#no that only happens to adults because children are supposed to be rubber and bounce no matter what

[vampireknitting]

I have to get my wisdom teeth removed here on the 4th and I really wish medical anxiety wasn’t so dismissed or laughed at.

The anxiety has been slowly ramping up since Christmas and now that I have to cut out the only thing that’s managed the fibromyalgia bs. I mean sure it’s just weed. But when my health tanked and I was throwing up half of everything I tried to eat and losing weight like it was nothing. Unfortunately it was the only thing that helped stop the vomiting.

I’ve been put on and taking off several medications over the years for being the unlucky type that doesn’t react well to different meds. All the gut pills they wanted me to take hurt or was you know making me digest my own blood.

The Fibromyalgia began creeping in when I was in high school and the doctors I had told me to eat pills and go away. I had injured my knee and it just didn’t get better. I still have issues with it. Being a childhood cancer survivor means health complaints must be cry’s for attention or drugs.

They asked me to not consume any weed because they don’t know if it’ll hurt me to be put under so they can cut out the heavily impacted teeth. Which fine, I won’t fight because they could label me as some sort of user or drug obsessed or whatever. But the only drug that I know can kill you while being put under is meth.

My sister’s dental surgeon said don’t stop smoking weed because there isn’t anything out that supports either side. Pro weed or anti-weed before surgery. He didn’t want anything to add to the stress of the surgery so he said keep doing what you’re doing.

[tiny-smallest]

day one - pride

Rating: G Characters: Henry and Bendy Warnings: none Description: Henry reflects on the definition of labels and belonging in certain spaces.

Also on AO3!

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WHO'S READY FOR THE INK DEMONTH 2021 I SURE ONCE AGAIN TOTALLY WAS YEP DEFINITELY NO LAST MINUTE ANYTHING HERE LET'S GO

Doing writing prompts again because this year has been A Lifetime and I just don't possess the ability to draw this time so let's go let's get stupid get weird enjoy the misadventures of a specific au of of Bendy and the Ink Machine where the toons are their own people in a world they still don't entirely understand and the people who love them who try to help them navigate it.

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Henry was used to a surprising amount of things to interrupt his day first thing in the morning. Easily numbered in the hundreds. His children were toons; there was no end to the amount of crazy nonsense that they could get into when he was asleep, and that was disregarding the fact that Bendy usually slept until noon.

Sure, he was the Troublemaker In Chief. That did not mean the other two were paragons of holiness, no matter how much Alice tried glowing her halo at him while she and her brother gave him the saddest, biggest, shiniest puppy eyes. And that didn't even take into account how much trouble they could find, no mischief intended.

He'd seen smoldering breakfasts, pancakes on the ceiling, saran wrap around the kitchen archway, demonic rubber chicken noises from a saxophone that had a part replaced with the noisemaker from the novelty prank toy...

(He still didn't regret letting Boris chase Bendy for that one without intervening.)

With all that, being immediately accosted by three toons hanging off his legs the second he came down the stairs and all trying to talk to him at the same time did not magically get any easier to withstand.

"Whatever it is, it's a no until I get my coffee," he drawled as he attempted to walk with them hanging off him, the three of them dragged along with him. It was with quite some difficulty that he got to the kitchen counter.

"But Henry!" Bendy whined, "we only got a few hours to get ready if ya say yes! We need every second!"

"For what?" he yawned, pouring a cup from the machine.

"You don't know what day it is?" Alice was surprised enough to actually let go, and she dusted herself off like the lady she was before standing up.

Instantly something cold grabbed Henry's heart and squeezed. "Uh- no I...?"

Had he forgotten someone's birthday? No, it was summertime; Bendy was a winter 'birth' and Boris and Alice were spring and fall. An anniversary of some kind? Quick think what are you forgetting you useless-

"How!?" Bendy gaped at him from down below. "It's been all over the news fer weeks!"

Well okay now he was just thoroughly confused. "I um-"

"The parade, Henry!" Boris's tail was thumping gently against the floor; he was not trying one tiny ounce to hide his eagerness. "The parade that's today!"

"Parade-?" It took just one more nanosecond of thought before it clicked.

"Oh you mean the-!" And they wanted to go to it.

Well, he shouldn't be surprised. This would be the first parade they'd get to see, wouldn't it? And it was nice weather out. And it would be bursting with color, which the toons were darn near obsessed with.

He took a contemplative sip. They weren't human; god even knew if they had any sort of sexuality at all. Could they even feel that stuff? The urge to- do anything like that? Wouldn't that technically make them asexual? That was the word, right?

Well, human or not, that would solidly mean they belonged there. Queer was queer, regardless of species, right? Hell, even if they'd just started asking themselves those questions, or wanted to support the fans of theirs who fell under that giant umbrella, they were valid for being there.

"Sure, I can take you."

Both boys cheered, lifting their arms to do so and releasing his legs. He quickly took a step away from them, but their joy had them leaping to their feet anyway and he watched as they bounced around the kitchen, slowly draining his coffee and trying to curb his smile when he was actively drinking.

It was a hard task.

Their excited chatter melted pleasantly into the background as he took the time to drink and try to shake his brain awake the rest of the way awake like shaking out an old blanket to coax out the wrinkles. Their enthusiasm always made for the perfect background noise.

"What colors do you want?"

"I dunno! There's so many! I don' even know what label I fit in-"

"I saw you checkin' out that guy the other day don't think I didn't!" The wink and nudge from Bendy sent Boris blushing so hard the poor wolf's face turned nearly as black as his fur.

"I was hopin' you hadn't-"

They were all quick to consume breakfast, and Henry retreated upstairs after telling the toons to come get him when they wanted to leave.

He settled comfortably in the limitless, timeless space of art before reality came knocking with Bendy's distinctive tapping at the door, pulling Henry from the space inbetween something and nothing as he set his pen aside. "Come in, kiddo."

When Bendy stepped in with what was unmistakably a rainbow flag on his cheek and extra face paint he knew he was in for a time.

"Oh uh- what's that for-"

"For you!" Bendy said with a giant grin. "Who'd ya think?"

He rubbed the back of his neck. "Ah well- I uh-"

Bendy didn't slow down. "Anyway the others are about ready to go but they sent me up here to get your flag on while they finish up- now why they trusted me with the paint I got about as much an idea as you but hey I'm not gonna complain-"

"Aw that's- that's sweet kiddo but I sorta figured I'd just be-" How to say this. "Dropping you off...?"

Immediate confusion. "What? Why?"

"Uh well- I mean-" He fiddled with the pen- when had that ended up back in his hands? "You guys- you have a space there, you know? I'm not sure if I-"

There was now a puckered frown on the little devil's face. "Not sure if you what?"

"Well I mean- I don't exactly- belong, now do I?"

The frown multiplied its intensity by about five. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Aw jeez. He really did not want to discuss this with his kid, as much of an adult as Bendy was. For many reasons. "Uh well- you know-" He gestured, as if hoping that would somehow pluck the answer from the air and implant it in Bendy's brain without having to give voice to it, setting the pen down in the process so he’d stop playing with it. "I'm not exactly- I mean-"

"You like guys." Bendy's voice was so sure that Henry knew making any sort of denial was futile. And also kind of stupid. Why would he deny that to his own son? No of course he wouldn't.

"Well I mean- I married a woman, didn't I?" he finally blurted out.

Unimpressed blinking as he drew closer to stand beside the desk. "Yeah they got a word for that. Several actually. Most popular ones are bi and pan, so which colors is it gonna be?"

"No no I mean-" God he was probably blushing. His face definitely felt way too hot. "I uh- I mean I- I like guys, yes-" great brain thanks a ton totally needed that heart rate spiking why are you acting like that's scary this is our kid- "but I- I married a woman- I like women- more often?"

The blinking was now confused.

"Uh-" How to phrase this. "If- if we split it into a pie chart- it's probably like... thirty-seventy in favor of women?" He ran his fingers through his hair and down the back of his neck again. "I'm- not that I'm any great catch but like, if I was in any way qualified to be in the dating pool again, I'd be way more likely to end up with a lady."

The unimpressed look was back. "And?"

It was Henry's look to be surprised. "And- and that means that, you know- I'm not really-"

"You like guys."

"I- yeah?"

"And you're a guy."

"Kind of a given at this point."

"So you're a guy, and you like guys, and just also happen to like girls too. We got names for that." He gave Henry's shirt an appraising look. "Gotta say the bi colors would complement your clothes best. If you want pan colors I'm gonna have to ask you to change. As your official fashion consultant."

Henry snorted. "My what?"

"Listen Dad I love you but I ain't about to let you walk into that parade wearing like, a pineapple hawaiian shirt or nothin'."

Henry banged a fist lightly on the table and pointed at him. "Liar! You wore the exact same thing just the other day!"

"Yeah but that was to the beach, not a parade."

"Literally when have you ever cared about not being a fashion disaster."

"This time, when Alice'll actually kill me otherwise."

"... Okay you got me there."

Bendy grinned. "So, bi colors or pan colors! Or somethin' else? I think there's other ones too."

He opened his mouth, closed it again and then opened it. What the hell. "... Bi colors, I guess."

"Yesssssss I was hopin' you'd say that." He hopped over onto the table like he'd suddenly become a bunny.

"Oh you were, huh?"

"Listen, the pan folks got pretty colors, but I'm always a sucker for a sunset," he said as he pulled out the pallet he needed. Henry sighed and shook his head, the smile ruining his effort to look exasperated.

"Well. Sunset me then, I guess."

"You got it boss!" Bendy said in maybe the worst mafia minion accent known to mankind.

It was barely five minutes of Bendy painting lines carefully on his cheek before he whipped out a mirror.

"Tah-dah!"

Henry blinked at himself in the mirror. He tilted his head, something shifting inside his heart that he had no name for, no way to voice.

The once proud look on Bendy's face was swiftly dropping. "... I didn't mess it up, did I...?"

"No- no, no." Henry tilted his head. "I uh..."

Bendy's worried browlines screamed anxiety to him.

"... I guess I just look good in a sunset," he said quietly, seeing the little corner of his reflection's mouth turn up as if in some sort of hazy dream.

Better than I thought.

[goldeneyedgirl]

Fic-Mas Day 2: In Another Life

Oh my gosh! Thank you so much for the lovely response :D I’ve got bad allergies tonight and I’m babysitting a puppy post-surgery, so no long message, just onwards with Day 2.

Day 2. In Another Life

(This was/is a part of an anthology fic called ‘The Only Girl in the World’, and was basically just a lot of different ways Jasper and Alice could have met, and how fate helped or hindered them. I also want to make it completely clear that Alice is a human child in this fic, and there are no romantic or sexual undertones, implications, or subtext.)

The new neighbours have finally arrived.

The Brandons live outside of town, and it has been forever since the Hawkins’ left. Not that anyone was surprised - there are enough ghost stories and rumours to keep that house empty forever.

There’s a line of pine trees that seperate the Brandon house from the old Hawkins’ place. Other than the orchard, the rest of the land belongs to the new neighbours now.

“Where are you going, Mary?” her mother is in the kitchen, consulting a cook-book. Caroline Brandon is the consummate housewife - consistent, resourceful, and bored out of her mind raising two daughters outside of a small town. Neither Caroline nor Michael Brandon have told the girls that they’ll be getting a brother very, very soon - even though nine-year-old Mary and seven-year-old Cynthia have already taken note of their mother’s bulging stomach.

“To see the neighbours!” the cry summons little Cynthia, and both girls start their charge towards the Hawkins’ place. They are almost mirror images of each other - sturdy Cynthia, and bird-boned Mary; Cynthia’s blonde curls fall effortlessly to her waist, and Mary’s stick-straight black hair hangs around her shoulders. Cynthia wears a pink-striped dress and matching shoes; Mary wears ancient fairy-wings over a rainbow leotard and a long skirt, her feet bare.

Through their mother’s flower garden, and around the vegetable patch; over the low stone fence and through the orchard to no man’s land. They climb up the old viewing platform - their father says that it used to belong to hunters, and they need to stay off the rotten old thing, but they have no other play structure, and the temptation is just too much.

“Are they there? Are there kids?” Cynthia asks, bouncing.

“They’re there. I think they’re all grown ups,” Mary squints through the plastic binoculars they have stashed up there, in an ancient lunchbox. “Come one!” They are both nimble little girls, and have climbed up and down the platform hundreds of times; each foot hits the bolts they use as steps with certainty and speed, and then they are off, through the long grass, to see the mysterious new neighbours.

Crossing over the border, it is like another world. Everyone knows the story of the Hawkins’ mansion: a man built it for his wife, and their children kept dying. They said the youngest child, Arabella Hawkins, was mad and roamed the house at night. All Mary knew was that Mrs Hawkins had been taken away in an ambulance, and that Mr Hawkins was found asleep in his car one morning, and the police had to be called.

But the house was exquisite, under years of neglect. The fountain and gardens, ready to be loved again. The Victorian mansion of at least three floors. Mary Alice couldn’t imagine how nice it was inside.

She could see the new people unloading the truck, and hurried across the gravel to see them closely.

“Hi,” she blurted out, standing barefoot on the gravel, at the adults suddenly staring at her. “I’m Mary, we live next door. She turned around to see Cynthia lingering shyly behind her. “That’s my sister Cynthia.”

They are staring at her, as if she is quite strange. There is a lady there, wearing a pretty sweater, who smiles so nicely at her.

“Hello Mary, hello Cynthia,” she says. “I’m Esme Hale. This is my family.”

Mrs Hale is sweet, and asks them a lot of questions as the rest of the family unpacks; Cynthia takes a shine to the lady, and jabbers away about the new baby, about Halloween and Thanksgiving, and that they want a puppy for Christmas.

Mrs Hale appears equally as enchanted by Cynthia - that’s not strange, most adults love her little blonde sister. She watches boxes and covered furniture been carried into the house, and the gravel bites harder into her cold, bare feet. It’s just an ordinary moment, ultimately forgettable. Except it isn’t. And she’s still too little to understand the intricacies of everything that has happened, has been seen and said and felt.

They leave soon after, with Mrs Hale promising them cookies next time they come over; Cynthia is delighted, but she has a terrible sweet tooth. With a wave and a smile, both girls dart back towards the tree line. Mary doesn’t know why she looks back, but she does, and see a man and woman staring at her from the garage, and frowns.

That night, she dreams of the blond man coming to their house - its nighttime, and Thanksgiving, because she’s wearing a stupid dress with fall leaves and turkeys on it. She knows the new baby is there, and everyone is in the dining room laughing and talking. He smiles down at her, and whispers something to her.

And she takes his hand. Then she’s in a car; her backpack is at her feet, and her plush rabbit is in her lap. She’s wearing her best winter coat, and she’s not at all afraid. She’s warm and sleepy. When they stop, he buys her waffles and hot chocolate, and he looks at her so sadly. She’s happy though. Well, until he takes her to a public bathroom and cuts her hair off. But it’s only hair, and she doesn’t blame him.

They find his family at another house; this house is wooden, like a ski lodge, and he seems surprised to see them there. They yell a lot, and she hides in a bedroom upstairs.

That’s when Mrs Hale comes to her side, and shows her the news. She sees her mother screaming and crying, she sees a lot of police. Her photograph on the news. Her ugly Thanksgiving dress fished out of a dumpster at the gas station.

The Hales talk about returning her, and how she’ll keep their secret. Mrs Hale puts her to bed, and kisses her cheek and promises her it will all be okay.

She doesn’t even stir when he lifts her from her bed and leaves with her again. She wakes up again, and they are in a truck, driving fast. He just keeps saying he’s sorry.

She doesn’t care. She likes him. He is so peaceful and safe to her eyes. And during their travels, he is kind. He buys her food and makes sure she is warm and clean. Few people give them a second look, but the few that do, she dismisses. “My name isn’t Mary. It’s Alice, and he’s my brother.” He buys her fake purple glasses, a sketchbook, and a new coat for Christmas. They sit on the front of the car, and she eats pizza out of a box and look out at the festive lights on Christmas Eve. He takes her to a church, and she says a prayer, and then they leave again.

He is taking her to Alaska, he tells her. She’ll be safe there. She doesn’t know what he’s protecting her from, but she trusts him. She doesn’t tell him she feels sick, that she’s hot and cold all the time, and it doesn’t matter. She shouldn’t be sick, she knows that. Some part of her knows this is how everything is going to be fixed; that someone has made a terrible mistake (not him), and this is how they try to put it right.

She dies in his arms on the side of the road on New Year’s Eve. Her mouth tastes like blood and everything is floating. It hurts to breathe. His red eyes stare down, desperately at hers, and she wants to reassure her that she understands everything. Not in a way that can be put into words, but she does. That she is nearly ten years old, but she feels much older and would never ever have told anyone. That this life is all wrong, and that’s why she has to go to heaven.

His family won’t be mad for long, they’ll welcome him back. They’ll never, ever ask him about what happened to her - even when they find out he has kept her stuffed rabbit.

She wants to tell him all of this, but she can’t, so she closes her eyes and snuggles closer to him, and fades away from the world.

When she wakes up the next morning, she knows her fate. She knows which clothes to pack into her backpack and to tie a ribbon from her bunny to her bag, so that when he climbs in her window, he won’t forget Bunny. She leaves her back right next to the window.

Binoculars. She needs her binoculars.

Her rubber boots pinch a little, and if her mother finds out that she’s running around in her pyjamas, she’ll catch it. But she treks across the snow to the old hunting structure, and climbs up.

It’s just happenstance, bad luck, and maybe a reprieve for a haunted man. The crack sounds like the branch from a tree going, and suddenly she can’t catch her balance and then there is falling and pain and stillness as the rotting wood finally gives out. The only metal pole that was holding the wood in place pierces her chest and makes her feel hot and cold at the same time. One of her boots has come off or torn or something. She’s all ice and wet from the snow. She can’t breathe or cry or scream or talk.

It will be hours before she is found, nestled in the wreckage, with a starburst of blood around her. There will be yelling and screaming, and emergency services everywhere, and her photograph will end up in the newspaper. There will be some speculation whether she died from her injuries, or froze to death. But it doesn’t matter - accidental death is accidental death, however you frame it. Her mother will never understand the clothing in the backpack, or the ribbon tied to her favourite toy. Her father will throw away her fairy wings and broken binoculars. And Jasper Hale will never kidnap the little girl that made him feel hope, and run away without a plan.

She lies in the snow, and she is frustrated and sad. This wasn’t supposed to happen. She wasn’t supposed to be a little girl when she met him; he wasn’t supposed to be so desperate.

She wasn’t supposed to die alone.

But she does anyway.

[thedemonshavemisplacedtheirgod]

The Demons Have Misplaced Their God - Part 2

“Get us out, get us out, get us out!” Harley’s screeching was not, in fact, helping, but he seemed to think it was.

Brian grabbed half of a porcelain plate from a dumpster knocked sideways onto the ground as they ran, and smashed it over Harley’s head. It only made him more hysterical.

“WHY DID YOU DO THAT? WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? YOU COULD HAVE KNOCKED ME OUT! THEY WOULD CATCH ME! I WOULD DIE! WHY DO YOU WANT ME TO DIE?”

“Because you won’t SHUT! UP!” Brian looked like he was about to continue when Nate grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and yanked him into an open doorway, covering his mouth with his hand. Remy grabbed Harley in a similar fashion, but Harley seemed to get over his need to destroy his own vocal chords and did not need to be smothered. The four slowed their breaths and listened to the sounds of footsteps--multiple people running after where they’d been shouting.

The hunters almost ran right past their admittedly rather terrible hiding place, but pivoted on their feet to face them. Time slowed around them and instead of whipping out their weapons and killing them instantly, they sluggishly reached for their knives and guns. 

Nate released Brian and sauntered over, reaching into their pockets and removing anything of interest, either breaking it or keeping it, tossing the broken, useless remains onto the ground. The hunters’ faces moved achingly slowly in reaction--horror, annoyance, the like. A few of the group had the audacity to look afraid. 

“It’s almost like they’ve never fought a demon before,” Remy noted, chuckling. With a wave of his hands they all fell asleep, oh-so-slowly falling to the ground in varying levels of discomfort. They would awake once the demons were good and far away.

“Why don’t we just kill them?” Brian whined. 

“Do you want a whole pack of hunters after us, instead of a few strays?” Remy asked. Brian backed down, but grumbled under his breath. 

“We can’t feed from them anyways,” Nate muttered. “They’ve poisoned themselves. Drank holy water.”

Remy let out a string of curses that would singe any self-respecting angel’s ears. “What the hell else are we supposed to eat? The people here are too damn paranoid to go out at night. And unless you wanna get maced, I don’t think we should try any of the dealers around here.”

Harley huffed. “Can’t even try a decent prostitute. Stupid city council cracking down on it being illegal, and all.”

“I mean, there’s that homeless shelter downtown,” Brian said. “We could try breaking in. They’re probably all asleep anyway.”

“I actually looked into that the other day,” Nate spoke. “They’ve got a silent alarm. We wouldn’t even know it before the cops were on us. And these days, they’re worse than the hunters.”

The rest muttered sounds of agreement as an uneasy silence settled on them like a sticky child’s blanket. As in, they really would rather be doing anything than continue to be touching such a silence. 

“So…” Brian bounced on his heels. “What are we gonna eat?”

-

Nate and Remy met at the turn of the century, at a millennium new year’s party. There were a few raised eyebrows exchanged, at first. After all, they both wore the same sunglasses indoors, and both wore leather jackets--although Nate kept his sleeves rolled up to his elbows at all times. Aesthetic was and is a crucial part of both of their lives, so the fact that they matched was an unpleasant revelation. And as they met in the corner of the room to discuss such pleasantries as who would be leaving and coming back in another outfit, they both recognized the indisputable, if hidden via powerful glamour, aura of a demon. 

As the ball dropped in Times Square and on the TV, the humans around them cheered and drank and Nate and Remy removed their sunglasses for the first time that evening and made out until the last of the human partiers vomited onto the couch and resolved to fix her alcohol problem this year. (She didn’t, but it’s the thought that counts, and at least she got the two weirdos in the back to stop snogging each other and leave.)

-

Their apartment didn’t have a lock, but it did exude residual demonic energy, and that worked well enough to ward off potential burglars. Not that they had much worthy of pilfering. Harley jiggled the door handle and slammed his full body weight into the door in an attempt to budge the stubborn thing. Remy leaned against the doorframe and ‘helped’ until it actually opened, and the four went in.

Inside, a dented old red boombox played ‘Best of Queen’, and a pair of identical young boys played Mario Kart on the stolen TV. They didn’t bother to look up at the adults as they wandered in. Nate sat on the couch next to them, humming in mild amusement as one boy blue-shelled the other. 

“Not sure how you can win or lose this one, Jobe,” Nate ruffled one boy’s hair, laughing as he was swatted away.

The game ended and the duo turned to their brother in the same kind of unison one would expect of twins in a horror movie, but not in real life.

“Did you bring food?” The image of two boys blurred until it seemed as though there may not have been any boys on the ratty old couch at all, and maybe it was just a smudge on your glasses? Only for the smudge to reform itself into one singular boy in-between where the separate boys sat, holding both controllers. 

“No luck,” Nate admitted. From somewhere in the barren kitchen, (for though food was a luxury, it was not one they could afford) he heard a frustrated huff that could have been from any of the other three housemates.

Jobe frowned, then tried to hide it, then decided it wasn’t worth it and just frowned. “We’re all gonna to starve at this rate!”

“Nah,” Nate reached out and took one of the controllers from the younger’s hand. “Ain’t gonna happen. Wanna play against someone who isn’t you?”

“Finally. Do you know how hard it is to beat myself?!”

“You’re such a braggart.”

-

Jobe was a surprise. But he was Nate’s baby brother, and while it may be the norm for humans, siblings are spectacularly rare among demonkind. (This is for various reasons, including but not limited to: demonkind’s lack of loyalty to former partners, often betraying each other before the opportunity to reproduce presents itself a second time, as well as their general dislike of children, particularly demonic ones.) So Remy accepted that as long as he and Nate were… whatever they were, he’d have to be around Jobe.

It turned out to be easier than he thought.

“I didn’t picture you as good with kids,” Nate had a towel wrapped around his waist, his hair still dripping from his shower. Remy looked up from the carpet, where he and Jobe had taken toothpicks and rubber bands to set up a witchburning with Barbie as the accused. As it was, Elmo the witch hunter had already burned such known witchcraft practitioners as Potato Head Man, all three of the minions, and a particularly feisty Beanie Baby who had laid a curse upon all of Elmo’s descendants that probably wouldn’t come into play until after Jobe had taken a bath. However, the townsfolk were starting to get suspicious of Elmo’s credibility, as Barbie is a well-respected figure across all cultures. (That part had been Jobe’s idea, and Remy had wholeheartedly agreed. Elmo was getting greedy, and greedy humans--or muppets--had to pay eventually.)

“Sorry, we borrowed your cigarette lighter,” Remy handed back the object in question, gesturing to the melted remnants of one of Potato Head Man’s arms. “We’re having a witch hunt.”

Nate nodded solemnly, handing the lighter back to the closest of his five brothers, two of whom decided to reform one, bringing the count back down to four Jobe. (The plural of Jobe, of course, is Jobe. This is because no matter how many of him there is, at the end of the day Nate only has one brother, even if there are several of him.) 

“I always knew the minions were something unholy,” he commented, heading back to his room to get into his pajamas. 

-

After some cajoling, Jobe eventually went to bed, leaving the four adults to ponder their tragically familiar situation over the kitchen countertop.

“I’ve heard LA’s got a pretty good food chain system going,” Harley suggested.

“Big cities, easy no-go. Besides, I heard that’s a rumor the local hunting family there’s been spreading,” Brian rested his head in his hands, staring down at the fake marble as if it had snatched away his only birthday present.

“Ontario’s been quiet lately,” Remy mused dryly. 

Harley shivered. “Canada’s too cold for me.”

“You don’t have to come,” Brian rolled his eyes. 

“Please. What would you do without me?”

“Sleep, maybe.”

“Shut up,” Remy took off his sunglasses, rubbing his forehead to stave off a headache. “Nate? Anything?”

“...Orlando?”

“Big city, same problems,” Brian repeated.

“Florida’s not too bad, though. Not a lot of hunting.” Remy considered it. It could be nice. Maybe they could take Jobe to Disney. He’d be ecstatic.

“That’s because all the humans down there are old,” Brian huffed. “It’d be so… boring.”

“Boring is good, though.” Nate spoke to Harley and Brian, but he’d moved his sunglasses onto his head, and his eyes were having a silent conversation with the other leather-clad demon. “Boring is safe.”

Harley and Brian shared their own look: one of mutual distaste for the inherently romantic route this conversation had involuntarily taken.