show off on the way up to your apartment, swinging your hips a bit more than was warranted, knowing he was right behind you, the tight skirt giving him a full view of your ass. You privately bemoaned the fact that he was actually a priest. What a fucking waste. A guy who looked like him had no business giving himself to Jesus and denying the rest of the world the pleasure.

You took a selfie by your front door, a tired smile and a thumbs up that you sent to Julie and Lisa.

“Just letting my friends know I got home safe,” you explained, noticing Father Charlie staring at you.

You could barely hide your self-satisfied smile when you unlocked the front door. “The bathroom’s through the kitchen, first door on the right.”

“Thank you.”

Making a beeline for your bedroom, the first thing you did was take your heels off. Your feet were still sore, with a mean blister that made you walk funny when you brought the heels over to your shoe rack. You could hear the toilet flush and the water from the sink run in the bathroom. Chewing on your lip, you were almost tempted to ask Father Charlie if he wanted to stick around. If you could just brush your teeth and reapply some makeup real quick, you'd be good as new.

You never got a chance to.

“So, why this costume?” he asked, startling you.

You gasped, turning around to see him leaning against the door frame. “Oh, um—I thought it was funny.”

“What’s funny about it?”

“Well, nuns aren’t supposed to have sex, and this costume is—”

“Pornographic," he said. "I mean, it’s something you get fucked in.”

“Yeah,” you whispered, shocked at his bluntness.

“Chastity. The sacred vow to God that all women of the cloth take, and you—” he scoffed to himself, stepping into your bedroom so he was only a few feet away from you, “you mock it.”

You knew you should’ve picked the sexy nurse costume instead. “I’m so sorry, Father.”

“You will be. Get on your knees.”

“Ex-excuse me?”

“Don’t be crude. This is about repentance.”

The searing venom in his voice made your muscles contort to his will, and you found yourself on your knees. You should have been fighting back, screaming for him to get out, but in your heart you knew it was useless. Back in the convenience store, you noticed his fit physique, and you could hardly count on your neighbors to give a shit if you were in any kind of trouble.

"Do you even know how to make a sign of the cross?" he asked mockingly.

You shakily did so, bringing your left hand to your forehead, then your chest, then to each shoulder. He scoffed, apparently you messed something up, but he didn't elaborate, instead ordering you to repeat after him. The prayer came jumbled from your mouth, 'through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault' over and over until his voice was ringing in your ears like a broken church bell.

The bulge in his pants was impossible to ignore. You kept your eyes focused on his face, even when you heard the sound of his zipper and clothes shifting. But you couldn't help it, not when he was pumping his cock right in front of your face. Your repetition dipped with a slight whimper when you glanced at the size of him, foolishly hoping it was just proximity making his length appear so intimidating and angry, as if it wanted to hurt you just like he did.

“Simply praying won’t do someone like you any good," he said abruptly. "You need another form of penance, something more tangible."

Shoving his cock in your open mouth, you choked at the intrusion, attempted to shift backward and finally make a run for it, but he caught you by the habit you so stupidly kept in place with bobby pins and hit the back of your throat.

"Why don't you give me ten Hail Marys?" he mocked, his looming silhouette appearing outright demonic through your tear-filled gaze.

You didn't know the damn prayer. Couldn't even try to fake it when all you could manage was muffled pleas for him to slow down, go easy on you, have mercy. Your jaw ached, throat burned at the force he used to make you take as much of his cock as you possibly could.

He didn't show any signs of fatigue, save for the beads of sweat that rolled from his face and onto your own. He grinned at that, at you, the position you were in. The church was full of sickos, and he was certainly no exception.

Making one feeble attempt to fight back, your teeth grazed his cock, and just as you tried to work up the courage to bite down, he jerked his hips, cursing under his breath.

"Take it," his voice a low growl as he came in your mouth, ignoring your choking, spit and snot and cum leaking down your face and onto your vinyl costume and exposed breasts, "take your penance, slut."

Father Charlie hardly gave you a chance to catch your breath when he pulled his spent cock out of your mouth. You practically collapsed on your bedroom floor, each gasp of air painful against the back of your abused throat. Grabbing you by the habit again, he hauled you over to your bed, bending you over the edge of it.

He shoved his fingers between your legs and scoffed at the wetness that coated your thighs, your thong doing little to contain your subconscious reaction to the way he treated you. "Oh, that's just shameful," he drawled. "You're not repentant at all, are you? Leading a man of the cloth astray, causing me to sin…why else would you have put this costume on tonight?"

Straddling you from behind like a dog, his body was heavy on yours. With one hand squeezing your neck, the other pressed something against your throat. You reached for whatever he was holding, freezing in panic when you realized it was the hair scissors you kept in your bathroom. He must have swiped it while he was in there. They weren't even that sharp, but the extra effort he'd have to put in to mortally injure you with them would mean it would be all the more painful for you.

“Depraved, animal, barbaric,” he said, his voice low and dangerous. “Is that what you think of me?”

You whimpered, feeling his cruel laughter rumble in his chest against your back. “No—no, you can’t be—”

“I was going to do something about that costume anyway, but having that mutual friend in common,” he mused, “I just can’t pass up the opportunity to leave Detective Tryon a personal message. Call it divine will.”

“I’m sorry,” you choked out.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart. You can tell God yourself how sorry you are,” he whispered.

“No—Father, please don’t—”

[temporarywelcome]

Please? - Peter Maximoff

Word Count: 3.5k

REQUESTED!

The Ask: I humbly ask for a Peter Maximoff smut, I'm thinking y/n either a: distracts him while he is playing his arcade games, b: using whipped cream to give him a lil sweet treat while fucking, or c: literally any smut of this man, I need him. Preferably him being a little cocky/silly, but when you actually do anything he is a whimpering mess praising you. - @envy-of-greed

I give you... Option A.

WARNINGS: SMUT! oral (m recieve), handjob, mommy kink, praise, reader is a tease, reader is MEAN, sub!peter, dom!reader, Peter becomes a MESS, reader calls him "pup" and "puppy" like once, aftercare, alluding to punishment

A/N: gonna work on a Spencer Reid fluff/comedic fic next

_____

Peter was annoying as hell.

She loved him to bits, she would do absolutely anything for him, but she was allowed to admit her boyfriend was a complete terror?

Y/N was peacefully sitting in her room when her telephone had rang. Placing down her magazine, she reached for it, bringing it to her ear, “Hello?”

“Babeeee,”

What a surprise this was. Peter Maximoff, who usually would just show up unannounced with his super speed, decided to give her a phone call?

“Peter? What’s the occasion?” she asked with a smile, leaning back against her pillows, twirling the telephone’s wire in her newly manicured fingers. 

“Eh, I just remember you saying you like phone calls, the bonding or whatever. So i wanted to give you one.”

That made her heart melt. This little terror was sometimes a complete angel as well. “Yeah…” Y/N replied, “I love phone calls. Your voice sounds so nice on the phone, by the way,”

She could already picture him blushing. “I-It does? I mean, of course, yeah it does! I’m Peter freaking Maximoff, babe. Everything about me is top-tier,”

“You could work on your baking skills,” she mused, remembering literally every single time she would attempt to bake something with him. Flour everywhere. Remnants of cake or brownie batter on his face because he just had to eat some (a lot). Firealarm going off. Burnt baked goods. Every. Single. Time.

“Bitch! Every baking failure is your fault for always distracting me!” he whined in protest.

“How the hell do I distract you? I’m baking too!” 

“ ‘Cause you’re pretty,” Peter replied cheekily, and she knew he would have wiggled his eyebrows if she could see him, “How am I supposed to focus?”

“Stop making excuses for your terrible baking skills. Even if I wasn’t there, you would be a mess,”

“For different reasons,” Peter scoffed, “I can’t bake by myself, I need your guidance,”

“But you can’t bake with me either because you allegedly get distracted. Sounds like you just can’t bake,”

“Fuck off,” he grumbled, making her laugh, “Let’s get to more important business: when can I pick you up?”

“I wasn’t aware of being picked up at all,”

“Yeah well I’m picking you up. I wanna spend some time with you!” she could hear his excited tone that was so uniquely Peter. Everything about him was unique. Everything about him was different and weird and strange and she loved every part of him. 

“Well…” Y/N sighed, “I was going to start on some homework…”

“Boooo! College student booooo!”

“Shit, excuse me for wanting an education. Better than planning on living in my mom’s basement for the rest of my life,” she teased.

“Ouch. Fine. Can’t you do your homework later?”

“I’ve been procrastinating on it,” Y/N set down her magazine, getting off of the bed and walking to her desk, stretching her body as far as she could with the limits of the phone cord. Fingertips brushing against her notebook, she was able to grab it, nestling back into her bed and opening it, “Shit, it’s a lot.”

“Who cares? Finish it tomorrow!”

“It’s due in the morning.”

She could already tell he was pouting, she knew him so well. “Can’t you do it at my place?”

“You mean your mom’s place?” Y/N decided to keep teasing him. Peter was pretty much a loser, not really having any plans in life other than to lounge in his mom’s basement playing video games and eating twinkies for eternity. He thought he was a loser, Y/N’s parents thought he was a loser (which is why they don’t like him much), even Y/N thought he was a loser when they had first met. 

Yet here she was, smiling like an idiot while babbling on the telephone with said loser. Said loser who always gives her (stolen) gifts. Said loser who comes over at random points in the day just to say he loves her (superspeed is pretty handy). Said loser who named his Dungeons and Dragons character after her (however, he was such a loser, he didn’t have many people to play it with). Said loser who would scoff and pout whenever she would tease him about being her future house husband (well, what else would he be, if he just plays video games and dotes on her all day?) Her favorite loser. 

“Yes,” Peter deadpanned, “My mom’s place. Now may I come over so I can escort you to my mom’s place?”

She pretended to think about it, hearing his soft breathing on the other line as he waited for her to answer, “Fine. No distractions though!” 

“Yes, ma’am,”

Y/N opened her mouth to say something else, jumping when she heard a harsh knock on her window. Whipping her head towards the source of the noise, she rolled her eyes with a laugh. Peter, waving at her with his usual happy dorky expression. Placing the phone back down onto its receiver, Y/N rushed towards the window, opening it. “Babe!”

“Missed me?” he asked with a smirk, zipping into her room and right past her, making her roll her eyes again. He picked up her notebook, examining the pages, “Ew ew ew. What the hell are you studying again?”

“Psychology,” Y/N sat on the bed, slipping her sneakers on and tying them. 

“Boring,” he sped off in a blur to her desk, grabbing a pencil, and rushing back to her notebook. 

She didn’t even notice, focused on her sneakers, but when she raised her head and saw him drawing on her notebook, her facial expression soured, “Pietro Maximoff!” she snatched the notebook back, flicking his forehead. 

“Hey!” he gasped dramatically, “Ain’t no way you used my real name.”

“You misbehave to the point I have to like a mom,” Y/n replied dryly, going off to her closet to grab her bag. Brows furrowing, she dug around a bit, “Shit… Dunno where my bag went-”

“Ahem,”

Y/N didn’t even have to turn to know what that meant. But she did, and, not to her surprise, Peter was holding her bag with a smirk on his face. 

“Asshole,” she grumbled, crossing her arms over her chest. She knew him well. If she attempted to grab the bag, he would just zoom off somewhere else to tease her. 

“Aren’t you going to get it?” he asked with faux innocence, holding it out to her. 

“Fuck that, I know what you’re planning,” Y/N shook her head, raising her brow at him expectantly, “Drop the bag,”

“Um, am I a dog?” He placed a hand to his chest, jaw dropping like the drama king he was. He should have been in theatre when he was in school. 

“Do I have to treat you like one?” Y/N threatened boldly, “Come on, pup, drop the bag,”

Peter’s eyes widened and he dropped the bag, “You did not just say that,” 

“Well, it worked,” Y/N smirked, grabbing her bag and planting a kiss on his cheek, “Good boy,” She began throwing her supplies for her homework into her bag, unaware of the growing dent in his pants. 

“Bitch,” he mumbled to himself, too quiet for her to hear. 

“Alright, I’m ready to go,” she announced, slinging her bag over her shoulder. He just stood there, eyes glazed over. “Earth to Peter?” she snapped her fingers in his face twice before he blinked, coming back down to society. 

“Okayletsgetoutofhere,” he word vomited, grabbing her waist (with one hand on her neck, of course! Gotta prevent that whiplash!), and within seconds, they were in his room (the basement). 

“Shit, am I ever gonna get used to that?” Y/N laughed, flopping onto his unmade bed in dizziness. Before she could react, Peter dived in on top of her, making her let out a pained, “Oof!” and a “Peter!”

A childish giggle left him, arms going around her waist as he nuzzled into her neck, “Hm?”

“Can’t breathe,”

“Are you calling me fat?”

“I apologize, my dainty little princess,” she deadpanned, arms going around him too. Yes, he was crushing her, but she honestly didn’t care, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. She then felt something on her thigh. Felt like something was poking-

Oh.

Oh.

She smirked, but didn’t say anything about what she just realized, casually stroking his hair, “My pretty puppy,”

He gasped, immediately dashing off. Poor thing was flustered, playing one of his (stolen) arcade games, back turned to her. 

“What’s wrong?” Y/N immediately got to teasing him, “I thought we were cuddling?”

“Wanna game,” he replied simply, and his ears went red. Cutie pie. 

“You wanna game? But I thought you wanted to spend time with me?” she laughed.

“You said you wanted to do your homework,” 

“True true…” she opened up her notebook, glancing at his squirming figure, “You dancin’, love?”

“No, I’m not dancing,” was all he said. There were plenty of times he didn’t catch onto her teasing, which was always adorable. This seemed to be one of them.

“Then why are you moving like that?” 

“Like what?” Now he was playing dumb. He groaned as he died in the game, restarting it.

She slid off of the bed, walking to him and wrapping her arms around his waist from behind. Resting her chin on his shoulder, she said, “You’re acting funny, darling,” she pressed a kiss to the side of his neck, feeling him tense under her touch.

“N-No, I’m not,”

“Oh, really?” One hand reached out, tucking a strand of hair behind his ear before planting a kiss there, “You’ve been acting funny ever since I called you a good boy,” His breath hitched, making her smirk, “I didn’t know calling you that would have such an effect on you, baby. Maybe it’s because you’re so bratty, you don’t hear that often, huh?”

“Stoooop,” he whined, losing in his game again, “You made me lose,” Peter pouted. 

“Hm,” she let her hands drop lower, fiddling with the button of his pants absentmindedly, “You must be slacking, Peter! You should be able to game under any condition, right?”

“But-”

“Nuhuh,” she pressed a finger to his plush lips, “No ‘but’s from you. We gotta practice your concentration skills, my love. They’re lacking,” she unbuttoned his jeans, making him gasp. His hands were gripping the game’s controls tightly, however they were unmoving as she palmed him through his boxers. “Hey,” she roughly squeezed his length, making him squeak cutely. “Did I say you could stop? C’mon, time to practice.” 

“S-Sorry, Y/N,” he stuttered out, hitting restart again. She squeezed his cock through his boxers again, earning a whine from him. 

“Now what do you call me when I play with you?” Y/N asked tauntingly, running a single finger over his clothed length. Up and down. Up and down. Up and-

“Mommy,” he bit his bottom lip to keep himself from moaning. 

“That’s right, darling, I’m Mommy,” She stepped away, confusing him, until she got down on the floor, crawling right between him and the game. “Mommy’s going to take care of your pretty cock now, okay?” Her hands trailed towards the belt loops of his jeans as she spoke, “You are not allowed to stop playing your game. Each in-game death is two spanks. You’re not allowed to cum till you clear three levels, understood?”

Peter’s cheeks flared up and he nodded excitedly, “Yes, Mommy,” 

“Good boy,” she purred, pulling down his pants and letting them pool at his ankles. Fingers dipping into the waistband of his boxers, she cooed, already noticing a small wet patch, “So excited, huh?” she pulled down his boxers, letting them join his pants on the floor. Y/N stuck out her index finger, letting it run along his cock like before. Up and down. Up and down. Up and-

“-Mommy,” Peter whined, “Stop teasing me, please,”

“Oh? The bratty boy is using his manners?” she cooed, wrapping her fingers around his thick length and slooooowly stroking him, “Remember the rules and everything will feel amazing, yeah?”

He nodded, sucking in a breath, “Y-Yeah,” Peter tried to focus on his game, he really did, trying his best to get his character past the villainous NPCs. But as soon as Y/N began to stroke faster, he whimpered, his character being slain. 

“Oh?” Y/N smirked, pausing her movements and making him whine more, “Already lost? That’s two spanks, darling,”

“Sorry, Mommy…” He mumbled in embarrassment, restarting the game, “I won't do it again- fuck,” She started stroking him again, the delicious feeling going straight to his pretty little head. Any sort of sexual intimacy would immediately make his brain short-circuit, causing him to be complete putty in her hands.

“I know you won’t do it again, Peter, because you’re a good boy, right?” Y/N’s lips curled into a little smile, leaning forward to press a kiss to his tip, continuing to stroke him. “You’re my good boy?”

“Mhm,” he nodded, bottom lip between his teeth as he attempted his game again, his avatar jumping through obstacles and avoiding approaching enemies, “I’m y-your good boy- ughhh,” she wrapped her pretty lips around his tip, teasingly sucking on it. He bit his bottom lip again, hard enough to draw blood. 

Peter couldn’t help it, he took a glance down at Y/N, mouth going dry seeing her sucking on his tip, stroking him in a steady rhythm with her own eyes looking dead at his. His eyes widened seeing her take him deeper into her mouth, eyes not leaving his for even a second.

Game over.

He looked up at the screen of his game, realizing his character died again. Fuck. 

Y/N pulled her mouth off of his dick with a pop, making him whimper, “Two more spanks, darling. That’s four now.”

This was going to suck. This was going to suck in the best way possible. 

“Didn’t you say you were going to be a good boy?” Y/N asked, pouting exageratively, “I remember you saying you were going to be a good boy,”

“I am your good boy!” Peter huffed, crossing his arms over his chest. 

Y/N laughed, pressing a kiss to his thigh, “You’re so cute, baby. Now, c’mon, start the game again. You’ll never get to cum at this rate.”

Poor thing panics, starting the game up again. He began spamming the buttons desperately, wanting to clear those three levels so Y/N would allow him to cum. Overstimulation was hot as hell, but edging was terrible (which is why that was her usual punishment for him).  

Her lips were on him again, sucking hard, and poor guy was seeing fucking stars trying to focus on this damn fucking game. He was a good gamer, these levels should be easy to clear, but when Mommy is sucking his cock how is he able to focus on such a thing? He would rather abandon the game and fuck her like a bitch in heat, which is certainly what he felt like at that moment. 

It was torture. Spamming buttons desperately, not beating the level, the threat of edging and spanking in the air. He was going crazy.

“Thats ten spanks now, baby,” Y/N said after another failed level, “I thought you were good at games,”

“I-I am!” He exclaimed, “It's hard to fucking focus when you're sucking the soul out of me!” A pout formed on his pretty lips, brows furrowed as he attempted to play the level again. 

“Watch your tone, Peter,” Y/N glared at him, making him feel emotional. Whenever he was in a vulnerable place like this, it's embarrassingly easy for him to burst into tears. Especially because during any form of intimacy he was baby or darling or something cute, never Peter. Why would she call him by his name? Was he being bad?

“Sorry, Mama,” he mumbled.

Y/N couldn't help but smile softly, being reminded once again how much she adored him. Her pretty boy. Her favorite loser. Being called her titles by him always made her weak at the knees. “I know, baby,” she was a soft domme at heart, she can't be mad at him. Ever. He was her baby and he deserved the whole world. “Let's try this again, okay?”

She waited for him to nod before taking him into her mouth again. His pretty tip was red and hot in her mouth, dribbling pre-cum on her tongue as she swirled the muscle along. 

He finally beat the first level, moving on to the next excitedly. He was getting somewhere now! Soon he'll be allowed to cum and maybe Y/N will let him inside…

Yes, he really wanted to be inside her. 

Y/N began taking him deeper into her mouth, and fuck he felt his tip nudge the back of her throat so perfectly he wanted to cum. So bad. But he won't because he's a good boy and he's not going to cum until he's allowed to. 

That was the plan, at least.

But his name was Quicksilver for a reason and he could feel himself getting closer and closer to the edge. His left hand was gripping the joystick painfully hard, knuckles white as he moved it around in an attempt to get his character across the map to the next level. 

He finally made it to the third level, sighing in relief. He was getting somewhere. Almost to the end. She was bobbing her head up and down, one hand gently rubbing his tender balls, bringing him closer and closer to release. 

“AhI’msoclosethatfeelssogoodthankyouthankyouI’msoclose” he babbled out, speaking practically a mile a minute. A wide grin appeared on his face once he cleared the third level, “IdiditcanIcomenowpleasecanIcumnow-”

She pulled off of his dick again, making him groan in both desperation and annoyance, “You cleared the level? Good job, sweetie. I guess I can let you cum now…” They both stared at each other, Peter panting and his chest rising with each labored breath, Y/N batting her eyelashes at him meanly, continuing to tease him. He was ready to just start fucking her face and go wild, but he told himself he was going to behave.

So he’s going to behave. 

Ugh, but why does she have to make it so hard? 

“Can you keep going?” he finally asked.

“Should I, though?”

“You… You promised!” he gasped, eyes widening in panic.

“Hmmm, I don’t remember promising anything,” she replied, trailing her finger along his shaft like she always did when she wanted to fucking tease him. Up and down up and down up and down-

“Please?” Was she really going to make him beg? She knew he hated begging, which is probably why she enjoyed making him do that so much. 

All she did was hum, continuing with that aggravating motion of her finger, fucking asshole. 

“Please, Mommy?” he grumbled, hands balling into fists at his sides to keep him from going crazy. Think with your head and not your dick, Peter.

Y/N gave him another mean smirk, “That’s my boy…” she went straight back to sucking him off, and he was back to being a fucking mess. 

“ThatfeelssogoodyoualwaysdosogoodfuckI’mgoingtocumcanIcumpleasepleaseplease-”

She nodded, not stopping her sucking motion for even a second. However, his eyes were screwed shut so he didn’t even notice, continuing to beg to cum till she released his dick from her mouth and said, “You can cum, baby,” with a little laugh before going right back to work. 

And within two seconds of being back inside her mouth, he was cumming hard, hands going to her hair for something to keep him grounded. When she pulled away from his cock once again, she swallowed without a second thought, rubbing his thigh soothingly, “You still there, baby?”

“Mhm,” Peter was a known chatterbox, everybody knew this. But every time after cumming, his desire to speak would vanish, the need to just be held and taken care of overpowering all else. 

So Y/N stood up, taking his hand, “Let’s lay down, yeah?” She knew Peter could not last long, however, he could bounce back extremely fast. Just some cuddles will do, and he’ll be back to either a) yapping her ear off, or b) being hard as a rock. Or both. Who knows? 

She laid down on his (unmade) bed, pulling him down beside her, “You need anything, baby?” He simply shrugged, arms going around her waist and resting his head on her shoulder, “Water?” He shook his head. “Snack?” Fast nod. Of course. “Alright,” she went to sit up, but he immediately tightened his grip on her. “Didn’t you want a snack?” she laughed.

He thought for a moment before hesitantly releasing her from his hold, allowing her to get up and go to his practical tower of Hostess treats, grabbing a box of Twinkies. His favorite. Sitting back down, she opened up the box, unwrapping a cakey treat while he leaned against her again. 

“Here you go,” she said softly, letting Peter pluck the dessert from her hand and eat it. It was silent as he ate, her hand going to his hair to gently stroke the silver strands. 

“Thank you,” he mumbled after he finished, looking up at her with a cute smile, “You always know just what I need,” he nuzzled his nose into her neck, inhaling her scent. “Love you,”

“Love you too, baby,” she kissed his head, sighing peacefully, “So… about that punishment…”

[illbegottenfaith]

maybe stay here forever (inspired by packing it up by gracie abrams)

the holidays have you feeling sentimental over yours and theo's relationship (theo nott x reader)

a/n - 100 followers in a little over a month is very much insane for me, and like any other writer I rlly appreciate every interaction with my fics <3 also im trying to work on making mutuals (esp with other writers!) but man it does NOT help that im so incurably shy, anyways enjoy!!

tropes/warnings - tw descriptions of grief and anxiety, established relationship, domestic bliss, more angst than I anticipated, an outtake ft. petty!theo throwing down with a 13-year-old

word count - 2.6k

"Y/N! PHONE!”

You placed your butterbeer down with a thunk, weaving your way from your table to the telephone at the counter. Your friend Ivy handed it to you before disappearing into the crowd. You knew who it was even before pressing your ear to the receiver.

“This is highly illegal, as you very well know,” you said breathlessly. "Randy hates anyone using his phone."

“Relax. Ivy said he's gone into the back.”

Even through a telephone line, your boyfriend's voice gave you a giddy sort of thrill. Still, you glanced at the back door anxiously. “For now. What’s up?”

“Oh, nothing. Just wanted to hear you sound deliciously panicky.”

“Unbelievable. I’m risking being banned from Hogsmeade’s only pub for nothing?”

“What’s the point of having a girlfriend,” Theo wanted to know, “if she won’t enable your illegal endeavours?”

You rolled your eyes. “So, did you manage a game between the four of you?”

“Eh. It was…something. I’m not sure if anyone would call it Quidditch, though.”

“Oh?”

“You should join us next time. The flying, screaming - you’d love it.”

"Rude." The one time Theo had managed to wheedle you into at least trying to play Quidditch with him and some of your friends had not ended very well for you. In your defense, heading straight for the ground sounded like a much safer option than waiting around to be hit by a Bludger.

“You’re still watching the back door, aren’t you?”

You stiffened, eyes sweeping across the crowded pub. He wasn’t here, was he? He did love messing with you. You shook yourself. Of course not, you were using the only telephone in the vicinity. “Am not,” you sniffed injuredly. "Anyway, what are you up to now?"

"I'm about to go down to the shops to run your errands. What did you need, again?"

"Butterbeer fla - are you writing this down?"

"No need, I'll remember."

You frowned. "Teddy, you always say that, and you always forget something."

"Not this time. Shoot."

You huffed. With how aggravating Theo could be, he was lucky he had such a pretty face. "Butterbeer flavoured popcorn, for the popcorn garlands. If they only have regular, don't bother, I have bags and bags of those. New Christmas lights, because one of the bulbs blew out. Wrapping paper, someone's bound to need it. Hm, what else...that disgusting peppermint tea you love - "

"I don't love peppermint tea. It's...it's not bad, that's all."

"Fibber. You cleaned us out last year."

"And I'll do it again if you keep throwing around these unlawful accusations."

You rolled your eyes. "Oh, listen - bring Mattheo along with you, will you?"

Having just broken up with his girlfriend, Matteo's Christmas plans fell through at the last minute. You couldn't help it was in your nature to worry. You heard the distant rustle of parchment crackle over the phone. Ah - ha, fibber indeed. "Alright, but for the last time, he's doing perfectly fine on his own." You heard him folding the list up. "He's a grown man, Y/N."

Your tone turned reproachful. "It's the holidays. No one should have to spend the holidays alone, remember?"

"Don't you have your own friends to fret over?"

"They're all going home. You only have yourself to blame for being within arm's reach, you know."

"If I'd known you were going to be this meddlesome I'd have stayed far, far away."

"Please. Like you could have resisted my charms."

You could imagine the teasing look he'd be giving you.

"Speaking of charms, how does a charm bracelet sound? Would you like that?"

You sighed. For some reason, you were having a particularly difficult time thinking of something to ask for this Christmas. You kept putting it off, and now it was less than two weeks away. Theo was doing his best to help, though it did get a bit grating when he'd point out every item in a shop one by one.

"I still don't know," you said helplessly. "Rain-check? Again?"

"Fine. But you don't have much time left." You heard him unfolding the list. "So, for today, butterbeer flavoured popcorn, Christmas lights, wrapping paper and peppermint tea?"

"Yep. Thanks, Teddy."

"Anything for you, doll." Theo cleared his throat and dropped his voice a couple of pitches.

"So what are the odds I can convince you to wear that green little number to tonight's party?"

You grinned at the pub counter flirtatiously. "I don't know. How badly do you want to see me in it?"

Theo groaned. "Going to make me beg for it, baby?"

"In a manner of speaking." You glanced back at the back door, just in case. "Haven't you learned? Sweet-talking will get you everywhere with me." Your eyes drifted to your table, where Ivy was impatiently waving you over. "Damn. I have to go. Ivy looks like she's about to have a coronary."

"Wearthedre-"

You wore the dress. You could be cruel, but not that cruel. It was a cosy sort of party, with friends and friends of friends milling around. You were sitting in Theo's lap on one of the couches, the two of you trying to talk over the music.

" - and so I said to Ivy, if he can't be bothered to even say hi when there's other people around, then that shows how little respect he has for you, and he'll only get worse the more you let him get away with it, and - and I'm rambling."

Theo's mouth quirked into that special smile he reserved just for you. "Only a little. It's very becoming, if that's what you're worried about."

"Yeah, right."

"It is, but only because it's coming from you."

You fiddled with Theo's hair, trying to fix a cowlick of his. "So what did you do today?"

"We got the popcorn, the tea, the wrapping paper. Matteo got a little too excited with the lights."

You raised your eyebrows. "Do tell."

"Mind you, he's never shopped for anything in his life. He has house elves for that."

"Kind of like you when we first met," you teased lightly.

"I don't think he was expecting so many options. He kept winding each type around his limbs to compare. I think the insulation was faulty on one of them so he got a mild electrical shock."

You gasped. "Is he okay?"

"Yeah, as far as I could tell. I think he kind of liked it, to be honest."

"Of course he did." You wrinkled your nose. "Then what did you do?"

"Freed him, obviously."

"And then?"

"Then we got the same lights we always do."

"And then?"

Theo shook his head, bemused, and tugged at a lock of your hair. "And then nothing. And then we left. And then I changed and came straight up to the party to find my nuisance of a girlfriend."

You laughed. Theo wasn't being particularly funny, but it was hot and your hair was sticking to the back of your neck and you were high off the thrill that came with being perfectly in sync with your favourite person. In short, you were too buzzed to care. You were flushed, either from the alcohol or the feel of Theo's hand steadily creeping up your thigh.

"I have some bad news, though."

You sat up and scowled. "What?"

"I couldn't get us out of my family's Christmas dinner."

You groaned. You had half a mind to drown Theo in what was left of your drink.

"C'mon, Y/N," he cajoled, "iwe'll only be there a couple of days. Tis the season of giving."

"Sure, I'll give them a push down the stairs."

Theo stifled a snort and plucked the drink out of your hand. "Okay, that's enough punch for you. Speaking of..." He glanced somewhere behind you, sitting up a little and, frustratingly, pulled his hand off your thigh. "The punch bowl might need refilling."

"Don't," you whined, dragging his hand back to where it was a moment ago. "Let Enzo do it. We don't get to see enough of each other as it is."

Theo sighed. "So you're just never going to let me leave?"

"I can't help it," you said, "I like the way you speak. I love hearing you talk." You rested your forehead against his, your eyes fluttering close. "Promise you'll never quit talking to me."

"Done," he murmured against your lips, a hand sliding to the small of your back.

Hours later, you felt yourself stirring. It was the middle of the night, long after the two of you had gone to bed. You regretfully peeled your eyes open, trying to figure out what had woken you up.

Theo was lying next to you. It took a few more blinks to see that he was breathing harder than normal, the moonlight filtering through the window casting a sickly pallor on his face. His breathing quickened till it bordered on hyperventilating, a restlessness spreading through his body as he uselessly clenched at the sheets.

The first night you had witnessed this, you had gone absolutely ballistic. You thought he was having a seizure. After an awkward conversation between a highly uncomfortable Theo and a panic-stricken you, you learned that it wasn't its first, or last, occurrence.

They weren't nightmares, exactly. If they were, Theo would forget them by the time he was shaken awake, and only the residual tremour in his limbs would be left. They were more akin to bouts of subconscious panic and despair surfacing from the recesses of his mind. Some nights, he recovered quickly, falling back to sleep in under an hour. Other nights, you'd hear him creep out of the room so as not to wake you while he whiled away the hours to dawn.

As hard as Theo tried, bless him, he struggled to put an explanation for these attacks into words. You guessed that it might have something to do with the sudden, unexpected departure of certain loved ones from his life after one mildly confusing fight. You had slipped out of bed early one morning, while Theo was still asleep, to get a headstart on your work for the day. A couple of hours later, when he found you in the Slytherin common room and immediately started going off on you, still in his pajamas, you found out how much waking up in an empty bed freaked Theo out.

Now, you shoved Theo hard on the shoulder. His eyes flew open, anxiously twitchy, as his breathing started slowing down. Still half-asleep, you snuggled up to him, pressing an ear to his chest. You could hear his heart pounding under his T-shirt. After a moment or so, once he'd recovered from the shock, he tentatively wrapped his arms around you.

You squeezed an arm around him as well. "'M here," you mumbled into his shirt. You could feel him taking deep breaths, forcing himself to calm down as he distractedly stroked your hair. Slowly, bit by bit, you felt him relax around you as you started to doze off. There the both of you stayed, a tangle of limbs, till the morning.

one year ago

You were sitting in the Astronomy Tower one chilly autumn night, having escaped from the party your friends had dragged you to. The holidays had just begun, and in the coming days, most people would be going home or carrying out their respective plans. Most people didn't include you. This year, more than anything, you wanted to be alone. Your friends assumed you were going home for the holidays, and your family assumed you were spending them with your friends at Hogwarts, and to be completely honest, you didn’t see the need to correct either of them.

You looked up, straining your ears as you heard disembodied footsteps approaching you. A minute later, Theodore Nott emerged from the shadows.

“Mind if I join you?”

You shook your head as Theo settled with his back against a pillar, stretching one overly-long leg towards you while bending the other. You had seen him at the party for the first fifteen minutes you were there. He looked delightfully comfortable in a loose, casual denim button-down. It felt a little odd to think of him as an acquaintance when you saw him nearly weekly while your other friends caught up. But at the same time, there was a tinge of awkwardness in the silence stretching out between the two of you. You weren’t even sure if he knew your name. Now, he was pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his jean pocket.

“Is it okay if I -?”

You shrugged wordlessly, still in a bit of a daze. As far as you could remember, you had never been in a one-on-one setting with Theo. It wasn’t that you avoided each other; it just never came to it. You had plenty of mutual friends acting as a buffer between you two.

All you knew about him was that your families’ tax brackets were far apart enough to mean you’d likely never see him again after Hogwarts. And after getting bruised and beaten by one too many failed relationships, you were kind of over trying to reach out or connect with new people.

And so Theodore's familial prestige was all you took note of. That, you thought as you watched him sigh in relief after the first drag of his cigarette, and his mildly concerning nicotine addiction.

You risked a sidelong glance at him to find him unabashedly looking right at you. But with him sitting perpendicular to you, you were in his direct eye line. Where else was he supposed to look? Literally anywhere else, you wished, as you returned his gaze with an awkward half-smile.

“So, Y/N,” Theo was saying, tapping ash off his cigarette. So he did know your name. You decided then that you were right - you had never been in such an intimate capacity with him before. After all, you weren’t one to forget someone saying your name like…like that. Like he harboured some secret fascination with it, from the way he let it linger on his tongue. “Any special holiday plans?”

You shook your head wordlessly. Theo gave a slight frown.

“You do speak, don’t you?”

You scoffed. “…yes. Obviously.” He’d seen you talk in front of him. Maybe not to him, but he knew you could speak perfectly fine. Your tongue currently feeling like cardboard was an entirely separate mystery.

“Going home?”

You hesitated. Theo was neither friend nor family, but for some inexplicable reason, that made it all the more difficult to lie to him. You blamed it on the smoke, it must have been making you nauseous. That, or his relentlessly demanding stare.

“I only ask because Ivy mentioned you were.”

You gave him a look, mildly peeved. If he already knew, what was he prodding around for? The cooler, more rational part of your mind pointed out that he might just have been trying to make polite conversation, and that a normal person who didn’t keep secrets like you wouldn’t be having this kind of a reaction.

“Yeah. I leave…soon.” Not for the holidays, though.

“That’s funny,” Theo continued pleasantly, “because I heard you mention to Matteo that you were staying here with the girls.”

You froze. Crap. How were you going to explain your way out of this one?

“So?” You couldn’t keep the defensive edge out of your voice. Maybe if you acted confident enough, he wouldn’t realise anything was amiss.

“So…you’re lying to someone.” He tapped his cigarette again, irritatingly casual, as if you were only discussing the weather.

“Why are you so interested in my holiday plans anyway?” you asked crossly, pulling your cardigan tighter around you as a chilly breeze started picking up.

Theo raised his eyebrows. He had the gall to look thrown off, as if he wasn’t the one pursuing the topic.

“People don’t normally lie about their holiday plans. You do realise that, right?”

Oddly enough, something in his tone made you feel embarrassed over being caught in a lie. Scratch that, it was embarrassing to have Theodore Nott catch you in a lie. What for, anyway? He was hardly the most honest person himself. Probably. You felt the back of your neck heat up. You desperately wished he would look away.

“What’s it to you?”

Theo opened his mouth before closing it again. He stewed in his thoughts for a minute while his jaw worked, as if he were trying to find the right words.

“You shouldn’t be alone on the holidays.”

You worried your bottom lip. Was this…concern?

“Maybe I want to be alone.”

“Do you?”

His otherwise dead eyes looked so inquisitive - so piercing yet unnervingly honest for someone as prone to manipulation as him. You couldn’t bring yourself to lie to those eyes. You dropped your gaze to where your fingers were fidgeting with the hem of your skirt.

“It’s complicated.”

“So explain.”

You laughed humourlessly. “They wouldn’t understand.”

You watched the shadows on the tower’s floor shift. You looked up to see Theo finishing off his cigarette as he moved to join you, looking out at the same Hogwarts grounds you were facing. It seemed to make it easier, this pseudo-confession, without the brunt of his needling stare.

Here was someone you didn’t feel the urge to explain yourself to. You felt…less alone. Like you finally had someone unequivocally on your side. It had been a long time since you felt that way.

Even with the slight distance between you, you could feel the body heat he radiated. You leaned towards him slightly, but you told yourself it was only because he was blocking the wind and you were sick of shivering. Perhaps you weren’t as subtle as you would have liked, because he stretched an arm around you, running his hand up and down your arm to warm you up as you sank into his heat gratefully. You didn’t have the heart to pull away. You didn’t want to pull away.

“You could explain it to me, you know.” Theo glanced down to where you were resting your head on his shoulder. “If you wanted.”

You toyed with the idea. So, basically, I’m sick of every relationship I’ve been in falling flat, and lately I’ve been feeling like even my friends don’t understand me, so you’ve caught me just as I’m giving up on it - love, that is, romantic or otherwise. You pulled a face. It sounded far too melodramatic even in your own head. Still, you tried.

“Have you ever felt like…giving up?” Theo’s brow furrowed even more. “No, not - I’m not suicidal. Just…when everything gets too exhausting, and reaching out just feels so…”

“Once.”

You hesitated. You weren’t expecting him to agree. Sympathise, maybe.

“After my mother died.”

“…oh.”

Could you sound any more stupid? But you couldn’t help it - in a group of friends who regularly made cracks at each other’s Death Eater fathers, Theo’s mother was a strictly off-limits topic.

"It was a couple of years back." Theo's voice sounded different now; blithe and almost aggressively neutral. "In front of me. I didn't realise until it was too late, but she was my best friend." He paused, idly tracing the lines on his palm, but you got the distinct impression that he was trying very hard to discuss something that was very difficult to talk about.

“I was -“ he broke off with a sharp bark of laughter that sounded as painful as it was unexpected. “I was angry, actually. Fucking livid. Angry at my dad, for being such a piece of shit. Angry at myself, for every time I thought I was too cool to spend time with her. Angry at her because…because it was too soon, and she was all I had. And she knew that.”

Theo had a white knuckle grip on the edge of the tower’s floor, looking dangerously close to trembling. Every ridge in his face stood taut with the ache of poorly healed emotional wounds. “She knew it. She fucking knew it.”

You placed a hand over his. He drummed his fingers restlessly against the floor, and you could feel the agitation seeping out of him as his breathing evened out.

“How did you get over it? The anger?”

Theo gave you a strange, almost pitying look.

“I’m angry nearly every day of my life, Y/N.”

He sighed and dropped his head, finally leaning into you as well, his hand drifting innocently along your arm as he talked, as if you were old friends. “But if Matteo and the others have drilled anything in my head over the years, it’s that isolating yourself is the real killer.”

Your fists were clenched tightly in your lap. It was almost comforting, seeing how your body language mirrored each other's. You didn't think you would ever feel ready to do it once more, letting yourself be susceptible to heartbreak or loss, in this lifetime or the next, but perhaps...perhaps you could manage. For him. You turned slightly, burying your face into his neck and closing your eyes.

“I suppose…I could try," you started in a small voice, partially muffled by Theo's shirt. You took a deep breath in. God, his neck smelled so good. "One last time."

“Of course you can,” Theo murmured, sounding unreasonably patient. “You’re stronger than this.”

“You think so?”

“I know so.”

You let him keep holding you for a little while longer, just until you warmed up to the idea The quiet felt nice. Theo felt nice, in every sense of the phrase.

“I’m starting to think you didn’t come here for just a smoke break.”

"Ivy might have mentioned something," he confessed. You bit back a smile. You should have guessed. "Your friends really care about you, you know. And you've really worried them."

The bitter taste of guilt hit your jaw. You idly traced the stitching of Theo's jean's pockets. Someone else also seemed rather worried, though you weren't about to point that out.

"Have I?"

"Afraid so. You're lucky you're so precious."

Theo tapped your nose, and for the first time that evening, you grinned. After weeks of wandering in a cloud of grief, the motion felt achingly familiar. Theo returned the smile, as if you couldn't help but amuse him.

“There it is.”

“There what is?”

He looked momentarily speechless again. You frowned. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think that you made him as nervous as he made you.

“Nothing,” he mumbled hastily. “Can we go back down? It’s freezing up here.”

present day

"Morning."

With some difficulty, you extracted yourself from Theo's embrace. You cleared your raspy throat as you stretched out your stiff limbs.

"H'llo."

Theo leaned down to give you a peck on the lips and you wrapped your arms around his neck. As he pulled back, your hands slid to his face, then down to his shoulders. You weren't entirely sure what you were looking for. "Better?"

"Yes." You saw the sleepy bliss fading from his face. "I'm sorry I woke you."

"You didn't," you lied. "I was up anyway."

Theo quirked an eyebrow interestedly. "What could a respectable girl like you be doing at three in the morning?"

You giggled softly and pulled him on top of you, and you thought he gave a rather appealing demonstration on what you might have been doing. A while later, you glanced at the clock, and saw that it was getting dangerously close to afternoon.

"We should probably get up."

"Mhm. You still need to decide what you want for Christmas, by the way."

Cold air rushed in as Theo rolled off of you, pulling his clothes on. You dragged yourself to the bathroom, still trying to figure out what to ask for. When you stepped out, feeling much more human, Theo was missing. You wandered into the empty common room where he had already set out two steaming mugs of that disgusting peppermint tea on one of the tables, complete with candy canes.

His eyebags are terrible as ever, and he's yawning, but he looks happy. Content. As content as you feel. And you think, this is all you want. For Theo to always get the cold side of his pillow, all the peppermint tea he could want, pleasant Hogsmeade trips...a real break, for once. For him to get everything that he asks for, and more.

bonus outtake

"Let's talk about something else. Anything else." Theo pulled you into his lap. "Like what an adorable elf you make."

You narrowed your eyes at him. "I'm not sneaking you into this year's gift donation drive."

"Why not?"

You should have known this was coming. "Listen, you got yourself banned last year."

"It wasn't even my fault. You didn't even hear how snarky that guy was being. 'Oh, where's your present?' Jackass."

"The jackass was 13, Theo."

He sniffed with an injured air. "It's not like I lied to him or something, you know."

"Again, for the last time, I cannot impress enough how incredibly inappropriate it is to point out one of the helper elves as your 'present' to a 13-year-old boy."

"But you were my present. I got to unwrap you and everything afterwards."

[maiiuelle]

˚❀˚

as we all know, jj is not a fan of cops. so, you can imagine how angry he’d be getting a call that you’re locked up.

it's sort of a game of telephone actually. you called kiara from the jail, pleading with her not to tell jj knowing how he'd react. but, with her parents grounding her from any more involvement in pogue business, she didn't really have a choice. so, she told pope, who immediately told jj.

luckily, your offense wasn't serious, you'd been having a bad day already and decided to go on an innocent bike ride. jj was kind enough to have slipped a joint into your backpack for an occasion like this, which you happily lit up to get your mind off of everything. your mistake was riding through the rich side of the island, some kook must've seen you and called the station to complain about who-knows-what, and the smell of weed sticking to your skin made it easier for shoupe to find you. you complied, letting him haul you in the back of his cruiser while he lectured you about drug possession and public intoxication. must be a slow day.

now you're sat in the lobby of the police station, hands bound together in metal cuffs, resting in your lap. you're barely high anymore, the light feeling in your head replaced by irritation. you hear jj before you see him, and the sound of his booming voice makes your heart sink.

"where d'ya even have her? huh, plumb?" you squeeze your eyes shut, the heat of his anger growing closer and closer.

"you need to relax, maybank." she hisses, rounding the corner before him and stopping at the sight of you. she crosses her arms, almost amused. "she's right here."

your blonde boyfriend stomps in after her, wide eyes searching the room before landing on you. he's disheveled, clearly having been in a rush to get here. you don't know what to do other than to stare back at him doe eyed. deputy plumb comes to your side and hoists you to stand with a hand on your arm, spinning you roughly so she can start to unlock the cuffs.

“alright—let’s make this quick.” shoupe’s voice draws everyone’s attention, a stack of papers in his hands that he offers to jj. “i’m doin’ her a favor, just a written warning.”

jj snatches the papers from him, superficially looking them over and then using them to point at the deputy. “you’re outta your mind, shoupe. i can’t believe—“

“i suggest—“ shoupe cuts him off, and jj’s jaw clenches. “—you kids get on home now. we’ve got some real work to do.”

deputy plumb lets you go, clipping the cuffs to her belt and nudging you toward jj. “and keep the dope on the cut.” you look back at her, keeping your mouth shut as you slink over to jj’s side.

“can count on kildare P.D., ain’t that right?” jj keeps his eyes on the officers, face red with anger as he adjusts his hat and starts walking toward the door. you stick close to him, feeling better attached to his side even if he’s angrier than you’ve ever seen him. “pickin’ on teenage girls — real tough, shoupe. pretty sure y’all got bigger fish to fry, maybe focus on that.”

on the way out of the station, he’s silent. he doesn’t look at you or say a word until you reach the twinkie, where john b is sitting patiently in the driver’s seat. you feel real bad now, realizing you brought everyone into this mess that you could have easily avoided. jj stops at the front of the van, and you follow suit, anxiously biting your lip.

“jayj, i really didn’t mean to cause a whole—“

“nobody’s upset, sugar. relax.” he takes a second to look you over, running his hands down your arms and scanning over your body. “didn’t rough you up in there, did they?”

you shake your head. “oh, no. i’m fine.”

“good.” he brushes your hair over your shoulder, letting his hand linger by your jaw to pull you into a kiss. “least y’got a little street cred now, huh?” his calloused thumb rubs across your cheek, and a warm smile spreads across his face. you’re relieved, in the end really grateful that your boyfriend came to save the day.

˚❀˚

[bulbabutt]

i dont know how to put this delicately. i dont know how to put it in a way that doesnt get me put on a fucking blacklist. but HONESTLY? im so tired right now.

please kill the cop in your head. like some of you are so into being a fucking surveillance state of 'this person talked to that person who followed this person who promoted this' and i just... guys. if no one is actually fucking being hurt?? and nothing 'inappropriate' is actually BEING promoted? why the hell are you telling people about shit you STALKED THEM to find out?? you genuinely dont fucking know people and you have a warped sense of morality about it. THATS whats going to get people hurt. when shit in this world starts goes south really soon and you start noticing the more open kinks of queer people on the internet, i sure hope you dont start selling them out as perverts just to justify yourself as 'one of the good ones'. cuz thats the slippery slope youre on with the way you talk sometimes. learn some fucking history about the ways in which these kind of justifications have been used in the past.

im a visibly queer adult with other shit going on i do not fucking care if someone has a side thing they arent fucking telling you about. its weird that youre telling me. im TIRED of you trying to tell me. im never gonna fucking answer these things because its MESSED UP! im not joining a fucking hate parade!

fucking kill the cop in your head. i mean that. its an important lesson to learn, and i get some of you are young and you dont get why yet, but one day youre gonna regret being like this. one day when you realize youve made people unsafe you will feel really fucking bad about it. this world is hateful enough right now without needing to fucking dog pile on people who are keeping to themselves. and if theyre not? block them and move on. why is that so fucking hard?

a fucking hate campaign game of telephone only serves to make people feel unsafe. I FEEL UNSAFE around you people. have you never been on the receiving end of group harassment before? i have. as a teenager! back when the internet was MORE anonymous than it is now! got my shit plastered on bigoted sites where people were sending me death and rape threats to my inbox every day for weeks. thats the end result of what youre doing to people. it WILL become co opted by those kinds of people.

just because something gives you an ick, it doesnt mean someone is a morally reprehensible person. it doesnt mean they deserve to feel unsafe in the world. block it and move the fuck on. youre going to get someone hurt. you probably already have.

[toskarin]

Is Tomino an antisemite?

I assume you're referring to the section of PROJECT PROTOTYPE: Zeta Gundam Proposal that talks about Melanie Hue Carbine?

worth mentioning, this bit was also reprinted in the liner notes for the Zeta Memorial Box laserdisc release

to cut a long answer short and address the elephant in the room: the Carbine stuff, in those notes, is antisemitic. I also don't think that it necessarily reflects what Tomino currently believes, if he was even the one who wrote it, which is also unclear

the answer ends up being "there's not a clear answer one way or the other"

I'll elaborate a bit more on this below the courtesy break

for disclosure's sake, I could be misremembering some details here, but this is less of a "defence" and more of trying to sort out what's not included in that screencap which gets reposted every so often.

-

it's understandable that this comes up time and time again, given what a mess that writing is

the question of whether Tomino was antisemitic has been talked to death, which is why a lot of Gundam fans have just stopped entertaining it, but I still think it's worth clearing up periodically for people who haven't heard it talked about before, so it's not ground down into pop trivia

when you hear people talking about the Carbine lore in Zeta, it's usually presented as coming from a setting bible and being a direct quote from Tomino

that understanding comes from a long-running game of telephone that was probably significantly worsened by language barriers and 40 years of information rot

the infamous Carbine section not only has dubious authorship and canonicity, but was also written in the 80s in Japan (which was undergoing something of a Jewish conspiracy exploitation boom at the time) and first published in a fan-targeted magazine (not the setting bible, as it's usually presented) in a period of Gundam's history when there was a lot of outsourced filler lore being released to stopgap the inevitable decline of post-Zeta Gundam hype before the release of ZZ

that's not to say Tomino doesn't have a history of misstepping and saying incredibly strange (and sometimes reactionary) things, or even that this wasn't a concept in the original proposal for Zeta before it was heavily reworked. it wouldn't be that out of place, but it would still stick out

but, to be frank, Tomino is an 82 year old Japanese man who has been in the public eye for 60 out of those 82 years

even if we take it for granted that he was the one behind that off-screen lore, we then have to believe that he held those beliefs unchangingly for 40 years without (to my knowledge) repeating them, which is a bit of a stretch

there might be something especially damning that I haven't seen, but I feel like it would have emerged alongside the Carbine passage if that were the case

[satureja13]

After eating those strange alien vegetables and fruits, Jeb left the crew mess. Jack and him are still alive. That's a relief. And it will help them to overcome the time until they are able to stock their supplies. Let's hope the cat creature likes the new diet too ö.Ö Since the communication system and some other crucial components are still not working, they just stayed on their route to Batuu. They have no access to their map data either and can't take any detours to buy what they need.

Sai was just caring for the Little Ones, when he spotted Jeb. They'd been avoiding each other since Jeb dropped the bomb that he'll never be able to properly woohoo Sai... But Sai is no one who gives up that easily: "Jeb. Wait!"

Sai: "We're not caged at the bridge anymore so we could resume our yoga practise in the 'meadow', what do you think?" Poor Jeb doesn't think at all. He doesn't even know if they are still resuming their relationship...

A little yoga didn't hurt anyone so he just went over to the meadow with Sai to meet the others. But there aren't any others... Two of them are always supposed to be on duty at the bridge and the other two are probably sleeping to be fit for their duty on the bridge... So it's only the two of them.

They silently started their practise. Silent until Skully started his record player:

'Whenever blue teardrops are fallin' And my emotional stability is leaving me There is something I can do I can get on the telephone and call you up, baby'

Sai didn't remember this song but he was delighted that Skully played something relevant and sweet for once.

'And honey I know you'll be there to relieve me The love you give to me will free me If you don't know the thing you're dealing Oh I can tell you, darling, that it's sexual healing

Let's make love tonight (Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up) 'Cause you do it right'

It's 'Sexual Healing' from Marvin Gaye! Delighted too early... Sai sighed. Why didn't they just leave Skully in that cave in the Therapy Game?!

It was hard letting go of all the thoughts and feelings that where torpeding them - just like letting clouds passing by... A new wave of Romantium permeating the air didn't make it easier either... But the Boys are practising yoga, meditation and tantra for so many months now, Sai and Jeb managed to remain in their realm of serenity even though the goats were also couriously gathering around them 🐐probably having their usual inappropriate chitchat about the Boys and their love life...

Jeb was aware that Sai also initiated a few of their tantra exercises. And so it was awkward again after they'd finished. How can Sai still want him after he destroyed his dream to loose his virginty to him? Or was it just one of their random exercise sequences and Sai didn't think anything by it? Sai: "You can shower in our quarters, I'll go over to Jack's."

Jeb was confused. Does that mean Sai moved out? He always wanted Sai to move in with him when they had their own places at their home. But Sai always refused. He needs a place of his own. And Jeb tried to understand. So it was to expect that Sai felt uncomfortable to live here together with him. Did Jeb make the right decision to start all over again with Sai. After all those times they broke up and got together again? It's all too painful for him. But how is he supposed to live without Sai? Wouldn't it be easier if both of them found someone who matched better?

If it only weren't so hard. Jeb shed a few tears and when he finally regained his composure and stepped out of the bathroom, Sai was standing there. Very close. Right before him. All beautiful and gorgeous. How could he have thought of leaving him just a few minutes before?! When he would gladly take each stab in his heart just to be near him.

Jeb: "Sai..." Saiwa noticed that Jeb doesn't call him 'Vanië' anymore for a while now, his term of endearment for him. (And the part of Sai's overly long name that means 'beauty/beautiful') Sai: "I'm sorry I freaked out. Jack and Ji Ho told me a while ago that you don't want to hurt me. I just didn't want to realize the full extent of it. But we can still make this so good for us, hm?" Jeb: "So - we don't break up again?" Sai: "What? No! I told you that I won't fail you again and we will make this work. I did everything I promised you and I improved. A lot. Look how I didn't complain once about being the captain of this crazy mission, hm? I improved." Jeb: "But I failed you. I can't give you what you crave."

Meanwhile the AC was doing a good job spreading the Romantium all around.

Sai: "Can we please stop overthinking this - us? I love you more than anything and I know you love me too. Let's just make this good for us. As good as we can. We are going to put all our effort in and be our best selves and that will do." Jeb: "Do you think this will be enough for you?" Sai: "I do and it will. I just want you. And I will show you how eager I am to make us work." Jeb was dazed. Maybe because of the Romantium. Or because Sai has this intoxicating effect on him.

And Skully turned the record player louder:

'Baby, I got sick this mornin' (heal me my darling, heal me my darling) A sea was stormin' inside of me Baby, I think I'm capsizin'(heal me my darling, heal me my darling) The waves are risin' and risin'

And when I get that feeling I want sexual healing Sexual healing is good for me Makes me feel so fine, it's such a rush Helps to relieve the mind, and it's good for us

Come take control, just grab a hold Of my body and mind, soon we'll be making it, honey I'll be feeling fine You're my medicine, open up and let me in Darling, you're so great, I can't wait for you to operate (Heal me my darling)

I can't wait for you to operate'

Sai started to kiss along Jeb's neck: "We will *kiss* work *kiss* so hard *kiss*. And it will *kiss* make us sweat."

And Jeb stopped thinking again. No thoughts about how weird it was. Sai going from 'NooooOOOOoooo!' to 'Don't worry, we will make it work' ... (You can thank Jack later ^^')

From the Beginning 🔱 Underwater Love 🔱 Latest

Current Chapter: starts ▶️ here Last Chapter: 'Here comes the Sun' from the beginning ▶️ here

📚 Previous Chapters: Chapters: 1-6 ~ 7-12 ~ 13-16 ~ 23-29

[themadauthorshatter]

Lucky through out Finding Frankie:

"Yeah, I'll play this game, I earned it."

"HOLY SHIT! ... Okay, BYE, BITCHES, I'M OUT!"

"The other contestants mysteriously died! Not sure how that happened! Oh well, at least you're still here!"

"Yaaaay, I love being surrounded by CORPSES."

"How many circuit breakers does one trampoline and water park NEED? If it's this many, can't I just WORK HERE? You guys get any new employees or are they also rabbit food?"

"(Hiding) please don't see through mesh. Please don't see through mesh. (Frankie leaves) Okay, so the floor is lava. Or just a no-go unless I want to die slowly and painfully."

"Made it! And no- WHAT THE SHIT!?(As Frankie crawls by) ... I'm getting that 5 mil. I'm buying this place, and setting it on fire with that abracadabra looking asshole inside."

"GET AWAY FROM ME! GET AWAY FROM ME! GET AWAY FROM ME! GET AWAY FROM ME! WHO PUTS LOGS ON THIS STEEP OF A SLOPE AND HAS A MAN EATING RABBIT CHASE YOU!? I THOUGHT THIS PLACE WAS ALSO DESIGNED FOR KIDS!?"

"Aw, ducky. (Gets pecked) FUCK YOU TOO. Gonna play nice or do I need to throw you again?"

(Encounters Henry)

"... Do I still want that 5 million? We'll, I can't have if I'm dead. ... Alright, away we go."

"WHY IS THERE NO LIGHT IN YOUR AREA!? WHY ARE YOU FRIENDS WITH A CARNIVOROUS RABBIT!? ... (Inhale) Okay. I can handle the giant man eating rabbit. I can handle Talking Telephone man that keeps trying to strangle me. I can handle the fucking duck. I can handle this stupid costume and the fact that I'm surrounding by decaying bodies in this hellhole. But I DRAW THE LINE AT FUCKING BUZZSAWS! WHO'S IDEA WAS THIS!?"

"... Really? You guys have an incinerator? So what's paying this place? All the circuit breakers or this incinerator?"

(Encounters Real Frankie)

"... what... What the fuck?"

(Sees Henry die)

"WHAT THE FUCK!?"

(Gets help from Real Frankie)

"Thanks. Please don't tell me this will come back to bite me later."

"Again with the buzzsaws! In a WATER PARK! ... At least the circuit breaker won't get wet."

"Aw, noob noobs. (Explosions) Sorry, got a game to win and money to collect."

"Oh, hey, a chat board. ...'Boring?' I resent that. Raise the 10k to 30. I'm living and I'm going to buy this place and turn it into a hotel. Frankie's broke ass won't be able to stop me. ... Wait, did someone bring up lava?"

"Frankie's Frosted peak. Just get to the top. Easy. (Slime gets released). SCRATCH THAT! CHANGED MY MIND! I'M BURNING THIS PLACE!"

"I'm never using a buzzsaw again in my life."

"Hey, uh, Frankie, can you help me out? I'm... I'm stuck. (Gets shut it) ... Thanks a lot. Dick."

"STOP MESSING UP MY F*CKING GAME SHOW!"

"SO TRYING TO KILL ME WHEN I'VE ALREADY WON, BITCH!"

"NOOB NOOBS! Wait. OH, SHIT! NO!"

"Surprise, mother fucker. Give me my five million in cash."

"... (Sigh) Fine. *One more season.* But no buzzsaws, no slime, and no fucking corpses scattered all over the place like the Black Plague hit this place. We have an incinerator to play with."

[greetingfromthedead]

1. Death's Door

Series: Apple Blossoms Series Plot: Knives is finally crushed, his plans in ashes, his body at Death's door, but Vash decides to spare his life. With the last power he has left, he carries his brother to a person who has nursed him back to life, now begging for you to save his twin too. A tattered Knives finds himself in the care of a human and as time goes on, he has to come to terms with uncomfortable truths about his skewed world view and the strange feelings he discovers blooming in his chest for you. // Contains some Trimax spoilers. // A slight mix of all the Trigun iterations, but mostly Trimax Pairing: Knives x GN!Reader Series Rating: PG-13 + pwp BONUS chapters Series Tags (initial): No use of "Y/N", Redemption, Love, Romance, Sickfic, Medical Inaccuracies, Knives is injured, Caretaking, Falling In Love, Adventuring, Cowboy vibes, Knives is introverted, Knives has a crush and is very lost, Fluff, Reader-Insert, Canon-Typical Violence, Post-Canon, No use of y/n, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Forced Proximity, Trauma, Knives pouts a lot Word count: 3.3k

Author's Note: It is not yet a fully fleshed out story, I have the first few chapters planned out, but keeping it going will depend partially of the interest shown for it and how things will work out. All in all, I would be grateful to hear your thoughts. What is something you would love to see in such a story, scenarios and dynamics you would like to explore. Perhaps I will adopt some of them.

Yapping | Next »

It has been many long months since the communications were cut off as the satellites fell from the sky as comets. Since then, the only source of information have been the criers, who travel from village to village, sharing news and stories. Sometimes you hear different stories from different mouths and really can never be sure what the truth is. Apparently, at least most of the Seven Cities have been decimated, and a giant ark is destroying everything in its path. The criers are warning people to seek shelter and prepare for the worst, but you still hold on to a sliver of hope. You've heard that Vash the Stampede is somehow involved in this whole mess. The man with a giant bounty on his head is rumored to be the Devil himself, the Humanoid Typhoon. Some sources say he is behind all of this; he is the one who is raining down destruction as he always does; others say he has stepped up as the protector of humanity on this desolate planet. And the truth remains a mystery, hidden behind the game of telephone and conflicting accounts. Deep down, you believe that he is on your side, fighting to keep humanity safe from the impending destruction.

You have met that strange man before. He arrived in your care with multiple gunshot wounds in the dead of night, or rather, you stumbled over his dying body in the dark desert. It had been nothing short of a miracle that he had evidently walked from the next town over towards your lonely house before collapsing. And it was even more of a coincidence that you found him at all. Vash the Stampede truly has the luck of a demon, or perhaps it was fate. Who's to say? But you did dragged him home, patched him up, and took care of him until he awoke from his week long slumber. He remained under your watchful eye for a bit longer, and as the closest thing to a doctor this area has, you felt it was your duty to make sure he fully recovered before letting him leave. You got to know him quite well during the time he spent at your house. You quickly realized who he was, but let him introduce himself. It became clear to you that the vicious rumors held little truth. He might be clumsy, but not evil. He was nothing but kind and grateful to you, helping you however he could and paying you for the time and medicine spent on him even as you tried to refuse. All that happened a few years ago, but his generosity and kindness still stick with you to this day. You still remember his smiling face as he turned to leave into the empty desert where you found him in the first place.

Nowadays, you live quietly in your lonely house. The closest village is half a day's ride away, and you rarely see anyone besides the occasional messenger passing through. The closest city is Octovern, but to reach that via tomas, it would take nearly half a week. You occasionally take your first aid kit and go through the nearby towns to help anyone in need, but you have been blessed to not be dragged into the larger war decimating the planet. You have been able to maintain a sense of peace and purpose amidst the chaos, but you can only hope things will return to a sense of normality soon, as much as that can be found in this place.

Little did you suspect of the evening where a loud and insistent banging on your door would shift your life entirely. A rap like that always means trouble, and instinctively, you hurried to open the old creaking door into the cooling evening air. The golden light of the setting suns tries to flood into your hallway, only to be obscured by a giant figure. It takes a moment for your eyes to adjust to see more than just the silhouette, but still, the sight leaves you dumbfounded. Before you are two people, but they aren't entirely human as wings spread from their backs, not quite covered in feathers like an angel, partially reminding you of roots and stone, partially of shattering metal. Two wings, one on each of the bloody men. One holds the unconscious body of the other. He struggles to stay upright, one knee on the ground, the other supporting the limp form of the other as his singular arm wraps around the other's waist. The stump of his left arm has wires tangling from it, and it must have been what he used to knock on your door. It takes you too long to realize who that man is—Vash. His blonde hair is now entirely black, and his features are obscured by dirt and blood.

"Please. Help." He pleads with desperation in his eyes. "Can you save him?"

Your eyes shift to the man in his grasp. He is looking even rougher than Vash; his clothes seem burned and torn, and his skin is covered in blood and open wounds. His face is bruised and swollen. He hangs limply in Vash's embrace, his arms dangling lifelessly at his sides in an uncanny fashion. He's barely breathing, and it's clear that time is running out.

"Right!" You stir from your shock. "Let's get him inside!"

You push aside the weirdness and the unnatural aspects of the situation you find yourself in and slip back into the familiar feeling of urgency. You rush forward to put a shoulder under the unconscious man and lift him up with the help of Vash. You drag him not to the cot that's reserved for your patients, but instead you haul him onto the long dinner table that doubles as an examination table in a pinch. Your hands move on their own as they grab what you need: shears and cloths, first aid kits, bandages, medicine, water, and alcohol. You firmly tell Vash to sit down on the stool in the corner and not get in your way. You feel bad for being so stern with him, especially since he is injured too, but the man on the table is already playing dice with death.

You get to work quickly, knowing that every second counts. You remove the tattered clothing and assess the extent of his injuries. You're surprised he still has life left in him with the amount of blood he must have lost, chunks of his body apparently missing, gashes, and cracks covering his skin. You do as much as you can, focusing on the larger wounds first, knowing that time is of the essence in saving him. To your surprise, he doesn't bleed nearly as much as you think he should, given the severity of his situation. You roughly stitch him up and pull a few bullets from his flesh. His internal organs seem in good enough condition, and you're glad you don't have to operate on them further. As you work away, the wing on his back crumbles; the chunks feel strange, and you can't begin to guess the material, but you don't have a chance to analyze it either. By the time you are done, the wing is gone, leaving a chunky heap on the ground, almost like sand. You clean his body with water and alcohol before checking his skeleton and joints. There are no broken bones, but the right shoulder is dislocated. You take care to pull it back into place with a snap, and you continue to examine him. Much of his skin is cracked; it looks strange, and you can't begin to guess what caused it.

After hours of grueling work, you administer him medicine to hopefully avoid infection, another dose of strong painkillers, and some saline to help with his recovery. You lift his head carefully as you smear the gooey concoction on his gums for a longer lasting effect. To be doubly safe, you inject more drugs directly into his bloodstream and lather the wounds with ointment to help them heal. Wrapping him in bandages takes a lot from you too, especially since you can't accept Vash's offer to help since he is still dirty. By the end, your patient is almost entirely covered in bandages but still breathing. You throw a clean blanket over him and a pillow under his head, too worried to move him off the table onto the bed. It will have to wait, perhaps if he survives until dawn. But the chances of him making it through the night seem slim.

"Right." You let out a deep sigh. You can finally shift your attention from the dying man to Vash. You are deep into the night, pushing the morning hours, with dark circles forming under your eyes, but there is no rest for you yet. You turn towards the man in the chair; he looks like hell. You have never seen him look this bad before, and last time, he was the one whose life was dripping from his body on this table. Tears have carved deep lines into his dust, ash, and blood covered cheeks. There is an unusual mix of emotions on his face, but worry burns the brightest.

"It's your turn now," you say to Vash, catching his attention. His gaze lifts from the floor, and for a moment, it seems like he didn't hear you at all. You just continue, getting a washbasin, cloth and a jug of water ready. "You can use these to clean up; I'll help you with any spots you can't reach in a bit; I'll clean this mess up first."

"Will he survive? Will he be alright?" he asks instead, ignoring your comment completely.

"I do not know. I tried my best. The rest is up to him and fate itself. Whether he makes it or not is out of my hands." You look at him sympathetically. "Hopefully dawn will bring good news," you say softly.

As you pick up your bloody tools and cloths, you hear Vash stand up, but instead of walking towards the counter where the washing supplies are, his steps lead away, towards the door.

"Where do you think you're going?" you ask resolutely, a nip in your voice. He pauses in silence for a moment.

"I must go. I have some things to take care of still," he answers, a note of guilt present in his tone.

"You will clean up, have me patch you up, and take a nap before you can think about leaving. Doctor's orders!" Your words are commanding, leaving no room for argument. You're both tired; he looks awful, and you almost sway on your feet. But your work is not yet done.

Vash stands quietly for a moment longer before turning back and stripping a few layers of his tattered clothing. Exposing the bruises and wounds covering his body. He struggles a little with the setup at hand, using the reflection of your window to try and see where he has to reach. At the same time, you clean up the mess you made while working on your patient. You wipe the surfaces and wash the tools, and finally, you can discard the bloody robe, mask, and gloves.

You help Vash wash away the dirt from any spots he can't reach and have him sit on the chair in his underwear. You stick a cup of warm tea in his hand and down a strong coffee yourself before washing your face with cold water to wake up again. After that, you set everything up to stitch him back together and get to work. You examine him thoroughly and give him pain medication before getting the needle out. His body is tense and his pulse is still high; he has yet to calm down.

"Is he your brother? Even under all that bruising and swelling, I can tell the similarities." You speak softly to him to get his mind off the things that are hurting him at the moment.

"Yes, my twin," Vash replies, his voice hoarse and filled with pain.

"I didn't even know you had a twin. What's his name?" You continue as you tie together another suture.

"Knives."

"That's an interesting name," you say with little emotion in your tone, most of your attention going into taking care of his wounds. A stray thought of the wings crosses your mind; Vash has lost his too in the time your focus was on his brother. There is clearly something weird going on, but for now you are too tired to ask the relevant questions, and you need Vash to relax.

"I guess…" His voice trails off, and you can see him staring at the unconscious body on the table.

You keep talking as you work on him, stitching, disinfecting, and bandaging the larger cuts one by one. You give him a checkup and pain medication, and as you take his pulse, it is normal again. You are relieved; he seems to be stable and doing alright despite the way he looks. You provide him with some loose clothing you have laying around just in case and make him get in the bed you have in the other room to rest and recover for the night. He is hesitant, but the tiredness in his eyes tells you that he needs the rest.

"I will stay up with your brother; I will check on him, and I promise I will wake you up if there are any issues. Sleep. You need it." You assure him as you throw a cooling blanket on him before turning off the light and leaving the room. "Rest easy; everything will be alright now."

You return to the patient on the table and check his vitals again. You take his pulse and check his light blue eyes. His breathing has returned to normal, and he looks to be doing better, but as you press your hand on his forehead, you feel the developing fever. You know that this could be a sign of infection, and it makes you slightly nervous. His jet black hair feels damp as your hand glides over it, and you notice that his skin is sticky to the touch. However, you try to remain calm and decide to check again soon and keep a close eye on him.

To keep yourself from falling asleep, you keep yourself busy with whatever tasks you find. You clean up your kitchen from everything, organize your cabinets, and even clean Vash's clothes and hang them to dry outside. Dawn comes, but nothing changes; the slight fever still lingers, and Vash is asleep. You mix up some sugar water and carefully drip a few drops into Knives's mouth. He swallows painfully, and you continue administering him the water for a few hours. You're losing the battle with your exhaustion, so you make yourself a cup of coffee again, letting it steep while checking on the wounds. They look good, and it almost appears like they've started to heal a little. You write it off as your own delusion. The rising suns cast their hot light on the desert, and Vash's clothes dry in no time. You pick them up and get to sewing the dark shirt and his pants; the red coat is mostly gone, burned, and torn.

You realize that it has been a while since your last meal, as you even missed yesterday's dinner. You get to cooking up some porridge after leaving Vash's clothes in the other room and making sure from afar that he is still breathing. Every quarter hour, you return to the man on the table, check on him, and give him some water and medicine if necessary. Nothing has changed, neither for the better nor for the worse, and you are grateful for that, counting your blessings as you remind yourself of the condition he arrived in.

Another hour passes as Vash appears in the door-frame, his eyes first falling on his brother before moving to you. He looks better; he is still covered in bandages and bruises, but the wary tiredness is gone from his eyes. He wears the clothes you mended for him, and his expression softens as he takes in the sight of you checking the pulse of your patient.

"Good morning," you tell him with a slight smile. "I made some food, but it's probably cold by now. Feel free to take as much as you want. Your brother is doing alright; he has a slight fever, but it hasn't gotten worse. The wounds look good, and I've given him water and medicine. For now, it's okay; he is not out of the woods, but he's getting there."

"Morning," Vash says as he walks closer to you. He doesn't say much; there is an unexplainable expression on his face as he pulls you into a one armed yet crushing bear hug. You feel his breathing get more ragged as he holds you; he repeats seemingly endless "thank you"s until you feel tears soaking your shirt. He finally lets you go, holding your shoulder and looking you in the eyes, tears and snot running down his face.

"You're welcome, but don't get too carried away, okay? I cannot promise you anything other than that I will try to get him back to full health; it doesn't mean it will happen." You try to calm him down again, reaching for a tissue to hand him. "Now eat; I will check your wounds again after that."

And so it goes. Vash eats his fill, dragging his chair a bit closer to the table but not quite next to it, as you gave him a stern look, worried for any contamination. He finishes his meal quickly, eager to have his wounds checked, as if he is in a hurry. Luckily, they look fine, and you lather him in ointment and cover everything with fresh bandages, relieved that he is okay.

"You said you had some business to attend to. Is that why you are vibrating on this chair?" You ask calmly, checking the strange cracks in his skin on his cheek.

"Well, I have to go. I promise I will be back as soon as I can—just a few days at most. I am sorry to just dump him on you, but I beg you. I only go to keep both of you safe." His sky blue eyes try to track your movement the best they can as you put a bandage on him.

"It's alright; I'll take care of him. I doubt he will regain consciousness anytime soon. I can only hope he won't get worse." You take a step back, happy with your handiwork, as nothing is bleeding. It's the best you can do for Vash right now.

"I will forever be in your debt. Thank you for everything. I will pay you once I get back, I swear." His eyes look pleadingly at you as he gets up from the chair.

"I believe you; don't worry about that." You smile, recognizing the honor in his face.

Vash gives you a nod and goes closer to his brother. He says something quietly to him, and you don't quite pick up any of the words. With that, Vash turns and walks to the front door, and you follow.

"Thank you again," he says to you tenderly, and then more loudly over the whole house: "Get better soon, brother!"

You watch as Vash steps outside, heading into the desert. Only a little while later, you figure out he has nothing with him but the clothes on his back and the gun on his leg. No water, no food, no shelter—nothing. You turn and see what's left of the red coat on the chair, now realizing you must really be out of it to not notice it sooner. But it's too late to go after him now; all you can do is hope that he has a plan.

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[carolperkinsexgirlfriend]

let's take a chance and fly away somewhere alone

a steddie upsidedown au oneshot

||Jonathan Byers & Nancy Wheeler & Barbara Holland || Nancy Wheeler/Jonathan Byers || ~17k, complete || Complicated Relationships || Canon Typical Violence || Trauma || Mutual Pining || Friendship ||

Nancy’s jaw felt tight–aching with how hard she's clenching it as she walks the halls of the school. Beside her, Barb’s shoulders were curling forward, rounding in in a way that made her furious. If she’d known going to one of Steve Harrington’s famous parties would end like this, she wouldn’t have bothered.

They’d both heard the rumors by now. They’d seemingly circled throughout the school, passed on from person to person like a messed up game of telephone. It’d started innocuously, word spreading that she’d had a fight with Steve, and Barb had been there, but by the time she’d reached her locker,  it’d mutated beyond recognition.

Nancy had glared at the girls loitering by her locker that morning as one whispered in the ear of the other, purposefully loud enough to carry—Did you hear Steve Harrington’s loser girlfriend tried to get his friend to fuck hers? 

She’s heard too many iterations to count. Barb tried to have sex with Tommy, and stormed out of the party when he said no. Nancy tried to have a threesome with Barb and Steve. And, most hurtful, Steve cheated on Nancy with Barb.

Each one was whispered with such weight, like they didn’t have any other cares in the world. Not grades, not extracurriculars, not even the fact that there’s still a kid missing. Jonathan Byers keeps putting up missing posters, but that’s yesterday’s news. There’s new gossip to be passed around. 

Everyone knew someone who knew someone who’d seen it all go down last night in the Harrington’s living room. No one, apparently, had seen Tommy call Barb a loser and then drench her in his shaken up beer. 

Worse, Steve wasn’t here to put the rumors to rest, his words holding more weight than either Nancy or Barb’s. She was starting to worry that he’d skipped on purpose—who knows what excuses had come out of his own mouth once they’d left.

By lunch, she’s ready to stand up on a table and shout, if only it would stop everyone from looking at them.

“It’s not worth it,” Barb mutters as they sink into their old, familiar seats in the cafeteria, abandoned weeks ago for the more central popular table.

It’s nice, almost, to be back to just the two of them, no boyfriends or parties where people picked on her friend.

“Do you think Steve knows about this?” Nancy asks, voice hushed as she glares around the cafeteria, huffing as peering faces suddenly whip down to full lunch trays when their gazes lock.

Barb doesn’t answer right away. She picks at her tepid lasagna, not meeting Nancy’s eyes. 

“Barb?”

She sighs. “I don’t know,” she says, that mulish tilt to her chin that only comes out when she’s made up her mind but isn’t admitting to it. “I never thought he was good enough for you.”

Nancy picks up a carrot stick and bites it in two with a sharp snap. Steve wouldn’t have done this, not on purpose; she knows it. But one way or another, she’ll find him after school and get to the bottom of this. And if he had? She knew of an extremely sharp drop-off in the quarry he could stumble off. 

Barb plays reluctant chauffeur after school, idling in her car as Nancy pounds on the Harrington’s front door. 

Even though his car’s in the driveway, no one answers. 

Nancy goes around the side of the house. The gate’s still open, and the yard’s a mess of cups and overturned chairs, exactly as she’d seen it last night.

A kernel of worry sinks into her gut. Steve’s fussy about a lot of things—his hair, his possessions, his clothes—and she’d always thought that would transfer over to his own house. And yet, he’d left it like this?

The sound of a car door slamming echoes through the deserted cul-de-sac followed by Barb’s jogging steps.

“What the hell are you doing?” she demands.

Nancy tries the side door, peeking her head through when it opens. “His car’s here,” she says, stepping inside when no one immediately jumps out to arrest her. “He’s here.”

“So you break and enter?” Barb demands, but she follows Nancy inside, shutting the door behind her. 

“Steve?” Nancy calls. 

The house is big enough that her voice seems to bounce off the walls and echo right back at her. No one else says a word. She makes her way through the house, kicking abandoned cups out of the way.

She jogs up the stairs, Barb hot on her heels. When she reaches Steve’s bedroom door, she knocks quietly before pushing it open just enough to poke her head in and peer inside. 

It’s neater than she’d expected, what with the state of the rest of the house. There’s nothing on the floor aside from his backpack, no clutter on his desk, no clothes strewn about. His bed’s even made. 

“Steve?” she calls again.

No one responds, so she steps inside, peeking into his en suite bathroom, opening his closet, pulling back his blankets like he can somehow be inside. She stalls in the middle of the room, surrounded by Steve’s things, no boy in sight. 

Something that feels uncomfortably close to worry starts to pool in her stomach. “Where would he have gone?” she asks the empty room.

Barb’s the one that answers with an exasperated, “I don’t know, Nancy.” Nancy turns to find her standing in the entryway to Steve’s bedroom, arms crossed, clearly fed up with all of this. “Maybe he’s off with his parents vacationing in Europe or something. Who cares? Can we go before someone calls the police?”

Nancy looks around the empty room again. “Will is missing, though,” she replies. “Do you really think that’s a coincidence?”

Barb throws her hands in the air with a vehement, “yes!” 

Barb’s exclamation rings through Steve’s bedroom, filling up all that vacant air. 

“What if something’s wrong?”

Barb sighs, slumping down and softening her voice. “Look, I’m sure he’s fine,” she says. “If he’s not in school tomorrow, you can always ask those two trolls if they’ve seen him.”

Nancy nods, looking down at her feet. She doesn’t want to talk to Carol or Tommy who very clearly share her mutual dislike. But, Steve’s not allowed to just up and leave when he owes her an apology and answers both. 

***

They use the side entrance to leave again. Barb’s tiptoeing out, some part of her waiting for Steve Harrington to step out of the recesses of his house and call the cops on them. But, when she closes the door behind them with a quiet click, all that greets them is silence. 

The pool’s got plastic cups floating in it, and there’s a pile of what looks like vomit gathering flies by the diving board. Her nose wrinkles when she catches a whiff. 

“Come on,” Barb says, heading toward the still-open gate and her waiting car. But Nancy’s circling the perimeter of the pool in the exact opposite direction. “Nancy?”

“I just want to make sure he’s not back here,” she says, peering into the trees like Harrington will be passed out drunk in the woods almost twenty-four hours after his rager ended. 

Barb stands by the gate, glaring at Nancy’s back until it’s entirely obscured by trees. All this fuss for a boy who couldn’t even be bothered to show up and apologize. 

Something snaps in the woods, like Nancy stepped on a felled branch and it broke beneath her foot. Nancy calls, “Steve?” and Barb’s ready to roll her eyes at whatever practical joke the guy’s pulling, but then there’s another sound.

It’s guttural, and twisted up on itself, and entirely indescribable. Nancy gasps, and there’s a thump. That’s when Barb comes running. Her sneaker slips on a wet patch and she almost goes tumbling into the pool.

Nancy rushes out of the forest, barreling into her hard enough to send both of them sprawling on the hard pavement. Nancy jumps up, yanking Barb upright right alongside her before dragging her by the wrist, trotting toward the gate at a fast clip.

“What happened?” Barb asks, craning her neck to look behind her, trying to catch sight of whatever made that noise, whatever freaked Nancy out this much. “What did you see?”

Nancy doesn’t answer until they’ve both slipped into the car and Nancy’s locked her door with shaking hands. Sensing the urgency of the moment, Barb hits her own lock and starts the car, backing out as quickly as she can.

Nancy stays twisted in her seat, peering out the back window until they’re down the Harrington’s long driveway and off his street entirely. “Nancy?”

Nancy finally turns forward, face blanched white. “There was something in the woods,” she says. 

“What, like a wolf?” Barb asks, thinking of that sound, the way it almost echoed through her head. 

When Barb glances away from the road, Nancy’s shaking her head. “It was bipedal,” she replies, staring at the windshield more than through it. “And it had no face.”

Barb scrunches up her face. “Like a person in a ski-mask?” she asks. It hadn’t sounded like a person. It hadn’t even sounded like a wolf. Barb never wants to hear it again. 

Nancy shakes her head, and all she says is, “I have a terrible feeling about this.”

Barb does, too. She wants to go home, and forget this entire day completely. She almost manages it, but it all comes rushing back when Harrington still doesn’t show the next day.

Barb nibbles on her lunch, watching Nancy talk to Carol and Tommy in hushed whispers. Tommy leans back in his chair, laughing at whatever Nancy said. Carol doesn’t look amused, but when Tommy wraps his arm around her, she leans into his side, glaring up at Nancy. 

Whatever Carol says next has Nancy storming out of the cafeteria entirely, not even glancing at where Barb’s sitting at their usual table. She still follows, the remains of her lunch left abandoned on the table, but Nancy’s nowhere in sight. 

There’s a pit sinking into her stomach as she walks to her next class without Nancy by her side. 

*** 

Jonathan doesn’t stay for the well-wishes and the throwing of the roses. He can’t, not surrounded by all these people who know Will–knew Will. Not when his Mom’s standing right beside him and still a million miles away. 

He shuffles out of the graveyard, head bowed, shoulders curled, hoping to remain unnoticed. He collapses on the sidewalk, letting his head rest against the fence surrounding it even though it’s rusted. Maybe he’ll get tetanus and die. Is that how tetanus works?

Will was always the smart one, but now there’s a grave with his name on it, not even a body to bury beneath all that dirt.

He knows he should feel bad, that’s what a good brother would feel, but all Jonathan feels is empty, sucked dry of everything. His whole life’s crumbled at his feet, and he feels nothing. 

Something warm settles against his side. He sighs, expecting his mom, but it’s Nancy Wheeler, smiling uncomfortably across at him.

“Hey,” she says, quietly. Private.

“Hey.”

“Can we talk for a minute?”

Jonathan feels his lips quirk up, but it’s a nothing gesture, empty of everything. “We are talking.”

“Steve’s missing,” she says, no further preamble wasted on useless condolences.

It takes him a second to connect the name to a face, but when he does, Jonathan leans away, creating distance between their bodies without having to get up. He keeps staring at her face, waiting for her to continue, but that’s apparently it. “Why would he be here?” he asks, words coming out dead on arrival. 

“No,” Nancy says, scrunching her nose up. “No one’s seen him since the party.”

Jonathan knows the party she means. He’s got a few photos from it in his room right now, developed in haste in the school’s darkroom. But there hadn’t been any hints of Will, no matter how hard he’d scoured them. 

He’d still kept them, couldn’t bear to throw them away. There was just something about the way when you flipped through them, the people slowly dwindled, shrinking down until the photo was just of two subjects. 

Steve Harrington, hand clenched as it drips blood onto the grass beneath him while Eddie Munson sits, staring up at him with his usual manic grin where he sits beside the pool. 

Jonathan had left not long after. He knew what that particular look on King Steve’s face meant, and he wasn’t keen to get caught in the fallout.

“Did you call the cops?” Jonathan asks because that’s what he’s supposed to ask, right?

Nancy nods, throat bobbing as she swallows. “They’re not doing anything,” she says, and there’s something righteous in the way she sits up straighter, neck high, spine stiff. 

What would it be like to live in Nancy Wheeler’s world, where everything is just so? Where you’ve got the time and money to dot every i in your planner, cross every t? Where every minor injustice is immediately rectified? 

Jonathan’s just so tired. 

But then Nancy says, “even after I told them what I saw,” under her breath, and an electric current runs through him. 

He leans back toward her. “What did you see?” he asks fervently. 

She ducks her head as he gets close, picking at the seam on the end of her black dress with perfectly rounded fingernails. “I went back to Steve’s to look for him,” she asks, lilting up at the end like it’s a question, so Jonathan nods. “And I thought I…saw something. Some weird man?” she glances at him out of the corner of her eyes before shaking her head. “I don’t know what it was.”

She stops talking again, pursing her lips. Jonathan wants to reach over and pluck the words from her throat. “Why are you telling me?”

Nancy straightens, turning fully to him again as she says, “your brother, and now Steve,” before stalling out, biting her lip as she finally meets his eyes. “I just thought, maybe you’d seen something?”

He stares at her, mind ticking away against the fog he’s been in since they’d fished Will out of the quarry. He must take too long, though because she starts to stand, muttering quiet apologies, as she smooths down her dress.

“Wait!” Jonathan cries, desperation bubbling out of him until he’s reaching for her arm and gripping it too tightly. She drops to her knees, and Jonathan lets go, holding his own wrist to his chest like it’s the one with a blooming red mark on it. “Sorry, just…”

But he trails off, not sure what to say. It’s just that Nancy had seen a man, and he’s at his brother’s funeral, and nothing is connecting right in his brain anymore. “What did he look like?” he asks finally, after another too-long pause.

Nancy settles back down, almost smiling as she shakes her head and says, “I don’t know.” Jonathan thinks that’s it, because the smile drops and she’s looking down at the pavement. “It was almost like he, like he—”

“Didn’t have a face?” Jonathan says it by rote, finishing the same delusions his Mom has been spouting.

But Nancy’s meeting his eyes now, brows furrowed as she asks, “how did you know that?”

The thing that bubbles up in Jonathan now is delicate. Dangerous. He’d just buried his brother, but Mom’s been talking to him through the lights for days. If one delusion is true, who’s to say another isn’t. 

Hope is the most dangerous killer, but he grasps it with both hands. 

*** 

“What’s up with you?” Barb finally asks, unable to stand the quiet a moment longer.

Nancy startles, eyes wide as she whips her head around to look at Barb for the first time since she’d hopped into her car before school.

“What do you mean?”

Barb sighs. “Is this still about Steve?” she asks.

Harrington’s corner of the cafeteria has been growing quieter every day, the empty spot where he usually sits growing a presence of its own. Like, even in absentia, Harrington is determined to haunt their minds.

Nancy smiles, but it’s her fake, lying to her parents' smile – she’s never used it on Barb before. “I’m fine, Barb.”

Barb digs her ragged nails into the steering wheel, jaw clenching painfully as she pulls into a parking spot. Nancy keeps up her prattling small talk all the way to class, like covering up the silence with meaningless words will distract Barb enough that she’ll forget the car was ever quiet at all.

Something’s wrong though, and Barb won’t be shaken off, so when she sees Nancy skulking around with Jonathan Byers of all people, Barb trails them. It’s better than eating lunch alone again.

They disappear into the dark room, Jonathan flipping the sign on the door to “in use, please knock” before letting the door slide shut. The hallway’s deserted, so Barb presses her ear to it, just barely able to hear the intonation of their words through its thick wood. She stays there long enough to grow bored, torn between barging in and walking away, when the volume of Nancy’s voice raises.

“That’s it!” she says, “that’s what I saw.”

Her mind goes to that sound, the inhuman growl that had sent Nancy running. Alone in the brightly lit hallway, Barb freezes like she’s prey being hunted by something bigger and scarier than she is.

She wants to leave. 

But Nancy’s in there, doing something stupid the way only she can, so she knocks. All noise on the other side of the door stops entirely for a second before whispering starts up, too quiet for her to make out.

When the door finally opens, it’s not Nancy behind it, but Jonathan. Up close, she can see the bags under his eyes from too many sleepless nights, the way the worry lines at the side of his mouth look like they’ve somehow been permanently etched into his skin in the past few days.

Barb’s never been in the dark room, but it’s about what she expected: a cramped bare room with a couple of sinks and a clothesline, all bathed in a light so red that it feels like it’s drilling into her skull. 

When she steps in, Jonathan skulks away from her toward the corner, like she’s switched from prey to predator. Behind him, Nancy’s got her fingers frozen mid-reach toward a photo. Barb ignores Jonathan to go look at the photo she’s standing in front of.

It’s grainy and dark, but she can Eddie Munson grinning, and the edge of someone else’s arm, and there, on the edge of the photo, is something else. It looks tall, like its body has been distorted, fingers stretched out to improbable points. 

“That thing has Harrington?” Barb asks, leaning closer, trying to get a better look at it, but there’s not much to see. Where the face should be, there’s what looks like folds of skin, tightly sealed against each other.

She tries to imagine the thing making that sound, and can’t. There’s no mouth visible by which it could growl through.

“And maybe Eddie Munson.” Nancy says, and Barb looks back at the guy’s grinning face. She hasn’t been subjected to a tabletop rant all week. 

“And Will,” Jonathan says, finally uncurling from the corner to join them by the picture.

“Isn’t he dead?” she asks, wincing once she realizes what she’d just said, and who she’d said it to. She hadn’t gone to the funeral, but she was there when the news broke, saw the shock of such a young death hit the small town. 

“Mom doesn’t think so,” Jonathan replies, not meeting her eyes. 

Barb looks back at the thing in the photo. There’s no way it’s real, probably doctored or a prank gone wrong, but even with her feet planted firmly against the floor, all she wants to do is run out of the room and never look back.

But, Nancy’s here, and she’s clearly not leaving, so all Barb says is, “what’s the plan to get them back?”

*** 

The car’s quiet, the heater pushing around stagnant air the only sound aside from Nancy’s well-loved Blondie tape, still stuffed into Barb’s car’s tape deck. Halfway to Nancy’s house, Barb reaches out and smacks the eject button abruptly enough that Nancy flinches at the sudden movement.

“You’re mad,” Nancy says, not looking away from the cassette now sticking out of the player, waiting to be taken out or pressed back in.

Barb snorts, but doesn’t reply. Nancy’s hands curl into fists in her lap.

She loves Barb—she’s her best friend, but that doesn’t make her any less frustrating. It’s like she doesn’t know how to face an emotion head on. Sadness comes out as isolation, and anger? That comes out in snide comments and cold silences.

Nancy hates it.

“Can we just talk about it?” Nancy asks, glancing at Barb out of the corner of her eye, wincing at the way her jaw’s clenched. “Just this once? There’s a monster, and we don’t really have time for—“

“That’s the problem, Nancy,” Barb interrupts, voice even, tone cold. “There’s a monster, and instead of telling me you, what? Snuck around behind my back with that loser, Jonathan?”

“Jonathan’s not a loser,” Nancy replies quietly.

“God, Nancy!” Barb throws her hands in the air in clear exasperation, before grabbing the steering wheel again as the car swerves toward the sidewalk. “That’s not the point, and you know it!”

Nancy looks down at her lap, picking at the debris beneath her nails as the silence settles between them, a third passenger looming in the backseat. Barb’s right; she does know what Barb’s talking around, the question she wants answered without having to ask it.

Why did Nancy tell Jonathan Byers and not her?

“You don’t like Steve,” Nancy says, finally glancing Barb’s way. Her fingers are clenched hard enough on the steering wheel to turn white, and there’s that same mulish tilt to her jaw, but she’s not interrupting, so Nancy keeps speaking, keeps answering unasked questions.

“And I thought Jonathan might know something, you know, with his brother?” Nancy asks, wincing when that just gets another huff.

It’s the truth, but there’s a bigger, deeper truth that she doesn’t want to speak into existence, doesn’t want to give the weight of her words, lest it come true. But, that’s just useless superstition—the same kind of horse shit that makes Steve wear the same pair of tube socks for every away game.

So, when Barb still doesn’t have anything to say, she opens her mouth, and voices it out into the world. “Mike’s devastated, after Will,” she says, picking at her nails again, digging her thumbnail hard enough into the cuticle of the pinkie on her opposite hand that a bead of blood wells up. “And this seems dangerous, Barb. That thing in the woods? It was—it was like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

Barb parallel parks in front of Nancy’s house so her dad doesn’t get mad about being blocked in, and cuts the engine. When Nancy looks over at her, Barb’s looking back, eyebrows still furrowed, but she’s no longer got a death grip on the wheel, and her jaw’s relaxed, teeth no longer grinding themselves into nubs.

Nancy meets Barb’s piercing gaze and finally says what she’s been talking around. “I don’t want to lose my best friend, too.”

Barb softens, reaching across the distance, the silence, the secrets separating them to take Nancy’s hand. Her fingers are soft as they squeeze around her own.

“I’m not going  anywhere,” Barb says, squeezing her hand once, hard enough that Nancy jolts. “And you’re crazy if you think I’m going to let you go search for your boyfriend alone.”

Nancy laughs. She doesn’t bring up that Jonathan will be there, the moment too fragile and easy to shatter. “Steve’s not my boyfriend.”

Barb snorts, noise full of humor this time, as she steps out of the car, Nancy following her lead. “You might want to tell him that.”

Nancy’s mouth twists. Maybe she’ll tell Steve, maybe she’ll fall into his arms, maybe they’ll yell at each other about their fight at the party and go their separate ways. She’s not sure, but it doesn’t matter right now. First, they have to find him.

*** 

It turns out to be less of a plan, and more of reenacting a hodgepodge of training montages that they’d seen on TV. Barb can’t even blame them—as Nancy practices swinging a baseball bat like she in any way knows how, she’s doing the exact same with the crow bar nabbed from Ted Wheeler’s trunk.

They look like fools, and if there really is a monster, they’re going to die, but Barb still climbs back into her car and drives them out to meet Jonathan. She’s in this now, had damn-near begged to be involved, and no matter how stupid this whole thing is, she’ll stick it out to the end.

They go to her house next, but it’s got less options for weapons than Nancy’s own, neither of her parents sporty enough for a bat or handy enough to own a crow bar. They sit out on the front porch, waiting for Jonathan to show up after grabbing his own supplies.

When he finally arrives, Barb climbs into the backseat without complaint.

Her conviction is tested as she stands behind Jonathan and Nancy, watching as they flirt their way through a shooting lesson, somehow segueing from Jonathan’s failed hunting trip as a kid into their parent’s failed relationships.

“Yeah, I guess he and my mother loved each other at some point, but I wasn’t around for that part,” Jonathan says, lowering the gun after failing miserably to hit even one of the glass bottles he was aiming for.

Nancy holds out her hand impatiently, and Barb watches as she looks down at the gun like she’s never seen one before. “I don’t think my parents ever loved each other,” she says, and Barb flinches.

Nancy’s parents have always been a sore subject. Her dad’s as absent as a parent you live with can be, and her mom flits around Nancy like she’s trying to relive her glory days through her daughter. These sorts of conversations are usually reserved for two in the morning during sleepovers, the space between them in the bed just enough to keep their shoulders from brushing.

Hearing her talk about it so freely now, makes jealousy churn in Barb’s stomach like bile.

“They must have married for some reason,” Jonathan says, staring at Nancy with a focus that makes Barb twitch.

“My mom was young, my dad was older, but he had a cushy job, money, came from a good family. So, they bought a nice house at the end of the cul-de-sac and started their nuclear family.”

There’s scorn in Nancy’s voice—it’s the way she always sounds when she talks about her parents’ relationship, but she’s not talking to Barb this time. Barb’s behind her, almost a specter in this moment, lost in the face of attention from Jonathan Byers.

It almost makes her wish Harrington was back, such a shallow pool of a boy that there was no way Nancy was ever going to stick around. There was always a looming end to their relationship, and it looks like it’s well past its expiration date, with the way Nancy’s flirting with Byers right now.

“Screw that,” Jonathan says, and Nancy smiles, shoulders shoring up like what he said was profound, unexpected, unique.

Barb and Nancy had made plans to get out of here together. Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, anywhere with people who had bigger dreams than settling down and marrying the closest eligible bachelor. As she watches Nancy line up the gun, squinting at the targets with the same focus she usually reserves for pop quizzes, Barb can feel that future crumbling beneath her feet.

“Yeah, screw that,” Nancy says, punctuating her words with the loud bang of the gun going off, exploding one of the glass bottles with unerring accuracy.

Barb claps condescendingly. Jonathan and Nancy both whirl, clearly having forgotten she was there at all based on their wide eyes. “Congratulations, Nance, you’re a crack shot,” she says. Nancy’s cheeks darken, whether from the compliment or being caught flirting with Byers, she’s not sure. “Now can we get this show on the road? Daylight’s burning.”

Jonathan nods, picking up the bat and not meeting anyone’s eyes as they shuffle off into the woods to look for a monster that probably doesn’t exist, no matter what Jonathan’s camera had captured in grainy film.

*** 

“You’re cooler than I thought you would be,” Jonathan says, walking close enough that their shoulders brush.

Nancy elects to pretend she can’t hear Barb scoffing from behind them. “Yeah?” she asks, smiling down at her feet as she steps over a root in her path.

“Yeah,” Jonathan replies, swinging the bat foward to hold a branch out of their way, waiting until even Barb’s made it through before jogging to catch back up with Nancy. “When you started seeing Harrington, I thought maybe you were just like the rest of them, but now? I don’t know.”

Nancy’s gut sinks. She takes a step to the left, creating distance between them, face dropping into a scowl. “Steve’s actually a good guy, you know,” she says, unsure if she even believes her own words. She had thought so before, but after Steve had defended Tommy H’s actions at his party, she wasn’t so sure anymore. But Steve’s missing, and he deserves the chance to explain himself.

“Sure he is,” Jonathan replies, tone derisive.

Nancy bristles, angry, as she replies, “Steve’s missing,” like it’ll mean anything to him. Maybe it does, because he goes catastrophically quiet beside her, the only sound filling the silence the sound of their stomping feet. That’s almost worse, somehow. Nancy doesn’t want this quiet; she wants a fight—something, anything that’ll get this bubbling dread out of her throat.

“You know, I was actually starting to think you were okay,” she says, waiting until she feels Jonathan’s gaze on her to continue speaking. “I was thinking, Jonathan Byers, maybe he’s not the pretentious creep everyone says he is.”

Jonathan snorts, sounding so much like Barb that Nancy glances back at her. She’s walking a few feet behind, crow bar still clutched in her hands as she looks down at her feet, clearly uninterested in joining the conversation.

Looking at her now, all Nancy wants to do is go back to when things were simpler, last week, last month, last year. It’s been nearly a decade of just the two of them—she’d had Barb, and Barb had her, and that’s all they’d needed. Steve had changed that. Something had twisted in on itself, Barb taking the change in lunch tables like a betrayal, and now she’s not sure how to crawl back in time to where they were before.

She’s not sure she wants to.

“Well, I was starting to think you were okay,” Jonathan says, and she snaps back to the present, turning forward to find a pretentious sneer plastered on his face.

“Oh,” she says, watching as his face cracks right down the middle, something gaping and hollow shining out of his eyes as he lands the final blow.

“I was thinking, Nancy Wheeler, she’s not just another suburban girl who thinks she’s rebelling by doing exactly what every other suburban girl does until that phase passes and they marry some boring one-time jock that now works sales, and they live out a perfectly boring little life at the end of the cul-de-sac exactly like their par—“

“Hey!” Barb snarls, pushing between them and crowding into Jonathan’s space, crowbar held like a silent threat. “If you finish that sentence, I’ll put this crowbar somewhere you won’t enjoy.”

To emphasize her point, Barb raises the crow bar above her head and steps forward until Jonathan’s back hits the trunk of a tree. He looks like a startled deer, doe eyes wide and scared in a way that would usually make Nancy feel bad, but his words are still ringing in her ears, cruel and pointed unerringly at her soft underbelly.

Nancy continues walking, and it’s Barb that catches up and takes her rightful place at her side, Jonathan trailing behind, a quiet skulking shadow to their fruitless searching.

By the time the sun’s setting, Nancy’s worried that there’s nothing to find.

But before she can open her mouth and suggest they turn back, she hears it: a quiet, moaning sound that makes her blood pound, fight or flight kicking in harder than ever before. She stops, Barb and Jonathan halting with her as she tries to strain her ears past the sound of her blood rushing through her ears.

“What’s—” Jonathan starts before she shushes him, eyes closed in concentration, hand raised to silence them both.

It happens again, and Barb clearly hears it as well because she immediately starts walking that direction, stepping cautiously, clearly trying not to make any sound. Nancy and Jonathan follow, the darkness hemming them all in.

She doesn’t know what she expects, but the deer isn’t it. It’s on its side, blood leaking slowly from its side, leg mangled, panting like a dog left out in the sun to bake. Barb and Jonathan just stare, but Nancy drops down, fingers fluttering over its side like there’s anything at all she could do.

“It’s been hit by a car,” she says, finally brushing her fingers against its bloody flank, like somehow her touch will heal it. All it does is pant and moan. “We can’t leave it.”

When she looks up, Barb’s looking down at the gun in Nancy’s pocket. Nancy shudders, but stands and draws it out, pointing it at the poor thing’s head. She shudders, staring into its rolling eyes, gut roiling right along with it.

“I can do it,” Jonathan says, taking the gun before she even responds.

She’s a better shot—she doesn’t take the gun back, the emptiness in her hand feeling worryingly like relief. Jonathan lines up the gun, hand shaking slightly. It won’t matter from the close of a range, but he doesn’t get a chance to pull the trigger.

There’s a growl, something unearthly and clacking, and the deer’s yanked sideways so abruptly that her eyes can’t follow its movement. Then it’s just—gone.

“What was that?” Jonathan asks, lowering the gun, eyes wide.

When Nancy looks at Barb, there’s a knowing look in her eyes. Nancy’s not surprised; they’d both heard that same sound outside the Harrington house.

“Did it leave a blood trail?” Barb asks, and Nancy looks down. There’s nothing there, the deer’s body snatched up too quickly to leave any of it remaining.

“It can’t have gone far,” Nancy replies, already walking forward, eyes peeled for anything out of the ordinary.

Barb follows her, but Jonathan goes a separate direction without a word, slinking off to search nearby patches of the woods. It’s quiet, so quiet Nancy can hear Barb’s rapid breathing in her ear, can hear Jonathan’s steps as he foolishly separates from the group.

There’s nothing but trees, dark and silent around her, almost choking her with the fear of the dark she was sure she’d kicked years ago. But, this isn’t just the dark—there’s something in here with her, she knows it.

It’s still just trees, but she stops, stunned as she stares at the bark of one of them, squinting as she trains the beam of her flashlight precisely on it. It’s red, and she’d think it was blood if it wasn’t for the way it was almost pulsing, like the tree had a heart beating beneath all that wood.

“Nancy!” Barb hisses, and it’s only then that she realizes she’s reaching out to touch it.

It’s colder than the air around it, a shock to her system as she presses against the tree, only for it to give under her touch. It feels like pinching an egg’s yoke between her fingers, cold and sticky before the membrane gives and splatters back into the bowl with the whites.

Her whole hand goes through, then her arm, then the rest of her until she’s all the way through, Barb’s panicking voice still calling her name, words now muffled like she’s talking through a straw.

She’s still in the woods, but it’s colder now, and the sky’s a nauseating red, almost pulsing the way the tree had. She stares up at it, heart almost beating straight out of her chest. But then there’s a sound, wet and slurping, and Nancy looks back down.

It’s not a man in a ski mask like Barb had asked. It’s not human at all, despite the way it stands on two legs, hunched over the dead deer, impossible mouth pressed into its intestines. The deer twitches with the thing’s movements, body jittering around almost like it’s gasping for breath.

Nancy can’t help it—she screams.

The thing stops eating its meal, somehow looking straight at her even with its lack of eyes. She stands frozen as the thing straightens, looming over her with its impossible height, backlit by the deep red sky. Nancy shrinks into the trunk of the tree behind her as it takes a threatening step forward.

Then, Jonathan’s voice joins Barb’s, almost drowning it out as he calls for her, trying to get her to come back, like she’s not frozen like a fly beneath a microscope, pressed between two slides.

But then Jonathan says, “follow my voice!” and without question, she does, slinking slowly sideways, matching the thing step for step in a dance she never wanted to be a part of. She doesn’t look away until her hand touches a tree and sinks in. She turns, peering into the red hole in the world she’d slipped through.

She’s about to slip right back out the way she’d come and hope she can make it before that thing gets her, but before she can, she hears a scream, loud and angry and terribly human. She spins back around just in time to watch Steve Harrington, dirty and bloody and alive, punch the monster in the head and flee into the woods, that horrible thing right behind him.

“Steve?” she calls, staring at where he’d just disappeared, willing him to come back. He doesn’t.

“Eddie!” She turns toward the shout, and there’s Will Byers, yanking a resisting Eddie Munson toward her.

She reaches out when they’re close enough, snatching Eddie’s hand and falling back toward the hole in the world, hoping the momentum of her falling body weight is enough to yank him and Will both through. She tumbles painfully to the other side, Will and Eddie on top of her restricting her breathing until Eddie scrambles up off her and pounds against the tree trunk, now a damningly normal brown color, and wails for Steve Harrington, trapped and alone in that horrible place they’d just fled.

*** 

Jonathan stares at his little brother, his little brother, dirty and tired, but whole in front of him. The brother he’d identified a body for, had picked out a coffin for, had lowered into the ground, never to be seen again.

And now he’s here, staring at Eddie Munson having a meltdown in the dirt.

“Will?” Jonathan says, voice strangled as it croaks out of his throat.

Will turns, brown eyes wide as he looks up at Jonathan. That’s all it takes to get him moving, knees hitting the dirt hard as he scoops Will into his chest, grip almost crushing as Will melts into him, small arms going around his waist.

“You’re okay,” Jonathan murmurs into Will’s greasy hair, like he can make it true, even as Will shakes in his arms, never taking his eyes off Eddie. “You’re okay, right? You’re okay.”

Will doesn’t respond, instead calling, “Eddie?”

Eddie turns, eyes wild, clearly not all there even now that he’s stopped clawing at the bark on the tree like it’ll somehow open for him and let him go back to wherever he’d been. Jonathan wants to hide Will behind his body, shield him from whatever the hell’s wrong with Munson.

“I’ve got to go back,” he says, finally turning away from Will to look up at Nancy with those same imploring eyes. “How do I go back?”

Jonathan turns his head toward her, still clutching at Will’s shaking frame. Nancy’s shaking too, voice trembling right along with her as she says, “I don’t—I don’t know,” with more hesitation than he’s ever heard from self-assured Nancy Wheeler.

“Why the hell would we go back?” Barb asks, finally voicing Jonathan’s own thoughts into the world.

Eddie’s hysterics reach a fever pitch at that—he sobs into the dirt, no longer looking any direction at all. Jonathan presses a kiss to the top of Will’s head, ignoring the way dust coats his lips, because Will’s shaking worse now, as he says, “it’s Steve,” voice quacking with emotions Jonathan doesn’t, can’t, understand. “He’s still in there.”

Steve Harrington, the jock, the king, has Eddie Munson, has his brother, quaking with emotion at the thought of losing him. It writhes in his gut, a rancid jealousy, he can’t voice. It curdles more, the dregs of a milk carton turning viscous and sweet on the kitchen’s counter as Will climbs into the backseat of his car and latches onto Munson like he’s the only thing keeping him tethered to his seat.

That used to be Jonathan’s job—how could so much have changed in five of the longest days in Jonathan’s life?

The car’s quiet as Jonathan drives, steering wheel creaking beneath his grip until he pulls into his driveway and cuts the engine.

When they get to the house, it’s in disarray—Mom’s hung Christmas lights haphazardly in the living room, the dining table’s overturned, and the same dishes have been in the sink long enough to mold. 

He’s sure Harrington’s house is pristine, it probably smells like lilacs instead of the mildew and damp that’s always clung to their home. The roof’s been leaking for years, and the insulation doesn’t keep it from rotting the walls somewhere underneath where they can’t quite reach.

“Mom?” Jonathan calls, desperate suddenly to see her, to have their family unit together when he’d thought they never would be again. “Mom?”

He goes through the house, turning on lights and opening doors, but it’s an empty shell, no one inside.

He stalls out, unsure of next moves as Nancy orders him around his own house. He follows her lead, making sandwiches, and doing the dishes, one eye on Will where he’s curled up on the couch, tucked into Munson’s side.

Jonathan’s not hungry, but he eats his sandwich anyway, watching as Will eats two, looking so much like a starving dog given snacks that it makes Jonathan sick. Plans are made to get Harrington back—desperate, stupid plans, but Jonathan barely listens, only interjecting to make sure Will stays with him.

Even as he gets in the car, Nancy once again in the passenger seat, Will in the back, all Jonathan wants is to find his Mom.

***

Barb watches Jonathan and Nancy riff off each other’s ideas, syncing up seamlessly even in this catastrophic situation. In contrast, Will and Eddie are crumbling into themselves without Harrington. They want him back with such ruthless vigor that it makes her curious.

She sits on the fringes of two fractions, not quite fitting into either, left floundering on the sidelines as the world crumbles around her.

Until she’d seen Nancy crawl through the fabric of reality, she hadn’t really believed any of it. Even with the photo, and the growling, none of it convincing enough to make her stop doubting the impossibility of the world she’d found herself in.

But then Nancy had disappeared into a different world and come back with two out of three of Hawkins current missing persons.

Steve Harrington sits like a ghost between them.

So, when Nancy volunteers to go with Jonathan to the army surplus without a glance in Barb’s way, she volunteers to take Eddie to go see his uncle after they pick up her car.

When they’re alone in her car, she asks, “you live in the trailer park, right?” not even waiting for his affirmation before heading that way. They’re not friends, but Hawkins isn’t that big—she knows where he lives.

Eddie’s quiet, staring out the window at the passing houses like he’s looking for something. Barb’s got a sinking suspicion it’s less of something, and more of someone.

“Why are you so focused on Steve Harrington?” She says it before she even knows she’s going to open her mouth. It’s just, he’s Eddie the freak Munson, and the last she’d heard, Harrington wouldn’t spit on people like him even if he was on fire.

“He’s not what you think,” Eddie murmurs, still looking out the window even as his hands clench in his lap.

He looks mad, like he’d like nothing more than to reach out and hit her with one of his fisted hands. But, beneath that there’s that same desperate edge, and it’s not violence he’s desperate for.

“Coming from you, that might actually mean something,” she says, trying to reconcile the look on Eddie’s face with the last glimpse she’d gotten of Harrington, laughing as Hagan had shaken his beer up and squirted it in her face.

The subject drops in favor of walking up the Munson’s short drive and stepping into his trailer. When Eddie walks in, she follows, hovering awkwardly as Eddie’s uncle scoops him up in a hug tight enough that it must hurt.

It’s only as introductions are made that she realizes that Eddie doesn’t even know her name. She reaches her hand out to shake Wayne’s hand, smiling tightly as she introduces herself. Wayne shifts his gaze between the pair of them, eyebrow raised as he asks Eddie, “you got something to tell me?”

The implication of that hits Barb as Wayne glances down at her stomach. She grimaces, shaking her head against the disgust at even the thought of having sex with Eddie Munson, much less carrying his spawn. It flies right over Eddie’s head entirely.

He breaks down. Again. She’s getting tired of hearing Eddie cry like the world’s ending. She steps past them, settling into their dinky dining room table as unobtrusively as possible as Eddie cries into his uncle’s arms, babbling about having gone to hell, about leaving Steve there.

“Steve Harrington?” Wayne asks incredulously. Barb’s never empathized with something more in her life.

“He saved my life,” Eddie says, and she watches in real time as the look on Wayne’s face turns determined.

He leans over and pulls a shotgun from behind the recliner he’s sitting in, laying it across his knees as he says, “let’s go save your guardian angel.”

It’s only as Eddie’s cheeks burst with the most vibrant blush she’s ever seen that Barb clues in on what must be happening here. Eddie is in love with Nancy’s boyfriend. God, this is going to blow up in all of their faces.

But she’s in it now, and she’s curious enough to want to see what all the fuss is about. There’s got to be more to Harrington than hair to put that look on Eddie’s face. Besides, she’s always been too nosy for her own good.

*** 

They’ve got all the weapons they could find at the army surplus in town, garnering strange looks from the cashier. But, he takes Jonathan’s money anyway, so they scoop it all up and take it back to his car.

“You know, last week I was shopping for a top I thought Steve might like,” she says, smiling nostalgically as she drops her load into the trunk, Will and Jonathan following her lead. “It took me and Barb all weekend.”

Barb had complained for the first few hours, but as the trip had drawn on, they’d fallen back into their usual dynamic, goofing off in dressing room stalls and picking out terrible outfits for each other. Now, Barb’s tongue has gone back to being barbed. Nancy wonders if things will ever be that simple again.

“It seemed like life or death, you know?” she asks wistfully. She doesn’t think she’ll ever wear the shirt again, not after it had been tainted, first by Steve’s actions, and then by his disappearance. “And now—”

“You’re shopping for bear traps with Jonathan Byers?” Jonathan asks, that ironic tone to his voice that always makes her laugh.

“Yeah, and I don’t know if I even want him to like me like that anymore.”

It’d started with Tommy H’s cruel words, then rumors spread around the school the next day had felt like the final nail in their relationship’s coffin, but it’s more than that now. There’s Jonathan and the way, even when he’s hurling insults at her, she can’t seem to look away.

“We got into this fight that night he disappeared,” she continues, remembering the way his laughter had sounded almost mocking as Barb had wiped the beer from her face. “And I was so mad, but now I just hope he’s alive.”

She’s mad, still, but she wants to yell at him, to forgive him, to see him at all after all this time.

“He’s alive,” Will cuts in, and she jerks, having forgotten entirely that he was there, too caught up in memory.

She looks him in the eye and nods, firm and assured until the kid relaxes. Will’s always been a little anxious, but it’s understandably worse now, after whatever the hell he’d been through over in that terrible place. Still, she’s happy they got him back, would trade almost anything for the relief that’s going to flood Mike’s face when he sees Will again.

They just need to get Steve back first.

*** 

Wayne Munson doesn’t hesitate to take charge once he’s joined the fray. Jonathan stands in his own house and watches Will lead Mr. Munson to the kitchen and over to the phone, determined to get ahold of mom.

As Mr. Munson hangs up the phone, assured that both her and Chief Hopper will be arriving shortly, the tension on Jonathan’s shoulders finally eases. They’ve been fumbling in the dark for days now, and it’s a relief to have an adult doing something useful.

When his mom stumbles into the house after Chief Hopper, all Jonathan wants to do is collapse onto the couch and not move a muscle for an entire week. His brother’s back, everyone he cares about is in his line of sight, there’s nothing else he needs to do.

In contrast, Eddie and Will only seem to get more worked up as they spill the entirety of the sordid tale across the kitchen table. It hurts to hear, just like it had the first time. He doesn’t want to picture Will alone in that place with no one but Eddie and Harrington to protect him.

It rankles, and keeps on rankling as Eddie pulls Will into his side the same way Jonathan always has to comfort him.

“You mean blood draws this thing?” Hopper asks, only looking more fed up as Nancy, Barb, and Eddie shout entirely different answers at him.

“We’ve got a plan,” Nancy cuts in, self-assured, even in this. “To test the theory.”

They do have a plan, but it’s stupid and reckless from start to finish. Jonathan knows this, Eddie knows this, even Barb knows this. It’s only Nancy that’s affronted when it’s shot down from all sides. Her fists clench and her chin juts stubbornly forward.

Before she can argue further, mom yells, “this is not yours to fix!” with enough furious indignation that everyone shuts their mouths immediately. “It’s not you kids’ responsibility to save another kid.”

It embitters him, right down to his marrow. 

He’s a kid now, but why has it always been Jonathan’s responsibility to watch Will? Why is it Jonathan’s fault when he goes missing? He would do anything for Will, give up anything for Will, but he can’t help but feel that he shouldn’t have to. Why does she get to pick and choose when it’s convenient for him to step up and be an adult, and when he should sit back and let the adults fix his problems?

He bites his lip against the words that want to pour out. He bets Harrington has always got to be the kid, big house with parents to cover up all his messes. 

“Anyone called the boy’s parents?” Wayne asks, and Jonathan’s surprised by the derision everyone answers him with, like the Harrington’s caring that their son is missing is out of the question.

Jonathan’s gut churns as the implication of that response hits, Lonnie an invisible specter to this horrifying conversation. He looks down at his own knees and tries his best to disappear into the chair beneath him.

It’s only mom saying, “Will?” so worriedly that brings him back to himself in time to watch Will disappear down the hall toward his bedroom, Munson hot on his heels.

When his mom makes to follow, Jonathan grabs her mom, says, “Munson’s got him,” even though that rankles, too. Even in his own family, he’s been pushed to the side. Mom’s only got eyes for Will, and Will? All he seems to think about is Eddie and Harrington, like a couple days with them really has overwritten all their shared history.

While Nancy and Chief Hopper argue about next steps, Jonathan does what he does best: he sits and waits for someone to tell him what he’s supposed to do.

***

Nancy doesn’t understand how Barb and Jonathan can be so calm about this. They’d spent hours on this plan, and it was a good one, and now, what? They’re not allowed to do it because a few people that hold no authority over her have forbidden it?

She loathes it.

It gets even worse when Will comes out of his room, hands shaking and tells them that some “bad men” have her brother and his friends pinned down in the junk yard, her house being watched by unknown government entities. And the chief of police is trying to leave. Without her.

“He’s my brother,” Nancy hisses, standing with both her fists balled, rage boiling up her throat.

“I don’t care,” Chief Hopper declares, looking down at her like she’s a bug he’d accidentally squashed beneath his shoe. “You’re not coming.”

“You want me to just sit here?” she demands, hating how quiet her foot is when she stomps it down, hating the derisive snort the Chief sends her way—hating, hating, hating.

“You are staying here,” he asserts.

Neither Barb nor Jonathan make a move to back her up. Nancy stews in the feeling, unable to do anything else without a license or a car. She’s stuck.

Nancy joins Ms. Byers at the table and maps out their locations, knowing even as she does it that it won’t help at all. But she needs something to keep from yanking her hair out in little clumps the way Munson is.

“You’re not the only one worried, you know,” Nancy grits through her teeth when she can’t stand to see him pacing along her periphery anymore.

It works, but now his big, wet, accusatory eyes are pointed right at her as he asks, “excuse me?”

“Nancy,” Jonathan cuts in, going so far as to place a hand on her shoulder, like she’s a wild dog he’s keeping leashed. She shakes him off and takes a step forward.

“My parents’ house is being watched,” she says, the horror of it not touching her voice even as it permeates her. “Mike is out there, trapped and defenseless.”

“Yeah, but–”

“And I care about Steve, too,” she interrupts, her hold on the situation dissolving beneath her hands.

Munson doesn’t say anything else. He just stands there, chewing on his hair. She wants him to talk back, wants him to fight, so she can fight back before the silence lingers long enough for the knot in her throat to form in her tear ducts and trail down her cheeks.

Before either of them can make a scene, Mike rushes through the door, bypassing her entirely to barrel into Will, knocking him and Munson both down with the force of his hug. It doesn’t take long for the whole thing to end in a mess of kid’s limbs and jumbled conversations, catching the kids up with what’s been happening.

It’s only when Lucas asks to go home that anyone brings up Steve.

“We’re not leaving Steve,” Eddie cuts through their loud voices, glaring around the room like anyone had even suggested it.

“Steve? Nancy’s stupid boyfriend?” Mike demands.

“He’s not my boyfriend!”

The words are out of her mouth before she even thinks them. She wants to stuff them back in her throat and swallow them down. It feels wrong to announce it to the room, Steve missing, gone, maybe dead when the last words Nancy would ever say to him were used to tell him how much he’d disappointed her.

She wants him in front of her so she can yell at him about all the rumors circling the school about Barb, tell him that his friend is rotten, and she’s upset that he’d taken Tommy H’s side over hers. She wants to be able to break up with him, if they were ever even dating at all. They’d never talked about it. Before this, there was always more time.

As the conversation moves on without her, Jonathan squeezes her shoulder. She leans back into him, and doesn’t think about how Steve would feel about it.

*** 

Barb doesn’t even know why she’s surprised when they all end up at the middle school to set up some sort of sensory deprivation chamber to help the girl with super powers get them to work. Barb’s not sure how a bandana and a kiddie pool are going to make a lick of difference in finding Harrington, but she’s not the one in charge of the plans here.

She’s pretty sure the whole thing is bullshit, but then the lights go dark, and she finds herself huddling against Nancy and Jonathan as they stare down at the floating girl. When she says Steve isn’t in the Munson’s trailer like Eddie had suggested, Nancy reaches down and squeezes Barb’s hand tight enough to cut off her circulation. She can see her other hand clutched in Jonathan’s, a trio on the fringes of this entire fucked up situation.

As the girl finds Harrington in his own damn house, as Eddie bullies his way into the search party, as Ms. Byers corrals the kids left waiting on the bench, she’s not sure why she’s even still here.

“We have to do something,” Nancy says, voice quiet but firm.

Barb sighs. She knows that tone of voice—no matter what anyone says, Nancy’s already decided on her course, and with most of the adults off on a suicide mission, there’s no one left to stop her. She also knows that no matter how fucking stupid it is, Barb will be going right along with her.

She’d done it at seven when Nancy wanted to sneak out and go to the library, done it last week when Nancy had wanted to go to that party, and she’ll do it again now.

Jonathan’s not as up to date on the way Nancy Wheeler operates, though, so he asks, “what?” in such a befuddled voice that she almost wants to laugh.

“Demogorogn’s are drawn to blood,” Nancy whispers, looking furtively over at where Ms. Byers is fussing over Will. “The hypothesis is sound, even if we didn’t get to test it.”

Barb sighs again. She wants to climb into bed and sleep for the rest of the year. This has been the longest week of her life so far, and Nancy’s determined to make it longer.

 “So, bear traps?” Barb asks, exhaustion hitting her even more as Nancy nods firmly.

Jonathan’s not looking at either of them. His eyes are fixed on his brother sitting on the bleachers with the rest of his friends, “But, Will is—”

“Fine!” Nancy hisses, loud enough that Lucas looks suspiciously their way, glaring over at them until Dustin sucks him back into whatever inane conversation they’re having. “Will is fine, but he’s going to be devastated if they can’t save Steve.”

Jonathan’s whole face drops, tinting almost green like he’s going to be sick at the thought. It’d almost be funny if it wasn’t destined to break that poor little kid’s heart.

“Munson’s the biggest freak in the school, and he seems pretty determined to get him back,” Barb says. She winces as both of their eyes turn straight to her, piercing her where she stands. “Shouldn’t that be enough for us to give him a chance?”

Barb grimaces, Jonathan making the same face right at her. She means it, really she does. She doesn’t know Munson, but he seems nice, and if he’s willing to risk his life to save Harrington, maybe there’s something there that she’s not seeing.

Jonathan sighs. “So, bear traps?”

He blushes when Nancy smiles with all her teeth, pointed directly up at him. God, she can’t even blame him. There was a time when she’d turn just as red at the force of Nancy’s smile. But they don’t have time for whatever weird courting ritual they have going on right now.

“Should we go before Ms. Byers stops fussing over Will long enough to notice us leaving?” Barb asks.

Nancy jumps, like she’d forgotten Barb was even there. Again. But they all file out of the gym quietly, entirely unnoticed. As she slides into the back of Jonathan’s car, all she feels is tired.

*** 

Tension knots up Jonathan’s shoulders as he watches the middle school disappear in his rear-view mirror. It feels wrong to leave Will after only just getting him back, even with mom there to keep an eye on him. But Nancy’s words are ringing through his ears—if Steve dies, Will will be devastated.

He doesn’t get it, can’t get Harrington’s smirking face out of his mind long enough to see anything else, but maybe that doesn’t matter. It’s not about him, it never is. This is about Will. And Jonathan would do worse things than save a guy he hates to keep Will happy.

“Where are we doing this?” Jonathan asks, rolling his shoulders as he drives, trying to unknot them as best he can. It doesn’t work.

“Harrington’s house, right?” Barb asks, leaning forward between him and Nancy. “That’s where the girl said he was in the Upside-Down.”

Without question, Jonathan turns and heads toward Loch Nora, happy it won’t be his own house they’re trashing.

It’s late enough that the streets are vacant as he drives through them, and all that’s in Harrington’s driveway is Steve’s own douchey car. He parks behind it, cutting his noisy engine as fast as possible to avoid getting the cops called.

“How are we getting in?” Jonathan asks, turning to look at Nancy, only to find she’s already out of the car waiting for him to unlock the trunk.

“The side door’s unlocked,” Barb replies, following Nancy out.

Electing not to ask how the hell they know that, Jonathan sighs and follows them. Now that it’s time, the supplies in the trunk seem inadequate. Still, he piles it all into his arms and follows the girls through an open gate and into the Harrington’s yard.

There’s a pool, in-ground and everything, surrounded by precisely trimmed bushes. It would be a perfect depiction of the upper crust’s suburbia if it wasn’t for the red cups scattered all around, abandoned and not cleaned up, even all these days after Harrington had gone missing.

He follows them through a side door, and the house proper looks just the same. Huge, colorless, and empty if not for those cups scattered around. It isn’t until he sees the abandoned house, almost a week after their son went missing, that Jonathan really lets the insidious thoughts creep in. Big house, no parents has always been something said about Steve, lauded as the perfect life for a perfect king.

Now, with the king absconded from the throne and his castle abandoned, it just seems lonely, and the castle isn’t much more than an empty shell of a place.

Nancy and Barb seem to share none of his compunctions. Barb goes through the house, turning on all the lights she finds until the whole thing’s lit up bright enough to show all its pristine corners, and Nancy kicks all the cups to the side to make enough room to set their main trap.

She pulls the Harrington’s auspicious rug back from in front of the couch and drops the bear trap down hard enough that Jonathan’s worried the floor will dent. Still, he follows her lead, pulling nails and a hammer from the box so he can nail the thing down, make it sturdy enough to hold the monster.

When he steps back, the set-up looks macabrely like whoever’s on the couch is supposed to watch the spectacle, view of the fuck-off huge television doomed to be obscured with whatever’s caught in the deadly points of their trap. Jonathan elects to never, ever sit on that couch.

Nancy puts bullets in his dad’s gun, Jonathan hammers nails into the bat, hoping for a weapon that has a chance of making a dent in a monster, while Barb pours gas all over the Harrington’s fancy hardwood floor.

The finishing touch is Will’s yellow yo-yo, commandeered without his permission, hung precisely over one of the Harrington’s dining room chairs placed just inside of what must be Mr. Harrington’s dusty office, a fucked-up warning system to let them know when the monster’s ensnared.

It’s a mess, and the more they prepare, the less he feels sure that any of this is going to work. But, there’s a steel behind Nancy’s eyes, so when she grabs three knives from the Harrington’s butcher block and asks, “ready?” he holds out his hand just like Barb does.

The steel feels heavy and cold in Jonathan’s hand. He clutches it, fingers shaking just a little as Barb says, “on three?”

“One,” Nancy replies, not giving them any more time to hesitate.

“Two,” Barb continues in the pause between words.

When they both turn to him, he looks between them, panic sinking into his stomach like lead. All this for Steve fucking Harrington. “We don’t have to do this.”

“Jonathan,” Nancy says on a disappointed sigh.

“I’m just saying, we don’t—”

“Three,” Barb cuts in, and Jonathan moves before he knows what’s happening.

The knife’s sharp enough that he doesn’t feel it at first, even as it parts his palm like butter. It’s only as blood starts pooling out of the cut into his cupped hand that the pain hits, sharp and clarifying.

“Shit,” Barb says, clutching her own hand to her chest, getting blood all over her shirt. 

Jonathan doesn’t look at either of them. He’s looking up at the lights, looking for any of the flickering that shows something from the other side is present. Nothing happens. The house is cold, and empty, nothing faceless creeping free of any nooks or crannies to kill them.

“Is that it?” Barb asks.

Did they trash the Harrington’s house—worse than it already was—for no reason at all?

“Maybe it takes a while?” Nancy replies, but she sounds the least sure Jonathan’s ever heard her, voice small and scared, not that the monster might come, but that it won’t.

Blood’s dripping down from his hand, splattering against the hardwood until he cups his other hand and catches it. Nancy moves abruptly enough that he jumps, their self-inflicted wounds giving her enough purpose to find her footing as she heads over to their supplies to fish out the bandages.

She wraps Jonathan’s first, moving quickly to Barb’s and then, finally her own, staunching the blood flow enough not to let it drip everywhere. It’s only as Nancy uses her teeth to rip the final piece of her bandage from the roll that the lights in the Harrington house start flashing, fast enough to be blinding.

Nancy picks up the gun, shuffling backward until she’s pressed against Barb, who’s snatched the bat from the carpet and is eyeing the house wildly. Left without his own weapon, he grabs Barb’s crow bar and settles into the circle, back to back to back.

Barb’s indrawn breath is the only warning he gets. He spins, eyes roving wildly until he catches sight of what’s caught her attention. He stands, transfixed, staring at the Harrington’s ceiling. There’s something wrong with it. It’s turned elastic and it’s pulsing as something presses on it from the other side, pushing and pushing as it descends until it gives way entirely.

What comes through isn’t what he pictured. It’s bigger, standing taller than any man, legs and arms bending at angles that should be impossible. They all stand, frozen, as it drops to the ground with barely a sound. No amount of prepping or planning could have prepared them for this.

They stay like that until the thing turns toward them, opens its face, and screeches loud enough to reverberate through his head and bounce around inside his skull. He hears the sound of Nancy shooting at it, close enough to make his ears ring, but the thing just screeches again and begins coming their way.

Jonathan grabs the closest wrist and runs, following the plan by rote, heading toward Harrington senior’s office. It’s only as he skids to a stop just past the threshold that he realizes it’s Barb he grabbed. She’s panting, staring wide eyed at him.

“Where’s Na—” he starts to ask, turning back toward the open door just in time to catch her in his arms, barely stopping her momentum without taking them both down.

Barb slams the door and they all three shuffle back, staring at the closed door, and Will’s yellow yo-yo stationary where it’s slung over the top of an office chair.

Nothing happens, The house is eerily still.

*** 

The longer the yo-yo doesn’t move, the tenser everyone gets. Steve’s house is eerily silent, and the lights are no longer flashing. Nancy holds her hand steady, gun pointed unerringly at the closed door, waiting for the heavy wood to splinter and let the monster through.

“Can you hear anything?” Barb whispers, voice quavering.

Nancy can’t blame her—she’s sure that if she opens up her mouth, bile will be the only thing that comes out.

“No,” Jonathan murmurs.

No one moves. The gun’s warmed up beneath Nancy’s hands with how tight she’s clutching it, how fast her blood is zinging through her veins. But, she’s the one who’d dragged them into this. She’s the one who’d insisted they distract the monster, help give the rescue party a better chance at success.

If anything happens to either of them, it’s on her. Besides, Steve’s her—friend. She wants to help him, so she takes the first step toward the closed door.

“Nancy,” Barb hisses.

She doesn’t answer her, just reaches out and opens the door, gun raised to shoot anything that so much as twitches on the other side. Nothing does. The air’s still, house silent and settled in its foundation. It feels like a herculean task to step over the threshold and back into the hall, but when she hears two sets of footsteps follow her out, her stride gains assurance.

The trap is still in the living room, intact but empty. The whole house seems empty, lights on and no longer flashing.

“Do you think it’s gone?” Jonathan asks, and as if his voice had summoned it, the lights begin to flash.

Nancy snaps her eyes closed on instinct, only opening them again when Barb and Jonathan’s backs press against hers, completing the circle. Moments later, the lights go out, leaving them in the relative darkness of the unlit Harrington house.

“Shit,” Barb says, and before Nancy can even turn, something heavy hits her back, knocking her down and sending her gun flying out of her hand just before she’s pinned to the floor.

Something screeches and Nancy rolls, terrified that the monster is atop her, but it’s just Barb. Nancy’s scrabbling for the gun, hands running over the floor, desperately trying to locate it in the dark.

Just as her hand closes around its reassuring metal handle, finger automatically resting against the trigger, Barb screeches and there’s the meaty thwack of a something hitting a living body. She scrambles to her feet, gun already raised.

Jonathan’s on the ground, crowbar raised in defense as Barb crashes the nail-studded bat into the thing’s back. It turns away from Jonathan, mouth open as it screeches in Barb’s face, that unholy sound reverberating through the house with such force that she’s surprised the walls don’t shake.

Nancy points and shoots, nicking the thing’s head just as Barb raises her bat again and yells right back in its face, bringing it down into its flesh again and again, nails embedding into the thing’s side. Afraid to clip Barb in any attempt to help, Nancy rushes forward to haul Jonathan to his feet, both of them stumbling to right themselves

Nancy’s brain’s not working, it’s shut off sometime between the monster dropping through the ceiling for the first time and Barb knocking her flat on her ass. So, when Jonathan clutches at her shoulder to steady himself, she just stares up into his eyes, brain ticking against itself as he stares right back, the sound of Barb’s assault gaining an echoing quality the farther away it gets.

They don’t snap out of it until Barb calls, “it’s in the trap!”

Jonathan drops his hand from her shoulder and turns, running toward Barb’s shout, Nancy hot on his heels.

Barb’s got black ooze splattered on her face, and her glasses are missing, but she looks remarkably calm and collected as Jonathan pulls the lighter out of his pocket and drops it to the Harrington’s gasoline-soaked floor. The flames lick up the hardwood remarkably fast, and Nancy’s caught watching the moment like it’s a movie and not real life, frozen and staring at the growing fire. 

The thing screeches as the flames caress its feet, almost dancing in the bright light like it’s trying to escape the heat even if it means losing the foot that’s caught in the trap. She watches, entranced as it writhes in the split second before the monsters entirely engulfed in flickering flames.

Nancy stands there, staring at the flickering fire, bathed in the relief of surviving the night, entire body shaking, when Jonathan Byers surges toward her, cups her face in his big hands, and kisses her like he wants to consume her.

***

For a second, it’s perfect. Nancy’s lips move against his, firm, and warm, and open just enough for the air to moisten between them. It’s the best moment of Jonathan’s life, his first kiss since Nicole in fifth grade who’d only done it for a dare. He wants to live in this moment, suffocate on Nancy’s breath and die happily.

But, then there’s a sharp, hissing sound, and they both jump back just in time for Barb to put out the remains of the fire with the extinguisher they’d brought for just this reason.

There’s nothing left on the Harrington’s fancy hardwood except a black scorch mark.

“Where is it?” Nancy asks, and when Jonathan looks her way, her lips are spit-slick and swollen, like their kiss really had lasted eons instead of the seconds that must have passed.

Jonathan jerks his head away, abruptly reminded of the real-life danger they’re in, eyes roving over ceilings and floors and walls, trying to find the Demogorgon, or any clue as to where it had gone. A tear in the Harrington’s gaudy wallpaper, a spot on the ceiling that’s distending bizarrely. But, there’s nothing.

“It has to be dead,” Jonathan says, looking back at the burnt patch of floor.

The Demogorgon had been entirely engulfed in flames, not visible past the flickering oranges and red that entombed it. Could anything survive that?

Barb snorts, dropping the empty fire extinguisher down with a clatter. “That thing’s from an entirely different world, why would you assume it’s dead just because it’s not here?”

She sounds exhausted—Jonathan doesn’t blame her for slinking around the burnt patch of floor to slump down on the Harrington’s hideous floral couch. She leans back into the cushions, head slumping back like it’s too heavy to carry. Nancy follows her lead, settling on the middle cushion, feet tucked beneath herself, her shoes no-doubt getting dirt and soot all over the cushions.

Despite promising not to, Jonathan sits beside her, facing forward as Nancy uses the hem of her shirt to wipe the black blood from Barb’s face. He keeps his feet planted on the floor, staring forward at the black TV screen, eyes dipping down to the burnt floor every few seconds. He’s right—it does feel macabre to see that trap there, even now that it’s signed and closed. What would it have been like to sit here and watch it burn?

He almost wishes he had—for Eddie, for Will, and hell, even for Steve fucking Harrington who might be dead right now. Whose girlfriend he’d just kissed. Whose girlfriend had kissed him back. God, this is fucked.

His shoulders hurt from wielding the crow bar with tensed muscles for so long, so he follows Barb’s lead and leans back, hoping to sink into the cushions and finally relax.

“This couch fucking sucks,” he says, and on the other side of the couch, Barb laughs.

“Fucking rich people,” she echoes, reaching her hand past Nancy to whack him on the shoulder in a way he’s pretty sure is supposed to be companionable, but just fucking hurts.

They stay like that, quiet and exhausted in each other’s presence. Jonathan doesn’t know what time it is when he closes his eyes, mind drifting in that place between sleep and awake, thoughts flitting in and out of his brain too gentle to be caught.

“We should clean up,” Nancy says, and Jonathan shakes himself back awake like a dog after a bath.

At some point, he must have fallen asleep—maybe they all had with the way Nancy’s slumped into him, head resting on his shoulder, feet curled up into Barb’s lap. Nancy gets up first, hair tickling Jonathan’s chin as she removes her body heat from his side.

On the other side of the couch, Barb groans, eyes blinking to half-mast, short hair mussed, and drool coming out of the side of her mouth. It’s cold on the couch without Nancy’s body heat. Jonathan’s tempted to lean into Barb instead and fall back to sleep for a few more blissful minutes, but then Nancy turns on the living room light and Jonathan shuts his eyes against the blinding light.

Nancy comes back, Barb’s glasses held out to her, and Barb levers her body upright, knee popping as it changes position. She takes her glasses and puts them on her face, still squinting as she dutifully begins following Nancy’s lead.

Jonathan’s own body feels weighed down with too many sleepless nights, but he levers himself up, entire body aching from his uncomfortable slumber as he joins the girls in cleaning up their mess.

There’s not much to be done, in the end. They pry up the nails securing the trap with the end of the hammer, cover the tarnished portion of floor back up with the rug, put the dining room chair back where it belongs, and make sure the knives they’d used are back in their respective slots in the block, sans blood stains. Once they’ve carted all their supplies out of the house and stuffed them into Jonathan’s trunk, the house is still a mess, but it’s like they were never there at all.

Jonathan slides into the driver’s seat, turns the key in the ignition, and stalls out, staring at the blinking 3:03 on his dash. God, they must have been asleep for hours. There’s no way his mom still has the kids at the school this late. Should he check the hospital for Harrington? His house for mom and Will? What’s he supposed to do here, now that all his goals have been accomplished?

“Where am I going?” he asks, finger poised to turn the key once one of them tells him what to do.

Barb stays silent in his back seat, but Nancy hums, that small little sound she makes when she’s thinking. “My house?” she asks. “Visiting hours at the hospital are over, so we should get some sleep and check there in the morning.”

Jonathan follows her direction, driving toward the Wheeler house in exhausted silence. He wants to check on Will, but his mom’s bound to have some angry words to shout at him over his disappearance, and he just can’t right now. Nancy’s house is dark, only the porch light on to guide them in once Jonathan’s parked on the street. They slip on silent feet through the house, and Jonathan’s reminded of how quiet they’d tried to be after they’d found the dying deer. He wants to laugh at the absurdity of it.

When they finally reach it, Nancy’s room is nice—it’s organized, clean, and full of light pinks that suit her. Jonathan stares around at it with tired eyes and wonders how many times Steve Harrington has been in here, how many times he’s settled into her pink paisley sheets, Nancy beneath him.

Nancy’s sitting close to him, shoulders brushing as they wait for Barb to get back from the bathroom to turn out the light.

“Nancy,” Jonathan whispers, reaching out to take her hand. “With Harrington—”

“Not now,” she cuts in, squeezing his hand gently, the bandages on their palms brushing together. “Not until I talk to Steve, okay?”

Jonathan shudders when she says his name. Steve, Steve, Steve, as if Nancy hadn’t kissed him back. As if they even know if Harrington’s even around to talk to. But Barb’s words echo through his head. Eddie likes him, and so does Will. Shouldn’t that be enough for us to give him a chance?

“Okay,” Jonathan says, squeezing her hand right back. He’ll try his best to offer up that chance and hope against all that he is, that he doesn’t regret it.

When Barb gets back, she climbs into bed right alongside them, shuffling until her back’s to Nancy. Jonathan does the same just before Barb reaches over to turn off the lamp, ready to watch both of their backs for one more night.

*** 

“Where the hell were you?”

Nancy bolts up out of bed, disoriented. Mike’s standing in her doorway, backlit by the bright light in the hallway. He’s wearing yesterday’s clothes, arms crossed, and a ferocious snarl on his face as he glares down at her.

“Mike?” she asks, rubbing her eyes, trying to wake up. “What are you—”

“The bad men came, and you were all just gone,” he hisses, quiet enough not to disturb their parents, wherever they are. “El almost died.”

“Bad men?” Nancy prompts, brain still fuzzy with exhaustion. “El, what…?”

“They pointed guns at us,” he says, taking a step into her room to loom more effectively over her. “I’m fine, if you even care.”

“Mike—”

“But good to know you were all too busy sleeping together to care!” And with that, he storms out of the room, slamming the door hard enough that mom yells at him from somewhere downstairs.

She stares at the closed door for a minute, mind still clogged to work all that well.

“I need to go check on Will,” Jonathan says, and when Nancy whips her head toward him, he’s already up and out of the bed.

“Jonathan—” she tries, hand reaching out toward him, but he’s already too far away, grabbing his keys off her desk and shoving them in the pocket of his jeans.

“We’ll talk later, okay?” he says, pausing at the threshold of her bedroom door, soulful eyes staring back at her. “Maybe after you talk to Harrington?”

Nancy’s gut twists. “Okay,” she says, voice as small as she feels as Jonathan walks out the door.

She drops back onto the bed with a groan, beyond frazzled. Beside her, Barb still breathes deeply, always an absurdly deep sleeper. The shape of her warmth is a comfort, now that Jonathan’s stormed out, his side of the bed slowly growing cold.

She should talk to Steve.

Should she talk to Steve? From what Eddie and Will had said, he’d been through hell. Did he really need all of this on top of everything else? But, didn’t he deserve to know? Wouldn’t she want to know?

It seems like hours before Barb rolls over with a yawn, blinking confusedly over at Nancy where she’s staring up at the ceiling.

“Where’s Jonathan?” she asks, voice sleep-rough and low.

“Should I tell Steve?” Nancy asks, the question sitting on her tongue long enough that it escapes her mouth at the first chance of a willing audience.

“About Jonathan?” Barb asks, scratching her stomach beneath her t-shirt as she waits for Nancy to nod her affirmation. “Definitely. Kind of fucked up if you didn’t tell your boyfriend you kissed someone else.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” she blurts out, and for the first time, she wonders who she’s trying to convince. “Besides, I thought you didn’t even like him.”

Barb shrugs her shoulders awkwardly against the mattress. “I don’t,” she confirms, heading out of Nancy’s room. “Doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve to know.”

Barb doesn’t close the door behind her as she heads down the hall to the bathroom.

After Barb goes home, Nancy stews on it. Barb says Steve deserves to know, but what if knowing does more harm than good? What if it sets back any progress he’s made? No matter what fight they’d had, it feels stupid now. She doesn’t want to hurt him, and this will.

Nancy collapses back down into her bed, stewing in the silence of her bedroom, the other side of the bed feeling cold without Jonathan to warm it up. 

***

He finds Will at the hospital, tucked into Eddie’s side as they both stare down at Harrington like he’ll disappear if they don’t keep their eyes on him. When Jonathan sees the state Harrington’s in, he’s not sure he can blame them.

His hair’s all shaved off, and he looks sunken down tucked under a thin hospital blanket, like he’s lost an impossible amount of weight in the few days he was gone. He’s got bandages wrapped around his shoulder, peeking out from beneath his hospital gown.

He looks washed out, tired, sick, nothing left of King Steve, just a boy who’s lost his crown.

He steps into the room, staring down at his prone form in the bed, something swirling through him, a mix of pity, and jealousy, and a nauseous sort of shame that’s only quelled when Will calls his name and jumps up, throwing his arms around Jonathan’s waist.

“You’re okay!” he cries, small arms wrapping Jonathan up tight and holding all his squirming guts inside.

Jonathan drops his hand on Will’s head and cards his fingers through his hair. “I’m fine,” Jonathan replies, voice choking as he remembers Mike’s words about bad men and guns. “Are you?”

Will nods, head rubbing against Jonathan’s ribs as he turns his head back toward Harrington lying lifeless on the bed. “I’m okay,” he whispers, “but Steve…”

He doesn’t have to finish the thought, he can see it in the sallow tint to Harrington’s skin. “What’s the prognosis?”

“They won’t tell us anything.” It’s Eddie who replies, barely glancing up from his vigil at Harrington’s side. “Johnny boy.”

“Eddie,” Jonathan replies, leading Will back over to his chair, pulling another over to his side so they’re all stacked against each other, staring at Harrington as he sleeps on, unaware.

He doesn’t wake up this time, or the next time he brings Will by, or the time after that. Eddie’s always at his side, looking more skeletal and drawn at each visit, like whatever umbilical cord is tying those two together is sucking all the life from Eddie to keep Harrington alive.

Jonathan just hopes Will won’t go down right along with him.

He doesn’t hear from Nancy or Barb, wonders if either had come to see Harrington at all, or if they’d both washed their hands of him now that he’s relatively safe. A small, quiet voice in the back of his head wonders if they’re doing the same thing with him.

It’s on their fourth visit that something changes: Harrington’s eyes are open, and as soon as they walk in, they’re trained on Will with that same unerring intensity that Will and Eddie have when they look at him.

“Will,” he says, and by the cracking of his voice, it must hurt, but he’s smiling. Smiling as Will clambers onto his bed, smiling as he burrows into his chest, smiling as he bursts into tears.

Jonathan follows him in, settles uncomfortably in that same hospital chair as Steve murmurs platitudes into Will’s hair, and Eddie rubs his back. He’s left to the side, watching his little brother break apart in front of him, two people who aren’t him or his mom piecing him back together with kind words and gentle hands.

It burns, like acid reflux boiling up his throat after movie nights with Will where they both eat too many off-brand chips, and chug sodas like they’re at one of Harrington’s house parties shotgunning a beer. He’s not a part of this moment, out on the front lawn watching a picture-perfect family moment through someone’s warmly-lit window.

Jonathan clears his throat, and Will shuffles back away from Harrington, rubbing his tacky eyes. While his eyes are covered, Harrington winces, hand coming up to cradle his side, like Will’s hug had hurt him, and he’d held on just as tightly anyway. By the time Will’s dropped his hand from his face, Harrington’s hidden any pain behind a smiling face.

“Thanks, man,” Jonathan says, speaking before he even knows what’s going to come out of his mouth. Steve’s eyes look startled, wider than they normally would with his shorn hair and gaunt face. Jonathan looks down at his lap, unable to meet his gaze as he continues. “For saving my little brother. I don’t know what I would’ve done if–”

There’s a sob building in his throat, at the thought of Will alone over there, Will dead in the coffin they’d buried. Will gone. He’s choking on it.

“Hey, man, your brother’s a badass,” Harrington says, like he’s trying to comfort Jonathan. “He would’ve been fine. You would’ve found him.”

“Yeah, Baby Byers definitely saved my life,” Eddie chimes in, going so far as to reach over and pat Jonathan’s back roughly, like he’s trying to burp a baby.

The sob in his throat dissolves as he looks between the two who’d saved Will when he couldn’t, who’d still wanted to see him once there wasn’t a monster to kill. They’re both smiling, and not at each other: at Jonathan.

“Well, still,” Jonathan says, voice cracking on all that saltwater he’d refused to shed. “Thanks.”

“Anytime,” Steve replies, clearing his throat uncomfortably even as he smiles up at Jonathan, small and shy, and so far from the usual King Steve that Jonathan remembers from across the cafeteria that for the first time, Jonathan wonders if he actually means it.

***

Nancy waffles for three days, the guilt over not even visiting him growing with each consecutive day. God, what must he think?

For the entire three days, she doesn’t hear from Jonathan at all.

It’s a relief when Barb agrees to go with her. Nancy feels almost sick with how clammy she feels as she slinks into Steve’s hospital room and catches sight of him for the first time. He’s sallow, thinner than she’s ever seen him, and his hair’s gone, shaved down until it’s just stubble.

Nancy’s throat clogs up as she looks at him, pale enough to blend in with the pillows he’s propped up against. In the chair closest to his bedside, Eddie sits, staring fixedly at her. She stares back, trying not to blink. It feels like he’s flaying her open. Does he know, somehow, what she’s done? Can she see the press of Jonathan’s lips against hers?

“Harrington,” Barb says, Steve’s answering response croaky enough that it must hurt to speak. “Glad you’re not dead.”

She can see Steve shuffling out of the corner of her eye, but Eddie’s still staring at her, and she won’t be the first to break.

But then Steve says, “I’m sorry about Tommy,” with such a contrite tone of voice, that she snaps her gaze toward him. He’s looking down at his own lap like he’s trying to hide his expression behind his hair, but it’s all gone now, and she can see everything. His mouth’s twisted up, eyes squinted closed, like a little boy being shamed for not doing his homework in front of the entire class. “That wasn’t cool.”

Nancy watches him, nauseous at the way he just says it, what little anger she’d been able to hold onto leaking out of her and leaving shame in its wake.

“You’re not responsible for Tommy Hagan,” Barb replies, caustic and biting. “I don’t give a fuck about him. I care that you’re friends with such a piece of shit.”

“Barb!” Nancy cries, trying to get her to shut up. Barb doesn’t even look away, eyes trained solely on Steve’s wide eyes.

“You don’t get a free pass because you tried to get eaten by a monster.”

Nancy gasps, but all Steve does is laugh, mouth twitching up at the corners like he thinks it’s funny, looking more alive than he had since they’d walked into his room.

“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything,” Steve says, still smiling up at her, open, honest, happy to be called out on his shit. She doesn’t know the Steve Harrington that’s sitting in front of her.

Like that’s all it takes, Barb sits down beside Eddie, quizzing the pair about Steve’s injuries. Nancy watches, shocked as Eddie and Steve banter, jumping off each other’s sentences like that’s how it has always been. When Eddie had been so desperate to get Steve back, this hadn’t been what she’d expected.

There’s something there, she can almost see it.

It’s gone as soon as she steps further into the room, all candor in Eddie’s face dropping as she inches toward the trio, settling on the foot of Steve’s bed, carefully keeping distance between them, if only to stop Eddie from lunging toward her and slitting her throat.

“Steve?” Nancy asks, all conversation dropping away as Steve and Barb turn to look at her as well. She feels small under their eyes, twisted and wrong, as she says, “I’m sorry,” and really, really means it.

“For what?” Steve asks.

For Jonathan. “For leaving you at the party,” she says, catching Barb’s scathing glare. She swallows the knot in her throat and finally, finally says what she really means. “And for—you were gone, and Jonathan—”

She stops, can’t force the words past the lump in her throat. She stares at Steve, trying to beam the knowledge into his head, as he looks from her, to Eddie, to Barb in turn.

Barb, always both a thorn and salvation for Nancy, says it for her, looking Steve head on as she says, “Nancy and Jonathan have a thing going on.”

It feels like both more and less than it really is. They’d kissed, they’d slept side by side in her cramped bed. They’d saved each other’s lives, and spilled their own blood in Steve’s living room, and they haven’t talked in three days. Only three days, and she misses him, wants to kiss him again, see if she can recreate those handful of seconds where things seemed simple.

“Nancy, it’s fine,” Steve says, voice soothing even beyond the scratch of its disuse. “We kissed a few times, that’s all.”

Her gut sinks, and then balloons up and out of her entirely. Momentary hurt swept away on a tidal wave of relief.

“Really?” Nancy asks, eyes watering as she looks at him, ignoring Eddie’s scathing question from Steve’s side.

“Really,” he replies, like it’s easy. Like he means it. This is not the Steve Harrington that she knew. But maybe, that’s okay. Maybe that’s better.

So when Steve asks, “Friends?” all awkward and shy, she smiles and says, “friends” right back.

And when she climbs into the passenger side of Barb’s car after their visit she asks, “can you take me to Jonathan’s?” feeling hopeful for the first time all week.

*** 

Barb drops Nancy off at Jonathan’s house, and she can feel it coming—Nancy, Barb, and Jonathan becoming Nancy and Jonathan. She’d felt it coming curled up in Nancy’s too-small bed, pretending not to notice the other two curl into each other on the other side of the bed.

It’s been a waiting game ever since. Waiting while Nancy muddled through her feelings about Steve, waiting until Steve was allowed visitors, waiting for Nancy to break his heart so she can move on to Jonathan.

It hurts, that she’s right.

It’s not like they cut her out. She sits at their table at lunch, watching them hold hands beneath the table. They still talk to her in stints before getting wrapped back up in each other.

She can’t remember the last time her and Nancy had a sleepover.

It curdles, makes her bitter and mean, but she’s got nowhere else to go. It’s always just been her and Nancy. She hasn’t bothered to make any other friends. But, maybe she should.

When Steve comes back to school, part of Barb expects Nancy to approach him, make good on his request that they stay friends, but she doesn’t even seem to notice he’s back. Barb watches him as she stays at Nancy and Jonathan’s side.

He’s wearing Eddie’s clothes, bags dark beneath his eyes, hair still shorn startlingly close to the top of his head, and all the students part to let him through like whatever’s wrong with him is catching. And Eddie’s attached to his side like a barnacle Steve’s not even trying to shake loose.

She stands behind Nancy and Jonathan in the lunch line, waiting for them to pick out their lunches so they can sit down at their usual seats. They’re flirting over the school’s atrocious lasagna, so Barb lets her gaze wander over the rest of the cafeteria. She’s unsurprised to find Steve settled at the freaks and geeks table, Eddie tucked close to his side.

She leaves the line, heading straight for Steve and Eddie, unsurprised when neither Nancy or Jonathan notice she leaves.

“Barb would cry if she heard you say that,” Eddie’s saying as she walks up.

“I would cry if Steve said what?��� Barb asks as she sits down at Steve’s side. She’s curious, nosey, warmed by them thinking about her when she’s not here.

“Steve here said you two aren’t friends,” Eddie, always the consonant shit-stirrer, replies.

That twinges, but she looks over at Steve, there’s no King Steve in sight. He looks awkward, worried, shy, as he picks at his lunch without actually eating it.

“You’ll do, I guess,” she replies, watching the pleased smile bloom across Steve’s face before she looks back at where Jonathan and Nancy are sitting at their usual table. Their bodies are pointed toward each other, closed parenthesis containing their inner circle, neither having seemed to notice she’s not in her usual seat across from them. “Besides, I’m going to need some new friends at this rate.”

Eddie nudges her sympathetically, but if anything, Steve seems more confused as he squints across the cafeteria at the pair, so she explains further, pulling the sandwich her mom had made that morning from her back pack and nibbling on it.

“All Nancy cares about right now is Jonathan.” As if to punctuate her point, Jonathan reaches out and tucks one of Nancy’s loose curls behind her ear, Nancy’s face blushing a rosy pink. Barb looks down at her sandwich, unwilling to watch it anymore. “At least with you, I knew it wouldn’t last. Now, when am I going to get my friend back?”

When she looks up from picking at her lunch, Steve’s staring at her, eyebrows still furrowed. “She’s right there,” he says, going so far as to point directly at the lovebirds. “Can’t you just go hang out with both of them?”

As if she hasn’t spent weeks doing just that, being left to the wayside while they stare soulfully into each other’s eyes. “They’re all…wrapped up in each other,” she explains, trying to keep her temper in check.

“Didn’t Hagan and Perkins go through a honeymoon phase?” Eddie asks. It’s not a phrase Barb’s heard used about high schoolers before, but it seems right. Phase implies it’ll end at some point, Barb just hopes it won’t take too long. Nancy’s smiling around the carrot stick in her mouth, and Jonathan actually looks fucking charmed by it. “What did you do when they used to go on their romantic dates?”

“Go with them?”

Barb snaps her gaze back to him, Nancy and Jonathan’s mating display all-but forgotten in favor of the conundrum wrapped inside a jock package in front of her.

“You’re shitting me,” one of Eddie’s loser friends cuts in.

“Wait, no. Let’s let this play out,” Eddie says, sounding gleeful. Barb glances at him across Steve and there’s a manic gleam in his eyes. “So, let’s set the stage. It’s Valentine’s day, 1982. Tommy Hagan has set up a candlelit dinner with Miss Perkins to celebrate their eternal love. Where are you in this scenario?”

“Have you been like, stalking me?” Steve asks, and it takes Barb a minute to realize the implication of that question.

Steve Harrington had gone on their fucking 1982 Valentine’s date.

“So, you, Steve Harrington, showed up at your best friend’s Valentine’s date last year and that was just fine?” Barb asks, voice devoid of all emotion.

“I didn’t just show up, I was invited” he says, glaring at her as he finally picks up his burger and begins eating it. “Usually, I help Carol do her make-up before. She’s not good at doing her own eyeshadow without looking like a hooker.”

He’s not looking at them anymore—he’s staring across the cafeteria at Perkins and Hagan with the same, forlorn look Barb knows has been peeking out of her own face for weeks now. Barb turns away from the rest of them to stare across at Nancy and Jonathan again. They’re even closer now, like whatever they’re saying is too private to be said above a whisper, even with all the vacant space at their table.

They still haven’t noticed the entirety of Eddie’s usual table staring at them, much less Barb herself, and maybe that’s the difference: Nancy and Jonathan haven’t invited her anywhere, have barely left a space at their side for her to settle into.

“I don’t think I can go on Nancy and Jonathan’s dates,” Barb finally says, something sad and churning within her as she crumples up her sandwich bag and sweeps it into the almost-full trash can at the end of their table.

“Oh, they’re both freaks,” one of Eddie’s other friends cuts in, the entire table dissolving into giggles.

Jonathan leans forward, planting a shy kiss at the corner of Nancy’s mouth that makes her smile, small and shy. Barb turns away, facing Steve and Eddie still arguing good-naturedly at her side.

Nancy and Jonathan may not have left room for her, but Steve had dutifully scooted closer to Eddie so she’d had room, both of them including her in the conversation like she’d always been there.

Maybe Barb was right all those weeks ago: Steve deserved a chance, and as he delicately ate his shitty cafeteria burger, she was happy to give him one.

As always, shoutout to my beta @queenie-ofthe-void who both made this flow better, and also pointed out that when I said it was done, it, in fact, very much was not! I hope the few of you who read this will enjoy it <3

[unlimitedbutchworks]

ratliker is absolutely not someone to defend. like she was so racist if you search her name on here you can see so so many posts about her racism by so many different people lol

we are not doing this. i am not defending the genuinely shitty stuff she did say; all I said was that it’s not fair to extrapolate some racism into her being an incest defender pedophile, and that we should not forget the situation that spawned all that mess, that being a Chilean woman joking about revenge on the US for its imperialism that she has materially felt and getting flamed by americans for it. like she gets brought up every time tyler does this and every time they act like she said the slave trade wasn’t genocidal despite her saying otherwise over and over, because this bad faith reading of some scuffed comments and resulting telephone game into “ratliker denies the slave trades violence and is a dogfucking incestous pedophile” is again, completely unjust, and they were looking for excuses to use this genocide-denying language about her ever since she complained about usamericans and joked about nuking the us, just waiting for a sturdy enough pretense for tumblr users to bandwagon. like waiting for a trans woman to reblog an anime girl so you can say some contrived shit about her being pedophilic because wow don’t you know all anime is made to look like kids?

a trans woman saying something racist is not a go-ahead to lie about her being everything evil under the sun, we should just take racism seriously as a bad thing in of itself. except they don’t take it seriously which is why they lie and do this, as we can see every time they lump twoc in with white trans women to bitch about trannies and every time they fabricate accusations of raceplay.

[ecargmura]

Ron Kamonohashi's Forbidden Deductions Episode 24 Review - The Man With The Crescent Moon Mark

If you drink, play a drinking game every time ‘Seventeen years ago’ is spoken in this episode. You’ll probably be hospitalized by the end. I don’t drink, so I’m being tormented by those three words with or without alcohol. Anyways, after watching this episode, I can see a very clear moral for this case: don’t trust people on the internet; you may one day be involved with a crime syndicate if you do. That’s why they always warn you to be wary of them.

Now with the reveal of a third murder, I think this case has the highest body count so far; please correct me if I’m wrong. It’s like a increase in difficulty level compared to the observatory case. I do see some similarities with that case with this one in that Ron is suspected of being the killer, but we all know he’s not. With the people in this case being involved with the Jim Gore murder case seventeen years ago, I do think that, if you narrow down the possible suspects, Tiger Dan is the definite culprit. Why I think is because he’s the one that started the cycle of how the murder start meaning that he’s the most unreliable. He says that he met the man with the crescent moon mark on the Internet, met Jim Gore and that’s how it all transpired, but he could easily be lying. Maybe he was working with the man. It’s like a game of telephone. Someone will always mess it up, and it’s usually the second person. If the man with the crescent moon mark is the one who talked to Tiger Dan, then Tiger Dan is the second person in the long line of murder telephone.

Like the observatory case, Ron gets into trouble and Toto has to step up. This time, Ron learns about his possible connection to the man with the crescent moon mark and it turns out to be his father Eliot Moriarty. Excuse me? Did you say Moriarty? Yes! Ron finally learns that half of his blood is from the Moriarty family. This shocks him so hard mentally that he becomes catatonic, so Toto has to lug him around and later stepping up to be the one to solve the case. Ron always believed Eliot died before his birth, but that’s not the case. There’s still a fragment of his memory that’s missing and Eliot revolves around it. All Ron can remember is that Eliot showed him many different methods of crimes. They all seem brutal, despite him using dummies. Did Eliot traumatize Ron in some way? I heard that the brain has a mysterious power to erase a memory that causes him pain, so I assume something revolving around Eliot traumatized him so much that it was wiped from his memories. That’s probably it. Poor Ron, though. Learning he’s half-Moriarty was definitely NOT in his bingo card.

Though, there is something I’m curious about. Why was Mia invited to the auberge and not her mother? Did her mom die before the story? I think it’s rather cruel to make Mia, a seventeen-year-old girl be a part of the murder case, but that’s how the M family is—they’re cruel and show no mercy even to the young people. Also, given she’s Italian, is she half-English or was her mom on vacation at the time? I feel like the pregnant lady portion of the flashback is a little weird, but that’s just me.

It’s crazy how we only have two episodes left. Ron Kamonohashi’s Forbidden Deductions/Deranged Detective will be showcased for the upcoming Jump Festa. I wonder if they’ll announce Season 3… What are your thoughts on this episode?