#mildly annoyed Nine that has been experimented on

[brainworms-all-night-long]

Haven't got the faintest idea what is it that i created but it sure exists now!!

[the-chaotic-christian]

I bet y'all won't be able to tell my favorite.......

Smalls

He has a bad habit of fiddling with his sword pommel. It’s bad because, more than once, someone has assumed he’s about to draw the weapon and presumed he was aggressive. He’s not, just distracted or thinking.

He rarely stutters or blushes and only does so when he’s severely embarrassed or nervous. Heather brings out both and it’s mildly terrifying for him.

Smalls would rather do anything than cook. He’s not bad at it, he just really, really hates washing dishes, which was a required part of meal-making according to Wilfred.  

Speaking of doing dishes and chores in general; he’s perfectly okay with doing them and doesn’t think it’s below his station. If he messed up his room, he can clean it, okay?? No one else needs to do it. It’s also a privacy thing, because he absolutely hates when people poke through his stuff without permission. Part of that is because when he was living in the Palace while the First Warren was under occupation, Daggler’s guards would go through his things with zero respect for privacy or any sense of decency.

When he was a kid, he would occasionally disappear for whole days. The few times this happened nearly gave Wilfred a heart attack, because Smalls was (and still is) very good at hiding from people. He was always found safe and okay, and was always more irritated that he’d been found in the first place.

Smalls hates being underground because of a very bad experience in Daggler's dungeons when he was about ten years old, and it was only made worse after his Dragon Tomb experience. Some days he can’t even stand being inside; he feels trapped.

The only time he actually gets annoyed about his height is when people make assumptions about him based off of it. This gets cleared up pretty quickly because he will quite literally stare them down until they apologize, or someone interrupts and corrects whatever they said (usually Heather or Wilfred). The thing that really bugs him is being mistaken for younger than he actually is.

Smalls will eat anything within arm’s reach. It’s a bad habit that Wilfred has been trying to break him of. Since he went hungry more than he’d like to remember as a child, he tends to eat more than he really needs to. He’s getting over this, but it’s a bit of a struggle. He will try anything once, and both Evan and Picket have taken advantage of this at times. On the list of weird things he’s eaten; A rock (Made him sick, regretted it immediately, done on a Evan’s dare, because they were stupid and like ten), Carolina Reaper (Spiciest pepper known to rabbitkind, almost threw-up, but managed to keep it down, Also Evan), snail (Sort-of cooked, stole it out of the pan in the kitchen. Not on a dare, he was curious. And nine, so it seemed like a good idea at the time. Didn’t really make him sick), And Locust (It was cooked, thank goodness, and long dead. Picket dared him to do it, and discovered the hard way that Smalls didn’t take dares as a joke. Didn’t make him sick at all). Smalls is secretly rather proud of having eaten these things, everyone else who knows about it simply thinks its weird.

He started drinking coffee when he was ten. He drinks it straight black, no sugar or cream, and won’t touch it if it does have any in it. Heather has banned him from having more than six cups a day, and while that might sound like a lot, his usual before she instated the ban was twelve. One for each hour.

Whittel terrifies him and no amount of convincing from either Heather or Picket or even Wilfred will make that fear go away. Picket thinks it is hysterical, and Whittel is completely oblivious. No one really wants to know what Smalls will do if someone spills about it.

Unless someone reminds him, he will completely forget to eat, drink, or shower. He once passed out from lack of food, and from then on Wilfred quietly made a habit of having someone check on him every few hours. Smalls is oblivious to this.

He will read anything, but definitely prefers mysteries and thrillers. Wilfred is slightly concerned by how dark some of the books he reads are, but considering his everyday life, he leaves it alone. Heather does not and won’t let him read the books out loud to her, the one time she did she had nightmares for months. Smalls, admittedly, felt very bad. Weirdly, he never gets nightmares. Not from books, at least.

He's extremely touched starved (Wilfred wasn’t exactly touchy-feely, so he gets hugged like, once every other year) and definitely craves affection. Won’t ask for it though, because he’s afraid he’ll burden others.

Smalls never wakes up screaming. He does wake up crying and he’s seriously ashamed of it and was extremely embarrassed the first time Heather found him like that. As a kid he was taught that crying was a weakness, so he learned not to do it in front of others. He suppresses a lot of his emotions in general and needs a lot of validation to even acknowledge them. He has emotional break downs at least every other week, but never in front of others. Heather’s the only one he trusts enough to be vulnerable with.

Smalls rarely curses but when he does, it’s nasty. He spent too much time around military personal when he was young to not have a sailor’s mouth. He usually feels bad about it after, especially since Heather chews him out about it most of the time.

He really likes to draw and he’s good at it too, but rarely has time for it.

He’s a Slytherin but would have been a hat stall between that and Gryffindor. It was his ambition that really won the day.

Introvert, dislikes most sentient interaction (Unless it’s with Heather, then he’s content to sit with her all day)

Heather

She’s a little self-conscious about all the scars she’s picked up throughout the war and usually wears clothing to hide them. The one from Vitten especially bothers her, because it was a point in her life where she felt completely helpless and alone.

The general populace loves her. Not just because of the Scribe of the Cause thing, but because she’s a genuinely sweet and nice person. What they don’t know is how genuinely terrifying he can be in a rage. Once when she was angry like that, Jo addressed her as ‘ma’am’ and it’s become a trend with the Fowlers (Including Picket) and many of the soldiers. Even Evan and Smalls will do it if she’s seriously angry.

Heather is still very afraid of tight spaces and will do anything she can to avoid them. Like Smalls, some days she doesn’t like being indoors.

She’s only two inches shorter than Smalls. When they first met, she was taller, but he grew a few inches during the war so now he’s just barely taller. Heather is mildly annoyed by this, but doesn’t say anything.

She can beat Smalls in a sprint, but not endurance. She teases him about it, and it’s one of the few things they bicker about.

Smalls was the first to call her the ‘Scribe of the Cause’, and it really irritated her at first. Now, he’ll occasionally tease her a bit with it, and she secretly really likes it. Picket gets annoyed whenever it is brought up, and accuses them of flirting and generally just acts the little brother.

She loves the rain and could spend hours watching it. When she was little, she would always beg to play in it, and when no one’s watching she’ll still stand outside while it’s storming. So far, no one’s caught her.

Heather has a massive sweet tooth and especially loves chocolate. Picket has used that against her and bribed her with it before. Her tolerance for spice is pretty high but she doesn’t like it all that much. She refuses to ever eat a bug and thinks that Smalls is insane for ever having eaten one, and isn’t much of a risky eater in general. She has enough common sense to say no to a stupid dare, so that probably has something to do with that.

She drinks tea and only tea, with a ridiculous amount of cream and sugar too. Smalls and Picket have both tried to get her to like coffee, but she won’t, and she particularly hates the way Smalls drinks it.

Heather placed in the top 1% her last year of taking standardized tests.

She will read anything she can get her hands on, unless it’s a thriller. Then she would honestly rather die. She prefers fantasy or historical fiction, and, weirdly enough, anything about dragons absolutely fascinates her. Everyone is completely baffled by this, and Smalls doesn’t get why she can read that but not thrillers. The only thing they both like are mystery and detective stories, though they both usually figure out the answer to everything way before the protagonist does.  

She hates doing laundry. It was her chore back in Nick Hollow, and she hated every minute of it. There’s just something about it she finds particularly gross.

Heather hates to sleep. Truly hates it. Her dreams are extremely vivid and dark, and very upsetting. She’d rather pull three all-nighters, crash for a whole day and not remember what she dreamed about, then sleep like a normal person and have to deal with how disturbing her night visions can be. Not to mention that half the time they’re prophetic. Occasionally she can be convinced to get an actual night’s rest, but not often. When she does sleep, often she’ll have night terrors where she’ll confuse reality and what she’s seeing in her head.

Heather was bullied a lot as a kid, and with her hot temper she got into a surprising number of fights, though, to be fair, she didn’t instigate most of them. She got both her front teeth knocked out before her adult ones were ready to come in, so she had a big gap for several years before hand.

Heather is actually a lot more like her mother than people give credit; while she appears quiet at first (and she is) she has zero qualms about inputting her opinion, and her temper is completely her mother’s, though she has much better control now than Sween did at her age.

Her older sister instincts trigger around Jo, and at this point she’s basically adopted him as another little brother. Picket has informed him this is both the best and the worst thing that could have ever happened to him.

Heather has a bad habit of skipping meals when she’s really focused on something, whether it be research or her latest writing project. Everyone has discovered that the best way of doing this is nicely reminding her, since she’ll only ignore you if you try to force her. But if she still won’t budge, then someone (Usually Smalls) will step in.

If Heather’s swearing, then the situation is really really really bad, because that girl reserves such language only for the direst of situations. She does not condone cursing, and hates it when other do so.

Smalls is the only one who has successfully coaxed her down from a panic attack.

She’s a Ravenclaw. I don’t think this needs much explanation, she’s the most intelligent, driven character in the entire series.

Ambivert.

Picket

He hates asking for help. This is basically canon anyways, but I think it needs to be said again. He asks for help as a last resort and no sooner, and there have been multiple times that Smalls or Heather or Weezie or somebody has come to his rescue when he’s gotten in over his head. It still annoys him most when Smalls does it, but he’s gotten a lot better about snapping.

He relies on Heather for protection way more than he’d like to admit.

Picket and Smalls bicker and fight all the time. Evan has informed Picket that this means that Smalls has accepted him as a permanent fixture to his life. Evan explained that because he moved around so much, Smalls had to force himself not to get attached or except anyone new into his life, because it only damaged him more in the end. So if he’s willing to interact regularly with Picket, that means that he’s accepted the fact that he’s sticking around. Picket, naturally, is somewhat at a loss at this and, if he’s being honest, a bit depressed.

Picket has a fatalistic sense of humor that mildly concerns Heather. Weezie thinks it’s hysterical, and Picket, Evan and Jo sometimes have full-on sarcastic conversations about death. Smalls even joined in once. Heather has to restrain herself from losing it nearly every time they do so, though her slate isn’t exactly clean either.

Picket’s a Gryffindor who looks and sounds like a Slytherin.

Is a serious introvert, like, worse than Smalls kind of serious. Absolutely hates any kind of formal social event but it usually guilted into it by Heather or dragged by Weezie, who is an extrovert on par with Evan.

tge fans! share your headcanons here!

[beca-mitchell]

wish i could pretend i didn’t need you (3/?)

Summary: Two weeks later. Beca has to work with an old acquaintance while her relationship with Chloe has flourished all the while

Word Count: 4,081

A/N: Chapter title from Gavin Haley and Ella Vos’ “The Way I Am”. Unbeta’d, sorry (except for Chloe yelling at me this morning when she woke up and read the chapter)! Smut warning for this chapter!

* * * * *

Excerpt:

She hates this game, however. Whenever her father’s associates pretend to not know who she is, or at least, feign politeness upon greeting her as if it is the first time they are meeting. The fact of the matter is, their business circles already aren’t necessarily the largest. It isn’t like she doesn’t know who wants to talk to her.

“Good morning,” she greets politely, though she does not put her spoon down. Instead, she idly stirs her oatmeal, finding it infinitely more interesting than the man next to her. “On your way out?” she asks quickly. Pointedly.

“Yes, but it’s always a pleasure to see you. We really should talk about grabbing a bite.”

She had spared him a brief glance and once-over a few seconds ago, but she does not linger. In her mind, she categorizes everything she knows about him at first glance. Son of a wealthy contract with a lot of influence in L.A. and the surrounding area. Young—probably around her age. Mid-twenties. She supposes he isn’t bad to look at. He just has the same hungry look in his eye, as do most young men whenever they’ve seemingly been promised an opportunity to talk to her.

She sighs, knowing that she’s going to have to annoy her father once more.

Read below (AO3 link under the cut)

AO3 - chapter 3: wish i could take your hand

“Are you sure you don’t want something else?”

Beca peers up at the staff waiting on her. It makes her feel simultaneously small and grandiose all at once. It was never something she got used to, even if she grew up in this very house, surrounded by many of the same people. She’s sure her family would like her to consider them her friends, but she often feels more like a stranger than anything else.

“Miss Mitchell?”

“I’m—uh, no. It’s okay. I’m good with this.” She gestures at the measly oatmeal she has placed in front of her.

She catches the brief panic that flashes across his face, looking very much like he wants to insist on feeding her something more substantial.

“Um, but where is my dad? I was told he wanted to have breakfast together,” she grumbles. “After dragging me out of bed too.” She glances at him to see if she has managed to elicit a smile. Half a smile. A quarter.

Nothing. “Mr. Mitchell is in a meeting right now, but he will be with you shortly.”

Beca resists the impulse to roll her eyes and turns back to her food, uncaring that she has her jacket draped sloppily over the dining chair armrest or that her shirt is mildly rumpled, having just been picked from her dresser carelessly. Another thing she hates—being treated like another one of her father’s business associates. It’s often hard to believe they’re from the same bloodline at all. It’s hard to believe that he considers her his daughter at all.

“Did you need something?”

Beca pinches the bridge of her nose, annoyed. “No. Thanks.”

“I’ll...be in the kitchen if you need anything.”

Beca watches him go with a sigh. Her brooding is interrupted by a short buzz from her phone, resting on the table.

Chloe Beale Dinner tonight? Missed you last night <3

That puts her in better spirits. She immediately picks up her phone, spoon hanging loosely from her mouth, dumb smile on her face.

Beca Mitchell Yesss please. Missed you too. Sick of me yet??

Chloe Beale Never

It is absolutely incredible how a simple text exchange manages to lift her spirits. She clicks her phone off, putting it on the table and returning to her breakfast.

“Beca Mitchell?”

She glances up. Beca flashes a tight smile at the young man now interrupting her breakfast. She chooses to spend as little time in her father’s house as possible, but he had arranged for a car to pick her up from her apartment that morning, which had been rather fortunate, considering that she had actually spent the night at her apartment for the first time in a few weeks.

She hates this game, however. Whenever her father’s associates pretend to not know who she is, or at least, feign politeness upon greeting her as if it is the first time they are meeting. The fact of the matter is, their business circles already aren’t necessarily the largest. It isn’t like she doesn’t know who wants to talk to her.

“Good morning,” she greets politely, though she does not put her spoon down. Instead, she idly stirs her oatmeal, finding it infinitely more interesting than the man next to her. “On your way out?” she asks quickly. Pointedly.

“Yes, but it’s always a pleasure to see you. We really should talk about grabbing a bite.”

She had spared him a brief glance and once-over a few seconds ago, but she does not linger. In her mind, she categorizes everything she knows about him at first glance. Son of a wealthy contract with a lot of influence in L.A. and the surrounding area. Young—probably around her age. Mid-twenties. She supposes he isn’t bad to look at. He just has the same hungry look in his eye, as do most young men whenever they’ve seemingly been promised an opportunity to talk to her.

She sighs, knowing that she’s going to have to annoy her father once more.

She hates this part the most. She hates being regarded as a piece of meat of some kind. People who didn’t know her, walking up to her and starting conversations. People like her who barely understood what it meant to live a life of struggle. A life outside of privilege. And on top of that, she already knows what he wants. He wants two things: first, probably to get into her pants, which. Gross. Second, he wants to talk up his company—his father’s company—until she wants to slice her own ears off. She knows the formula. She knows the formula too well at this point. In the same way that her father is set in his ways, she figures that some things never change.

“I’ll have my people call your people,” Beca replies, quickly putting a spoon of oatmeal into her mouth so she can resist the peal of laughter that threatens to burst from her at the sight of his despondent expression. “Nice seeing you, Darren.”

“It’s Derek.”

She smirks, tapping her spoon against the table. “Oops.” He leaves in a huff. Beca, pleased by this reaction, contentedly rises from her seat and twists, bowl in hand only to see—“Jesse?”

Jesse Swanson, in all his smug glory and leaning against the arch opening into the living room, is quite possibly the last person Beca wants to see at the moment, but she draws comfort from the fact that he is, at least somebody she can moderately trust. Which is a lot more than she can say for ninety-nine percent of the people her father brings into his home.

“Happy to see me, Beca?”

“Not particularly, no. You only roll into town whenever there’s a huge shipment coming in.”

“Look at us,” Jesse drawls, moving closer. “Back together again. And you haven’t changed. What’s it been? Two years? Three?”

“Three since I rejected you at university, I believe,” Beca says, tapping her chin slowly. “Time passes when you’re having fun.”

“He was into you,” Jesse comments. “Totally into you. It was like watching a trainwreck, watching him flirt with you.”

Beca scoffs. “Was that what that was? Was I supposed to be impressed with that?” She sighs, finally close enough to slug Jesse in the shoulder. “How have you been? How’s the girlfriend?”

“Beca,” he pouts. “You know my heart only beats for you.”

Beca grimaces, shoving him out of the way as she goes. That, she hates. She hates that Jesse, for whatever reason, still holds some kind of torch for her. It had started as an early attempt at an arranged...something...between their families. Jesse’s family, one of the biggest shareholders at Los Angeles Port had been highly interested (read: invested) in a potential romance between their only son and the only daughter and heir to the Mitchell fortune.

It was a match made in hypothetical heaven.

It was just that...Beca couldn’t bring herself to muster feelings for Jesse. He was too much, too forceful about their relationship, and too into her at the time. It was all more than she could handle when she had already been coerced into getting a degree.

On top of that, it left a bad taste in her mouth knowing that it would have been yet another thing tying her to this shitshow of a lifestyle.

And, though she would never really admit it to her family, it was the fact that Jesse was...Jesse. They had grown up together. They had trained in martial arts together. They had overseen incredibly illegal trades together.

She just couldn’t take him seriously as a romantic prospect, despite never having had experience dating many people to begin with.

So...yes. It bothers her that her father is still trying to force this upon her, even years later. She knows it’s his way of attempting to seal their relationship in the same way he always does—like a puppetmaster behind the scenes.

The thought enrages her enough that she shoves through her father’s study doors. “No,” she announces boldly, ignoring Jesse’s stammering behind her.

“Beca, good morning to you too. I’ll overlook your disregard for rules and inability to knock when requested.”

“Dude,” Jesse hisses to her. “Mr. Mitchell,” he announces. “You wanted to see me? Um.” He shifts closer to Beca, whether for protection or something else, she doesn’t want to find out and steps away. “Us,” he corrects.

“Yes, thank you, Jesse. And please, what’s with this Mr. Mitchell nonsense.” To Beca’s immense surprise, her father stands and moves from behind his incredibly unnecessary and large antique desk. He moves to pat Jesse jovially on the shoulder. “You’re practically family.”

Beca clenches her jaw, watching the exchange. She doesn’t realize she’s holding her breath until her father stops in front of her. He cups her cheek, smiling at her with something akin to tenderness. Or perhaps an impression of it, as if he had seen it once in a movie. “Always nice to see you, my dear,” he says. “You never really stop by much anymore unless it’s to get irritated about something entirely out of our control.”

I want to be out of your control.

The thought passes by so fleetingly that she almost doesn’t catch it, but she does. She catches it and holds on to it, letting herself drift along with it for a few short moments as her father returns to his perch behind the ornate desk.

Beca hates that desk.

“I need you two to supervise a shipment coming in tonight. Jesse, your parents will have the exact drop-off point at the port.”

Beca hates stake-outs more than that desk. She holds her tongue, merely nodding as her father gives directions. “It might take all night.”

At that, her head lifts. “All night?” she questions.

“Yes.” He places his hands on the table. “Is that a problem, Beca?”

She senses that Jesse shifts next to her. The air seems to grow still around them as her father awaits her response.

“No,” she murmurs, finally, thinking only of Chloe and the text she’ll have to send. “Not a problem.”

“Good. I know you won’t disappoint me.”

She hates that he looks directly at her.

 * * * * *

  “Rebecca! Get in here!”

Beca startles, nearly dropping her walkman on the ground as her father’s booming voice echoes from his study, down the ominous hallway she hates walking through.

He had full-named her. She can’t imagine what horror awaits her. Desperately, she tries to wrack her brain for something she might have done or not done.

She rushes, wincing as she bumps into a chair along the way. The pain burns through her and she pauses, momentarily stricken by how hard the chair had resisted against her movement.

“BECA!”

“Coming!” she calls back, wincing at the tremor in her own voice.

She knocks quietly on the study door, noting that it stands slightly open.

“Enter.”

Beca enters, still clutching her walkman as something comforting to hold on to at this point. “You wanted to see me?” she asks.

“You want to explain this?” He points at a paper on his desk, not even bothering to look up at her. For that, she’s grateful, unable to explain why she fears her father so much...especially whenever he looks her in the eyes.

She approaches the desk, unable to see what it is exactly. When she is close enough, she sees her school emblem atop the paper and her eyes widen, knowing it must be her report card for the semester.

“What is it?” she asks. “What do you want me to—”

“Don’t be smart with me now, Beca. Look at this. A B? Another B? A B-?”

“It—it…” She wants to explain that it had been hard, switching schools again in the middle of the semester. It had been hard to make friends, but she was trying. She was trying to fit in and she genuinely did like school. She liked the people she had managed to become friends with. She liked her teachers. She loved music class.

“Are you stupid?”

Beca’s face grows hot. She feels like she might cry. “No,” she murmurs.

“No, you are not. Because you are a Mitchell. And we don’t fail.”

“I—”

His eyes zero in on her walkman, still pressed against her chest. “Give me that.”

She whimpers. “Please, daddy—”

He stands, chair pushing back roughly. She wills herself to stand still at the sound. His previous instructions echo around her mind erratically. Stand still. Back straight. Shoulders back.

Stand like you mean it.

He snatches the walkman from her. “This is a horrible distraction. You need real education.”

She barely has time to protest, words dying on her throat, when her father drops the walkman on the floor and crushes it under the heel of his foot.

“Do you see this?” he demands over her sudden, erratic sobs. “This is what happens to failure in this house. We don’t accept it. This is what we do to people who put our futures in jeopardy.”

“I’m—I’m sorry,” Beca cries, hands coming up to her face. She feels such shame for crying in front of her father, knowing that he must think so lowly of her.

“Apologies won’t bring that back,” he says, pointing at her walkman. “Apologies won’t fix your grades.”

“What—” her mother bursts into the room, taking in the scene before her: Beca, shoulders hunched as she cries, smashed walkman on the ground, CD and all. “What’s going on in here?”

“Some lessons need to be taught. Did you see the grades from that school you wanted to put her in?”

“She’s seven!” her mother cries, pulling Beca tight against her. Beca continues to cry, pressing her face against her mother’s shoulder. Her mother’s hand presses tight against the back of her head, a comforting grip. “She’s seven, she’s trying!”

“Public school was a mistake. This was your idea, Sofia. Don’t think I've forgotten.”

“And you agreed. She needs the socialization, Enzo. She needs to meet people her age and grow.”

“She can get that just fine here. With private tutors. She needs to be homeschooled so she can—”

“No. I don’t want to talk about this right now. Look at her. You made our baby cry.”

Beca doesn’t hear her father’s response, too distracted by the warmth of her mother’s hold and the beating of her heart beneath her ear.

 * * * * *

 Beca checks her phone for the millionth time. She sees nothing out of the ordinary in Chloe’s goodnight text. They had agreed to postpone their dinner date to brunch the next day, but God, the disappointment Beca feels is unparalleled. She had been looking forward to curling up in Chloe’s arms, drifting off to sleep in Chloe’s bed. She had been looking forward to Chloe’s attempt at cooking dinner. She had been looking forward to it all.

“You seem agitated tonight.” Jesse watches her carefully. “Hot date that you’re missing out on tonight?”

“Why would you automatically assume that the only reason I wouldn’t want to spend time with you is that I have other plans?”

“Oh you wound me as always, Beca.”

“Just. Focus, okay? Let’s just get this done.” She wraps her jacket around herself tighter, wondering why, of all nights, Los Angeles decided to be abnormally chilly. The chill seems to seep into her bones.

“You’re not that into this, huh?”

“What are you talking about?”

“This whole...thing. Being here.”

“Jesse, it’s not about you.”

“I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about this life. This charmed life we live. Waiting for a shipment of questionable materials and making sure nobody steals from us because God forbid that we become less rich. That whole life. But it’s just...this is pretty much it for us, you know? Mess up once and that’s the end of the line.”

Beca is silent, contemplating the breadth of Jesse’s words. She’s sure he isn’t necessarily baiting her into saying anything, but she is still wary of responding too affirmatively, lest he take that information and use it to his own advantage.

But it’s Jesse—he has been fairly mellow over the period of time that they have known each other. He has been somewhat kind, somewhat understanding. He seemed fairly hands-off in terms of his own parents’ business, similar to Beca’s own disdain for this lifestyle.

“So...that’s why…” Jesse sighs. “Who is it? Do I know him?”

Beca blinks, refocusing on the horizon. The water looks especially daunting at this time of day. Rippling calm. Moon glinting off the surface. Blackness. Darkness.

This is pretty much it for us, you know?

“It’s nobody,” she finally responds. “It’s nothing.”

 * * * * *

 She ends up leaving the stake-out early, under Jesse’s reassurance that he would handle it.

Beca doesn’t mean to arrive at Chloe’s apartment, but her feet moved her automatically. She checks the time, noting that it isn’t too ridiculously late for a Friday night. A small smile graces her lips at the memory of how she had met Chloe on a random Friday night. Now, three and a half weeks later, and she’s dating this woman, murky future in sight, but a future nonetheless.

She reaches up to knock, but hesitates.

It’s too soon for you to be showing up this late. Too soon—she doesn’t want to see you.

Her own thoughts knock the wind out of her; she knows that this level of self-doubt is unwarranted considering that she and Chloe have been moving fairly steadily along over the past month. A month and Beca’s feelings have only developed further, growing along the way.

She bites her lip, hesitating. She has no reason to believe that Chloe doesn’t feel the same way. Chloe, who is incredibly open and genuine. She wears her emotions for all to see.

Now, her father’s voice, chiming in: the lack of self-preservation. Remember that emotion is a weapon and a curse. Depends on how you use it.

But, Beca thinks. Is it so bad to be wanted?

Beca Mitchell Hey Are you awake?

The briefest moment of radio silence, but it’s enough to send Beca’s fingers back to the keyboard as she makes her way back down the apartment hallway. She is about to type out nevermind when Chloe texts her back.

Chloe Beale yeah, what’s up?

Beca Mitchell would you mind opening your door?

Chloe Beale :O :O :O beca mitchell! yes! coming!

Beca barely has time to suck in a relieved breath when Chloe’s apartment door flies open and Chloe herself is leaping onto Beca’s back with a delighted squeal.

“You made it!”

“You’re not mad I came so late?” Beca asks, lifting her hand and curling it around Chloe’s forearm. Chloe’s hug tightens momentarily before she loosens up enough to let Beca spin in her arms. Lazily, she drapes her arms over Beca’s shoulders, kissing her right in the middle of the hallway, without a care in the world.

“I’m just glad you came, Bec.”

The nickname, still as jarring as it was when Chloe first used it, somehow warms Beca’s heart. She finds comfort in it; she finds comfort in how out of left-field it feels. And beyond that, beyond the nickname, she finds comfort in Chloe’s sincerity.

“I’m late,” Beca repeats, wonder creeping into her tone.

“I don’t care.”

“Really?” Beca asks, unsure why she is fixating on this one little instance. This one moment between them in their new, budding relationship. Everything between them is passion and desire, but also an undercurrent of something incredibly deep. She pulls on Chloe’s hips, having only just a moment of clarity which she finds in Chloe’s blue eyes before Chloe’s lips collide into her own. Like the softest of blows, Chloe’s kiss knocks the wind out of her.

But, as Chloe has proven over and over in just a short period of time, Chloe catches her. She holds Beca close, deepening the kiss only slightly with the intent of inflicting passion and nothing more. Gently, her lips move against Beca’s—a greeting to surpass all greetings—as a hello.

Hello, you’re here. I’m happy to see you.

That and nothing more.

“Stay the night?” Chloe asks, breathless as she tilts her forehead to press against Beca’s.

“I would love to. But, um. I should definitely shower first.”

 * * * * *

 Beca had been tired, but she can’t think of anything else now with water dripping down her forehead and nose. The steam is almost overpowering, but her gasps have nothing to do with steam. She gasps, loudly and wantonly, because Chloe’s tongue is doing sinful things between her legs. She wants to grab something other than Chloe’s hair, but she knows that she can’t for fear of breaking something in Chloe’s shower.

Chloe’s tongue flicks out expertly against her clit, bullying it gently and stimulating it, pushing Beca’s sensitivity to its limits. Again and again, she flicks, occasionally sucking at whatever her mouth can reach. Chloe’s movements are almost lazy, with how sluggishly her hands scrape up and down Beca’s thighs, sending fresh waves of tingles across Beca’s skin.

With each pass of Chloe’s lips and tongue through and around her cunt, Beca trembles, shaking off every last moment from the day she just had. “Fuck...Chloe…” She tapers off into a broken-off moan when Chloe sucks on clit rather harshly. Her mouth falls open and her head tilts back, smacking against the hard tile behind her. The sensation is lost soon enough however, when Chloe draws away, sliding up Beca’s body. Chloe is panting herself when she comes face to face with Beca. Their lips collide, messy and sloppy in technique, but rife with desire and lust. Beca clutches onto Chloe’s shoulders with her remaining strength, attempting to keep up with how desperately Chloe’s tongue moves inside her mouth.

Shower all but forgotten, Chloe’s fingers navigate between her thighs. “I want to feel you like this,” Chloe murmurs. She nips a line down Beca’s jaw. “Feel you around my fingers.” She sucks at the spot she knows drives Beca crazy, unrelenting as two fingers slip inside her dripping pussy.

Beca moans, giving Chloe the sounds she enjoys most. She tenses, tight around Chloe’s fingers, attempting to draw in her girlfriend’s fingers further. They fit so well together, Chloe’s fingers pressed tightly inside her, Beca’s hands holding tightly to Chloe’s shoulders.

“Harder,” Beca breathes, clutching Chloe’s head to her chest. “Fuck, Chloe. Harder.”

Chloe whimpers at her words, lifting her head to press a kiss to Beca’s mouth as best as she can. “I’m—I just want—” She moans, moving her fingers in and out of Beca. “To take care of you, fuck—” She shudders, pressing herself more firmly against Beca’s thigh, wedged as best as she can against Chloe’s cunt. Her thrusts increase in intensity, both of them doing their best to maintain an upright position.

You are, Beca wants to say. She can do nothing more than cry out, pulling at Chloe’s hair as she finally comes, falling apart in Chloe’s arms.

 * * * * *

 The phone buzzes obnoxiously.

“Who is it?” Chloe asks sleepily. She moves as if to rise from the bed to retrieve their phones. Beca groans, pulling Chloe back into their comfortable cocoon-slash-duvet. “But—”

Beca could care less about who it is. All she knows is that she wants Chloe wrapped around her in more ways than one, but she’ll settle for at least cuddling at the bare minimum. Naked cuddling, on top of that.

“You’re so clingy tonight,” Chloe observes, but she does not sound upset about it. Instead, she sighs, wrapping her arms around Beca’s shoulders and nestling even closer. “And warm,” she adds happily. “Awesome.”

Beca hums, distracted by the soft curves of Chloe’s body. She presses her lips against Chloe’s collarbones—a kiss on each side—before she begins lazily kissing the column of her neck. Chloe shivers against her, though her arm tenses around her shoulders, tightening her hold.

“Again?” Chloe murmurs. She uses her free hand to trace the curve of Beca’s cheek and the line of her jaw. “You’re insatiable.”

Beca doesn’t bother arguing. She just tilts her head back so Chloe can see her face and she smirks for good measure, knowing that Chloe will cave soon enough.

On her phone—three missed calls: Jesse Swanson.

fin chapter 3

[gothic-safari-clown]

The Mind’s Power Over the Body

Part Ten

Story summary: They only ever had each other. It had been that way since high school, ever since Elianna transferred to dreary Arlen and took Jonathan under her wing. They go separate ways for college, and when they're reunited at Arkham Asylum professionally, Elianna comes to find that they've both changed during their time separated. Can she look past the promise of danger and stay by Jonathan's side as they slide further and further into the darkness while she grapples to come to terms with the truth about herself? Can she accept what needs to be done in order to hold onto the only person who holds any meaning in her life? This is a very self-indulgent AU that draws from several different canons of the DCU and ignoring others, starting in the Batman Begins Nolanverse. This will follow the plot of the movie, although the timeline has been very slightly tweaked.

Part One / Part Two / Part Three / Part Four / Part Five / Part Six / Part Seven / Part Eight / Part Nine

Word count: 1247

"So he's here today?" Elianna asked Jonathan as they walked up the asylum steps on yet another grey morning in Gotham.

"I got an email last night after you fell asleep," he confirmed. "He's been put on my case list and everything." He stopped his friend with a hand on her arm in an empty part of the lobby before they reached the stairs. "I need to make sure that you're not going to get cold feet," his voice was hushed and intense.

"Not a chance. I want to do it. I want to see it." Jonathan's eyebrows raised slightly at her matched intensity.

"Okay," he nodded slowly. "Then we'll start next week," he said, removing his hand from her arm. El found herself surprised, but she didn't quite know why. She knew that they couldn't start right away, lest they draw suspicion, but still, a whole week of opportunity for Zsasz to escape again and come after her, the thought of which made it hard for El to stay excited about the plan.

"Well, that's fine, but I think I should stay with you until it's taken care of."

"I was thinking the same thing." He agreed as they resumed their way up to the second floor.

"I'll try my best to annoy you as little as possible." She bumped him with her shoulder, and he smiled a little.

"You know, having you around doesn't really bother me that much; I just like to keep you on your toes."

"Please, don't make me laugh." El rolled her eyes lightly. "Let's see if that's still the case next week."

"Don't, please, just take the compliment and leave it at that." The growing exasperation in his voice made her laugh.

"Ohhh, I see now, that was your best try at a compliment." Jonathan sighed heavily and gave her a look, to which she laughed. "Alright, I'm done. See you later." She said as they reached the top of the stairs. "Tell Scarecrow I say to behave until then." She wasn't even sure why she said it, as she didn't typically like to acknowledge the alter; the comment was met with a flash of amusement in his eyes and a genuine smile, not half of one, for a split second, before it was gone again as suddenly as it came.

"Can you give me a heads up before you mention him by name again?" Jonathan rubbed his forehead, looking mildly annoyed. "He's always trying to take over in public, and he really likes it when you talk about him." Oh.

"Yeah, of course, I just didn't realize he was so close under the surface," El explained apologetically, and Jonathan waved his hand as if to say it was alright.

"Don't worry about it. You didn't know," he said, suddenly tired. "See you tonight."

"Yeah, see you." El left a kiss on his cheek without thinking, and they split off their separate ways to their respective offices. A sudden arm linked through hers startled El for half a second before she looked and saw Harley.

"So what's going on between you two, huh?" The blonde asked suggestively, to which El laughed.

"Just friends. Good morning, by the way."

"Uh-huh, and whose choice was that?"

"Come on, Harley," El rolled her eyes. "Yes, I love him, but not like that. No." Harley gave her a look that said 'really?' with a raised eyebrow. "Why, you interested? I could put in a good word-" the deflection got the exact reaction that El had hoped for.

"No!" Quinzel smacked the redhead on the arm. "He's not my type, but you're gonna tell me you've never thought about it? I mean, you've got to admit, he's...attractive, isn't he? Stop laughing!" El did her best to stop, but it took a few seconds.

"Sorry, just...you're right, I can't argue with that, but he didn't use to be. But now...it's the eyes, I think, they're very intense."

"Yeah, that's what it is! That and the cheekbones, very sharp." The blonde was clearly fishing for more of a confession.

"I don't know, Harley. We've been friends since high school, you know? To me, he'll never be 'Doctor Crane,' he's just...Jonathan. I think anything from my side is just due to a positive association. We were there for each other right when it started mattering the most. But that doesn't mean that either of us wants anything to happen." Harley let out a frustrated sigh.

"Fine, but you'll still have to start fighting off other girls with a stick. I'm not the only one that thinks something is going on between you two, and some'a them are gettin' a little jealous." El laughed.

"I shall defend his honor valiantly; it'd be a first though."

"Not very popular with the cheerleaders?"

"Not even close." El shook her head and couldn't help remembering what had happened to Sherry Squires and Bo Griggs. God, how could I have forgotten? Counting Granny, Jonathan had already had three bodies under his belt before they even graduated high school. She really shouldn't have been surprised by the recent turn of events.

"Ya know, I gymnastics and cheer in high school. I only kept up with the gymnastics, though."

"Maybe that's why he doesn't like you," El teased and poked her new friend's nose.

"He doesn't like anyone. Except for you, I don't see why you wouldn't just give it a shot!" Elianna was starting to get annoyed with the conversation. She just doesn't give up, does she?

"Look, Harls, if you're that concerned with my romantic life, why don't you take up the case? We'd make a hot couple, don't you?"

"Without a doubt, gorgeous," Harley agreed with a grin and a wink. "Maybe I'll kiss ya later though; I gotta go."

"Alright, take care of yourself, babe," El laughed and patted Harley's hand as she withdrew her arm and headed off to wherever she needed to be. Once she was safely out of earshot, El let out a somewhat relieved sigh. If Jonathan could have heard that conversation, he would have been very uncomfortable. Even thinking about him like that felt disrespectful.

The first thing Elianna did once she was safely in her office was to double-check her patients for the day. First on the docket was Mr. Thomas, one of the inmates that Jonathan must have been using for his experiments. She had spoken to him twice before, and neither time had he shown any signs of misconduct in the facility.

Sure enough, their third conversation uncovered nothing of significance, neither about his mental state nor of Jonathan and his toxin. She was quickly learning what Jonathan had known for a long time: that fear was the best leverage. It was how his great-grandmother had kept him under her thumb for so long, and it was how he was keeping these test subjects quiet.

Fascinating.

The rest of the day, and then the week passed in the same way that Mr. Thomas's session did: slowly, nothing of significance. Arkham managed to avoid any trouble for an entire week, and while every passing day without incident from Zsasz (or anyone else for that matter) filled Elianna with relief, she found herself anticipating The Day more and more with every hour that passed, and it was almost driving her crazy. The anticipation did nothing to help the long week.

[usermischief]

It was supposed to be a pack bonding experience, yet Stiles has never felt so removed from his friends. They're falling apart, have been for a while. Everything that keeps them together is the lethal threats breathing down their necks. At least, that's what it feels like.

Stiles wonders if he's the only one seeing them drift away from each other little by little every single day. It certainly seems like that’s the case - and Stiles has never felt this distant from his friends. He hasn’t missed Lydia this much in a long time either. Her summer course at MIT is going to launch her forward, and he couldn’t be happier for her, but right now, he wishes she’d be here. Much more than his current girlfriend. They spoke earlier today. Malia spent most of the time complaining about how much work she has to do because of summer school. She told him she wished she’d be in San Diego with them. Stiles didn’t feel the same way. It’s probably just another testament to the state their relationship is in. 

If you can even call it a relationship. They certainly have something, Stiles just isn’t quite sure any longer what that is. 

A wave bumps into him, cooling down the vicious heat for a bit and bumps him forwards. Closing his eyes, Stiles goes under, allowing himself to be swallowed whole by the sea. He wonders if someone would notice his absence, if someone would notice his leaving. Right now, Stiles doubts it. Liam and Mason are too busy gawking at every single mildly attractive person walking past them, only to never approach anybody because ‘they’re out of our league, man’. Scott and Kira are floating in their own world. They’re at the beach, but they’re not really with them. It’s the second day in a row that they’re doing nothing else. Being on cloud nine must be fucking stellar. But it’s not the only reason they drove all the way to San Diego. They wanted to check out universities, and San Diego is one of their first choices. It doesn’t have an insurmountable distance to Beacon Hills in case of an emergency, and Scott and Stiles could start their studies in the same city albeit not the same university. 

Breathing out, Stiles pushes himself back to the surface. He shakes the water out of his hair and squints against the sun, spotting Liam fidgeting with his towel. With a sigh, he wades out of the water. He’s just going to grab his towel and go back to the hotel. They didn’t just come here for a vacation, and if nobody else will check out any colleges, Stiles is doing it by himself. Seeing how things are going, he’ll probably have to do a lot by himself for the next three days. 

That’s perfectly fine. He is perfectly capable of keeping himself busy. He’s been doing it a lot during the summer. It’s not much different in Beacon Hills than it is here.   

Mason drags Liam off to the group playing volleyball. Shaking his head, Stiles walks back to his towel. He's not going to spend any more time in this hot sand, under the burning sun, being third-wheeled as fuck. Without a word, he tossed everything into his backpack. Part of him hoped but didn't expect any sort of comment. 

Kira proves him wrong. "Are you leaving?" Drawing her eyebrows together, she looks almost concerned.

And Stiles almost feels bad about being annoyed with all of them. "I have a headache."

Scott is staring at him, raising a brow.

"Oh, do you want-"

"No," Stiles interrupts her, opting for a smile. "No, I just- the sun. I need to get out of the sun for a bit." He tacks on a smile that doesn't feel genuine at all. 

Kira looks more concerned for a few seconds, but she eventually smiles. Scott doesn't say anything, probably knowing that there's nothing he could say to change Stiles' mind. "See you later."

Stiles nods and leaves, swallowing around the lump in his throat. They’re losing each other, and with every step, he makes in the hot sand, with every step he gets further and further away from his pack, his friends, he understands that. He doesn’t want them to fall apart. He doesn’t want to be the one left behind either. A big part of him wonders if it’s all worth it, another doesn’t want to give up. People grow up. They grow apart. Stiles should accept it, but he’s afraid it’s just some leftover thoughts from the nogitsune. Maybe his mind is still playing tricks on him. 

Even months after the incident, Stiles struggles to tell what’s real sometimes. His friends always felt real, but maybe that’s just a childish hope he is clinging to. Everything seemed fine the past few months, or maybe nobody had the time to worry about anything but staying alive while people were trying to kill his friends left and right. It’s not that they had a lot of time to return to normal, or deal with being possessed by a nogitsune, or turned into a berserker, or into a werewolf. 

Their life was such a shitshow that normalcy feels surreal.  

Stiles drops his sneaker on the sidewalk and slips into them. Although the motel they’re staying at is maybe five minutes away, Stiles is not going to burn his feet on the hot asphalt. His mood is terrible enough, and the slight burn on his shoulders may or may not develop into a sunburn. 

“Oh fuck.” The sound of a skateboard scraping over asphalt catches his attention. Stiles whips his head to the right, but before he can even see what’s going on, a body crashes into him like a battering ram. Pain ricochets through his body. His balance is out the window. He lands on his backpack and the hot asphalt. The impact knocks the air out of him, and the body landing on top of him certainly doesn’t help the situation. 

At least he doesn’t hit his head. 

That’s something. 

Stiles groans.

"Shit, I'm sorry." The body on top of him shifts a bit but doesn't completely move away. "Are you okay?"

"I'm alive," Stiles replies, blinking his eyes open. The sun does not make identifying the idiot running him over with his skateboard any easier. He shields his eyes and squints. The pain in his body is almost forgotten when he spots the guy on top of him. Of course, Stiles has the questionable honour to be run over by a fucking GQ Model to be. 

The boy grins down at him.

Stiles can feel the heat creeping into his cheeks. Fantastic. Now he's blushing. He needs to get out of the sun.

"No injuries?" GQ Model asks, still not getting off him. "I could never forgive myself if I hurt you.”

What? Stiles blinks and opens his mouth with the intent to say something. His mind, however, refuses to cooperate for the first in a long time. If he hadn’t already been aware that he likes guys just as much as girls, his sexuality would’ve just had a rude awakening. This dude is hot as all hell, refuses to get to his feet, and looks at Stiles as if he’s found his favourite candy. 

Holy shit. 

“Uh-”

Brain, please.

“Are you boys okay?” A mother approaches them, pushing her sunglasses up, and holds what’s probably GQ Model’s skateboard in her hands. 

Right. They’re kind of in the middle of the street, and there are a lot of people around, yet Stiles keeps gawking at the hot guy on top of him. The hot guy who’s been on top of him for a lot longer than strictly necessary. He should’ve gotten up a while ago. Stiles should’ve probably forced him to get off. 

“We’re fine,” the boy says and gets to his feet in one swift movement. “Aren’t we?” His grin doesn’t help at all, but when he offers Stiles his hand, he grabs it and lets himself be pulled to his feet. 

When GQ Model quirks a brow inquiringly, Stiles yanks his hand back. “Yes,” he says hastily, remembering that he’s supposed to answer the question. “Fine. I’m fine. Just peachy. Nothing to worry about.” Stiles even manages to smile at the worried woman. He hasn’t been so thrown because of a person since seeing Lydia and Derek for the first time. 

The woman draws her eyebrows together before walking away, shaking her head. 

“I’m sorry for running you over,” Hot Guy says again. “Is there a way I can make it up to you?” 

Stiles can think of multiple ways how he could make it up to him, but he gathers his scattered composure and throttles the urge to drag this guy back to his motel. He has a girlfriend. He is with Malia, and even if their relationship is in a very questionable state - that gets more and more questionable the longer he stares at the boy in front of him - Stiles would never do anything to hurt her like that. 

“I’m-” he clears his throat and starts again, “I’m fine, really. I should’ve watched where I’m going.” 

GQ Model laughs, and the sound alone makes Stiles weak in the knees. What the fuck? He has to get his hit together. He has to. “Oh, I saw you,” he tells him and keeps looking him straight in the eye when he adds, “and I couldn’t look away.” He licks his lips before curling them into a smirk. “Took me a second to remember I was on a skateboard.” 

Now, it’s Stiles’s turn to laugh. It’s an awkward, almost strangled sound. Nothing close to the smooth laughter he’s heard a moment ago. This dude has checked the mirror before he left the house today, right? Not that Stiles is terrible to look at. He looks good. Kind of. He’s not ugly, but there are miles and miles between the league this dude is in, and the one Stiles feels at home in. “Well-” Stiles has no idea how to respond to that. 

“I’m Theo, by the way.” He offers him his hand. 

Stiles swallows. “Stiles.” After a second of hesitation, he shakes Theo’s hand. He notices a weird flutter of anticipation, and he can’t help but notice how warm and soft Theo’s skin is despite crashing into him with his skateboard. 

Still smirking, Theo pulls him closer without warning, and Stiles flails as his balance is almost ripped away from his again. He’s not only good looking, he’s also strong as well. Good to know. “I really would like to apologise for running you over, Stiles.” The way his name rolls over Theo’s tongue is nothing less than sinful. It doesn’t take much more than that to make Stiles understand how Theo wants to apologise.

It’s so hard to deny him his chance. But he has a girlfriend. He still has a girlfriend. “It’s fine. Really. There’s nothing to apologise for.” 

Theo’s face falls a little, and he lets go of his hand. The disappointment, however, lasts hardly longer than a second. “I’m just saying, I know the best ice cream parlour around.” It’s damage control, that much is obvious, even though he’s really smooth about it. 

Stiles has a hard time denying that offer as well. “My friends and I wanna check out the colleges. I really don’t have time.” If not for Malia, Stiles would probably jump at the offer. Fuck. He wouldn’t even bother with ice-cream first. But the pack is in a weird state at the moment, not only because they’re separated for a week. It’s the first time it’ll happen, and when they’re back in Beacon Hills, Kira will leave for the rest of summer break. All of that really doesn’t help to get rid of Stiles’ bad feeling. But it is just a feeling. If he does something stupid, accepting Theo’s offer, for example, Stiles is going to make it real. 

“Oh, how long are you and… your friends staying in San Diego?” Theo asks, walking past him to pick up his skateboard.

“Sunday. We arrived on Monday.” 

Theo quirks a brow. “Where are your friends?” 

“Oh.” Stiles points in the direction of the beach. “I wanna lie down a bit. Headache.” He’s not even fucking able to form proper sentences anymore. The last time he’s been completely overwhelmed by someone was when he met Derek. Well, and Brett to a degree. As hot as he is, the guy didn’t quite fuck with his head the way Derek did and Theo is doing now. The sun probably doesn’t help. Neither did being knocked to the ground by a hot guy on a skateboard.

Theo smirks again. “Well then, I don’t wanna keep you any longer.” His expression softens a little, and Stiles notices a hint of disappointment in the curls of his lips. “It was nice to meet you, Stiles. Sorry again for running you over.” 

“It’s okay.” 

Theo drops the skateboard and places his foot on it, ready to skate off, but he hesitates for a moment. “I gotta ask,” he says, scratching the back of his head, “can I have your number? Or maybe I’ll give you my number, so I can hope you’ll call me back?” 

He should say no. Stiles knows he should say no, but he finds himself nodding. “I’ll take your number,” he says, pulling out his phone. Since he is highly aware that this could be read in a completely wrong way, he adds, “maybe I’ll need that ice-cream later.” 

The smirk returns in full force as Theo saves his number to his contacts. “I’m always available for ice-cream emergencies.” 

Stiles grins. “That’s good to know.” He’s probably not going to call Theo ever but knowing that he could makes him feel a hell of a lot better. His mood hasn’t been this good since they arrived in San Diego on Monday. “See you around. Maybe.” 

“Hopefully,” Theo corrects and winks at him before speeding off with his skateboard. 

It's impossible to immediately walk away. There's something about Theo that draws him in. He's hot as hell, that's for sure, but still. Stiles bites his bottom lip, takes a deep breath, and forces himself to walk back to the motel, still holding his phone in his hand. Maybe he should think long and hard about his current relationship if a stranger knocks him off his feed.

WIP/tbc

[ziracona]

Not That Kind of Person Who

[My half of an art trade with @speckeltail , who requested a fic for the time Joey went to Lerry’s between trials and found Quentin there completely blitzed on morphine he’d taken accidentally, and helped him get back to the campfire that has been refferenced from Quentin’s pov in his lovely ask blog @badham-bedhead (Speck, I want you to know this pic of Joey you did on the blog is directly responsible for much of what you’re about to read >: D .)]

  This was always fun. Fucking with Herman.

A top twelve pastime, here in the fog. There was training, and bumming around with the gang, stealing shit from the Clown, spying on whoever was new, collecting cool new stuff for the lodge, but going to Lerry’s was up there. Honestly, it would have been higher if it wasn’t for the fact that he’d been caught doing it before, and while you got in some real trouble if you killed a survivor or another killer outside of trials, it uh, it sure as hell wasn’t enough to deter everyone from doing it. And Joey had been on the receiving end of that with Herman once.

Still, that was a long time ago, thought Joey, ducking under a fallen chunk of what had once been wall, and slipping deeper into the institute. Herman didn’t scare him.

A noise somewhere down the hall he was creeping along startled Joey, and he jumped on impulse, and then cursed himself silently, placing the noise as he watched a crow that had gotten in take flight far up ahead, and tried to slow his heart back down. …He doesn’t! I’m being “wary”—that’s just smart. I’m not fucking scared of him. If I was, I wouldn’t be here.

Herman was fun to annoy. Because he got angry over the weirdest shit, and had big reactions, and also because if he did catch you, it wasn’t pretty, so it always felt good to win one. And the institute was so big, it really wasn’t hard to get in and out unscathed, so long as you were quiet. If you were quiet, Herman would sometimes even ignore you when he knew you were there—especially if he was distracted doing shit, and had no reason to suspect you were there to ruin his stuff. Joey was sure that wouldn’t have been the case if he was actually allowed to keep anyone he caught, but he wasn’t. If he grabbed a trespasser and strapped them to a chair to see how the inside of their brain worked with barbs sticking out of it, the Entity would make him pay big time.

“Probably has made him pay,” whispered Joey to himself, following the hall and looking for a good place to do what he’d come to do. Library would be choice, but he’d heard what sounded like warning signs of the Doctor himself in that direction when he got here, so he was going to have to settle for somewhere else.

He was willing to bet Herman had grabbed someone back in the day and gotten in a lot of trouble over it. Actually, Joey felt pretty sure that that’s what it would have taken to get The Doctor to not be grabbing someone to experiment on every time he saw a trespasser now. And he was kind of thankful, because the time he’d been killed had been really fucking shitty, even though it had been pretty quick. Honestly, that was part of why he liked coming here so much and fucking with the guy’s stuff. Mini-revenge. That, and boredom. Between trials, there wasn’t so much to do sometimes, and since with…everything really, being the way it was, Joey wasn’t super into sitting down and thinking about how life was going. He needed to constantly be distracted, and if someone else wasn’t there to help, it meant finding something like this to do. Especially after a trial where he’d barely gotten one last-minute sacrifice and been given a pretty harrowing warning about not fucking up again next time. …Shit.

Yeah. It wasn’t great. He was going to be seriously in trouble if he didn’t do a lot better next trial. It was so fucking annoying, too! Stuff always worked out like this for him! He’d gotten Claudette hooked right near the trial’s start, and then literally tripped over her like fifteen seconds after someone had gotten her down, when he hadn’t even been looking for her, and he’d felt kind of bad, even though he knew how stupid that was to do, and how dangerous. They had to hunt, and suck it up, and the survivors would try to live, and if they failed, they failed, and that wasn’t his fault—it wasn’t like he’d asked to be here doing this. It was just how shit was, and it was rough for him too, and it wasn’t his job to feel bad for them. It was him or them. If they couldn’t hack it, and they died, then too bad—that was rough for them, but it wasn’t gonna be his problem. But. He’d been doing well in the trial so far, and feeling confident, and-a-and she had looked so sad—like not even just scared, but sad, because her luck had been so shitty probably, and so he’d been fucking stupid, and felt bad, and left her on the ground instead of sacrificing her, and chased off the person he’d been going for originally instead, and in return for answering that stupid impulse to show a little mercy, he’d lost her completely after that, gotten run around by Zarina, and then only barely managed to down and sacrifice the newest girl who he’d never heard anyone say the name of yet right by the gates at the last second, and now the Entity was pissed at him, and everything sucked.

That’s why he’d come to do this. To blow off steam. Bad day, friends tired and asleep, need to feel a little better? Go sneak into Herman’s place and deface some of his shit. It always made him feel better to do it.

Oh! Here we go, thought Joey, spotting a nicer section of lab up ahead, hospital beds, one of the storage rooms beyond. He took the can of black spraypaint he’d brought with him off his shoulder strap and primed it as he slipped along the hall towards an open doorway. This would be perfect. Far enough away to be safe and give him time, super noticeable, and a big fuckin’ annoyable to the Doctor when he was gone. Joey carefully cased the area inside, planning what he wanted to do, picked a center point on the floor, marked it, thought for a few more seconds, and then started spraying. It took a couple minutes to do, because he’d picked something a little bit fancy, but when he stepped back finally from his last line, he was surrounded by what looked like chaotic nothing. That was, until you stepped about five feet back right down the middle of the rows in the room to the spot he’d marked on the floor, and the pieces would all line up from that perspective to become a grinning skull. Nice, thought Joey, proud of himself because that kind of tagging was a little tricky to do and he really enjoyed doing it, it looked sick as hell, and also largely because he knew it would make Herman furious. “Okay, what now?” whispered Joey to himself, shaking the can again. He glanced over his image, considering.

“You should be saying something,” he decided, liking the idea very much. He picked out an insult in his head and started to form what would be a speech bubble, when the world’s loudest clang sounded from so close on his left that he almost jumped out of his skin and died with alarm, fucking up the line he’d meant to lay down and jerking back, then ducking and sliding beside one of the cots nervously, heart thudding. He ripped his hunting knife out of its sheath and held it clutched tight in his right hand.

Fuck! What was that? He left the library?

There was no electricity pulsing along the wall though. The Doctor was kind of a walking AOE, so you could at least generally sense him coming, and there was none of that.

Fuck, then, thought Joey, slowly standing up again, cautious but calming back down just a little as seconds went from two to nine and nothing appeared to cause him trouble, What was that just now?

It had been on his left, hadn’t it?

Carefully, Joey slipped out of the partially-tagged room and glanced up and down the hall on the left side. Nothing weird in sight. Just empty hall, debris, doors into other rooms. No movement, no more clangs. Nothing. The sound had seemed like it could have come from the next room over though, he thought, looking back, but that one was just one of the big, open, trashed ones—Joey had passed twenty just like it on his way down. Not nice enough to be worth tagging, because the dude might not even notice. What would have made a noise like that in one of those spots?

I guess…maybe part of the roof just caved in? Or something?

That was a weird thought kinda. In reality, for sure it would be an option—buildings broke and shit fell apart eventually. But he kind of didn’t think deterioration worked the same way here. There was one really annoying broken massive window panel in Lerry’s that was always hanging by a thread and banging against the wall in the wind every trial, and every trip out here, and it had never snapped and fallen to the ground like he wished it would. Nothing in Ormond had ever rotted through or something either, even though the lodge was super old and kind of falling apart. So. So maybe that was what it was, but Joey was kind of unconvinced.

Still, I can’t spend forever doing this, thought Joey, mildly frustrated, but hesitating. Whatever it had been, Herman might have heard it too, and uh, he did not want to be here when Herman showed up to find the fantastic work of tagging art he’d just done all over his hospital beds. He had a cool ‘fuck you’ to add to the skull before bouncing, and whatever it had been—

Thunk.

Okay, what the fuck, thought Joey, freezing again on instinct, and then turning his head very, very slowly to the right. It hadn’t been the big open room—it was the one just past it. He was sure this time. Whatever the noise was, it hadn’t been as loud this time, but it was definitely something. Something alive. That wasn’t the sound of a building breaking—that had been the sound of somebody dropping a kind of heavy object—he was like—was really close to 100% sure.

If he’s playing mind games to lure me into a trap because he saw me sneak in, I’m gonna be so pissed, thought Joey, mildly distressed by that hypothetical but sneaking over slowly anyway, curiosity too strong to be beaten down by paranoia now.

When he reached the room in question, he saw through the open doorway ahead that it was some kind of supply room. Small, and as decrepit as everything else, and Joey took it with a lot of caution, ears straining for sound. There was something in there for sure, he could hear it clearly now, but he couldn’t tell what it was. Feet on linoleum, for sure, and shuffling around—he heard things being moved too, and- Wait, was that a voice?

What the fuck? But no, he hadn’t imagined it—whoever was in there was talking to themselves, and not in a God I better be careful to be quiet whisper either. And it wasn’t Herman. It had to be another killer then, breaking in like he was, because whoever it was clearly wasn’t afraid of pissing off the Doc and getting their ass handed to them, but which one? One of the more powerful ones, had to be—it—

Sliding far enough into the furthest entrance from the noise to get a visual of the far end of the little room, Joey froze. And then just stared. Because it wasn’t a killer at all. It was a survivor. He recognized him instantly, but took a second to remember his name. One of the younger ones, one of the guys—Quentin—that’s right. The one who always came back to try to help a teammate even when it was ridiculously stupid, and was an easy kill. Although kind of an exhausting one at the same time, because he fought hard as fuck. It was him, though, plain as day, stumbling around the edge of the room with an armful of junk.

Wh. Joey watched the guy take a couple wobbly steps and bump against a wall he just didn’t seem to see in time with extreme confusion. Did he—did something hit him on the head? Whatever was up, the guy kept going on the other end of the room about fifteen feet away, muttering to himself and trying to pick up various scattered items from the floor and replace them in an open drawer in one of the medical cabinets. He was moving around super unsteadily, but he didn’t look worried about it at all—he was actually smiling to himself.

This is so fucking weird, thought Joey, too distracted by the sight to go back and finish his own work or to actually go over and find out what was up, and not sure he’d have wanted to.

“Okay, that’s the last one, right?” the guy asked himself quietly at the end of the room, but nothing like quietly enough for someone sneaking through Lerry’s and hoping to avoid the Doctor’s wrath, evidenced by the fact that Joey could hear him 100% fine from 15 feet away.

The guy held up a little bottle and blinked at it, then looked at the drawer by him. “No…there’s an empty space. Missed…one…somewhere.” He grimaced at the drawer and then looked around himself, turning in a little circle in the hopes of finding the last bottle, and then sighed exaggeratedly when he didn’t see it. “Where the fuck—” he started to ask himself, raising his hands in exasperation, and then he looked down at his hand again and the bottle still in it and said, “Oh,” sheepishly and set it down in the drawer.

The…hell?

“Okay, okay,” said the survivor to himself, drumming his fingers absently on the cabinet, “What else?” He started humming—of all the wild fucking things to do, humming to himself, and Joey just stayed where he was, staring and lost. The guy kept going through stuff, moving on to the next cabinet and swaying unsteadily as he did, still humming.

Okay, that’s just not normal. Is he…Wait, is he high?? thought Joey, watching the uncoordinated movements and completely out of it disregard for his own safety in the person across from him with something approaching wonder, Oh my God, I think he is. He—

“I took the blame,” came the survivor’s voice from across the room, and Joey’s head snapped up and all he could do was gape at the guy as he kept going. “Directionless so plain to see, a loaded gun won't set you free. So you say.”

Holy shit.

He was. He was fucking singing. Singing in Lerry’s Memorial Institute in the wreckage of torture chambers while rifling through drawers and making a huge fucking racket the owner of this little patch of hell might hear. Oh fuck. He’s gonna hear that for sure. This guy’s gonna die. The Doctor’s gonna come storming in, super pissed he’s being loud as hell while he’s trying to concentrate—I gotta go, or he’s gonna find us both—if he even sees me, he’ll know why I was here—I gotta—

He started to turn and book out the side door again, planning an escape route in his head, and then hesitated, and turned slowly, and looked back at Quentin again. Still humming to himself, between verses now, the teenager was opening a cabinet, and then, seeing nothing immediately promising inside, stooped to go throw open a drawer beneath it. It was so weird, watching that, and for a second he got lost just staring at the guy’s face, and forgot what he’d been going to do at all. He couldn’t look away. And for a moment he wasn’t sure why, and then Joey realized that it wasn’t just that this was such a stupidass place to be being loud that was making this whole moment surreal, it was also that he hadn’t actually ever seen a survivor look…happy, before. Like, okay, well, he’d seen them grin or be pleased or whatever if they won in a trial, or pulled off something smart in one, but like, carefree? Normal happy? Happy like this? Never. Not once. Not happy like they weren’t where they were. Like they weren’t going to die horribly in a couple minutes every day for the rest of their life. And the guy looked so…so happy for real, so chilled out and okay, but. He wasn’t. Something was wrong with him, and he only felt that way because how he felt was out of his control and he just didn’t know that yet, or how bad that was gonna be in a minute here when the Doctor heard him. He had no idea. And he wasn’t gonna. He was just humming and absently keeping time with his fingers to the beat of the song between verses, looking so fucking chill and at peace, and he was going to stay that way until the Doctor showed up and. …

Shit.

A few feet away, the survivor started to sing to himself again, nothing but happy in that little moment of being free from the reality of what was really going on in his life. “We’ll share a drink and—”

“Hey!” hissed Joey, listening to what he really wasn’t sure if was his better or worse judgement, and stepping back into the room.

The guy jolted and slammed his head into the cabinet door he’d left open, cursed in pain, stumbled backwards, tripped over his own medkit, which Joey hadn’t even seen on the floor, and slammed into the ground on his back with a muffled yelp.

“Whoa,” said Joey quietly, holding up a hand and stepping closer, “Are you—”

“-Shit!” said the guy, scrambling up to his elbows and looking for Joey, finding him almost instantly. “Legion?” He froze where he was, on one knee, staring at Joey with huge, unfocused eyes. “W. What are you…?” Something seemed to occur to him then, and his expression changed, and got frantic, and he snatched his medkit from the floor and stumbled to his feet and back two steps, clutching it in front of him like a blunt weapon, eyes fixed on Joey still, but wide with tension and mistrust now. “Look—just back off. I’ll fight you if I have to.”

“Relax,” said Joey, keeping his hand up and stepping cautiously a little closer, “Not here to fight.”

The guy looked surprised, and lowered the medkit a little, believing that way too fast for any remotely sober person.

Jesus, how much of whatever you took did you take? If he’d been close to sure before, he was certain as fuck now that the guy was high—and like, almost completely out of it kind of high too. He was already swaying a little, and his kept blinking and working to refocus his eyes like he was having a lot of trouble doing that. Movements just a little too slow, too off, too uncoordinated and loose to be anything but high.

“O-oh,” said the guy after a second, “Why then? You can’t…” He looked over his shoulder at the cabinet behind him, “Need. Medical supplies?”

“No,” agreed Joey, holding up his can of spraypaint, “I came here to tag. And then heard you sounding like a fucking elephant in here and came over to get you to quiet down.”

“What?” said Quentin, offended, “I’m not—”

“—Yes you are!” argued Joey, taking another step closer and lowering his hand, “You’re making a ton of noise. The Doctor’s gonna come and kill you if you keep it up, dumbass, and he’ll find both of us. Keep it down!”

Quentin stared at him for a second, and then looked to the side at nothing and blinked, thinking hard, then back at Joey. “I was making a lot of noise?”

Uh. Yes??? “You couldn’t tell?” asked Joey, exasperated on his behalf.

“I-“ started Quentin uncertainly.

“—You were singing, in here! Why were you singing?” hissed Joey. He’d gotten close enough that he was a quick lunge away from the survivor now. He wondered if it was weird that his mental units of distance now were all related to hunting people down for sport…

“I. ...It was stuck in my head,” defended Quentin a little uncertainly, looking confused, “Does it matter? Wait—were you watching me?” He took a half-step back, medkit gripped like a weapon again.

“No, you were just super fucking loud—I could hear you in the next room,” whispered Joey.

“…Really?” asked Quentin again, shoulders relaxing a little, thoroughly distracted and caught somewhere between being insulted and kind of worried or ashamed about being a nuisance.

Joey nodded.

“Oh,” said Quentin awkwardly, taking his word for it and pretty visibly out of it and having a pretty hard and disjointed time keeping up, but doing his best through whatever the fuck was in his system. “Uh. Sorry, I guess. I’ll stop. –And you’ll go, then?” He double-checked. “–We’re not gonna fight?”

“No,” assured Joey, relaxing a little.

“…Okay,” said Quentin after considering that for a second, and seeming to find it reasonable. Trusting that for the second time way too quickly for anyone with normal judgement, all things considered. If Joey had caught him stealing supplies from Ormond, he probably would have fucked with him a little before trying to scare him off. He didn’t look scared of him at all right now though, just kind of confused and unsteady. Waiting for Joey to say or do whatever he’d do next, or to leave maybe. When he didn’t make a move, the guy blinked a few times, and then just went back to trying to dig through supplies in the cabinet by him, movements shaky and uncoordinated. Like he had no depth perception or balance or focus at all, even though he was clearly trying really hard to focus. And getting back to his scavenging the guy just—just turned his back on him—on a killer, in a killer realm, in easy melee distance, like that wasn’t a stupid and dangerous thing to do, even if Joey genuinely did have no plans to bury a knife in his back. He couldn’t know that.

Shakily, the guy reached over and pulled open a drawer and started to sort through it, almost collapsing when he took a step to move to get a better view of the contents, and looking confused by the failure of his legs to do their job more than anything else as he righted himself, Joey all but forgotten the second he was out of sight.

God. It. It was super weird to watch this--to see Quentin this way. Why? It shouldn’t have felt so unsettling to him, right? Joey just—he’d never—well, okay, Joey had been around people high before, but this wasn’t even high, this was like, bordering on blitzed completely out of his mind, and usually even seeing someone at a party who had done way too much of whatever was just chill and kind of funny to be around, but here? It wasn’t that at all. It was like…

Joey stopped moving, lost in a memory he hadn’t seen in ages, and forgot everything else. Thinking about a bird in a little wooden pen.

Of all the stupid things to… He tried to stop, tried to re-focus on the present, but he couldn’t shake it. Couldn’t look away. And once he’d remembered that trip a lifetime ago at all, he couldn’t turn off the flood of old images in his head. They just came, and came, and he got lost in them. Once, a-a long, long time ago, there had been a trip he’d gone on, where he’d been driven on a long car ride to go see extended family off in the country away from Ormond, off in a different part of Alberta altogether. Very different. The cousins there were ones he hadn’t seen much before or after, but he’d been excited, he thought. To be doing something new. He’d been a kid at the time—really little, like five or something, and all the cousins out there were all older than him—teenagers, closer to his brother’s age, but he had followed them around everywhere out there just the same, wanting to be included, and they hadn’t forced him to go away so long as he could manage to keep up. It had been new, and exciting, and fun. And the second day he’d been there, they’d gone and met up with some friends, him trailing after, and headed off into someone’s house to play alone out in the backyard with a bunch of other kids they knew, and there had been a chicken. Just a dumb little bird, and Joey had never liked the things, because he was little back then, and chickens were mean, and they’d chase you, and try to peck you, so they’d kind of scared him.

One of the boys had gotten a chicken from somewhere though, and brought it over, and he’d given it something. A sedative maybe, Joey had never found out. But whatever it had been given, it had been disoriented, and confused, and moved slow, and loopy, and he’d watched it as a little boy, hugging the bottom rail of the wooden pen they’d set it in and in a way closer to the action to anyone else there, and seen it suffer. The older kids had gone into the pen and kicked it. They would chase it, and scream at it, and laugh, and sometimes drop stuff like bunches of tangled fishing line or stuff in its way so it would panic, and run from whatever had just scared it, and tangle itself up so bad it couldn’t get free. They had thought it was really funny, watching that stupid little animal try to escape and hurt itself and then forget it was even scared because of how fucked up it was on whatever it’d been given. It would bump into stuff on its own after a little bit—they didn’t even have to help it to get it hurt. Trip around and squak and pull itself up, then run into the same box again head-first. And it hadn’t been funny. He had laughed, before he’d known what was going on, and just thought the older kids were playing some game and gonna run around after one of the mean chickens to spook it, but when he’d figured out it was hurt, and thinking wrong, and never even had a chance, it hadn’t been funny at all.

Things had escalated, bit by bit, while he watched. Gotten worse.

Joey hadn’t done anything to try to save it. Just stood there at five, watching it with huge eyes in silence as it stumbled around in a loopy fashion, trying to avoid old nails the older kids had embedded all over the path ahead of it tip-up in the hope it would eventually step on one, or something else, or simply be betrayed by its own balance while running from them, and fall, and had rooted for it in silence to make it through. It hadn’t. It had made it about two feet.

He didn’t think the boys had been planning to kill it, but they had. And he hadn’t stopped them. Probably it hadn’t been too hurt to save after taking a couple nails through its side. Joey didn’t know—he’d never known—he didn’t know really anything at all about birds. But it had still been very alive when they’d been cursing in a panic and talking about what animal to pin the death on, and a boy had stepped on its head. He hadn’t thought about that day in years, after he’d finally been able to stop thinking about it at all, maybe a year later when the nightmares had finally gone away. He was fucking terrified of chickens. He would never tell anybody that, not ever, but he had been ever since. Which had to be like, the stupidest possible fear a person could have, and made no sense to him at all as a response to that even—he’d seen how dumb and easy to fuck with and little they were! Which should have made him anything but afraid! But. …But any time he saw one, he was always struck by this intense feeling that if he kept looking at it, it would be able to look up into his face with those tiny dead empty black eyes, and see in his own what he’d watched and that he’d just stood there, and that those awful little bead eyes with nothing past them seeing that truth inside him would mark him like a curse forever, and it would only be a matter of time before he met whatever awful punishment the universe laid out in wait for him to make him pay for the judgement it had passed, and as fucking stupid and irrational as that thought was he had never been able to shake it.

Joey hadn’t ever associated doing drugs with that sight from a lifetime ago, not once, but he was seeing it now, and he lost about seven seconds of time doing it, feeling that very specific, long-forgotten fear again, and then he heard a clang and was snapped back just in time to see a drawer the survivor had been using as a foothold to reach a high shelf in the same cabinet must have been pulled out too far to be stable anymore, because it had splintered under the guy’s weight, and as he watched, it ripped out of the cabinet and the survivor went pitching backwards on a collision course with the edge of the heavy desk four feet back with a surprised cry.

Snapped into action, Joey shouted something not very intelligible or useful like “Whoa!” and shot out on impulse to catch the guy and just made it. Knocked to his knees on impact, Joey wrapped his arms around the guy, ducked his head down to minimize damage, braced, and then slid to a stop just shy of the desk he’d expected to ram into breathing hard.

For a second, he held perfectly still like that, listening to things from the drawer go rolling around the floor, waiting for the sound of the Doctor coming to kill them, but the Institute slowly returned to silence. Nothing but the sound of two people breathing.

In his lap, the survivor kind of shakily held out his arms like he was testing his balance, and then tried to turn, and Joey let go so that he could. He moved back and onto his knees to face Joey and blinked, then squinted at him in confusion, like he’d forgotten who he was or that he was there.

“Uhm… Thanks,” offered Quentin. “…Are…?”

Joey didn’t have any idea what to say so he didn’t.

“Uhm…” said the guy, looking to the side and then back at him, kind of at a loss, “W. Where did you?”

‘Where’? Where what? Come from? Learn to do that? He couldn’t even tell if the guy was really recognizing him right now, from the look on his face. God your eyes look glazed over. That can’t be a good sign. How much of whatever had he taken?

Quentin raised a hand like he was going to gesture at something specific, and opened his mouth to speak, and then seemed to forget what he’d been going to say, looked a little troubled by that, and then blinked again and looked to the side, thinking hard, and then back at Joey. “I-I don’t. Uh.” He paused and looked up over his shoulder at the cabinet he’d just fallen from and took in the damage, then back at Joey. “I’m not…sure…why that happened,” he offered unsteadily, “I think—I think it. Broke. Are you okay?”

“Uh. Yeah,” said Joey, not sure how to respond to that at all. It was surreal, because for a moment, the guy looked so genuinely concerned about him, like he hadn’t been the one to almost get brained on a desk. And also because. It. Well. That just wasn’t a way survivors looked at you. Or…anyone did, really. Not in a…long time at least… “Are you?” he asked, trying to tell. The guy didn’t look hurt.

Quentin looked down at himself, and turned his palms over, checking them, and then nodded like that was sufficient to account for any injuries possible. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

He stood up shakily and almost fell again, and Joey half-shot to his feet before Quentin caught himself on the wall. The guy looked surprised his legs weren’t behaving normally, and glanced down at them in confusion, then back at Joey after a second when he remembered he was there, and offered him a hand. Not sure that was a good idea, but acting kind of on impulse, Joey took it and let the guy help him to his feet—which uh, was actually more like Joey standing up with way more leg-muscle-effort than usual so the guy could feel like he was helping him to his feet.

“Look, uhm,” said Joey as he straightened up, watching the guy with something close to concern at this point, “Did you maybe take something in here on accident?”

Quentin looked incredibly confused. “…Uh. No. Not on…accident. I-I told you I’m collecting supplies, right? Medicine stuff?”

“No—I mean, not take like ‘pack up’—take like, did you do any drugs,” corrected Joey, “Like, while you’ve been here in Lerry’s—did you use anything on yourself, or accidentally jab your hand on something—or maybe up, I don’t—inhale some fumes, or?”

“Uhm. Yeah. I. I guess,” he said, very confused.

Okay. Well. That sure track. “Do you know what it was?” asked Joey hopefully.

“Uh. I mean—there’s only two options. The bottle’s here somewhere though,” said Quentin.

“Okay,” said Joey, “what are the two—” WAIT. Oh my GOD. Th—You took it on purpose?! Why! How stupid are you! “-Hang on, are you saying you—you took something, like, you on purpose took a drug? Here, in Lerry’s?” asked Joey, and the guy stared back at him and the incredulity in his voice with such an open look of surprise that he knew for fucking certain without him even answering that he must have. “Oh my GOD you did! You dumbass! What the hell were you thinking! That’s crazy!” snapped Joey in disbelief, gesturing broadly, “Who would do that! Did you even read the bottle first?! No wonder you’re in here stumbling around like a blind rhinoceros. What’s wrong with you!”

“I—what? No—I—I’m not blind,” defended Quentin, confused and looking a little attacked, “—or a—Why are you angry? You said you didn’t need supplies. We do. It’s not like I use them all. I bring most of it back, just, I usually take one or something when I find them, especially if I’m—”

“—WHAT! You go get high in killer realms and do drugs all the time?” exploded Joey in a very angry hissed whisper, some of the sympathy or concern or whatever it had been he’d felt before turning into a surge of blind disbelief and irritation. What kind of fucking dumbass? “Why would you do that! You’re gonna get yourself killed!” he snapped, waving a finger and stepping forward. “You unbelievable dumbass! Do you just not care if that happens?!”

Quentin took a step back as he advanced, looking a little threatened by the sudden burst of anger along with confused now, and he glanced around for where he’d left his medkit, then back at Joey as he defended himself. “No! Of course I do—I do that because I don’t want to get killed out here!” He finally spotted the case back inside the cabinet he’d fallen from and started backing nervously towards it. “The only injectables ever in Lerry’s are adrenaline and hemorrhagics. And I always need both of those! I don’t take too much of them—I use one and take everything else back to the campfire. Or, maybe on a really bad day if I’m out a long time and need it, I use two. Usually if I’m—I’m out scavenging, I’ve been out for a while—and—”

“—And? Why the fuck would need to jam a hemmor—” started Joey, and then he stopped mid-sentence, only just then actually looking at Quentin for real. He’d noticed the blood on his jacket and shirt as soon as he came in, but. …Is…? Joey stopped and looked down at his own arms and hands, and his gloves and black sleeves were wet. He stared at them for a second, then back up at Quentin in confusion as the guy stared back at him with the same completely lost expression he must have had on.

“Are you bleeding?” asked Joey in a totally different tone of voice, stunned.

Quentin stared at him for a second, eyes big and sort of glazed over, but trying to stay trained on him and focus through that fog, and then he looked to the side for a moment, thinking and confused and a little nervous still, and then finally he looked back at Joey, and his expression was completely different when he did, like he was…wary suddenly, for some reason. “…Yeah,” he said really quietly, eyes on Joey’s.

“Why?” asked Joey, totally lost, “Did the Doctor see you on the way in?”

For a second, Quentin was silent again, just watching him, expression unchanging. Then the line of his mouth set a little and he glanced down and away. “I’m always bleeding,” said Quentin very quietly.

“W—you’re always wounded?” asked Joey. Had he been? He’d seen him in trials, and he did kinda always look like this, but he’d thought those were blood stains. Not still-bleeding wounds! Why the fuck would—? Didn’t they heal? He—he could have sworn that— “I thought you guys healed when you got killed and brought back?” said Joey.

“Yeah, but,” started Quentin, and then he stopped. He glanced down, and then up at Joey again and swallowed. “Uhm. Why?”

“Why?” echoed Joey, arms lowering at his sides now that the anger and irritation was gone, and feeling about as confused as Quentin looked, “Because you’re fucked up outside a trial apparently all the time, and that’s not really supposed to happen. Are you okay? Are you dying?”

“…Uh,” said Quentin, looking harried, “No. I just.” He thought for a second and looked out the nearby window at nothing past a far hallway wall, then back at Joey. “You know how…we—all of us, uhm, we go into a trial looking like we look, right? L-like we do naturally?”

“Yeah,” said Joey, nodding.

“Well, if we get hurt outside of a trial, we have to have time to heal right. And. If you die, you get reset to how you were before the trial began. And if you…” He stopped for a second and looked down, kind of sad, and quiet. “…Die. In almost all of your trials. Or all of them. Then…you lose a lot of. Of time. And things don’t. They don’t really have much chance to heal. Not at a normal rate, at least. Because you keep being…set back. So it might take—might take a whole month, to heal like a week should have done, back home. And…the Entity. It. The way it sees us, and ‘puts us back’ when we die. That can-can change, over time. You. You get a little older, in here. Eventually. If you start running between trials, you get better leg muscles—lift weights, better arm strength, that kind of stuff,” offered Quentin, glancing back up, “But other things change too. My uhm. I uh. I die a lot, in trials. And I…get hurt sometimes, out doing this. One time really bad. And. Somewhere along the line the Entity just decided I was, uhm, a little bit older than when I got here, and that I…” His shoulders lowered, and he looked away. “…Just. Spend all of my time. Kind of injured. Because I just kept being injured. All the time. From out here, and for way too long from that one time, and in trials, over and over in a lot of the same ways. More than is uhm.” He risked a glance at Joey’s face. “Is normal. In too many trials. So this uh.” He gestured vaguely at himself. “This is what it th…what it sees as my Default State, now. Hurt become more how it remembers me than…how I…was when I was okay. So. Now it’s how I heal back.”

What the fuck?

Joey gaped at him in a kind of slow building horror. “So…You’re just injured all the time now?”

Quentin considered for a second, and then nodded.

“Is—are all of you like this?” asked Joey.

“Nnnno,” said Quentin slowly, thinking about it, “Uh. Some of us are a little bit. Jake’s leg is always hurt. I think so is Laurie’s arm. Minor stuff. But uh. This whole,” he gestured at himself and gave Joey a kind of smile, like he was making a self-deprecating joke about this situation that Joey wasn’t really finding funny at all, “uh. Mess thing. With like—fifteen injuries and always about to pass out—that’s just me.” He grinned, and then when Joey didn’t smile back, the expression faded and went neutral, and then suddenly looked almost panicked.

What?

“Uh,” said Quentin nervously, suddenly seeming agitated and for the first time since Joey had walked in like he might have some small awareness suddenly that he wasn’t totally thinking straight and was concerned about that, “You’re not gonna use that, are you?”

“Use it?” echoed Joey, lost.

“I-I –I already die so much,” said Quentin, almost like he was appealing to Joey’s humanity or his honor or sense of decency or something. He brought his hand up to his left eye, which Joey had noticed for a long time had slash mark scars across it like he’d been raked by a claw, but was only just now realizing didn’t open all the way anymore too. “I’ve only got like 50% vision on my left side already—please don’t like, start fucking up my other one every trial to try to get it to stick too. I don’t know what I’m gonna do if I see even worse. It took me so long to get used to fucked up depth perception. And I just—I’m so tried, all the time, always, I-I—I know that you—”

“—No!” said Joey, kind of horrified and holding up a hand to stop him there, “I-I’m not gonna—fucking rip out one of your eyes every trial to try to get the Entity to make you go blind—why would you think that?”

Quentin looked at him for a long couple of seconds just a little sad, his deep blue eyes holding Joey’s brown ones, and not saying anything, and Joey felt a kind of sinking feeling in his stomach as he actually thought about the question he’d just asked the other person and the way their relationship—if you could even call butchering someone every time you crossed paths a relationship at all—had only ever been.

“I wouldn’t,” said Joey, lowering his arm when Quentin still didn’t answer, feeling shitty in ways he really wasn’t used to. “I’m not gonna do that. I’m…not that kind of person.”

For a second, Quentin watched him in silence, too unguarded under the influence of whatever he’d taken to be thought of exactly as ‘studying’ him in the way Joey was used to thinking of people trying to read you and sense sincerity, but he thought trying to tell if he meant that, and then he smiled at him. “Okay.”

That would have felt good. It started to, and then Joey remembered it was just the…LSD, or Opium, or whatever the fuck was in him talking.

“You’re not as murderous as I thought you’d be,” offered Quentin like a genuine friendly compliment, giving him another smile before turning back to the cabinet, and then looking down at all the scattered supplies on the floor blankly, lost and distracted immediately in figuring out what to do about them.

Yeah, thought Joey kind of sadly, watching him, Only. I don’t think you’d even be looking at me long enough to know which one of us I was if you were yourself. We’re only having a conversation at all because you’re too fucked up to remember you should be scared of me.

“Uh—you said you did take something though, right?” said Joey, clearing his throat and circling back, needing to say something, and that was kind of important to pin down.

“Huh?” said Quentin, glancing back at him. People looked weird when they were high. Had they always? Or was it just whatever he was on? It was…uncomfortable. Joey hadn’t noticed it before on other people he’d been around, the couple times people had done drugs at parties, or out behind the school late at night, and he’d been lucky enough to be invited to the event. But Quentin’s eyes were glassy, and he was looking at him, and not looking at him at the same time. It made him almost sad for some reason. Why the fuck do I even care? Why am I talking to him at all? I should get out, and fuck off, and let whatever happens happen. I’m not supposed to buddy up to a survivor. If he wasn’t blazed out of his mind, he’d run away from me, and hate me, and there is no way this could possibly go but badly! I don’t need to help him. He can help himself. I’m just gonna get myself in trouble and get nothing out of it if I stick around. It’s not like he’d help me if he found me tripping balls in here. He’d probably kick the shit out of me and steal my knife and maybe kill me like the Doctor did.

“Oh!” said Quentin, remembering and turning back to face him for real, still acting really friendly like he had been a second ago. Whatever had flipped the buddy switch in him seemed to have taken root and stayed. “Yeah—yeah, uh. I didn’t even look to see if it was adrenaline or a hemorrhagic. My shoulder’s always fucked up now, and if I inject adrenaline into the muscle there, it’s as good as anywhere else, so if I find a syringe to use, I just plunge it in half the time, because it’ll work for me either way, and I’m usually in a rush.” He glanced around the room like he was casing it and passing on some little-known information to Joey. “You don’t want to stay around Lerry’s too long. Or any of the killer realms. Gotta be fast and careful.”

Yeah, I know, dumbass, but you’re not being either.

“Do you still have what you took?” asked Joey, choosing to be nice this time because he was pretty sure he wouldn’t sound too smart that fucked up on drugs either.

“Uhh, yeah, I guess—I mean, I don’t have the stuff—I took it, but I saved the syringe. Even when they’re empty, they can be pretty useful sometimes—might need ‘em later,” offered Quentin. He took his medkit out of the cabinet and opened it and took from it a small cardboard package with an empty plastic syringe hastily jammed most of the way back into it from on top of a kind of depressing and meager supply of gauze and little boxes and bottles. It had been such a big medkit case, Joey had expected it to be full of stuff. I guess he brought it to fill up.

“Here,” said Quentin, handing him the syringe, and then as he watched him take it curiously, “What do you want it for?”

“Oh—I’ll give it back,” said Joey, glancing up at him and then turning the syringe in his hand, looking for a label, “I just want to know what you took.” It took him a second, but he found the old faded print on the tiny label, topped, squinted at the decayed words for a moment, and then succeeded and felt his eyes bug out. Ah geeze no wonder you’re a fucking mess. You stupid dumbass! It’s a wonder you’re still standing! 50mg/mL concentration?? Holy FUCK that’s high. Dad was on 10 after surgery! He’s right—the Entity’s fucking with him—goddamn. FIFTY. Jeeze! Poor guy. Damn that’s a lot of opium to take. He’s lucky it wasn’t worse. I’m amazed he’s still standing! –wait, I wonder if that just means it hasn’t really taken effect yet…

“What?” asked Quentin, interested, trying to read the label too, upside-down and from a distance.

Joey held it up for him. “It was morphine.”

“What?” asked Quentin, blinking like that might help him process the news. He took the syringe and cocked his head, studying it.

“You took morphine,” said Joey, “A shit ton of morphine.”

“…Oh,” said Quentin with a note of worry now, face falling. He stared at the syringe without moving for a few seconds reading it, and then exploded and swung a hand angrily at nothing. “Fuck!”

“I don’t think it’s gonna kill you,” offered Joey, trying to dial him back.

“No—it’s not that,” said Quentin, turning to him distressed, “It’s morphine! That’s what fuck’s about! It’s a painkiller. A great one! Do you have—have any fucking idea how rare those are? Finding a bottle of Advil is like scoring a fucking gold mine out. A-and I had a whole syringe worth of morphine and I just used it all? On me? B-because I was too rushed to read the fucking label?” He’d started pacing and gesturing compulsively as he talked, and when he backed up far enough he bumped into the wall by the cabinet, he just slid down against it all the way to the floor and put his arms up over his head and folded in towards his knees miserably. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe I wasted that. I-I could have saved it. We should have been able to split it! Fuck! …fuck…”

Not sure what to do but feeling bad for him, Joey watched for a second, trying to think, and then walked over and slid down carefully beside him. When he got there, Quentin glanced over at him from beneath his arms.

“It’s not so bad,” tried Joey encouragingly, trying to think of what might be good to say.

“No, it is,” said Quentin, depressed, and with his voice muffled from his sleeve. He lowered his arms and folded them over his knees instead, then buried his chin and half his face in them. “Morphine’s such a … …. ….fuck!”

“What?” said Joey, confused.

“I can’t think of the word,” said Quentin, visibly distressed.

Yeah I’ll bet. I’m amazed you’re still kind of coherent at all, considered Joey, who thought better of saying that out loud and instead said, “…Important? Uh. Useful?”

“No,” said Quentin, hung up on this, “Not easy to find—like rare—OH! Fuck! Rare—that was the word.” He went right back to overwhelmingly depressed the second the word was found, like he’d flipped an internal light switch, and kept plowing straight ahead down the depression line, gesturing as he spoke and looking miserably over at Joey. “It’s such a rare find! I’ve never gotten morphine before. Or opium, or anything really good for pain. I could have saved it; we could have taken a little bit to make really bad days better when they hit—it should have been for all of us! Or saved for an emergency! I-I –fuck, a, a whole syringe full? A lot of us could have gotten enough to help at least once. But I fucked up. That’s all gone, and I’ll probably never find one again.” He stared forward for a second and then smiled sadly and leaned his head forward against the side of his arm and stared unfocusedly at nothing. “I wasted the whole thing on myself and, I don’t even feel good.”

Joey watched him and swallowed. He had no idea what to say. “…Maybe, since it left some once now, that means the Entity will put more morphine in the realm?” he suggested after a second.

Quentin looked over at him somewhere between a tiny bit hopeful and about ready to cry over how little he thought it was true.

“It might be,” said Joey encouragingly, hoping the one plus side to being absolutely wasted on morphine might be that he’d be easily swayed into avoiding a depression spiral. “You said you never found one before. The Entity adds stuff sometimes. I bet it’s just a sign you’ll find more now.”

For a second, Quentin watched him, expression unchanging, and then he smiled at him and looked a lot better. “You think?”

“Yeah, for sure,” lied Joey.

“…Yeah, maybe,” decided Quentin after a moment, cheering up. He glanced over at Joey and smiled at him again and then started to uncoordinatedly pull himself back up. “You’re right. I’m being stupid and just wasting time feeling bad for myself like an idiot—I should keep looking.”

“Uhhh---I don’t think that’s such a good idea!” said Joey quickly, hopping up after him.

Quentin gave him a confused look.

“You heard what I said, right? –Before the more morphine thing. You’re super fucked up,” said Joey, “You’re on like, a fuck ton of morphine and making a bunch of noise in the Doctor’s home base. If you don’t leave, he’s gonna come find you.”

Quentin waved the concern away with a hand and turned back to the mostly ransacked cabinet. “Nah—I’m fine. Just don’t feel pain right now.”

“Dude, you are not fine,” argued Joey, following after.

“I really am,” said Quentin in the voice of someone who was definitely not not 80% out of it on drugs. He turned around and put a hand on Joey’s chest, started at it for a second, and then moved it up to the shoulder he’d been trying to aim for and missed, and patted it reassuringly. “I’m good. Thanks though.”

Joey just stared at him as he turned back to the cabinet. Quentin looked down at the drawers and noticed the broken one and its scattered contents and blinked at it in surprise.

“Oh yeah,” he said to himself after a second, “I guess I should pick that up.”

He took a step forward, lost his footing, and rammed headlong into the cabinet. Joey winced as Quentin bounced off it and fell to his knee, and then looked at the big wooden thing in confusion. The guy held up his hands and watched them shake for a couple of seconds, and then, looking supremely lost by all of the things happening, made it to his feet again and tried to get his wobbly body to stay still, confused and clearly trying to remember or figure out something in silence as he did, and having a hard time doing it despite the absolutely complete focus he was giving to the task.

“See what I mean?” asked Joey.

At the sound of his voice, Quentin glanced over with a look on his face like he’d completely forgotten Joey was there.

“You’re not fine,” said Joey again.

“I’m good,” promised Quentin, not even really responding to what he’d said in a way that made complete sense. He looked even more fucked up now than he had when Joey had come in there. More than a couple seconds ago even. Shit, I was right about it having not totally set in before, I think.

Joey stared through the floor for a second, trying to guess how long he had before the Doctor had them both, and to figure out what to do. He felt something bump his chest and looked up.

“Hey, Joey, could you hold this?” asked Quentin, holding out the broken drawer.

How the…fuck? Where did-? I’ve never said my own name in a trial, so who did he hear it from?

“Uh. Why?” said Joey, taking it anyway because he didn’t think not to, still kind of stuck on the fact that apparently at some point Quentin had learned his name.

“I can’t get it to go back in, and I don’t know where else to put it,” said Quentin as if that made perfect sense.

“You want me to hold it forever?” asked Joey in disbelief.

“Can you?” asked Quentin, surprised, taking that for some reason as a 100% genuine and doable offer.

“No!” said Joey.

“Okay,” said Quentin, seeing the choked back urge to laugh on Joey’s face and grinning in return, even though he pretty clearly didn’t get what had been so funny to him, “Then just find somewhere good to put it, I guess.”

As soon as Quentin turned his back, Joey hocked it onto a nearby hospital bed to deafen the thump.

Over by the cabinet, Quentin opened the second-to-bottom drawer, and gave a tired sigh. Joey scooted a foot closer and saw it was completely empty. He watched as the survivor tried again with the last one, and got the same results.

“Is stuff usually empty?” asked Joey, genuinely curious. Other than stealing alcohol from the Deathslinger, he’d never like, actually really gone somewhere looking for supplies.

“Uh, kinda,” said Quentin, glancing up, “I mean. There’s always good stuff somewhere, but it can take a long time to find it.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?” asked Joey, watching and then following as Quentin made it shakily to his feet and took several swaying paces over to a little desk about six feet to the right and started to go through its drawers too. “I mean—don’t people usually find you and…” He made a slashing motion over his throat, but Quentin turned away just as he started to do it and didn’t see, so he added, “uh—kill you? Or. I know we’re not really supposed to kill you if we find you out here, but. I’m sure some of them do. Or at least fuck you up.”

“Hmm?” said Quentin, auditory-processing on a delay, and then before Joey actually had a chance to repeat himself, “Oh. Yeah—they do.” He picked up what looked like an empty can of something and gave it the world’s most displeased look, then kept digging. “Uh, I mean, it’s risky. But if we don’t come get good supplies where it’s dangerous between trials, we’ll only have shitty ones in the trials to use when we get hurt. And I’m kind of a medic, so it’s my—” He paused, holding up a little package and turning it over a few times trying to figure out what it was, seemed to recognize the object that was completely foreign to Joey, opened his medkit on top of the desk, dropped whatever it was inside with the other meager supplies he’d collected so far, and went back to searching. “—Uh, my responsibility kind of, to have stuff to help people,” he finished, “Sometimes you die out here and lose everything, or you get hurt, and slowed down in trials for a bit because of it, but.” He shrugged. “The alternative is…”

“…Not great?” offered Joey, seeing him struggle to recall a word again.

Quentin glanced up at him and nodded, then flashed him a little smile and kept going.

It still felt so weird to get smiled at by a survivor. It…made him feel guilty, like he was tricking someone into doing what he wanted while they were fucked up. Which he didn’t—he wouldn’t have…

“Hey, gauze. Not great, but I’ll take it,” said Quentin to himself, taking a big roll of gauze from the last drawer on the desk and putting it in his still mostly empty medkit. He stood up and swayed, then caught himself on the wall, looking almost too blitzed to even be confused or surprised by that this time, and glanced over at Joey. “You see anything good on your way through here?”

“Uh—” he actually tried to remember. Had there been? I didn’t look in anything. I have no idea. “Dunno.”

“Okay, well, good luck tagging,” said Quentin, words friendly and a little slurred, coming in at the wrong cadences as he started to walk past him. “You know—Nea really likes that. I bet you two would have fun doing that sometime,” he offered, pausing to glance at Joey again. “You should ask her.” He stepped on past then, heading for the hall, and almost immediately his foot hit a little jut at the place the floor of the hall and the floor of the room met and didn’t quite connect right, and that was enough to take him down again, but Joey shot forward and caught him this time, saving him from crashing headlong into an old cart out in the hall.

“Whoa—” said Quentin, trying to get his balance back a little. And then, flashing him a smile, “Thanks.”

“Dude, you have to stop,” said Joey urgently with his voice hushed, “You’re gonna—”

“It’s okay, really,” said Quentin with great assurance, thumping him on the shoulder again as he tried to straighten back up. “I feel fine.”

“You are not fine, dumbass!” hissed back Joey.

“Wow. Rude. Seriously, though—I’m pretty sure I’m good,” said Quentin, not worried at all. He started to walk again, thoroughly nonplussed, and began humming to himself, a melody Joey had never heard, swaying a little as he walked, and seeming about the most happily contented Joey had seen somebody in years. Joey stayed frozen, gaping at him as did a few really bad what Joey was pretty sure had been dance steps crossing to the next room, and started singing, “Oh my God we’re back again. Brothers, sisters, everybody sing—gonna bring the flavor, show you how. Got a question for you, better answer nooow.”

He made it into the far room and started getting louder. He’s lost his mind! thought Joey in a panic, breaking out of his initial shock and sprinting after him.

When he made it through the doorway, the dude was still kind of uncoordinatedly bobbing while he turned in a circle and scanned the room for potential storage areas, blissfully carefree as fuck. “Am I original? Yeeeah. Am I the only one? Yeaah. Am I s—”

“—What the fuck are you doing!” hissed Joey, bolting in and catching the surprised teenager by the arm.

“Uhm. I—wait. Didn’t we have this conversation before?” asked Quentin, like he was genuinely trying to parse some surreal deja-vu.

“Yeah! And you said you’d stop singing!” said Joey.

“…Oh yeah,” said Quentin in surprise, remembering. “Huh.” He immediately started to sing again, eyes focused on nothing at all like he’d gotten so lost in his head in the 0.4 seconds since agreeing that singing was off the table that he’d forgotten Joey was even there. “Am I sexual, ye—"

“—No you’re not!” shot back Joey, and Quentin stopped singing and looked at him kind of betrayed.

“It’s—that wasn’t a question—it’s a Backstreet Boys song,” said Quentin, a little hurt.

“A what?” said Joey. No idea what the fuck he was talking about.

“What?” asked Quentin with a huge amount of intense incredulity in his slightly slurred tone. “Y. You don’t know them?”

Joey just have him a disbelieving look.

“Everybody? I Want it That Way? As Long as You Love Me?” When Joey said nothing, he tried, “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart?” like it was the last bastion on earth and Joey would just have to know that one. Quentin waited a second for an answer that didn’t come and took in the completely lost look on Joey’s face. “Holy shit, really?”

Joey made a hopeless gesture, not even sure which part of this to respond to.

“Ah, that sucks!” said Quentin with incredibly genuine sympathy, “I wish I had an album. I guess it’s kinda fun though,” he added with a grin, like something amazing had just occurred to him, “because that means you get to hear them for the first time now.” He looked up at nothing, thinking. “They’re not really the kind of music I listen to, but Everybody and I Want it That Way are catchy, and I’ll give them that, and I wouldn’t usually tell people this, but I actually really like Don’t Go Breaking My Heart.”

“Dude, you have to stop singing,” pleaded Joey.

“Well, I will now,” promised Quentin, “Sorry—didn’t know I was spoiling the song. I thought everybody’d heard it.”

“That’s not really the problem!” whispered Joey.

“It’s—that’s cool,” decided Quentin, not listening at all. He looked off at nothing and then back at Joey, smiled, and slung an arm over his shoulder. “I like people who want to hear songs for real the first time they hear it—man, music’s so fucking cool. I have a record player back home—there’s just nothing like hearing a vinyl for the first time. Really! It’s like, magical what a difference it makes! I wish I could show you—”

Joey pulled Quentin’s arm back from over his shoulder and moved back a half-step. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“W…” Quentin looked at his arm, and then Joey in confusion. “It’s a friendly gesture,” he offered. “You were nicer than I thought, and we were talking about music, so—”

“—Yeah, we’re not friends,” said Joey, crossing his arms and feeling a way intenser reaction to this than he’d expected. His heart was thudding. Why the hell did you just blow up at him? He doesn’t even know what he’s doing.

“… I know,” said Quentin, drawing back his arm slowly and smile fading, looking kind of genuinely hurt for a second, “I said ‘friendly’ gesture, not a friend one. Like. When you meet a nice classmate and you’re hanging out the first time. So people can tell you don’t want to stab them in the back.”

“What?” said Joey.

“Yeah well, maybe not at school,” said Quentin, following his own logic path, “But you know. Here people are…harder to be sure—because half of them are always trying to kill you. Well. If you’re one of us.”

I guess, thought Joey, saying nothing.

“You know,” said Quentin, glancing up at him and smiling again, earlier hurt forgotten, “I’m really relieved, actually. I thought when you showed up, I was gonna have to fight you off with my medkit and probably get killed again.”

“Does every killer you’ve ever met out here try to kill you, even though we’re not supposed to outside trials?” asked Joey, genuinely surprised, and un-crossing his arms.

“No,” said Quentin, thinking about that, “But I figured you would. You hate me.”

“What?” said Joey, taken aback, “No I don’t. Why would you think that?”

“W…because you always kill me,” said Quentin, confused, working hard to find the right answers through the fog in his head.

“Don’t all of us?” said Joey, almost insulted. I’m not worse than anyone else! I’m probably one of the nicer killers! I’m not super cruel, or—

“Yeah, I mean, none of you are really merciful or anything, you’re all kind of monsters,” answered Quentin very serious and sincerely, “But most of you let the last one go at least sometimes. All of Legion does. But you’ve never let me take the hatch. Julie lets me take hatch sometimes if I did well in the trial and she’s in a good mood. Susie lets me take it. Even Frank’s let me go before if I’m the last one. But you never have. Not even one time out of so many trials, so you must really hate me. I’ve never known why you do. …Did I do something? That I just don’t…remember? If I did something really bad to you to make you hate me, I’m sorry.”

“I—” Joey stared at him, kind of bowled over by a feeling it took him a second to realize was a mixture of distress and horror. “No. No, you—I don’t hate you—I. I do that because you’re so easy to catch,” he tried to explain, stepping a little closer. Quentin watched him take the step and didn’t back up, but he wasn’t looking at him like he had been before anymore either. Not at all. “That’s all. You come back in at the end in trials if anybody else is still in there—always, no matter how stupid it is, or how obviously it’s a trap. Even if you know you’ve got no chance of saving them, you’ll try. So when you’re there, even if I have a really bad trial, and no sacrifices at all by the time the gates are up, I always know I can get at least two kills if I can just manage to down even one person before you’re all out, because you’ll always come back for anybody I get, no matter how suicidal it is, and then I’ll be okay. Free kill. It’s like a safety net. I can always count on you to try to come sacrifice yourself to save someone, and I pretty much always get both of you, too. I don’t kill you all the time because I hate you, I just do it because it’s…easy.”

He lost steam on the last word, thinking for the first moment for real about what he was saying.

Even with the haze of drugs in his system, Quentin was working hard to listen, glassy eyes fixed on his, and Joey could tell that he’d heard it all and understood what he’d said, but the guy didn’t say anything at all. Just looked at him in silence. Looking kind of sad, or wounded, or some other emotion Joey didn’t even know the name of that was hurt and sad and lonely and a lot of other quiet, painful stuff all at the same time, and he just held Joey’s gaze with that emotion in his eyes and said nothing. Just looked at him.

Fuck. Fuck! I—

After a few long seconds, Quentin looked slowly away and nodded.

What did I say? I—shit. I. Joey had thought it would make him feel better—why the fuck did you think that? Fuck! Idiot! He wanted to say he was sorry, but there was no way he could. He didn’t even know if it was true. It—it was just practical, killing him. Joey was alright, but he wasn’t the best at hunts, and sometimes shit went south in trials. He liked getting Quentin in his trials, because that always made them easier. Even a worst-case scenario was pretty much always gonna be a 2-kill for him. But he-

“I’m gonna go back to searching,” said Quentin very quietly, finally glancing his way again for a moment, but he was barely looking at him anymore, “You can go back to tagging now. I’ll be quiet. …Thanks for…giving me a warning, instead of murdering me this time.”

“Quentin-“ started Joey as the survivor turned and began working towards the other end of the room unsteadily, using the back of a long bench for support, but he stopped, and let him go. What would he have said anyway? Joey looked at the ground for a second, not seeing the dirty carpet at all. Shit. Shit! Why-? I didn’t. It’s just—I-I don’t have a choice—I. Fuck! Why did I even follow him in here? Why did I talk to him at all! I should just go back, and finish up if I have time, and then get lost, or book if I hear him making noise again. If he wants to get found by the Doctor and tortured for a couple—

He stopped, mind flashing him images of a death he had been working hard to repress since the day it happened. That had been the first time Joey had ever died, and it had been awful. Usually he could just not think about it so much, and just be angry it had happened, but he was feeling electricity run up his backbone like a shiver, remembering the way that smelled, and burned. He had thought he knew what the sound of his own voice screaming sounded like before that, but he hadn’t. Not a real scream. He just hadn’t known how different the sound could be. Joey felt sick with the memory, seeing the Doctor’s grinning face in his head and shuddering involuntarily at the sight of it so close to his face in his mind’s eye, and then hating himself for doing that like a fucking coward—like the guy was better than him, or stronger, or anything. He’d just gotten lucky that last time—they were all strongest on their own turf. But, fuck. It—

Joey turned his head and looked for Quentin, and saw him easily, walking unsteadily towards the far end of the room. Something more off about the walk than before. He was moving…it was almost like he was nodding off on his feet or something. Quentin made it to the end of the bench, though, and behind a big secretarial area against the wall near it, and started to try and look through shelves, and Joey heard him start singing again, very quietly this time, words barely decipherable from where he was about fifteen feet off.

“…step outside. An angry voice and one who cried, ‘We'll give you…everything and more. The strain’s too much, can't take much…more.”

Oh come on, thought Joey desperately, You’re gonna go sing a sad song now? You’re doing this on purpose!

“…Oh I’ve…” Quentin stopped singing and took a couple deep breaths like he was short on it before he kept going again. “Oh, I've walked on water…run through fire. Can’t seem to…feel it. Anymore…”

Wait. Something was wrong.

“Can’t seem to feel it anymore,” whispered Quentin again, staring blankly at nothing, struggling to keep his eyes open. He looked down at his hands and held one of them up in confusion and tried to focus on it.

“Quentin?” asked Joey. He didn’t even glance up, just stayed staring at his hands. Joey didn’t think he was even aware he was still in the room with him anymore. Wait, were you sweating before? What the fuck? What was he looking at?

Quentin didn’t move at all. He just stayed standing there, breathing shakily, eyes fixed on his fingertips. Joey took two steps closer carefully and tried again.

“Quentin?”

He turned this time, surprised—no. Afraid. And found Joey, and his eyes—what the fuck? “Oh no,” whispered Joey. Gaping. Quentin’s pupils were so small he could barely see them at all, like they’d drowned in his huge blue eyes. He didn’t think he’d ever seen someone’s pupils that vanished. That was wrong—that was really, really wrong, especially from someone who was scared. Okay-okay—he was staring at his hands—why. Joey looked frantically and saw why immediately. His fingertips were blue.

Joey started to bolt forwards, and Quentin reacted with alarm, stumbling back from him and losing his balance immediately, falling against the back wall.

“S-Stay away from me!” managed Quentin frantically through desperate breathing Joey didn’t think had anything to do with fear. Joey didn’t stop. He vaulted the low wall sectioning off the secretarial area and landed inside it only a few feet back. Quentin tried to struggle up and get away from him, and collapsed halfway though the effort, arms giving out, and rolled onto his back and crawled back on his elbows instead, looking up at him with such intense panic and terror it was kind of sickening. It was like he wasn’t the same person he had been a minute ago at all.

Fuck—fuck—he’s really fucked up—this is really bad.

“Calm down,” tried Joey, starting to go towards him while holding up his hands, palm-out, “I’m just trying to help you.”

There wasn’t even a fraction of belief this time in the person opposite him. He just kept trying weakly and horribly to get away. “No you won’t!” he shot back desperately, pupils tiny pinpricks of black in vacant eyes as he tried to keep away from Joey without the ability to really do it anymore at all.

“I am—I am,” promised Joey, keeping his hands up, “Remember? We were just talking a minute ago—I’m not trying to hurt you.”

“You always do!” argued Quentin, hitting the side wall of the little secretarial area and, with nowhere else to go, desperately reaching blindly for a weapon and comping back with a pen leveled at him like a knife, “Don’t come near me!”

Fuck, he’s getting too loud! The Doctor’s gonna hear that! His impulse was to jump him and get a hand over his mouth to shut him the fuck up before it was too late—that pen wasn’t gonna do shit. But. But he could tell that was exactly what Quentin thought he was gonna do, and he had no fucking idea what morphine did to you if you overdosed, but what if he had a heart attack, and—

…and he’d just come back, wouldn’t he? Like he did any other time he died. So it wouldn’t really matter. Right? What was one more. What were any of the deaths. No, thought Joey, feeling overwhelmed and sick in a way he’d never felt before, remembering the one and only death he had experienced so far, No. What were all of them.

“Okay,” said Joey quietly, stopping about three feet from Quentin, crouched, hands still up. “Okay. I’m just trying to help. I know I’m a killer, but we met a few minutes ago, remember? We’re both in the Doctor’s realm, so we’ve got a kind of temporary alliance thing going. Both have to be quiet, or we’ll both get caught, and we’re both gonna die.”

The shaking teenager opposite him watched him in confusion, breathing raggedly, pen still leveled like he really thought that could protect him.

“W-what?” he asked, searching Joey’s face desperately, “I-I don’t—”

Right. Okay—okay maybe… He held up his right hand, and with his left, slowly pulled his mask off. Quentin stayed still, constricted pupils locked on his face, trying to find some sign of familiarity he wasn’t going to find, because he never had seen Joey’s face before, but at least it was a face.

“See?” said Joey calmingly, hand still up. “Remember me? Joey?”

“…Y-yeah,” said Quentin after a second, lowering the pen a little. He swallowed hard. God, he looked so bad. He couldn’t have been sweating for very long, but he’d sweated so much since it had started that he was soaked in it now, and disgusting. This is really, really bad.

“You need help,” said Joey, gesturing towards him, “Look at your fingers.”

Quentin did, and then looked confused and worried to find them blue again and shaking. “Sh-shit,” he managed. He looked up back up at Joey worriedly. “A-am I dying?”

“I-I don’t know,” said Joey, “You took morphine. I think you must have overdosed. Do you know if there’s a way to fix it? Do you—do you need to throw up or something?”

“Oh. Oh, that’s right,” said Quentin shakily, blinking, “I-I. No, I. I took it in a syringe. I can’t throw that up. It’s in my blood.”

“C-can I help you?” offered Joey, a horrible feeling in the pit of his gut. Fuck. Fuck—I’m gonna watch him die from an overdose. I don’t want to know what that looks like.

“I-I don’t. I don’t. I don’t….I don’t know,” said Quentin, voice deteriorating as he went, like he might cry.

Joey looked around, as if he might spot something that would miraculously help, but there was nothing—he wouldn’t have even known a cure if he’d seen one. He didn’t know what that was! He had no idea what to do.

Quentin was breathing more desperately now, and his arms went lax at his side, not fighting anymore at all. He looked up at Joey and he was scared. Really, really scared. “I,” he tried, struggling to talk through shallow, frantic breathing, “I can’t breathe right. I’m-I’m choking. I can’t. I can’t breathe. And. And I can barely see you at all.” He teared up, and Joey felt sick. “With either eye. Not just my left one. I’m-I’m…”

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” promised Joey, moving close to him and putting his hands on his shoulders. He didn’t shudder or try to pull away, just kept trying desperately to breathe, and when he looked back at Joey, he was looking at him like a friend, and that just made everything so much more awful, and somehow he was glad for it at the same time as if felt like a knife in his gut. “You’re gonna be fine.”

Quentin shook his head.

“You don’t know anything about what to do?” asked Joey, desperate for the answer to change.

“I…” Quentin swallowed hard, thinking. “I’ve. W-we don’t ever get painkillers. It’s. It’s supposed to come with an antidote, m-morphine, in case you do what I did, b-but I don’t remember any when I got it.”

“Okay! Okay—Where did you get it?” asked Joey.

Quentin tried to point to something, and when he saw that his arm was shaking too badly to obey him, he said, “There’s a—another. Nother room. I…”

“The one I found you in first?” asked Joey.

Quentin shook his head.

Fuck! “Which one? What did it look like?” pressed Joey.

“…A hospital room,” said Quentin in a whisper, eyes filling up. Which had to mean he was too out of it to think right and remember, but still there enough to know that wouldn’t be enough for Joey to ever find it, and failing to remember meant there was no way he could be saved. Which was so fucking cruel.

“Maybe it’s not so bad,” tried Joey, taking his hand and closing his fingers around it, “Maybe it’s not a fatal dose.”

Quentin looked up at him for a few seconds, struggling and sick and shaking, and then looked slowly away at nothing past the floor. “…What does it matter,” he whispered, expression changing. Despairing. He grimaced then and choked back a sound of pain, wincing and pressing an arm to his stomach, and then looked up at Joey again with something between hope and desperation in his eyes. “Y-you have a knife?”

“Yeah,” said Joey, reaching for it, ready to try anything.

Quentin watched him for a second, breathing shakily, eyes becoming increasingly glossy and wincing at pain that hadn’t got bad enough yet that he had to vocalize it, then choked out, “Kill me?”

“What?” asked Joey, horrified, drawing the knife back like he thought Quentin would reach out and snatch it from him to do it himself.

“It. Please,” Quentin managed. So fucked up and out of it and lost. “It hurts so much. It’s getting worse. I. I can’t…I can’t see anything. It’s all blurry. I can’t breathe. I-“ He looked up and took a second to find Joey’s eyes, then held them, fingers digging into the hand Joey had given him to hold. “I’ve died before, but I. I don’t even feel like me. It’s all…It’s all wrong. I don’t—I don’t like feeling like this. I don’t wanna die like this. Please.”

“I-I. I can’t,” whispered Joey, sickened.

“Why not?” asked Quentin brokenly, “You have. But you—?” He looked so hurt and betrayed and hopeless, and Joey felt his grip on his hand slacken. “You won’t? The one time I. I want to…” He started breathing horribly then, like he couldn’t get his body to do it at all, and looked panicked, and started gasping, and then as fast as that had started, he was suddenly barely breathing at all, chest refusing to rise and fall like his brain was only getting the signal to breathe on a delay, picking up one-tenth of the signals he was trying to give it. It would be nothing for several seconds, and then a ragged shallow gasp, and he could see him trying to breathe through all of it, trying so fucking hard, and failing.

“Fuck! Fuck—I want to help!—Isn’t there something I can do?” Joey pleaded, grabbing his hand and trying to think, but Quentin couldn’t answer him anymore. His skin was changing color, and he was shuddering, struggling to keep his eyes open. FUCK! Fuck! Isn’t there something I can do? Anything? He was fine a minute ago! What the fuck!

Joey felt the fingers on the hand he was grabbing close around his, and looked down to see Quentin clutching it weakly. He looked at Quentin’s face and for a second they met eyes and the other guy looked so out of it he was barely there at all, but he was there enough—enough to be aware how wrong it was, and to be terrified.

“No-no, come on,” said Joey frantically, “You said there’s medicine to fix it—right? Just tell me what it’s called! I can—”

Wait! Wait—when he walked in the room—the first time he saw him today—Quentin had been looking for a bottle he was already holding, right? Maybe. No—but that was a pill bottle. No way it’s what he needs. Fuck! No—no wait, but—but he is remembering badly. And maybe if he’s remembering badly. He’s scavenging, right? H-he could have taken it—he would, right? He doesn’t think so, but he f-forgot the bottle, and he forgot me! It has to be there, right? He said he didn’t even check to see what he was taking was, because there’s only ever two kinds of drugs in syringes he finds here, and he keeps both, so it has to be there it has to be, right? He would keep it! Right? thought Joey desperately.

Moving urgently fast, he tore his hand away from Quentin and shot the two-feet over to where he’d left the medkit on one of the shelves in the secretarial area beside them. He felt him try to hang on to his hand when he ripped it away, and thought he tried to say something, but there was no time—he—

“Hang on, hang on,” called Joey without looking, ripping the case open, “I think—” Fuck—fuck. Syringes, pill bottle, gauze, band-aids, thread, thread, fuck! –there—package—no—bandaids again—shit! It would be near the top, it!

Desperate, he snatched the same container Quentin had taken the used syringe he’d given him earlier from, hoping for a miracle, and it had weight to it. Weight he thought might be beyond just the empty syringe Quentin had put back in there, and— Fuck! Yes! There! The top was ripped open, where he’d gotten the syringe out, but there was a partition about 2/3rds of the way though the case, and the last third was still sealed, and Joey ripped it open with a vengeance and snatched up the little syringe waiting inside—there—on the label. ‘Naloxone. 2mg.’ Fuck! Is that the right drug? He had no idea, but it had to be, right? What else would have been in there? There were no instructions on the stupid fucking box or the label or in the container at all, but it had to be, it had to. It is—I know it is.

“Okay,” said Joey, hurrying above Quentin again, ripping the cover off the needle tip and trying to figure out where the fuck to inject him. F-fuck, a vein, right? That’s where doctors do it—in your arm, right? Kinda by your elbow, or up by your wrist? He couldn’t see a fucking visible vein that wasn’t tiny in his wrist, so he grabbed Quentin’s left arm and tugged it straight and readied the needle, eyes on the thick blue vein there on the inside of his elbow, praying to God that he’d do this right. Not too deep not too shallow fuck fuck fuck come on, you can do it.

Below him, Quentin’s skin had gotten tinged with purple and blue, and he was choking but too weak not to be doing it frantically anymore, just weakly, and it was like watching someone drown, except it was so much fucking worse, because he couldn’t just pull him out of the water—there was no water—there was air, and he just couldn’t make his body take it. He was soaked in sweat and looking at Joey with pinpoint pupils and glossy eyes, and he tried to say something, but Joey couldn’t tell what it had been, only how distressed it was making him that he couldn’t.

“It’s okay,” promised Joey, sliding the needle slowly into his arm and trying to force his own hands to quit shaking, “I got the drug—you’re gonna be fine.” He pressed down on the plunger, and watched the liquid go in, desperately hoping for a miracle.

Beside him, Quentin stopped breathing.

Joey didn’t register it at first, because he’d been struggling so hard, and he was focused on getting in all of the drug, but when the tenth breath that should have finally gone through and given the teenager a gasp of air didn’t come, and then didn’t come on an eleventh, a twelfth, a thirteenth beat, Joey felt it. He turned his head and stared at Quentin in frozen shock, almost as still as the body beneath him had suddenly gone.

“No,” said Joey quietly, not ready to believe it, watching, waiting for him to breathe again. Fuck. What if it was. What if that’s another pain killer? What if he could have made it through that if I’d just helped him and done nothing. Fuck! I thought—I.

Slowly, he pulled the needle back out of his arm, feeling sick, eyes still on Quentin’s face, and then there was a motion—a—he hadn’t been looking, but he thought his hand had twitched. Wait—

“Are you not dead?” asked Joey desperately, feeling a tiny spark of hope. The body didn’t respond. But he— “No! No way! Fuck it!  I did everything right! I saved you!” argued Joey to the form beneath him he refused to believe was anything but unconscious, “You’re not dead!”

He’s just not breathing! If the drug works, it probably takes it a minute—I can keep him breathing for a minute. Fuck you! You’re not dying now—not after all of that! Come on!

Joey shoved Quentin’s jacket and necklace aside, wincing at the fresh claw marks still there, placed his palms over each other in the center of his chest like he’d learned in highschool, and started compressions.

“Come on come on come on,” he whispered, keeping time to a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, all the way up to 30. He hit thirty, moved an inch to the right, tipped back Quentin’s head and held his nose, then breathed into his mouth twice. Come on come on. Again. Back—1 through thirty. Mouth open, breathe for him, again. Again. He hit 120 and kept going. Again. 27, 28, 29, 30—breathe. Head back, mouth open, nose closed. Breathe. Take a deep breath, blow in. Breathe for him. Th—

He was halfway to ramming the full force of his palms against the guy’s ribcage, already mentally ticking off 1 in his head again, when he saw it was moving shakily up to meet him, and he stopped, staring. The chest lowered weakly, and rose again, and he looked over at Quentin’s face and saw the tiniest mist in the cold air of Lerry’s Memorial Institute as he exhaled.

Joey fell back onto the floor and sat still, watching, a huge smile spreading slowly across his face, and then he laughed, overcome with relief. He looked at Quentin’s still features and smiled at him. “You scared the shit out of me.”

For a few seconds, Quentin just kept breathing, and then he coughed weakly and groaned, and slowly opened his eyes to little cracks and blinked weakly, trying to make out the ceiling above.

“…Ow,” whispered Quentin to no one and nothing, still out of it.

Joey grinned.

“Hi.”

Quentin heard him this time, blinked again, and slowly turned his head and looked over at Joey. For a few seconds he just squinted, no recognition or emotion attached at all, no familiarity, or fear, or gladness, or hate, just trying to figure out who he was. Then he said, “…Lee.g…J..Joey…?”

“Yeah,” said Joey, smiling at him.

“Did you kick me?” asked Quentin hoarsely.

“What?” asked Joey, trying not to laugh because of the absurdity of that question to him.

“My ribs feel like shit,” groaned Quentin, turning his head and looking back up at the ceiling again.

“Yeah, well, you quit breathing,” said Joey, proud of himself, “Before the antidote kicked in. I had to give you CPR. It’s better to push too hard than too soft if you’re trying to get someone to breathe. Sorry it hurts—I don’t think I broke anything though.”

“…What?” asked Quentin, turning his head to look at him again.

Joey grinned and opened his mouth to echo himself, and then stopped, a sinking feeling stabbing him in the chest all of a sudden. Oh, Joey, you fucked up here. You should not have done this. This was bad.

What the fuck was he doing? And why? Why—I mean—okay, sure, they were supposed to not kill a survivor outside of a trial. Leaving him alone was fine, shutting him up so the Doctor wouldn’t come—totally normal. M-maybe even trying to warn him off—after all—they weren’t supposed to be friends, but like, that didn’t mean he had to like watching them die. Didn’t have to…to not let a guy so fucked up he didn’t even realize he was high know he was going to get electrocuted to death really slowly for making so much noise, right? Yeah. Yeah—that—that was fine. Anybody might have done that. But. But this? He’d been about to die, hadn’t he? Probably? He’d been unconscious, so if he’d just done nothing, Quentin would have just ended up dead on the floor here and gone back to his campfire again without his meager supply of medical shit he’d collected so far, and start over. No harm done. He hadn’t even been—been like, saving him from pain. The painful part had been over. He’d been out. Why did you do this? Why not let him die this time? What did it matter?

Right. …Right, Quentin had. He’d said that too, hadn’t he. Asked what it would matter if he died one more time.

Shit. … Shit! Was it—was it always like that, for—for all of them? He couldn’t…couldn’t imagine watching Frank get ripped up by a chainsaw, day after day—his best friend? While he—he couldn’t do anything, or knew he was about to be next? Trial after trial after trial? Could something like that happen so many times it didn’t even matter anymore? Could you get used to that? And if so, then why? Why do you always come back for the people I catch in trials, if it doesn’t matter if I get them one more time anyway? If death is just—just fucking nothing anymore. God, it couldn’t be nothing anymore, could it? He was scared of it, and he’d died—only once, but. But.

But you were too, thought Joey desperately, remembering the terror in the other teen’s face when he’d been choking to death. You were scared. You were so scared you wanted me to mercy kill you, because it would be quicker, even though you were scared of me killing you at all a few minutes ago. So it has to matter to you, doesn’t it?

But maybe it didn’t. Maybe it couldn’t. And he was suddenly, immensely, deeply afraid of that. Not all the deaths themselves. Joey felt like…like those could only matter. He’d only been killed one time so far, but he didn’t think he’d ever have be able to get used to the way that had felt—there were just some things in life you couldn’t—like getting punched. It didn’t matter if people fought you a lot, or you got picked on and beat up every day at school—maybe you got used to the idea of bullying, but you never got used to the way a fist stung against cheekbone or felt rammed into your gut. You just didn’t. Other things too… But. But maybe this didn’t—hadn’t—not at all. Maybe it couldn’t anymore. Maybe if you died so much, got cut down and carved up and electrocuted and drugged and burned and eaten and ripped to shreds one too many times, it stopped mattering at all if there was ever a time that you didn’t. Because why would it? Death would just be back for you the next hour. So it. It probably hadn’t even done anything at all. Except fucking made him all confused and angry and—fuck! He didn’t even know how he felt except bad. How could it not matter, he thought desperately, still saying nothing, and watching a semi-conscious guy his age who might have been a classmate or a friend or anything at all in another life blink back at him in confusion, still waiting for an answer he no longer knew how to give. How could it not matter that I saved you! It should! It should…

But fuck. It didn’t. And he got that now.

I never should have done this, thought Joey, feeling a little nauseous suddenly and like the room was swaying around him, I didn’t do anything at all for you, and I fucked up my head doing it. I should have just kept walking and let what happened happen. I should never have talked to you at all.

“Are you okay?” asked Quentin. He looked concerned now. Of all the possible stupid things. Concerned. Voice all cracked and dry and weak and scratchy from choking to death, and he was asking Joey if he was okay.

When you think I hate you, thought Joey hopelessly, I didn’t even think I was one of the mean ones, but I’ve been making you miserable for months, and didn’t even see it, because I didn’t have to care or to even know. I could just do anything I wanted, no repercussions, unless I fucked up killing people too much. What the fuck. And.

“What happened?” asked Quentin. Slightly more awake now. Still out of it, but pupils slightly larger than the tiny specks they’d been before, and struggling to focus on his expression. He tried to push himself up onto his elbows and grimaced and stopped only partway there and looked over at Joey again.

“You almost died,” said Joey barely audibly, because he couldn’t keep not answering him at all, and there was nothing else he knew to say.

Quentin looked confused by that, and thought for a second, looking at nothing, brow ridiculously furrowed. “…morphine?” he asked after a moment, glancing up at Joey very unsure.

“Yeah,” answered Joey, no energy in the word.

The survivor thought for another moment, trying to pick up pieces in his head, Joey thought, then met his gaze again. “…You found the antidote?”

“Nah,” said Joey quietly, not looking at his face, “It just wore off.”

For a second, Quentin was quiet. “But…you said you did,” he said after a moment, “You said you…gave me CPR.”

Joey stared at him, feeling cornered. Fuck—I thought you didn’t hear that all the way. Quentin was watching him in unfocused confusion. What am I supposed to say?

He didn’t know, so he didn’t say anything, and Quentin glanced at the ground around him after a few seconds with no response, and saw the syringe and the package where Joey had left it, and picked up the empty needle and shakily brought it towards his face to read the label. “Nal…Naloxone—you did,” said Quentin, glancing back at him.

Joey shrugged. For a moment, they just stared at each other in complete silence, Quentin still only half propped up, Joey maybe a half foot back, sitting above him on the ground. Joey didn’t really know what either of them was waiting for, but he was afraid to be the first one to speak, or move, so he didn’t.

“…Thank you,” said Quentin finally, and he smiled at him. Like he meant it. And Joey knew it was really the drugs that were still in there that meant it, and not the teenager at all, but the guy thought he meant it so much that it was hard not to smile back, and so he did for just a second before he could stop himself.

Quentin looked at the ground for a second then, blinking slowly, breathing more regularly now, but eyes still glassy and movements irregular and off, and Joey tried to guess from a distance how high he still was. Not dying at least. His skin isn’t blue anymore, so. That’s the big one. That and uh, breathing.

“Why did you do that?” asked Quentin, looking back up. Just curious. No accusation or suspicion, or anything in the tone but the desire to know. “-Save me?”

“…I don’t know,” said Joey quietly, because he didn’t, and he knew that another fifteen seconds of thinking before he answered later, he still wasn’t going to. And he didn’t want to lie. Not here, not to that question.

Quentin tilted his head and watched him for a few seconds curiously, and then laid back down on the dirty floor and smiled at the ceiling thoughtfully. “Well, thanks. I don’t remember all of it, but that seems really good of you,” he offered.

Joey didn’t say anything.

After a second, Quentin shut his eyes and took a few deep breaths, then started mumbling something to himself, hummed a few bars of one of the songs he’d been singing earlier under his breath, and then sat up. He made it this time too, still a little unsteady, and he turned and glanced over at Joey and offered him a friendly smile and said, “Thanks again. I think I can get up now if I go slow, so I’m gonna go ahead and try to get back to searching,” then grabbed the side of the desk by him and started to attempt to pull himself up.

“WHAT?” exploded Joey in barely hissed indignation, shooting halfway to his feet because he expected the other guy to collapse in about 2.4 seconds at most.

“Supplies,” said Quentin, who had made it up to one foot and one knee with the help of the desk, wobbled a little with an arm out, and then glanced back at him once he got his balance, “I should look for some more before I go back to the campfire.”

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” hissed Joey, losing it, “You—you fucking unbelievably stupid dumbass! No! You’re still high, you just almost died, you’re already making too much noise again, and you’re gonna get caught if you stay! –And you want to keep going? You’re fucking insane!”

“I am not,” replied Quentin kind of indignantly, “I’m okay—you gave me an antidote, so my head will clear up—is clearing, and I’ll be good to keep going.” He started trying to make it all the way to his feet with a lot of arm strength and effort because his legs weren’t super dependable right then.

“Why!” asked Joey, “What’s wrong with you! Why are you so set on killing yourself to get stupid medical supplies! They won’t even help you much anyway!”

Quentin stopped. He turned his head and looked at Joey and he had a look on his face like a friend of his had just smacked him and he didn’t even know why. Shit—I shouldn’t have—

“They do help,” said Quentin quietly, like he was trying to make it more true just by the way he was saying it.

Joey thought about saying nothing, because he was pretty sure he’d sort of hurt his feelings before, but the stupid fucking dumbass survivor was going to stick around and get himself killed, and then come out again the next day and the next, and for what? It just—It wasn’t worth it! He was wrong!

“They don’t,” said Joey, shaking his head, “Not enough. You’re risking your life out here all the time for no reason.” He picked up the medkit from the floor, and Quentin watched him in what was almost alarm, and tried to reach out and grab it back, and just about lost his balance without both arms propping him against the desk, and had to stop to keep himself standing. Joey held up the case, watching the kind of frantic look on the other teenager’s face as he watched him, obviously afraid he was going to chuck it across the room or something, or break it. Like people looked at you if you had their paper and were holding it up above a running sink at school. Like he was going to take this one stupid flimsy fucking piece of nothing the other guy had and break it for no reason. And you would care. That would hurt you—it’d be so easy. Why the fuck do you care? You shouldn’t! God it’s—it’s nothing!

“Joey, please, I—” asked Quentin, eyes still on the case.

“—It’s not worth it,” cut in Joey, shaking his head again, “It’s not gonna help you. Coming out here all the time? It’s a waste. None of this is gonna be enough to really matter.”

Quentin stared at him.

“Come on, Quentin, think!” said Joey, “What’s one more roll of thread gonna let you do? Stitch up your leg a little bit better so it’s fresh for the next beartrap? Extend how long it takes you to bleed to death? That’s nothing! It’s fucking nothing! You could have gotten caught by the Doctor out here and tortured to death—it’s not worth the risk!”

“—It is!” said Quentin.

“Why?” shot back Joey, desperate for him to reassess the situation and just fucking go home. “How is this possibly worth it?”

“…Because… I don’t have anything else I can do,” said Quentin. He didn’t look great. His expression was hurt, and his voice was kind of…broken, when he spoke. “Y-you don’t understand,” he tried, still looking from Joey to the case like the worst possible thing in the world would be for him to take that shitty little piece of metal and crush it under his foot, or hock it out a window into somewhere he would never be able to get it back. “We. We go into trials every day, and you—you can’t get used to that. To being hurt. To-to dying. And it’s not fair—it’s stacked so we can never win against you, even when we try—even if all of us try—not in a fight. We can only live if we run away, and make it out in time, and even on a day all of us have a great trial and all four make it out alive, there is never gonna be a day where there’s a trial where you don’t end up hurt. You can’t save anybody. You can’t. Can’t kill, or hurt, or punish any of the things hurting them. You can’t really escape, or go home, or even have time to recuperate and heal enough for that to actually mean something—it’s hell.” He looked up into Joey’s face and held his eyes kind of desperately. “It’s. It’s not much but suffering, not ever. So I—I always go back in, because I might be able to save somebody, even if it’s a trap, and I go out here to get meds, even though y-you’re right, they won’t ever do much—It’s cause I have to. I have to. I have to try. If I’ve got tape and gauze and a needle and thread, I can find somebody hurt in a trial, and tell them we’re gonna make it out together, and I can help them—I know it’s nothing—I know it is, but I. I can try. I can say that, and I can sew up a wound, and let them know they’re not alone, and if I’ve got good supplies, I can make that a little less painful—I can stitch it up faster, I can—I can go more even, so it hurts less. I can stop the bleeding a little faster. I can give somebody hope, maybe—maybe that at least. I have to.” He was struggling to talk, and the look in his eyes and the way he sounded choked up made Joey feel sick in a way he hadn’t known before. “I have to do that, at least, because it’s all I can. I go back, because it might work this time—I might save them, I c-I can’t do anything else. I’ll attack any killer I see, and I’ll try to make them pay, and try to stop them, try to be the one who dies instead, but it’s never enough. I have to—have to try though. Because the second I stop. … The second I stop, none of it’s gonna matter anymore. And I c—” He couldn’t for a second, and he looked away, and swallowed, and tried again. Tried to look at Joey again. Pleading with him for the little box of rusted nothing in his hand. “I can’t…keep going, once it doesn’t. I need it to. We all need it too. Fuck, it—it’s the only thing we even have left. We can’t run, we can’t hide, we can’t fight, or win, or rest, or go home—if we can’t even matter anymore, we’re just.” That was too much, and some of the tears he’d been choking back spilled over and he stopped, broken down and angry and hopeless and ashamed at not having stopped himself from that in front of Joey, and he looked away again, breathing shakily, trying to pull the emotion back inside where it was livable again.

Joey didn’t look at him, because he could see Quentin didn’t want him to, and he would have felt the same way if he’d been the one crying, so he slowly lowered his arm and looked at the medkit instead. These things always looked the same, pretty much. Basic objects. A few different sizes, and shapes, but with little variance between them. But this one was different. He’d painted over the little Medic + that was always on the outside of these, and put a red heart there instead. Like that might somehow fucking matter too.

“Here,” said Joey quietly, holding the case out.

Quentin looked over at him in surprise, and then took it shakily. Once he had it securely, he glanced back over at Joey and took an unsteady breath and then smiled at him again. Like all of that shit that had just been said and the side of it he was on had just been forgotten. “Thank you.”

“Are you sure you can… Are you sure that the morphine wore off enough you can get it done, though?” asked Joey.

Quentin nodded.

“—Look, I understand you need it to matter, and why you think you have to do this,” said Joey kind of desperately, and he actually did, probably not the same way, probably not really at all, not like Quentin, not like any of the survivors—probably he couldn’t, but he’d at least understood it barely enough that just minutes ago he’d thought almost some of the exact same things he’d just heard Quentin say, and God, the alternative was too fucked to really even understand, but… “—but it really doesn’t have to be today. You’re kind of hurt, you should go home. Try again tomorrow instead.”

“I’m doing much better,” promised Quentin, appreciating the sentiment and trying to reassure him, “I’m thinking fine now; I’m sure.”

“How sure?” asked Joey nervously, watching him test his footing and prepare to take a step on his own again, “You know it-it won’t help you to find more supplies if you get killed on the way back.”

“I know, but I think I’m okay,” said Quentin sincerely, glancing back at him. “The antidote must be working really well, because I don’t think I’m high anymore at all.”

“Really?” asked Joey.

“Yeah,” assured Quentin, “I feel fine now.” He took a step and immediately slammed face-first into the floor on top of his medkit with a surprised cry, and Joey winced at the impact.

“Yeah, uh, you sure about that?” asked Joey, trying not to find that funny just a little bit, and failing somehow in spite of everything. His legs hadn’t even held his weight long enough to buckle.

“Uh,” came Quentin’s muffled voice from the floor.

He stayed there for a second. Joey cocked his head and watched him.

“…If you’re high, while you’re high,” asked Quentin, voice still muffled. “how can one tell?”

Joey rolled his eyes and smiled, then walked over beside him and crouched down. “Hey Quentin?”

Quentin turned his head to the side so he could see him and blew some of his curly brown hair out of his face, then sighed. “Yeah?”

“You’re still really fuckin’ blitzed,” said Joey.

“…Fun,” said Quentin miserably. He pressed his face against the floor again. Joey tried not to smile.

For a moment, he let him just deal there on the gross Institute floor, then tried again. “So uh, how about this,” offered Joey, “We go ahead and get you out of here before the Doctor comes and kills us. Huh?”

“But I barely got anything. All I did was waste a bunch of fucking morphine,” came annoyed Quentin’s muffled floor reply.

“Well, some is better than nothing,” offered Joey.

Quentin made an incredibly unhappy sound.

Joey considered that, thinking hard. “…Okay. What about this. We go back now, and on the way, anything good you see in a cabinet we pass or something, I’ll run and snag for you. Does that seem fair enough?”

“…Really?” asked Quentin, turning his head to see him again.

Joey nodded.

Quentin squinted at him for a second. “Why are you being so nice to me today? It’s weird. I mean. I. I appreciate it, and I don’t know if it’s normal me thinking normally doing it, or the morphine making me paranoid, but I’m also kind of…I don’t know. Expecting you to be pulling some big trick to make me think we were friends before you stab me in the back.”

“What?” said Joey, too many points in that sentence to hit at once and mostly just stuck on the last one. Smiling at the ridiculousness of doing that to him right now. “No.”

“We are then?” said Quentin, propping himself up a little on an arm and giving him a hopeful look when he saw Joey had smiled.

“Are?” echoed Joey.

“Friends,” said Quentin.

It felt like being punched in the stomach. Joey felt himself starting to lose the smile, and was suddenly afraid for some reason of how this fucked up on morphine stranger his age would act if he saw the smile go, and tried to keep it instead. Feeling sick. You are lying now if you say yes. You’re a monster. Don’t do that—I know it’s complicated. I know we can’t stop. But you can’t tell him we’re friends it’s too fucked up—you can’t.

“Yeah,” said Joey, managing to keep his smile.

And Quentin believed it. He smiled back, in a way that, fucked up on morphine or not, was so much more real than Joey’s was, and said, “…Wow. Good. I-I hoped so. Huh. I never thought I’d say that to a…well, a killer. Are you coming over to our side?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” managed Joey, struggle to freeze his smile and keep it there. He offered Quentin an arm, desperate to change the subject to anything else. “Come on—let’s get going before we’re in trouble.

Quentin took the arm and Joey pulled him up. “You should,” continued Quentin, unfortunately not having been distracted into missing a single beat, “I mean—you’re…weirdly cool, and, good, and it’s not like you can keep killing people and, uh,” he gestured to himself and the arm Joey was supporting him with, “This kind of stuff too.”

“…Yeah,” said Joey. He put one of Quentin’s arms over his shoulder to more easily help support his weight.

“I’d—” Quentin started to offer.

“—And uh, maybe actually keep it down a little this time, dumbass?” Joey cut him off, trying to sound jokey, but desperate to stop whatever he’d been about to say, because none of this was fun. It was fucking unbearable. “You do remember there’s a sadistic serial killer somewhere in here, right?”

“You mean another one, right?” grinned Quentin.

“Thanks,” said Joey sarcastically, giving him a look and pretending to be miffed. Losing that and smiling at the rib in spite of himself too then, because it had been kinda funny. He’d really walked into that. “Okay, let’s get you back to the campfire,” said Joey, in position to be ready to help him walk and ready to bear pretty much all of Quentin’s weight now if he had to. They took a first step and started off together then, and it was pretty easy. Quentin was bearing some of his weight fine this time, it felt like—just couldn’t steer on his own. He flashed Quentin a teasing look, “And do you think maybe you could stop ripping me apart at least while I’m being your volunteer taxi service?”

“Wow,” joked Quentin, grinning at him, “I didn’t know you had such thin skin.”

“At least I have the common sense not to jab myself in it with every single drug I trip over,” shot back Joey with a half-suppressed smile, “Unlike a certain local maximum dumbass I know.”

“Owww,” said Quentin, not really hurt at all, “In my defense, every time until now that I’ve done that, it’s worked out really well for me.”

“You’re such a fucking dumbass, you know that, right?” said Joey, shaking his head and grinning, “You’re really not gonna take the two seconds out of your life you would need to read a label, and just play God with your ability to be alive like that, then defend it?”

“Okay, okay,” said Quentin, smiling back at him and starting to get a little bit goofy-high, “I should not have done that. I will be more careful now that I have to, apparently. And I’m sorry for hurting your feelings—it’s not totally true anyway; you’re not sadistic.”

“That partial redaction’s not as nice as you think it is,” said Joey, amused and trying not to grin as he glanced over at him.

“I mean, I feel like all things considered I should get to tell a couple kind of mean jokes at your expense,” said Quentin, “You have killed me before.”

Joey snorted. They made it back into the hall and Joey began retracing his own steps, because Lerry’s was kind of a fucking maze, and going out the way he’d come in like an hour ago was the surest way to not get lost. “Okay, fine—but put a hard limit on the number.”

“…Thirty?” offered Quentin after a second.

Wow, kind of a low-ball if you think about it. “Yeah, okay, thirty,” agreed Joey.

“Thirty,” echoed Quentin quietly as they went through the far end of the room he’d first found the guy in, “…I better think of some really good ones to use that on, then. …Thirty starting now, or am I at twenty-nine?”

“Thirty starting now,” said Joey, not caring either way, “Be easier to remember.”

Back in the room he’d not quite finished tagging, Joey found the center isle between the hospital beds and started down it. At his side, Quentin hummed quietly and turned his head slowly to watch their surroundings go by.

“This is where you were spraypainting?” asked Quentin.

“Yeah,” said Joey, kind of surprised he was lucid enough to notice, the way his voice sounded all out of it and he was still blinking at everything and smiling contentedly the whole time like he was hanging out pretty close to blissfully high.

“What where you making?” asked Quentin, studying one of the squiggly lines on a bed with great fascination as they passed, “A bunch of chaos?”

Joey snorted again, insulted. “No. It’s a picture.”

“Of what?” asked Quentin, looking around them at the completely unintelligible back smudges and lines on things, “It just looks likes you came in here and were mad.”

RUDE. Well. I guess he’s not wrong, but he’s just not looking at it right. “That’s because it’s an anamorphosis,” said Joey.

“A what?” asked Quentin, gaping at him. “An animorph?”

“No!” said Joey, “Dumbass! I said ‘anamorphosis’—it’s an anamorphic picture—only viewable as what it is from like, one specific angle.”

“Oh—a perspective art thing,” said Quentin, excited at getting that, “Can I see it?”

“W—see the picture?” asked Joey, stopping.

“Yeah! I want to see,” said Quentin with incredible interest.

Really? Nobody was ever excited to see shit like that. It was fun to make, and Joey was good at it, and the things never lost their charm for him, but most people, they saw one once, they’d seen them all, or something—he didn’t get it, admittedly, but it was true. For whatever reason, for most people, anamorphic art seemed to be something they lost interest for pretty fast. At least, any of the times he’d made it. But then, I guess he hasn’t seen his one. Joey glanced over his shoulder, trying to tell how far back he’d have to go to be in the right spot again to see it right, and Quentin started to too, and Joey saw him going for it and reached over and covered his eyes with a hand. “Stop!—Don’t do that! It’s cooler if you walk into view from the side than the back,” said Joey.

“Uh. Okay,” said Quentin, “I can shut my eyes on my own, though.”

Joey moved his hand, and Quentin obliged and kept his eyes closed. Joey squinted at him suspiciously. “Yeah, but are you gonna peek, though?”

“Pff—what am I, four?” asked Quentin indignantly, “I don’t want to spoil the art for me either.”

Satisfied, Joey turned them around and walked back, found the perspective point easily since he’d marked it on the floor earlier, and then took a step to the right. “Okay, open.”

Quentin did, and blinked, then squinted at the almost comprehensible shape he was just out of line with. “Oh—you weren’t kidding,” he said, kind of excited, “They—is it a face? It’s almost like one.”

“You’re close,” said Joey, moving to the left again and stopping them so that Quentin was dead center.

“…Whoa,” said Quentin. He stared at the skull with his still morphine-influenced over-glossy eyes and too-constricted pupils, trying through that fog to take it in. He watched it for several seconds, absorbing the lines and detail, and then leaned as far as he could to the right, and then back to the center again, snapping the image in and out of perfect alignment. He turned and gazed at Joey in excited wonder. “Holy crap—I knew it would be cool, but that’s amazing.”

Joey felt his face get hot and looked at the skull picture too, to be looking away from Quentin. It wasn’t bad, for sure—he liked it. A nice skull. He’d never gotten to do the speech bubble though. It wasn’t even finished.

“No, really,” insisted Quentin with conviction, taking that reaction to mean he didn’t believe him, “How do you do that?”

“Uh, the—perspective?” asked Joey. The other teen was looking back at him with huge eyes and so much interest he didn’t know what to do but answer. “Uhm. Well, you pick an area first, and visualize what you want, and you’ve gotta be able to remember that image, and then move the image in your head kind of 3D so you know how to paint it when you look at it from another angle—or—if you can’t do that, you can draw pictures, starting with how you want the end result to go, and work from there. It’s kind of mental math stuff, I guess, but once you’ve done it a bunch, you can mostly sight-read what you need for stuff unless it’s super complicated.”

“That’s…incredible,” said Quentin really sincerely, kind of gaping in wonder at the skull, and looking from it to him with big eyes, and even though the guy was high enough his speech was still a bit slurred, and probably he wouldn’t have been so impressed sober, it felt pretty nice, and Joey smiled. Quentin gazed at the skull for a couple long seconds. “Wow,” he whispered finally. He turned his head back to Joey. “Could you teach me?”

“T—what, to do that?” asked Joey, stunned.

“Yeah! I mean—I’d probably be really bad at it,” said Quentin quickly, probably morphine-induced oversharing a little bit while trying to get to his point, “I did art before, like drawing—drawing type art—uh—took some classes, in high school—I was never super good at it, but I haven’t done nothing—like with art. I could try. I could—I bet I could at least do a shape! Like a triangle. Or a cross, or a circle—or—or like your little smiley face on your pin,” he suggested, tapping the pin on the belt Joey had thrown over his shoulder, “I mean—if—if I could learn,” added Quentin, still talking at break-neck speed, “I don’t know how hard it is, and I haven’t even really used spraypaint before, but I’d like to. It’d be cool to-“ He glanced back at the skull again and smiled at it. “-make something. You know. Something good. If you think you could teach me.”

“Yeah,” said Joey, excited and happy at the prospect, “I could—” He stopped. Fuck. Stupid—you-

Quentin glanced over at him, curious about the sudden pause.

“Sorry. Thought I heard something,” lied Joey, trying to make his voice sound urgent, “Doctor. We better go quick. Stay quiet, okay?”

“Oh,” said Quentin, lowering his voice drastically, super out of it and probably not actually feeling the fear through all that morphine, but doing his best to look and act urgent too and giving Joey a fervent nod. “Okay.”

They kept going, winding quickly back through the room the way Joey had come originally, passing hospital beds and cracked floors, blinking fluorescent lights, on their last leg. Quentin stayed quiet through that room and the next, but Joey also started to have a harder and harder time keeping him upright. Mostly he would do fine walking, but every so often he would just kind of forget to use his legs, or trip over nothing, or something, and they’d both almost go down, and they actually were getting a little closer to the last place he’d heard the Doctor on his way in, so he didn’t want to end up crashing into something. Well, it’s not far, anyway. Joey glanced over, trying to tell how coherent the other guy was. He looked like he was having trouble not falling asleep now—kept kind of slow blinking, and nodding off, then jerking his head back up and looking around.

“Not doing so hot?” asked Joey quietly.

“Mmm? Oh,” said Quentin, “Uh. I don’t know. I’m just tired.”

“You look…more high than a few minutes ago. Uhm. Does the stuff I gave you wear off?” asked Joey.

“For morphine? Yeah,” said Quentin with a thoroughly unworried look on his face, smiling sleepily over at Joey as they went, “It uh—it blocks your head receptors from absorbing the opium, but once it stops, if the opium is still there,” he made what Joey could only guess had been meant to be some kind of gun firing motion with his free arm and a matching Pshooo sound with it. “It comes back.”

“…” Joey stared straight ahead, low-key panicking. Fuck. So. In fifteen minutes or something he’s just gonna start to die again? “Uh. Okay. How long does the antidote last—and the morphine?”

“I dunno,” said Quentin, thoroughly unworried, watching the room they were going through with interest. “Oh—hey—cabinet! Bottles on the top shelf.”

“Bottles of what?” asked Joey, “—Something that’ll help?”

“No—what?—‘help’? I mean, I guess they’ll help somebody. You said you’d get stuff,” said Quentin. He waited a second, but Joey still didn’t get it. “On the way back? If I—”

“—Right, right, right, right,” said Joey, “Yeah—okay.” This might help anyway. He got Quentin against a wall with a windowsill for him to lean on and let go. “Uhm—about the morphine. Is there anything other than naa…naaa-whatever-it-was that I gave you that would help a morphine overdose—something that’d last longer?”

“Uhhh, I guess,” said Quentin, thinking hard, “There’s activated charcoal.”

“There’s charcoal?” asked Joey in disbelief, turning his head to gape back at him.

“No—activated charcoal,” said Quentin, giving him a look, “It’s not the same thing.”

“Then why the fuck do they call it that?” said Joey, going over towards the cabinet to fulfil his promise and check for useful shit, apparently hoping to find whatever the fuck ‘activated charcoal’ was too now. “That’s just confusing. Because charcoal is already a word. What is it, then?”

“Uh. It’s a powder. It’s super porous, and it stops toxins by like, sucking them up in it like a sponge if you swallow some,” said Quentin, struggling to remember, “You make it by burning stuff at a really high temperature—”

“-Wait,” said Joey, whirling on him and incensed at the scientific community at large, “So it is charcoal?”

“Uh. No, it’s—it’s burned way hotter and—” started Quentin.

“—It’s just fucking superheated charcoal?” said Joey, “Superheated fucking barbeque, campfire, burned wood shit?”

“…I. …I guess it is,” said Quentin after a second as if the most mind-boggling realization was dawning. He stared at nothing, and then grinned and looked at Joey like his discovery was the funniest thing in the world.

“Then why’d you look at me like I was a dumbass when I asked if it was charcoal?” said Joey, as he opened the cabinet and took things out to check.

“Because I didn’t think about it,” said Quentin, “I just. But you’re right. It’s just fucking superheated charcoal. I can’t believe it.”

Joey watched him for a second and then smiled too at the mind-blown look on the other dude’s face.

“Medical science in the modern era sure has advanced into wondrous new territory, huh?” said Quentin, grinning at him.

Joey snorted.

“Anything good in there?” asked Quentin, indicating the supplies.

“Uh. Package of medical tape, some old scissors, a bandage that’s super gross and I’m not bringing over to you, and three bottles. We got Aspirin,” said Joey, holding up a fairly large bottle, and he saw Quentin’s face light up and instantly felt guilty as shit because he hadn’t been trying to lead him on in the way he’d phrased the sentence he was saying but he super had, “—which is empty,” he added quickly, trying to indicate he was sorry about that in his tone.

The happy look on Quentin’s face instantly became a disappointed, tired one instead. “Bastard. I swear to God, the Entity does that shit all the time just for fun. Fucking hate finding empty bottles of good stuff.”

“Well—the other two have stuff in them,” said Joey hopefully.

“What are they?” asked Quentin.

“C… Cipro…floxacin?” tried Joey, “It’s a little bottle, and it’s only got two pills left in there, but it’s not empty.”

“Huh. I don’t know what that is,” said Quentin.

“You don’t know?” asked Joey, genuinely taken aback.

“Hey,” said Quentin, “I’m trying my best—I’m not a real doctor or anything. I’m figuring this out as I go. But yeah, I’ll take that—maybe Adam will know what it is.”

“Alright,” said Joey, filing that information away, “The last one says on the bottle that it’s burn ointment. It’s pretty full.”

“Oh—hey—that one’s actually a pretty good score,” said Quentin, cheered up a little, “Burns aren’t the most common wound, but it’s good to have just in case. I’ve only found one of those a few times. Usually if we need something like that, we just have to hope Claudette can make some with whatever plants she has on hand.”

“Cool,” said Joey, walking back over. “Give me the medkit.”

Quentin immediately looked concerned, and did not. “Why?”

“Look I’m—not gonna take it again,” promised Joey, “I’m just gonna put this stuff inside. You try to do it, and you’re gonna drop shit and make noise.”

Finding that believable, Quentin relaxed and handed him the medkit. Joey took it and set it open on the back of a bench and put stuff inside haphazardly, looking for the little box from before again. He found it immediately and picked it up, checking for anything he might have missed, like the package of activated charcoal he was hoping to miraculously find. Shit. Nothing this time.

He became suddenly aware of another presence very much in his personal space and looked to the left to see Quentin had leaned waaay over the kit from the other side and brought his head right night to Joey’s to try to see in too.

“What are you looking for?” asked Quentin turning his head to look over at him, and suddenly like half an inch from his face.

“Nothing!” said Joey on absolutely nothing but panic impulse, almost smacking his head on the windowsill behind him with the speed he jerked backwards away from Quentin and back into his own personal space again. His heartbeat was running a mile a minute. Oh—geeze, fuck—what? He—the. What had just-? He tried to swallow. Still over the medkit Quentin was watching him with surprise. “Uh—activated charcoal, I guess,” corrected Joey, regaining his ability to think and feeling his heartbeat calming down again.

Quentin blinked at him, trying to process that through the fog in his brain. How the fuck were his eyes so big?

“Oh. Right—you were asking about it,” said Quentin, “I don’t have any.”

…fuck.

There was just nothing, then. He would die anyway, and he’d have to do it twice now, because Joey had tried to help. Fuck. …I…

“Do you need some?” asked Quentin, seeing the distress on his face and looking confused and kind of worried about him.

You are so fucking stupid on morphine bro—like I appreciate it but you’re like the dumbest piece of shit when you’re high—you’re gonna get killed if I look in the other direction for six fucking seconds. How the fuck did this happen to me? Why was he so upset? “Yeah. I kinda do,” answered Joey, subdued.

“Well, I can get you some if you really need it,” said Quentin with concern.

“Wait, really?” asked Joey, hope blossoming again.

“Yeah—Adam has some,” said Quentin, nodding.

Ad—oh—the—okay. “You mean back at your campfire?” checked Joey.

Quentin nodded. “I’m sure he’d let you have some, though. If you need it.” He looked like he really thought that, too. Joey wondered if Adam would, if he’d needed it. If having done them one good turn would be enough for that kind of small favor. If Quentin would have even offered if he’d really been aware enough in there to know what was going on.

…Probably not.

Didn’t matter though. If he got fucked up on morphine again when stuff wore off because the antidote hadn’t been enough, or the overdose had just been too high for it, then his friends would be smart enough to give him the medicine he needed. So long as he got him back to the campfire, he’d be fine.

“Nah—I don’t need it,” said Joey, “I was just curious what it looked like.” That was the beset fucking lie you could come up with??

“Oh,” said Quentin, buying it completely. He smiled at him. “I can show you sometime.”

Joey closed the medkit and got his arm around Quentin again so they could keep moving.

“I could teach you how to patch up wounds too,” offered Quentin as they started off again, “Trade you, for lessons doing spraypaint.”

“Yeah,” said Joey, looking straight ahead, “That sounds nice.”

They were getting close to the edge of Lerry’s now—almost out of the danger zone at least—fucking blessing. Though then he’d have to navigate the fog all the way to the campfire. Or. However close to the campfire he could get. He hadn’t actually tried before. He had no idea how close he would be able to go. I wonder if I actually could go all the way up there? Nah, that was stupid, though. It had been a fun idea, but no way the Entity would make it so killers could get withing range to take a shot at survivors outside trials in their home base at all. And. Well. I am a killer. And I still will be in an hour, after I’ve dropped him off. ...

And then forever after that.

“There.”

Joey had been walking on auto pilot, but he came back out of his head at the sound of Quentin’s voice and glanced where he was pointing. “What?”

“Supplies,” said Quentin, pointing at the desk by the entry way they were coming up on.

Joey looked at the desk. “…Where?”

“There!” said Quentin. “By the—phone thing.”

There was nothing on the desk except the old phone and a Styrofoam cup and some old pens. “…The coffee cup??” asked Joey.

“No. What?” said Quentin, “The—needle….and the—the bottle…it’s…”

Uh. “There’s nothing on that desk but a coffee cup and some pens, man,” said Joey.

“Really?” asked Quentin, staring intently at the desk.

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure,” said Joey.

“No. But…I saw them. They were just there,” said Quentin, huge eyes fixed on the desk. “I know they were. I just saw them. They.” He looked up at Joey. “I saw it—I did. I’m so sure!”

“I mean…?” said Joey, relenting a little and walking them closer. Yup. Definitely nothing there. Beside him, Quentin turned his head from left to right, scanning the whole desk with intense, almost frantic scrutiny.

“...Where did they go?” he asked Joey with 100% sincerity, like the most insane thing in the world had just happened and some medical supplies had walked off.

“Okay,” said Joey, turning them back around and making a B-line for the exit, “That’s enough hanging out at Lerry’s for you. Hallucinating’s never a good sign. Its’s time to go.”

“No!” said Quentin quickly, “But I barely got anything on the way back! I-I forgot and I kept almost falling asleep, and talking to you, and not looking.”

“We’re not going back in,” said Joey, pausing in the doorway because Quentin had started trying to go back the other was and was pulling against him and suddenly making it really hard to walk.

“But I can’t go back with nothing,” pleaded Quentin, “I wanted to do a good job.”

“You got some stuff and you didn’t die—that’s a pretty good job,” contended Joey. That argument did not seem to do it for Quentin, who kept weakly struggling to tug Joey back into the terrifying old institute with its long hallways and flickering lights and horrifying owner somewhere deep in the bowels, but he was making about as much headway in that as he would have trying to drag a cement support column. God damn it, you have the tenacity of a bulldog, you know that! You’re really not gonna stop trying, are you? He was certainly showing no signs, despite the impossibility and complete lack of success he was having. Joey sighed. Okay, if he won’t stop, then it’s either find a way to get him what he wants so he’ll leave, or just pick him up and drag him off fighting, I guess. And Joey was pretty sure which of those two options he definitely did and did not want to do.

“—Okay, look. What would be a good enough find to leave?”

Quentin paused in his efforts to get Joey to move and looked at him hopefully. “Uh. I don’t know. Pain medication, a couple hemorrhagics, or some gel dressings? Something we don’t get much.”

Joey considered that, giving the institute past Quentin a dubious look, and then shook his head. “That would take forever.”

“Please?” said Quentin, looking at him with his huge fucking eyes. God, and he was giving him the world’s saddest, most sympathy inducing face too. How the hell was he doing that so well! That look was miserable! It made Joey want to die—he felt like he’d just accidentally kicked a dog—t-the only thing that had ever been able to give him a look as critically effective at pleading as this before had been a dog! This was pressure levels on par with his pet lab putting his head in his lap while he munched on a burger and somehow conveying in its big sad eyes the message that it hadn’t eaten in four years and if he would please just pass some of that burger on down here, even just a crumb, it might live and be eternally grateful, and would cry and sadly starve miserably to death in his lap if he didn’t.

Beside him Quentin was still just standing there, waiting for a response and looking at him like his heart was gonna be crushed to dust if Joey didn’t say yes. Fuck—come on! That’s not fair! How the fuck are your eyes so big? We can’t go back into Lerry’s—I’m not trying to be an asshole!

“You don’t understand,” said Quentin when Joey stayed quiet, fighting an intense internal battle to not be swayed by the most pitiful puppydog eyes he’d ever seen, “I need this stuff to be able to help people. It’s important.”

“—No, I get it,” managed Joey, clearing his throat and looking away because he finally couldn’t take the face any longer, “You explained it before.” He risked a glance back over again after a second, and Quentin still had the exact same expression and it was like getting suckerpunched in the ribcage by a bowling ball. FUCK! “Okay, okay—uh,” said Joey desperately, turning back to him, “Look. Uh.” Fuck fuck fuck—think. “We can’t go back in there—we’ll both die—but you just want supplies that make your people die less, right? And even if you don’t find much stuff, if you get even one or two super rare things that help your people really well, you did good, and you can go home.”

Quentin considered that, a little confused, huge eyes still on Joey’s face, and then nodded.

“Okay. Then how about this,” said Joey. He reached up with his free hand and unfastened the little smiley face pin on his shoulder strap that Quentin had tapped earlier and got it free after a bit of a struggle, then held it out.

At his side, Quentin blinked down at the object, then looked back up at him in confusion.

“It’s a token,” said Joey, “You take that, and then, any trial you choose to give it to me in, I’ll quit chasing whoever I’m on for two whole minutes. Seem fair?”

Quentin stared at him.

“—I-it’s a really good deal!” argued Joey, because it was, “Think about it! Two whole minutes? That’s a lot of immunity in a trial. What’s the best you’d get out of a hemorrhagic? Stop some bleeding faster? If you think about this as a health item, it’s better than a whole pile. You could prevent somebody the pain of a whole bunch of wounds entirely, instead of just fixing them faster.”

“O…okay,” said Quentin, following that slowly. He reached out and took it, cocked his head and looked at the button, and then tried and failed several times to clip it to his jacket, before finally getting it to stick, and Joey tried not to grin watching. Once he had it in place, he looked back at Joey and gave him a reassured smile.

“We can go?” asked Joey.

“Yeah. Let’s go home,” agreed Quentin.

Immensely relieved, Joey lead him out of Lerry’s and to the edge of the surrounding border, where the fog waited. Hmm. I haven’t gone to the campfire before, so it might take me a little while to navigate in the fog. The fog was tricky. It was how they navigated between mini-areas in the realm. Killer home bases, unused trial areas, the campfire. It was this murky patch of foggy woods that was at the border of everything, and it would just kind of, creep up and render in when you got closer to it, leaving somewhere else—like a video game. Once you went into the forest and started walking, you’d get wherever you meant to go eventually, but it was kinda complicated, and it was easier to go home than anywhere else. It was…sort of like swimming in an ocean, to get from realm to realm--if like, walking was swimming, and the fog was the ocean, and the realms were islands, except that ocean was a whirlpool that changed directions all the time and was confusing as fuck, so it took a little bit of work. The actual direction you went in the woods didn’t matter. Maybe if walking was swimming in that analogy, it would be accurate to say there were tethers in the whirlpool too, swirling around and past you, attaching to all the realms and each a little bit different in shape and size and feel, so you could learn to recognize which was which to help you where you wanted to go. Because if you focused on where you wanted to go, you would get there eventually, walking through the fog. Like you were pulling yourself hand over fist along a rope towards where you wanted to go, intent and experience making you get there faster. But it was always easier if you knew the place than if you just like, kinda knew of it. And how long it took you to travel tended to correlate pretty directly to how well you knew the place you were heading. Joey had never been to the campfire before, so he could definitely find it—he’d had to find everything but Ormond for the first time once—but it might take him like ten—fifteen minutes to navigate like that route on his own. I guess I could ask him to lead us. He looked over at his travel buddy. Quentin had his head bent over ridiculously far, trying to look at the pin again and not considering that moving his jacket collar to a different angle would have been the easier option as far as giving him a close up view, and he was humming that Backstreet Boys song from earlier again while he was at it. Yeah, no, that could only go terribly. Me it is.

“Alright, let’s get you home, dumbass” said Joey in the same friendly way he would have said it to Frank if he’d been helping him home sloshed after a wild night, and it felt nice, saying it and seeing Quentin glance over and smiled back in the same amicable way he’d been spoken to, and Joey stopped thinking this time before it could change, and feel rotten, and he stepped into the mist.

After only about three steps, Lerry’s was gone, de-loaded in like it had never been, and they were in deep woods. The massive, ancient kind of deep woods that was so big it was heavy with silence. So dark you couldn’t make out more than about three feet in any direction, and full of fog. It had kind of unsettled him the first time he walked it, but Joey was used to the Fog now, and really, he was just incredibly glad to be out of Lerry’s. This place was much more familiar, and less hostile.

Quentin went down hard with no warning, and Joey had been mid-step, so he lost his balance too and went with him, slamming forward into the hard ground with a cry, and not thinking to let go of the other guy in time to save himself. No idea what had just happened, but fairly unhurt at least, he dragged himself up to his arms as fast as he could.

“What the hell?” he asked the survivor laying on his chest next to him.

“Ow,” came Quentin’s muffled voice.

“What happened?” asked Joey, sitting up.

“Your pin is stabbing me,” came the reply.

“No, to your legs, dumbass—why’d you go dead-body on me?” said Joey, kind of relieved because the fall didn’t seem to have hurt him at all either.

“I don’t know,” said Quentin sadly with a sigh, turning his head and looking over at Joey.

“Like—you don’t know why you did that, or it wasn’t on purpose?” asked Joey.

“Not on purpose,” said Quentin, “They just stopped working. I have no idea why. –Sorry about that. Did I fall on you?”

“L—three seconds ago?” asked Joey, “You don’t remember? No—I—you haven’t moved yet–how could you have fallen on top of me when you’re on the ground?”

“I dunno,” came the muffled reply as Quentin put his face against the earth again, “Can we stop and take a nap maybe?”

“No!” said Joey. He reached over and got him by the shoulders and flipped him over, and Quentin squinted up at him and grimaced, then looked up at him for a couple of seconds with interest and got a goofy grin on his face. “What?” said Joey.

“I just like your face,” said Quentin happily, “It’s not scary at all. And it’s really funny, because nobody at the campfire’s gonna recognize you. They’re expecting a skull face.” He started shaking his head, still smiling contentedly up a Joey, “Not a guy.”

“Oh my God,” said Joey, feeling his face get hot and trying to power through, “Come on—we have to keep going!”

“But I’m super tired,” said Quentin, shutting his eyes, “I’m just gonna take a quick, like, three-hour nap.”

“No you’re not!” said Joey. He tried to pull him up by his arms, and Quentin didn’t stop him, but he was 110% dead weight now, and that was so much fucking harder to lift than anything else. “Come on!” said Joey, “Work with me a little.”

Quentin opened his eyes and looked back up at Joey and started to say something, then his brows furrowed. “…Wait.” Whatever he was thinking, it took some time to make the full circuit with it in his head, but he had sounded almost worried or something when he said ‘Wait,’ and still did when he spoke again—Joey thought even more than before. “Your button.”

“It’s still there,” assured Joey, “It didn’t come off.”

“No. You. Said you’ll leave somebody alone, if I give it to you,” said Quentin, his words spoken with even more difficulty and slurring on the ends than before, eyes still glazed over like and just as out of it as he’d been all day, but still working as hard as he could to connect dots.

“Yeah?” said Joey.

“…W…you’re still…doing trials?” Quentin asked. He looked up at Joey with those huge blue eyes, nothing but open confusion on his face, like he had just said something that just couldn’t make sense. Joey stopped moving.

Fuck.

“…No…” said Quentin after a second, looking away, thinking even harder. “…No, okay. Right. You said we were friends. For sure. We’re good friends now, and we’re gonna do painting stuff. And I’m supposed to show you how to stitch a cut up. So no.” He looked back up at Joey again then and smiled in a relieved way, like everything was fine. “Sorry. I guess I’m still kinda high.” Joey couldn’t say anything, so he hurried to add, “—not thinking right,” trying to explain his actions in case he’d hurt Joey’s feelings by saying the first thing, and looking up at him so clearly worried that he had.

“…It’s okay,” managed Joey after a few seconds, his voice barely audible.

And Quentin looked so relieved. And happy about that. And smiled up at him again. “Thanks.”

“Do you think you can walk?” said Joey, trying hard to keep his mind blank of any thoughts at all.

Quentin tried to sit up, and made it, then teetered, looked confused by that, and started to collapse sideways with 0 attempt to save himself, and Joey shot out his arms and caught him in the nick of time.

Quentin blinked down at his body in surprise, then looked up at Joey. “So that’s a maybe.”

“Okay,” said Joey, trying not to smile, “I’m carrying you.”

“Is that really—” started Quentin, and then Joey got the guy’s arm over his shoulder and hefted him up in a fireman carry, so that Quentin was held up across his back and shoulders, one arm keeping hold on Quentin’s right arm, his other around his legs, to keep him from slipping, and Quentin stopped talking as Joey stood up, using his leg strength to make it to his feet with the teenager slung over his back. “Oh. Okay,” said Quentin, and he gave up and just went ragdoll again on Joey’s shoulders. “Wow,” he observed in a slurred voice, “You’re really strong. Am I heavy?”

“Not compared to a lot of you,” said Joey, starting to walk again, and kind of proud of himself because of the compliment.

“Good. Don’t want to break your back,” said Quentin. He hummed to himself for a second and then said, “This isn’t super comfortable. Did you know that?” like he was sharing a genuine discovery.

“Uh—I’m not surprised,” offered Joey.

“Backsteet’s Back Alright!” sang Quentin loopily to no one, not even listening to the answer to the question he’d asked.

Joey grinned at what he could see of Quentin’s face. This was kinda familiar—like taking a buddy who’d got super plastered home after a party. The fun kind of fucked up—the kind he was used to seeing.

“—Hey—do the verse with me,” said Quentin.

“I don’t know the lyrics,” said Joey.

“It’s super easy,” insisted the thoroughly wasted teenager, “It’s uh—'brother sister everybody sing.’ Uh. ‘Something something, bring the flame’—no wait—‘oh my God we’re back again, brother sister everybody sing, gonna bring the flames and show you now, have a…have’—okay that’s most of a verse.”

“You go ahead,” said Joey.

“Come on,” pleaded Quentin, “It’s…ssuuper. Easy. ‘Brother sister’—no. ‘Oh my God, we’re back again.’” There was a very definitely Now You flavored pause.

Joey gave in. “Oh my God, we’re back again?”

“Yes!” said Quentin ecstatically with all the energy he had left, hanging limp over his shoulders, “Yes! Perfect! Okay, now it’s ‘brother-sister-everybody sing.’ But like sang so it—for rhyming reasons.”

“Yeah, I heard you doing it,” said Joey.

“K. You got it, or need to hear it again?” asked Quentin.

“I think I got it,” said Joey.

“Same time,” said Quentin.

“Brother-sister-everybody sing,” sang Joey with him at roughly the same time.

“Yes!” said Quentin excitedly halfway through the word ‘sing’, “Ah! You learned it so fast! Then just ‘Backstreet’s Back, Alright!’”

“That’s the whole song?” asked Joey.

Quentin thought about that for several seconds. “No. But we’re gonna go one verse at a time.

“Okay,” said Joey, trying not to laugh.

“Everybody sing,” repeated Quentin, setting them up, “Ready?”

“Yeah,” said Joey.

“Okay,” said Quentin, “Backstreet’s-“

“-Back, alright,” sang Joey with him, grinning.

“Yeah!” cheered Quentin happily over his shoulder, “Hell yeah! We’re awesome. Fucking nailed that! That was really good. You’re cool. Cool at…stuff. And singing.” He was losing coherence real fast now.

Joey would have started to feel worried about that, considering the OD had almost killed him earlier, but he had just spotted light up ahead in the distance, and that could only be the campfire. That meant they were close. Almost there. Maybe just a minute now. And with that worry gone, he just took in the compliment and grinned at it. “Thanks. You too,” said Joey.

“Thanks!” said Quentin, mumbling now, “Man. I never knew you were nice.”

“Yeah, well, don’t tell anyone,” joked Joey.

“I’m gonna tell everyone,” slurred Quentin happily in reply. After a second, he asked in the voice of someone who’d forgotten something they were supposed to know, “Why did you decide to walk me out of Lerry’s?”

“Because I thought you were gonna die,” said Joey, eyes on the light up ahead.

“Why?” said Quentin curiously.

“Because you’re super fucked up on morphine, dumbass,” said Joey, “Okay, we’re getting pretty close now. How close do you think I need to get for your friends to hear you if you call?”

“Uhm, I don’t know. Depends on how loud you yell,” said Quentin, smiling and shutting his eyes.

“Hey! Don’t fall asleep on my shoulder!” said Joey, trying not to smile, “Wake up and call your friends.”

“Right now?” asked Quentin, super confused and only half conscious, “Why?”

“To come get you,” said Joey.

“Why don’t you just walk up to the fire,” said Quentin, shutting his eyes again.

“Because I don’t think I—” Joey had been going to say can, but he smacked headfirst into an invisible barrier he hadn’t had any idea was there and pinged off so hard he went ass-over-tit backwards and slammed into the ground with the breath knocked out of him and the fear of God in his heart.

Holy SHIT—what the—oh my God. Ow. Fuck—oh!

“Quentin!” he called, sitting up, looking for where he’d dropped him. He didn’t see—Wait. Joey looked behind himself and saw Quentin laying in the dirt where he’d just landed and realized he’d slammed ass-over-tit hard into the cold unforgiving surface not of the ground but of Quentin. “Oh my God! I’m so sorry—are you okay?” He asked.

On the ground, Quentin let out a desperate wheezing sound, and Joey was horrified for a second thinking he was fighting to breathe again, and then he realized he was just trying to laugh with no air in his lungs. The dude barely had any air in there at all, after Joey slamming the shit out of his ribcage, but he just started wheeze-laughing uncontrollably anyway and didn’t stop for a good fifteen seconds, completely losing it down there in the dirt, and then he looked up at Joey with tears in his eyes from how hard he was laughing, and Joey started to laugh too.

“What!” said Joey with a grin.

Quentin tried, couldn’t get a word out, wheeze-laughed for another six seconds, and then tried, “How d—” He lost it again, and struggled to keep going, “—how did you do that?” He completely lost his ability to speak for another few seconds and couldn’t say anything, tears rolling down his face, then gasped out, “Did God just come out of nowhere and backhand you in the forehead? What the fuck! That was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen!”

“No,” said Joey, grinning at the sight of absolute merriment on the other dude’s face, and relaxing a little and slumping to a more comfortable sitting position behind him. “I hit your stupid fucking campfire barrier—it’s just invisible. Apparently.”

“So you can’t go over there?” asked Quentin, finally choking back the laughs a bit.

“Yeah, you’re on your own,” said Joey, “Think you can walk it?”

“Uhm,” said Quentin, looking in the direction of the fire. He pushed himself up on to his arms and then started laughing again and collapsed. “I’m sorry—I’m sorry,” he managed after a second, “I can’t stop now. I’ll get up. Just give me a second.”

Joey waited, smiling. Quentin took a few deep breaths, then tried again, and again immediately started to laugh and collapsed. “Dude,” said Joey.

“I’m trying!” pleaded Quentin, managing to choke the laughter back again, laying on his side, “God—what did you say I took again?”

“Morphine,” said Joey.

“How do you know that?” asked Quentin with curiosity.

“I looked at the label,” said Joey, “You don’t remember?”

“No,” said Quentin thoughtfully, “I remember singing with you though.”

Joey stopped and looked over at him very carefully. Feeling a very, very intense emotion at painful levels that he had no idea how to describe. “…You. But you remember stuff before the singing too, right?”

Quentin took a deep breath and smiled and thought about that, staring up at the sky, and then back over at him. “You called me a ‘dumbass,’ a lot,” he offered in a friendly way. He watched Joey for a second and then smiled at him with those huge fucking blue eyes, all glossy, and not seeing anything, like Joey was realizing for the first time now they hadn’t been all night. “When did you take your mask off?”

Fuck.

“Don’t remember,” lied Joey, not sure he could say more the right way just that second.

“Oh. You too?” asked Quentin.

“No,” said Joey quietly, “Not like that. I remember the rest fine.”

“That’s good,” said Quentin, shutting his eyes. “Why did you help me?”

Joey didn’t answer.

After a few seconds, Quentin opened his eyes and looked up at him again.

Joey met his gaze and swallowed hard, then said very quietly, “I thought it mattered.”

Quentin just looked at him for a few seconds, then gave him a little smile, and said, “Thanks. It does to me.”

“You better get going,” said Joey, “Back to your campfire. Before you get yourself into even more trouble, dumbass.”

“Okay,” said Quentin in a friendly way, “You don’t have to be mean about it.”

Joey offered him a hand, and Quentin took it, and Joey pulled him to his feet. They went forward together again, Joey supporting Quentin with one arm and with his other hand out this time, very careful approaching the place he’d been taken the fuck out before, and when he found it, he stopped, and shoved Quentin gently across the barrier that was only there for him. The guy almost lost his balance when he did that, but managed to keep his footing this time, and glanced back at him in confusion.

“I can’t go any further,” explained Joey. He pointed to the light not far now, past Quentin. He could ear voices coming from there. People talking together. “Get going. It’s a straight shot.”

“You’re not coming?” asked Quentin, looking kind of surprised and hurt, and for a horrible second Joey was sure that he did remember, and he was painfully happy about it, even knowing how stupid that was, and how it didn’t matter, because remembered or not, the little fake friendship they had had tonight was over the second he was sober again. But then Quentin tilted his head and added, “I know you gotta go back to your place, but you could come chill out for a minute first, and I could give you a flashlight or something for walking me back,” and he knew that he didn’t.

“I told you,” said Joey, struggling to smile, and hoping to God Quentin was fucked up enough to see the look on his face and buy it for what it was pretending to be, “I can’t go past your invisible wall. It’s survivors only over there. Now get going, and don’t be a dumbass and get into trouble like that again! Or you’ll die of a morphine overdose or something. I don’t want to have to bail your stupid ass out of a bad trip again—I have my own stuff to get done. And I might not even be there next time! So don’t have one.”

“Okay—I’ll try,” said Quentin, still smiling a little. He gave him an unsteady wave. “Thanks again.” Goodbye said, the survivor turned to go and started staggering unsteadily towards the light waiting for him up ahead.

Joey watched him go for a second, then started to turn to head home himself and caught a flash of moonlight on something, and stopped. There in the dirt by his feet was the little smiley face pin he’d given Quentin as a bribe—it must have come off when they fell or something—must have rolled, and—

He opened his mouth to call out “Hey! You left your button” at the retreating figure ahead of him, and then stopped, and slowly closed it instead. It wouldn’t matter. He wouldn’t even know what it was. Besides. It was probably better this way. Maybe definitely better. This way, he doesn’t know I lied to him. I’m still a killer and a monster, but at least I’m not somebody who betrayed him when he thought they were his friend.

Yeah. That was better. It would be better. Maybe things would be normal again. And he could forget about this. It had all been stupid to do anyway. He still didn’t know why he had—why he’d made bad decision after bad decision over and over tonight. Why he’d thought any of it would matter, in the end. The guy didn’t even remember it now. It was hard to think of anything that could matter less than that. You should go home. It’s been a long day.

He took a breath and turned to go, then paused, reconsidering, and reached down to retrieve his pin, and his hand hit the invisible wall he’d already forgotten the location of hard enough to sting. Shit. He took a knee, hoping maybe close the ground he’d have just enough space to reach it, but it had rolled maybe just six inches past where the realm would allow a thing like him to go, and it was stuck there now, just past his fingertips, out of reach, and where nobody would ever find it or use it or want it again, even if it was there, and there was nothing he could do about it.

“Hey!” It had been Quentin’s voice, coming from ahead of him, towards the fire, and Joey looked up. The survivor had paused and glanced over his shoulder, still just in sight, and was looking at him. He sounded happy—almost excited. And even from a good twenty feet off in the darkness, Joey could see he was smiling at him like he would have a friend. “I’ll see you around, Joey.”

Joey watched as Quentin turned and headed for the campfire again, and then very slowly stood up, leaving the pin where he could never get it, and watched the survivor disappear until he was well and truly gone, lost to sight through the nearest line of trees, and then he turned back and headed towards his own home, off through the fog, back to the old rotting lodge in Ormond with three other killers where he belonged.

No, thought Joey, No, you won’t.

[homesweetsewer]

Consolation Prize: Part 3 (Donatello x Fem Reader)

Hello! Part 3 is finally here (yay)! So glad I finally got some time this evening to work on this...its been killing me! I have one more part lined up to finish this one off and them I’m thinking of either doing an April-centric tie-in OR maybe a little Donnie x Reader intimate action OR maybe both if ya’ll are digging it. Let me know what you think :)

 Anywho, I’ll drop the links to the rest of this little saga below since quite a few of you have told me you appreciate having everything in one place.

Harmless: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

Radiant: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Consolation Prize: Part 1, Part 2

Donatello rolled out of bed long before his alarm had ever gone off. Truthfully, He hadn’t really gone to sleep other than an intermittent light doze punctuated by dark nightmares in which you broke up with him over his unintentional neglect. Each time he’d been jolted back into an uneasy wakefulness, lying in his bed and staring at the ceiling as his conversation with Raph played over and over in his mind. Worry ate incessantly at him. Were things really so bad that he was actually at risk of losing you?

His stomach twisted in knots as he picked his way through the darkened lair towards the kitchen, his mind focused as he worked through different scenarios to earn your forgiveness. As if on autopilot, he set a pot of coffee to brew and reached for a box of strawberry pop tarts. He hummed to himself as he ripped open the foil package and released the pastries from their confines. Absently, he licked the frosting from first one and then the other before slipping them back into the pack and replacing the box before reaching for his favorite coffee cup and pouring himself a healthy dose of the freshly brewed, caffeinated beverage. 

Sipping the scalding liquid carefully, he finalized the details of his plan as he made his way toward his lab. The door swung silently open and his nimble fingers sought out the light switch with practiced familiarity, flicking it on and flooding the space with brightness before shouldering the door closed behind himself. He retreated to his chair, seating himself behind his desk, ignoring the various monitors that hummed and buzzed with incoming data and information, as well as the various half finished projects he had scattered about the room. He’d get to work later but right now he had a more important priority. The most important priority he now realized. 

He took another steadying drink of coffee before reaching for his phone. In his head, he ran over the words he’d say and hoped you were in a forgiving mood. He scrolled through his contacts which were admittedly few. He was a mutant turtle after all and, as such, his social circle was limited to put it mildly. He found your name easily and tapped on it, a whimsical smile tugged at his lips as he took a moment to admire the photo he’d saved to your contact information. It was a photo that his youngest brother had snapped, long before he’d had any inkling of his true feelings for you, and it remained one of his favorites. 

“Alright, fam,” Mikey had instructed, “squish together and smile!”

The two of you had already been seated closely together on the couch and you hadn’t hesitated to snuggle yourself into his side and wrap your arms around him. He’d pulled you closer, one arm around your shoulders and the other around your waist in a tight embrace. Neither of you had been looking at the camera. Instead, you’d been looking deeply into one another’s eyes, a faint blush on your faces as you both smiled timidly at each other. What had been so easily over looked then, what was so obvious to him now, was the absolute adoration he’d felt for you in that moment. It was written all over the tender expression he wore as he looked down at you and you...you were absolutely beautiful.

“How’s this?” You’d asked the question in an almost whisper, your eyes never leaving his. 

“Perfect,” Michelangelo had responded with a knowing grin before digitally immortalizing the moment forever.

A sigh of longing escaped Don’s lips as he brushed a finger gently over your image. He’d loved you even then, he now knew, but he wanted to make sure you knew it, too. Taking a deep breath to fortify his nerves, he pressed the call button and waited with a gut full of nervous anxiety as it began to ring.

“Hello?” A groggy voice answered on the fourth ring. “Donnie?”

“Good morning, love...” Donatello faltered slightly at hearing your sleepy tone. “I...I didn’t wake you did I?”

The soft sound of blankets shifting preceded your annoyed grunt. “It’s six o’clock in the morning...on a Saturday,” you emphasized.

Donnie cringed slightly into his shell. He’d been so eager to speak with you and clear the air that he hadn’t even considered your love of sleeping late on the weekends. Already things were not going as well as he’d hoped. “I’m...I’m sorry...”

You sighed, “Is everything alright? You never call this early.”

“Y-Yes,” he stuttered. “Everything is fine. I just...I just wanted to talk to you. And,” he took a deep breath, “and apologize for last night. I know it’s not an excuse but I got carried away with what I was doing and lost track of time.”

“Four hours,” you uttered, sounding more awake and emotional now. “I waited on you to finish for four hours and you never came out.”

“I know,” Donnie grimaced. The slight tremor that had replaced the tiredness in your voice shot a dagger straight through his heart. He hurt you, perhaps even worse that he’d originally believed. “I’m sorry. I-I didn’t mean...”

“You don’t have to explain,” your voice was thick with emotion as you spoke, cutting him off. All your insecurities rushing to the forefront of your mind as you continued, “I know I’m not April O’Neil.”

Donatello’s brain faltered at that. You couldn’t possibly think...? Could you? He shook his head vehemently despite the fact that you couldn’t see it. “No, no, no, no, no! It-it isn’t like that at all...” 

“It’s okay,” you sniffled. “I understand if you’d rather spend time with her. I’m just...just...second place. I always have been. I know that.”

Donnie’s mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water as he tried to wrap his head around what you were saying. You seriously believed he’d settled for you when things hadn’t panned out with April? That you were some sort of filler? His anxiety melted into anger. Not at you. Never at you. He was angry with himself. He’d made you feel this way. Even worse, he could hear the tell-tale hitch in your breathing that told him that he’d made you cry. 

“Sweetheart,” his voice cracked and his own eyes took on a glassy sheen. “Please, don’t cry.” He swallowed around the lump that had formed in his throat. “I don’t know what I’ve said or done to make you think like that, but it absolutely is not true. I wouldn’t trade the time I spend with you for anyone or anything in the world! You...you are my world! You’re amazing!”

“Right.” You sounded anything but convinced. “Just not amazing enough, I guess...not like her.”

“Listen to me, love,” Don exhaled a shaky breath. “I know that I got too wrapped up in the project we were working on to realize how it must have looked to you, but April is a friend. Just a friend. I admit, I may have been slightly infatuated with her at one point in time...”

You scoffed at his understatement, “slightly infatuated?”

“But,” the ninja continued, "in retrospect, all I really feel for her is close friendship and a sense of gratitude for all she’s done for my family...and myself,” he confessed. “If it weren’t for her and her relationship with Casey, I wouldn’t be so happy. I wouldn’t have you.”

“If things has worked out with her,” you argued, “you wouldn’t know the difference.”

Donnie stated with certainty, “It wouldn’t have ever worked out with her.”

His declaration gave you pause. “Why not?”

“Because,” Don smiled wistfully, his grip on his phone tightening, “she isn’t you. I’m right where I was meant to be. With you.”

Your breath hitched at his words and you felt like crying again. “Oh, Don...”

“I know I haven’t done a very good job lately of letting you know, but,” the turtle’s voice softened, “you’re the most incredible thing that’s ever happened to me. I can’t take back the last few weeks, but if,” he took a deep breath, “if you’ll let me, I’d like to make it up to you.”

“Donnie...” The sincerity in his voice helped to begin soothing your aching heart but your nerves felt ragged after your outburst of emotion. 

The ninja pleaded. “Give me a chance to make this right between us.”

You took in a ragged breath. “How?”

“Come over tonight,” he requested. “Nine o’clock. No brothers. No April or Casey. No projects or experiments. Just the two of us.”

Your feelings may have still been hurt, but you had to admit that the proposition sounded wonderful. Still, you hesitated. “I don’t know...”

“Please,” Donatello spoke the words softly into the receiver. “I love you.” He poured every ounce of emotion he could muster into those three simple words, his heart pounding in his chest. “Only you. Always. Let me show you how much.”

You snuffled, tears once again flowing freely. “l-I love you, too.”

Donnie let out a breath that he hadn’t even known he’d been holding. Relief flooded through his veins at hearing the words repeated back in your trembling voice. “You’ll never know how wonderful it feels every time you say that.”

“I think I have a pretty good idea,” you sniffed. 

Hopeful, he asked, “Will you please come over tonight? I need to see you. Nine o’clock?”

“Yeah,” you finally agreed. “Nine o’clock.”

Donnie bid you farewell but not before again telling you how much he loved you. As soon as you hung up, he was back up on his feet and moving. He had a lot to do and not much time to do it in. He grabbed his now cold cup of coffee and exited the lab, making a beeline for the kitchen. Just as he’d hoped, he found his brothers there, still half asleep and gathered around the table for breakfast.

“Guys,” he announced as he approached, “I need a huge favor...” 

[celestialholz]

Riddle Me This

So, uh... casually reblogging on the train yesterday morning, and there was this:

(Find the original over here: https://anxietyproblem.tumblr.com/post/184795738758)

And well, Qcard inspiration, basically. I’m beginning to think I can literally Qcard anything ever, to be perfectly honest, but have some dumb, wholesome and warming fun for your Wednesday evening anyway, because I write far too much angst and sometimes I think I need to lighten up a little lmao

This is dedicated to @q-card​ as we had a bit of a crap day yesterday and we deserve some silliness and love, as do you lovely people. <3

------

It’s not even a full minute into his shift when he hears an echoed ping; he spins, baffled, almost coating himself in the first tea of the morning, ready to reestablish boundaries in as few syllables as possible, but to his surprise, it isn’t Q. Instead, it’s simply an ancient piece of parchment, and he makes for it in mild intrigue, barely resisting the urge to roll his eyes - what in the cosmos could be so important that he couldn’t have said ten minutes earlier, when they were still half-dressed and making their way through overly sugared pastries? If the god thinks this new relationship is about to devolve to the level of note-passing -

He stares at the elaborate cursive for a moment, brilliant in scarlet ink, and purses his lips.

“‘I am the beginning of everything, the end of everywhere. I am the beginning of eternity, the end of time and space. What am I?’” He reads aloud in disbelief. 

... Dear galaxies, it’s even worse than notes.

He considers it for a moment, chiding himself for even humouring the riddle - it’s hardly the conundrum of saving three Enterprises simultaneously, or proving humanity worthy of continuing. He’s a Starfleet captain, for pity’s sake, and he’s fairly certain that the kindergarten population of the ship could come up with something reasonably accurate in response.

“Do you want to know now?” He questions thin air dryly, narrowing his eyes in anticipation of an amused Q’s appearance; handwriting further writes itself across the page instead, and Picard can almost taste the self-satisfaction.

No, no. I can see you’re incredibly busy, wouldn’t want to disturb your vital mission. 

He consults the ready room ceiling in palpable exasperation and takes a seat, surveying the latest duty roster just so he looks suitably preoccupied to any casual, omniscient observer. It takes him a moment to realise something profoundly annoying: this is a riddle from an ancient entity, known for his complex tests, and therefore it can’t be that simple.

... Can it?

-------

“All ahead, ensign - warp five,” he instructs mid-morning, a proud, “aye, Captain” setting them off towards the closest starbase to meet a Risan diplomat. He settles into his seat, glances across at his first.

“Number One,” he begins, “may I ask you something?”

“Of course, sir,” Riker replies goodnaturedly, brow raised. “Do we need to adjourn?”

“Oh no, we’re just fine here. A simple example of wordplay for you, if you’ll indulge me.”

The brow hitches further, and the beginnings of a grin form on his friend’s lips.

“A riddle, Captain? Haven’t humoured those in a while. Go ahead.”

He recites Q’s riddle verbatim, and Riker stares at him for a moment, expression bemused.

“... I’ll be honest with you, sir,” he says eventually, “was kind of hoping for something more elaborate.”

Picard blinks for a second, nodding.

“Mm, so was I,” he replies dryly, staring up at the viewscreen. “It really isn’t any more interesting than the obvious, is it?”

“Don’t think so, no. Sorry to disappoint you.” Riker grins, shrugging, and Picard smiles back.

“Forget I asked, Commander. Thank you anyway. You have the bridge.”

--------

He finds exactly who he’s been looking for for a while in Engineering; Data’s halfway up a Jeffries tube, reciting conduit issues to the computer, and Picard crouches down, glancing up at his second.

“Mister Data,” he greets, “you’re quite the poet, I’m sure you’ll enjoy a riddle I’ve been pondering.”

Data’s head quirks to a curious angle given the lack of space, bewildered.

“Would you prefer we discussed this out in the open, Captain?” He enquires mildly, and Picard barely represses a smirk.

“No, no need - I won’t take up much of your time.”

“As you wish,” says the android, voice echoing around the tube. “I must confess to being intrigued at the prospect, sir.”

“Knew you would be.” Picard smiles quietly, and plays the words back aloud.

“... There are eight hundred and sixteen potential responses in Federation standard,” he replies simply, “ranging from the metaphysical to the -”

“Alphabetical?” Another voice answers fondly, and Picard glances up at his grinning chief engineer. “Sometimes, Data, an egg is just an egg.”

“... I am perplexed by your choice of vernacular, Geordi. What do dietary requirements have to do with the Captain’s riddle?”

Picard doesn’t even need to stare up at the familiar puzzlement of the Commander to acknowledge it. 

“Although Commander La Forge is most likely correct, sir - the most logical option is the most plausible in this instance. Riddles do tend to have simple conclusions, and none of the alternate options fit quite as well.”

Amusement fills Picard as he quietly excuses himself with a nod, leaving his colleagues exchanging confused glances.

-------

“Guinan,” he questions, half an hour from the starbase, “how are you with riddles?”

“I prefer my words less shadowed,” the El-Aurian replies from nine decks hence, matter-of-fact. “Why do you ask, Captain?”

“Personal curiosity,” he answers not untruthfully. “What do you make of this one?”

He recites it lightly, unconsciously leaning forward onto elbows as he awaits her response - if anyone aboard could have any manner of higher wisdom, it’s surely his old friend, her mostly eradicated race largely a mystery even to him -

Guinan clears her throat, and he can clearly visualise her dry expression.

“You’re a deeply intelligent guy, Jean-Luc,” she answers in exasperation. “You can’t tell me you don’t already know the answer to that.”

“Well of course I know it,” he exclaims woefully. “But I can’t help feeling it isn’t so easy.”

“... I mean, could be ‘nothingness’, I guess, but that’s even more ridiculous than the answer.”

“Mm,” he mutters in agreement, hesitating - his new relationship with Q isn’t something he ever wants to reveal to anyone, and especially not to Guinan, but perhaps a vague hint couldn’t hurt...

“If I told you this was set by someone known for being, well... difficult, would it alter your solution?”

“That’s most of the known galaxy in my experience. Are they also known for being stupid?”

Picard almost chokes on tea at the very idea. “Good lord, no.”

“No, then,” she replies honestly.

“... Ah.”

------

His afternoon of diplomacy having gone as well as it ever can with such an awkward ambassador and his mind as plagued as it’s become over the course of the day, Picard finds he can’t quite help himself as they arrive in transporter room one. The Risan’s clearly intelligent, has spent the last few hours desperately trying to prove as such, and amiable enough.

“Ambassador,” he asks as he nods at the chief, “perhaps a parting gift, as a show of good favour towards our new trade agreement. What humans would call a ‘riddle’; lateral thinking, in the form of wordplay.”

“I did think I’d had quite enough of your wordplay today,” replies the man indulgently, and Picard internally winces, “but as it’s an intellectual custom, please feel free.”

“Wonderful. Now...”

The Risan glances at him in disbelief a moment later.

“... Do they tend to be so simplistic, Captain?” He asks in amusement.

“Usually, yes,” he murmurs almost to himself. “Thank you, Ambassador. I’ll inform Starfleet of our conclusions post-haste, don’t let me keep you any longer.”

“Good show, Picard. Travel safe.”

“And you, Kanfla. Engage.”

Miles stares at him as he leaves, agape.

“... You do know that the answer, right sir?”

Picard rolls his eyes. “Yes, chief.”

------

He’s rather exhausted his options at this point, he realises darkly shortly before he clocks off. Beverly, whilst an invaluable friend and exceedingly helpful, is a woman of science and logic who will consider him likely in the first throes of something nasty and neurological if he starts questioning simple conclusions; Deanna, he acknowledges warily, is likely to assume him troubled and attempt to pry the depths of his psyche, and he takes little joy in being his dear counselor’s subject even when he needs to be. So that leaves -

He takes a subtle breath, and spins in his seat, glad the bridge crew’s on a split shift today and therefore that no one has to hear this twice.

“Mister Worf,” he begins primly.

“Captain?” The Klingon asks attentively.

“... May you indulge me for a moment?”

“Of course, sir.”

“A... riddle.” He almost grimaces, hides it admirably - he doesn’t doubt his lieutenant’s intelligence, but Worf is hardly known for his verbal subtleties or affection for the lateral; indeed, he looks mildly annoyed at the very notion.

“... Captain, with respect, I am not certain I would be of much use to you. Perhaps Counselor Troi would be a more... suitable choice.”

Picard’s lip twists for a split second, and he nods, pulls down his shirt promptly, and stares blankly out into space.

“... Mm,” he answers fairly. “As you were, Lieutenant.”

“... Yes, Captain.”

-------

He finds Q sipping something luminous from a spiral-shaped flute upon his return to his quarters, periwinkle blue sequins shimmering upon the evening robe he’s adopted, and the god grins at his appearance.

“Ah, mon capitaine!” He greets in delight, and damn his cursed riddles, but Picard admits privately that there’s something distinctly warm in his chest at the sight of him - of having someone he cherishes to come home to.

... Not that he has any intention of showing him as such, of course; their kiss is perfunctory at best, and his withdrawing look could sour honey.

“Oh, come now, dearest - you aren’t stuck, are you?” He teases, amused. “Do give me your answer, won’t you? The anticipation’s been driving me mad.”

Picard stares at him, trying desperately to cling to irritation rather than silently melt at the excitement in those eternal eyes. 

“You challenge me,” he’d said not two nights earlier against a pillow, fingers trailing across his captain’s cheek. “IQ of two thousand and five, darling. I see everything, I can do everything; do you have any idea how rare that is?”

He valiantly maintains his exasperated countenance, and answers dryly, “The letter ‘e’.”

Q’s face falls with an almost comical suddenness. 

“... What?” He says in disbelief. “What in the galaxies -”

He snaps, summons back the paper that’s spent its day upon the ready room desk, scanning it for a half-moment before raising disappointed eyes back to Picard’s bemused ones.

“Well yes, alright, fine,” he dismisses, “admittedly that does fit quite nicely, but did you really think I was going to offer you something with such a depressingly basic solution? Think about it, man!”

This is their acquaintance, Picard notes with a quiet thrill; the permanent game, ramped up to warp ten now that they’re lovers, every touch and night cycle whisper a tease, a promise, an idle nothingness laced with potential meaning.

He has no intention of failing, however little he has to prove any more, and so he thinks through that brilliant stare, mulls the words over his mind.

Beginning of everything; end of everywhere. Beginning of...

“... Ah,” he murmurs, humoured despite a certain weariness. “Ought to have realised it was self-indulgent.”

“’Self -’? Oh,” Q answers softly, smirking. “Well obviously it could be me, yes, but I was thinking rather, er... closer to home, Jean-Luc.”

Picard’s mouth opens, though he realises belatedly that he has nothing of note to say. 

“You... meant me?” He asks dumbly, baffled. “How can I possibly be -”

“Perspective.” Q smiles warmly, dots fingers across his uniform before clasping a hand quietly. “You begin and end everything for me, my dear. Honestly, your colleagues are morons - you’re right here! How could that not have occurred to th -”

Picard embraces him spontaneously, buries himself in a warm chest, treasures the arms that encircle him fiercely in response.

“You’re an overly dramatic fool,” he scolds tenderly, no heat at all to the words. “You can just say things sometimes, Q.”

“Too dull,” he drawls, grinning from somewhere above his favourite mortal. “We don’t do dull, dearest.”

He presses a soft kiss to Picard’s skull, and the captain wonders idly how he could ever have been annoyed.

[creampuffqueen]

Feyre x Rhysand baby headcanons

Alrighty! First one for acotar kiddos! 

-Alright alright alright here we go kids

-Feyre and Rhys are clearly the first to have kids. It's just a fact

-Unlike in the ToG world, however, it takes wayyy longer

-In the acotar world, it's been about thirty-ish years since the war with Hybern

-Things have happened. Eris has taken over his father's spot as High Lord of the Autumn Court. Tarquin found his mate. Helion realized that Lucien was his son and took him in.

-And yet, the Inner Circle has remained the same

-The first few years after the events of acofas were kind of hard for Feyre. Even though she knew it would take a while, she was still disappointed when she didn't get pregnant immediately

-Then life got busy, and their focus was elsewhere

-Which is why, nearly thirty years later, Feyre finds herself.. not feeling too great

-The thing is, none of her symptoms scream 'PREGNANCY' that much

-She was nauseous for a few days, no throwing up

-Had an odd craving or two

-Was extra tired for a while there

-So neither Feyre nor Rhys is too concerned

-The real surprise comes when Feyre starts gaining weight

-Now that's odd

-Feyre's been training for three decades. She's like, swole

-But then her breasts start to get sensitive

-And her stomach starts to get pudgy and soft

-The final clue is when her scent starts to change

-Rhys wakes up one morning and smells his amazing wife, only to find... she doesn't smell quite the same

-Feyre feels fine, but because Rhys is Rhys and must be overprotective, he instantly calls for Madja, their healer

-Madja knows what's up right away

-Because she's just cool like that

-"I am pleased to inform you that you are about three months pregnant, Lady Feyre."

-At first neither believes it

-They haven't been trying, but then again, they haven't been preventing it either

-As soon as the healer leaves, making sure that Feyre promises to show up regularly at the clinic, the couple literally just sit and squeal with excitement for like a solid five minutes

-They are freaking ecstatic, like seriously. Feyre has never seen Rhys so happy before. They're both over the moon

-Because Feyre's already three months pregnant and her scent has changed, they decide to just tell everyone

-Rhys drags Cassian, Azriel, Mor, and Amren down for dinner. Nesta and Elain, being sort of married to some of those people, obviously tag along

-When they're all gathered, Cassian is being all 'what is this even about'

-And Feyre pretty much just jumps up and down and says 'I'm pregnant!'

-Like, she's still so freaking excited

-Of course, the whole Inner Circle pretty much loses it

-Cassian is yelling and patting Rhys on the back, Mor and Elain are both crying, Nesta is actually smiling and so is Azriel. Even Amren seems mildly less annoyed with them for once

-Basically everyone is just so happy for them

-And because Rhys can't keep a secret, almost the entirety of Velaris knows within the week

-Which means that the Court of Nightmares is also aware

-And the Illyrian camps

-And... other Courts

-The citizens of Velaris are all so kind. Feyre gets tons of handmade gifts and lots of food, which is good because she is mostly just hungry and tired all the time

-The Court of Nightmares is... another experience. They give congrats, mostly so they don't seem rude

-But otherwise they don't bother them too much

-Some of the Illyrian camps are hostile, but most are also at least semi-polite

-It's the other Courts Rhys is worried about

-He doesn't think most of them will try anything. But he is concerned

-He doesn't want anything to happen to Feyre or the baby

-So he makes Feyre always keep someone with her just in case. He just wants a buddy system

-Feyre is annoyed at first, but she doesn't want anything to happen either, so she's fine with it. Besides, she likes spending time with her friends and family

-When Feyre is about six months pregnant, Nesta finds out she's pregnant, too

-Which Feyre is ecstatic about, because it means she gets to experience pregnancy with her sister

-Nesta's pregnancy is, unfortunately, a lot harder

-Which means Feyre can't spend as much time with her as she'd like

-But still, it's fun

-At nine months pregnant, Feyre is irritable and uncomfortable

-Rhys spends a few nights in guest bedrooms because Feyre needs the whole bed to sleep

-And some nights she can't sleep at all, so she wanders around the River House aimlessly

-They have a nursery, toys, and so many clothes they don't know what to do with them all

-All they need is a baby

-One day after her due date, Feyre wakes up suddenly in the middle of the night in a pool of water

-She goes to take a bath, trying not to wake up her mate, when she feels it

-A contraction

-It's not that bad, though, so she takes the bath

-She thinks it's just a false alarm, since it was only one and nearly half an hour later there weren't any more

-But when she wakes Rhys up to change the sheets, she feels another

-Again, Rhys being Rhys, gets Madja

-Poor woman, she was probably being called to the River House twice a day because Rhys is an anxious mother hen

-But, guess, what

-Feyre's in labor!

-As far as Fae births go, hers is pretty easy

-Afterwards Feyre doesn't want to know what a hard labor feels like

-Because she was in labor for eleven hours and was in so much pain she couldn't feel her legs halfway through

-Madja nearly had to pull the baby out herself

-Rhys was there to support her the whole way through, and was honestly the only reason Feyre did so well

-If it weren't for him she thinks she wouldn't have been able to do it

-But after everything is said and done

-A little baby boy is asleep on Feyre's chest

-His name is Cirrus Beddor Archeron

-After Clare, the girl who was an unknowing sacrifice to Amarantha

-Cirrus has a head of night-black hair, and tiny little wings wrapped around his body that are nearly translucent with how thin they are

-For Illyrians, they don't gain much body weight soon after birth because all the muscle and fat goes to strengthening the wings

-Which is true for little Cirrus. He's a tiny little bit underweight until he's about a month old

-But damn is he cute

-When he opens his eyes, Feyre nearly gets her breath taken away. He looks exactly like the boy the Bone Carver showed her

-As he gets older, Cirrus is a good kid

-A troublesome toddler, but hey, what can you expect, really? Have you seen his relatives?

-Every now and then he'll say something very weirdly wise for someone so young

-And it's incredibly obvious how powerful he is

-Like, he's got powers from all the Courts, plus extra Night Court powers, PLUS Illyrian genetics and powers

-This kid is crazy powerful

-Which is why Rhys and Feyre train with him relentlessly

-If Cirrus can't expel his powers properly, he could seriously injure someone else. Or even himself

-He's a smart kid, and a strong one

-By the time he's six years old he's got a handle on his powers

-Not enough to properly use them, but enough to control them

-Which is good

-Because Feyre finds herself pregnant again

-This time she's pregnant at the same time as Elain, which is fun again

-And just like last time, her pregnancy is smooth sailing

-Cirrus will practice his reading by reading books to Feyre's belly

-And Rhys is again, overprotective doting mother hen

-This baby is a girl

-And she's the exact opposite of Cirrus

-Feyre's gold-brown hair and violet eyes

-Wings, but not as much power as her older brother

-Her name is Camille Alis Archeron

-Camille's powers are sort of strange

-She has a tiny bit of each power, but her most prominent is not Night Court powers. It's Summer, Day, and Spring

-Camille is a quieter kid

-Cirrus loves her to bits, but sometimes he's just too much for his introverted little sister

-She does, however, get along strangely well with Mor. Even though Mor is her opposite, she's definitely Camille's favorite aunt

-And this little girl also ADORES books

-She spends almost all her time in the library

-When Camille is four years old, another addition joins the Archeron family

-A second baby girl, with hair blacker than the night, and violet eyes

-She looks exactly like Rhys

-Her name is Caliphe Feyre Archeron

-And she's the most troublesome of the three

-It's because she's the baby

-So she gets away with everything

-Cirrus and Camille love their little sister, but she's kind of... ruthless

-Too much time with aunt Amren

-Caliphe is obsessed with jewelry and all things shiny, and is also obsessed with flying and fighting

-She loves to fly more than anything in the entire world

-And Cali also has the strongest Night Court powers of all her siblings

-Her Daemati powers are out of this world. It's completely insane

-She doesn't have any other powers besides those from her father. Nothing from any other Court

-But still, she's freakishly strong

-Feyre and Rhysand have got three of the strongest Fae on their hands

-And you know what?

-Their kids are their joys

-The reason they get up in the morning

-And yeah, maybe Camille is reading instead of doing schoolwork, and Cirrus is causing trouble in the markets, and Caliphe is stealing jewels

-But they wouldn't have it any other way

-The story Worlds of Fire and Darkness takes place when Cirrus is 20, Camille is 14, and Caliphe is 8

[merinnan]

DMBJ Explore with the Note Ep 5

Okay, now that my workshop is finished, time for DMBJ Explore with the Note ep 5! Otherwise I will spend the entire afternoon just fucking around in WoW instead (one day I will show you screenshots of my Iron Triangle-as-WoW-toons).

We start ep 5 with the usual counts 

Season 2 Xiaoge Rescue Count: 2 for Wu Xie, 2 for protagonists, 3 for everyone 

Season 2 Wu Xie Swoon Count: 0 

Season 2 Evil Hair Count: 3

Cumulative Xiaoge Rescue Count: 12 for Wu Xie, 17 for protagonists, 18 for everyone 

Cumulative Wu Xie Swoon Count: 6

- It's been a few eps since we had updates to the rescue or swoon counts, so here's hoping for Ep 5 

- Ah, yes, the baby archaeologists just discovered the heavenly palace 

- At least this girl is marginally less annoying than she was in the novel 

- ...okay, I take it back

- Sweetie, it's a fucking tomb, why are you upset that there's a corpse in there? 

- Those are some impressive fingernails 

- lol, and they were all so distracted by the girl that no-one noticed 'Xiao Zhang' going all Zhang Qiling to get up there to check out what freaked her out

- I am disappoint that they didn't keep the present time crew in form-fitting wetsuits for the whole underwater tomb investigation like they did with the flashback crew 

- OMG the look on Wenjin's face, I love it 

- I think she's starting to realise that he knows what he's doing

-Very good questions, Wenjin 

- Oh, so that wasn't just better set lighting, the tomb was actually fully lit somehow? The better question in this case is not 'why is it suddenly so dark' but 'how the fuck was this underwater tomb so well lit?'

- THEN you can follow it up with 'why has the mysterious lighting suddenly gone out?' 

- WHY would you bring such a group of easily scared kids on an archaeological expedition to EXPLORE THROUGH TOMBS? 

- That seems like a bad idea even if you didn't think anything weird would go on

- ISTG, Sanxing, Wenjin, and Xiaoge are the only level-headed ones of the bunch 

- A mural. They were in hysterics over a mural. 

- I mean, yeah, there's a lot of high mountains, so not surprising you can't tell which one it is

- I was gonna say she's super judgey for an archaeologist but...nah, yeah, that tracks for academia, speaking from experience XD

 - This episode has been taunting me with potential rescues that never quite get there, so it better actually pay off with one of them this episode

- Oooh, bitty shadow 

- Wonder if it's the baby corpse from the jar earlier 

- ...oh, right, Sanshu's still running around in some weird trance

- Awww, the lights go out in the heavenly palace room, and the entire set lighting goes from lovely and well-lit so you can actually see what's on screen, to super dark and shadowy, even outside that room

- Sorry, sanmei, I know I said I’d stop talking about lighting, but...I live in eternal hope of good lighting. The flashbacks here were actually GOOD up until now. So I am sad they've gone back to bad lighting. 

- I'm embarrassed to say that it's taken me the entirety of Guardian, Granting You A Dreamlike Life, DMBJ 1, and now partway through ep 2 of DMBJ 2 before I've realised that I can pause Viki playbacks by hitting my space bar.

- OMFG, how many rooms are there in this tomb with a set of porcelain vases arranged in a particular order?

- Smart, Wenjin, conserving flashlight batteries like that. 

- I know that this Wenjin must be older than the Wenjin in the Chongqi flashbacks, but why couldn't we have had this Wenjin in those flashbacks as well?

- Chongqi Wenjin is ok, but this one's more level-headed and competent. And much better at de-escalating semi-hysterical girls. 

- Then again, I suppose if Chongqi Wenjin had this Wenjin's skills, they wouldn't have been able to have had that dumb ~DRAAMAA~ with the love triangle

- Tunnel floor is suddenly wet again instead of dry. Wish they'd make up their mind 

 - Evil Hair Count: 4 

- This time creeping on random guy at the back of the party 

- Who is mildly disturbed that he's suddenly got water down the back of his neck. Don't blame him

- Judging by the way Xiaoge just clapped a hand over his mouth and nose, I'm guessing that they all just got gassed. 

- And it must be a REALLY FAST acting gas if they all collapsed like 5 seconds after Xiaoge covered his nose and mouth, and he seems to be fine

- Oh, no, spoke to soon, down he goes 

- Okay, Sanshu. A) That's creepy, and b) why aren't you also affected? 

- ...something that takes down Xiaoge for long enough that he wakes up in a hospital bed concerns me 

- I do not blame him one bit for looking so perturbed

- OMG, that GRRM roast, that's fantastic 

- I hope Xiaoge is just leaving out all of the unnecessary family stuff that he doesn't think Wu Xie and Pangzi need to do, otherwise he just implied that the Zhangs have just, like, misplaced him for 20 or so years and not looked for him?

- Wu Xie is always so desperate to believe the best of Sanshu, it's really cute 

- Ah, I see we're back to the requisite pingxie staring for the episode. Excellent

- Here's the clearest sign yet that S2 does not follow on from S1 at all, as it completely ignores changes that S1 made to the plot and instead is referencing novel events that did not happen in the drama. 

- I would have been SO FUCKING CONFUSED if I hadn't read the first novel

- lol, Xiaoge. Giving a tiny almost-smile and clapping someone on the shoulder after dropping a bombshell like that on them is NOT how you're supposed to talk to your crush

- And it looks like we're now back to Wu Xie's nightmares from the first ep 

- ...is that last one supposed to be Xiaoge? It's hard to tell with the angle and (yes, sorry, sanmei) the lighting 

- Way to ruin the moment, Pangzi 

- ...omg Pangzi 

- I'm kinda cringing now

-  Hahah, the look on Wu Xie's face. Like, same 

- Those are good points, Pangzi, but wouldn't you still have the problem of being underwater without oxygen tanks? That tomb is pretty far down and mostly buried in the sea bed, after all 

- ...Wu Xie that maths made no sense at all

- Rude. Pangzi has said useful things before now! 

- LOL at all the "don't touch anything" "i mean it" "also" "DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING" 

- Because we all know that Pangzi is gonna touch stuff and try to steal at least one thing 

- Oh, there you are, A-Ning 

- How did you get in there?

- This is an unnecessarily long sequence of Xiaoge running his fingers over the door and Pangzi messing with his hair, set to super annoying BGM. Was it really necessary to have a full 1 minute 40 seconds of that? 

- That should have been done in, like, 30 seconds tops.

- I do like how excited this Wu Xie is to see the cool architectural stuff like the moving doors in here 

- After that first hallway, they all seem so unconcerned about traps 

- Tombs are usually, quiet, Wu Xie. Hence the saying 'quiet as the tomb'

- Xiaoge's tiny smiles at Wu Xie and Pangzi's banter are just adorable

- OMG THEIR FACES

- But guys, you really should have looked for traps first 

- Before the walls started trying to squish you like pancakes 

- "Start climbing", says Xiaoge, as he just fucking leaps up the sides of the walls

- Good thing these walls are conveniently not smooth and straight, with regular hand and footholds 

- Xiaoge Rescue Count: 3 for protagonists

- Not quite the dramatic rescue I was hoping for, but I'll take it since it's been so long 

- The closed walls has now made them a cute little tunnel to crawl through

- Oh, wait, annoying girl was from one of the Nine Gate families? 

- Which one? I'll have to look her up later, I've completely forgotten her name.

- Xie Lianhuan is talking Sanshu into taking him along on the original expedition. Honestly, dude, you dying is all your fault, you weren't even supposed to be there

- Oh, Qiu Dekao was involved in the 20 year ago bullshit as well. Why am I not surprised? 

- And with the tomb from S1, too, also 20 years ago

- Wait, if Wenjin was the leader the whole time, how come she kept deferring to Sanshu? 

- Dramatic bgm! Dramatic reused footage! 

- Oh yeah, the looks on their faces, I know exactly who just popped into mind for Pangzi and Wu Xie at that 

- Because who else could have done it?

- ...okay, except Sanshu, point 

- Oh noooooo, more fucking underwater diving scenes 

- This show is instilling in me a visceral loathing of underwater diving scenes. They're awful

- Like, seriously, after 5 eps they've already shown enough underwater goddamn diving scenes to fill up a full half of an episode 

- An entire quarter of one episode was made up of them 

- Oh my GOD that bgm. That was...something

- Okay, Xie Lianhuan was supposed to have dug this passage? Seriously? 

- He was only missing for a day before they found his body, how the fuck was he supposed to dig a loooooong passage, high enough for a fully grown adult to walk crouched, in less than a day?

- Ah, and that's ep 5. 

 Count updates: 

 Season 2 Xiaoge Rescue Count: 2 for Wu Xie, 3 for protagonists, 4 for everyone 

Season 2 Wu Xie Swoon Count: 0 

Season 2 Evil Hair Count: 4

Cumulative Xiaoge Rescue Count: 12 for Wu Xie, 18 for protagonists, 19 for everyone 

Cumulative Wu Xie Swoon Count: 6 

Season 2 is decidedly lacking in swoons so far. It better up its game.

[angelbabylu]

Something Wicked // LH

pairing: witch!oc x vampire!luke

word count: 5k

warnings: smut, fluff, magical stuff 

notes: this is the most self indulgent thing i’ve ever done. it is comprised of a few different elements: first i got the idea for this from this book series about a witch falling in love with a vampire. on top of that, i’ve always been obsessed with higher education for supernatural creatures (like hogwarts but as a university) and i decided to add some of that element to this fic as well. next, there are a few allusions to Macbeth and Les Miserables in this because i really enjoyed how they fit with the story line. and finally, Luke is french in this?? bec i thought it would be hot & also i loved the idea of him being made a vampire during the french revolution. this fic ended up being mostly character and world building and then smut lol but i may revisit this universe again with some actual plot at a later date. 

title: from Macbeth 

:: ::

It was almost 9 pm when the wind began to pick up outside Margo’s half-opened window. It usually wouldn’t have bothered her–she loved the ominous rustle of the trees and the way the wind’s magic made her feel as if she could fly. But tonight, it was whipping jet black hair into a frenzy in front of her face, making it almost impossible to read the book of potion ingredients that sat in front of her. At first, she had tried tucking the offending strands behind one ear, then another. When the hair tie she used to secure it into a curly knot atop her head broke, she groaned in frustration, her head slamming on the desk with a dull thud.

“Alright you fucking mop,” Margo growled to her curls. “I’ll close the window.”

She was surprised to find the rest of her room dark when she moved away from the incandescent lamp that lived on her desk. The enchanted item had slowly increased in brightness as the sun had given way to its rival, assuring that Margo’s studies weren’t bothered by such trivialities as not having enough light to read.

It took only five long strides for Margo to cross her room, but in that time her mind had moved from the conveniences of being a modern witch back to the potions test she was going to take the next day. Mutely, she recited the four fundamental potion bases and what effects they could help achieve. She was on the third when a bright flash of lightning pulled her from her thoughts and stilled her hand on the window sill.

That explained the way her hair was behaving, at least. There was a thunderstorm brewing, and her hair’s natural propensity to disobey increased whenever electricity stirred in the air. She closed the window and went back to her desk; she had more important things to worry about. By the time the deep roll of thunder disturbed the air, she was tucked back in her chair, nose buried in her book.  

Margo didn’t look up again until her senses drove her to do so. There was a slight tingling in her thumb–a witches sixth sense that told her another being was coming her way. Eventually, she didn’t need any of her preternatural senses–the loud clacking of heels against old wood floors announced the arrival easily enough.

Mildly annoyed, Margo sat back. It was too much to ask for more than a few hours to herself–especially when her sisters were involved. She had barely taken a full breath before the door to her room was slammed opened revealing Serena, dressed in what had to be her most revealing outfit all year. The leopard print skirt was tight and short, struggling to fully cover the entirety of her ass. The top–well Margo wasn’t sure if she could call it a top. It was more a flimsy piece of mesh and two strips of fabric to cover her breasts. But if anyone could pull it off, it was Serena. It was not just her amazon like appearance that made this possible, but also the obvious confidence that rolled of her and the way she commanded attention as soon as she entered a room.

Much like she did now.

But Margo had known Serena too long to be intimidated by her.

Raising an eyebrow tauntingly, Margo asked, “Trying to catch an incubus?”

The sharp sound of Serena’s heels was the only response as Serena moved deeper into the room to sit on Margo’s bed. The bed was raised to allow space for storage underneath. Often times, Margo found herself leaping just to get on to it, but Serena was tall enough that she could sit down without a struggle.

Finally, Serena met her eyes again. “Not everyone has a hot vampire boyfriend drooling over them, Mar. I definitely wouldn’t mind an incubus.”

And there it was. The reason why Margo had thrown herself so wholeheartedly into her studies that night.

A warmth started to spread on her cheeks and to the tips of her hair as she blushed. “Shut up,” she grumbled, hating the way just the mention of his name sent her pulse skyrocketing.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Serena said as she played with one of the many earrings up and down her lobe. “Maybe you should invite him to the party tonight.”

Margo rolled her eyes and ignored the girl on her bed in favor of her text. “I’m not going to the party tonight, Serena. I already told you that.”

“Oh for Circe’s sake, Margo.” Serena’s voice was colored with annoyance. “Just come to the party. Live a little.”

Margo kept her eyes focused on the page in front of her. Under Fire Potions, she began reading the uses – poison, hallucinogens, mind-alterations, etc. Serena got increasingly agitated behind her, but Margo continued to ignore her.

When Serena grumbled, “Margo?” Margo finally gave her the response she had been looking for.

“I said I am not coming.” Margo gestured wildly to the mess of notebooks, sticky notes, and highlighters strewn across her desk–though this was not the only reason she would be missing out on the festivities.

Margo had other plans come the witching hour. She tried not to let her face betray that fact, knowing that Serena would not take lightly to her ditching her party for a boy.

“You’ve been studying all night. Take a break and come celebrate with us.”

Margo had argued with Serena enough to know that a simple no might not suffice. Instead, she uncapped a highlighter and grumbled, “Serena, if you don’t leave me alone I’m going to hex you green for the next 24 hours. Then, neither of us will be able to enjoy the party.”

Such use of magic on school grounds was, of course, strictly forbidden. But Margo would happily risk probation for the few minutes of blissful quiet it would bring. Luckily, no one had to hex anyone. Serena accepted her defeat and left Margo’s room, muttering, “Your loss.”

Margo and Serena were both students at the University of the Arcana. They were the world’s worst kept secret. The things that mortal beings feared most were real and living among them, though not with as much horrific tendency towards the cruel as mortals liked to believe. Or, at least, no more so than the mortals themselves. Witches, vampires, demons, shapeshifters–they were human just like everyone else, just a different subclass of humans.

Part of the human experience, unfortunately, was going to a university and getting a degree. Here, Margo studied horticultural magic. It was a degree with which, as her mom liked to remind her, she could go on to become a pharmacist. That was not her plan. She wanted to own a greenhouse someday–maybe do some rudimental medicinal remedies for people in her community. She often dreamed of this simple life on a countryside somewhere.

For now, she was forced to live on a campus large enough to be a country of its own. Not only that but the sorority Gamma Nu with which she had pledged required her to live with twenty-nine other student witches. As much as she hated it–it was a campus requirement. No student witch was allowed on campus without pledging to a coven. That, unfortunately, meant that her sorority sisters never gave her a moment of peace.

Serena had only left Margo’s room for twenty minutes before the heavy bass of some modern hip-hop song began shaking her room.

“Oh, you’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Margo yelled to no one in particular. The tips of her fingers began to spark blue as she itched to hex someone. It seemed that her sisters couldn’t be bothered to cast a privacy spell on their party, thus subjecting Margo to the loud, rhythmic thumping that would make studying impossible.  

Regretfully, she was terrible at noise redirection spells. Any attempts to soundproof her room would end in disaster. Her plans for the night, to study and retain all that she could before he came, we’re steadily being foiled by distractions at every turn.

Taking a deep breath, she tried to steer her mind to a different route. She just needed to change locations. If she trudged around disgruntled enough, the house would recognize her need, and provide her with a solution. The house was sentient, as all witch abodes were. Something about the excess magic in the air caused them to develop a mind of their own. Sometimes, it was more harm than good, as the house had been known to get rid of entire rooms when it was in a mood. But, just as often, it had been known to give a witch exactly what she was looking for.

Holding out hope, Margo packed up her belongings and slipped out of her room.

“Okay house,” she said pleadingly, hoping it could hear her over the thundering of the music and the storm outside. “Show me someplace quiet I can study.”

For a minute, the only thing she saw was a little black ball of fur that dashed past her feet, following the music downstairs. Witches didn’t have familiars per se, but that never stopped her sisters from ironically adopting every black cat they came across.

“House?” she asked impatiently. A door banged open down the hall.

“Thank you,” She whispered, making her way to the door. It led to the library, which was one story down on the eastern wing, but the laws of physical space did not much apply there.

She couldn’t bring herself to fully step inside, however. This was obviously one of the house’s jokes.

The library was soundproof, that much Margo did know. But it was also haunted by two loud, gossipy ghosts.

“Oh dear,” a larger woman said from her position knitting by the library’s fireplace. If not from the way she was tinted silver and slightly translucent, one might not have known she was undead. “Elizabeth, come see! The studious one did not get invited to the party.”

From somewhere on the banister of the second floor came a tinny laugh. “Well, that’s no surprise to me!” Elizabeth responded. “Look at the way she dressed.”

Margo resisted the urge to pull at her old sweatpants and the UA sweatshirt she wore. “Shut up,” she grumbled. Before shutting the door, she added, “I was invited by the way! I didn’t want to go.”

She ignored Elizabeth’s pointed, “What kind of girl doesn’t want to go to a party?” The sound of which lingered until much after Margo had closed the door.

The house rumbled underneath her, making it clear it was laughing.

“House!” she snapped, annoyed at his antics. Another door appeared in front of her in that instant. This time, she did step inside it. It was the abandoned potions laboratory she hadn’t known existed. A quick survey of the place revealed it was in the basement. Which, happily, seemed to be enchanted, for all the noise of the party disappeared as soon as she closed the door.

It was perfect.

Margo toiled over the cauldron in the laboratory for hours, using whatever preserved ingredients she could find to build practice potions. Having always been a tactical learner, this made the art of potion making so much more accessible to her. The fire underneath the cauldron burned hot, causing her to shed her sweater for the loose grey tank underneath. Eventually, she piled her hair up and away from her face, to avoid the way the steam had caused it to stick to her cheeks and the back of her neck. The ingredients were old school–more animal than plant-based, as she preferred to work with. But Margo made it work nonetheless. 

                    Eye of newt.

                    Toe of frog.

                    Wool of Bat.

                    Tongue of Dog.

Round and round the boiling pot she went, throwing in the ancient ingredients and murmuring incantations, learning the form way better than any text could teach her. She was so lost in the art of it all, she was sure nothing could pull her out.

Then the witching hour came, and a sharp prickling sensation in Margo’s thumbs told her that someone was looking for her. Or something. It was much bigger and much more powerful than Serena–it sent her witch’s sense haywire. She knew just who was it was. She had been waiting for him all night. For a moment, she debated going up to the party, finding him, and dragging him back down to the basement. But, there was a spell she knew, old and powerful, that would bring any creature to her in an instant. Of course, with ancient magicks, there was always a chance of attracting unwanted, much more dangerous attention.

Sighing, she lifted up a quick prayer to Hecate, then said, “Fuck it.”

Turning away from the cauldron, she recited the old but powerful spell.

By the pricking of my thumb, Something wicked this way comes. Open, locks, Whoever knocks.

She closed her eyes for a breath, and when she opened it, he appeared in front of her like an apparition. At first, he was nothing more than a blur of black and silver. He had entered the room at full vampiric speed, and her eyes had to take a moment to adjust, to register what she was seeing.

Her heart began pounding in her chest, not unlike the rhythmic thumping of the bass she had heard earlier. Run, her instincts told her, recognizing that there was a predator, much larger and much deadlier than her in the room. She tried to calm the pounding she could now feel in her throat, with a breath. It came out shuddering.

Now that her eyes were fully adjusted, she could see the way his pupils dilated, no doubt at the sound of the rush of blood through her veins. As he advanced on her, she took a few steps back. Eventually, she was stopped by the edge of the table next to where the cauldron still bubbled over.

“There you are. I’ve been looking for you.”

Vampires were at the top of the human food chain. Because of that, everything about them was designed to draw prey in. Luke was no different. The way he talked was an aphrodisiac, the smallest hint of an old French accent rolling off his tongue lasciviously, drawing a longing from her core. She felt the moment her body realized that she was in no immediate danger, and her heart started hammering for an entirely different reason.

“I know,” she responded, trying to sound cavalier. It was why she had thrown herself so wholeheartedly into her studies that night. At some point in the afternoon, she had received a text. It was just five words, yet it had made her toes curl with desire. Witching hour. I’ll find you. The modern monster’s equivalent of a booty call. Margo, not one to betray her studies for a man, had spent all afternoon with her nose buried in a book. Now that he was right in front of her, she was confident enough in what she had learned that she had no trouble stepping away from the cauldron for the night.

Instead of getting closer to her as her whole body ached for, Luke moved to survey in the room. In turn, she surveyed him. His movements were cat-like, each motion deliberate and graceful. The white, silk shirt he wore was unbuttoned halfway down and tucked into a pair of black leather pants. A peek at the smooth expanse of his chest made Margo yearn to reach out and touch, but she stayed backed up against the table, allowing him to walk the layout of the lab.

“Pilar said you were somewhere studying,” He referenced her housemate easily as he walked around the room almost aimlessly, first glancing into the still bubbling cauldron, then the ingredients that lined the shelf. Ungraciously, she felt jealousy rise to the surface, sending pinpricks of magic down her spine. Margo was well aware of Luke and Pilar’s brief tryst a few months before, and in moments like these, when her senses were bridled by lust, she couldn’t help the primal instincts of possessiveness.

“Potions test.” She responded. Then, because she couldn’t quite put the thought out of her mind, she added, “Pilar needs to mind her own business.”

She was proud of herself when the words didn’t come out sounding shaky or hoarse.

“She’s worried about you, ma chérie. All you do is study.”

Margo tramped down her envy and reminded herself that she hadn’t spent all day studying just so she and Luke could fight about his over-friendliness with his ex. Instead, she tried to focus on nudging Luke’s eyes back to her with a suggestive comment. “I’m not studying right now.”

At her goading, Luke finally gave her the attention she craved. He turned to look at her, his smirk dangerous and promising.

“I prove to be an adequate distraction, no?”

She didn’t see him move. Rather, one moment, he was across the room with a jar of dragon scales in his hand, and somehow, in that same instant, the jar was back on the shelf, and he was next to her, tucking an escaped curl behind her ear.

Immediately, she heaved her chest up to him.

The way he tutted was almost regretful as he traced the line of a barely visible scar, one that he had left on her chest less than 24 hours before. “Oh, ma chérie. You’re already addicted to my touch. I can hear how your blood sings for me.”

Bowing his head, he gently brought his lips to the scar that rested just above the swell of her bosom. “Are you ever,” he paused slightly as if choosing his next word carefully. “Scared of this?”

Scared of this. Scared of them. Historically, witches and vampires did not come together for anything more than sex and political alliances. But, there was something deeper between Luke and Margo. The memory of how indignant she had felt when Serena mentioned her hot vampire boyfriend rose to the surface. Even now she had a hard time with the state of their relationship-how quickly she had come to fall in love with her predator. He often reminded her of the power that he held over her and how her sense of self-preservation became nonexistent whenever he was around.

Luke nipped at her skin lightly, not enough to draw blood. It wrenched her from her thoughts and into that moment with him. When her heart stuttered, he stared up at her, a wolfish grin playing on his face. In moments like these, they both regressed to their animalistic impulses, running on deep, primal instincts left over from their ancestors.

“You forget, Hemmings, that I’m powerful too,” Margo muttered a quick incantation, and this time, the speed with which Luke moved was not due to his vampiric abilities, but rather the invisible bands of wind that twisted around him, pulling him off her, and restraining his wrist. His attempts to burst free of his magical binding was futile. He pulled at his invisible restraints and bared his teeth in warning to her.

The animal inside him did not like to be tied up.

She ignored the way her blood roared in her ears, focusing only on the fact that if it sounded loud to her, it would be deafening for Luke.

Reaching out to the potions table, Margo grabbed a knife she had been using earlier, wiping any traces of ingredients from it with a quick, cleansing water spell. Then, she held it up to her breast. Both her and Luke tracked the way the cool blade as it came to rest against her skin. The grey tank top, as unattractive as Elizabeth’s ghost would find it, did the job of sparking Luke’s interest. She wore no bra underneath, so it hung low on her ample bosom and was thin enough that her nipples all but poked through.

She pierced the skin right where Luke had scarred her before. In response, Luke’s pupils dilated further until his blue eyes were almost completely black, and his breath began to get ragged. Now, it was her turn to smirk.

“I might be addicted to your touch,” she purred. “But you’re addicted to my taste.”

Luke impossibly broke free of her binds and had his hands gripping at her sides in a second. He buried his face in her neck, not going for her blood until he got express permission to do so.

“Can I?” His voice was rough and riddled with want. She nodded once, and Luke dropped his mouth to her heart vein and started to drink deeply.

Nothing that Margo had experienced in her 21 years of life was as erotic as a vampire drinking from her chest. In popular culture, vampires drank from their lover’s neck. That was too impersonal of an action, Luke had informed her. Vampires drank from a mortal’s necks when they planned to drain them and leave them for dead. There was something much more sacred about their relationship, something that made the idea of taking blood from that public place repugnant to him.

As he sucked deeper on Margo’s chest, a shiver of lust set inside her aflame. She could feel herself grow wet from the pull of blood out of her and into him. It was an aphrodisiac, and she was powerless against the feeling it brought. From the way Luke flexed his fingers at her side, she could tell he was just as affected by it as she was. He pulled away to thrust his erection against her.

“Wanna drink while I’m inside you,” he begged.

She didn’t trust her voice not to come out in a ragged plea, so she nodded mutely, already reaching for the hem of her shirt to pull it over her head. Luke hoisted her up unto the table she had barely noticed digging into her back. Instead of returning to the wound on her chest, already closed from the healing properties in his saliva, Luke went for her nipples, sucking on one as he rolled the other between his forefinger and thumb.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered almost reverentially.

He started on a path downwards, kissing her stomach, licking into the dip of her belly button. “You know,” he began as he knelt in front of her, fingers already poised to remove her sweatpants. “Since the change, I’ve questioned my belief in a higher power. But when I do this with you, I know He’s real. Nothing else but an omnipotent deity could have created an angel as beautiful as you.”

Margo bit her lip. Having spent some time with the romantic era poets of the mid-1800s, Luke was prone to outbursts like these in the midst of sex. Margo liked to tease him about it.

“I’m no angel,” she retorted a slight quirk of her lips. “I’ll be right there in hell with you, Luke Hemmings. You can’t get rid of me that easily.”

Luke took a moment to respond, choosing instead to remove her sweatpants and panties. Then, he placed a few chaste kisses to the inside of either thigh, letting his scruff rub lightly against her teasingly. Margo’s hand shot out, running through his hair a few times, before trying to lead him to her folds.

Instead, he chose that moment to respond to her earlier comment. It was always like this with them. Push and pull. Two opposing tides of want, dragging their sex in different directions. “You are too intoxicating. The devil will try to steal you from me.”

Luke brought his mouth back to her stomach, lapping at the salt of her skin. He nibbled slightly, causing her to release a shuddering breath.

“The devil can’t have me,” she cried between gasps. “I belong to you.”

That was just the motivation the vampire needed. “And I to you,” he growled. It was a guttural sound coming from deep within. In the next moment, he brought his tongue to her, pressing it against her clit.

He spent his time worshiping her folds, before adding one finger inside her. Margo’s legs fell open wider in response, inviting more.

“How does every inch of you taste so good?” He asked in another bought of reverence. Margo’s only response was a cry of euphoria as Luke’s fingers scissored in and out of her, drawing immeasurable pleasure. For a few moments, she basked in the sensation of a lover taking his time to reduce her to cries and shudders. When she came the first time, she was so lost in this sensation, she wasn’t cognizant of the little sparks of magic flittering off her, falling to the tables and the floor.

It was not until Luke muttered, “Shit,” that she opened her eyes to see smoke rising from a hole burnt into the hardwood floor.

“Fuck,” she cursed, still panting. “My bad.”

They glanced at each other for a brief moment, taken by the heat of each other. Then, they devolved into laughter. This wasn’t the first time Margo had burnt something in the midst of their passion, and it wouldn’t be her last.

Luke stood and picked her up amid their laughter. In response, she wrapped her legs around his waist and peppered her face with kisses. “Take us back to your room,” he begged. He raised one foot in the basement of the old house as Margo whispered her incantation, and when he put it down, they were back in her second-floor room.

“God, I love magic,” He breathed, depositing her on her bed.

“Me too,” she responded, and with a wink, all his clothes disappeared. Luke was unconcerned with their dematerialization, knowing from experience he would find them neatly folded at the foot of her bed the next morning.

Crawling on top of her, he slotted their mouths together in a motion they had done so often it became ritual. They spent a few blissful moments, rubbing unbidden against each other. But Luke was impatient. Soon, he was pinning both her wrists above her head with one large hand and entering her slowly.

At first, his thrusts were slow, deliberate, as he got used to the feeling of being inside her. Then, when his movements started to become more erratic, Margo bared her chest to him, knowing exactly what he wanted. His teeth pierced the scarred flesh easily, and he moaned at the first drop of blood that made contacts with his lips.

He released his hold on her hands then, so his were available to wrap his hand around her throat, grip at her side and play with her clit or nipple as he saw fit. The animal in both of them moved about in unrestrained movements as they devolved into hands, teeth, and hips. He drank until it felt like the open wound in her chest was somehow connected to her pussy, each deep suck causing her walls to contract.

She groaned, one hand in his hair, the other in the sheets. It was heaven for her, but for him, it was even better. Curious, Margo had once asked what it felt like to make love to her and feed from her at the same time. He said it felt like being burned alive in the best way possible. Passion consumed every inch of him, setting him aflame.

When he pulled back from her chest, they were both seconds away from climaxing. Immediately, he brought one finger to her clit, playing with it as he thrust inside her. She came, and he followed. This time, a soft glow of light radiated off her in pulses, matching the pulses of her orgasm. Her magical reactions to him were getting stronger.

She turned her attention to the man now draped atop of her, breathing in deeply, taking in the heady scent of the room.

“Smell something you like?” she teased, knowing he liked the smell of them tangled together in the room. Luke loved being unable to smell where he ended and she began.

“Yeah,” he breathed in response, still visibly affected by Margo’s blood. Margo laid there a few minutes running her hand through his hair, waiting for him to come down from the high she had caused.

When Luke was back to himself again, he flipped them, so she was lying atop him. With a quick incantation, Margo brought the blanket gently over their shoulders. Peacefully, they settled in for the night.

“I love you, mon cœur,” Luke uttered the sentiment first.

Margo repeated it.

“Wake me up at 8?” She wanted to get some last minutes revisions done before her test at 10 and one of the best things about having a vampire boyfriend? He didn’t need sleep, so she had a personal alarm. Margo thought the kiss he placed atop her head was an affirmative and a goodnight all in one. He had one more thing to say.

“Le suprême bonheur de la vie, c'est la conviction qu'on est aimé; aimé pour soi-même, disons mieux, aimé malgré soi-même.”

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather in spite of ourselves.

It was a quote from his late friend, Victor Hugo. In moments of reminiscing, Luke thought back to the time he’d spent with the author and poet. He had told her once that he never believed he would find the happiness Hugo spoke about. But he found it with her.

She squeezed his side gently, a silent admittance that she loved him as well. 

:: ::

Part 2: Man or Beast

end notes: shout out to anyone who recognizes the names margo, serena & pilar who are elle’s sorority sisters from legally blonde the musical lmao. let me know what you think! love yall!

tag list: @5sosnsfw / @bloodmoonashton / @lukescaboose / @5sex-of-summa / @deviantnines / @halcyonnhood / @gh0st-0f-y0u-95 / @aspiringwildfire / @cal-pal-cuddles / @hotmessmichael / @hereforlukescruff/ @softforcal / @ohhmuke / @fratcalum / @calumamongmen / @ashtonandcalslefthand / @asht0ns-world / @colorful-queen-of-the-roses / @heavenlydrarry / @slowlyelectronictragedy / @myemptywallets / @pagesuponstpages / @fallfrxmgrace / @thefireisgone / @michaelorwhat / @dammitbands / @sugarcoated-pain / @sublimehood / @cal-puddies / @singt0mecalum / @irwinkitten / @myloverboyash

[anchanted-one]

Eternal War Chapter 33 Horrors of War

Read on AO3

Hours later…

Kaliyo took a long sip from the bottle in her hands, then passed it to Kanner, who didn’t bother looking to Jorgan for permission before taking a swig herself. She tossed it to the gruff Cathar veteran, who caught it without looking. You knew it was bad when Soldiers like these broke protocol.

“So… pretty bad day…” Kaliyo drawled.

“Yep,” Jorgan said heavily.

He looked at the city beyond the building they were currently taking shelter in. A lot of it was on fire. When the Security Forces had failed to pick up their trail in the maintenance tunnels after hours of searching, an infuriated Arcann had ordered them to open fire on the sector. Even the civilians. The carnage had put a damper on even Kaliyo’s spirits.

“Did I thank you guys for coming back for me?”

“Nope.”

“Well then… thanks, Maje. Thanks Havoc. Really. I didn’t think you’d come back for someone like me. I’m… feeling quite touched here. Thanks.”

“We don’t leave anyone behind.” Jorgan said tonelessly. “The moment we were both on the same team, you became a comrade-in-arms. And you’re not the worst one we’re working with out of necessity, believe me. But so long as we are, we got your back.”

“Copy that, sir!” the cybernetically enhanced trooper, Dengril, approved fervently. “We there for each other. Separates us from them .”

“That bottle, sir…?” Xabaan asked. Jorgan quietly passed it to the Twi’lek. Once Xabaan was finished, Dengril took a drink, but of course it would be poisonous for the Kel Dor Abeth. Korg, like the rest of his Kaleesh people, only drank to victory or to the celebrated dead. Once he was done, Kaliyo was satisfied that so little of the booze was remaining. She emptied it in one go.

“So what’s the plan now?” She asked. “I normally use this kind of chaos to make my getaway, but for you guys…”

“If we turn up to help them,” Jorgan sighed. “It becomes worse. For them, for us. If we have to do anything for these guys, it has to be covert.”

“But you don’t want to leave.” It wasn’t a question.

“I signed up to stop this kind of thing.” Jorgan said, a tortured expression on his feline face. “Turning away… it feels wrong.”

Kaliyo remained silent. She was an unabashed anarchist. She was a survivor through and through, only ever looking out for herself. But once someone had her loyalty she would die a thousand times for them. As she would have for Cipher Nine. Well, her Cipher Nine, not the half-trained faker who took that title after Corellia.

They watched in silence as a group of citizens cleared some rubble away to free trapped survivors. They worked well together. Perhaps they had been given some rudimentary training in search and rescue? Hard to believe on this pampered world.

“Oh no!” Kanner muttered. “Sir!”

“I see it! Havoc, if those Skytroopers attack those civvies, we break cover and protect them.”

A chorus of “Roger that, sir,” all around them. Kaliyo wanted to shake him hard and remind him of his own words minutes ago. What happened to being covert? But there was just no convincing some people. She tensed, waiting for the order.

The Skytroopers swooped in on the civilians, and Jorgan called “Take em!”

He fired twice, nailing two Skytroopers mid-dive. His squad broke out of their hiding place and attacked the Droid soldiers with a surgeon’s precision. All twenty droids were scrap before they even knew what hit them.

The people they had saved screamed in shock. Several tripped and fell as they staggered back. They began whispering among themselves: “The Outlander’s people…” “The Outlander’s soldiers!” “The Outlander’s …” “They saved us!” “They saved us!”

“Alright, everybody, time to move—”  “No, please, wait!”

Jorgan stopped as a trio of citizens stepped forward. These were among those who had been searching for survivors. “We are part of the local Resistance,” a middle-aged man explained. “We work for Caradha.”

“Caradha is that Zakuulan who called for an end to Arcann’s tyrannical reign, right?”

“The same, good Soldier.” The man confirmed. “She has been trying to stop this carnage, but her only plan was discarded because we have no professional soldiers among us.”

Oh? How perfect! Kaliyo grinned wide, a feral expression that was mirrored by Jorgan.

“Well sir, now you have Havoc Squad.”

*

Odessen, War Room

The Holoprojector chimed and the holo of an ageing dark-skinned human materialized.

“Alliance Base, this is Colonel Vakkes of the Onderon strike force.”

“This is Alliance Base,” Lana responded. “We read you Colonel.”

“We have finished scouring the Fortresses, and there was some horrifying stuff going on in there.”

Lana’s eyes narrowed. “Explain.”

“A Research Lab, by some definition of the term. From what we can tell, they’re dedicated to ‘cutting-edge’ epidemiology experimentation. Hundreds of Onderon and Dxun’s fauna specimens. Dozens of sentients from all walks of life. Some of these guys have been missing for years. We assumed they were dead, but…” the veteran Soldier shivered visibly. “They’ve been used as test subjects. What logs we recovered describe how they were subject to numerous toxins and exotic diseases and kept under observation as their symptoms progressed. Some had organs removed while still alive. Shot repeatedly while hooked up to kolto tanks. It was like they wanted to see how many ways they could discover, of death by torture. Or how long they could endure before it became too much.”

Lana unclenched her jaw, and ran a hand through her hair. She looked around at her comrades; their expressions ranged from disgust to anger to horror. The Zakuulans among them were the most affected, Doctor Oggurobb looked outraged, probably more about the fact that someone would call such terrible methods “Science”. He had his many good points, but empathy wasn’t among them. Theron, like Lana herself, had already seen such setups—both Imperial and Republic—and both of them had braced for such atrocities. But to see them confirmed was something else entirely.

Lana looked at Theron, then Oggurobb. “We will need to alert all teams across the galaxy, have them look for labs immediately. Secure as much data as possible.” She looked back at the Colonel as something occurred to her. “Any survivors?”

“None, not even wildlife. From the looks of it, the scientists killed them before surrendering. They set charges on the computers, but the Ion Prison cloud deactivated the detonators. So even though there were no witnesses, we’ll know exactly what these psychos were up to when we decrypt these files.”

“Good.” Lana said. “Send over everything you can find for us to analyze. You and your people must be feeling quite disturbed by all this. Please get some rest. If you need therapy, we can have you brought here to Odessen. We have set up a well-equipped Mental Health facility for our people, and it should be enough to cope with at least a third of the Strike teams.”

“Appreciate the offer, Alliance Control. We’ll have our people undergo a thorough checkup, then let you know if we need your facilities.”

“Very well then, thank you Colonel. See you soon.” The holo flickered out.

“This— this isn’t Zakuul!” Koth looked like someone had ripped his heart out, Senya was in tears. All the Zakuulans were trembling. “I swear, this isn’t what we are...”

“We know,” Aygo said soothingly. “This isn’t on you. Just your Emperor.”

“But… such a horrifying turn of events!” Senya was stammering, barely coherent. “I can’t believe that this is what my children have become. That they have sanctioned such experiments despite what Valkorion did to Vaylin…”

“It is good we stopped the Fortresses,” Jettarn rumbled. “But we need to stop this. This is a stain on our people. It is suddenly more urgent that we—”

Wodar spoke up. “I’ll see about broadcasting that info across Zakuul. Once our people see it…”

“No, wait,” Theron said. “We need to know exactly what has happened, and who’s involved. I’ve seen Black ops like this, sometimes leadership doesn’t know. They may have drastically overstepped mission boundaries and Arcann might not know about it. It’s possible that this was an isolated incident. Or at least, a limited one.”

Lana nodded. “Yes, I think that’s best. We don’t want to saddle your people with guilty consciences if this was an unsanctioned operation.”

The Zakuulans looked relieved. Senya reached for a glass of water, then changed her mind and picked up the brandy instead. But Lem still had some venting he needed. Roaring loudly, he picked up a tool shelf and tossed it hard over his shoulder.

When the expected loud crash never came, they all turned to look in that direction.

Arro stood there, looking mildly annoyed. The shelf and everything that had spilled out of it hung suspended in the air in front of him. “I only just woke up, so go easy on me please? You don’t want me right back in bed, do you?”

The whole room stood frozen for a moment. Lana was stumped; how had she not sensed him wake up? Had she been so engrossed in operations?

It was Doctor Oggurobb’s delighted greeting broke the spell. “Commander! So good to see you awake again!”

*

“So much has happened?” Arro looked embarrassed. “How long was I out this time?”

“It’s only been a week,” Theron said. “Hey, given what you’re suffering we’re kinda asking too much of you.”

“In fact,” Senya said gently. “We were discussing taking more of the load off your shoulders so that you could rest. We can handle operations well enough by ourselves, there’s no need to burden you with even more stressors.”

“It’s enough that you be seen enough for morale to remain up,” Koth put in. “It’s your name and your legend that’s keeping everyone inspired.”

Arro bit into the sandwich he was holding. Taking his time to chew, he swallowed and placed it back in his plate. Something seemed different about him, but what? His stance? His bearing? The bright gold glint in his right eye, maybe?

“Before we discuss how aged and infirm I’ve become, I have a story of my own to tell you guys. You’re not going to believe the weird nonsense that can happen when you’re asleep.”

*

[dhominis]

Life updates, CW for disordered eating and medical stuff (...mine and my job’s).

(dropping out of college was genuinely the best single decision I have yet made)

- Did a social thing, decided it was unpleasant and unlikely to become pleasant, politely informed the organizers I wasn’t going to be involved. In the past my solutions have been more like “spend the next year attending regularly and also being miserable and misanthropic” or “ghost them.” This is possibly a sign of maturity.

- I love the ICU so fucking much

- There’s something to be said for walking into an entirely new environment and feeling immediately at home, immediately competent. In general I expect that new experiences will be at least mildly stressful. My first day on the ICU, though -- not at all. Just natural and easy and calming. (Within the first four hours a guy coded and someone else stopped breathing while I was watching him and I cleaned up a lot of bodily fluids some of which were supposed to be outside the body and some of which weren’t and it just. Felt easy. Suspecting I’m unusually well-suited for this.)

- A thing I love about the ICU: the course of a given day is unpredictable, you don’t know if you’re going to get a code or a behavioral crisis or, you know, just a patient who really wants a burger and has surgery in the morning and isn’t allowed to eat. But once the thing happens there is in general a clearly defined sequence of steps. (Maybe not for burgers.) It’s... there’s decision-making, but a lot of the longer-term planning is outsourced. You’re responsible for your duties, you know what they are -- and it’s still not boring!

- The disordered eating has receded. I got sick -- influenza-like illness in June -- and didn’t eat much for a week. And when I felt better I easily started eating again; it wasn’t a force-feeding process, just hey all right this is what we’re doing now, there was not at any point the concern that I’d be unable to reinitiate feeding. I still don’t like eating food other people have prepared, still can’t rely on hunger cues because if I did I wouldn’t eat (that might be the physical health problems!), still don’t reliably enjoy any food. Still working on all of that. But. I eat and there’s not the feeling that something wrong has happened. It’s been a while since food felt like force-feeding. I’ve wanted to vomit for reasons other than nausea... once in the past few months? And even that was super mild. It’s not perfect but it’s great compared to what I was like when I left home. I’m proud of that.

- Started meds for the GI fuckery. The nausea actually seems somewhat better and I’m really glad. Pain might be better but honestly I’m used to the pain by now, it’s way down the list of priorities. Still having a lot of reflux symptoms, a lot of trouble swallowing. (Maybe a quarter of the time I swallow the capsule, drink plenty of water, and then fifteen minutes later I clear my throat and oh crap no there’s powder in my lungs now. This is hilarious and also very annoying.) Endoscopy-colonoscopy scheduled. It’s nice to know there are steps being taken.

- One of my coworkers figured out I’m smart. (She used the phrasing “borderline genius”; I responded with “borderline something, anyway.”) It’s weird and kind of uncomfortable; when I left my hometown I had halfheartedly tried to leave this behind, or had at least hoped that it would not be obvious. Being the smart one grates after a while. Better to prioritize instrumental aspects of my identity: not I am this, but I have this ability, I have done this. At the same time, though, I’ve acquired personality traits other than “wants to be an academic, is intelligent, talks like a textbook.” I don’t care as much about being seen as smart when people also see me as a lot of other things that aren’t annoying.

- Primary care doctor referred me for an ADHD evaluation. I think medication is likely to improve my functioning and quality of life. Will be going back to school within the next few years, too -- should consider whether accommodations would be useful. I’m not sure the diagnosis itself is useful other than a means to an end -- I’ve implemented a lot of the non-pharmaceutical management options, I’m getting pretty good at this -- they might offer useful suggestions and anyway the report will be nice to have. And I am narcissistic enough that psych testing is fun.

- I don’t appreciate how difficult ADHD evaluation is to access! It seems designed to filter out the people who really very much need it. Assuming medication refills will be the same way.

- It’s been nine months, maybe ten, since I decided to drop out of college. I still think it was a good decision. I have my partner and a job I love and an apartment and friends -- a clear future -- food no longer feels like a violation -- if I am sick I can see a doctor -- this life feels like mine. I am alive. I didn’t have half of that and didn’t fully expect to keep the other half, when I decided to leave. It’s okay now, though -- it’s okay.

[saturnmyg]

The devil wears givenchy (1) | Min Yoongi

❝ You’re a therapist who one day gets a call from someone who claims to be satan asking for an appointment. On the day of the appointment you expect to see a teenager or someone in their mid twenties instead you’re met with a man in a screaming red suit whose hair and eyes are as dark as the night but with an attitude of a spoiled brat, he surely cant be satan. ❞

➵ paring: Satan! Yoongi x Therapist reader

➵ author’s note:  im excited for this series to start so i hope yall like it, also the question yn asks are question therapist have asked me on the first counselling session this is all based on experience. 

➵ requested by : no one

| 6.6k words | Demon au |  romance | Humor | action | eventual smut | series

| warnings in this chapter : cursing, mention of death 

Masterlist

@minyoonjiswifey

➵ ➵ ➵ ➵ ➵ ➵

‘’Miss Y/n’’

A deep voice followed by a knock rips you out of your thoughts and you look over to the door. The office's secretary Mr Kim stands there holding a planner in his hand

‘’There was a request or should i say a demand for a counseling session’’ Kim continues brows furrowing together telling you that he's mildly annoyed ‘’by someone claiming to be satan’’

‘’Excuse me what?’’ you fully turn towards secretary Kim with raised eyebrows.

‘’As i said he claimed to-’’

‘’No i understood that’’ you interrupt waving your hand dismissively ‘’did you ask what his real name is?’’

‘’I did-’’ Kim answers monotone ‘’- he said mortals shall call him Min Yoongi. i set an appointment this friday five o'clock’’

‘’Alright thank you for notifying me’’ you smile at the stoic man who just nods in reply, bows slightly and walks out of your office.

Mr Kim is.. a peculiar person. He's a man of a few words with an expressionless yet handsome face and mouse grey dyed hair thats most of the times slicked back. Though when finally does  decide to talk, he tells the wildest stories that often gives you a whiplash.He's also an undefeated champion when it comes to giving backhanded compliments or at least they seem to be.

You'd think working together for almost nine years you'd be used to him.

Thats right, its been nine years since you started working as a therapist. You've always had an affinity to listening to other peoples concerns and to look at the problem objectively without it affecting you. Its funny though that you ended up in this profession. The past you was.. wild, especially during college. Don't get it wrong it wasn't that you were out partying all time but you and your group of friends were up to no good.

Your family was very poor when your mother was still alive. She loved gambling and spending her money on alcohol to the point where you had no food left at home. Which meant that fourteen years old you had to work, at a strip club as waitress. Not the best place for a minor to be considering the leeching looks the people sometimes threw at you but fortunately one of the security guys always looked out for you. until one day a sleazy looking man gave you his business card saying that he was looking for someone who'd be able to deliver stuff for him. Of course you were weary but the promise of a paycheck that was three times higher than the one you were already earning was too good of an opportunity to let it slip past you.

And thats basically how you became a drug dealer and how you met your friends who were either also working for your ex boss or working for his friend who often had his folks deliver drugs to your boss. Of course that slowed down the moment you became a senior. You started studying and participating in class more, the pressure of finding a socially accepted job after college weighing on your shoulder like a huge rock. You and some of your friends completely stopped dealing when graduation was nearing and your boss thankfully let you go but offered that the there would be always a spot open for you if you ever needed it.

Shaking your head you chuckle slightly and turn back to the computer. You've met countless types of people but no one ever has introduced themselves as satan. You're intrigued in finding out what type of person your client is going to be.

Shutting off the laptop you stand up from the table, take your jacket and put it on. Flickering off the lights you turn around and give your office a last glance before you exit out of the room. Walking down the pristine hallway towards where the reception you fumble with your car keys lost in your thoughts. Arriving at the entrance you see Secretary Kim sitting behind the computer typing something at a fast speed. Walking up to the reception table you knock on the dark hard wood a few times ‘’I'm clocking off’’

Secretary Kim looks up from the computer and nods curtly, the glasses sitting low on his nose bridge, before immersing himself in whatever he was doing before and you let out a small sigh

‘’don’t stay too long’’  you warn him and leave the office.

Standing in front of the elevator you hum a quiet tune waiting for the doors to open. A few seconds later a quiet ping indicates that the elevator has arrived at your level and the doors open. Surprised you see a tall man wearing a black coat with a book in his hand

‘’Ah good evening Y/n’’ The man greets you as you walk into the elevator, dimples poking out of his cheeks.

‘’Its already night Namjoon’’ you greet back with a small chuckle.

Namjoon works at the dental praxis that is one floor above you so you constantly run into each other. He's playful man who most of the times has a mischievous glint in his eyes yet from what you've seen is very serious about his job. Another thing is he's quite popular, even amongst your own coworker alongside with secretary Kim. But with those looks who wouldn't be, tan skin with deep dimples and voice, beautiful thick hair and legs so long they belong on a runway. Plus he got the brains too, he's what you call a total package, anyone would be drooling for him.

Namjoon reaches over and presses the button ‘’since its only 07:55pm its still evening’’

‘’Semantics’’ you reply with an eye roll and namjoon just chuckles. A comfortable hush falls over the both of you and you take out your phone. Your'e so immersed in looking at your schedule that you dont notice that the doors have opened. Namjoon nudges you and you snap out of it, bashfully you tuck your phone back into your pocket and walks towards  the building's entrance.

‘’See you Y/n’’ Namjoon turns around smiles, his eyes turn into crescents.

‘’Bye’’ you wave and you both part ways. Taking your scarf out of the purse, you wrap it around your neck before tugging the jacket closer to your body. Winter has finally settled and you're overjoyed. You love November, you love how the city smells of cinnamon and mulled wine. How around every corner you can hear people already singing Christmas carols and how everyone just looks so happy.

Besides Christmas you love winter nights, specifically nights where you wake up at three in the morning to pee and you look outside to find freshly fallen snow. The snow making the environment look brighter and slightly alienating, kind of as if you live in a picture. Yet for whatever reasons that sight makes your bed seem more comfortable and warm.

Scurrying across the parking lot you take out your keys and unlock the vehicle. Quickly you get into it and slam the door behind you. Throwing your purse on the passenger seat you plug your phone in, scroll through Spotify till you find your playlist and press play. A smooth melody with a deep bass vibrates through the car as you're backing out of the parking spot and you quietly hum along.

The only thing about winter you don’t really like is driving on the iced street. Along with the lingering paranoia that any car could lose control and crash into yours.

Thats a bad habit of yours, imagining the worst possible outcomes of any situation. You could be walking down the stairs and suddenly you'll think about how you could fall down, hit your head and die instantly cause your neck snapped. So most of your rides are filled with anxiety and extreme caution.

Sighing slightly you shake your head before focusing back on the road.

⤑ ⤑ ⤑ ⤑

Unlocking the door you enter you home, take off your shoes off. Walking down the hallway into the living room you throw your jacket onto the gray couch and grab the remote control. Turning on the tv you continue to walk into the kitchen.

Your kitchen is pretty nice though, black tiles decorating the wall along with white and gray cabinets. As a matter of fact you decorated your place only with monochrome colors, to the point where even your dishes match the look you're going for. The plants that are widespread throughout the apartment finishes the look with a splash of green color.

To be honest, you've been meaning to change the color scheme but you're either are too lazy or too busy to do so. Maybe its cause you've gotten older but often times the colors make you feel alienating, kind of the same feeling you get when you enter an apple store. Future-esque but not homely or welcoming.

Opening the refrigerator you groan at the sight, slamming the fridge shut you notice the post on note. ''buy groceries!''  it says in bright red cursive letters. Great, whats the point of using post on notes when you don't even see them cause apparently now you're blind.

Grimacing your reach over to the house phone hanging on the wall corner that separates the kitchen and living room, and dial the pizzeria's number. The phone rings a few times until it clicks

‘’Dio's pizzeria how can i help you?’’  asks a lazy voice.

You give them your order and address and they tell you that the pizza should arrive in thirty minutes. Hanging up the phone you walk out of the kitchen, down the hallway into your room.

Your bedroom just like the rest of the apartment is decked out in the same monochromic colors , even your sheets and pillows match. Hanging on your wall are cute pictures of your college friends that you try to meet up at least once a week. Overall the room has a nice feeling to it but if the pictures weren't there no one could tell that this room belongs to you.

Putting the light on you stop in your tracks. Something is off, you cant really pin point what but it feels like someone was in your bedroom when you weren't home. Looking at the pictures on the wall you see that they're all intact and untouched. Walking towards the desk you carefully look at the papers and other items, wondering if you truly left your desk this disorganized.

With quiet steps you walk to the closet and take out your pajamas and scurry out of the room. ''What is this , final destination?' you mutter under your breath and enter the bathroom. Feeling like someone is watching you quickly undress and jump into the shower.

After serenading several songs you remember that the pizza should be arriving any minute you jump out of the shower and dry yourself with a fluffy towel you bought a few months ago. As you're wrapping the towel around your head you hear the doorbell ring so you walk out of the bathroom, take your purse out of the bag that you left in the hallway and open the door.

In front of you stands a boy that looks like he's in his early twenties. Tall, with honey dipped tan skin and Dark hair that reaches the tip of his chin. A face that's so flawless you're sure he was sculpted by god himself. Yet the longer you stare at him the more its off putting. Kind of like how the longer you look into the mirror the more grotesque you think the reflection has become. His eyes is what makes the alarm bells ring in your head. They're big and dark but soulless to the point where for a second you think a other worldly being stands in front of you.

‘’One prosciutto e funghi pizza for Y/n?’’ He asks his voice deep and you notice that his canines are unusually pointy.

‘’Thats me’’ you answer , take the pizza. As you're handing him the money, your finger tips graze the palm of his cold hand a electric shock goes through your body.

‘’Always be careful to not touch supernatural beings’’ a vague memory of an old woman flashes through your head and you quickly retract your hand, clutching it against your chest.

The delivery boy who stiffed up at the skin contact, hastily takes a step back, runs his fingers through his hair , acting nonchalant but his eyes are still wide. ''Have a nice day'' he says, his smile even more menacing than before and it sends a shiver up your spine.

You nod slowly, and he turns around and  leaves. Your eyes following his back until he walks down the stairs and you cant see him anymore , before you walk back into your home and close the door. Walking into the living room you put the pizza on the small table by the couch and you sit down.

‘’Its just paranoia’’ you mutter, reach over and take a piece out of the carton. ''Is it though? you ask yourself while biting into the food. You're not sure why you even had such a flashback earlier and why your grandma was in it. As much as you know she's was an ordinary old sweet lady who loved spoiling her grandchild, though there is a big junk of your memory missing due to an incident that happened when you were a child.

Shaking your head you decide to worry about it when the time comes and try to enjoy the rest of the night.

‘’How could you do this to me?’’ the woman on tv cries and you scrunch your nose. The acting is horrible, similar to how the late eighties movie were, over dramatic with a lousy plot and weird sense of humor. Taking the remote control, you take a bite off the pizza and switch the channel.

⤑ ⤑ ⤑ ⤑

Annoyed Yoongi sits in the waiting room, tapping his fingers against his thigh rhythmically. He's only here because his advisor- Jimin basically blackmailed him to go to therapy, which in yoongi's eyes is ridiculous. As a matter of fact , Yoongi had rolled his eyes when jimin came up with the proposition. He doesn't need therapy he's perfectly fine but according to Jimin ,yoongi is brash, pompous and needs a ''reality'' check. Yoongi thinks jimin is only saying that because of the way he treats his employees. Sure he's a hard-to- please- boss and likes to nitpick at everything, he is satan after all but he has seen human's who were in his position treat their employees way worse than he does.

Yet here he is, sitting in the waiting room in a uncomfortable chair while starring at the white eggshell wall that's decorated with various framed pop art posters. The atmosphere heavy reminding yoongi of the dread of lost souls and he wants to smack his head against the wall. The tapping on his thigh speeds up , making the small thumping sound echo through the room and the man sitting opposite of yoongi shoots hime a glare. Before yoongi can retaliate the door opens and you step into the room.

‘’Min Yoongi?’’

Yoongi stand up and fixes his blazer and walks towards you.

The first thing you notice about the Yoongi is the suit he's wearing. The red is so bright it makes you want to gauge your eyes out, you cant fathom for the life of you why someone would wear that color but then again secretary Kim did tell you that the person on the phone was strange. The suit though fits his form quite and goes well with the white turtleneck that he's wearing underneath the blazer.

‘’That's me’’Yoongi replies, stretching out his hand.

‘’Y/n’’ you take his hand into yours and shake it briefly. The second thing you notice is how deep yet slightly nasal his voice is, which matches his image impeccably.

‘’Please follow me’’ you say and turn around to walk down the hallway with yoongi on your heel. Opening your office door you step aside and let him enter the room first. ‘’Would you like something to drink?’’ you ask walking over to the coffee machine standing on top of the gray table thats by the wall.

‘’Coffee, black’’ Yoongi curtly answers, while looking around the room before sitting down on the arm chair.

Yoongi feels uncomfortable. Theres this weird feeling in his gut that started the moment his skin touched yours and that feeling only got stronger when he walked into your office. Your office looks like any normal office would look, white walls also decorated with the same overrated pop art posters that every college student that majors in art surely has hanging in their room. Gray armchairs and a plant by your desk that looks like its five minutes away from dying. Yoongi isn't sure if the plant is supposed to be like that or if you're really just careless and if the latter is the case, does that mean you care about your clients the same way as that plant?

‘’Here’’ you speak up ripping yoongi out of his thoughts, putting the mug on the small table in front of him before taking a seat opposite of yoongi.

Yoongi was surprised earlier when you greeted him. He expected his therapist to be an older woman in her fifties who had a kind grandmother face and a soft voice. Instead he was met with you, who stood as if you were being pulled up by the roots of your hair, wearing black from head to toe with your hair pulled into a tight ponytail and oval glasses sitting on top of your nose. Which made you look more like the grim reaper instead of a professional who listens and helps people coping being alive. Even know as you're sitting in front of him, you're posture is straight as a wooden board which adds an air of elegance to your being but in yoongi's eyes you look prudish and stern.

‘’Tell me why you're here’’ you say looking up from your notebook where you wrote down todays date and his name.

Picking the cup up Yoongi takes a sip before sighing deeply ''i was forced to be here''

That doesn't surprise you, his whole body language and vibe screams that he doesn't want to be here at all and you're sure he's doing that on purpose. ‘’Forced? by who?’’

‘’By my advisor’’ Yoongi answers ‘’he thinks i have behavioral issues’’, he makes air quotes. ‘’Which is complete bullshit considering we work in hell and compared to the human bosses who are way more corrupted that we demons are i'm actually quite lenient’’

You stop writing on your notebook and blink at him multiples times. The fact that he even said that whole speech with a straight face makes you think you dissociated for a second. Raising your eyebrows slightly you continue to write.

calls workplace hell and refers to coworkers as demons. advisor sent him to counseling.

‘’I assume then that you haven't seen a therapist or counselor before?’’ you ask and cross your legs.

‘’correct’’ Yoongi sighs ‘’i'm going to be honest i'm not exactly expecting much from this i'm only here cause of my advisor who otherwise would get angry it wouldn't surprise me if he ratted me out to the angels’’

That the action of someone nonchalantly shrugging their shoulders could look so arrogantly never occurred to you until you met him. Nodding your head you continue to ask

‘’What do you see as being the biggest problem?’’

‘’Work’’ Yoongi answers so fast the words practically fly out of his mouth. ‘’Some would say its me but its the workers. We're not understaffed but the workers love lazying around and gossip. And hiring new people would take up too much time considering that they'd need training and honestly i don’t have the patience cause they're more likely to make mistakes and i hate mistakes. he stresses the word hate.

likes consistency ,seems very particular about surroundings.

‘’What exactly is your occupation?’’

‘’I thought you humans knew what we demons do’’ Yoongi states taking another sip of the coffee. ‘’Considering that mankind worship god and its ways, though the holy scriptures aren't accurate at all i mean they were written by humans , which by the way half of those people didn't even exist, and then translated into other languages over decades which means most of what was originally written is lost in translation.’’

If this were The Office this would be the scene where you'd blankly stare into the camera for a few seconds but it isn't so you just choose to stay quiet.

‘’But you know what's ridiculous?’’ Yoongi continues ‘’i got casted out , told that i will never return to heaven, which yeah was shitty but the real trauma is how when i fell i was immense pain cause my wings started to burn off and my wings were my pride you know.  Just cause i didn't agree with their vision,  and now i constantly have gods followers on my ass, acting like I'm the bad one when in actuality I'm just doing my job and its those unemployed demons that wreck havoc in the human world.’’

Refers to parental figure as god, meaning that person is the authorial person in the household. overall cites and talks about the bible, could mean  the household is extremely religious.. Says angels are after him and the coworkers, possibly trying to tarnish the company's name. Has implied that he is satan, possible the black sheep of the family.

‘’I thought satan is responsible for all demons’’ you decide to humor him.

‘’Don't be silly human' Yoongi waves dismissively his hand ‘’that would make me a god, which i'm not. To be a god i'd need to have a lot more followers and willing sacrifices which i honestly don't have the time for cause you humans are dying at an alarming rate and we have to overwork ourselves.’’ He sends you a nasty glare you decide to ignore.

‘’What would be the solution?’’ you look up from your notes

‘’if they stop fucking misplacing the documents, pens and everything else. Theres a manual where it specifically states that if you put documents on my table it has to be on the right side four centimeters away from the left and three centimeters from the part of the desk thats the closest to you .’’ he rubs his temples with furrowed brows.

‘’Why those numbers specifically?’’

‘’because thats the most efficient way’’ Yoongi answers with a tone that makes you think you asked the world's dumbest question.

‘’They stress me out so much to the point where i feel like screaming every time i see their faces, sometimes i feel like they're doing this on purpose cause when my advisor orders them to do something they'll happily comply. im sure its because of his looks’’ he mutters the last part.

gets stressed out to the point of exhaustion if he doesn't have full control of his environment.

‘’What positive changes would you like to see happen in your life?’’

‘’this is going to sound crazy since i'm satan’’ Yoongi sighs deeply and stares at the dying plant behind you ''but i want things to be more peaceful and right now hell is in utter chaos, as i mentioned earlier a lot of demons are not working, not due that there aren't any jobs but because they still have that old mindset that their only mission in life is to kill humans. Don't get me wrong i could care less about you guys but its my company that has to overwork itself cause of it’’

You raise your eyebrows ‘’don't souls go to hell cause they used to be a sinner?’’

Yoongi scoffs and rolls his eyes ‘’ hell is just another word for the underworld. Souls come down to us to get judgment of their previous life and if they were a goodie two shoes they get sent to heaven by following the holy light that shines down when the gates open up. Though i am glad my advisor was able to negotiate with the angels to let them into heaven cause it was getting overcrowded down there and all the demons we sent up to bring the souls were brutally attacked by them’’

For someone who claims to hate humankind yoongi sure likes and takes his time to explain to you how hell really works. As if you're going to correct anyones assumptions about hell , which by the way you don’t believe that he's satan, there is no actual evidence that demons exist. So you decided a long time ago that you wont believe in such folklore.

You stare at the paper in your lap for a few seconds, raking your brain on what to write down of what he just told you, since you cant compare it to anything logical. The only explanation on why the ''angel's '' would attack yoongi's worker would be that he works in the shady field, you know, like being a drug lord or anything else that isn't accepted in society.

‘’you know’’ you speak up, deciding to document that last part later when you have time to think everything through. ‘’although you are not a god, you're still the most powerful demon in the underworld no?’’

‘’Not exactly, after i fell i became one of the ten kings of hell, mostly because i was the one who contributed the most when it came to establish the underworld. Though i am the one who makes the final decision hence why i get the most workload.’’

‘’hm’’ you hum ‘’it sounds like the reason why you're not being listened to is because you haven't clearly established the hierarchy in your environment’’

‘’I clearly have but they don't-’’

‘’Being the boss does not mean you scream or fuss at your subordinates, but that you reward them for their good work and fire them if it needs to be done’’  you give him an intense look. ‘’With you lashing out shows that you have time to be emotional which means theres time to dilly dally’’

‘’Their reward is a good paycheck’’ Yoongi counters clasping his hands ‘’there are no holidays for us because you humans die whenever its convenient and theres a special regiment that needs to be followed for the souls to either get reincarnated or go to heaven. And firing my workers is out of question’’

‘’Then what about proposing the idea to the others ,of making a trainee department where you recruit people who want or are desperate for money since you said the paycheck is hefty. It would benefit you in the way that , the trainee's can see what working in your department would be like  and then decide if they want to stay or not, and if they stay your workload will sink significantly’’

Yoongi touches his lips for a few times, lost in his thoughts trying to process what you said before he snaps his fingers and points it at you. ‘’Human that is actually a very good idea, do you want to work for me?’’

A feeling similar to disgust washes over you with the way he said human, as if you're lower than him, lower than an insect even and your first instinct is to grimace. Instead you smile, squinting your eyes ever so slightly to give the illusion that the expression is real. ‘’No thank you i'm quite content with my job’’ you politely refuse.

‘’Thats a shame’’ Yoongi shrugs his shoulders ‘’you would fit into the underworld quite well’’

You're not sure if that is a compliment of it he's telling you that you're demonic. Either way you decide to ignore his statement and close the file in your lap. ‘’The session will end in five minutes , but before that i want to ask you, how do you feel now?’’

''Better'' Yoongi answers ‘’less stressed as when i walked in which surprises me , you're quite good  i wouldn't mind the weekly sessions.’’

‘’Thank you’’ you answer ‘’do you have any questions?’’

‘’everything i tell you is confidential right?’’

‘’Yes, unless you've killed someone or are threatening general public i would have to report you but otherwise no one knows anything, even your advisor wont get told what happened in here’’ you reply.

‘’i wouldn't say that’’ Yoongi hums ‘’he has quite a way with words and is able to persuade anyone’’

‘’we'll have to see’’ you retort and take your planner from the small table ‘’is next week on thursday at four o'clock in the afternoon good for you?’’

‘’Yes’’ Yoongi answers as he's looking at the schedule on his phone.

‘’Good’’ you close the planner ‘’before you go i want you do this every time you feel like your anger and stress is getting to you, take deep breaths and slowly count to ten, that should help you calm down a little and think rationally, well talk on how effective it was next week then’’

Yoongi nods and you stand up, walks towards the door and open it. As you turn around to face him you see him standing just a few feet away from the couch starring out of the window, his brows furrowed and his lips tight. He turns around and walks towards you in long strides an hint of annoyance on his face.

‘’I'll see you next week then’’ you stretch out your hand ‘’if something should come up and you’re not able to come please do call and cancel a day before the appointment’’

''Alright '' Yoongi replies and takes your outstretched hand into his

When Yoongi's hand touch your skin your earlier suspicions are confirmed. His hand are icy cold to the point that it feels like your skin is burning at the mere contact. Which is worrying because the only time a human ever has a temperature that low is when they're dying of hypothermia yet the man in front of you looks like he has drank out of the fountain of youth.  

He grips your hand tighter and says in a low voice ‘’be careful in the next few days’’

Not sure if he's warning or threatening you, you blankly stare at him before nodding silently and Yoongi lets go of your hand. Gives you one last glance before he walks out of the room and you close the door. Walking over to your desk you plump into the chair and sigh deeply, you have no idea what that so called warning is about, yet another part of your brain instantly goes to how you thought your apartment was broken in a few days ago. But how can Yoongi even know about that, considering the fact that you've just met an hour ago unless the whole thing about him being satan is actually true.

You shake your head, there is no way Yoongi is satan, sure he looks devilishly good despite the ugly red highlighter colored type of suit he was wearing and the black hair compliments his skin color impeccably. But you're also pretty sure the overlord would have more blood thirst and wouldn't be so merciful like yoongi ,who took his sweet time to explain details about hell to you. Almost coming off like that one kid at a slumber party who corrects the other kids when they state they had fun today , saying since its past twelve it technically ''tomorrow'' hence why they had ''fun yesterday''

Basically a kill joy.

Tapping the pen against the desk for a  few times you snort out loud before putting the utensil down. Its out of question that demons and otherworldly beings are real, so for now in your eyes yoongi's using religion as metaphor for his own life.

Opening the laptop you wait for it to start up so that you can write about the session. After around twenty minutes of you trying to find the right words for the report without making it seem like you made the whole thing up ,you notice the time and shut off your laptop. Looking out of the window you notice that the sky is already dark and snowflakes are falling from the sky.

‘’I hope Christmas comes soon’’ you murmur with a small smile before turning around and taking your jacket from the chair. After wrapping the scarf around your neck and picking up your bag you walk towards the door, shut the light off and exit the room.

Christmas has a special place in your heart. Until you were fourteen you had never experienced Christmas, it was something you'd only see on tv and thats was rarely cause your mom almost never paid the electricity bill. And the only time you did was when you were seven, because your grandmother came and took you away from your delirious mother. Though you cant remember it because you had an accident that was severe enough to wipe out your memories of that entire winter.

After you started working as a waitress and the girls who worked there found out that you never celebrated the holiday they made it a tradition to throw a party after work. Everyone would bring food , cake and gifts and would just have a jolly time. And till to this day you continue on with that tradition.

‘’Im clocking out’’ You say as you arrive at the reception to just to find it empty. Confused you look around until you see secretary Kim coming out of the break room with a cup of coffee.

‘’See you on monday’’ he says in his soothing deep voice and holds the cup higher in salutations. You give him a bright smile and walk out of the praxis.

⤑ ⤑ ⤑ ⤑

The reason why you're standing in the middle of the grocery store is because you still haven't bought food. You don't even have an excuse for it, sure technically your'e now seen as an adult but your mind is still that of an nineteen year old college student who doesn't know what budgeting is. Its pure laziness, the mere thought of having to cook and then wash the pots and pans has you groaning for eternity. Hence why your basket is filled with food that can be cooked under fifteen minutes, such as ramen, bread ,cheese, all types of sweets and of course beer.

The convenient store is relatively empty, besides you there are two other people in it one which is the cashier. Mariya takeuchi's song plays in the background but its not the same melody as you remember it. Its funkier than usual which gives the whole store a weird vibe to it. Stores at night are generally a place where it seems like reality is altered. you know the same way how when you're at your friends house and wake up in the middle of the night and everything just seems like its from another dimension? exactly that.

Putting the last chocolate bar into your basket you walk towards where the cashier is located. The cashier is a tall girl who has turquoise blue hair and a mole underneath her left eye. Her whole demeanor is screaming that she's bored but she doesn't attempt to make small talk with you which is something you appreciate. After paying you bid her goodbye and walk out of the store only to bump into someone.

‘’oh shit sorry’’ you aplogize and take a step back. The person you notice, is a male with a black hoodie on, his eyes weirdly soulless as he glances at you not even bothering to give you a reply yet for unknown reasons the hairs on your neck raise and you get goosebumps.  Scurrying across the parking lot you open your car door and put the bags into the passengers seat. A feeling of paranoia washes over you and you quickly get into the car.

‘’be careful- ''  yoongi's voice rings in your ear and you shake your head.

‘’Im starting to loose my damn marbles’’  you murmur, set the gear into reverse and back out of your spot before driving out of the parking lot , towards home. no music is playing because you feel like if it was on you'd miss clues on if someone is following you, also you can concentrate better that way. Thankfully it doesn't take too long for you to arrive home and you park your car into the spot that was given to you by the landlord of the housing complex.

You tighten the scarf around your neck because the cold wind picks up. Heave your purse over your shoulder as you take the two bags full of food,  close the door and lock it before walking up to the building your apartment is in. As you climb up the stairs you notice how the closer you get to your apartment the louder the thumping sound is.

Its your neighbors. Two boys who love to party constantly, which is really annoying even though they're always very polite to you and sometimes when the partying gets too much, they leave you a token of gratitude for not calling the police on them. Its not all that bad though a pair of ear plugs can solve the problem pretty quick and once you're asleep its like you're dead anyways, well unless someone enters your room thats when you wake up in 0000.3 seconds.

You unlock your apartment door and get inside, take off your shoes and walk into the kitchen. You set the bags on the counter, rip the post it note from the fridge and throw it into the garbage can. You leave one ramen on the counter while you put the food into the cupboard, take a small pot and fill it with water before turning on the stove and walk out the kitchen towards your bedroom. 

Putting on the light you notice that your room actually looks untouched and your sigh relieved. You get out of your clothes, carelessly throwing the on the floor and put your pajama on, which of course are black. You tie your hair into a bun, take your phone and walk back into the living room. Put on the television and realize that the water should be boiling by now. 

you smile slightly when you see the water is indeed boiling,  kind of proud at how accurate your timing is but thats no feat for someone who cooks ramen constantly. Literally after ten minutes the food is cooked and you put water into the pan to ‘’let it soak’’ knowing well that you’re using that an excuse to just not have to wash it now. Taking the bowl you walk over to the living room where you sit on the couch and watch the variety show thats playing on tv. 

Chuckling at the funny reactions of the idols you put the now empty bowl on the small table in front of you and lay down on the couch, your hand underneath the pillow. This position , combined with your full stomach and the temperature of the living room has you growing tired and its just takes a few seconds before you fall asleep. 

⤑ ⤑ ⤑ ⤑

The loud banging on the door wakes you up and alarmed you jump up from the couch. Looking at the clock you see that its eight in the morning and grumble ‘’Who the hell has the nerve to disturb me at ass o clock on a saturday morning somebody better be dying’’

You walk up to the door , open it and see two police officers , whose annoyed expression disappears , in front of you.

‘’ yes?’’ you ask

‘’ma’am we’d like to question you on where you were yesterday when the murder happened next door‘’

[upfrog]

Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline

Since I’m now properly getting into my 2019 reading list, I thought I might stick some reviews of books I’m reading here. So we’ll see how this goes.

This review is spoiler free.

Ready Player One was an adequate piece of science fiction that felt like it's only real reason to exist was to let the author, Ernest Cline, write a copious number of 80′s references. It brushed against a couple of properly interesting topics, but then seemed to deliberately avoid actually using those topics to make the book itself interesting, or even memorable as an exploration of anything beyond how to write a collection of nerd buzzwords for only mildly nerdy people. I don't regret reading it at all, but I doubt I'll read it again unless someone makes a compelling argument that I missed something.

The year is 2045, and human civilization is well into it’s downward spiral. A massive energy crisis has left much of humanity impoverished, and corporate warlords (or to steal a phrase from Neal Stevenson, “equity lords”) appear to control most of the remaining enclaves of relative prosperity. Whatever is left of the national government, at least in the US, appears to be impotent to help the situation. Wade Watts, our protagonist, is like most people of his time in that he has given up all hope in reality, and instead immerses himself in the exciting and prosperous online land of OASIS,  a virtual reality massively multiplayer online role playing game that most people seem to consider to be the only world worth living in. 

In this digital realm, Wade is a Gunter, a player who has dedicated themselves to solving a massive puzzle posthumously left by the eccentric creator of the game, James Halliday. The first person to solve the puzzle (which consists of finding several keys, and using them to unlock various challenges) is set to receive the entirety of Halliday’s estate, including several hundred billion dollars, and complete control over OASIS. Solving this puzzle requires an obsessive knowledge of Halliday’s interests, which seem to almost exclusively revolve around nerdy 80′s pop culture: video games, cult classic movies, music, sitcoms, the whole nine yards. In their attempt to solve this puzzle, the Gunters become experts on Halliday, his personal life, and every piece of pop culture he ever hinted that he enjoyed. 

All good so far, right? Right! It’s an interesting enough premise, and if you’re into retro video games and trivia, you may really enjoy it’s execution. For my part, 8 years ago I bet I would have loved this book, but nowadays I’m less into all the 80′s culture, so the book didn’t have that crutch to help my opinion of it. This is a shame, because the book needed that crutch.

The first problem is that Wade rarely feels genuinely challenged. Much of his struggle takes place “off screen”, and once it’s brought back on screen, he starts succeeding at almost everything. Set backs are rare, and when they occur, the book never really treats them as having any weight behind them. Part of this can be blamed on the virtual setting; after all, part of the point of a video game is that if you die in the game, you don’t die in real life, which does make the consequences for failure less severe by default. However, I think that the setbacks could still have been meaningful if the author had wanted them to be, which I’m not sure he did. That is of course his prerogative, but the book was left weaker for it.

The second problem, which I consider more serious, is that the book seems to avoid it’s own most interesting parts. Virtual reality is an interesting and increasingly relevant theme, as is the idea of people abandoning reality in favor of a cleaner, happier, more prosperous virtual reality. The book establishes that many in it’s world live their real lives within OASIS, with the physical reality more of an unwelcome chore than anything else. It then fails to follow up on this theme in any meaningful way. The book also touches briefly on the social impacts of being able to decouple the real “you” and the virtual “you”, the latter of which is often more important in the book’s world, but it never goes anywhere with it. Heck, the Gunters are in many ways a budding religious order; had Cline chosen to focus on that idea, I think he could have written some interesting material around the idea of the construction of deities. But this too is not explored. Every theme that could have made the book interesting was briefly mentioned, if it was included at all, and then dropped.

Personally, I didn’t really find Cline’s writing very effective. It didn’t pull me in particularly, and I wasn’t left with any particularly good imagery. That said, I find David Weber’s writing style riveting, so maybe I’m just weird. But while it wasn’t exceptionally effective, I didn’t have any real problems with it, and had some fairly good foreshadowing. Not necessarily subtle, but well executed, and it does a lot to make the world feel real, like something vast that we are only seeing through a small window. So what do we see when we look through that window?

We see 80′s references of all sorts. If that’s your thing, this book will probably be bumped up several notches in your esteem. But once again, it didn’t do anything very conceptually interesting with all of it’s pop culture. The 80′s references could have been replaced with 90′s references, or 00′s references, and had little effect on the story. Just change the names around, and re-write the details of some of the puzzles. Even in-universe, it appears that the only reason that Halliday chose the 1980′s was his own nostalgia. For my part, the 80′s references started to feel pretty tired before I was a quarter of the way through the book, though they never got the point where I found them annoying. 

What was somewhat annoying was the way that Cline discussed his references. Many of the things he wrote into his world are relatively obscure; cult classics on the Atari 2600, box office flops, things that in the modern day have a presence in two main cultural groups: the people who were kids when the reference was first relevant, and nerds who have found themselves smitten with this piece of retro culture, and have adopted it as their own in the modern day. You will note that these two groups are by no means mutually exclusive. But Cline writes his references as if he is trying to put them in terms that people not in either of these groups can easily understand. This is an understandable decision, as he presumably wanted his book to be appealing to people other than nerds, but the result is that some of the book feels at times like it was written by an outsider trying to write about these in-jokes. One minor example is how every creative process that led to the world of OASIS is referred to as being programming. Technically accurate perhaps, but it feels like Cline is afraid that he’ll scare off the normies if he refers to, say, animation, or concept art. Another minor frustration is that OASIS has a fairly typical case of Fictional Video Game Syndrome, where everything in the game is named to make it sound gamer-y to non gamers, with the result that it sounds extremely fake to people who actually play video games. 

Admittedly, minor frustrations with how the book’s references are handled are, well, minor. But when a book feels like it raison dêtre is to have a bunch of pop culture references, it becomes harder to excuse failure in the delivery of these references. But aside from this relatively minor annoyance, the references were handled fairly well. While it is clear that the book mainly exists as a house for these references, they always stay in keeping with the rest of the world. Various classic video games are brought up and discussed in a story-appropriate manner, and they don’t feel shoehorned in.

I realize that I’ve just spent a silly number of words talking about all the things I didn’t like about the book, but at the end of the day I really don’t mind it. I read it, and I enjoyed it while I read it. I feel no need to read it again, or to watch the movie, or read any of Cline’s other works, but the book was certainly not bad. I’d recommend it to anyone who secretly wishes they could have been born in time to experience the 80′s in person, or to readers who are getting their feet wet with science fiction. It may also be good for readers who have trouble getting into most books, but connect readily to the digital world. For others, I wouldn’t steer you away from the book, but I wouldn’t recommend it either, unless you liked the sound of what you just read.

This is not exactly a popular blog, so I’m not really guessing that anyone will read this. In case someone does, feel free to leave any feedback you may have, and if you want to talk about the book, hit me up! 

[cafezimmermann]

Coco & Igor

Before leaving for Weisendorf, I picked up a few DVDs from the library, just in case I had some extra time on my hands to kill. That didn’t turn out to be, but I did manage to smuggle in Jan Kounen’s 2009 film Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky by watching it at fifteen-minute intervals during the week. Don’t run out to get it – not only is the second half of the movie terribly annoying, the mere idea of having an athletic, 6-foot tall Dane (Mads Mikkelsen) assume the role of the diminutive, 5’3”-tall Russian composer is utterly ridiculous. Then again, if Mads is interested in taking over the character roles of vertically challenged people, then he should give me a call. We can make a deal. The trailer:

Indeed, his chiseled, frieze-like body dominates the film, as does the svelte figure of Coco Chanel, who played by the French actress Anna Mouglalis. 

Throughout the movie, the two strike their poses against a series of drop-dead gorgeous Art Deco backdrops – Coco Chanel as a strong, modern, independent woman who is relentless at getting what she wants, and Igor Stravinsky as a brooding, tight-lipped enigma of a man who only seems to be interested in serving his music. It works at first; the tension that you feel between the two as they realize that they somehow “understand” each other on a deep level is tremendous. But when the two consummate their affair, the poses they assume quickly become wearisome. “Coco and Igor jump into bed, and it’s a bore,” was the headline of the Politico film review. The numerous scenes of their tandem nakedness only seemed to serve somebody’s voyeuristic desire of seeing what Mads Mikkelsen and Anna Mouglalis look like without clothes on. 

Still, it was interesting to contemplate how the stay of the Stravinsky family at Chanel’s home in the Paris suburb of Garches in 1920 “might have played out.” The chance meeting of two great minds is always fascinating – particularly when they are able to look into each other’s soul but aren’t free to express their affection for each other openly. But since it’s a film, the barriers do fall. Meanwhile, Catherine Stravinsky, who suffers from tuberculosis and is often seen bedridden in the manor, slowly becomes aware that something is awry when she notes that Igor’s compositional style is suddenly different: “Your music has more passion,” she tells him. Sadly, the film doesn’t seem to be interested in delving further into how Stravinsky’s music might have displayed such passion, apart from a scene where Stravinsky can be seen playing his piano sonata (at least, I think that is what it is – can someone please help me here?) before Coco Chanel enters, the playing suddenly breaks off and there is more sex at the piano.

Afterward, Chanel leaves for Grasse to develop her signature perfume. The two are obviously smitten with each other, but Chanel is most likely already annoyed at the fact that Stravinsky won’t take the risk and run off with her. Things begin to fall apart – love turns to hate, the two women are filled with jealousy for each other, and Stravinsky’s furioso side of his personality takes hold of him as he pounds away at his piano in the back room of the manor. Madame Stravinsky leaves with the children, and… at this point, I turned off my laptop and went out to go for a walk. I didn’t care anymore about how the film ended.

Fortunately, the opening scene of the film, a reconstruction of the premiere of Le Sacre at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris in 1913, is definitely worth watching, even with Mads assuming the role of the great Igor. Back when I was at Oberlin, I was one of Tom Kelly’s “guinea pigs” for his book First Nights – Five Musical Premieres, which takes a closer look into the historical context and circumstances surrounding the first performances of, among other works, Stravinsky’s Sacre. Tom Kelly, with his gentle, upbeat North Carolina accent always had a natural talent for spinning a fine story during our lessons – as if you had William Styron in front of you. And you feel that in his book. It’s simply a good read, devoid of the dryness that makes most academic textbooks hard to digest.

I am wondering if Jan Kounen might have read Tom Kelly’s book when he was getting ready to film Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky because I was struck by how closely the opening scene follows what Kelly describes to his readers. In short, the film is “authentic,” not only in terms of the costumes and the choreography of Le Sacre itself but in the details as to just how violently the public reacted to the performance, so much so that the gendarmes had to be called in. There are numerous accounts of the evening – Stravinsky himself described it in 1962:

“Mild protests against the music could be heard from the very beginning of the performance. Then, when the curtain opened on the group of knock-kneed and long-braided Lolitas jumping up and down (Danse des adolescents), the storm broke. Cries of “Ta gueule” came from behind me. I heard Florent Schmitt shout “Taisez-vous garces du seizième”; the “garces” of the sixteenth arrondissement were, of course, the most elegant ladies in Paris. The uproar continued, however, and a few minutes later I left the hall in a rage; I was sitting on the right near the orchestra, and I remember slamming the door. I have never again been that angry. The music was so familiar to me; I loved it, and I could not understand why people who had not yet heard it wanted to protest in advance. I arrived in a fury backstage, where I saw Diaghilev flicking the house lights in a last effort to quiet the hall. For the rest of the performance, I stood in the wings behind Nijinsky holding the tails of his frac, while he stood on a chair shouting numbers to the dancers, like a coxswain.”

Kounen portrays this brilliantly in his film, succeeding to bring to life something that my mind’s eye has tried to imagine whenever I have stood on the stage of the Théâtre des Champs Elysées and looked out into the parquet of the auditorium. And yet, he also seemed unable to answer one key question that has always bothered me: How did they manage to get in so many musicians into orchestra pit? For, according to Kelly: “Stravinsky’s orchestra ended up being very large. He had originally intended it to be smaller, but encouraged by Diaghilev (who was no doubt feeling expansive because of the enormous sum Astrc was paying for the 1913 season), he increased its size.”

Kelly then tallies the number of musicians needed for Le Sacre, arriving at a total of ninety-nine players. “This may well be an enormous orchestra, but in a sense it is also chamber music, in that practically each player, even in the strings, has a unique part.” In terms of strings, this translates to “eight desks of first violins (all eight desks are needed on p. 20 of the score); seven desks of second violins (all needed on p.77); six desks of violas (all needed on p. 84); at least seven cellos (five soloists plus “the others” on p. 75); and a famous passage that calls for six solo double basses (p. 7).” There were “quintuple winds – that is, five of each wind instrument, though the five musicians were often required to double by switching from one instrument to the another.”

In the film (I stopped it and counted) it seems that 60 musicians involved, without the conductor – in other words, 39 less than what would have been needed to perform Le Sacre “properly”:

And again, from first-hand experience, I know that the theater pit is not big. Back in 2012, Akamus played a production of Pascal Dusapin’s Medea. We had 22 musicians, six solo singers, and the conductor in the pit, and even then the living quarters were quite cramped! Therefore, I suspect that something “had to give” for the premiere of Le Sacre. But what? Kelly even goes so far as to mention the problem in his book: “The orchestra pit, though ample, was small for the enormous orchestra of Le Sacre. Stravinsky wanted to expand the seating area by changing the layout of the theater. To remove the front seats in the auditorium, however, would have required taking welding torches to the brand-new theater, in addition to resulting in a loss of revenue. Ultimately, the orchestra succeeded in fitting into the pit, although the seating was not ideal.”

“Not ideal” is putting it mildly. Men the size of Mads Mikkelsen, impersonating Stravinsky, must have found it terribly frustrating. But then again, Mads was probably only waiting for the second half of the movie to get underway.