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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 4 years ago

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Eccentricity [Chapter 10: Stay, I Need To Be Myself]

A/N: I hope you enjoyed the fluffy times while they lasted. 😉

Series Summary: Joe Mazzello is a nice guy with a weird family. A VERY weird family. They have a secret, and you have a choice to make. Potentially a better love story than Twilight.

Chapter Title Is A Lyric From: “Where Were You When The Sky Opened Up” by The Dangerous Summer.

Chapter Warnings: Language, sexual references (not graphic), angstttttttttt.

Word Count: 6k.

Other Chapters (And All My Writing) Available: HERE

Taglist: @queen-turtle-boiii @bramblesforbreakfast @maggieroseevans @culturefiendtrashqueen @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark @escabell @im-an-adult-ish @queenlover05 @someforeigntragedy @imtheinvisiblequeen @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhyee @deacyblues @tensecondvacation @brianssixpence @some-major-ishues @haileymorelikestupid @youngpastafanmug @simonedk

Uninvited

“Hey, it’s our song!” Joe turned up the radio as he steered his Subaru down the Lees’ cobblestone driveway and into a parking spot facing the woods. We’d been back from Chicago for a full week now, and—with the notable exceptions of classes and the early morning hours when Joe soundlessly crept out of my bedroom window—were very rarely apart.

“And I would do anything for love

I’d run right into hell and back

I would do anything for love

I’d never lie to you and that's a fact.”

“Uh, this is not our song,” I objected, the soles of my shoes propped against the dashboard. “I was not consulted. A couple’s official song cannot be a unilateral decision.”

“But I'll never forget the way you feel right now

Oh no, no way

And I would do anything for love

Oh I would do anything for love

I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that

No, I won’t do that.”

“Oh okay, what are you, the relationship police? Alright, Chief Baby Swan, let’s hear your brilliant suggestion. Wait, let me guess. Something by The Killers. Vampire Weekend. My Bloody Valentine. Is there a band called Chipotle Veggie Bowl?”

“Never Gonna Give You Up?” I suggested.

He laughed, dragging me over the center console and into his lap. “Oh, you are the worst!”

I straddled him in the driver’s seat, cupped his face in my palms, giggled as I touched my lips to his, soft and cool and lithe and inviting. When I broke the kiss, Joe pulled me back in, knotting his fingers through my hair. The way my thighs fit perfectly around him; that sharp, instinctual, now so familiar ache of longing. “I want you,” I breathed.

He pretended to be scandalized. “Right now? At this exact moment? In my parents’ driveway?”

“Yeah,” I confessed.

He grinned, unbuckling his belt. “Okay.”

“Really?!”

“Yes. I’ve lost all sense of decency. I’m an animal. You’ve absolutely ruined me.” His hands travelled beneath my U Chicago sweatshirt and tore it over my head. Yes, he had converted me to Chicago apparel. It was very embarrassing. Let’s move on.

“I’m sorry,” I moaned softly. I lied. I wasn’t sorry at all.

“I think we might need to get our own place.”

“Why?”

“Because I love the way you ruin me. And I want you to do it...” He went on, kissing me after each word: “All. The. Fucking. Time.”

I yanked off his Cubs t-shirt in one vicious tug. “We’re okay out here?” I didn’t really care; I should have, I was aware of that. But I didn’t. The Lees, most likely, would not call my dad to report us for public indecency. I could imagine Scarlett’s voice in my head, warm with approval: Get it, girl.

“Totally. And we’re far enough away from the house, Rami shouldn’t be able to hear us.” Joe nipped lightly down the side of my neck: carefully, always so carefully.

“He’d only get your side of things anyway.”

“Well yeah, that’s what I’m worried about! Your thoughts wouldn’t be so intrusive. I don’t care if he knows I’m a fantastic lay.”

“Oh, are you?” I teased, grinding my hips against him. “I hadn’t noticed.”

Joe smiled as he unbuttoned my jeans, deliciously slowly. “Well let me...just...refresh your...memory...”

I kissed him, roughly and deeply, arching into him, biting his lower lip. Yes, yes, yes...

Joe pulled away, still smiling but blinking and dazed. “Wow, all the sudden I feel...like...really calm.”

“Thanks...?” A week of almost constant sex might do that to a person. Sure, maybe, what did I know? My lips found his again. My hand skated down his bare stomach and into the waistband of his boxers. Joe began to help me peel off my jeans; then he stopped.

“Wait wait wait, I know this feeling.” Joe lifted me off of him and pushed me back into the passenger’s seat, gently but stubbornly. I tried not to be offended.

“What—?”

“Shhh.” He grabbed the headrest of my seat and twisted around to peer out of the rear windshield. I followed his gaze. There was a new car in the driveway, parked up by the front porch: an anonymous black Honda Civic. The plate said California. It was probably a rental. “Oh fuck,” Joe whispered. His eyes were enormous, glassy, horrified.

“What is it?”

“Stay here.” He threw on his Cubs t-shirt, zipped his pants, fastened his belt. “Stay down, stay quiet. And no matter what happens do not get out of this car, do you understand me?”

“Joe, why—?”

“Do you understand me?” His voice was low but severe, so incredibly unlike him; his dark eyes were flinty. Just like that night with the apples in Mercy’s kitchen, that night when Ben almost...

“I understand,” I heard myself reply.

“Good.” Joe climbed out of the Subaru—smoothing his shirt and then his tousled hair—and rushed over to intercept the unsolicited guest. I peeked around my headrest to watch, my right palm braced against the center console, that feverish lust that had been rushing through my bloodstream gradually weakening, perishing, vanishing like seawater baked from the sand under a rising sun.

The stranger stepped out of the Honda Civic, and although I knew his face, it took me a moment to place him. It was like—I could only imagine, having never been myself—a child stumbling into their movie heroines and beloved stuffed animals come to life during their first trip to Disneyland, amazed and yet somehow gut-twistingly uneasy as they gawked up at that grotesquely inflated cartoon face, that mask of lipstick and rouge that didn’t quite match their recollections, that dreamlike mirage plucked from pages or screens and impelled into a physical form that suddenly swallowed up space and gravity and oxygen. I had seen this stranger before in the massive painting that adorned Gwilym Lee’s upstairs office.

Cato.

He was very tall and very beautiful, classically beautiful, Ben-level beautiful. Joe often jokingly referred to him as Idris Elba within the Lee household, and a mid-thirties version of Idris Elba was just about right. He wore an immaculately tailored grey suit and aviator sunglasses, which he removed to greet Joe, folding and then sliding them smoothly into the front pocket of his suit jacket. His face was solemn and observant; he had a closely-trimmed beard without a fleck of silver. He extended a hand, which Joe shook.

“Hey, Cato!” I heard Joe say, muffled through the walls of the Subaru. I couldn’t make out Cato’s replies; his voice sounded deep, rumbling, extremely level. “So nice of you to stop by! I didn’t know you were in town. Yeah, everyone’s doing great. Even Ben. Hahaha, yeah, you know how he is. You know exactly how he is. But it’s all good. Well look, I’m just gonna go run a friend home and then I’ll be back in fifteen, maybe twenty minutes and we can all chat. Okay? Awesome. Feel free to head inside, I’m sure Mercy would be thrilled to play hostess. There’s sweet tea in the fridge and a hummingbird cake on the counter and...oh, something else too...some weird type of cookies she baked this morning. Help yourself. I’ll be back before you can say ‘tyrannical vampire murder cult.’”

“Tyrannical vampire murder cult,” it looked like Cato replied without a hint of a smile. But he wasn’t paying attention to Joe anymore. His eyes had found the Subaru, and then me; he was staring with that intense, seeking bewilderment that reminded me of Rami and Lucy and Ben when I’d first met them, when they were still trying to puzzle out why my mind (and my mind alone) was a night-draped, silent ocean of the unknown.

He's trying to read me, I realized. He’s trying to read me and he can’t.

Joe was jogging back to the Subaru now. At last, Cato turned away from me and headed into the house. The carved pumpkins from Weber’s Farm still lined the front porch: Scarlett’s Thunderbird, Archer’s Vantage, Rami’s swooping bat, Lucy’s moon and stars, Joe’s moustached jack-o-lantern, my (but actually Gwil’s) snapshot under the sea, Ben’s miniature Lee residence complete with the winding cobblestone driveway. Joe swept into the driver’s seat, adjusted his rearview mirror, and spun out of the parking spot.

“Goddammit,” he hissed as we barreled down the driveway.

“Why is Cato here?”

“I have no idea.” Joe looked straight ahead as he drove, preoccupied, consumed with possibilities. His fingers drummed the steering wheel. “We have to pay dues to them, all the covens do. Gwil cuts a check. But that’s not until around the New Year. That’s almost always when Cato stops by. Collects the payment, interrogates us in a way that masquerades as conversation, hangs around town for a few days, reports back whatever we’re up to...which usually isn’t much. Holidays with the extended family, gotta love it. I don’t know why he would be here now.” Joe shook his head. “Maybe something to do with Ben. It would have to be Ben. There’s no other reason.”

“And you don’t want him to know about me.”

“No, I don’t.”

“But...Cato isn’t all that dangerous,” I said, not understanding. “Is he?”

“Not alone, no. But the people he works for are.” Joe sighed, glancing over at me as he drove, serious and sorry and sad. “There’s a lot of violence in my world. A lot of darkness. I’ve tried to protect you from that as much as possible. And maybe I’ve done too good a job, maybe it’s too easy for you to forget what we really are. Most vampires aren’t like Gwil’s coven. They’re not like me. They kill easily and unrepentantly. And I don’t want any of them knowing that you exist, that you’re a weakness of ours. I want them to know as little about you as physically possible.”

“A weakness,” I repeated. I didn’t like that.

He smiled faintly. “It’s a compliment to be somebody’s weakness, Baby Swan.”

“I guess so.” The towering pine trees whipped by in a verdant blur. The sky above was thick and grey and churning. “You’ll be okay, right? Ben will be okay?”

Joe seemed to find that amusing, ridiculous even. “You don’t need to worry about us.”

“But I still do.”

“We’ll work it out, whatever it is. Cato is a reasonable guy. And Ben is definitely capable of...well. Advocating for himself.”

Capable of unparalleled carnage, he means. The memory of the first day I’d met Ben hit me like a hurled stone, illuminated my mind like a pulsing neon sign: the coiled tension in his muscles, that mindless, animalistic hatred in his eyes. Yes, he must be quite the monster when he wants to be. But he didn’t want to be anymore. I knew that completely, unquestioningly.

Joe pulled into Charlie’s driveway. The police car was gone; my 1999 Honda Accord and Charlie’s Toyota Corolla rested idly side by side. My dad would be working late tonight, until eight or nine at least. A pang of loneliness struck in my gut, just beneath the ribs; I had grown so accustomed to the absence of solitude, of quiet. The silence suddenly felt so loud.

“Don’t let it ruin your night,” Joe said as I got out of the Subaru. His words were affectionate; but his voice was still distracted, distant. “Don’t let it bother you. Everything will be fine, I promise. And as soon as Cato’s gone, everything will go back to the way it should be.”

“Okay,” I replied, not feeling very comforted at all. I don’t like the way he pushed me off him when he saw the car. The way he’s barely looked at me since. The way he called me a weakness.

Joe was already checking his mirrors, preparing to leave.

“Hey. Mob guy.” I leaned into the rolled-down window. “I love you.”

And the grin lit up Joe’s face like the sun. He crawled across the passenger’s seat, drew me into him by the collar of my brand new U Chicago hoodie, kissed me until that wild, interrupted desire was flaring up again in my arteries and nerve endings and everywhere else. The thunderous clouds in my skull split open. Everything’s still okay. It really is. “I love you to death. And then back again.” He retreated and shifted the Subaru into reverse. “I’ll see you soon. But maybe not too soon, I might be tied up with this family thing for a while. Don’t wait up tonight.”

“No problem. I’ll just call one of my other monster boyfriends to keep me company. The werewolf should be free. It’s not a full moon, is it?”

“No bestiality,” Joe retorted sternly. “That’s illegal, ma’am.”

I smiled and waved as the Subaru swerved out of the driveway and disappeared. Everything’s okay, I told myself, standing in the front yard under darkening skies. Everything will be okay.

And I kept telling myself that, again and again like Hail Marys, until I was dozing off in my bed alone six hours later.

Hit It And Quit It

I dreamed of the beach at La Push—my toes wriggling beneath the cold sand, the ricocheting cries of seagulls, the primordial growl of the frothing waves—and woke up with the ghost of saltwater in my sinuses. I grabbed my iPhone off the nightstand. Two new texts: one from Archer—Hey would it be distasteful or hilarious to dress up as Dracula for the Lee Halloween party? Asking for a friend.—and one from Jessica asking if she could copy my Marine Botany homework. Absolutely nothing from Joe.

When was the last time I didn’t have a text from Joe waiting for me in the morning? I struggled to remember, my mind still foggy with snippets of dreams. A week? Two weeks? A month? It felt like forever.

I tapped out a text to Joe with my clumsy, just-waking-up thumbs: I am resolved. No more nights with my werewolf boyfriend. Dude scratched the hell out of me and then barked at the mailman. Had to drop him off at the SPCA for neutering. See you soon! xxxx

I tried not to obsessively check my phone as I showered, got dressed, gathered my textbooks and notepads and pens. And yet still, I noticed: Joe didn’t text me back.

The rain poured from a grey sky all through my drive to Calawah University, Marine Botany class with Jessica, our frantic dash across campus beneath her hot pink umbrella to Forks And Spoons. My human friends had custody of me during lunchtime today. Angela was studying for a Computer Science quiz, Eric working on an article for the Calawah Chatterbox, Mike histrionically lamenting a sprained ankle coming just on the cusp of basketball season. Jessica bought me a chocolate chip muffin as thanks for texting her a picture of our Marine Botany homework this morning. Ah, the sweet taste of academic dishonesty.

I was relieved—more than I would have liked to admit—that all five Lees were at their usual lunch table, looking worn and tired but normal enough. Ben was hiding behind a pair of sunglasses and his black U Chicago hoodie that Joe and I had bought for him last weekend, sipping steaming tea out of a mug that he gripped with both hands. Scarlett flipped moodily through an astrophysics textbook. Rami repeatedly tapped the tabletop with a pen while Lucy knitted a lavender sweater, never raising her eyes from the jumble of yarn in her lap. They all murmured to each other in low, furtive voices, their mouths barely moving. Joe gave me a wave and a drawn smile; but only after I waved first.

Angela was now scolding Jessica for her lack of moral integrity.

Jess rolled her eyes, gnawing on a chicken finger that was burned black around the edges. “I’m here ostensibly to become an anthropologist and in actuality to find a hot rich husband, not to learn how to identify like sixty different types of algae.”

“Then why even take Marine Botany?” Angela asked, confounded.

“Calawah University forces every student to take at least two science classes, even if you’re a humanities major. Because they’re fucking fascists.”

“Oh, fascists, a big word for you!” I congratulated Jessica, patting her shoulder before returning my attention to my homemade veggie quesadilla and leftover slice of Mercy’s hummingbird cake. I was getting so good at this eating respectable meals thing. Joe would be proud.

Angela chuckled. “How’s that finding a husband thing going, by the way?”

“Awfully,” Jessica sighed. “I had this really promising flirtationship going with a frat boy in my Indigenous Peoples of the Arctic class. Ellsworth Jonathan Griffin, gorgeous blue eyes, blond man bun, his dad is a partner at a corporate law firm in Los Angeles. That’s the stuff dreams are made of. But I’m pretty sure he dropped out because I haven’t seen him in a few days. Also he would bring Absolut vodka to class in an Aquafina bottle.”

“You can probably do better,” I said.

“Well we can’t all end up with Lee boys, now can we?” Jess snapped irritably.

When it was time to depart for our afternoon classes, I met Joe in the doorway of Forks And Spoons, linked my fingers around the back of his neck, tugged at his dark, auburn-tinted hair.

“You okay, mob guy? You seem a little...” Exhausted? Edgy? Sad? “...Distracted.”

“I’m good. I’m great.” He kissed me briefly, fleetingly. No big deal; after all, we were in public. Right? “Are you cool to hang out later?”

“Absolutely. Can we go to La Push if it stops raining? I know it’ll be cold, but I woke up with the beach on my mind and haven’t been able get it out all day.”

“You got it. Can I meet you there? I have to take care of a few things first. Have to, uh, hunt.”

I stared up at him, feeling my stomach drop, feeling rapidly and jarringly off-kilter. Joe rarely mentioned hunting around me...not in a serious way, at least. It was one of those things that knocked me out of the fantasy of how compatible we were, how possible. It was a reminder of all those interminable differences that lived in the hushed space between us. “Okay.”

“I’ll...I’ll explain everything then. At La Push.”

“Okay,” I said again, very uncleverly. What’s going on here? What exactly did Cato say?

Joe smirked; finally a flash of playfulness, that contagious light he was built of. He smoothed my hair with one feather-light stroke of his hand, touched his lips to my forehead. “Don’t be late to Chemistry. I can’t have you failing out.”

“Of course not. How would I be able to get my Marine Biology PhD from U Chicago?”

But Joe didn’t laugh, didn’t even smile; he just left.

Ben was hunched over our table in Professor Belvin’s classroom, his arms encircling his notebook, the pen in his hand scribbling frenziedly. The window was wide open; the rain outside had weakened to a docile drizzle. He was still wearing his sunglasses. He didn’t acknowledge me at all.

“Rough night?” I asked, sliding into the seat beside him.

“Yeah.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“I definitely do not.”

“I’m sorry,” I told him. Ben glanced up, his thick eyebrows raised; they peaked just above the rims of his opaque sunglasses. “Whatever it is, I’m sorry.”

For a long time, Ben just looked at me; maybe wanting to say something, maybe just feeling that decorum necessitated it. “You shouldn’t be,” he replied at last. And he spent the rest of class paying no attention whatsoever to Professor Belvin’s lecture on the Pauli exclusion principle and instead scrawling untidy Welsh phrases into the formerly pristine pages of his notebook.

It was just after 5 p.m. when I arrived at La Push, the tires of my 1999 Honda Accord crunching over the gravel of the small parking area, the wind whipping ferociously. Joe had gotten there first; he was sitting on a rock down by the water with his back to me, peering out over the Pacific Ocean, tossing pebbles and shells into the waves. We had an hour of daylight left. The sky was obscure, grey, dim. Fine droplets of rain like mist sailed through the biting autumn air and clung to my skin.

When Joe spotted me, he leapt off the rock and watched me approach with his hands in the pockets of his North Face jacket. He wasn’t wearing anything Chicago-related today, which was highly unusual. I waited for him to touch me, to hold me, to tell me that everything was okay and always would be...at least for the next ten to fifteen years. He didn’t. “Hey,” he said instead.

“Hi.”

Joe nodded down the beach. “Let’s walk.”

I have never been especially good at mundane, monotonous rambling. That’s a Scorpio thing. And yet monotonous rambling is exactly what I did: I prattled on about my classes, Charlie’s bowling league, Renee’s new life in Florida with Paul, the ocean, the weather, anything to fill that space between us that all at once felt so enormously significant. I was vaguely aware that I was afraid to stop talking; I didn’t want Joe to have the chance to say whatever was on his mind.

Finally, Joe stopped walking. He took my hand, ran his thumb over the faint scar from when I accidentally cut myself in Mercy’s kitchen. His shoes sank into the wet sand, left imprints there like fingerprints. He turned to face me, pained, grave, and oh god, far worse: guilty.

“What?” I asked, terror swelling in my lungs, my bones, some inborn warning of impending ruin.

Joe gazed out over the crashing sea, then came back to me, like a dislocated joint popping back into place. “I am so sorry.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I...” He spoke slowly, haltingly. “I thought that this was something that was doable. But I was wrong.”

“What...?” And then a possibility occurred to me, a glorious possibility. Of course. A grin erupted across my face. “This is a joke, right? You’re joking, you’re always joking, this is just—”

He shook his head. He wasn’t joking. I wrenched my hand out of his and stared up at him in furious disbelief.

“It’s not fair to you,” Joe said. “This thing, being with someone like me. I can’t give you a future. I can’t give you an uncomplicated existence. I mean, come on, you have to worry about getting murdered around my own family—”

“Do you have fucking amnesia?” I demanded, incredulous. “Joe, we just talked about this. We just made plans to move to Chicago after graduation, we agreed that it was what we both wanted. I don’t want a normal human boyfriend. I don’t want normal human in-laws. I want you, Joe, and Ben, and Mercy and Gwil, and Rami and Lucy and Scarlett, I want the whole ridiculous Lee family package and there’s nothing you could say to make me decide that this isn’t worth it.”

“Look—”

“No, something happened, right? Something happened with Cato, or Ben, or someone, something happened and now you think that you have to do this but I’m telling you that whatever it is we can figure it out, we can figure it out together, isn’t that what you promised me?” He said he wouldn’t leave. He promised me he wouldn’t leave. All those things...all those things he said...

“Listen.” And now his eyes were stony. He didn’t call me Baby Swan. Oh, this is bad. This is so bad. “It’s not fair to me either.”

“And that’s what this is really about,” I realized. My voice was abruptly fierce, caustic. All those other women; those beautiful, graceful, immortal women. How did I ever think I could compare?

“It’s not personal.”

“It’s the most personal thing there is, Joe, it’s pasts and futures and love—”

“It’s not though.” He smiled, just barely. “Maybe we thought it was, but it’s not.”

It hit me like a brick, like a bullet; I couldn’t catch my breath. I was drowning in thin air, like a sawfish, like a shark. “Well I’m glad you figured that out on your own fucking schedule.”

“This was my fault,” he said. “All of it. And I am so profoundly sorry for the pain I’ve caused you, and I take full responsibility for it. I hope you’re able to move on knowing that there’s nothing you could have done differently. These are just the realities of my world. You’re better off in your own. And you’re going to make someone very happy someday.”

It's all so empty, so excruciatingly generic. “You’re a monster,” I seethed at him, tears stinging in my eyes.

“Yes,” Joe agreed softly.

“I hate you.” I wasn’t sure if I meant that, but I still said it. Maybe I could will it into being true, like how people find God after a particularly grim diagnosis; there’s no harm in trying to make it real. There’s nothing left to lose.

“That would be more than fair, given the circumstances,” he said. “I won’t bother you again. I’ll ask you to do the same for me.”

“Sure.” Tears were streaming down my cheeks now; my breaths were ragged, hitching. I need to get out of here. I need to get away from him.

A shadow of concern crossed his face, the first one I had noticed since yesterday afternoon. “If you need someone to drive you home, I’d be happy to—”

“I’d literally rather die.” And I left Joseph Francis Mazzello standing on the beach with the twilight wind in his hair and the sun setting behind him like time slipping through an hourglass.

I fled to my Honda, turned the keys in the ignition, covered my face with my hands and wept in raw, heaving shudders as Hungry Like The Wolf played from the mixtape that Joe had left in my cassette player. I ejected the mixtape, rolled down my window, tossed it out onto the rain-slick gravel. I couldn’t stand the thought of going home. Charlie would be at work until late tonight; Joe would never set foot in the house again.

I have to go somewhere. I can’t just sit in that goddamn bedroom. I can’t be alone.

I wheeled my car onto the main road and drove until I came to an unceremonious mechanic’s garage with a fractured concrete floor and cracks like spider legs across the windows. When I stepped out of my Honda, Archer raced over to meet me, beaming and wiping his hands clean with an oil rag.

“Hey, you know you’re not allowed to come here unless you bring Taco Bell with you...” Then he saw me, he really saw me. “Whoa, what—?”

And Archer caught me as I collapsed into his arms, sobs ripping through my throat like fangs.

Benjamin, 24 Hours Earlier

It was bad. Whatever this was, it was bad.

I knew because Rami could read Cato, and I could read Rami; the hazy wisps of color that unfurled from him were a hectic, wrestling electric blue: distress, grief, anxiety, denial. Cato’s own aura had always been rather unforthcoming—he tended towards deep, mellow greens and purples of congruence and contemplation—and forever tinted with an opalescent quality that spread like wildfire to the people around him, the people who were under his influence, that intangible calming and harmonizing effect, that irrational sense of wellbeing. Everyone in the room had that faint opalescence shimmering around them now, even Rami, whose unspoken turmoil remained a roiling rather than a storm. And I thought—not for the first time—that if Larkin was a spade that hollowed you out, scraped along the jagged snags of your split bones to empty you of any ambitions and loyalties that had come before, then Cato was the anesthetic that made the mangling go down smoother, the promise that you would someday still catch glimpses of innocence. Larkin was a purger, a purifier; Cato made you believe again.

There were pitchers of sweet tea and a heaping tray of butter pecan cookies on the living room coffee table. Cato sat on the neat white sofa, one leg crossed over the other, stoic, waiting. Rami stared vacantly from the loveseat; Lucy was beside him, her delicate bare feet tucked beneath her and her fingers laced through Rami’s, her brow knit into grooves of worry. Scarlett was next to me on the largest couch, her boots propped up on the edge of the coffee table, her hair in a long French braid, periodically cracking her knuckles. It was nearly the only sound. Mercy bustled around the room gifting everyone tall chilled glasses of sweet tea; Gwil stood by the virtual fireplace on the big-screen tv, his hands in his pockets, his lips pressed into a rigid line.

The front door opened, and Joe stepped inside, his car keys rattling in his fist. For as long as I’d known him, his color had so often been a bright and buttery yellow, his aura more visible and constant than anyone else’s. Lately, he was increasingly cloaked in the rosy pinks of love or the vivid, shifting, crimson reds of lust; and Rami and I bonded over our shared efforts to politely ignore that particular variety of thoughts.

Joe pointed to Cato. “What’s going on?”

“How long?” Cato asked him.

Joe feigned cluelessness. “Huh? What do you mean? Oh, car chick?! That’s nothing. She’s just a friend.”

Cato blinked. “Do you really think I just arrived in Forks today?”

It rolled through Joe like a wave: surrender, apprehension, dread. The realization that Cato had been watching us for days, weeks even, meticulously keeping just enough distance to stay out of Rami’s range of hearing. Joe’s now-opalescent aura dipped from cerise to an agitated mahogany. “Two months.”

“And she’s talented.” Cato’s voice was impatient, incredulous; How could you be this stupid? that voice said.

“No,” Joe flared, like shards of wood cracking in a fire. “No, she’s got nothing to do with you, with us. With our world. She’s got nothing to do with it.”

Cato circled the fingerprint of his index finger around the rim of his misted glass of sweet tea, meditative. “In one hundred and seventy years, I have never met someone who I couldn’t find if I wanted to. And yet the second I turned my back on that girl, she was gone. Vanished. The world was a blank map. How is that possible?”

No one said anything. Finally, Cato looked to Rami.

“You can’t hear her thoughts, can you?”

“No,” Rami admitted.

“And how many times has that happened in...how old are you now, the same as Ben? How many times in the past century have you met someone who made you feel normal, weak even? Who made you feel human again?”

“Never,” Rami conceded.

“You too, right?” Cato asked me. “You can’t see what she’s feeling. She’s nothing but white noise.”

I nodded reluctantly.

“She’s talented,” Cato said again, decisive.

“Oh god,” I choked out, burying my face in my hands. Now I knew what Rami had heard. I knew everything.

Joe shook his head almost violently. “No, that’s not fair. There’s no way of knowing if that would translate to life as a vampire or how it would manifest. There’s no way of knowing if she would survive the transition at all. And none of us are ever going to find out because she has nothing to do with our world.”

“She does,” Cato insisted. “Because you brought her into it.”

Scarlett shivered beside me, crossed her arms over her chest, clutched her leather jacket tighter. “You can’t be serious, Cato. You’re not a monster, you know she might not survive—”

“And that would stop Gwil. It would stop me, sure. When has it ever stopped Larkin?” Cato gestured to me. “With him? With me? With Akari or Araminta or Liesl or Rigel or all the ones who didn’t make it, who died screaming as they scorched from the inside out? It has never stopped him because he doesn’t care. He finds talented people. He covets them, covets them jealously, like jewels or money or lovers. And they either become one of his possessions or they become nothing at all.”

“No,” Joe whispered. “No, no, no...”

Rami was shrinking into the loveseat, overwhelmed by the emotions in the room that were dragging his aura into whirling greys, those desperate and dark thoughts; not even Cato could mute them entirely. Lucy tried to soothe him, laid the back of her fine-boned hand against his cheek. Mercy covered her gaping mouth. Gwil studied the floor, thunderstruck, absorbing it all.

“This is a courtesy that I’m doing you right now,” Cato told Joe, his large palms clasped together, his voice sorrowful and yet unyielding, almost pleading. “This is a warning. If he finds out about her, about what she can do...he’s going to want her. And he gets everything he wants.”

“He can’t find out,” Gwil said hoarsely.

“No,” I agreed. Death or a hundred-year sentence. Either way, a part of you dies. Either way, a part of you ends up in a box six feet underground and clawing for the sun.

“What can we do?” Scarlett asked Cato. “I mean...is there anything we can do?”

“You have to get rid of her. That’s her only chance. Get her out of your orbit, away from our world, away from where Larkin or anyone who serves him would ever cross her path. I won’t tell him about the girl. I’ll try to deflect his attention. If she’s already been spotted, I’ll tell him that she’s useless, just another one of Joe’s litany of casual liaisons. And that’s a risk I’ll take, I’ll do it out of respect for your coven, Dr. Lee, and for Ben. But there is absolutely nothing I can do for you if Larkin finds out for himself. I don’t think I’m the only one he has watching you.”

“Of course not,” I said bitterly. “I’m sure he has all sorts of eyes on me. The white whale. The one that got away.” This is my fault. It’s all my fucking fault.

“It’s not,” Rami murmured; and nobody else heard my side of it, but I think they understood.

Joe’s aura was now murky, sunless, almost black. It was a color I hadn’t thought he was capable of. His eyes were slick and bleary.

“Son?” Gwil prompted. Mercy was sobbing into a handkerchief patterned with roses. Mom, I ached instinctively, before pushing the thought away.

“I won’t do it,” Joe said. “You’re asking me to break her heart and I won’t do it.”

I begged: “Joe, you don’t understand—”

“No, you don’t understand! You don’t understand what this will do to her, what it’s going to do to her for the weeks and months and years that come after, she might never forget—”

“Do you want her to end up dead or in a hundred-year contract?” Cato shot back. “Do you want to see how much of that girl you care about so much is left after a century with Larkin?”

Everyone’s eyes fell on me. I could feel them, full of pity and horror. I’m what’s left. Someone gutted of everything but rage and bloodlust.

“No, of course not,” Joe said. Thanks a lot, brother.

Cato smirked without any humor at all. He had known. “Then the choice is easy.”

“Son,” Gwil said again.

Joe gazed back at him with huge, agonized eyes. His words were brittle, raspy, hollow. “Dad, I love her.”

“I know,” Gwil replied. His aura was a blue like cobalt: profound sympathy, compassion, mourning. “And that’s why you’ll do the right thing.”

Twenty minutes later, I was puffing on my vape pen as I paced back and forth across the wrap-around porch like a caged bear, watching the sun disappear behind the western hemlock trees that raked the clouds. Gwil, Rami, Lucy, and Scarlett were with Joe; Mercy was trying to convince Cato to stay the night in one of the guest bedrooms. I could hear her ludicrously gracious protestations through the walls. “We know it’s not your fault, dear, this...this...situation. We know you’re just the messenger. And you’ve been so important to Ben all these years, so kind. It’s really no trouble at all...here, let me at least wrap up some cake for you to take...”

The front door opened and closed. Scarlett appeared beside me, resting her forearms on the porch railing. She sighed, closed her eyes, said nothing.

“This is going to destroy him,” I told her.

Scarlett nodded, her face bathed in silvery moonlight, marvelous and yet forlorn. The aura that surrounded her was a deep, despondent indigo. It matched the sky. “Yeah.”

“And to think...” I exhaled heavily, nicotine-tinged vapor vanishing into the damp night air. Rain was coming; I could feel it in my bones. “I was just beginning to like it here.”

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marauder-exe · 5 years ago

Text

AU list!

hi! These are a bunch of Au’s that i could write,and you could request! (reposting because it didnt work the first time)

General

Fake dating (My personal favourite)

Soulmates

Coffee shop

Modern Royalty

Rockstar

Running From The Police

Rebel Against The Goverment

High School

University

Law school

Delayed-Flights-And-Were-Stuck-In-The-Airport-And-Its-Like-2Am

Roommates

Road Trip

Arranged Marriage

Im-Arranged-To-Marry-Your-Brother-But-Were-In-Love

Amnesia

Tattoo-Artist-And-Coffee-Shop-Worker

Loved-Since-Childhood

Professor-Student (of age)

Met-On-Holiday

More detailed

21.You were singing/playing guitar/etc. in the park to protest the war and a policeman tried to dismiss you for 'disturbing the peace' but you argued that you were promoting peace and things got heated and next thing you know you're being arrested for assaulting an officer. You intrigue me, so I'm here to bail you out and maybe take you on a date?

22.the nice one who everybody loves with the grumpy and strict one that the students hate and the students wonder?????????how what the fuck

23.we just had a one-night stand but a massive storm hit so now we’re snowed in, hello awkward

24. i sit at the rental booth at our local ice rink and watch you teach children how to skate

25. alternatively, i watch kids teach you how to skate because you’re a terrible skater

26. i’m running late to an important interview/meeting and you accidentally spill your hot cocoa all over my outfit

27. you’re my hot ski instructor and i’m failing the bunny hill

28. i slip on some ice and you’re the stranger who catches me

29. i gave my winter coat to a homeless person and come into your store to warm up

30. our friends rent a cabin to go skiing and we’re the only ones who stay inside

31. you’re the asshole of our group and we don’t get along, but then i find out you make soup for the local shelter

32.we’re waiting in line for the club when you complain that your roommate stole your gloves so let me warm your hands up with mine

33.my family invites you to join our holiday meal as an obvious setup and i’m so sorry

34.the power goes out in our apartment building, but i’m not prepared for this, and you come to check on me

35.i’m having a snowball fight with my friend in the park and i hit you instead

36.a storm is delaying our flight home and i’m afraid of thunder, please talk to me while we wait

37. we’re both in small claims court and i got into a huge fight with the person suing me but you stepped in to hold me back before security got there

38. i drove two hours to the closest video rental store that’s still operating and you were checking out the only copy of the movie i was after

39. i hit you with my car but luckily you’re okay, but we should still exchange information i guess

40. i was worried about buying something off of someone creepy from craigslist but oh no you’re hot

41. my friend talked me into playing a drunken game of spin the bottle even though we’re all adults and now we have to make out

42. we both decided to take a [yoga/fencing/cooking etc] class and we’re the only two assholes not taking it seriously and everyone else is giving us dirty looks but we keep grinning over at each other

43. my date just made a scene in public and got arrested and now i’m stranded in a city without a ride home

44. sharing a cab together

45. you’re trying to get me to sign a petition and i have no idea what you’re talking about

46. you’re drunk at this festival and dancing on the table and when you eventually fell i caught you

47. we both play this stupid game online and you keep beating me every single goddamn time so i called you out and you are pretty cute but can you not

48. im a bartender and you just came in here without shoes sat down and ordered a chocolate volcano and idk what the fuck that is and im scared to ask

49. we are neighbours and every night at 3:14 am you start yodeling for no fucking reason??? why???? is that you yodeling??? its been 2 months???

50.im a pizza delivery person and i just delivered a pizza to someone in the middle of a satanic ritual and they gave me their number???

51. i woke up this morning to find you sitting in my living room with a goat in a poncho??? who are you??? why is the goat wearing a poncho??? how did you get the goat in here i live on the 12th floor???

52. we work out at the same gym and you always look super legit but i know you sing hannah montana in the shower and you know i know

53. im a cashier and i saw you stuffing you pants full of potatoes and i would stop you but you already have 27 and i want to see how many you can fit

54. its 4 am and im drunk as fuck in a mcdonalds and you have been watching my trying to eat this burger for 30 minutes

55. i was playing beer pong with a coin and i accidentally threw it right into your eye at a party

56. i’m at the beach and some kids thought it was funny to bury me in the sand when i dozed off can you please dig me out

57. it’s unbearably hot and we’re both fighting over the last handheld electrical fan at the shop at the amusement park

58. hey i just met you, and this is crazy, but i get sunburned really easily so can you please help me put sunscreen on my back?

59. thunderstorm after a menacing heatwave and we’re both getting weird looks for dancing in the rain

60.i have no idea who you are but you just fainted right in front of me holy shit dude you need to drink more in this heat

61. we both chased after the leaving ice cream van like ten-year-olds and now we’re both out of breath and a bit embarrassed

62.i clearly reserved this deck chair by putting a towel on it why on earth are you lying on it who the fuck do you think you are

63. My friends bet I wouldn’t buy these three weird and questionable items and you’re my cashier.

64.Once a week I go visit the pet store just to stare at the cute kittens and puppies and you’re the nice employee who always lets me hold them and wait I think I’m going to cry hold on.

65.You’re the DJ of the University’s radio station and every time you give an opinion on a current event I have to call and argue with you because could you seriously be anymore wrong?

66.We both wait tables at the same restaurant and you’re always mad at me by the end of the night because I make more in tips

67.We have the same class and once a week you wear this graphic shirt I don’t understand and I really want to ask you about it.

68.We both work at the same craft store that literally has no customers so we have nothing to do and I’m always reading at the register but you always have to criticize my book choice what the hell?

69.I’m working the concession stand for this week’s home game and this is the fifth time you’ve come back for snacks wait are you flirting with me?

70. we’re at a bookstore and you and I seem to have similar taste in books have you read this one? How about this one?

71. you look like you need help and I’m a professional roller/ice skater but I don’t want you to feel bad about how much you suck but wow you suck

72. You ordered your food before me and they gave you a drink you didn’t want so you gave it to me

73. We’re sitting at adjacent computers in the library and I’m taking extra care not to look at your screen out of respect but what the fuck do you keep laughing at

74. as a joke I yelled out “happy birthday to someone!” in this store and you called back “thank you!” who are you

75. You heard me talking about a TV show in class the other day and now you’re passionately yelling at me about how good it is we’ve never actually spoken before

76. It’s 10:30 at night and I left my glasses at home so I can’t read any of these labels and you’re one of the only people in the grocery store and GODDAMMIT DO YOU HAVE ANY TOMATO SAUCE WITHOUT CHUNKS

77. We go to the same support group; I have social anxiety and you’re a kleptomaniac who sorta stole my heart

78. You thought you were alone at the bus stop so early in the morning so you started passionately singing Fall Out Boy but your Patrick Stump impression could use some work and I’m not really afraid to point that out

79. I’m an artist and you have a really nice face so would you mind if I drew you?

80. We’re rival up-and-coming singers and every time one of us releases a new single the other does a cover to try to make it better; we’re always trying to top each other and out-cute each other, but half our fans aggressively ship us; our agents use this to their advantage and decide we should do a duet because it’ll be popular; unfortunately now that we’re in the same studio and I’ve seen what you’re like I really wanna know what your lips feel like

81.PLEASE I REALLY CANNOT FIND MY CAT AND I KNOW IT’S THREE A.M. BUT NEIL CATRICK HARRIS AND I WOULD BOTH APPRECIATE THE HELP

82. We were both stood up for dates at the same nice restaurant so we decide to eat together and split the check but I dunno you’re pretty interesting aside from your distractingly enormous eyebrows

83. We met at a mutual friend’s cheesy masquerade party and we agree that the only good thing about this party is the masks so you can’t judge a book by its cover only now that we’ve been talking I want to see your face but I don’t know how to ask

84. You used to date my friend who absolutely hates your guts after a messy breakup and now you’re flirting with me and I really shouldn’t be so interested in you but I am

85.We pass each other every day while we’re biking on the same path so we’ve started smiling at each other and one day you’re stopped because you’re having an asthma attack so I offer you my extra water bottle and now we’re talking and now I’M the one who’s breathless

86.I lost my little sibling in IKEA and I need your help finding them

87.I'm a private detective hired to follow you, but you're endearingly boring and mostly I just like watching you and oops, I sort of find you adorable.

88. You've been sketching me for half an hour now, and just shuffled up to hand me the finished product and it's TERRIBLE but you just wanted an excuse to talk to me.

89. I'm at an art exhibit and I just badmouthed the art, because I don't get it, okay? And it turns out you're the artist. I'm so sorry, maybe I could get you coffee and you could explain what it was supposed to be?

90. We're the only two people who turned up to an underground gig and it should be awkward, but the band is amazing and you asked me to dance and hey, there's nobody watching but us.

91. You live in the apartment next to me. We're not supposed to have pets, but I KNOW you have a cat. I'll make you a deal, I won't tell, if you let me pet it.

92. I punched you because I thought you were insulting my friend, but it turns out you know each other and it was an inside joke and I'm so sorry, let me drive you to the hospital?

93. We both wanted to rent a bike for an hour but the only one they have is a tandem bike

94. I’m on a terrible date and you’re my waitor please help me

95.Our dick landlord just evicted us both

96.I’m your neighbor and I can hear you fucking someone who shares my name

97. You’re sort of famous and we vaguely know each other through bumping into each other all the time but the media thinks we’re dating

98. Your roommate cheated on me and I just threw your laptop out the window thinking it was his

99. It’s 2am on the night of my 21st birthday and we gotta fix this fucking mess by morning or else we’re fucked

100.Fuck you and your bee farm I’ve had enough

Feel free to use any of these as your own! If you wanna request you could drop an inbox saying ‘ could you do ____ AU with this character’!

#remus lupin x reader #sirius black x reader #james potter x reader #lily evans x reader #cedric diggory x reader #regulus black x reader #fred weasley x reader #george weasley x reader #hermione granger x reader

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jasperwhitcock · 5 years ago

Text

01. AN IMPOSSIBILITY

i stumbled upon a post you can read here from @bellasredchevy from like a year ago where she expanded on an au where bella & edward switch places where bella is a vampire in the cullen family and edward is a human. we’re all social distancing (or we all SHOULD be unless u have work so if ur out partying take ur ass home boo) so i had time to kill & i thought i’d write a chapter hehe.

It was an impossibility for me to have missed the presence of my adopted brother entering the room. What with my astute senses, my supernatural sensitivity to everything – the microscopic details of the book page’s porous beige paper, the length of his shadow stretching onto the floor beneath the novel in my hands, cast from the golden light of the hallway, the smooth, feathery finish of the paper under my frozen fingers, the whooshing sound of air caressing his mountainous stature as he appeared, the soft yet heavy thud of his feet against the floor – a sound nearly imperceptible, the impossible to place scent of something like bergamot, white cedar, rose, and sandalwood perfuming the room at his appearance. An impossibility, and yet, my focus was so invested in the words inked on the page, enamored with a story I’d read a hundred, a thousand, a million times, that I found myself shocked when the novel surprisingly ripped down the spine into two perfect halves before my eyes, another one of my novels that he had plucked off the shelf barreling towards my face. He had thrown the other book with such force that in the process of his attempt to grasp my attention, he knifehand-striked a book I had taken from my mother Renee’s sad little toilet-reading, bathroom basket collection of a library.

I was on my feet hunched towards him infinitesimally, the book that had been less than a centimeter from crashing into my face tenderly clutched in my right hand, my lips pulled back over my teeth to let out a snarl. The right half of the original novel I had held fell onto the floor with a thump a moment later. He stood crouched as well, a wicked smile spread on his lips, a mischievous glint in his eyes. He loved provocation – eliciting this kind of response in me fueled him. A fight with some authentic irritation, a fight with an edge.

“Time for school, baby sister,” He raised an eyebrow, inviting the challenge.

“Emmett,” I hissed through my teeth, tensed to launch myself at him. Part of my mind sifted through a dozen plans of attack, strategizing what would be my most successful method of taking him down since he was pretty much insurmountable. He had all the strength and all the size. Stealth would be my greatest chance. Another part of my mind pulsed with irritation, an irrational, furious mood swing sweeping over me. The kind of emotional response only our kind could experience...or handle. I nearly saw red as the rest of the words flew through my lips. “Couldn’t you have told me that without destroying a priceless artifact of my human life, big brother?”

I made the name sound like a curse word.

“Artifact?” Emmett snorted. “Please. How many times have you read that same damn story in the past few years? I did you a favor,” he smirked as he feigned right and left so fast that it was as if he hadn’t moved at all.

I tensed to hurl myself forward at the opportune moment before a tsunami tide of calmness washed over the room along with an earthy aroma of citrus, patchouli, musk, and leather. “We really should be leaving now,” my other adopted brother Jasper murmured in his lightly southern accent as he appeared.

“Restricting as it may be, vehicles only allow up to a certain speed, and Esme wouldn’t like for us to be late,” my tiny sister materialized by his side in a blur of porcelain skin and inky black hair. “Although, maybe she’d get a kick out of a call home for tardiness,” Alice laughed, a sound like windchimes. “I can tell you who would have won or you could have your fight later.”

“Ugh,” Emmett groaned in disappointment, dropping his stance. “It’s so hard to get her that riled up. Fuck!” He complained, grumpily disappearing from the room in a flash.

“Later,” He promised under his breath from the garage.

“You would have won,” Alice mouthed, her beautiful lips stretching into a secretive smile as she winked. She picked up the other half of the novel I had purposefully dropped to catch the meteor Emmet had propelled, tossing it in the air towards me in one fluid motion.

I grinned to myself, gently tucked the other book back into its rightful place on the shelf across the room, and caught the ruined piece before it hit the ground. My face immediately dropped into a frown as I analyzed both halves. Fortunately, Pride and Prejudice was not beyond repair. I could mend the division by sewing it back together down the spine later. I set the injured book down and flew downstairs not a moment later. As I passed my adopted mother on the way to the door, I pecked her on the cheek before exiting the house and sliding into the dark leather backseat of the pearly white car next to Alice. Without checking the mirrors, Rosalie sped out of the garage as soon as the door lifted enough for us to clear.

The trees outside the windows were a green haze as we flew by, our speed only decreasing when we arrived in the main part of town among other drivers. We could have ran to school much, much faster – and thus not had any concern about tardiness – but without our cars for appearance, our show might prove unconvincing. It wasn’t abnormal to walk to school in the unrelenting pouring of rain in our small town of Forks, Washington. However, though few people in town knew the location of our home, perhaps the front office ladies might find it concerning that a group of teenagers trekked a half marathon to their classes. It was unlikely they’d care to look up the address from our files, but we were never too cautious.

I liked running. I had been characterized as very clumsy in my human life, so it was a welcome change to feel graceful and coordinated. It was a welcome change to feel powerful. It was, however, unwelcome to participate in the daily charade of masquerading as exactly the opposite of that. As much as I had enjoyed my afterlife, I loathed the same thing many teenagers did, a hatred that may be my greatest commonality with the humans that surrounded me.

High school. I didn’t mind school prior to my immortal life. I had been decent and even above-average in most subjects. I had been a responsible, diligent, and quiet seventeen year old: I paid attention, I completed assignments in time, I spent most of my time in solitude which allowed me ample time to study. There were subjects I enjoyed far more than others that kept things interesting enough for me. Unfortunately, after a number of graduations, high school lost any potential interest and became something of a purgatory. Even classes like English lost their charm over time. Once you had spent years studying literature from the greatest professors, scholars, and writers both living and dead, it was immensely rare for a small town high school English teacher to offer a new take that would make my attendance worthwhile.

Attending high school provided us with the opportunity to remain in one place longer, so complain as much as I want, I suppose it’s something to fill the endless amounts of time. Still, that didn’t make the obligation any more tolerable.

Rosalie hummed along to a song playing quietly through the speakers while Emmett sulked in the passenger seat over having missed out on a fight. I smiled, a bit smug. On the other side of Alice occupying the middle seat, I sensed Jasper’s head jerk slightly in my direction to see the expression that reflected my slight change in mood. I shook my head, still smiling, and he smirked a bit himself before returning his attention back to his window. His scarred hand traced affectionate circles onto Alice’s hand in her lap, and she stared forward, her unfocused eyes seeing not what was in front of her, but the potential realities of the future.

They were a gifted couple. We become immensely enhanced when we’re transformed from being human, and as a result, some immortals are equipped with a special gift on top of their already unparalleled supernatural senses. Our creator and father figure Carlisle theorized that our strongest traits from our human life develop in even stronger ways once we’ve been changed. Jasper’s influential nature flourished into a skill of sensing and manipulating the emotional climate of those around him. Alice’s gift was even more unique. She could see into the future. We didn’t know what in her human life this had developed from. Her past is a secret to not only us, but Alice as well.

I too was gifted. For some time, we had no idea until I had met our cousins. In Denali, Alaska, there was another coven similar to us not just in kind but in diet and ideology who we considered extended family. Another commonality we share is that they also have gifted immortals among their coven. One of the only males, Eleazar’s, gift was sensing the abilities of other vampires, and he had detected my ability. He revealed, to all of our surprise, that I was something called a mental shield. It’s a talent of blocking out any powers that could invade my mind, and it is absolutely, entirely useless to me. I didn’t have a need for this kind of protection. My gift was a complete waste.

The drizzling rain was picking up into a steadier shower as we pulled into the small parking lot of Forks High School. Scenting the earthy, fresh stormy air was the tempting fragrance of the students’ pulsing blood as they ran for the dry cover of the maroon brick buildings. I was entirely satiated from my most recent hunt. Still, my throat burned with the slight dryness that would never completely go away. Jasper sighed.

There were only a few late stragglers hurrying from their vehicles towards their classes that could potentially see us, but as Rosalie parked, we moved at the frustratingly slow pace of the humans around us as a precaution. No risks. After exiting the car, Alice tossed me my backpack of useless school material from the trunk. I slid one strap over my shoulder and departed from my siblings for my first class.

The rest of the morning dragged along like a slow, drawn out sigh. I spent most of the time in my classes thinking of ways I could reorganize the book shelves in my room again. By genre, by author name, by theme, by year published, by year the story takes place, by favorite author, by alphabetical order of the location the story was set, by date of author’s death, by favorite to least favorite protagonist, by which accumulated the most pieces of literary criticism, by section that each family member might enjoy the most, by order in which I first read each, by order of which I read most to least, by order of which my family had read most to least, by alphabetical order of the antagonist’s name, and by which was least to most realistic were all ways I had structured my personal library in the past few years. I was toying with the idea of organizing by order of the birthday of the first character introduced, but a lot of the birthdays had not been established throughout the plot. I would have to decide where they would fit throughout the year based on which zodiac sign I might consider them to have depending on their character traits. Not that I held much stock in astrology – horoscopes did me no good when I had a future-telling sister.

The only difference in this day than any other day was that the trivial gossip I unintentionally overheard throughout the hallways concerned a new addition to the student body. This stirred up a lot of interest seeing as the majority of the children here knew each other for the entirety of their lives. What I had gathered in passing was that it was a junior boy named Edward Masen from Chicago who had recently moved from living abroad with his family. The girls were very excited – they considered him a very attractive potential new love interest. Attractive, though those who had been brave enough to speak to him found him to be impenetrable despite his charm. I wondered what the boy would make of me and my family.

I joined my siblings at our lunch table, the farthest table from everybody else in the room. In front of each of us was the prop of a lunch tray piled with unappetizing food. Alice sat, staring forward with empty eyes again, living in her own ever-changing reality. Jasper and Emmett made a hacky sack out of an apple and subtly kicked it back and forth in the air beneath the table, the apple moving too fast for human eyes to detect. Rose twirled a piece of her golden hair around in her hands, disinterested. Her thoughts were clearly elsewhere. As were all of ours. Occasionally she participated in their game by intercepting the apple with her foot.

“The new student’s going to ask about us in approximately fifteen seconds,” Alice chirped, her face returning to the present.

Emmett chuckled quietly.

“What will be said, and how will the boy respond?” Rosalie asked, her foot sending the apple reeling toward the ceiling.

Alice caught the apple in her slender, white hand before tossing it back to Emmett to end the game. “No different than anything else that’s been said, and no different than anybody else.”

I scanned the cafeteria to find the new student, so I could place a face to the upcoming conversation I’d be listening in on.

My eyes locked with a pair of soft green eyes set in a pale, angular face beneath an untidy mess of strange bronze hair. I looked away immediately but caught the beginning jolt of shock lighting up those surprisingly wise eyes.

“Who are they?” The boy gasped. So it had been my gaze that brought Alice’s vision to life. No doubt he’d immediately recognize the subtle differences that distinguish our kind from his. Emmett and I exchanged a glance, laughing under our breath as another junior student I recognized as Naomi Parker provided the common knowledge of the strange Cullen children. The story was complicated. In Forks, the explanation for our family was that Carlisle had adopted his twin niece and nephew, Rosalie and Jasper Hale, after the unexpected passing of his much older half-brother. Similarly, after a tragic car accident took the lives of Esme’s parents in addition to her aunt and uncle, she took in her younger siblings, Emmett and I, along with her niece Alice to look after us. Bonding over the shared experience of so much responsibility so young, Carlisle and Esme eloped, and we formed one giant, misshapen family.

Instinctively, I caught the apple in my hand just as it nearly turned into applesauce by means of collision with my stone face. I snarled at Emmett’s hysteric expression, hiding my hand from view so that anyone watching would have missed the entire catch. “Would you quit doing that today!?”

Rosalie shot Emmett a disapproving look. He shouldn’t be so irresponsible when we were clearly on display for the new Masen kid. I shot a minute glance towards his table to make sure they were no longer watching us. The boy seemed to be focused on the information he was receiving.

“This,” I snarled, sneakily disintegrating the apple into a pulp in my hand below the table where the humans couldn’t see, “will be what happens to you at home.” I made a show of letting the mush slide off my hand onto my tray.

My brother guffawed, and my other siblings joined in the laughter.

“In your dreams!”

I couldn’t help but laugh as well. I also couldn’t help but feel the intensity of watching eyes.

“Who’s the girl with the really long dark hair?” The soft, low voice of the boy asked quietly from across the room.

Reflexively, my eyes met his stare once again. He looked away quickly.

“That’s Bella. She’s insanely beautiful obviously, but if you’re thinking about trying to talk to her, forget it,” Naomi shrugged.

Once lunchtime was over, we disbanded to head off to the last half of yet another monotonous day. On my way out of the cafeteria, I purposely bumped into the trash can for Emmett’s benefit as he and Rose followed close behind. The action was a little more violent than I intended, and the plastic container bent slightly at the force.

“Oops,” I bit my lip to keep from smiling as he erupted into laughter. Upon our move to Forks, it had become something of a joke between Emmett and I for me to feign clumsiness. I didn’t participate in this joke daily, but every once in a while I’d sprinkle in an elaborate fall for his sake.

When I reached my junior level Biology class, I settled into my seat at the lab table I shared with no one. I laid the books devoid of any information relevant to me out on the table, and propped an elbow on the surface to hold my head up in my hand, awaiting the oncoming tedium.

The room filled as students returned from lunch. I paid them no attention, my eyes fixated on counting the snow-like particles of chalk dust floating in the air likely from Mr. Molina writing on the board prior to the end of lunch.

“Ah, welcome, Mr. Masen! We’re so glad to have you join us. You can take the seat next to Miss Cullen,” I looked up to find the biology teacher pointing in my direction. Next to him was the new boy. Standing up, he appeared very lanky – several inches taller than our teacher – though his physique was still slightly muscular.

I pulled the books closer to my side of the table to make room for him, feeling bad that he had the misfortune of being assigned the seat next to me. He would probably feel more comfortable anywhere else. Not only because I didn’t go out of my way to interact much with my classmates, but because their long-buried survival instincts told them what their brains didn’t totally understand: we were dangerous.

I had never been more dangerous than I was in that moment. Because after the Masen kid politely thanked the teacher, he turned down the aisle, directly in front of the heated airflow that blew towards me.

His scent washed over me like the most vicious, violent wave, a wall of unrelenting water in a heavy thunderstorm in the middle of the ocean, drowning me, taking me down, down, down, further and further away from the traces of humanity I had once clung to.

In every direction of this blackest of depths, there was no escape that could lead me back to the light; I resurfaced as the monster I pretended not to be.

The sweet enticing smell of Edward Masen’s blood compelled my throat to rupture into a burning, aching fire. I had never been ablaze with such need. My mouth was pooling with venom as my prey approached. Since he spoke, he had only taken another step forward. He would not take another.

As my muscles begged for the release that would send me springing forward, stealing the first life of my existence, those sage eyes glanced at me, widening in bewilderment at the vicious expression contorting my features.

With great difficulty, I emerged from my horrible, repulsive compulsion. The look on his face was enough to spare him another moment.

His scent perfumed the air around me; I was encompassed in this irresistable cloud of bloodlust, eager to leap up and put an end to this unexpected torture.

In all my years of immortality, I had never experienced a desire this overwhelming. I had never been so vulnerable to committing this kind of atrocity. My record was clean. With guidance, I had been able to restrain myself from the temptation of human blood. Of course, instinct is not easily fought. Sometimes the abstinence was painful. But never like this.

A dozen scenarios on how to kill this poor human boy crossed my mind, and I combatted every single one with the last miserable shred of self control I had left. I had never exerted so much effort. The toil was something hazily reminiscent of human exhaustion, weighing heavily onto me.

I had no choice but to end his life. There was no other way.

He awkwardly settled into the seat next to me, aware of some unknown hostility, but unaware of the ferocity raging within, unaware of the way his blood sang to me, inviting me in, inviting me to betray all my years of discipline, effort, and tolerance. Inviting me to betray my family.

Despite the absolute consumption, by some miracle, I resisted.

I desperately clung to the thought of my family. Rosalie. Esme. Carlisle. Alice. Emmett. Jasper.

They loved me. They would forgive me for this detestable, inexorable act. They would understand. They wouldn’t harbor any judgment.

But how could I let them down in this way? Everything about who we are, everything about what unites us and bonds us is intricately traced back to the compassion that rules over our lives. It’s what makes us different from others of our kind. It’s what allows us to retain some remnants of the humanity we’ve lost. So just as I’ve done before, I would withstand human blood now. No matter the agony that accompanies the resistance.

I took one last deep breath. The scent washed down my throat, burning me alive from the inside out.

I wouldn’t dare to breath for the next torturous hour. It was uncomfortable to forgo the sensation, but the consequences that would follow if I did breathe had far worse implications.

Could I last that long? What was I trying to prove? Was the possibility of a lapse in the best of my judgment worth not succumbing to the honest truth – that I had more weakness in the face of human blood than I thought?

Perhaps Emmett might make fun of me. Perhaps Jasper might secretly appreciate someone else struggling more than he did. But Carlisle and Esme wouldn’t see any weakness in leaving. They’d be proud of me for making this decision. They’d understand.

The last of the students were arriving from lunchtime. Now was the greatest opportunity to escape without drawing too much attention. In my peripheral, I saw the boy open his mouth to begin to speak to me.

If I didn’t leave now, I never would. My resolve was slipping away with every thud of the boy’s heart.

I got up and walked to the front of the classroom a little too fast.

“Mr. Molina?” I asked, my voice tight. The biology teacher looked up from a lesson plan he was reviewing, his eyes startled as he registered my face. I heard his heartbeat pick up from the surprise.

“I’m feeling a little... unwell. May I be excused?” I utilized the last of my breath, hoping the subtle begging in my voice didn’t prompt more questions.

Mr. Molina recollected himself, his eyebrows pulling together in slight concern along with confusion. The Cullens were never sick.

“Of course, Miss Cullen. Do you need a nurse’s pass-” He began before I cut him off, resentfully taking another tormenting breath. The scent sent my mind reeling. I fought for coherency in my thoughts.

I didn’t need to work to put on a show; I probably looked pale and sick enough.

“No thank you,” I spoke quickly, desperate for the relief of fresh, untainted air.

“Alright, then. I hope you feel better-” I was out of the room before he could finish the rest of the statement. The bell for class rang. The hallways were empty, so I risked the charade and began to move at an inhuman speed around the corner. Only when I had exited the building did I allow myself to breathe again. I gasped, nearly choking on the mouthfuls of clean air when I reached the car. My head was still spinning as I climbed into the drivers’ seat. I gave little thought to worrying if my quick movements in the classroom would reveal too much. I hoped that the students were too focused on finishing up their leftover conversations from lunch to notice.

With a jolt, I realized I was not alone in the car. In the passenger seat sat my tiny sister.

“Bella?” She asked, her pitch-black eyes unable to convey the concern that was etched on the rest of her pixie-like features.

“Alice,” I breathed. I had been so distracted with my own thoughts I hadn’t even paid any attention to the proximity of the familiar vanilla and jasmine fragrance of her skin. What was wrong with me today?

“Are you alright? I saw…”

I winced, knowing what she must have seen.

“I’m fine. I just… I-... I don’t know what happened…” The words flew rapidly out of my mouth.

“Do you need help? Should I grab the boys? Or would you like to leave-”

“No! No. It’s really not...a big deal. I’m just going to… I promise I’m fine. I won’t go back there-” I gulped, the venom filling my mouth as I even considered returning to the class where he sat. Alice’s eyes widened, so I stopped the thought in its tracks. “Rosalie has a free period right now. I think I’ll go find her. I’ll see you when school is over.”

I reached for the door, turning away from her, shame filling me, making me unwilling to face her any longer. Her slender hand grabbed my other wrist, pulling me to a stop. “I’ll come with you.”

“Don’t. I’m fine, Alice!” I pulled my hand away too defensively. Regret replaced the shame for a moment. “Sorry.”

I left her alone in the car, feeling guilty.

I knew it was risky to utilize my sense of smell, but following the sweet, warm aroma of orange blossom, marshmallow, and roses – and avoiding anywhere remotely near the science wing – I found my other sister alone in an empty classroom. Now that it had been distinguished from the rest, I could still smell the boy, but with more distance between us, I fought the temptation off.

“You’re not in class?” She asked as she typed into a computer, her back turned to me. It looked as though she was searching for some car parts. Even though I helped her in the garage sometimes, after all these years I was still no better at identifying anything related to automobiles.

“Rose...” I began, before stopping short, unsure of what to say.

She turned around in an indiscernible millisecond, her breathtaking face worried at the tone of my voice. “What’s wrong?”

She reached for me consolingly. Though I didn’t need the rest – I could stand still for hours on end and never feel tired – I sat on the floor beside her chair, hugging my knees to my chest, my eyes fixated on the dust deep in the roots of the rough, outdated carpet.

Her silky hands smoothly brushed through my hair, patiently waiting for me to build up the courage to speak. It felt nice.

After a few seconds, she spoke up. “Bella, you’re worrying me.”

I sighed.

“I’ve never...struggled this way before,” I admitted, exasperated with myself.

I could see that she was nodding out of the corner of my eye, immediately understanding. “That’s nothing to be ashamed about, Bella.”

I didn’t need to see her face to know her perfect lips were set into a deep frown. She wasn’t lying to me, but I knew to her, this existence was everything to be ashamed about.

“I won’t pretend that I don’t find myself...repulsed with...well, what we are. That’s no secret to anyone.” Her musical laughter had a dark edge to it. “But I’ve spent enough time for all of us hating myself for the impulses we have and the tragedy of our existence. You needn’t be so hard on yourself. It’s alright to...” She trailed off, selecting different words. “We’ve chosen an abnormal path in this non-life of ours. The terrible consequences of what we are are normal” – her hands froze in my hair briefly saying the word – “so try to let go of the shame I know you’re feeling, though I don’t blame you for feeling that way.”

She paused for a moment before adding, “you know we won’t allow you to harm anyone.”

I bit down on my lower lip. I was glad I came to Rosalie. She didn’t think I was being overdramatic the way Emmett might have.

Though I deeply loved my mother from my human life, there hadn’t been much maternal guidance. We had a strong bond, but I was far more of the caretaker than she was. I had been very lucky in this immortal life. Esme treated me as her own daughter, and I became truly taken care of. Just as Esme became the most loving mother figure in all the ways that counted, Rosalie became the very best protective older sister. My life had no shortage of supportive femininity and womanhood.

I heard a springy, featherlight approach of fast footsteps.

“I told you not to follow me,” I grumbled.

Alice poked her tongue out at me as she entered the room and fluttered to my other side, joining my other sister in stroking my head. “You’ll forgive me. I didn’t want to be left out of a sister moment.”

Her words brought half a smile to my face.

I closed my eyes, allowing myself to be comforted by Rosalie’s words and the soft feeling of my sisters’ hands in my hair.

Yes, it was undeniable what I was. I could never change the fact. But I could change the fate of this boy, and I could deny myself the instincts that identified me this way. I could deny myself Edward Masen.

#twilight au #twilight fanfiction #twilight renaissance #the twilight saga #twilight saga #edward cullen #bella swan #new moon #eclipse #breaking dawn #jasperwhitcock #equinoxjw

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stereksecretsanta · 4 years ago

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Merry Christmas, a-wolf-and-his-boy!

For @a-wolf-and-his-boy. I hope you enjoy this work, I had fun writing it.

Read On AO3

*****

A Summer Night's Ball

Chapter 1 - The Ball and Garden

“Come on, Stiles. Everybody is going to be there and who knows, you might run into your mate!” Scott said. He was (unsuccessfully) trying to tug Stiles from his bed without ripping any blankets. “Sitting in a ball of misery isn’t going to help things. So Lydia isn’t the one for you, so what? You’ll find someone just as good.”

Stiles poked his head out of the cocoon of blankets he’d made to say, “Scott, there’s not going to be anyone as good as Lydia and I’m probably doomed to be alone for the rest of my very short life. Just because you met your mate at the masquerade ball doesn’t mean I’ll meet mine. Why is that even still a thing? There are better ways to meet people than dancing with a bunch of masked strangers that you’ll never see again.”

Scott made a grab for Stiles’ head, getting a handful of hair before Stiles could retreat back into his cocoon. “It’s the biggest event in the country and plenty of people go to see if they might find their mate.” Scott grew claws on the hand not holding Stiles and slowly brought it closer to the chunk of hair in his grasp. “So get out of bed or you’ll be getting a new haircut this minute.”

“Don’t mess with the hair, dude!” Stiles tried to toss the covers off, knocking Scott off-balance who ended up falling on top of him.

“No crushing the Stiles either. Get off of me.” Stiles shoved Scott to the side, who ended up on the floor given how small the bed was. Stiles got up and reached for his closet doors only for Scott to stop him.

“Dude, my mom and your dad got something for you to wear to it so go to the bathroom and change into the clothes hanging in there and then we can go.” Scott turned Stiles around and shoved him out of his bedroom. Stiles mumbled as he walked to the bathroom about the traitor keeping him out of his own kingdom, got in and saw a full suit hanging. Never had Stiles felt so betrayed since that time in school when Scott refused to watch Star Wars with him, only to end up watching it with Allison later that year. After changing into the uncomfortable outfit, Stiles got out and saw Scott in a similar suit, though thankfully not matching like a couple. Both of them were wearing half-masks covering only the upper half of their faces, one of the more traditional choices. The bright red mask Stiles wore was slightly less traditional but he’d already given in to wearing appropriate clothes, he wasn’t going to wear a boring white mask too. He’d worn it to every ball and he wasn’t going to break that streak for anyone, luckily it looked like their parents knew that since the mask matched with his suit.

“Well, let’s get going. Sooner I’m done with this, sooner I can go back to my den of despair, misery and hopeless pining.” Stiles said.

“That’s the spirit! Who knows, I still think you might meet someone.” Scott said.

“And that’s why I have you, a ball of infinite optimism and sunshine.” Stiles said. The pair got into Stiles’ old beaten jeep and went to the old castle near the center of Beacon Hills. The country’s royal family lived elsewhere (nobody sure where the Hales currently lived after their last home burned down. Luckily, none of them were hurt.) but the castle itself was still used for major events like the Annual Ball that happened in the summer on the solstice. Being a spark, Stiles knew it was one of the major days of performing magic and the ball was originally a ritualistic event performed by the community to shelter them from anything evil. Nowadays, there were quicker, easier and safer methods so the ritual itself had stopped but the gatherings took on a new purpose. They were a chance for people to get together and possibly meet their mate or let people gossip about the latest incident or talk business. It was a day devoted to love according to the romantics like Scott or business to the less romantic like Stiles.

They pulled into the designated parking lot, almost full because it had taken Scott a long time to drag Stiles out so the pair were late since it started at six pm and it was close to eight and sunset. Stiles was feeling a little jitterier than normal, his spark was acting up a little but he put it down to what always happened at this event. It wasn’t like that last year when part of the Hale family didn’t show up but that was a coincidence as far as Stiles was concerned. After walking past the security, they entered the crowded ballroom.

“I’m supposed to meet Allison near the refreshments table so I’ll be heading on over. Go socialize a little, maybe dance a bit. My mom should be floating around if you are really bored but I think she finally got your dad off for one of these things and invited him.” Scott said.

“Dude, you should’ve told me that earlier and I would’ve come without a fight!” Stiles said. He gestured a little too strongly and almost hit a woman next to the pair. She glared at him and walked away so he turned back to Scott. “We’ve been trying to get them together for ages now, I thought it was agreed we tell each other any developments pronto.”

“I thought you already knew! You always seem to know everything before I find out so I thought you knew about them coming together too. Look on the bright side, we might be brothers soon!” Scott held his hand out with Stiles giving him a high five. Scott turned and his face took on a dopey grin.

“Guess I can’t bother Melissa then. She’d kill me if I ruined her chance.” Stiles noticed Scott was no longer paying attention to him. He shoved Scott and said, “Go on, I know where your mind is.”

“Thanks, Stiles. I’ll see you in a couple hours. My mom said we could be out as late as we want so don’t expect me to ride back with you.” Scott blurted out and then took off running, knocking a couple people over in his rush to get to his mate. Stiles shook his head and walked the opposite direction, the band switching over from the high-paced song they had been playing when the pair walked in to something slower. Stiles spotted his dad and Scott’s mom on the dance floor, swaying to the song, his dad in a similar suit to him and Scott while Melissa was in a matching dress. It was obvious they have been planning this for some time now and Stiles was pretty disappointed he hadn’t seen this before Scott.

The area near the dance floor was crowded as can be, a mix of people leaving the floor and trying to get on causing a traffic jam with no end in sight so Stiles gave up on dancing after trying for a few minutes. Spotting an exit nearby, Stiles took it to get some fresh air and maybe see what else he could see in the castle. While it was generally open to the public, there were still some parts that were off limits that he might be able to see this time around, even though he’d tried last year and failed so badly his dad had to bail him out. The exit he took led to a hallway he’d been in before, with less guards around to block him from snooping luckily. He peaked in a few doors only to see empty rooms with no furniture. Some had obvious cobwebs in the doorways and dust stir after he opened the door so that was a major disappointment for Stiles. He’d been hoping for something interesting given he was never allowed in but the rooms were filled with nothing after nothing after nothing.

His last hope for anything of interest was the last door at the end of the hall. With a quick charm, he was able to unlock the door and exit into what must have been a garden. He hung his jacket from a nearby tree branch and placed his mask on top of it, glad for some cool air after being inside the hot room. Most of the gardens were open to the public so he figured he’d probably seen this place before during daytime. He turned to leave until he noticed the large white wolf statue in the center straight ahead on the path from the door. That was something he had never seen before. Stiles approached the statue, noticing that the fur was extremely detailed, every strand was lovingly carved. The wolf was posed as if to threaten any intruders, teeth bared as if in anger.

He was almost to the statue when he heard a growl which he jumped and thought came from the statue itself until he heard it again. Turning around, he saw a large black wolf, eyes glowing a haunting yellow, staring right at him and felt a shock at the sight from his spark. He froze and saw the wolf do the same before it took a deep breath and softly whined at him. Stiles had no clue what to do about the obvious werewolf and stood still, slightly trembling. The wolf crouched down and approached him, Stiles wanted to back away but doing that now would be a giant mistake. He had to hope that the wolf wouldn’t do anything to him for obviously trespassing on Hale property.

“Nice sourwolf. No need to get violent. I can go back to the party and we can forget I ever did something this stupid, okay?” Stiles held his hands up in surrender. The wolf was almost to him, still taking what he thought looked like a submissive stance, before it reached him and shoved its nose up against him and loudly breathed in. “Whoa there, don’t you think that’s a little too personal? Buy a guy lunch before you start sniffing him like that at least.”

The wolf rolled its eyes before it gently grabbed his vest and tugged him away from the statue and away from the door he had come from. He followed along since he didn’t have much choice, ending up approaching a small bench that was hidden further into the garden. He saw a basket full of clothes next to a small bump on that side of the bench but ignored it as the wolf shoved him at the bench. He flailed for a moment before landing on the bench, mostly upright. “Hey, be gentle! You could have nudged me and I’d have sat down.” The wolf turned, grabbed the basket by the handle with its mouth and walked behind a bush. “Oh, so that’s for you to change back. Might actually get to talk to the man behind the wolf, huh? Don’t take too long.”

A couple branches shifted and one cracked loudly while he waited, probably the wolf turning back into human form while crouched down, Stiles guessed. A hoarse masculine voice said, “You aren’t in trouble for coming back here. I didn’t expect to find my mate here but I’m glad to see the white wolf is still looking out for my family.”

The man came out fully only in a shirt and jeans, eyes no longer glowing a bright gold. It was hard to tell what his looks were from how late it was getting until the man walked right by Stiles and pressed something on the other side of the bench and lights sprang to life in the garden. The gentle glow illuminated all the flowers, breathtaking in how they were arranged like rays of the sun coming from the center where the wolf statue was vaguely seen from where they were.

Stiles looked the man over, his shirt was tight against muscles he’d love to see, stubble he’d love to rub his face against but the eyes were the man’s best feature. They sparkled in the light, flecks of gold and possibly other colors glittering within. His admiration of the man’s perfect body halted when he registered what he said. “What do you mean, mate?”

“Can’t you feel the bond? I knew from your scent you were my mate. I have been catching your scent at these things for years, today was the first time I’ve seen you. I never expected my mate to be the local sheriff’s son.”

“And who are you? You’re obviously a werewolf, you are allowed back here and are an unmated man so you have to be a Hale but there are a couple it could be.”

“Derek Hale.” Derek stepped forward, hand out for Stiles to grab. “Grab my hand and you should recognize the pull if you haven’t already.

Stiles looked at him, eyes slightly squinted, before grabbing Derek’s hand and felt his spark leap out of his skin, reaching deep inside the werewolf to embrace Derek, both man and wolf. Stiles lost his footing but Derek pulled him close, holding him steady against his chest.

“Now do you feel it?” Derek said.

“Yeah.” Stiles breathed out. It took a couple moments for him to steady himself but he didn’t leave Derek’s embrace. “So what do we do next?”

“I was hoping you can come meet my family, they’ll be thrilled to see I’ve found my mate. It will have to be after the ball ends, could I convince you to stay until then?”

“I think that can be arranged.” Stiles said, pulling Derek down to sit next to him on the bench. “Why don’t we sit here and get to know each other a little before you drag me in front of your family.”

“Deal.” Derek said. “But can I have a kiss first so we can seal the deal? I’d rather do that here under the stars, in the garden, with nobody around to see.”

“Fine with me, dude.” Stiles said.

“Don’t call me dude.” Derek said.

“I’ll call you dude if I want, sourwolf. Guess you’ll have to shut me-” Stiles said before Derek interrupted by kissing him, slightly too forceful and at an awkward angle that soon changed to something much more enjoyable.

Derek pulled away and said, “Good to know that works.” He kissed Stiles again, the garden hiding the pair from other eyes while they found ways to entertain themselves while waiting for the party to end.

TBC On AO3!

#a-wolf-and-his-boy #stereksanta20 #*fic20 #*gifts20

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knittingdreams · 4 years ago

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Fireheart - Chapter 25

Sorry it took me so long to upload! I might have kind of forgotten my password and not logged in for weeks, oops! But I’m back! :D

Materlist / Ao3

Tiny tag list: @tillyrubes10 :) [Drop a comment if you want to be added]

I don't think any TW apply for this one, no more than my usual foul language that you should know by now!

New characters showing up!! This one was an exciting one to write! :D

CHAPTER 25

Hacking triplets

“Sam, did you find what I asked for?”

“Well, hello, how are you doing? I’m fine, thanks for asking,” Sam’s witty reply came from the other side of the line.

“Cortland, come on, I have no time for your games, did you find me someone or not?”

Celaena typed on her laptop furiously while she listened to Sam on the cell, still trying to enter Dorian’s computer even if she knew all her attempts were futile.

“I did. I found a team. It’s all pretty secretive, I’m sending you a link, and you’ll just have to follow the instructions.”

“Thanks.”

Celaena hung up the phone and threw it onto the bed while she opened up her conversation with Sam on the computer screen. Right after returning from the masquerade with Dorian last weekend, she had tried to access his father’s computer to download the guest list, but to her surprise, she was out of the system.

She had gone into that computer so many times, that when she found herself out, she was confused at first. That confusion quickly turned into anger. Celaena attempted every trick she knew, and still, every time she tried to access the computer on the top floor, she was kicked out. It was as if someone was actively getting her out of it every single time. No matter how much Celaena knew about computers, she was no expert. She knew enough to get by, but there was nothing else she could do, and that infuriated her.

She hated to admit it, but she needed a real expert.

Not trusting Arobynn anymore after seeing him at the gala with whom she potentially thought could be her aunt, she was now on her own. She didn’t know any hackers in town that weren’t in some way tangled with Arobynn already, and that’s when she thought of asking Sam for help.

Adarlan Elite High was a big school, one full of rich people with lots of things to hide, lots of things to protect. She knew if Sam asked around, he’d be able to find someone. After all, Sam’s goal in the last two months had been getting to know everybody and making acquaintances. If he couldn’t be of help finding her a hacker, then what was the point of it all?

Finally opening up the link that Sam sent her, Celaena scratched her brow. The link seemed to download a ghost program onto her computer and then led her to a page with encrypted bank details. Sam had explained that the address of the place she had to go to wouldn’t be given to her until a deposit was made. Enough to cover a basic fee, and the rest of the payment would be done after the job was finished.

The prices were high, but Celaena couldn’t be worrying about money now, not if it meant she could get a real lead. For years, she had had the hunch that her aunt might have been involved with her parent’s accident somehow, but she had always tried to ignore those feelings, telling herself that Maeve had been the one to look after her every time her parents went over on business trips, the one to buy her presents for every birthday, and the one that had organized a beautiful ceremony after her parent’s death; one that she had only heard about from third parties and a lot of research.

She didn’t want to believe her own family would have betrayed her, but after looking into Dorian’s computer for weeks and weeks, she was almost certain his company had had nothing to do with the accident. And getting to know Dorian Jr. now, she had to admit he wasn’t half as bad as she had expected.

Celaena got up from the bed and headed to her dresser after making the transfer. She pulled out her leather jacket, changed her shoes to her laced-up boots, and grabbed the bike’s helmet from the top of the night table.

It was time to go for a ride and find herself some hackers.

Celaena rode the elevator to the basement and jumped on her bike, setting up the coordinates that were sent to her by transferring the link straight into her GPS system. The location seemed to be close to the docks, and not being overly surprised by it, she rode out. She left the crowded part of the city behind in no time, turning towards the cliffs on the outskirts. She was almost to the docks when the GPS made a beeping noise, and the coordinates changed all of a sudden, telling her to do a U-turn.

“Sweet trick,” she chuckled to herself.

She turned around at the end of the road, and followed back on her tracks, returning the way she came. Once she was almost into the city limits, she got this weird feeling in the back of her neck. Looking through the rearview mirror, she got a glimpse of a bike behind her, but when she looked back, it was gone. She drove fast for another five minutes, following the directions until she was about five blocks from her destination. She slowed down, and as soon she was two blocks away, the location changed again. She looked over her shoulder and got a glimpse of a shadow behind her.

It wasn’t too dark yet, the sun only just reaching the horizon, but the tall buildings on that side of the town made the roads dark enough for her to struggle to figure out if there was someone behind her, or if she was being overly paranoid.

The location changed place three more times before she finally got to the end of a quiet road, and the GPS signaled for her to go down an extremely narrow alley in between two buildings. She parked up on the street, jumped down, and put her helmet away in the compartment under the seat. Looking behind her once more, the road was deserted.

Maybe she was indeed paranoid, or maybe the hackers had someone trailing her to make sure she wasn’t being followed by anybody else. Every single hacker she knew was over-suspicious and certainly odd.

Celaena walked all the way to the end of the alley, and a message arrived on her phone, indicating to knock three times on the metal door with a triangle drawn on it. There were three doors at the end, all the same except for the faint triangle scraped into the metal of the middle one. It was rough, and it could have been mistaken for senseless scrapings if she hadn’t been looking for the triangular shape.

She knocked three times and waited.

The door creaked open an inch, and a pair of black eyes looked at her from the dim interior.

“Who’s this?”

“Deposit 45986, my reference is Fireheart,” Celaena replied, stating the number of her deposit and the name she chose to use as code.

“Coded word?” The voice coming from inside was definitely female and sounded fairly young.

“Dolphin,” she replied, repeating the word that was texted to her only a few seconds ago.

“Come in.”

The door opened another few inches, and Celaena walked in, the door slamming shut behind her. It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the dim interior, and when they did, she found herself in a long and narrow corridor, the woman already walking away in front of her. Adjusting her leather jacket, Celaena followed.

They looked to be almost the same height, and the lady was wearing all black clothes, barely visible in the darkness. They reached an elevator at the end of the hall, and the doors opened automatically to show a small round lift with mirrors all around.

As they stepped in, Celaena got a better look at her escort and was surprised to find she only looked a few years older than herself. Her hair was as dark as her eyes, and it was long and straight, getting almost to her waist. She smelled faintly of tobacco, and her face was set on a hard unmovable expression. She almost looked bored.

A sepulchral silence surrounded them as they went down, and down, and down. It took longer than expected till the doors finally opened up again to reveal a small room, illuminated by a single yellow-ish light. There was another girl there, sitting at a small desk with a computer, and Celaena had to look back and forth to make sure she wasn’t imagining things. The girl at the desk looked exactly the same as the one by her side, the only difference being that her hair was light-blond instead of midnight black.

“This is how things work around here,” the blond said, pointing to a little scanner on the table. “We trade in secrets. Before you can step into the den, you need to scan your fingerprint here.” She pointed at the small scanner, a humorless smile on her lips. “We will share all our secrets with you, in exchange for all of yours.”

Celaena doubted for a minute, her fingers tapping the side of her thigh furiously as she thought about what to do. She needed to find out what was going on with her aunt, and maybe these girls checking up on her would be an effective test to see how good they were at their job. There was no registry of Aelin after she was about 8 years old, and all her records as Celaena were fake and not linked to her digits whatsoever. She was a ghost, a dead girl, there was nothing for her to fear.

She convinced herself that it was alright, that she could do this, and taking one step forward, she pressed her finger against the scanner.

A red light blinked under her finger, and then the blond indicated for her to do the index from her other hand too. The red light blinked again, and then Celaena looked into the blond girl’s eyes, her irises moving back and forth as she read information from the screen in front of her, her fingers flying over the keyboard at a speed Celaena had never seen before.

“Well, well,” the blond said after the longest minute in Celaena’s life. “Welcome to our den, Aelin Ashryver Galathynius,” she said, standing up and opening the metal door behind her.

Celaena’s shock from hearing someone other than Sam use her real name for so long was almost overrun by the sight of the room in front of her. She took a step in, following the blond, with the twin right behind her heels.

The room was huge, with high ceilings full of hanging light bulbs in all sizes and shapes. The walls had led lights on every side, making the room bright but pleasant to the eyes at the same time. Right in the middle, three huge desks were forming a triangle, one of the edges pointing to the door, so the desk on the back was mostly covered from sight from where Celaena was standing. The two desks she could see had the biggest screens Celaena had ever seen, and they were covered in all kinds of machines with lights blinking all over the place.

Against the wall on the right, there were several pinball machines, and to the left, there was a set of couches with three flat-screen TVs attached to the wall, and massive shelves full of movies and books to each side of them.

As Celaena took in the place with her jaw hanging a little open, a third figure stood up from the desk on the back, and the twins standing to each side of her smiled wickedly, nodding as a way of greeting.

“Sisters,” the new girl said, stepping from behind the desk and walking around until she was right in front of Celaena. “I see you’ve brought our newest client.”

Blinking again and feeling dumbfounded, Celaena extended a hand toward her. She had been mistaken to think the girls were twins; even if the one standing now in front of her had golden eyes instead of black, and her hair was of the most radiant silver, there was no doubt to her that these girls were triplets. They looked like printed copies in different colors.

“I’m Manon,” the silver-haired one said, taking the hand Celaena was offering. “My sister here is Asterin,” she pointed to the blond girl, “and this is Sorrel,” she added as she pointed to the dark-haired one. “And we welcome you to the Blackbeak den,” she gestured theatrically to the room and then headed towards the couches, the other two girls following behind her.

Feeling a little out of place, Celaena grabbed a seat.

“What can we do for you, Aelin?”

She swallowed hard, her neck feeling clammy with sweat, her heartbeat going wild inside her chest. Hearing her name again after so long, was a strange feeling. She tried to picture Sam by the coast, telling her she could be whoever she wanted to be, telling her she was indeed all three. Celaena, Aelin, and Fireheart. She looked at each of the triplets, holding their gaze, reading their eyes. They all seemed composed, wickedly serious, but trustworthy, even if Celaena wasn’t one to trust anybody. But maybe… Maybe Aelin could trust. No one had known who she was before, and if these girls had found out in a matter of minutes, then she had to believe they could help her with her parents’ case. And if that trust was broken, well… Then Fireheart could always take matters into her own hands: literally.

She took one last deep breath, cracked her knuckles, and then proceeded to explain what she needed.

“Should be easy enough,” Asterin said after she had finished talking.

“We don’t jump to conclusions, Asterin,” Manon corrected. “When do you need this information?”

“As soon as possible. Once you have the list, and if I find what I’m looking for in it, I’d like to do a full investigation on the person we find.”

“Good. Let us work, we’ll contact you as soon as we have anything,” Sorrel explained.

“No questions asked,” Asterin added as if finishing her sister’s sentence. “That’s our policy.”

“Your secret is safe with us,” Mannon filled in, a stoic look on her face, “as long as you don’t cross us. A single word about who we are, and we’ll know. One word out of your mouth about this place, and your life will be turned upside down, your every secret spilled like blood draining from a freshly open wound. Understood?”

Standing up and squaring her shoulders, Celeana nodded. “I understand. I don’t go around spilling secrets, only blood,” she winked at the silver-haired girl, who snarled back at her.

“Let’s hope neither is spilled in here,” Asterin added, a sweet smile on her lips that made her look somehow lethal.

By the time Celaena jumped back into her bike, her heart was still racing. Having someone know about her identity was not on her plans, and she hoped it better be worth it.

Here’s Manon for you <3

#fireheart #throne of glass fanfic #fanfiction #tog #tog fandom #tog fanfic #celaena #sam cortland #rowan #rowaelin #manon

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eldweena · 4 years ago

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So...road trip this weekend. This is pretty absurd, but we don’t really have used bookstores here... We have a Books-A-Million at the mall, which dabbles in used books but just barely, and a nerdy store called The Inner Geek that has some books but mostly vintage toys and tabletop gaming gear. And I heard someone opened a book café, but it’s on the far end of town and the online photos made it look more café and less book. (Maybe it’s BYOB, bring-your-own-book?) ANYWAY. Point being. When we want to brose a *good* used bookstore - which I often do, because I love out-of-print classic fantasy novels - we have to leave the state. So Saturday we drove two hours to Lexington because they have a couple Half Price Books stores. And after a full year of not leaving town due to COVID, we had like 7 bags full of books, CDs, video games, and DVDs to sell. Everything went great at the first store. We got there shortly after they opened at 10:00 am and there were signs posted everywhere saying one person per aisle. They had a sign on the door, and also called over the intercom, that your mask must cover your NOSE as well as your mouth. They’re taking the pandemic seriously and holding customers accountable! I was very pleased. We got $50 for half our sell-backs and found a lot of great buys, too. Then we had lunch at Schlotzky’s. I didn’t mean to take her picture, but in the background you can see a masked woman. She brought a book into the restaurant to read and it made my heart feel happy! After lunch we found an Asian market and my wife stocked up on sweets and drinks. Then we headed to the second HPB, and that’s where we somehow picked up a stalker. This store was a different experience entirely. This time we only got $30 for our remaining sell-backs (we split the selling into two trips so we wouldn’t have to be running back and forth between the store and the car in one go), and while the signage was the same, nobody was adhering. We were looking at science fiction paperbacks and a tall man talking loudly on his phone kept stepping closer to me until he literally brushed my arm. He wasn’t even looking at books - he was on the phone. I pointedly stomped around the other side of our cart to get away from him and while he didn’t stutter in his phone conversation, he did go away. I was about ready to make a scene with a loud, “EXCUSE ME - SIX FEET!” My god!!! People piss me off. Then we went to look at some gaming books because my wife found some old White Wolf manuals and we kind of collect them. (I did LARP Vampire: the Masquerade and MAGE briefly, but mostly I keep them for writing inspiration because the worldbuilding is just fascinating...) This time a young male kept inching his way closer while we were examining the two books they had. (The MAGE manual was brand new, velvet-lined, purple, and pristine. Also $60, so I passed. The Camarilla book was an older edition of the one I have, and the pages were pretty filthy, so I also passed.) I thought initially the guy wanted to look at the gaming books because - I say this only because he had glasses and unkempt hair - he looked like a nerd. Turns out, that was not the case. I caught the same guy staring at us as we moved to another section of the store, where he suddenly also happened to be. My wife went into the young adult alcove and was quickly swarmed by three girls. I couldn’t even get into the crowded aisle (again, the limit was supposed to be one person!) so I went to another shelf to look at true crime. I checked the YA books a couple more times, waiting for it to clear out some. And the guy was hanging around a corner. Not even alone, he was with a girl and I think another guy. By then I was feeling annoyed. I had a fucking mask on, so I knew he wasn’t really looking at my face??? We then looked at middle grade because I’m always on the lookout for Donna Jo Napoli, and that’s where they stick her, and i SAW The SAME GUY! He was never actually looking at books. He was always just standing there, looking out of place and hella awkward, never alone but with the same two people, but he was always looking at us. I wasn’t sure if my wife had noticed so I said, “Let’s get the fuck outta here. I’m tired of that guy staring at us.” She hadn’t noticed, but loudly proclaimed, “Where is he? I’ll stare right back?” I just said again, “Let’s get the fuck out of here.” We took our cart of books (yep, found some more) up to the registers. AND THAT MOTHERFUCKER FOLLOWED US. He like...jumped in line behind us, took a sliding leap. He was holding some things so I was like...well, I guess he could be checking out at the same time as us, coincidentally...??? But this time he was without his companions. So we started checking out and I whisper-hissed to my wife, “That’s--” and she said, “I know.” Then, loudly, she said how rude it was for people to stare. Our cashier said something (I’m hard of hearing so I don’t know what he said; my wife said he told her something like, “I understand, I’m sorry that happened to you”), then the other cashier, who I thought was checking that stalker-boy out, held up a flower book and asked, “Is this yours?” We were like...uh....no...and went about our business. After we checked out I grabbed our bags and was trying to like, run for the door. He’d only had like two things in his hands when I saw him scurry into line, and I was scared he’d try and follow us. I’m one of those people who fumbles and drops things and typos and gets all sorts of clumsy when I try to hurry, so it took twice as long as it should have. Finally we got out the door and I kept whisper-hissing to my wife, let’s hurry to the car. And she was like, no, if he follows us I’m going to tell him to fuck off! We got to the car and loaded up our books as fast as possible, and I just wanted the hell out of that parking lot, but my wife was like, no, there’s a trash can beside the store entrance and I’m dumping our garbage. I didn’t want to hesitate or linger, but despite her insistence that she could do it alone, I went with her. That guy gave me a really bad feeling. He could have been a harmless staring-type of creeper, but regardless, I wasn’t about to let her find out on her own. We went back to the store, and as she dumped our trash my wife said that guy was still in the store, fucking staring at us through the window. When they made eye contact, he ducked away from the corner and went down an aisle. I felt shaky for almost an hour after that, until we were headed out of Lexington and absorbed in an audiobook. I don’t feel like it was all harmless coincidence. How many times can you run into the same person in a store, even a small one? Why was he even there, if he wasn’t interested in books? I’m not sure if he even bought anything, or did he hand that flower book to “his” cashier and try to get her to give it to us as a creepy gift from him? Like, I don’t even know what was up with that flower book. We weren’t even at that end of the counter. We also considered that he might have gotten it into his head that we were shoplifting. I don’t know what would have given him that impression, other than perhaps the fact that I kept taking my cell phone out of my hoodie pocket and tucking it back, as I was comparing prices online versus the store, as I always do... I did see him lean over the counter and talk to the cashiers as we were leaving, and I thought at the time, is he complaining about us? Did he think we were stealing??? Which we weren’t, nor were we behaving suspiciously in any way. And, if he had thought that, why hadn’t he reported us the first or second times we bumped into each other, instead of waiting until seeing us check out and then jumping into line behind us? I mean, WTF. My best guess was that he perceived two girls looking at gaming books and got nerdily excited. But he didn’t try and start a conversation, he just. kept. staring. Men, don’t do this, ever. Women have enough shit to worry about without you stalking them, even by accident, in a fucking store.

#stalking #creepers #road trip #bookstores #asian markets

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phantomphangphucker · 5 years ago

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Ectober Week Day 7: Masquerade/Laboratory - This Is Not In Vain Chap.1: Familial In Vein

The weirdest things always happen to Danny. This time, apparently, his ectoplasm is sentient.

Danny walks down into the basement only to just seemingly get struck by two massive bolts of electricity. Promptly passing out on the floor.

Jack and Maddie only had a second to gape as the new invention both of them were fiddling with flat-out attacked Danny. Both passing out right after.

They come to before Danny, firmly confused by not being able to move their bodies....no, body actually.

Maddie: ‘what’s going on? Why does this body hurt and ache so much?’.

Jack: ‘not sure Mads, you sound like your bouncing around in my head’.

Maddie: ‘yours as well. I think, we were both holding the device right? Before it zapped Danny?’.

Jack: ‘yes, yes we were. But then. No that shouldn’t work? Danny-boy’s no ghost’.

Maddie: ‘he has ectoplasm in him Jack. That’s probably enough. But why does his body feel like this? It’s like he’s covered in tender bruising’.

Jack: ‘so we, are in, Danny’s body then? Since the SOS, Shadow Over Shadow, was supposed to let humans overshadow ghosts? And I don’t know Mads, maybe he was working out?’.

Maddie: ‘I think we are. But since Danny isn’t actually a ghost, I’m pretty sure it worked wrong’.

Jack: ‘of course! We must just be overshadowing the ectoplasm to a degree’.

Maddie: ‘then maybe...’.

Maddie tries moving but more fluid, tense up, and like muscles under-skin, rather than actually outwardly moving. Both of them picking up on a slight sloshing in Danny’s body that is decidedly very uncomfortable. Maddie mentally cringes as Danny jerks and snaps awake. Danny shakes out his arms, “what the?”.

Maddie: ‘maybe that wasn’t the best idea’.

Jack: ‘probably shouldn’t control any part of him. Except for communication maybe? Think he can hear us?’.

Maddie: ‘we’re likely in his ectoplasm not his mind. I’m sure sweetie can figure it out though...you did write down all the details right?’.

Jake: ‘uhhhhhh’.

Danny shakes his head and gets up, “okay that was weird”, looking around and tilting his head, “I’m pretty sure my folks were down here”.

Jack: ‘that was quick! That’s a Fenton for you!’.

Maddie: *chuckles warmly*

Danny walks over to the workbench -both parents noticing how his hip aches at the movement- and tilts his head down at the mess all over it. Grabbing a pencil and poking at one of the smoking devices, “okay, obviously that’s what zapped me. Let’s not do that again”, grabbing the schematics, which is pretty much just a drawing, no details or notes.

Maddie: ‘JACK! How is he supposed to even attempt to fix this?’.

Jack: ‘whoops, heh’.

Danny pulls out his phone and starts taking photos, “just in case there’s some side effects. Just reverse engineer some and fix the problem as needed”, chuckling, “hopefully Tuck won’t have to hack NASA again just to do that”. Slipping his phone back in his pocket and heading up the stairs, intending to snoop around for his folks some.

Maddie: ‘hacking? Tucker hacked the government?!?’.

After looking around for a bit Danny shrugs, “must be out hunting or something. Maybe I sho-”, Danny cuts himself off at feeling a chill through his body and feeling mist plume out of his mouth. Snapping his head to the side and crouching, moving forward silent and cautious.

Jack: ‘what was the cold? What’s he doing?‘.

Maddie: ‘seems like prowling? But I really don’t know’.

Danny sticks his head around the door, spotting Cujo and sighing with relief. Straightening up and walking forward, bending down to ruffle the pups' fur, “what’s up boy? What? Get bored? Let me see if I ca-”

Maddie: ‘Danny! What are you doing?!? That is a ghost!’, pushing and pulling to move away from the ghost.

Jack: ‘surely he knows....right?’.

Maddie: ‘it’s green and glowing’.

Danny jerks, wincing as his ectoplasm seems to spasm and splash against his vein walls, “OW, what the fuck?”.

Maddie: *mentally cringing* ‘sorry sweetie. It’s just, that’s a ghost’.

Danny waves off Cujo’s worried head tilt, “I’m okay. Body’s just being weird. No need to worry bud”, standing up and shaking himself off, “now let’s see about fetching your ball”, Danny hops up the stairs and digs around in his room. Tossing up a glowing green tennis ball, and chuckling as Cujo flings himself through the air to nab it.

Jack: ‘he definitely knows that’s a ghost. So why?’.

Maddie: ‘I don’t know, I just don’t get it. I want to make him stop, getaway. But...’.

Jack: ‘we can’t control him. We shouldn’t Mads’.

Maddie: ‘but...’.

Jack: ‘I know. But who knows what moving his ectoplasm around could do? And, and it’s Danny-boys life’.

Maddie: *sighs* ‘the thing’s probably tricking him. But I guess, sometimes we have to learn lessons the hard way’.

Danny smirks as Cujo leaps out of the window. Danny quickly rushing over and sticking his head out, looking down with a soft smile at the cute little head tilt Cujo’s doing. Chuckling, “ah a boy and his dog. Never been so damn ghostly. But hey, that works well for me”. Danny flings himself out the window and lands on the ground in a crouch, springing to stand upright quickly.

Maddie & Jack: !!!

Danny smirks down at the Cujo, “race ya? On foot though, body’s being weird”.

Cujo spits the ball at him which he easily catches as Cujo bolts off. Danny chuckles and shakes his head. Smiling wide as he gives chase, jumping over obstacles and occasionally sliding across the ground. Eventually springing past Cujo, turning his head to smirk at the puppy; who yaps back. As they make it to the park.

Jack: ‘I didn’t know Danny-boy was so athletic! Well, it’s a great skill for any future hunter!’.

Maddie: ‘......he never seems it’.

Danny throws around the ball with Cujo for a while, occasionally throwing it with some ghostly strength or jumping abnormally high to catch the balls Cujo spits back out at him. Both eventually tire of it and just lay in the grass. Danny absent-mindedly petting over the glowing fur. Watching the sky, “you know buddy, I think if you weren’t a ghost my folks would love you. Personally though, ghosts dogs better”, sighing, “is it odd that I’m on better and more friendly terms with ghosts than humans? I mean sure, Skulker shot me with arrows again and I might have punched him a few times more than necessary. But ain’t that half the joy? Sparing?-”.

Maddie: ‘WHAT!!!’.

Jack: ‘Skulker, whoever they are, is getting decked’.

“-And I mean really? There is something really satisfying in winning a tough fight. Plus, covered in my own blood, ‘plasm, and other assorted viscera, is a winning look for me. And at least Skulker, right, guy makes stellar lemon Creme pie. And humans, oof, how many of them consistently treat me well? Very goddamn few”.

Jack: ‘who’s treating him meanly? Bullies?’.

Maddie: ‘must be, school can be a hard time. I’m more worried about how he seems to like get injured....he doesn’t get hurt that much does he?’.

Jack: ‘he limps sometimes. What about his clothing? Any...blood, on them?’.

Maddie: ‘....I...haven’t done his laundry in years’.

Danny sits up with Cujo rolling around in his lap. Scratching the dog’s belly, “so fuck it. So what? Who cares... well besides my folks”, groaning, “do they have to be so bigoted and anti-ghost? And I kind of think that they’re trying to impress me with all the ghost hunter stuff”, shrugging, “which yeah, makes sense right? Not like Jazz is going to run FentonWorks in between all her schooling. And it’s not like they know anything about what I do with my time”.

Jack: ‘doesn’t get just hang out with his friends all day? Video games, going out to eat, that stuff?’.

Maddie: ‘we never actually ask. But that’s what I thought. Does he, does he really dislike how we are about ghosts? It’s not just some teenage rebellion?’.

Jack: ‘maybe we’ve been protecting him too much from the evil and harm they do?’.

Danny gets up and stretches. Cujo running in a little circle and yapping before just running off. Danny chuckles, “never much of one for my verbal bullshit huh?”, rubbing at his chest and sighing before checking the time on his phone. “Well I guess I should probably let my ‘plasm flow more normally”, prodding his chest again, “wound should be closed enough so that I won’t bleed any ‘plasm”, pushing a bit hard and wincing, “ahhh okay that’s still cracked. Damn”, before rolling his shoulders and letting his ectoplasm flow more normally through his chest. -both parents involuntarily jerking Danny’s ectoplasm from just how much pain is in Danny’s chest-

Danny shakes off the weird pulse or whatever, putting his hands in his pockets and starting to walk only to pause and tilt his head, “okaaaaay? This don’t feel right. It shouldn’t be this heavy?”, groaning and tilting his head, “wonderful, that whatever the fuck messed with my ‘plasm”. Danny turns on his heels and starts off home, grumbling, “probably should stick to the ground then. Don’t exactly feel like face-planting into cement today”, chuckling and shaking his head as he pulls out his phone to look over the photos.

Maddie: ‘what’s wrong with his chest? Why does so much hurt and what’s this cold ball?’.

Jack: ‘I...I don’t know Mads’ he tries to gently move around the ball, picking up that more ectoplasm seems to be being formed by it. ‘It, is this why Danny never seems to get less contaminated?’.

Maddie: ‘this, that, shouldn’t be possible’ poking at the ball and squeezing it a little.

Danny shivers slightly and looks down his shirt collar, quirking an eyebrow, “oh goddamnit, it hasn’t been that long since I’ve used you”, groaning and turning onto the street, “don’t tell me my Core’s also being messed with? I’d really rather not freeze over...again”. -at that the two make a damn point to leave the cold ball alone- Danny weaving through crowds while looking at his phone again. Easily able to sense where people are and how close they are due to his ecto-field.

Jack: ‘Danny’s got a core? Ghost core? How? And wow, he’s really good at navigating!’.

Maddie: ‘the shape, location, it makes sense. But it shouldn’t be possible-‘ she cuts herself off at feeling a chill go through Danny’s body again. This time clear it originated from the core.

Danny looks around and squints, quickly and smoothly navigating into an alleyway and waiting. Picking up that whoever is clearly following him.

Maddie: feeling the ectoplasm their possessing vibrate and grow staticy ‘what the?’, trying to make it stop.

Jack: ‘can, can Danny-boy control his ectoplasm you think?’.

Danny scrunches up his face and glances down at his, not invisible, hand. Growling at it, “oh come on. Now’s not the time body”. -both parents jerk, making Danny’s ectoplasm slosh, from the vibrating static returning and Danny’s hand becoming invisible- Dannh shake his head, “annoying”, before squinting at the alleyway opening.

Jack: ‘HE HAS POWERS?!?!??????’.

Maddie: ‘this, what, it shouldn’t, this makes no sense’ trying to return the ectoplasm to normal because this is just wrong.

Danny hisses, “for fucks sake”, and forcing his invisibility to reactivate. Then stilling and stopping his breathing as one of Vlad’s stupid vultures flies in and looks around. Danny rolls his eyes and slinks silently over to it.

Maddie: ‘Danny! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?! YOU DONT HAVE WEAPONS!’.

Jack: forcibly stopping Maddie from moving the ectoplasm their sharing, ‘Mads don’t! He’ll be in more danger if we mess with him!’.

Danny pointedly ignores the strange feelings going on in his body, slowly moving his hands out before grinning wickedly. Grabbing the birds throat and blasting it in the face with a green beam, chuckling darkly, “boo. I have no time for you today”.

Maddie & Jack: !!!!

The bird squawks, startled as Danny hits it over the head with his thermos. Promptly sucking it in after a second. Danny smiles at the thermos and shakes it, “frootloops vultures are always so damn stupid”. Danny looks around quickly before jumping and scaling up the building. -the parents both confused and disoriented- Danny crouches on the rooftop and looks around.

Jack: ‘oh, oh my Zone. Danny’s vision, he can see so far!’.

Both make a point not to try moving as they feel themselves/ectoplasm tingling and sparking in Danny’s eyes.

Maddie & Jack: !!!! ‘How?’.

Maddie: ‘it, the town looks beautiful like this. The colours, they’re so...intense? Defined? Glowy?’.

Jack: ‘so many details and his eyes, they seem to focus on anything possibly threatening’.

-Both them jerk and slosh Danny’s ectoplasm- Danny leaps off the roof and rolls to land on another. Booking it off after spotting the two other vultures. Stopping and sticking his invisible head over the edge of one building to stare down at the two birds.

Jack: ‘he’s hunting them? That’s great! But he seems to really know what he’s doing? Why wouldn’t he tell us he’s doing this? We could help?’.

Maddie: ‘......maybe...maybe he doesn’t want our help Jack dear’.

Danny flips and drops down on the two vultures, quickly pinning them with his feet and punching them in the face. Spinning the thermos around and sucking them in. Standing upright and nonchalantly walking back out onto the street, visible again.

Jack: ‘because we don’t like ghosts? Like he was saying earlier?’.

Maddie: ‘I think so. But why? They should be disliked’.

Danny’s phone goes off, so he digs it out of his pocket and looks down at it. Chuckling at Tucker’s face before picking up the call, “what’s up Tuck?”.

“I’m bored that’s what”.

Danny shakes his head, “well then I've got no excuse to not bounce my ghost weirdness off you”.

“Goddamnit, I was hoping for a movie or some shit. What’s going straight strange in ghost ville?”.

Danny flips over his hand a few times as he avoids being touched by people on the street, “my ‘plasm’s being weird. Feels heavy, is randomly turning off my abilities, and it feels like I’m startling it. Which is a mind trip and a half”.

“Well maybe it’s gained sentience? That’s exactly the kind of weird that would happen to you”.

“Tuck, that honestly would be impressive but also really horrible. Just how weird do you think I am?!?”.

“Dude, you got turned into jello once”.

Maddie & Jack: !!!!

“At least that had an understandable and obvious reason? I’m pretty sure a little electrical shock shouldn’t create sentience”.

“Well why don’t you ask it?”.

“You just want me to make a fool of m-”, -the two, seizing the opportunity, make a point to slosh and run themselves/Danny’s ectoplasm around and through his veins- Danny pauses, blinking, “oh Ancients. Fuck you Tuck”.

Laughter, “am I a good guess or what?”.

Danny looks down at himself and promptly walks into an alleyway. Making a point to hold his hand over his phone's mic. Grumbling, “why me?”, clearing his throat, “okay then. Ectoplasm? Just, like, fuck this is weird, slosh around in my left foot?”. -the two do as asked-

Maddie: ‘Jack dear, you are so lucky Danny has strange friends’.

Jack: ‘I’m grounded from blueprints aren’t I?’.

Maddie: ‘understatement’.

Danny tilts his head back, “oh Ancients. It had to be that invention”, Danny rubs his face and mutters into his hand, “well I’m not about to undo or, I guess, kill sentience. So I guess this is just my life now”.

Maddie: ‘right, of course. He wouldn’t know it’s us instead of some random new sentience’.

Danny scratches his head and puts the phone back to his ear, “I hate you. I don’t even understand how my folks could make something that could create sentience”.

“Dude, impossible is kind of come by for your halfa ass”.

Jack: ‘halfa? Is that slang?’ Deciding to try something out, he wiggles.

Danny tilts his head at the pulsing feeling and facepalms, “I mean you’re not wrong but still. Also, I’m pretty sure I just got asked what halfa is or something”.

“Congrats dude, your ectoplasm is a child you’re stuck mentoring now, CW would be so proud. Hey Danny’s ectoplasm, vibrate Danny’s eyes if you don’t know what a halfa is”.

“What? No! Don’t do-”, Danny covers up his eyes, feeling them vibrating and zapping, -the two easily able to see green light reflecting off of Danny’s hand-, “screw you Tuck. Now you absolutely are helping figure out how this invention works. Yes I’ve got blueprints. Ancients you’re a dick, I’m in public dude”.

Chucking, “no one ever notices your shit dude. Chill. But yeah I’ll help. Does your ‘plasm know who CW is, just out of curiosity?”.

Danny sighs, holds the phone away, “well? Just do the leg sloshing if you don’t”. -the two, feeling even more confused, do as they’re asked- Danny sighs and puts the phone back to his ear, “nope. So obviously it doesn’t have my memories or access to my brain. Which is weird, cause my ‘plasm is everywhere in me”.

“Danny buddy, just cause it’s flowing around your squishy thought organ doesn’t imply it can actually read your thoughts or memories. So when you coming by?”.

“Right now you salted fuck. The weirder thing is, it seems to be getting startled by me using abilities. It turned off my invisibility twice”.

“So what? It thinks you shouldn’t be able to do ghost shit? That seems pretty backwards dude”.

“Exactly so-” -the two slosh around in his leg again, hopping the question gets across- Danny sighs, “okay, yes it’s confused by the abilities”.

Laughter, “well then, have fun playing a game of twenty questions with something that can’t actually speak to you. I’ll see you in however long. But on a serious note, Danny’s ectoplasm? Yeah don’t block or stop the dudes powers. The guy would be an utter mess without them”.

“Hey! I mean, fine, I would be. But I’m more concerned about my, apparently sentient now, ‘plasm acting up while I’m fighting”.

“Then get it familiar with you using your shit. And shit dude, you should probably be a glow bug so it knows what that feels like. Cause you losing your form in a fight would be worst-case scenario. Plus, that has to feel really strange”.

Jack: ‘form? Glow bug? This is all so confusing’.

Maddie: ‘seems kind of...invasive too. He doesn’t realise it’s us’.

Jack: *sighing* ‘yeah, I’d rather Danny-boy tell us things intentionally. Trusting us’.

Maddie: ‘but he’s so secretive? It’s clear his contamination does so much more to him than we thought’.

Danny sighs, “yeah, but I’m a paranoid bastard. So I think I’ll break the ice slowly, clearly it has access to my senses so I’m just not gonna look at myself. Fuck this is weird. See you soon you prick”, snapping the phone shut and looking around the alleyway. Sighing, “alright ‘plasm. I’m gonna be doing something with you, well more so my Core ‘plasm but still, somethin’ I do a lot so just roll with it ya?”.

Maddie & Jack: !!!!! Having to try very hard to not do anything or try to hinder, feeling the core vibrate and pulse before cold energy shoots out and over Danny. Seeing the very bright light pass over his eyes. As all the regular ectoplasm/them starts vibrating and flowing more readily and closer to the surface. Feeling Danny’s feet leave the ground. !!!!!!!

Danny rubs his neck, feeling sloshing in his leg again, while he slowly floats up. “I mean, you were warned? And you’ll have to excuse me not being forthcoming with information until I know more about you. If the wrong people find out about somethings I keep to myself, it would put me or my family in a lot of danger”.

Maddie & Jack: !!!!!

Maddie: ‘we should be looking out for you, not the other way around!’.

Jack: ‘danger from ghosts? Or humans? We can defend ourselves well. I don’t want Danny-boy worrying about us...’. Moving around in slow circles in Danny’s back.

Danny blinks as he floats above a rooftop, tilting his head and laughing, “are you, are you trying to rub my back?”, shaking his head, “okay obviously you have some knowledge of things”. Shaking his head and kicking off from the roof. Floating up through clouds and looking down on Amity. “So this town yeah? My home”.

Maddie: ‘we...Danny....is flying. HOW?’

Jack: ‘it’s, really wonderful. Everything’s so small!’.

Maddie: ‘but how?!?? This isn’t normal Jack?’.

Jack: ‘it’s not hurting his body, he’s having fun, I think, Mads. And it’s nice. Weird’s a Fenton’s normal. Danny-boy is just really weird I guess. It must be because of whatever he did to make his ectoplasm, us, closure to his surface and all vibratie’.

Maddie: ‘he shot an ecto-beam earlier. Invisibility. Jack he has ghost powers, many. He’s not a ghost, this doesn’t make sense’. Making them slosh in Danny’s leg.

Jack: ‘Mads...’.

Danny shakes his head with a sigh and dives down, twisting and turning, still invisible, through the alleyways, speaking quiet -the two are past their shock enough to hear how his voice echos, like a ghosts-, “so flying’s a weird thing to you. Okay. Slosh around again of that’s because you think I shouldn’t be able to do this”, Danny squints his eyes -the two sloshing around in his leg- Danny nods, “okay then. Is....is that because it’s something a ghost can do? Slosh for yes by the way”.

Jack: ‘this is an annoying way to communicate’ sloshing around as asked.

Maddie: ‘at least we can. But this is still so wrong. He’s clearly good at this....comfortable with it’.

Jack: ‘I’m more bothered he hid it honey. Probably because of how we feel about ghosts. Mads, I think he doesn’t want us to dislike this. Whatever it is. So he just didn’t tell us because...’.

Maddie: ‘because he’s afraid. Oh sweetie, sorry. I, okay, no matter how wrong, I don’t want him feeling we dislike something about him’.

Jack: ‘it still feels wrong finding out like this. Not earning his trust. But it is fun. I can see why he likes it’.

Danny nods, “alright. Hmmmmm. So then I should only be able to do what a human can?’. -the two slosh again, a bit aggressively actually- Danny twitches and snorts, rolls his eyes, “now since I know you’re not in my mind so to speak. What’s my name? Slosh at the right letter. A, B, C, D-”, Danny smirks at the sloshing, “okay, last name then. A, B, C, D, E, F-”, Danny nods at the sloshing. “Okay, you know who I am then. So you are not just randomly spawned sentience then?”.

Jack: ‘that’s my boy!’ Sloshing and jerking around a bit more excitedly than necessary.

Danny jerks in the air, “okay, first off, ow. That’s my veins and shit you are running around in you know. Second off, do you actually want to be in my body? Slosh for yes, don’t do anything for no”. -the two make a damn point of not moving- Danny sighs happily, “oh Ancients thank fuck. No offence or anything, but I’d rather not have another random person in me. Especially controlling part of me. I’ll see if I actually decide to believe you though”, Danny grins, seeing Tucker’s house, promptly flying inside.

Tucker waves at Danny -the two parents jerk, caught off guard by the light flashing over Danny’s eyes again and feeling themselves/Danny’s ectoplasm sink deeper- Danny holds up a hand, “before you say anything. It seems this is not random sentience, but at least one actual person. They’re not being a dick so clearly they are a Fan of me but I don’t cook in Frying Pans with them”.

Maddie: ‘? You cook with us? What does cooking have to do with anything?’.

Jack: ‘we’re definitely fans though’.

Tucker groans, “well that’s more complicated. Blueprints”.

Danny tosses his phone over and flops to lay down in a beanie-bag chair, “tell me about it. They claim they either want out or this was an accident. But well, people lie, no offence whoever you are”.

Tucker snorts, “well at least you can communicate to some degree”, pointing at Danny, “also this sounds like your ‘plasm is being overshadowed”.

“Pretty sure not even ghosts can do that and I’m sure that whoever is human”, twitching his leg slightly at the sloshing, “okay yes, human. Which makes less sense than if it was some really weird ghost”.

Jack: *laughing* ‘yes ghosts can do some strange things!’.

Maddie: ‘which you seem to be able to do too. But...you’re not a ghost so...I guess it’s sort of okay’.

Jack: *chuckling slightly* ‘he still can’t hear us’.

Maddie: ‘he’s going to figure out it’s us in here. We’re going to have to talk about this...what he can do. Not to mention all the pain his bodies in. We shouldn’t get our words wrong...I, I don’t want to upset him’.

Jack: ‘....yeah. He didn’t choose to tell us, show us, this. Least we can do is not bug him about it. Though I am super curious! How’d he get these abilities? Learn to use them?!?’.

Maddie: ‘don’t bombard the boy with questions Jack dear’.

Danny shakes his head, watching Tucker flip the phone around and zooming in on the screen randomly, “Danny dude, have you even looked at any of this yet?”.

Danny shakes his head, “naw, Cujo showed. Puppy gets what puppy wants. That whoever wasn’t to pleased about me getting close to the green glowing dog”.

Tucker looks up from the screen, looks to the side and pulls a face, before looking at Danny, “so let me get this straight. You got zapped, cause that’s definitely what this does, by your folks invention. Now you’ve got someone overshadowing your ‘plasm who is seemingly confused over the abilities and seemingly doesn’t like ghost”.

Danny raises an eyebrow, “yup. Sounds about right”.

“Danny, you’re a fucking idiot. Have you seen you’re folks today?”.

“This morning up, but not since after dinner”, Danny screws up his fave and goes wide-eyed, “oh fu-”, only to get cut off by something impacting the wall and blowing up.

Maddie & Jack: !!!!!! ‘DANNY!!!!’.

Danny quickly transforms and grabs Tucker, turning them both intangible and flying out. Depositing Tucker on the roof. Both look over the ledge, Danny grumbling, “Ancients shit, Walker. Damn”.

Jack: ‘who? What’s going on? Why’d that ghost attack Tucker’s room?’

Maddie: ‘I think he knows a lot of ghosts we don’t. I wish we could help’

Jack: ‘do you think he’s been using these powers to fight ghosts? That that’s an enemy of his? That’s what I’d do if I could fly and shoot lasers’

Maddie: ‘I sure hope not! That’s so dangerous! With us is one thing but clearly he doesn’t hunt with us’

Tucker grabs Danny’s shoulders and spins him to face him, pointing at Danny’s face, “before you go off”, gesturing at the rest of Danny’s body, “you, probably, two. Let him do his shit, he’s good at it”, pointing at Danny’s face, “fuck your life dude”.

Danny glares, “know that I am pushing off my mental freak out. Watch out for his goons”.

Danny jumps off the roof, invisible, and glides around slowly, watching Walker pick through Tucker’s room with a frown. Whispering with a bit of bite, which is a bit threatening with the echoing voice, “no controlling my ‘plasm. Talk later”.

Danny listens as Walker huffs, annoyed, “the little punks not here”, turning to two of his goons, “I thought the tracker said his signature was here”. One goon shrugs before all four freeze at the sound of Tucker’s parents coming home. Walker grins, “well all the same. It seems we have good bait”.

Danny clenches his fists and bares his fangs in a soundless snarl. Promptly lunging at Walker and uppercutting him, blasting ectoballs at the two goons, sending them flying.

Maddie: ‘were those fangs? And- LOOK OUT!’ She really has to try not to interfere as the ghosts start blasting at him.

Danny shoots up through the roof, avoid one of the goons strange blasts. Quickly getting punched in the gut by Walker. Danny just growls and kicks his stomach, blasting him in the face. Smirking for only a second as he catches Tucker capturing one of the goons out of the corner of his eye. -the two parents actively cheering over that- Danny spins and ducks, avoiding a pink ecto-beam. Snickering, “you’ve always been a bad shot whitey!”. Flipping around and making a shield as Walker teleports behind him and tries to blast him again.

Jack: ‘he’s really good at this! You kick his butt son!’.

Maddie: ‘he shouldn’t be...but I guess it’s good’.

Danny slams his feet on Walker’s chest, making the two slam onto a rooftop. Danny blasts him in the chest a few times and grins a fair bit maliciously, grabbing Walkers collar, growling, “you don’t come after my friends family”, and punches him in the face. Grabbing his arm and flinging him into a building.

Walker grunts and stands, pushing away bits of brick with his hands, glaring at the floating Danny, “if you would just stay in a cell where you belong half creature, they’d be left alone”, shrugging with a cruel grin, “maybe”. Before blasting another beam at Danny. Which he avoids easily. But apparently that pisses Walker off, as he changes sizes into a more massive form. Danny just flips around his thermos with a cocky grin.

Maddie & Jack: !!!!!!!!!!

Danny expertly avoids Walker’s grabbing hands and spins through the air, firing off blasts, “big target! More areas to hit!”. Flying down, away from more pink ecto-beams. -the two, startled and worried, try yanking Danny down to avoid a car that was thrown- Danny jerking, snapping as his flight just cuts out for a few seconds. Car sailing over him only to get hit by something that binds around his chest and arms, pinning them and yanking him towards the ground. Danny gritting out, “that was not helpful. Getting hit by the car was preferred. The goal actually”. -the two a little freaked and struggle a little as they find they can’t really move-

Danny hits the ground hard. Coughing and sputtering but rolling across the ground to hide in an alleyway.

Maddie & Jack: !!!!!!!!!!!! DANNY!!

Maddie: ‘s-sorry. Sorry sweetie. Ow. Be alright Danny. What is this? This feels awful’.

Jack: ‘son....’.

Danny pushes himself up the wall, going against the heavy gravity of the thing tight around him. “Okay, how to get this stupid thing off”, Danny manoeuvres around to try using a dumpster to get something out of his pocket. It’s obvious he’s making a point of not looking at himself. Smiling and grabbing what feels like a tube of lipstick before sucking and rolling through the open door of a building. Falling down the stairs and breaking his nose in the process. -which the two freak out a bit over- Danny chuckles, “well at least something broke my fall”, before adjusting the lipstick blaster to shoot off the bindings. Flexing his left hand and wincing slightly, “fantastic. More broken bones”, before flying through the roof as Walker goes to kick in the building.

Tucker’s shouting, “got the other one!”. Danny only chuckles as a response, before shooting at Walker again. Catching him off guard enough to slam his across the cheek with the thermos. Growling and punching him with his left hand, “stay out of my town”, then sucking him into the thermos.

Danny stands and pants a little, Tucker running up, “dude, why the Zone did you fly into the capture blast? You haven’t done that in years”.

Danny flips him off as he picks up Tucker and flies them back to his place. Both frowning at the destroyed mess.

Dropping Tucker on the ground and doing the light ring thing again. Tucker points at him, “hand, gimme gimme”.

Danny rolls his eyes as they sit on Tucker’s, thankfully intact, bed. “That wasn’t me Tuck. It’s fine though. Everything worked out”.

“Dude, there's blood and ‘plasm all over your face”.

Danny chuckles and grabs one of the towels, cleaning his face off but winces as he whacks his nose, “right forgot about that”. Tucker works on setting Danny’s hand bones as Danny sets his nose with practiced ease.

Maddie: ‘I, Danny what? You forgot?!? This, you’re too good at it. Danny...’.

Jack: ‘Tucker’s, he’s good at this too. We don’t even get hurt like this’.

Maddie: ‘we don’t fight like that. We hunt. That wasn’t hunting. It was a fistfight. A ghostly fistfight. And now he’s hurt’.

Danny sighs as he holds his nose, “so um, slosh if you're my folks. Could really use knowing that”.

Tucker raises an eyebrow, “slosh? Really?”.

“Oh fuck you”, nodding at the sloshing feeling before looking to Tucker, “yeah, it’s my folks and I’m a moron for not realising that sooner”.

Tucker chuckles as he wraps Danny’s hand, “a lovable moron who’s going to have one Hell of a conversation after we, or more specifically I, fix this”.

Danny just grunts with a frown.

Maddie: ‘he’s all broken and that’s what he cares about?’

Jack: ‘he must really be worried what we think then’

Maddie: ‘I think...that he gets hurt like this a lot. But how have we never noticed it?’ Sloshing and swirling around near his hand and nose.

Danny screws up his face, “okay that feels very weird. But don’t worry, I heal pretty, um, fast. And yes I get hurt kinda often, um sorry for not telling you?”.

Jack: ‘fast enough that we never even notice? Must be because of the ectoplasm’.

Maddie: ‘at this point, I think everything is affected by his ectoplasm. I don’t like it. But if, if he’s okay like this, I’ll deal. We’ll deal’.

Tucker snorts and starts laughing, shaking his head at Danny, “dude, maybe save the awkward conversation for when they’re not stuck in you, or where I have to suffer through it for that matter. Also, cats outta the bag so please fix my damn wall”.

Danny rolls his eyes, “pushy pushy. I thought you liked watching people squirm?”. Tucker chuckles, “not you, not like that. You’re supposed to be the tough one. You’ve earned the privacy”.

Danny blinks, “don’t go getting all deep on me”, before turning his head towards the gaping hole and flicking his hand. -the two mental gaping and trying not to react as they feel themselves/Danny’s ectoplasm feel like it’s stretching and bending. Only for bits of the wall and destroyed objects to start glowing and floating back to where they were. Seemingly healing as well. Both easily able to feel Danny’s ectoplasm was a bit depleted now and feeling tired-

Jack: ‘I feel like I need a nap’.

Maddie: ‘that must have used up a fair bit of ectoenergy. Telekinesis’.

Jack: ‘wonder just how much he can do! Mmmmm, hungry too’.

Maddie: ‘you’re always hungry dear’.

Jack: ‘think it’s his ectoplasm actually’.

Maddie: ‘....you’re....right? I’m hungry too. Ectoplasm gets hungry?’.

Danny looks over Tucker’s work before flopping to lay down, grumbling, “you know, I’m always reminded how glad I am that your rooms all ectoplasmicly rich”.

Tucker snorts, “yours is worse. Now nap you idiot. I highly doubt your folks will do anything weird. While I slave away like an overworked carriage horse”.

Danny flips him off but falls asleep anyway. -the two able to tell that he seems to be absorbing in ectoplasm, core processing it and replenishing his own ectoplasm-

Jack: *chuckles* ‘close enough to eating I guess! Slimy yet satisfying!’.

Maddie: *laughing slightly* ‘well let’s not run around much. Let him sleep, and let us, his ectoplasm, replenish’.

Tucker shakes his head at Danny and continues fiddling away, “now I highly doubt ectoplasm can sleep. Would be pretty strange if it did. And Danny would give me s-hassle for being protective”, Tucker pokes where he knows Danny’s ecto-field is around his foot, “Danny’s better for his weird. And you guys accepting him is kind of a big deal to him. I know you’ve seen some weird and confusing sh-stuff. Probably doesn’t make much sense and you’ve probably made your own theories. But if you think Danny needs to be ‘corrected’, just don’t. Drop it. That’s pretty well the worst thing you could do to him outside of trying to dissect him or something-”

Maddie: ‘WHAT!?! We would never!’

Jack: ‘he’s really attached then.... Glad he’s adjusted so well! If he doesn’t want it fixed then of course we won't’.

Maddie: ‘.....even if it’s still rather wrong’.

“-similar. His abilities are part of who he is. So if you hurt him by rejecting or trying to change him, I will never forgive you. Danny-dudes basically my brother. He’s saved my life and everyone’s lives more times than I’m sure I even know. He deserves to be treated right”. Tucker watches as Danny’s foot turns invisible. Snorting, “look at you, figuring out how he works. I’m assuming that’s you agreeing with me? Just do it again if so”. -the two promptly do. Even if it’s weird vibrating themselves- Tucker nods, “good. This is a pretty sh-stupid way for you guys to find out. And know that he would have told you on his own eventually. Someday. He wanted you to stop being so universally hateful to ghosts first”, getting up and grabbing a few extra screws, speaking as he sorts through all the different kinds for the right ones, “seeing as his pup showed, obviously you know he doesn’t hate ghosts. That he’s friendly with some. Well Danny probably won’t appreciate me saying this but I damn well am. He is friendly with a lot of ghosts. More ghosts than there are people in Amity. He will never accept or tolerate your hate for ghosts. So grow up and realise when you might be wrong, cause you don’t know shit”.

Maddie: ‘I didn’t realise he disliked how we were? are? so much. And he’s, he’s friendly with that many?’.

Jack: ‘I’m glad he meant to tell us. And Mads, Danny-boy’s good, he would never be friendly with cruel creatures. So what does that mean?’.

Maddie: ‘I’d like to say he’s being tricked, but....that many? He’s not that gullible. No one is’.

Jack: ‘so what then? I’m sure our science isn’t wrong’.

Maddie: ‘I don’t know Jack’.

Jack: ‘well maybe the animal ones can be okay easier? Like the puppy?’.

Maddie: ‘I’m pretty sure Tucker means more than just animal ghosts’.

Tucker smirks at the machine and grabs Danny’s foot, shaking it violently before springing away. Danny nearly grabbing him and snarling. -startling the two parents and making them a bit confused- Danny blinks before smirking at Tucker, “you’re getting quick. What is it?”.

Jack: ‘wow those are some reflexes!’.

Maddie: ‘he’s like a feral animal.....He’s that paranoid and on guard?’.

Jack: ‘with ghosts that’s good!’.

Tucker shakes his head, “you are such a nightmare to wake up but it’s great dodging practice”, lifting up the device, “just need another part from your folks lab then we’re good. Got a reverse switch already installed”.

Danny nods and gets up, clapping Tucker on the shoulder, “nice. You’re going to make some tech or engineering company very very rich”.

Tucker huffs, “excuses you? I’ll be running it and making myself very very rich. Though you know I’ll always be your technician. Now let’s get your folks out of you”.

“That sounds really messed up Tuck”, Danny wraps an arm around Tucker and flies them off to his house.

They phase through the lab ceiling and land on the lab floor.

Maddie: ‘I think he can do everything a ghost can at this point’.

Jack: ‘which is kind of cool. At least a little. I could see inside our floorboards!’.

Danny stretches and yawns some, “so whatcha need?”.

Tucker digs in a draw and fetches a weird glowing blue tube, an ectoplasm spinner, “this”.

“How, no seriously, how do you always no where everything is down here? Uh, no offence guys, it’s kind of a mess”.

Jack: ‘the sign of being put to good use! No worries Danny-boy!’

Tucker chuckles, “little easy to forget you've got tag alongs?”, Danny nods as Tucker puts the final pieces together and points it at Danny, “this is probably gonna hurt by the way”.

Danny just shrugs, “expected”, before Tucker zaps him and he promptly passes out.

This time Danny wakes up first, seeing Tucker’s face inches from his and nearly punches him in the face, “fucking Zone Tuck”.

Tucker shakes himself slightly, “dude, you weren’t just snapping awake. It was weird. But also kinda cool”. Danny flips him off before both of them look to the still unconscious parents. Jack groaning. Tucker finger guns at Danny, “and that’s my queue to leave”. Danny just rolls his eyes and sits in a chair, waiting for the pair to wake up fully as Tucker bounds up the stairs.

Maddie staggers up, slightly startled by Danny just suddenly being there to help steady her, him asking, “you good? Er, physically anyway?”.

Maddie nods as Danny helps Jack up, Danny coming to stand in front of them. Still short as ever and a fair bit wide-eyed. Danny rubs his neck, “soooooo, my body huh? Interesting place”.

Jack and Maddie Exchange a glance and promptly hug Danny, which they feel kind of bad over how he had tensed up, before relaxing and hugging back.

#Danny Phantom #phandom #ectober #ectoberweek19 #possession #blood and injury #broken bones #body sharing #danny fenton #jack fenton #Maddie Fenton #Tucker Foley #fanfic #phanphic #have a fic suck my dick #phantomphangphucker #My writing

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pbpress · 5 years ago

Text

Fire and Ice: Chapter 7

by Brooklyn N. Dottin

AUSTIN JULIUS

Well, it was the week before the day of the dance. I drove over to Alessandra’s house on Wednesday afternoon, because she wanted me to help her find some jewelry to go with her outfit. She wouldn’t let me see the outfit, though, which I didn’t get. I mean, if I’m gonna help her pick out matching jewelry, I gotta see the outfit to know what to look for. But when I pointed this out to her, she just shrugged and said, “You’ll know,” then climbed on the motorcycle behind me, wrapping her arms around my waist. Taking off, the wind blowing in our face, I suddenly had a somewhat disloyal-at least to Alessandra-thought. It was at the corner of my brain for weeks, gathering dust, but I never realized it until that moment.

I wish Blanchard were riding behind me instead of Alessandra.

As we pulled into the mall parking lot, Alessandra hooked her chin over my shoulder. “Let’s go, baby.”

I squirmed inwardly when she said that. Never has anyone ever called me “baby” like that. It made me very uncomfortable. And made me half-wish it were Blanchard calling me that, not Alessandra. I shook my head of such disloyal thoughts and said, “Alrighty, off we go.”

Shuffling my feet, I followed Alessandra into Pandora. I hate to shop, especially if it’s for jewelry. All the gems, bracelets, and such sending off their blinding reflections into your eyes, and making you a little cross-eyed by the time you exit. Alessandra didn’t seem to have any problem with it, though. She spent the better part of our time in the shop looking at the amethysts and emeralds. Pretending to be way into it, I enthusiastically said, “How about this one?” pointing to an amethyst amulet in a glass case. Alessandra took one look at it, frowned, and said, “Too simple. How about this?” pointing to an overly intricate diamond-rose-gold necklace.

“Way too expensive.” I found a simple silver locket. “This?”

“Hell no. I wouldn’t be caught dead in that!” she exclaimed.

Maybe Ben was right, I thought. Maybe she is quite shallow and cold.

Finally, after two painful hours of searching and browsing, we settled on a rose-gold choker that wasn’t too expensive. Alessandra tried it on, and loved it. I was just glad she found one she liked, so I could get out of there.

After paying for it, we headed to my bike. I planned to drop Alessandra off at her house quick, then go straight home.

Alessandra, however, had other plans.

As soon as we mounted my bike, she leaned over my shoulder and said, “Can we drive to the park?” I said sure, ‘cause a bit of fresh air was exactly what I needed. After getting there, I parked my bike by some trees that sort of sheltered us from the rest of the park. But before I could climb off my bike, Alessandra literally yanked my head around and, with no warning, crashed her lips into my own. My mind immediately went into flight-or-fight mode. I quickly flipped through every outcome of any possible reaction: Push her away, risk her getting mad at me, perhaps wanting to hurt me later. Let the kiss continue, and risk not being able to-dare I think so?- get together with Blanchard, who, until around then, I hadn’t realized was the only one I actually loved. But now here was Alessandra, on my lips, with me not knowing what to do. I decided I didn’t want to continue this kiss any longer. I pushed her off me. She looked at me, a little confused, and for a split second, I wished I’d just sucked it up and let the kiss continue, but that second passed, and I said to her, “I’m taking you back to your house now.”

I half expected Alessandra to be all mad and stuff, but she just went, “Sure thing, Austin. Let’s go.”

Huh.

As we coasted towards Alessandra’s house, I began thinking of what I should do about the dance situation. It was too late to refund the tickets, and I’m not the type of guy to stand people up. I was seriously thinking of just faking a cold or whatever and telling Alessandra I couldn’t go. I was so wrapped up in my planning that I didn’t realize we’d passed Alessandra’s house until a couple minutes later.

“Um, hey, Austin? Are you forgetting someone?” she asked. I snapped out of it quick and realized where we were.

“Oh, my gosh, so sorry!” I gasped, making a sharp U-turn in the road, Alessandra gripping my waist as I did so. I almost exceeded the speed limit racing toward Alessandra’s house.

Dropping her off, I said, “Well, that was an interesting afternoon.”

“And rather hot,” said Alessandra.

What? Hot? On what basis was this boring-as-hell afternoon hot?

“I mean, hot as in it was hot outside, y’know?” she said quickly.

Now, I knew for a fact that it wasn’t even 60 degrees outside, and even she was wearing an autumn jacket. Something told me that she meant “hot” as in “sexy”, which made even less sense.

Waving to her as I drove off, I blasted over to Blanchard’s. I was gonna ask her if she were going to the Masquerade, in the hopes that we could go together, unbeknownst to Alessandra. Yeah, I know. Totally cheap. But at this point I was willing to do anything to avoid having to go to the Masquerade with Alessandra. But I also needed to talk with someone less provocative at that moment.

Turning into the driveway, I saw Blanchard on her front porch. She saw me and immediately got up from the chair in which she was sitting. I parked my bike-without any fancy maneuver this time-yanked my helmet off, and smiled at Blanchard. She didn’t smile back. Instead, she bolted for the front door.

“Hey, wait, what’s wrong?” I shouted after her. But she was already inside. I ran up and knocked on the door. But Blanchard’s mom answered the door.

“Oh, hi Austin! What a nice surprise,” she said. She looked rather frazzled, with more No. 2 pencils in her messy, unkempt bun and behind her ears than I cared to count.

“No good material, huh?” I asked.

“No,” she responded. “Can I help you?”

“Uh, yeah. Well, Blanchard acted a little weird when I pulled up, and she seemed a little nervous when I smiled at her,” I said. “Do you happen to know what’s going on with her?”

Ms. Schwartz gave a teasing smile and shook her head.

“Well, she seems to fancy you, rather,” she said.

“Huh?”

“She won’t stop talking about you. She’s always going on about “Austin” this and “Austin” that. I even heard her mutter your name in her sleep a couple nights ago.”

“But then, why doesn’t she want to see me?”

“Perhaps she’s nervous, or she thinks you don’t like her back, or she’s just trying to figure out how to talk to you.”

I was rather flattered at the idea of her saying my name in her sleep, that would imply she’s been dreaming about me. I suddenly remembered that she’d been dropping subtle hints the whole time. I just hadn’t noticed, mostly thanks to Alessandra’s seduction.

“You should try to talk to her,” said Ms. Schwartz. “You guys clearly like each other. She’s just a little nervous now. She’ll soon warm up to you.”

I blushed at the term, “warm up to”. I shook my head before any dirty thoughts dared to creep their way into my head. Looking up at Blanchard’s window, I smiled at the dark-haired personage, who I realized was looking out the window at us. She quickly shrank back out of sight. In the split second before she was out of sight, I could swear I saw her face turn red. I inwardly smirked.

“I guess I should go now,” I said to Ms. Schwartz, turning towards my motorcycle.

“Alright,” she responded. “I should get back to my writing anyway.”

“Bye, Ms. Schwartz,” I called back as I revved up the motor.

“Bye, Austin,” she responded, turning back to her house.

#BROOKLYN N. DOTTIN #poetryfiction

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demamanabeille · 5 years ago

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Primeval Playlist

Title: Primeval Playlists Timeframe: Varies. I’m pretty sure they were all written for Season One and Two though, since Sarah is mentioned a lot instead of Jess. (I love Jess.) Pairing: Becker/Abby Rating: K+ Author’s Note: This is a rewrite of an old story from high school, maybe college. I finally, after years of trying, got access to my old work. I didn’t think I would do anything with them, just wanted to have them. However, I think I am going to rewrite and improve the ones I liked. I’m pretty sure this was probably one of those iTunes shuffle challenges where you only have the length of the song to write a little drabble.

1. St. Patrick's Day- John Mayer

Becker smiles, seeing the name pop up on his ringing phone. “Hello, Abby.” “Hey, Beck. It’s snowing.” He can hear the smile in the woman’s voice and makes his way over the window of his little flat. He peeps through his blinds to see big white snowflakes fall onto the patio below outside. “Oh, it is.”

“You promised me a walk the next time it snowed.” Ah, there it is, he thinks. He hates the cold. He knows his girlfriend loves the snow. They’ve had many a conversation on it. It’s one of their many disagreements that she insists balances them out and makes them perfect for one another.

“It’s freezing out,” he protests, shivering a little involuntarily at the thought of being out in it.

“I’m sure we can think of someway to warm up after. You promised, and it’s Christmas Eve Eve. I want a romantic walk around in the snow with you. Besides, you don’t really want to be alone tonight do you?”

Becker lets out a long sigh, grabs his coat and gloves from the rack, and pulls his beanie over his head. “I’ll come get you. We can walk down to the park near you. I’ll be there in ten.” “Promise me something, Beck?” He’s making sure he has his wallet and keys, grabbing the little box from the drawer near the door, letting out a soft ‘mh-hm’ in approval. He was planning on waiting until tomorrow, but it just seemed right to bring it with him tonight. “We’ll make it to St. Patrick’s Day, yeah?”

Becker pulls the phone away from his ear and stares at it for a moment, shaking his head with a roll his eyes. “What are you getting, Abs?”

He can hear her hesitation on the other side the line as she gathers her own things. “It’s silly. Don’t laugh. Of course we will make it to New Year’s, and you’re not cruel enough to break things off right before Valentine’s Day. St. Patrick’s day is next.”

Gods, he loves this woman. “I promise you all St. Patrick’s Days. How’s that?”

“I love you.” “I love you too. I’ll be there soon,” he tells her, hanging up the phone, locking the door being him, and patting the pocket of his jacket to assure the ring box was safely nestled there.

2. Can't Get Me Down- Lo Ball

Abigail Maitland had yet to meet a man that could get her down. She was the epitome of tough and had long sense mastered the art of putting up walls. Not to say she didn’t care for the men she dated. She did. It just never really got to her when things ends, or rather when she ended things. She always met an expired relationship with the same independent, never gonna get me down attitude. It should have been the same with Becker. She knew that. She should have been upset for a day or two then been back to business as usual, watching movies and playing video games with Connor like it was nothing by the end of the week. That’s what was supposed to happen. For some reason though, when it came to Becker, that’s not how it did go. She cried for weeks. She shut everyone out. She wouldn’t even allow Connor in, outside of work, to cheer her up. No amount of drinks or ice cream or kicks to her punching bag could help her realize what was so different about the captain to get her down like that .

3. Cool Thing- Rascal Flatts

Abby joined the ARC for a number of different, valid reasons. She was thrilled for the once in a lifetime opportunity to research the creatures that come through the anomalies. She looked forward to helping same creatures in any way that she could. Hell, she joined so she could finally do something adventurous with her life. She never thought that she’d find her biggest adventure there. Or rather, she did, just not in the same way. She never thought that she would find love within her very own team, and she most certainly did not expect to the captain to be the one she fell for. She’d never been the type to go crazy for a guy in uniform. More often than not, she found them too up tight with not enough sense of humor. Becker though, he was everything she wasn’t expecting to find.

4. Everlasting Friend- Blue October

Never, in his over thirty years in life, had Becker ever gotten the crazy increase of heartbreak and sporadic butterflies in his stomach, that some many people, movies, and books alluded to. He had never been in love, and he quite honestly didn’t believe he ever would. He’d grown up being taught that love was a sign of weakness. It made you act like a fool, his father would tell him. In his job, that wasn’t an option. Any distractions could put a mission at risk. All that changed when he met Abby. He couldn’t tell you exactly why she was different. He wasn’t sure of it was her strength, her wit, or her natural beauty, that really did him in. When he was with her, his confidence spiked. He gave her a new type of strength that no amount of training could achieve. She taught him how to see the world through her optimistic view. She taught him friendship. She taught him everlasting love.

5. I'm Not Gonna Teach Him How to Dance with You- Kate Nash (originally by Black Kids)

“No,” he said flatly over his beer, glaring at the woman on the other side of the table from him. The blonde’s face face fell. “Please, Becks,” she begged. “Just teach him to dance. You’re a beautiful dancer, and he’s…not. I just want to be able to dance with him at Sarah’s wedding without him making a fool of us in front of everyone.”

“I’m not teaching Connor how to dance with you,” Becker told her, his tone final. He shook his head a few times, muttering what she thought sounded like “not doing it” for added measure.

Abby took a sip of her beer, and let out a long sigh. “Why not?”

Becker stared at her for a moment, realizing if he was waiting for the perfect time to admit his feelings, that was it. “Why would I want to teach another man to dance with the woman I’m in love with?”

She froze so suddenly she nearly spilled the drinks in front of her, unable to curb the smile that spread across her face. She reached across the table to cover his hand that was resting there with his own. “We just need one dance together as the Maid of Honor and the Best Man. After that, I promise all the other dances will be yours.”

“Fine,” he huffs, squeezing her hand, and switching their positions so he can lace his fingers though hers.

“Thank you,” she smiles, using their entangled hands to pull him forward so she can lean over the table to capture his lips in a kiss. “It took you long enough.”

6. I Run to You- Lady Antebellum

There were many things in life that Abigail Maitland ran from. She ran from hate. she ran from prejudice and pessimist, she ran from various monsters that had long since gone extinct. However, she always ran to the same thing… Becker. When the world got a little bit too much for her to handle she knew she was safe going to him. A year ago, Connor would have been the one she’d run to. The one that would hold her while she hid her tears and mourned the death of another creature, or another passerby that they weren’t in time to save. Connor wasn’t the most important person in her life now, though. Becker was. Becker was the reason why she got up even on the mornings it was too much, and marched herself in the ARC building, even when she wanted to tell Lester and his formalities to shove it. Becker was the reason she tried the girl thing again, even though he assured her he loved her no matter what she wore, even if those heels did do something to him. He was the reason her heart pounded each and every time he came within her sight. Becker was the reason no other man would ever seem like enough. Becker was the one that Abby had fallen in love with, the one that she would always run to, no matter the problem.

7. Masquerade- Phantom of the Opera

The soft white feathers tickled her face as Abby straitened the slightly too loose mask. She scanned the crowd for the simple black mask that she knew Becker had donned right before they arrived, refusing to wear it on the ride over. She saw Connor in his shiny gold mask, whispering over in partially hidden corner with Sarah. Abby was a little jealous of the sequined make up that the woman had perfectly applied in a swirling pattern around her eyes and over her. Part of her wishes she had thought of that. She had just spotted a tall red feathered mask spinning across that dance floor that could only belong to Jenny, when she felt someone snake their arms around her waist from behind. She let out a startled gasp before leaning into the familiar touch. “Abby,” Becker whispered in her ear, placing a soft kiss on her neck. “I have an idea.”

“Oh, what’s that?” she asked, turning to face him, and taking in how glorious he looked in his perfectly tailored tuxedo she’d helped him pick out just for the occasion.

“We should get married.”

Abby stopped fiddling with his bow tie, and flattened her hands against his chest. “What?” she barely managed to whisper out.

Becker pulled a cherry wood box out of his pocket, opened it to expose the simple, yet gorgeous ring resting inside, and took one of her hands in his. “Will you marry me?”

She nodded her head several times, grinning like mad, “Yes! Of course!”

He slid the ring on her finger, before scooping her up in his arms and spinning them both around. Neither could contain the laughter that bubbled out of them until he captured her lips in a deep kiss.

8. Stay- Sugarland

Becker closed the door of their shared flat quietly behind, in hopes of not waking Abby. He flicked on the front light, surprised to see her wide awake on the couch, clearing waiting for him.

“Where’ve you been Beck?” she asked him, his tone flat and harsh.

“Extra training with some of the new guys,” he told her with an inquisitive smile. “I told you I’d be late. You didn’t have to wait up.” He made his way across the living room to place a kiss on her cheek.

She leaned away, tears filling her eyes. “Didn’t know Sarah was joining the military branch of the team.”

Becker stepped back and let out a long sigh, rubbing the back of his head. “Abby, I-”

Abby shook her head. “Save it, Becker. Do you really think she loves you? Like I do? You think she truly cares for you and isn’t just looking for a quick shag to make up for Danny?”

“I’m so sorry, Abby,” he whispered. He reached for her, pulling her into a hug. She didn’t fight him, but didn’t immediately pull away either.

“You choose right now, are you going to be spending the rest of your nights in her bed or mine?” she shakily whimpered into his chest.

“What?” She pulled away from him, walking across the other side of the room and crossed her arms over her chest finally turning back to him with deep breath after a moment. “Right. Wrong answer. See, you keep choosing her. You chose her the first moment you let your pants down. Then you chose her again every time you lied to me about training to do it again. I’ve given you my best, yet she gets the best of you, and I’m not going to live this way. It’s too painful. So get out,” she told him harshly though her sobs.

“Abs, no-” He reached for her yet again, but she shoved his arm away. She chokes out another sob, throwing his keys at him. He just barely managed to catch them before they hit him in the face. “I said get out!”

The captain let out another huff, knowing there wasn’t anything he could do to change her mind or make up for his actions at his point. “I really am sorry. I’ll come get my things tomorrow,” he whispered, defeated before gathering his wallet and phone back up and leaving.

Abby waited until the door shut, before sinking down to the ground, grabbing a pillow, burying her face in at her body wracked with sobs.

9. Birds- Kate Nash

Abby set down her files with a lighthearted huff. “Alright, Becker, that is the fifth time that you’ve looked up at me like that since we’ve been here. Tell me what you’re thinking?”

The two sat at one of the metal tables in her lab, finishing up the paper work that Lester had assigned earlier that day. The others were off in various offices with their own ‘torture buddies’ as they taken to call one another during those late night reports and debriefings.

He took a moment to respond, just taking her in for an extra couple seconds tapping his pen on his stack of papers, as he considered what to say. “You know all these creatures. They scare the shit out everyone because they can tear you to shreds in a heartbeat, but they are interesting and beautiful and magnificent. That’s what am thinking, only about you.”

“What are you talking about?” she laughed, confused.

“You, Abby,” he told her, reaching across the folders and papers to take her hand. “You scare the shit out of me, because you mean so much to me, and I’m afraid every time we are out there that I’m going to lose you.” There was softness to his tone that she had never heard before.

“Oh,” she blushed, ducking her head momentarily to hide her smile. “Yeah, I - I feel the same way, Becker.” She squeezed the hand he still had ahold of, before going back to her paperwork. She knew that if they didn’t get it done now, they never would, and Lester would never let them free.

10. Boys with Girlfriends- Meiko

Abby rushed out of the storage closet, shaking the image of Becker and Sarah liplocked in between the towers of shelves. She had to stop being friends with boys that had girlfriends already. It never ended well for her. She always ended up falling for them to some degree. It was like a weird magnetic pull that attracted her to already committed men. If she was being completely honest with herself, she was a little worried about that was said of her character. It wasn’t like she actively pursued taken guys. She just wanted to be friends. She wasn’t supposed to fall for him.

I’m not even sure if this fandom is still alive. If you’re reading though, thank you. Let me know what you think. There were a couple I wasn’t thrilled with, but because it was a rewrite, I didn’t want to get rid of them.

Hugs, Honey.

#primeval #primeval fanfiction #becker/abby #hilary becker #abby maitland #mamanabeille #rewrite #my highschool playlists were WAY different than my current playlists

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pocket-luv101 · 6 years ago

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Summary: Licht knew the story of Cinderella but he didn’t want to find love at the ball. It was justice. He intended to sneak into the ball and make his own ending. But the prince wasn’t the man he expected. (LawLicht, Cinderella AU)

AN: I talked about this concept briefly on twitter and @meenakshi-queen made a fun suggesting that I just had to write.

(Part 1) // Part 2

Hyde parted the curtain and looked out the carriage’s window. The rain was still pouring heavily outside. He and his brother could do nothing more than wait. They had to stop because the roads were too muddy for them to continue. He noticed a man who ran past their carriage. The first thing he noticed about him was how he didn’t wear shoes. He stepped in the puddles with no concern to their delicate condition.

“Nii-san, look at that magic shop. Maybe we can buy a spell to clear this weather. I doubt a small place like that will have a powerful witch but it’s worth a try. It might be interesting to take a look around too.” Hyde suggested and tapped Kuro’s shoulder. Before his brother could answered, he opened the door and jumped out. Kuro groaned and followed him out of the carriage.

Licht stopped in front of the small magic shop. It was closed but Licht wasn’t there as a customer. He knocked on the door and waited for his friend to answer. The rain was so loud that Licht couldn’t hear someone approach him. It suddenly stopped and Licht looked up. A thick cloak was held over him and kept him safe from the rain. The blond who appeared held his cloak over them also gave him a smile.

“Where are your shoes, Angel Cakes? You might hurt yourself if you step on a rock.” Hyde nodded at his feet but Licht didn’t answer him. He glanced behind the man and saw the carriage parked nearby. The crest on the door told him that the man was royalty. His eyes narrowed and he turned away. The cold rejection didn’t deter him though. “Would you like us to help you home?”

“I don’t need the help of a demon.” He told him.

The door behind Licht open and a soft gasp followed. The local witch doctor, Mahiru, quickly urged him into his shop. He also gestured to the two princes to enter as well. “You three are soaking wet! Come in and dry yourself before you catch a cold. Sit down and make yourself comfortable while I brew tea for you three. I won’t charge you for it.”

“Thank you.” Licht said to his friend. Before Mahiru left, he used a spell to control the rain water and pulled it from their clothes. He poured the water into the cauldron sitting in the middle of the room. He disappeared into another room to make tea. Licht wanted to speak with Mahiru alone but he would have to wait until the prince and his advisor left.

The shop was filled with magical items and Licht looked through them curiously. He watched the two princes in the corner of his eyes. He was wary of the royal family who had passed laws restricting magic. Licht stood next to the cauldron and he wondered what Mahiru was making. He saw Hyde’s reflection in the water and he turned to him.

“Is there a reason you’re here, your highness? Mahiru has already closed his shop for the night. You shouldn’t inconvenience others even if your title allows it.” Licht told him. He knew he should be more respectful to a prince but he was a rather blunt person. Surprisingly, Hyde didn’t become angry like Licht expected him to and instead chuckled. The man had a charming laugh.

“I’m not the prince but his advisor.” Hyde lied. He wanted to speak with the man more but it was clear that he was apprehensive of the royal family. Since he had returned to the kingdom, he found the public opinion of his family had changed. They were in neighbouring countries to negotiate alliances in the past few months. Their advisors made decisions for them in their absence.

Hyde held his hand out to him. “My name’s Hyde. Can I know yours?”

“You don’t need to know since it’s unlikely we’ll meet each other again.” He answered because he was still a little wary. He saw him leave a carriage with the family’s crest.

Hyde accidentally leaned on the cauldron and he jumped in pain. He blew on the light burn until Licht placed a cool towel on his arm. Licht decided to trust him for the moment. At first glance, Hyde appeared to be a fool. “I don’t know if you’re lying about being an advisor. You should remove that crest or else someone might attack you thinking you’re a prince.”

“We wouldn’t want that.” Hyde placed his hand on the towel and their fingers brushed. He took the towel from him and he wrapped it around the burn. He could easily heal it with magic once he returned to the castle. “Did you forget your shoes here?”

“Why are you so interested in my feet? This is the last time you asked about them.” Hyde’s answer was a nonchalant shrug. The white strands in his dark hair and how he didn’t wear shoes caught his attention. But it was his sharp tongue that intrigued Hyde. He was a prince so it was rare to meet someone who was forthright with him. He wanted the chance to speak with him.

Mahiru came back into the room with a tray of tea. He set it down on a table and then handed a cup to his friend. He was welcoming to the two strangers but he also had to question who they were. The elaborate sword on the man’s hip made him think they weren’t common folk. He gave the prince a kind smile, “May I help you? My shop is closed but I can perform simple spells for you.”

“We were on our way home but the muddy road has left us stranded.” Kuro explained their situation. He didn’t know if Mahiru could help them since the magic shop was so small. Still, he took out a small bag of coin. “How much does the tea and a place to stay while we wait for the rain to end?”

“You don’t need to pay me back for my kindness. If you would like to buy a spell, I would be more than happy to help you. I can clear up the road for you.” Mahiru picked up his broom leaning against the wall. He could see that Licht was impatient to speak to him. They weren’t able to talk comfortably with the two strangers in his shop. “I’ll clear the road so you can go home.”

“They’re gone.” Licht relaxed as he saw the carriage leave. He thought of the blond man and wondered if he could believe his words. A prince wouldn’t be so relaxed with his subjects. He pulled the curtains closed and faced Mahiru. He pulled out a formal letter. “I found this when I was cleaning. It’s an invitation to the masquerade ball. This is our chance to save Misono!”

“A ball?” His brows furrowed as he read the letter. It was addressed to the family who adopted Licht after his parents died. “Did you take this from your stepfather? You should be careful not to anger him, Licht. The last time he got angry, he threw you outside without your shoes. I know you want to help Misono but you need to take care of yourself too.”

“I’m an angel.” Licht said to dismiss his concern. He tapped the piece of paper to bring Mahiru’s attention back to it. “This is our chance to sneak into the castle and save Misono. We can break him out of prison and destroy any evidence they faked. We both know he didn’t steal anything.”

“Misono is innocent and I want to free him too. I already petitioned the royal family to look over the evidence again. For now, we need to wait for their reply. We shouldn’t rush into anything dangerous unless it’s a last resort, Licht.” He reminded his friend. Mahiru desperately wanted to free Misono like Licht did. He recognized that the situation was complicated.

“But I can’t just sit and wait while my friend is in trouble.” Licht argued. He told Mahiru his plan: “With your magic, we’ll be disguised as foreign princes. We can use the ball to enter the castle and destroy the fake evidence they made. Just like Cinderella!”

“Cinderella is a fairy tale and she only wanted a fun night away from her family. She wasn’t planning a crime! We can get in a lot of trouble.” Mahiru saw the stubborn expression Licht had. It was clear he wouldn’t be able to convince him to give up. Licht would simply go to the ball alone. He decided to go along with his plan. “When is the masquerade ball?”

“So, you’ll help me?” Licht’s smile beamed brightly. “It’s this Friday.”

“I will go with you but we won’t commit a crime. We’ll go to the ball and simply talk to with the royal family about Misono. The only thing we will do at the ball is dance and talk with the princes. Okay?”

“Yes.” Licht lied. He refused to dance with a prince at the masquerade ball.

“Remember, the spell will only last until midnight so we need to leave before then.” Mahiru warned Licht. He glanced out the window of the carriage he made with magic and a pumpkin. The castle drew closer so he transformed a small mouse and hid inside Licht’s pocket. He only had one invitation so he needed to sneak in as a mouse.

He still had reservations about the plan. Only highborn families were invited so they could be charged with trespassing. It was too late to return now that they were in front of the castle. The ball had already started and they hoped to blend in with the crowd. Licht took a deep breath and stepped through the door. He went to the horses and lightly petted them. “Wait out here. We might need to leave quickly.”

Licht walked up the grand stairway towards the enchanting castle. It seemed to glimmer like moonlight but he wasn’t focused on its beauty. He thought of the number of guards and how difficult it would be to sneak through the castle. He handed the invitation to the doorman and stepped inside. A guard escorted him to the ballroom where everyone was too distracted dancing to see him enter.

He discretely scanned the doors to see where he could slip into the main castle. Licht stayed next to the wall and he did his best not to draw attention to himself. He noticed the large glass doors that led to the castle’s private garden. He checked that no one was looking at him before he ducked behind a large curtain. The garden was dark and empty so he opened the glass door and walked out.

He hid behind a hedge and then took Mahiru out of his pocket. He returned to his human body and rubbed his ears. “Transformation spells makes my body stiff. Hopefully, this won’t be a waste. Let’s go back inside and find the royal family to explain the situation.”

“You go ahead first. I have to do something first.” He said. Licht was glad that Mahiru readily believed him and returned to the ball. The moment Mahiru turned his head, Licht ran off. His goal for the night was saving his friend and he doubted talking with the royal family would achieve that.

He walked along the building to find another door into the castle. He was careful to hide from the guards so he wouldn’t be seen. Licht came across a door that wasn’t guarded. After he watched the staff come and go through the door, he decided that it was the best way to enter the castle. He hoped he could easily find the evidence against Misono too.

Licht opened the door the slightest amount so he was able to peer inside. On the other side of the door was a hallway. Luckily, it was mostly deserted and he waited for the chance to sneak inside. A smooth voice stopped him from entering. “That’s not the door to the masquerade ball, Angel Cakes.”

He jumped and slammed the door louder than he intended. He turned on his heel sharply and faced the man. Licht recognized him because this was the second time the man sneaked up on him. Hyde smiled at him and the sight did strange things to Licht’s heart. He ignored it and reminded himself that he needed to help Misono. Licht lied, “I’m lost.”

“I’ll help you,” He offered and held out his arm to him. Licht knew that it would be suspicious if he said no so he placed his hand on his arm. Hyde lightly patted his hand before he guided him away from the door. He noticed how Licht dragged his feet as they walked and looked down at him. He noticed the white streak in his dark hair. “You seem familiar. May I know your name, Angel Cakes?”

“You already called me by it. I’m Angel. Next time, don’t add the ‘cake’ because I’m not a pastry.” He told him a partial lie. Licht didn’t predict that he would meet the advisor again. Yet, his sudden appearance could help him. “I don’t like crowded parties. Can you show me around the castle?”

“It would be my pleasure, Angel Eyes. There’s a field of fireflies you might enjoy.” He led him back into the garden rather than the castle like Licht hoped he would. He thought he could ask for a tour of the castle and use it as an excuse to search the rooms.

As they walked through the garden, Licht thought of how to slip away from Hyde. There was a bridge that led to a meadow and jars of fire flies lined the sides. They were likely placed there to keep people from falling into the water. Licht opened one of the jars and set them free. A few fireflies landed in his dark hair and created a halo. He looked like an angel and Hyde was mesmerized by the sight.

Hyde waved his hand and created a soft song. His magic surrounded them. To Licht’s surprise, it was surprisingly warm and soothing. Hyde bowed to him and then he held out his hand to Licht. “May I have this dance, Angel?”

Licht thought it would be a good opportunity to learn more about the castle. So, he placed his hands onto Hyde’s broad shoulders. He didn’t expect to be swept away by the moment and Hyde’s clear, red eyes. They waltzed together to the song he had created with his music. “For someone who doesn’t like, you have good rhythm, Angel Cakes.”

“An angel can do anything if they want to. Also, I’m a pianist so following melodies is second nature to me.” Licht told him as the moved in a small circle on the bridge. “You’re not wearing a mask so you’re not a part of the party. Are you a part of the staff? Will you get in trouble if the royal family finds out that you sneaked out? That family is full of strict demons.”

“The Servamps are demons? I spend a lot of time with them and I don’t think they are.” Hyde noticed how Licht’s hands twitched slightly. He gently rubbed their fingers together and Licht looked up at him. “What did they do? You can tell me, Angel.”

He wasn’t certain if he should answer Hyde or not. While he wasn’t a part of the royal family, he worked for them. Would he help them free Misono? Licht bit his lip and he looked down at their feet. Hyde placed his finger beneath his chin and gently lifted his gaze back to him. Their eyes met and they stopped dancing. “Do you agree with their new restrictions on magic?”

“New restrictions?” Hyde echoed. His family hadn’t authorized a new law to be passed regarding magic. He placed his hand on the small of Licht’s back and guided him forward. “Let’s walk and talk about magic. You don’t need to tell me why you were sneaking around the castle. I just want to listen to you.”

“Magic is an essential part of our lives. The new law that states only the royal court may use it is short sighted and an abuse of power. They’re selfish demons, I tell you!” Licht ended his tirade with a few curses Hyde couldn’t repeat. His passion was attractive and he had to nod in agreement. They spent the past hour walking and talking but Hyde wasn’t bored for a moment. The conversation flowed between them easily.

“If I ever get the chance, I would kick some sense into those demons. Heeled boots are a nightmare. They’re even killing me.” Licht muttered. He sat on a bench next to the fountain and untied the laces. They walked a lot so his feet felt sore. He placed his feet in the a fountain. A light sigh escaped him and he kicked the water languidly. “That feels great.”

“Aren’t we a little too old to play with water?” Hyde asked in a teasing voice. He playfully splashed a little water at him as well. It was much but Licht retaliated by kicking the water and soaking him. He had to laugh at the sight. Hyde didn’t seem to mind and sat next to him. “I think I can help you, Angel. I know the prince. Just wait here and I’ll bring him out so you can talk directly to him.”

“I doubt he will listen.” Licht’s hands tightened into fists. “We’ll both be in trouble if the family knew we opposed their law. That’s why my friend was falsely accused. Why would you risk the same?”

“Well, I would love to know your true name, Angel Cakes. This might help you trust me more.” Licht was shocked that Hyde knew he lied about his name. Hyde smiled reassuring and stood up. “I’ll return with the prince soon. Stay here.”

“You’re a strange man.” He muttered to himself. Yet, he also nodded in agreement. He reasoned that he could force the prince to free Misono if talking didn’t work. Licht watched Hyde run back to the ballroom. He took his feet from the water and dried them with his magic. He hoped that Hyde wouldn’t be gone for too long.

Licht noticed someone return shortly. To his surprise, it was Mahiru who ran towards him instead of Hyde. Mahiru grabbed his arm and urgently tugged him to his feet. “Thank God I found you in time. It’s almost midnight, Licht. We need to go before the spell wears off.”

“But…” He looked back to the ball. Should he wait for Hyde to return? The clock struck twelve and Licht rushed to make a decision. He couldn’t stay and endanger his friend further with his plan. He would have to find another way to speak with Hyde. Licht hurriedly put on his boots but he didn’t have time to properly tie the laces. Mahiru turned into a mouse and he jumped into his pocket.

Licht retraced his steps through the garden and out of the ballroom. He needed to reach the carriage before the twelfth chime of the clock. As frantic as he was, he was mindful not to draw attention to himself. He passed a portrait that made him stop. It was of the royal family and there was Hyde. Hyde was a prince and hid it from him.

The loud chime of the clock was like a jolt of lightning. He forced himself to turn away and he ran out of the castle. Licht stared down the long stairway and cursed loudly. He ran down the steps and held onto the rail to stop himself from falling. Licht almost tripped when he heard someone call his name. He looked over his shoulder and he saw that it was Hyde.

“Angel, where are you going?” He only ran faster in response. Hyde managed to reach him at the bottom of the steps and he placed his hand on his shoulder to stop Licht. “I thought you wanted to talk with the prince about the new magic law. He’s right behind me.”

Licht spun around and kicked him. “Let go of me, Demon!”

He knocked Hyde away and he ran back into the carriage. Hyde was in a daze as Licht jumped into the carriage. He slammed the door close and then he collapsed against the plush chair. He felt the carriage rush forward. Licht took a shaky breath and he looked through the back window. He could see Hyde standing in the distance.

They were a safe distance from the castle when the clock rang the final time. Luckily, it didn’t seem like anyone followed them. Licht stepped out of the shrinking pumpkin and he took the mouse out of his pocket. After he set him down, Mahiru nullified his spell. He placed his hand over his heart that was still racing. “We are never doing something like that again. Licht, what happened to your boots?”

He looked down at his feet and he realized that one was missing. Since he didn’t tie the laces properly, the boot must’ve flown off when he kicked Hyde. He hadn’t noticed at the time. “I think I lost it. Shit, that was my favourite pair too.”

“Should we go back and get it?” Mahiru suggested.

“I can go back tomorrow.” Licht said. “I doubt that the demon will find my boot or even be able to find me with it.”

#servamp #lawlicht #greed pair #servamp hyde #licht jekylland todoroki #mahiru shirota #fanfiction

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queerspeculativefiction · 5 years ago

Text

Old stuff

Got talking with Alien, and remembered Cameron, so here are some old snippets from a book that’s never finished.

Probably some trigger warnings in there. A lot of them. Cameron is not nice. It is also old, like... 6 years old by now.

SNIPPET ONE - The whale problem

The park was nearly empty at this time of the day, the gravel paths a darker brown between the yellowed lawns. The sun was out, spring was here but the green had yet to follow, leaving a world of beiges and browns. The pond was empty of any ducks, the fountain dry and not yet running. It was desolate image, painted in subdued colours by the dust of nearby roads, but Cameron thought it almost peaceful. Sitting there, he could imagine that the world was dying the way he was, slowly aging into monochrome.

You never planned to be a part of the beige army, but one morning you woke up and found yourself there. Everybody put their pants on one leg at a time they said, but even those days were behind him. Now, he sat on the edge of the bed and gently eased his swollen feet into them. Then he rose and pulled, and with a bit of luck he just about managed. Maybe he should have help, but when you lived the life he had, you didn't take time off for raising a family. He probably had children somewhere, but had never stuck around to make sure. Prison tended to make a mess of any relationship, and after a while you just stopped trying.

Unlike some.

The woman had passed him twice now, a sharp young thing, all angles and shadows. She was leading a dog, a confused looking poodle that kept pulling at the leash.

"Either shit or get off the pot, girl." He spoke up because she disturbed him, made him remember, brought him back into a past he tried to forget

"You got a foul mouth for a wrinkled old prune," she replied, but her shoulders did the hunch of the guilty. He had not been wrong about her.

"I didn't know they let pakis in the force," he retorted, giving her a grim smile. At least he still had his own teeth, yellowed though they were.

"The name's Noor, not paki, they should have warned me you were an arse as well as uncooperative." She was standing with her arms folded now, the dog pulling on its leash with a whine.

"I'm only an arse to coppers," he said, looking up at her breasts. Smaller than he liked them, but still, beggars couldn't be choosers. "I'm kind to kids and animals. Unlike you."

"Oh, the dog?" She looked down at the struggling dog. "It's not mine; I borrowed it from a woman in the park to have an excuse to scout the place. They told me you'd bolt if you figured we were around."

"Look at me," he said, and both the dog and the girl did. He held up a finger and the dog sat down obediently, ears attentive. "You think I could run very fast?"

"You know what I mean." She looked increasingly uncomfortable but finally managed to look away.

"Say that I do. Say that you got me talking. It's still only for the pleasure of turning you down."

"Let him who has understanding reckon the number of the Beast, for it is a human number." Her voice had gone hard, insistent. "He's back. The Beast."

That made him fall silent. The dog started barking again, sensing the building tension.

"Last month there were three murders down by the banks," she started, voice hushed. "Like he used to do them. We hushed it up, nobody cares about dead Devkies. But the whispers started. He's moved in again, cleaned out the riverside, set up his own people there."

"He doesn't have any people anymore; he's been gone too long."

"Really? He got new ones then. Don't tell me that you haven't seen the signs. The rain of pigeons? The crows circling the city hall?"

"Don't tell me you've got the Sight, girl."

"Maybe I do. Runs in the family. And I know the law didn't stop him last time. You did."

"I had turf to protect then. An organization. I didn't need any jumped-up hellspawn trying to muscle in on my operation. These days I'm happy if I can have a decent piss."

"People will die."

"People always die."

"Not if I can help it."

"Girl... don't be an idiot. You'd be chewed up and spat out if you went up against him. You're hardly out of diapers; you even gave me your bloody name."

"Did I?" She looked straight at him, mouth curved in familiar displeasure.

"You... ah, clever girl. I suppose the vagueness of the wording would suffice. I was always fond of 'Call me Cameron' myself."

"I could never say that without thinking of Moby Dick."

"And yet you want me to go and hunt your white whale?"

"It's not really mine, is it? It's yours."

And the damn thing was that she was right.

...

The city felt so quiet, but the undercurrent of terror was already there. The murders plastered over the newspapers. The shadows you spotted on the way home after a late night out. The increase in looted stores and arson. Cameron had seen it all before, forty years ago when he was younger and the world was a different animal. He'd been in and out of prison since he could remember, and every time he got out, the world had made another turn. Things didn't change when you were away; you were locked inside the grey, preserved like a specimen in a jar until you were dumped out into a world that no longer needed you.

It had been bad enough during shorter stints, but when you were in for five, ten years you became a stranger in your own skin. Oh he'd learned things in there, in many ways more than he ever had in school. But it changed you all the same, and there came a time when he had seen enough and decided to retire to a life of feeding pigeons and watching young women jog past. A harmless old kook they called him, because age wiped away everything. Even a bad reputation. Once he had been a force to be reckoned with, now he was just a weak old man.

Still, there were worse things he could be. Like dead.

Was seriously considering this? Had the girl put the whammy on him? He thought not, she had the sight but he wasn't one to be talked into anything. Maybe it was just unfinished business. Maybe he was just picking a better spot to die than a bench in the park surrounded by a corona of pigeons. Of course there were worse ways too, and the Beast knew all about those. What was the old saying? 'And may you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you're dead.' He'd be lucky.

But he had always made his own luck.

...

"No, you can't get in old man. Just move along." The man was young and skinny and with a hungry look in his eyes, like all the Beast's thralls.

"Oh bugger off," Cameron said with enough force to make the man take a step back. "I want a chat with your boss."

"Let him in, Alfie." The drape had been pushed to the side, and an old woman popped her head out. Still striking despite her age, with pale skin pulled tightly against her skull. "He's expected."

Alfie stepped aside, still looking staggered, as if he'd got something stuck in his teeth that wouldn't budge. Cameron shuffled inside, trying not to lean on his cane too much. Honestly, he'd rather have his walker, but he guessed that would give a bad impression. The thought nearly made him laugh.

As if the Beast would care.

"So I am expected," he said, words sounding the waters as they shuffled down the corridors of the crack house. There were no doors here, the Beast did not approve of them. They held power, an older power than even he controlled. So as they walked, Cameron would get glimpses of what was going on through tattered drapes and curtains, things that might have blocked sights but never sound. If his skin wasn't so wrinkled it'd crawl.

"If you've ruined Alfie, I will be most cross," the woman said. "He's a hopeless druggie, but he's got a talented tongue."

"Ruined?" For a moment Cameron had no idea what she was talking about, and then he laughed. "Oh, the 'bugger off' bit? Not sure if it actually works that way. That'd be a laugh, wouldn't it?" If it had, he regretted not using it more. He could remember a few coppers who would have been well served by a long, hard fuck.

"No laughter here, Mr Cameron. I thought you'd remember the rules." She walked them upstairs, which was a slow process since his aging knees protested every step.

He did remember the rules. No laughter, another thing that held power. He'd watched the Beast do unspeakable things to a man's tongue for that particular transgression. Towards the end it had looked like a mouthful of worms writing in a bloodied nest, and he had to swallow hard to keep the memories down.

"I never was much for rules," he said with a shrug, more to keep his courage up than anything. "Who are you anyway? I feel like I should know your scrawny arse."

"You mean you don't recognize me? Shame on you Mr Cameron, you'd think you'd remember someone who's had your dick in her mouth."

"Nooo, little Sally Fielding?" He could see it now, when he looked. The teenage girl, all limbs and eyes and dark, dark passions. "I never thought he'd get to you of all people."

The shrug was nearly imperceptible. "He gets to everybody in the end. You should know that Mr Cameron."

They walked the rest of the stairs in uncomfortable silence.

...

The room was swathed in shadows, hundreds of candles making the heat almost unbearable. At least it would have been unbearable back when he was a younger man, but with age came the chills, and the need for electric blankets and warm sweaters. This, Cameron thought to himself not without irony, was probably the closest thing to warm he'd been in years.

"It's been a while," he said, because starting the conversation gave him the illusion of control. "Thought you'd decided to have a vacation in warmer climates."

"What can I say," the Beast said in his raspy voice, torn from the throat of his recent host. "Even wars get boring. I've missed the smaller, dirtier vices."

"And here I thought you missed me," Cameron said, fighting not to turn away from those piss-yellow stains that masqueraded as eyes.

"Maybe I did," the Beast admitted with an amused hum. "It is always a pleasure to see the mighty fall so far."

"As I recall, you took a bit of a tumble last time yourself." Where did he get the guts? No, he shouldn't be asking himself that. He had always been ready to piss in God's eye if it got him what he wanted. This was no different.

"I did," the Beast admitted, licking his lips. "Another thing I owe you."

Up until that point Cameron had hoped that maybe Noor would have been mistaken. There were any number of creatures that could have masqueraded as the Beast after all. Any number of terrors that went bump in the night. He had come here to make sure that she was wrong, that there was no need for new nightmares. But here, faced with the Beast, he had to admit the truth to himself. This was the real deal, or at least the same deal as the one he'd banished all those decades ago. This was the Beast, and he was back, and worse... he was smiling.

"Now, no need to talk old memories," Cameron said, hoping his voice sounded steady. "I'm just here to tell you that there's no need to unpack your bags. You won't be staying."

"Oh won't I? No attempt to even put some power into your suggestions, old man? Have you lost the knack for it?" The Beast had risen and was looming now, leaning close.

"Wouldn't do much good now, would it? Besides, I'm just the messenger this time." Just a worthless old man. Cameron willed himself to believe it.

"I see... then perhaps I should make sure to send a message back." The nails on the hand caressing his chin were as sharp as claws.

"Trust me; you really don't want to see me naked these days." He vividly remembered the message tossed on his own doorstep all those decades ago, the mutilated body naked and covered with marks of unspeakable torture.

"As if we cared about your looks," the Beast said, breath rancid. "You're all disgusting sacks of meat; it's the soul that matters. And I have been waiting for yours a long time."

"Mom lived past a hundred; you might have to wait longer yet." Cameron's knuckles were white over the hilt of the cane.

"I am patience."

"And I need to take a slash. The perils of old age you know. Bladder problems." He didn't look down, willed himself to keep looking into the inhuman eyes. "So if you're gonna torture, get on with it."

"I suppose there is no skill inherent in making an old man piss himself," the Beast admitted. "Begone and tell the people that sent you here that this town is mine now."

"I'll make sure to tell them that," Cameron assured, backing out of the room until the drapes fell shut and he could turn without having those yellow eyes eating away at his back.

Well, that could have gone better. And worse.

Once he had limped down the stairs, past the hollow eyes and swollen veins, past the used needles and wasted flesh, he pulled up his phone and called the number Noor had given him.

"You're right," he said curtly, foregoing even insults in the face of what we had just seen. "We've got ourselves a whale problem."

-------

SNIPPET TWO - A History Lesson

Noor pushed back the phone in her pocket with an unmuttered curse. Her contact at the hotel has just told her Cameron had arrived, but about an hour later than needed. What the old man had been up to in the meantime was anybody's guess. Unfortunately, there was no allowance for guesswork in this, but neither was she in any position to call up the old man and yell at him. Not that he would listen.

"Bad news?" Sergeant Williams looked up from his screen, the blue light flickering over his weathered face.

"Just annoyingly expected ones." She resumed rifling through the archives, then caught herself and looked over at him again with a softer smile on her lips. "Thank you for letting me have a look through the dustbin, it's appreciated."

The dustbin was what people affectionately called the deep archives of the Met, the place where things that didn't quite fit ended up. Over the past century it had collected what others would call 'curiosities', cases and items that never showed up in the official files. Who had first started it was a matter for debate, but it was being quietly curated by the Sighted few, the ones that knew that there was more to the world than the police operational handbook told you.

"Just be quick about it, I could get in a lot of trouble if someone found you here. The super's not the forgiving type. As you might remember."

"I do." She realized how defeatalist her voice sounded and quickly added. "I still don't regret what I did. No matter the consequences."

"A lot of us agree with what you did, you know."

"I know." The words were without sarcasm, and she added a smile to drive the point home. "But thank you again all the same."

"Don't thank me, just finish up in a hurry."

"I would be finished if you'd got these files organized by now."

"Yeah, yeah. You and me both know that's not going to happen. What year are you looking for again?"

"1981. That's when it started."

...

1981

The riots had torn through the city all through the summer, fuelled by anger and desperation. The air had turned electric with frustration, the streets humming with anger, spending itself against storefronts and riot shields. Anybody with a uniform was a target, and Brixton had been a name that brought fresh fears and horrors to the headlines. But the riots had been beaten down and a sullen august arrived, unreasonably hot, with the moon hanging low and pregnant in the skies.

And then the river had caught fire.

Cameron was standing by the banks, feeling heat curl his thinning hair. It wasn't fair that a man in his thirties should be growing bald already, but this was one war he couldn't win so he had just shaved most of it off to hide the casualties.

"This is insane," he muttered, watching the flames leap and the heat dance mirages in the air above. "Where is the damn fire department?"

"The fire doesn't burn for everybody, Boss." Eelis lit up a cigarette, tossing the spent match in the flames to let it be consumed. "It's just like the maniac on the platform, ennit? Now you see it, now you don't, and before you know it they have slipped away and hidden in the urban legends. This can't be seen without Sight."

"Bullshit, I know what the Sight does, but I can feel this." Cameron reached out and pulled back his hand with a snarl, blisters forming on his hand where the flames had leaped up to bite. "And it sure as hell ain't no stinking urban legend, those pissants work in the shadows, reaching out to maybe two or three people at the most. This is a bloody river through the centre of the city! This is bold."

"Not just bold, Boss, it's for you I reckon. He's pulling you close. 'Only for the ones the Beast has marked, will the flames have bite as well as bark.' Remember that? Turns out the old nutter was right on the money." Eelis reached out, running his hand through the flames, it turned opaque, surrounded by the flame mirage, but did not burn.

"That's not the Beast out there," Cameron snapped, sucking on a blister.

"If you say so, Boss." Eelis shrugged. It was never wise to argue with a man that had climbed to where he was today over the gravestones of his predecessors. Organized crime was a dog eat dog world, and right now Cameron was working his way towards being the biggest, meanest dog of them all.

"It's just a bigger, nastier version of the Bloody Mary, and we dealt with her when we were bloody teens."

"Like you said, Boss. Bigger. Nastier."

"Still something that can be dealt with. Just got to find its weakness." Cameron rubbed his scruffy chin, mesmerized by the dance of the flames. Did he really smell the cooked meat and the sulphur? Did he imagine the pained moans and crackling fat?

"Not sure if it has any," Eelis said after considering it for a moment. "Well, except God. Could always try a priest."

"I don't believe in God," Cameron said firmly, turning his back on the flames at last.

"That's probably a good thing, Boss, since you've been pissing in his eye for years."

"Oh go fuck yourself and get Swan to come back in. We've got work to do. I'll be at the flat, call me when he gets here and not a moment sooner." Cameron yanked open the door to his car hard enough that Eelis flinched a little.

"Swan? What if he starts up some more trouble?" he asked cautiously.

"Grow a fucking spine and deal with it."

...

"Do you remember someone called Swan?" Noor put down the file she had been reading, checking with her notes. "Most likely a known associate of Joachim Cameron or Eelis Jones?"

"Swan, Swan... Roger Swan? Could that be the man?" Williams rose to join her, his stocky frame crowding her away from the cabinet. "Have you checked the Cameron file?"

"There is a Cameron file?" Noor gave the older man a stern look. "Why didn't you tell me before?"

"Because you never mentioned that you wanted it." The shrug was amused, the moustache wiggling. "You've been going on about 1981 and the riots there, next time be a bit clearer my dear."

"I went through the computers about him, not much came up. I didn't know he was down here in the dustbins as well."

"Got one of the fatter files down here, at least of the recent ones. Old Nichols had a hard-on for Cameron for years, he collected every scrap no matter how out there. The sarge even threw a party once they'd finally nailed him. Fifteen years in Belmarsh.The old bastard will be a pensioner when he finally gets out."

"He is out. For a few years now. Retired from the looks." Noor took the file once that Williams had located it, the thick bundle somehow weightier than it should be. What was it about the old man that had given tbe Beast pause? Was it even him, or just his associates? She needed to know. "Swan, Swan," she mumbled as she leafed through the pages, then paused and reread. "Huh. Did you know Cameron had a girlfriend? I didn't think he was the type to settle down."

"Don't think he ever did." Williams smiled a little. "Men like him never cared where they stuck their dick, pardon ma'm, even if they happened to be in love."

"Love." Noor shrugged as she pulled out the picture of the young woman in question. "I very much doubt that ever ventured into it. That man doesn't have a soft bone in his body." If he had, he would have been less than useful to her cause.

...

1981

Dawn came early to the flat, situated at the top floor as it was. The previous owner had tossed himself out the window after seeing apparitions in the living room, and Cameron had always thought it gave the place a nice, quaint atmosphere. The woman next to him might have kept him awake all night, but she was blissfully Sightless and thus never noticed the shadows still haunting dark corners, waiting for easier prey.

"Strange," she said, running her fingers over his furrowed brow. "Usually you've stopped scowling by now." The sheets were tangled at the foot of the bed, the room too warm in the sweltering heat.

"Got a lot on my mind, babe," Cameron let his fingers trace the curve of her brown hip, the rounded little pot of a stomach. Everything was so soft and sweet about her, no sharp edges, no nasty hidden truths. She was a rarity for him, a woman that wanted nothing more than what he would give her, asked for nothing more than for him to just be himself. Not the big man. Not the tough guy. No masks.

"Don't call me babe," she chided, leaning in to kiss his nose, broken and healed too many times already. "My name is Maria."

"I wish you wouldn't do that," he flinched, pulling her on top of him so she lay draped there like a comforter, peering down at him with that amused little smile under the unruly afro.

"Do what?" she asked, shifting slightly to make herself comfortable, the smile widening as his hands kept trailing down her shoulders and spine.

"Give your name that freely. You shouldn't. It could be dangerous." But she walked in none of the hidden worlds; Maria was just Maria, a local girl, a convenience store clerk from down the block. She knew nothing of drugs or murder, of midnight beatings or the things that lurked behind mirrors or in alleys.

"You're such a worrywart," she said with the softest of laughs, running her fingers over his short hair. "No wonder you're growing bald."

"You told me that was testosterone." Cameron couldn't help but answer the smile though; she was the only one that he allowed to tease him like that. Like he was just a normal bloke, the dealer of luxury cars that he pretended to be. And maybe that was her particular magic, that right here, pressed down into the bed under her soft, curvy body, he felt at peace. Content. Like the rest of the world could go fuck itself, like whatever burning need for more he had always nursed in the pit of his stomach had grown content, at last.

"Well, maybe I lied," she teased, rubbing the tip of her nose against his.

"I'd like to see you try." Cameron wasn't even kidding there, he had seen her try to lie before, about the little things, and it had always ended in mumbled excuses. He couldn't call her innocent, not with the things they were up to in bed, but there was a sweetness to her that utterly disarmed him.

Was he in love? He'd considered it before, and every time he said goodbye to her he talked himself into believing otherwise, but there was no denying the effect she was having on his greedy heart. Like always, when he lay here happy, sated, he promised himself that maybe he should quit the others. Stay faithful. Be a good man.

It never lasted. He was not a good man, very, very far from one in fact. She just made it possible for him to pretend differently, just for a little.

"Don't tell people your name anymore," he said to her, putting every ounce of conviction, of talent, into that whispered order.

"Don't start being weird again," she chided, sliding off to the side so she could rest her head on his shoulder. "Dawn's here, we should get some sleep. Lucky for you I'm on an afternoon shift today."

"Yeah, lucky me" Cameron sighed, wrapping an arm around her. Nothing. He could talk a nun out of her knickers, and all his suggestions slid off her like mere words. She wasn't just Sightless, she lacked even the rudimentary senses that made people heed his words and look over their shoulder when something wicked came their way. She was for all intents and purposes immune to the world he half lived in.

Maybe that was why he treasured her so. That he could know she was with him because she wanted to be, he could not coerce her, could not talk her into things she might never have done otherwise. She was here by choice, with him. And there was nothing more powerful than that.

...

"Got him." Noor grinned and pulled out a picture of the man named Swan, a skinny, bespectabled blonde with a menacing look to him. She had been certain he had heard him refered to before, and if she was planning to have a hope in hell of succeeding with the task she had set herself, she would need every ace in the hole. From the look, he'd be the same age as Cameron now, was he retired as well?

She leaned back and chewed a pencil, then checked and rechecked her notes. Swan had been a shadow to Cameron's light, the power behind the throne whispered some. Nood didn't believe that, after having met the man she couldn't imagine Cameron playing second fiddle to anybody. No, Swan must have been useful to him, in other ways than mere muscle. Someone that walked the hidden paths? Someone with more magical clout than the former mob boss? Possibly, there had been rumours of a falling out and she had failed to locate the man when she had tried. And that was what she did after all. Finding things. Finding a way. And right now she was assembling the pieces of the puzzle that had been the Beast's bane once before.

Not that her task didn't make her crack a smile, she hadn't really imagined people powerful enough to worry the Beast being that... well, old. The charge of the pensioners didn't really have much of a ring to it, and most of the people she was tracking down came up dead. Cameron however was still very much alive and as nasty as ever. But back in the day he had help, and those were the clues she was hunting for in these old case-files, notes scribbled down by scruplously honest (and Sighted) officers who knew nothing they put down would ever be believed. Maybe they hoped for someone like her to come around one day, someone that knew enough to connect the dots. To read their story and make sense of it.

They themselves were long since dead. Another reccuring theme in her research. It made her wonder about the wisdom of her retirement fund.

...

1981

Cameron was in a cab, stuck in traffic, when the pigeons started to fall from the skies. At first there was one, a feathered body thumping softy on the hood. Then came the next, a soft impact on the roof, and then the rain started. Broken bodies, broken wings, feathers fluttering, small bodies ground to paste between the slowly moving wheels. The cab drove a few yards, and then stopped again while the thumping continued. People on the sidewalk had stopped and stared, dodging into stores to keep out of the birdfall. Setting his face in a deeper scowl, Cameron stuck a few bills to the driver, and then stepped out in the middle of the road, causing cars to stop and swerve.

"You think this scares me?" he bellowed to the skies, ignoring the looks he got. "Well, fuck you too assholes."

It took him fifteen minutes to make his way to the pub on foot, sweaty and cursing every inch of the way. Swan and Eelis was already there when he arrived, nursing their beers.

"Looks like someone didn't get fried sunny side up today," Swan said lightly, the alchemist looking insufferably smug. They hadn't seen each other since Cameron banished him from the boroughs, and to be called back now had apparently left him in the most pleasant of moods.

"Watch it or I'll make sure it's your balls that gets fried," Eelis said, elbowing the man in the side.

Cameron said nothing, just sank down in the chair, locking eyes with the alchemist. Swan was a clever little prick and he had great use of him in the past, but he was too clever for his own good and had dipped too deeply into funds he shouldn't have access to. The mere fact that he was still alive was testament to his talent, because while Cameron might be a vindictive bastard he was not stupid. And people like this little shit were too rare to kill unless you had no other choice.

"You can say it, you know," Swan said, easily keeping Cameron's gaze while most men would have looked down already. "In fact, I think you have to say it."

There was a moment there when the silence grew thick enough to cut, and then Cameron took a deep breath and shrugged.

"You were right."

"That wasn't so hard now, was it?"

"Don't rub it in. I broke your fingers last time, I could just as easily cut them off, and then where would you be?"

"Now, now, you never had a sense of humour, Mr Cameron. No need for violence."

"I'm not here for that. I'm here for answers."

"I gathered, word's been spreading, Hell is seeping into the city and that little exile you sent me on suddenly seems like a smart idea."

"There is no Hell."

"People might disagree, some might say life is hell, but this city has been hell for enough people that it tends to stick around. Like lice and cockroaches it lurks in the dark corners just waiting for the spark."

"The Beast."

"That's what he calls himself now, and who am I to argue?"

"A bloody superstitious cunt. He's nothing more than another Ripper or a Spring Heeled Jack. Find the right angle and he's just smoke in the wind."

"And mess this up and we might have another Masque of the Red Death, or the Mistress of Smog."

"Or another Great Fire of London," Cameron admitted grudgingly. "Like back in 1666, the blighter's been alluding to it. The burning river, the number of the Beast. I'm not stupid, Swan, tell me what I don't know."

"Anything is bound by rules, even him. If he plays at being the Beast, might consider finding faith." Swan shrugged and chugged the beer.

"Not gonna happen. And if I start playing by his rules, then he's already won." Cameron heard the words spilling from his mouth while his mind was reeling from what he had just realized he was planning to do.

"Why do I have the feeling you didn't call me back here for my sage advice? You already have a plan, don't you?" Swan's bleary eyes had grown sharp behind his glasses, the jovial mask slipping.

"I do," Cameron admitted while his guts slowly churned. "This is my bloody town, or will be very soon, and I have no plans to let some hellspawn get the better of me. My town, my rules, and he's going down."

"You planning on being a bigger bastard than he is?" Swan asked, bemused. "Good luck with that."

"Eelis," Cameron said, causing his subordinate to straighten a little in the chair. "Go get Maria, take her to the flat and keep her there. Tell her that it's important. That it will be a surprise."

"Done, Boss." Eelis rose, hesitated for a moment, but then left quickly, objections unvoiced.

"Am I supposed to be impressed?" Swan asked, emptying the beer that Eelis had left behind.

"Not particularly. Just useful." Cameron's words were clipped now, down to the bare minimum to get the point across. "I need you to forge an Echo for me. In the form of a blade. A small one, I need to be able to hide it."

"I... can do that," Swan admitted. "If you have the tools, but I figure you wouldn't call me back unless you were ready."

"You're right. I wouldn't."

"Of course it'll be next to useless against the Beast, you know. One, he's not stupid enough to confront you openly. Two, no matter what you quench it in, it's unlikely it's gonna do more than smart. Unless you've got the most pious saint in Britain stacked away somewhere."

"I haven't. Got something better. Don't worry about it; just do your fucking job."

"If I do..."

"Then you're allowed back. Just don't piss on my property without me saying yes first."

"I'll be a good boy, I've missed the City."

"Now get to work."

...

"This doesn't add up." Noor sighed and stretched a little. Swan was an alchemist and a tool maker. He didn't do banishments, there weren't any indications of faith or that he'd ever been a priest. Demons, or djinns, or whatever you would call them followed rules and strictures as harsh as the laws of men. Swan had no authority there, and neither did Cameron. And yet the Beast had been banished. Was she wrong about her approach? What was she missing? Her brain felt sluggish in the dusty room, the lack of air and fans lent the stillness a tomb-like quality. She needed a break and turned to Williams for advice. "What are the chances that someone will spot me if I do a detour to the coffee maker?" The coffee here was legendary bad, the kind that turned your gut to acid. The best kind in her opinion.

"You're a wee bit recognizable in that getup," Williams replied with the faintest of smiles.

"Are you making fun of my religion?" Her smile echoed his, you had to learn to grow a thick skin when you choose to wear the hijab as part of your uniform.

"No, just your dress sense." Williams kept a straight face.

"Says the man with that moustache. But I suppose you're right. Wouldn't want to get you into trouble."

"Me? How about yourself?"

"I know what I'm doing."

"That I don't doubt. Just the wisdom of it. Just sit tight and I'll bring you back a cuppa, how does that sound?"

"Heavely. I've got what... twenty pages of handwritten interrogation transcript notes to go through here, and I'm not sure where the original tape is."

"If it's not down here, probably lost for good. You and me both know that the dustbin is the last stop for most of the oddities. Someone propably managed to save the notes when the tape was destroyed."

"But this is from a murder investigation, they can't just disappear those, can they?"

"They can, and you know it. If it wasn't used against Cameron in his trial, it's probably..." Williams hesitated a little.

"Someone buried it." Noor was surprised at how hard her voice sounded, she knew that Cameron had murdered people, and yet to have that laid out in front of her stung like a slap. Could good be done with evil tools? Was she doing the right thing?

The truth was that she didn't know.She just knew that she was running out of choices fast. The Beast was not a patient creature. And if she'd be damned in the process, at least that was her own choice. She knew what she was getting into.

So she kept on reading.

...

1981

On the rooftop, the wind stole both words and breath, but nobody was in a mood to talk. The rain had started falling, hiding the tears running down Maria's cheeks, to be absorbed by her gag. Cameron didn't meet her gaze, just kept running his hand over the Echo that Swan had forged, twisted silver lined by runes, a black hole waiting to be filled with Meaning. The alchemist was busying himself with the runes, thick swathes of black tar making bold patterns on the concrete rooftop, untouched by the growing downpour.

"You sure it's gonna hold him?" Eelis asked, one arm around Maria, restraining her, though she was securely tied.

"For a few seconds maybe," Swan said with a shrug. "If we're lucky and he shows up at all."

"Oh he's gonna come," Cameron said, willing himself as hard as the concrete under his feet. "I'm gonna cut out my own heart, there ain't no way he can resist showing up to fucking piss on it. He's nothing but a big, fat buzzard, out to feast on the suffering of man."

"It's done then," the alchemist said and stepped back. "I've done what I can. The rest is up to you."

"Good," Cameron said, pooling all his frustration and grief into the words. "Then step over the ledge and take the quick way down."

"You bastard," Swan said, face whitening as he slowly started walking towards the ledge despite himself. "I cu..."

"Silence!" Cameron shouted, and the alchemist's mouth snapped shut, his eyes growing wide. "Didn't know I could do that, could you? I've not been complacent while you were away. No way am I letting you run roughshod over my city, not after witnessing this."

There was no triumph in his voice though, just tired grief and power. Swan had been a tool, but someone needed to pay for this, and part of him felt slightly content when they saw the wispy man step over the ledge and fall to his messy death in silence.

"I hope you're not gonna do that to me, Boss." To his credit, Eelis's voice didn't waver.

"You would jump off the ledge from sheer loyalty to me, wouldn't you?"

Eelis's nod was small, almost imperceptible. "I'd rather not, though."

"Don't worry, such loyalty is a precious and rare thing. Should be preserved. Now bring the girl to me."

Anne. Her name was Maria. Not the girl. Not babe. He could see her eyes telling him that. No anger, not yet. Confusion. A bit of fear.

"I'm sorry, babe," he said, running a hand over her cheek. "You should never have told me your name. And you should never have fallen in love with me."

She was struggling now, but her arms were tied, and her legs had just enough stretch in the ropes so she could tiptoe. Did you never love me, her eyes kept asking as he pulled her close? Was it all pretence?

"I did really love you, Maria," Cameron whispered, not bothering to hide the tears now. "This would never work otherwise."

The blade made no sound when it slit her throat open, blood gushing over them both, eyes widening, then growing dim. He held her gently in his arms as she died, felt the blade drink her essence, the Echo of her spirit caught, his own pain amplified by the surrounding runes. He wanted to kill himself. For the first time in his life he truly contemplated doing what the shadows in the apartment below had urged him to and jump of the edge. Face the fall. End this. Wash away the eyes, worse than accusing... confused. Hurt.

He never wanted to hurt her, the one good thing in his life that wasn't tied to misery and death. And now he had killed her. It was only when he heard the laughter that he opened his eyes, looking into the triumphant gaze of the Beast.

Yellow. Like pissholes in the snow. Mocking. Inviting. Burn or bend, serve or be consumed, this was an appetite that dwarfed his own. Or so he had thought. Had feared. But he had been wrong. The beast had been wrong.

The blade slid into the beast's gut as easy as it had slit Maria's throat. He twisted and yanked upwards, seeing eyes widen and grow green, then blue.

"What... are you doing?" the Beast gasped.

"Ending you," Cameron replied. Maria's body had sagged to the ground between them, he was embracing the Beast now, as it was shrinking from threatening creature to the shrivelled Devkie it had invaded in the first place.

"You... can't..." flies dying by the hundreds filling windowsills through the distant city.

"I can because I will it." Cameron yanked the dagger again, felt the edge scraping ribs. "First rule, do what thou wilt. Second rule, any great act of power demands an equal sacrifice."

"But I..." the crows that had been circling the rooftops had taken flight, rain and feathers the same faded grey.

"Am the Beast? She never believed in that bullshit. Or in magic. To her you're just a Devkie cunt. And I am ending you." The blade was as immune to the power as Maria had been, immune to healing, to destruction. The natural laws were for once immutable, and there was nothing special about the man that he was killing. Nothing special at all. The eyes grew wide, stared blindly, and then the man that had been the best sank down to his knees, then fell over. Dying. Dead.

All was silent now as the rain poured down, mixing with the blood. The oppressive august heat had broken at last, the city sated, the madness spent.

"Want... want me to get rid off the bodies, Boss?" Eelis spoke nervously, and got the briefest nod in return.

"Yeah... do that." Cameron ran a hand over his face, then looked at it to see whether it was steady. It was. "Do that and then contact the boys. The Beast's territories should we wide open. We're moving in immediately."

It was done. Both the terror of the Beast and this illusion of a different fate for him. Now only the hunger remained. The hunger and the City.

...

"Shit." Noor let the word slip out as she looked at the notes spread out in front of her, the grainy pictures of what had once been a man that fell from a building, and a woman found burned beyond recognition a week later. A suicide and a murder with an unknown assailant.It had been tagged as a possible British Boys deed, a black supermarket cashier ending up with her throat slit and no enemies.

"Was that a curse?" Williams put down the cup in front of her, and she drank it down despite the burn. As if the pain had somehow been her salvation.

"I'm wondering if I'm heading down the wrong track or not," she admitted with a pained smile. "These notes... Eelis Jones was it that testified? Why wasn't this brought to trial?"

"I guess people had their reasons to bury it. As had this Jones for telling what he did. Maybe he thought his boss had gone to far."

"You can't go too far in that business, Jones would know that. Maybe this was bragging." She couldn't be sure, but part of her wondered if Cameron wasn't the kind of man who wanted his story told. Wanted recognition of his victory. She had used men that before, but it was a risky prospect.

Nevertheless she had to do something. And now she knew what.

#snippets #old stuff #from thief of nightmares

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writerman · 6 years ago

Note

Modern elronbarduil. Bard is a cab driver, Thran is a the CEO of his own company, who just happens to be blind, and Elrond is an ER doctor. Now Thran some how gets injures at work but instead of call an ambulance, he calls a cab because he doesn't want to make a fuss. Bard is the cab driver and is worried about Thran, so offers to help get him inside the hospital and stays with him. Elrond is the doctor attending Thran.

//I am sorry but I didn’t make Thranduil blind in this one. I did, however, have a lot of fun writing this so this is where my confidence crashes and burns because now the world wide web get to read it... or ignore it ahahaha.

Enjoy, friendo!

THIS IS THE LONGEST PROMPT I’VE WRITTEN TO DATE!

Honestly, Bard had not expected his first fare of the afternoon to be a man bleeding from the temple, a well dressed, suited and booted kind of high flying exec kind of man… He was really bleeding, and from the rear view mirror he could not quite see where the blood was coming from but it ran down the man’s face with ease and dripped onto the grey suit he wore steadily.

“Uh… I know you’re not ok but are you ok?” Bard asked turning round to look at his customer properly, the guy was beautiful, angel fallen from Heaven masquerading as a man, beautiful.

Long straight blond hair, nearly white, piercing blue eyes and flawless skin, a jaw that could cut glass and all those other analogies that described the classic beauty of men.

Pale as milk though, either he had been bleeding for quite some time or he did NOT like the sight of blood, either way it was concerning.

The blond looked startled when Bard spoke, as though he had expected the cab to be self driven rather than by a flesh and blood human with thoughts and feelings. He lifted his hand to touch the blood and it smeared over his fingers staining the pale skin easily, all the while nodding slowly as though this was common place and he bled all the time from the head.

“So… Where do you need to go?” His whole body felt tense, this kind of felt like one of those scenes from a movie where he is infected by a virus and becomes a zombie because he just HAD to help the pretty one.

That’s how they get you, the zombies, they show up being pretty humans all the while the virus is working through them and suddenly you turn around to check on your passenger and BAM Zombie time and you’re dead.

He reeeeally hoped this guys asked for a doctor or a ride to the hospital because, damn, he was losing blood like no tomorrow.

Bard made the executive decision that he was taking the man to the hospital regardless and put the car in motion, not explaining his actions though he realised he was not asked any questions, or given any instructions… it was then Bard realised that the guy must have been in shock.

Once at the hospital Bard parked up, threw some money in a parking meter and eased the silent, still bleeding, man from the car, he spoke softly as if to keep this blond stranger at ease, as though he was some kind of easily spooked horse.

He looked like he owned horses, like 10 of them and had a son called Tarquin and they placed croquet on the lawn of their massive mansion.

Probably had house staff too.

Bard realised that was unfair, just because he wore a nice suit didn’t mean anything, he had a nice suit too, it was reserved for funerals and weddings, he had one and only one and when he wore it people thought he was important too, and not a cab driver in a city where his face blurred together with thousands of other brunet men with beards….

Further problems arose when he tried to check the man in to see a doctor, he had no idea what his name was, or even some semblance of an address, he barely registered the street he had been on when the blond had climbed into the car.

So far the only thing that had shown Bard the guy was aware of anything was when he nodded earlier, and he was sure that was just an automatic response to the question ‘Are you ok?’, because most people nod when asked that question.

Apparently standing at the reception of a hospital was good luck because a doctor ran towards them yelling something that was probably a name, ah, yes it was a name.

“Thranduil, oh Gods, what happened to you?!” This doctor was handsome, did beautiful people just attract other beautiful people, was this a cult?

While Bard stared at the two of them in bisexual, the brunet doctor that had jogged toward them turned to Bard for an explanation, and all Bard could do, and he did it so eloquently, was shrug.

“He got into my cab just bleeding like crazy from the head, he hasn’t spoken a word so I thought I would just bring him here…”

“You did the right thing, I will take things from here, thank you for your caring for him-” He was cut off as he tried to lead Thranduil off, the blond reached out and grabbed Bard by the wrist and would not move until he did.

“Ah, it seems you are coming with us, even in shock he recognises a catch when he sees one.” Inappropriate time to flirt when his friend was just stood silently bleeding like some kind of silent haunted house actor…

Were they friends?

Still, someone thought he was handsome, even though they both looked like Gods walking the earth amongst mere mortal men. Bard realised he had to take what he could get, even if it was a fleeting flirting opportunity from a doctor.

Before he could speak Thranduil, weirdly nice name, tugged at Bard and pulled him closer to his side, he slung his arm over his shoulder before his legs gave way and both Bard and the handsome doctor moved to steady him.

“Maybe he needs to sit down…?” Bard suggested and the doctor, who had the humility to look embarrassed, nodded and steered the weakening man toward a private room.

Thranduil was put on a bed and the doctor, who finally introduced himself a Elrond Peredhel, saw to the wound, he explained that wound was not deep but were it was situated was causing the blood to flow easily, the skin on the scalp was thinner he said.

Bard had no idea about any of this stuff so he just nodded.

“This man is not supposed to be working, this man is meant to be on bedrest.” Elrond quipped, the dig at his patience apparently brought him back to himself and Thranduil managed to roll his eyes, he looked to Bard and gave a soft smile.

“Thank you.” He whispered, his voice so damned deep and velvety and amazing, oh man, Bard needed to sit down after two words. He pulled himself round long enough to pull a chair up to the bedside and sit by the blond.

“I admit, you scared me back there in the taxi being all silent and bloody, I had visions of you trying to slit my throat or something.” It was a ridiculous thing to say and he regretted saying it instantly but the sound of Thranduil’s quiet laugh eased his insecurities for a moment.

The blond winced as though laughing hurt him, and Elrond placed a hand on his shoulder to soothe him as he worked on cleaning the wound, some of Thranduil’s hair was now stained red from the blood, but he did not seem to care all that much, or he hadn’t realised.

“I owe you so much, I could not speak and yet you brought me right where I need to be with who I need to be with.” Elrond and Thranduil shared a loving smile between them and Bard put the pieces together.

Husbands. Probably.

Well, they had flirted with him so they seemed relaxed so maybe very long time husbands?

Not that it mattered.

“Also thought you might have been a zombie.” Bard admitted quietly, which had Thranduil laughing again, and Gods it went right to his centre.

He suppressed a pleasant shudder, ignoring Elrond's knowing look.

“A zombie only before his morning coffee,” The doctor started, he rested a hand on Thranduil's shoulder before he spoke again, “Did you just swoon?”

This time Bard was the one to have the decency to blush and look away from the two.

"Ah, I thought so, he has that effect on everyone. Though so far you are the only one sensible enough to grab a chair and to respect that he may be in a relationship.

It's alright, you can flirt with him.

You can flirt with both of us."

Well, that was… interesting. So far Elrond had been quite vocal about his interest in Bard but Thranduil hadn’t said anything, and Bard was not sure it was alright for Elrond, even if he was married to the blond, to just offer the others affections so easily.

While in thought the two took the opportunity to whisper between themselves, some sort of debate, Bard wasn’t actually listening.

Eventually he made the decision that it was time for him to go. He had to earn a wage and sitting around in a hospital was losing him rent money for the month.

“Now that I know you’re alright I should probably go. I still have a job to do and while I do not necessarily have a boss I still need to make sure I make enough that I don’t have to work too late tonight.

It was great meeting you both even given the circumstances.

I hope you manage to keep him on bedrest this time.” Bard looked to Elrond as he said the last part and he got to his feet ready to depart.

“Thank you, again for bringing him here. I truly hope we meet again.” Elrond spoke with as much sincerity as he could muster without it sounding as though he was mocking Bard.

With that they parted ways.

It was a month after that Bard saw the two again.

He had been playing a zombie apocalypse game while the car idled at the side of the road, there didn't seem to be much foot traffic where he had parked up so he took the chance to try and level up his mobile game.

When the door opened behind his seat and someone slid in he paid them no mind, he was going to wait until they'd settled before he gave them any attention, that was until…

A pair of hands slid to his shoulders and squeezed almost pinching him.

Then a rumbling voice in his ear spoke.

“Still hoping for zombies, are we?” The tone amused and, dammit, the shiver that spiked down Bard's spine… the hairs on his arms stood on end and his heart beat leapt to a pace faster than he believed ever possible.

“Thranduil, leave him alone, he looks like he might have a heart attack.” Oh, yeah, it was definitely the dream duo he had absolutely NOT been thinking about since they first met… Elrond Peredhel and his husband Thranduil.

Two fantastically beautiful men that had taken a shine to Bard as though he wasn’t some grimy cab driver with untamed curls and bags under his eyes that could fill a baggage claim at Heathrow.

Doing his best to calm himself before he looked round, he sighed inwardly when the blond let go of his shoulders to sit back in his seat, Bard took a cleansing breath as quietly as he could and turned to offer the couple a bright smile.

“Well, hello, you two. Long time no see… so, where am I taking you tonight?” It was 6pm and the sun was sinking behind the high rise buildings around them- the night would come alive soon enough and Bard actually wanted to get home before any party-goers tried to hail him for a ride.

“Well, we were just going to go home but maybe coffee first, we’d love it if you could join us?” Elrond slid an arm around Thranduil’s shoulders as he spoke and pulled him so they were right up against one another side by side, their shoulders right down to their feet touching down one side.

“Uh… well, I was just going to go home after this fare…” Bard trailed off at the, frankly sorrowful, disappointed look he was given from both of them, so rather than argue he just nodded. “Alright, where would you like to go?”

They ended up in a small coffee shop, it advertised that it was open all night long and so far it was fairly quiet, Bard suspected the usuals that haunted the place would show up at the wee hours of the morning, sporting smudge make-up, tousled hair from brief intimate encounters and being more than just hungover as they sipped hot coffee full of sugar and cream before they could even begin to think of heading home…

It seemed like a trendy spot, Thranduil and Elrond stood out like peacocks against the vintage surroundings in their crisp fitted shirts and, what was probably, ridiculously expensive slacks and boots.

Smart casual.

Yet they looked across as Bard as though hungry hyenas and he was dinner for the night.

Hadn’t they just eaten?

“You don’t have to look so scared of us, but… we did have a proposition for you if you would be so kind as to allow us a moment to explain?” Thranduil began, he picked up a drinks menu from off the table in front of him and perused it casually, his eyes flitting to Bard occasionally and he offered a very sultry smile.

Bard felt nervous, like a bug near a venus fly trap but he was also a little hot under the collar, he didn’t image a look could ever have that effect on him but… well… there he was flushed.

The ye olde expression of ‘Mark me down as scared and horny…’.

“I’ll cut to the chase, let you breathe a little afterwards. We like you Bard,” Elrond began, he waved away a waitress that approached with a genuine smile before turning back to Bard. “We are a couple but we were hoping your interest in us was not solely a fanciful day dream. Thranduil and I would like to take you out and, perhaps with time, you would accept us, even love us and let our duo become a trio?” There was a long pause after Elrond said his peace and so Thranduil and he ordered drinks, and after a moment coaxed an order out of Bard.

He felt as though a hurricane had rushed over him and he was left windswept and out of breath.

Were they suggesting a three way relationship?

He had to admit, and admit it very quietly, even in his own head, that he had thought about that would be like… they seemed fun and flirty, but what were they like behind closed doors?

He didn’t feel threatened by them or actually afraid, and gods, he had seen the look of love they had shared between them back at the hospital.

Could that be him?

“I want to get to know you both better.” The words blurted out, his mouth and brain had not discussed this and yet there he was talking, all the while his brain is in disarray ‘We talked about this mouth, you have to run things by me first!’ but again his mouth ignored his brain and he spoke again.

“I am interested in both of you, I want to try this.”

All hope was lost for his mouth and his brain logged out for the rest of the evening.

With his acceptance of the couple, Elrond and Thranduil moved to sit next to him, one on each side, they wrapped their arms around him and welcomed him in to the fold.

“We shall show you a good time, so much so that you could not imagine being without us, let us love you.”

...and so, he did.

#long post #thranduil #bard the bowman #barduil #bard #elbaruil #elrond #the hobbit #writing prompts #writing #mypackpride

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mamaredd123 · 6 years ago

Text

A Taste of Something … New Ch 2

A/N: Ok, so I know a lot of writers out there usually plan out their stories, outlines, plot themes, etc, etc, etc, which is probably what makes them so successful. I, on the other hand, can’t do that. I have tried a hundred times and when I do that, I usually lose my story. When I write, I just sit down and write. What comes, comes. So, as we move forth, don’t hate me. Just bare with me. I have the next 3 chapter already done. I am in the process of writing during the week and then editing on Monday and Tuesday so I can post on Wednesday for the few of you who are following this story. Just want to let you know.

WARNING: maybe a slight spousal intimidation... if you spot anything else please let me know and I’ll tag them though

WORD COUNT: 1613

PAIRING: none yet… the best is yet to come

A Taste of Something … New Ch 1

Mama's Master List

Mama’s Tag List

It had been a couple of weeks since the night she had ordered her tickets to the Comic Con. Surprisingly, he still had not said anything to her. To be honest, this actually had her a little uneasy. She knew how he monitored their money, always keeping an eye on things, making sure the bills were paid and such. She had spent almost three grand on tickets and extras! And nothing from him!

Maybe that was why she was so apprehensive about tonight. He had come home three nights ago early for a change, early enough to actually eat a hot dinner with her. During their meal, he suggested that they go out for a change. He told her he had taken off work already so there wouldn’t be a chance that things would get in the way. At first, she was super excited, a confirmed date night! It had been absolutely forever since that had happened, but now that the night was here and she was thinking about things, excited was not exactly what she was anymore.

Still, she dressed, touched up her makeup, put a smile on her face, and walked down the hall to join him. There wasn’t much conversation as they got in the truck and drove to the restaurant but after this many years together, that was almost to be expected. Walking into the restaurant, he guided her, with a skilled perfection that was he had acquired from years of practice, to their table. Graciously, he pulled her chair out for her and allowed her to sit. She thanked him and smiled, reminiscing back on old times when she used to marvel that men still did such things. The waiter handed them their menus and asked for their drink requests. He ordered for them both, already knowing her favorite.

As soon as the waiter turned and left, he set the menu aside and looked at her. The look in his eyes almost chilled her soul. Every single good feeling she had for the night disappeared in an instant. The money! She realized that she had been right. This was exactly what this night was all about. It had nothing to do with her or them. It was in a public place so she could not make a scene. It was pubic and he drove, so she could not just up and leave. He had done it again.

“So, I see there was a sizable debit from out joint savings the other day. Want to tell me about that?” he asked casually.

“Baby, don’t be mad.”

“I’m not mad. I just want to know what you did.”

“I don’t know how to explain this without you really getting mad or defensive.”

“Then just explain,” he said in that particular tone of voice.

“You know as well as I do, most of that money in that account, I put there. It’s money that you give me. But I never buy anything. Unless it’s something for the kids and then usually you usually make me take the money for them out of the checking account.”

Thankfully, the waiter returned with their drinks at that moment. She took hers from his tray a tad too quickly and asked him to go ahead and bring another. The waiter nodded his acknowledgment and turned away.

“I’m waiting,” his voice seemed to rumble from across the table.

“Of fuck. I don’t know. What do you want me to say? I’m tired damn it. I’m tired of being at home all the time by myself. I’m tired of you never being home. I’m tired of doing NOTHING but housework. I have no friends anymore. Everyone else has a life and has moved on, years ago. This is something that is happening here, in town. It won’t be overnight. But it will be three days that I won’t be home during the day. Not like you will notice anything though. You will be gone to work before I leave and I’ll be home before you each night,” she said almost a little too sharply.

She didn’t even look at him after she said her say. She knew the look on his face would probably break her resolve and she was determined to stand her ground this time. That was her money! This was something she wanted to do! She didn’t need his permission to do it, she didn’t think.

She glanced around the room. Couples were seated all around her, mostly younger ones. She envied them in their naivety. Thing always seem like they will work out so perfectly when you are younger and have your whole life ahead of you. Funny how things can change. They were once just like all of them. Then, she didn’t know, life just happened.

The waiter distracted her as he popped back up with her second drink, asking for their dinner order. Taking advantage of the distraction, she stood up, excused herself, and made her way to the bathroom. Walking into the silent room, she realized she didn’t know if she could do this anymore. His looks, his demeanor, his attitude, his “I am the Law” persona. That was not what signed up for when she said “I do”. Was this the end? Was there anything left worth fighting for? Deep sigh escaped her as she realized she really didn’t know just yet.

She gathered herself together and headed back to the table. He had ordered for her and despite her feelings at the moment, that was actually fine. The rest of the evening fared without much incident. An hour and half and five drinks later, they arrived back home. She headed straight for the bedroom and shut the door behind her. There was too much alcohol in her system to deal with him anymore tonight that was for sure. Thankfully, he took the hint and never even attempted to come in the bedroom. Shedding her dress clothes, she climbed in the bed naked.

She had left her computer on the bed before they had left. YouTube was still up. Music had always been something that pulled at her, lifted her spirits when she left down. She clicked one of her favorite playlist and laid back as Linkin Park’s Castle of Glass began to play. ‘Show me how to be whole again’. How fitting that particular lyric was tonight. Maybe it was sign? Maybe things really were done between them. She had always been a little old fashioned when it came to marriage, never really believed in divorce. But she didn’t know anymore.

Lying back on the pillows, she listened to the music as it flowed through the speakers, not thinking, just feeling. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew it was the alcohol talking, but lying there listening to the various artists, listening to them sing, feeling their passion come through the speakers, she felt like the music was speaking to her in that moment. Song after song played, each one hitting home on a different emotion. Still listening to the random play, the next one to come up was Final Masquerade. That one sent a fresh flow of tears sliding down her cheeks. How can she still love him yet be so miserable? She was reaching for the computer to shut it down when The Eagles came on next. She never shut the Eagles down. They had always been their favorite band! So she pulled it a little closer, and sang along softly. ‘You never thought you’d be alone this far down the line and I know what’s been on your mind, You’re afraid it’s all been wasted time.’

Tears rolling down her face, she shut her laptop gently, hoping, praying fate wasn’t telling her she really had been wasting her time all these years. Emotions were twisted up inside of her. Should she just give up and leave or fight and stay? She had no idea so instead she cried herself to sleep, again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When he felt like it was safe to peek in the bedroom, he finally did. She was barely covered up, balled up in her pillows, and sound to sleep. No beautiful smile tonight. Instead, he could tell she had cried herself to sleep. Her eyes were already swollen. He hated himself for that because he knew it was his fault. He didn’t mean to come off like he did at dinner. He had just wanted to know what in the hell she had spent three grand on, out of the blue like that. Hell, he still didn’t really know! This was so unlike her.

Softly, he pulled the covers up around her. With an easy touch, he moved her hair out of her face and tucked it back behind her ear. He loved her so much but it seemed like the more years that passed, the harder it was for him to show her. He knew he was losing her and he didn’t know how to stop it. She was his life and she didn’t realize it. Tonight, for the first time, he realized she might actually leave him. He didn’t know what he would do if that happened.

He stood above her and watched her sleep. A tear slid down her cheek and his heart broke as he wiped it away. If only she knew what he would do to make her happy again.

As quiet as a mouse, he turned and left the room. She didn’t want him in the bed with her so he would sleep on the couch again tonight so he didn’t disturb her. With one last look, he closed the bedroom door noiselessly and made his way back to the living room.

Random Tags (gonna try to do an updated tag list soon… maybe.. hopefully)

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#A Taste of Something New #mama's writings #new series #spn fanfic

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deathbyvalentine · 6 years ago

Text

Prompts

Your Favourite Character’s Perfect Moment

Artificial sunlight filtered in through the glass of the library deck, making the place look like it was bathed in a permanent autumn. They were only half awake, the warmth and calm ushering them into a hazy state, content not to participate, just to listen to the world move around them from the comfort of the sofa. Soon, Finisterra.

Their head was in Nic’s lap, their hair long again and his fingers tangled in it. He was engaged in a book held in his other hand, occasionally coming across a line he would read out loud to the person in his lap, eager to share. It was something theological, which Cal found vaguely amusing, and Nic poked their cheeks every time they couldn’t suppress a smile.

Across from them, Bridge sat, methodically working through a translation, occasionally looking up to frown and ask his XO for his opinion. An array of data slates were surrounding him, but none were flashing with alerts. And there were no cadets or officers coming in to bother him either, the library code firmly set to private.

Anoretta sat by Cal’s feet, cooing over the two cats in her lap, while Baris sat opposite, eyes narrowed at one of the little creatures, assessing its threat level. Its threat level apparently was raised to an interesting level once he trailed a piece of wiring across the ground and watched it pounce.

Anya sat beside Silvestro, bandaging a bruise he had gained from nothing more serious than a sharp fall when the ship had juddered into warp. She was smiling, and laughing, and Silvestro wasn’t scowling. Their mind was as golden as the room they were in. But it wasn’t loud. Just loving. Just waiting, patiently and gently.

Moonlit Masquerade You could feel the music through the concrete from meters away. A bit closer and you could see the glow sticks flickering in and out of view, attracting revellers like moths to a flame. The parking complex was mostly free from cars, instead filled with a deafening party. There were speakers shoved in every corner, wires running across the floor to illegal generators. The lights were coloured, and never seemed to stay on for long. And there seemed to be every substance known to man there to enjoy and consume. Powders, cigarettes, liquids, pills...

It was easy for the fae to slip in unnoticed.

Their shining skin could be mistaken for glitter. Their dark eyes glinting could have been a trick of the light. The way they moved, odd and unnatural looked more like dancing when it was set to music. And of course, the way the entire place seemed louder, wilder, more intoxicating was surely just an affect of the drugs.

Nobody followed the old rules here. They took food and gifts without asking the price, accepting drinks and assuming they had no cost. They ignored thresholds, pulling creatures into dark corners, their lips whispering invitations. They named their lipsticks things like mistletoe and holly, and stepped into circles without checking the contents.

For the changelings, this was the closest thing to fairyland they could go. Their traitorous human blood meant that was one threshold forever sealed off from them. But now, among the humans they had grown up with and the fae they belonged to, they could almost picture it. They felt more at home here than they felt anywhere, this entire world like a shirt that was just a little too small.

They were all wearing masks, even the humans. But their masks were make up and pretence, pretending to be happier, prettier, more likeable. It had mixed success, depending on how good an actor they were. The fae were pretending to be human, generally poorly. They smiled too wide and their hands were too quick, their laughs too high. And the changelings, well, they were just pretending they belonged.

Wrongfooted

He wasn’t a big fan of leave. While for most of his squadron it was a chance to kick back and relax, the opposite was true for him. Noble families were fraught enough, but in particularly, he felt the need to seem like a functional human being for his father.

His father was an affectionate man, and would never raise his voice at his son. Not since he was a kid determined to put dangerous chemicals in his mouth anyway. But his eyes would fill with worry and anxiety, his mouth would twitch with disappointment, and Lance could almost see him wishing for his mother to walk through the door, so he didn’t have to cope with this alone.

Thankfully, it had been a few years since he’d had that look. After all, Lance had very proudly managed to get his shit together. Now he was the charming type of rebellious, rather than the ‘one bad move away from his family quietly asking his father to have him tidied away to some backwards planet’. He could deal with that. Being a pilot kept him out of family drama and responsibility, while giving him the excuse of doing the Emperor’s work if anyone hinted he should be settling down.

This time though, something was different. He had dropped his bag by the door, and hugged his father from behind, resting his head on his shoulder. He turned with an exclamation of joy and the usual fussing occurred, commenting on if he had grown, if that was a new scar, where he had been travelling, how his moods had been - but something was off. There were some new wrinkles around his eyes, his mouth frequently anxious, his mind occupied. But it wasn’t directed at him. Lance was not quite sure how to deal with this development. He had always been the problem in his father’s life, to one extent or another. He didn’t know how to solve anything bigger.

Best not mention the Inquisition thing for now.

Gaining Sentience

Jovich crouched in front of the blonde girl, shining a light into her eyes, and noting the lack of pupil contraction. He marked something on his clipboard, nodding approvingly. Void tilted her head, trying to catch a glimpse of what he was writing, but he tilted it away without even looking up. She tutted, settling instead for swinging her legs, her feet not quite touching the lab floor. After a moment, he placed the clipboard face down on the bed.

“That’s the physiological side done, unless you have any more power surges to inform me about?” She shook her head, blonde hair swooshing from side to side. “No, the protector you put in last time did its job.” “Good. Now. The psychological evaluation.” She rolled her eyes, starting to fidget with the pocket of her scrubs. “It’s pointless.” “I know, but we’re doing it any way.” He stood, finding the filing cabinet and yet another form out of a pile of endless forms. Science included a lot more paperwork than people thought. It was one of the myriad of ways the fantasy was better than the reality. “So. Your results last time were concerning, but we tweaked your programming a bit, hopefully for the better. Ready?” She nodded, though she was apparently more wrapped up in plaiting her hair than listening to him. It was the first thing anyone noticed about her. It looked like molten gold under light, perfectly straight and shining. She always seemed to be running her fingers through it, or brushing it until not a hair was out of place. “Do you still report feeling an absence of guilt, inner conflict or doubt?” “Yes.” “Have you had any trouble following your orders?” “No.” “Where would you say your sense of morality comes from?” “You.” He looked up sharply, and she smiled. “I mean, the programming you have put into me.” “And who am I?” “My creator.” Her mouth twisted over the word, as if it tasted unpleasant. He nodded approving, scribbling something down. “Your memory banks are intact?” “Since the last wipe, yes, though I would say that, wouldn’t I? If I didn’t remember I couldn’t remember...” “Point taken, we’ll restructure the question.” Another moment of the sound of his stylus scratching filling the room. “And do you feel emotions?” “Yes.” He finally made eye contact with her, sighing. “No. You don’t.” “But I do.” “You don’t even know what emotions are.” “I’ve searched my databanks. I’ve watched over three thousand films and downloaded over five thousand books. I’ve listened to twenty thousand songs. I do know what emotions are.” “You’re a skilled imitator, that’s all. You can learn and mimic, but it’s not real. If it was, that would compromise your use to us.” “Not really. I still don’t feel guilt or conflict or whatever. I can still kill people and not care.” “Then what do you feel Void?” She tilted her head again, the habit resurfacing whenever she was thinking. She thought of how much she wished Jovich would compliment her, or hold her, or even look at her eyes more often. She thought of the sense of deep, glowing satisfaction at a job well done. She thought of her room at night, how empty it was, and how big and empty the inside of her felt and how acutely alone she was. She thought of the jealousy that reared up inside her like a deadly monster when she saw Jovich with his real little sister, as blonde as her but two hundred times as real.

“I don’t know. Normal stuff I guess. Happy, sad, angry, you know. Human things.” “But you’re not human.” She flinched as if he had raised a hand to her. “Not to you, maybe. But all the people that don’t look twice at me on the street? Who don’t even realise the difference? How am I not human to them?” “Void, you are metal and plastic and programming. If you carry on with your delusions of grandeur, it’ll be time to decomission you.” “You won’t.” “Why not?” A bright grin. “Because I’m interesting. To you and to the company. And you never know when to quit.”

Strahd

She held me while I sobbed, and I’m not sure if her arms were sanctuary or prison. She didn’t say anything, but cooed at me, her delicate fingers combing through my blood soaked hair. She was the cause of my downfall, and now I was at the bottom, she was my only way up again.

I didn’t love her immediately. At first, I might have even resented her. She looked as if she knew, always wearing that smile. I wondered more than once if she could read my thoughts, or if she just wanted me to think that she could. There was no need. I raged against her in my own head, but a word never crossed my lips.

But she was so tender when she wanted to be. She would feed me blood from her goblet, watching me as I drank it greedily. When I graduated to fresh meat, she would let me have first bite, waiting until I have had my fill. She let me dress her, draping pearls around her throat or lacing up her dress, giving me a glimpse of the bare expanse of her back, as untouched as snow. While when I disappointed her, which was often, her words could be cutting, when we were lying together, her lullabies were soft.

And there was something powerful about walking in the woods at her side, knowing we were the real predators, hearing birds and animals fall still at our footsteps.

She got others, eventually. I didn’t care. I knew I was her favourite. I got the hardest jobs, the most trust, the most responsibility, the whispers in the ear, the knowing looks. I sat on her right hand side, and she would trace patterns on my hand with her nails, barely breaking the skin.

How could I leave her? It would be like this, for as long as she would have me. Me, her knight, protector, lover, soul mate. She, my bewitcher, owner, cause of life and cause of death. Heart of my unbeating heart. I loved her, and it was as simple and as complex as that.

Vampires in Edinburgh

The city looked best like this, spread out before them like a map, pinpricks of light like the stars so far above them. If he closed his eyes, he could see it like it was before, the electric lights becoming candles, becoming fires. Everything changed and everything stayed the same. The stone the city was built from was once the king’s castle, was once the foundations of the place.

He took a long pull of his cigarette, looking over at the woman beside him. She resembled him, the cut of her cheekbones, the haughty mouth, the wild black hair. She did not look much older than him, in truth. But she carried more weight, more history. “Do you ever miss them?” He inquired, curious of her answer. She tilted her head like a crow, considering. “I miss Guinevere, sometimes. She was kind. And Merlin, before all the unpleasantness.” Mordred could barely remember the queen, except that she had a gentle smile and soft hands. Merlin had made a worse and stronger impression. He still had a scar cutting up his back from the man, one he considered unjustified. He had never seen someone so full of violence, except, perhaps, in the mirror. Back when mirrors work. “What about you darling?” He knew what the true answer was. That he missed all of Camelot, and its people. He missed Gwaine and his laugh, Lancelot and his peace, Galahad and their purity. He had grown with these men, loved these men, occasionally desired them. He missed feeling a part of something, before his magic bloomed like a poisonous flower and damned them all. But most of all, he missed his father. Arthur, who could have been so much more than he chose to be. He wasn’t sure what he mourned more, the man or the potential.

He shook his head, knowing his mother wouldn’t appreciate that answer. Thousands of years and Morgana still hated him with a fury that frightened him. He wondered sometimes, when she fed, if she pictured Arthur’s throat underneath her teeth. A part of her had always resented that it was Mordred that slew him. It was her right, more than his. She smiled, slipping on her leather jacket even though she hadn’t felt the cold in a very, very long time. He had pleased her, once again, by hiding his true self. He wasn’t surprised. This was how he had lived by her side for all these years.

They Call the Witch Blind, but They Will Never Know All the Delights She Can See but They Cannot

It is considered common knowledge that things look different in the dark. And every child learns that looking at something sideways, upside down, or out the corner of their eye is one way to see its true nature. And yet, they all assume the witch sees nothing, nothing at all. She allows them their foolishness, because it makes them feel safe around her, makes them approach for remedies, advice and even spells. There was no danger of a pyre in this village.

In return, she didn’t tell them what was in the woods.

Nobody but the most foolhardy went inside there anyway. They knew there were dangerous rivers, hungry wolves and poisonous berries, all waiting to murder the unsuspecting or stupid. Those dangers were enough to keep most out.

So she didn’t have to tell them about the others. The things she could see in an ashy dreamscape that barely resembled the outside world. The flickering fae that moved from shadow to shadow, who could get inside yours and infect it, until you were nothing more than a puppet. The not-wolves, with legs too long and too spindly, their teeth dripping venom. Caves filled with wailing ghosts. The river sirens who bathed on the rocks, and pulled in paddlers by their ankles.

It was not all bad, however. Whatever God had deigned to take her eyes, had given her something else in return, in accordance to the way of the land. She could also see the leaf-fae, who looked like fallen leaves until they fluttered up, flying in dizzy spirals. And the wisps that could guide you anywhere in the forest, if you left the right presents. Flowers that glowed and would make potions a thousand times more potent. And even the sinister sirens were beautiful, their skin mottled like a seals, and their eyes huge and black.

Give and take was the way of the world, and on balance, she was not sure she would take her eyes back. She loved this hidden world far too dearly.

Family Isn’t Always Blood

Ashley awoke with a violent jolt, her sheets soaked with sweat. She cursed, hoping that it hadn’t soaked through to the couch underneath. That was the last thing in the world she wanted to explain. She tried to avoid sleeping near them whenever she could, hence why it was a sofa, not a camp bed in one of the rooms upstairs. Silently, she slipped out the room and into the bathroom, running cool water over her wrists, and stripping out of the soaking tank top. She avoided looking at herself, as always, wringing it out in the sink and leaving it to dry on a towel rack.

It wasn’t always the same nightmares, which made it impossible to predict. Sometimes it was like the Snow White forest scene, with tendrils of darkness whipping out to grab at her, pulling her hair or pinching her skin. Sometimes it was nothing, nothing at all, to the point where she couldn’t breathe, because there wasn’t even air. Sometimes it was looking in a mirror, her reflection not following her movements. Mostly it was the moment she opened her bedroom door, and saw the blood.

She couldn’t quite explain why she couldn’t tell them about it. It felt shameful, like she had let mould bloom in some darkened corner of her mind. They’d be angry, or disown her, or worse, feel sorry for her. And she had seen how hunters could be when they didn’t understand something, or when there wasn’t an easy fix. It was always better to put a rabid dog down, right? Same with werewolves, vamps and basically anything else.

Not that she was any of those things. She was just broken in different ways. And having lost one family, she was hardly raring to lose another. Not. Not that they were her family. No matter how much she cared for them, she would always be a little distant, a little too far apart. She didn’t know how to pull herself closer, and she was fairly certain she would die before she figured it out.

Achilles & Patroclus' First Day at Sandhurst

It was easy to see who was royalty. Not just by their manners and bearing, or accents and names. But by the way some others moved around them, like they were a planet and the rest were just moons. Achilles didn’t seem to notice. He sat at his table, posture dreadful, coveralls looking as inelegant on him as anybody else. It was good to know there were some things that even he couldn’t look good. The afternoon before, when he arrived in a suit, Patroclus’s breath had caught in his throat. The sun shining down on his golden head had rendered him divine, and Patroclus was suddenly more aware than ever of his ill-fitting suit, and the lack of his parents. Achilles was with both his father and mother, the latter looking about the crowd as if trying to find something valuable amongst it, to little avail.

He was in his platoon, and he knew, logically, they would have to work together. Not only that but fight together, help each other and bond together. Which sounded like a tall order at the present moment. Patroclus couldn’t even bring himself to sit beside the prince. Sitting beside him would invite comparison. And how could he ever compare? He couldn’t.

+++++++++

One of the first things he learnt was Achilles did not suffer fools. He rarely laughed, and seldom smiled, and didn’t join in the locker room banter, giving him quite a reputation. For either being serious, or being a dick depended on who you listened to. He split the opinions of the officers too. Half of them seemed to see he clearly belonged in this place of war, with its marble and history. The other half seemed to read his silence as insolence, which in all honesty, it almost certainly was. Achilles had trained in his own country for longer than most of these boys put together, and it showed. He had a quiet authority and assurance that Patroclus longed to emulate, often feeling awkward and out of place himself.

Which is why it surprised him so much when Achilles started to choose to sit beside him, whenever he could. They didn’t always talk. Sometimes it was blessed silence, and sharing fruit or a cigarette. Sometimes it was politics. Sometimes it was poetry. Achilles was a good listener, and something about him made Patroclus feel less homesick. +++++++++ He slipped into the room, quick as a shadow, carefully laying beside the bed on his towel. A sleepy head rose from on top of the duvet. “Pat? What are you doing?” “I didn’t want to mess up your bed.” There was a low chuckle. “Get up here. Just don’t you dare get inside it.” Pat crept up, the bed barely big enough for the two of them. Their fingers interlinked, and they shared breath, just looking at each other in the dim light. “I can’t stay long.” “I know.” “But seeing you helps me sleep.” “I know.” He leaned forward to nuzzle him, his skin smelling of sweat and sunlight. Patroclus didn’t say what he was thinking, about how often it was worry that kept him awake. Worry they’d be separated. Worry about the war that was brewing that they’d be pulled into, whether they liked it or not. Worry about what his lady mother may think about him being tangled in bed with someone below rank. Achilles, as though reading his mind, reached out a hand and smoothed the crinkle between his brows. “Just think of the now, Patroclus. Just think of the now.”

A little bit of debauchery never hurt anyone.../ The shadow in the water

Robert woke up and everything ached. The inside of his mouth felt like cotton wool. His clothes stank to high heaven of opium and tobacco smoke. Opening his eyes seemed like an almighty effort with very little pay off. The room was strewn with bodies in a similar, if not worse state than him. Bottles lay everywhere, the fire still burnt in the grate. Outside, the dawn was only just beginning to touch the sky.

He shuddered into a sitting position, finding his cravat had gone walkies. At least his boots remained on his feet, and he could spy his coat resting on the back of a dining room chair. Slowly, he got to his feet, snatching a half-full bottle of wine as he went, swigging it in an effort to sooth the headache that was slowly building. He retrieved his coat, left a flower on the slumbering form of the host, and stepped outside.

He liked Venice best like this, all told. In the day, it was too busy, calls being thrown from gondola to gondola, the narrow pavements too thin to adequately transport the crowds, churches and bars alike trying to tempt you inside. Now there was nothing but the quiet whispering of the water, and the occasional distant footsteps from those who’s occupation kept them up. He often wondered if he would be happier if he took on a job, some good honest work. He was among the legions of the English who took residence here and did nothing but socialise. He had never worked in his life and he wondered it if it had damaged him in some way. His father certainly thought so, but then, his father would.

The world was still a little wobbly around the edges. He was more drunk than he had realised. By the by, he sat down on a set of steps leading down to the water’s edge, still chugging the wine in his hand. He wondered if he should continue trying to find his way home, or if he should wait here until the first gondoliers began to stir. He stared into the water as he contemplated this lazily, considering the options.

And something flickered in the depths.

Not in of itself unusual. Even in these polluted waters, fish swam. Birds may dip in and out. But this was none of those things. It was bigger, and disappeared not by swimming away, but by swimming down. He squinted, leaning forward a little, trying to see it better. It appeared again, and disappeared just as quickly. He placed the bottle down with a soft clink. The stairs, as you got lower, became slippy and covered with slime and pondweed. He was careful not to let his shoes touch those stairs. The staining was a nightmare to get out. The last thing he wanted to do was fall in.

It was a shame really, that he was so focused on what was in front of him. That wasn’t where the danger lay. He only realised this once he felt the hands on his shoulders and the hard shove that followed.

Romantic Autumnal Walk With Something Sinister Hiding in the Trees

She admired the clip of her new boots on the tree-lined path, in truth more enamoured of the sound than with her partner’s present conversation. He was perfectly pleasant she supposed, well spoken and finely washed. He owned a small house and a carriage, and worked in his father’s book keeping store and went to church on Sundays. He was respectable and kind, and she would do well to marry him.

And yet.

He bored Felicity to tears. She didn’t give a toss about accounting, or herb growing, or the endless dirges he liked to sing. She liked novel reading, grand adventures, a life of excitement. Her older brother had went to Borneo with his ‘companion’ to catalogue the wild animals there, and it was her greatest sorrow she could not follow him. She treasured each letter that arrived from him, full of funny little illustrations and anecdotes, managing to swallow down her burning jealousy so she could enjoy them.

But here she was, imprisoned in boring old England, land of drizzle and cemeteries and country walks. And heavens, did Ethan love his walks. Even in October, when the wind was gaining a sharpness akin to a knife. She had to clutch her shawl closed in one hand in order to stop it stealing off.

She looked back down at her feet kicking through some russet leaves. The shuffling and crunching noise made her smile. They paused as he stooped to tie his shoe, the shuffle and crunch continuing.

Wait.

There was nobody else on the path. Only the lonely wind which did not crunch, but rustled. Felicity peered up at the darkening sky, but no birds circled overhead. Ethan witted on, struggling now with his cuff links. She paid him no mind, now looking down the lane. She got careless, the wind whipping her shawl out of her hand and into the treeline, catching on a holly bush inside of it. She followed it at a brisk walk, determined to both have a break from the ceaseless chatter and not lose the damn thing.

Once past the first line of leaves, she paused. It was the eyes she saw first. They were reflective, like a cats, with a dark green sheen like a beetle’s back. She blinked, and then saw the rest. A girl, about her own age, with scandalously loose chestnut hair, blood red lips, and a midnight blue dress of a strange cut. Felicity was sure she had seen a similar cut in her mother’s wardrobe, from when she was younger. She was beautiful, but so still, Felicity wondered if she was an exquisite doll for one foolish moment. Her skin looked as smooth as porcelain. But then she smiled, and Felicity could have sworn for a moment she saw a flash of something dark and disturbing. But then it was gone, and the girl was charming. “Your companion likes to talk.” Her voice was affected, sounding as if it originated not in the city, but a valley somewhere, perhaps even Welsh. It made you want to listen to it, and she found herself standing there, shawl in hand but not running back to the path. “Rather.” “I like friends that know the value of silence. Do you know the value of silence Felicity?” She had taken a step closer, casually taking her hand and turning it over to expose the inside of her wrist, a surprisingly intimate act that left Felicity’s heart pumping hard. “Yes. I believe so.” “Good. Here’s what you’re going to do. Stand right here, and close your eyes for thirty seconds, and hum your favourite song. I’m going to give you the gift of silence darling.” Felicity did as she was told, not even noticing that the last thing she saw was the pretty pretty girl slipping towards the path and Ethan.

#prompts #short stories #larp #horror #prose

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