#none of the kids got arrested

[icedteaandoldlace]

Lol my brother-in-law is TikTok famous now.

[kresnikcest]

Somehow I never thought about the Barbie mug shot meme for Tales but I figure the wanted posters are a close enough thing

[malkaviian]

random oc facts, of the "they have problems" flavor

[lavenderspence]

To Lean On You | Spencer Reid

Pairing: Spencer Reid x fem!reader

Content Warning: post prison!Spencer, mentions of addiction, prison talk (typical for the prison arc), gun use, mentions of death, suggestive themes, idiots in love, angst, so much angst.

Word Count: 8.6K

Summary: You and Spencer wasted years, truths hidden, feelings uncertain, and a fear of the unrequited. It took ten weeks, isolated, silent, and broken, for the realization to strike. There was no life, if you didn’t have each other. 

A/N: It’s finally here! Wow, writing this was a wild ride, honestly. Over a month of writing, blood, sweat, and tears poured over it (there were in fact some tears). This is also the first thing I’ve written in 3 years and I'm very happy to finally be out of my slump. It's probably the angstiest thing I've written ever, and at the same time, I feel like it's not the greatest, but deep down, I still love it, haha. Let me know if I've missed any warnings. And, enjoy and any feedback is appreciated. <3

Here are some of the songs I listened to while writing this if you want to get into the mood:

Hearts by Jessie Ware

The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived by Taylor Swift

Lost Without You by Freya Ridings

In This Shirt by The Irresponssibles

masterlist

79 days, 3 hours, and 27 minutes - that’s how long it’s been since he got arrested in Mexico.

70 days, 6 hours, and 13 minutes since you saw him being pulled out of the courtroom after he was deemed a flight risk and denied bail. 70 days, 6 hours, and 13 minutes have passed since you last saw him.

65 days, 7 hours, and 11 minutes, since he was transferred to Millburn Correctional Facility, and this whole nightmare, had started. 

Per Penelope’s carefully crafted schedule, every team member has made numerous trips to visit Spencer - every member except you. You’d only made one trip out, and that had been 3 days after he’d been transferred.

March 4th, 2017

It’s been 8 days since you saw him led in cuffs out of that courtroom, where Penelope had broken down in Luke’s arms, everyone too shocked to make a sound. He’d looked back, his eyes meeting yours briefly, and it had been as if you’d almost seen your reflection in the mirror, every emotion had run between you both in a matter of seconds. 

Shock, you’d almost been sure they would grant bail, and you’d be able to take him home. Almost. 

Fear, for his future and his well-being. Fear of the uncertain. 

Desperation, the desire to run to him and take him into your arms, finally, and to not let go. 

Except you’d held his gaze for as long as you could before you’d looked down and turned your head to save him from seeing you break down in tears. You’d made a hasty escape after that, not sparing any of your teammates a glance, and walked out of the courthouse, stopping by a tree outside. The urge to curl up into a ball and hide, pretending none of this had happened, was strong, and then a hand wrapped around your shoulder. You had turned around, only to see Rossi and one of his sad little smiles, the ones you rarely saw.

“It’s going to be okay,” he’d said, squeezing your shoulder. ”The kid is strong.”

You’d sniffled, trying to hide the tears in your voice. “Yeah, well, I’m not sure I am," you’d whispered in despair. 

You were better than you had been 8 days ago, calmer. Although still heartbroken, you were looking forward to seeing him, seeing with your eyes that he was okay. Garcia had seen him, 2 days ago, before you’d been sent out on a case.  

“He looks good. I mean, as good as that big genius brain of his can look in prison. His eyes were sad though, really, really sad.” She’d paused as if to assure herself it would be alright, “I’m sure he’s looking forward to seeing you, sweetness.” She’d squeezed your hand, but her statement hadn’t rung true. 

Your hands were shaking, you weren’t sure what from. The anticipation you’d felt? The nerves? Or the words you had a hard time coming to terms with.

“I’m sorry, but your name isn’t on Spencer Reid’s approved visitor list,” the guard at the checkpoint had said after rechecking the list. 

“There has to be a mistake, I made an appointment,” you insisted, feeling yourself unravel. It wasn’t possible, you knew for a fact you were on that list, Emily had made sure of that.

“Look, lady. There are only 10 names on that list, and yours is not one of them. Now, you need to move, because there are people here waiting to see their loved ones.” you’d hiccuped and turned around, walking to the lockers to unlock your gun, badge, and phone. 

“I’m here to see a loved one.” You’d wanted to scream, but you knew it would have been futile. There wasn’t anything you could do at that moment. 

You walked to your car, dialing Emily’s number, “This is Prentiss.”  

For a second, only your breathing could be heard over the sound of the wind, and then a tiny sniffle. You wiped at your eyes and nose, and then spoke up, barely, “Why am I not on Spencer’s approved visitor list?” 

“What do you mean? Every member of this team is on the list. So is his lawyer and Diana, even Derek,” you could hear the surprise in her voice, yet you couldn’t keep calm any longer.

"They refused to let me see him! I made the appointment, Emily, and I came, hoping I’d finally see him hear his voice, and ask him-” Your voice broke mid-sentence, and after taking a deep breath, you continued, “Ask him if he was okay, and I was denied because out of the 10 names on that list, it seems mine’s not one of them.” You finished defeated, barely above a whisper.

All was silent for the moment, save for what you could hear was Penelope’s voice on the other end of the line, quietly asking what was going on, “Let me call Fiona and the warden, and I’ll see what happened. Meanwhile, I need you back here, because we just got a case.” Her voice wasn’t leaving anything up for discussion. Still, you couldn’t go, not until you saw him. 

“Emily-” she cut you off.

“It’s not a discussion. I’ll resolve this, but I need you here and your head in the game. Am I clear?” Her voice was stern, but maybe that’s exactly what you needed. Maybe.

“Yeah, clear. I’m on my way back.” You took a deep breath and started the car and the journey back to Quantico, but your mind stayed right there, on the bars that kept you away from the one thing you held dearest. 

As it turns out, there was nothing the warden or Fiona could do. Even Emily Prentiss, Unit Chief of the BAU, couldn't “resolve” the situation. Days, weeks, and months passed, and for 70 days you couldn’t see him, isolated out, not even knowing why.

“-to be in the courthouse in one.” You snapped out of your thoughts, only catching the end of the sentence, digging the heels of your hands into your eyes. You were tired, and it had little to do with the fact that you had been up all night, going over all the evidence with the team and tracing Lindsey Vaughan’s steps to a T in an attempt to exonerate Spencer and finally bring him home. 

You were exhausted, both physically and mentally. You’d been up for more than 24 hours now, but then you hadn’t been sleeping all that well to begin with. Every single night was spent wondering how Spencer was doing, and every time you closed your eyes, you saw him in that cell in Mexico. 

His eyes were red, high out of his mind, barely coherent, dirty, and injured - a far cry from the person you were used to seeing every single day - energetic, passionate, and brilliant. After 12 years, if there was one image you wished to erase from your memory, it was this one. Not all the blood you’ve seen spilled, every victim, be it men, women, or even children, all the horrors of the job, but this. Maybe it made you a bad person, but there was nothing worse than seeing the one person you held dearest at their lowest and not being able to do anything to stop it.

Every waking hour that you weren’t on the job was spent wondering how he was doing and if he was okay. If he was healthy, unharmed, and safe, or as safe as an FBI agent could be in prison. But most of all, the one thing that had kept you up at night, slowly destroying your sanity and making you question everything, had been the one question you couldn’t seem to get an answer to. 

“Why doesn’t he want to see me?”

You’d asked everyone and had waited with battered breath for an answer, a clarification on the matter, and it never came. As shocked as you had been at the notion that you wouldn’t be seeing Spencer for an indefinite amount of time, your team had been even more shocked. They knew the kind of relationship you and Spencer had, how close you’d become over the years, and how much you relied on each other. 

You’d asked every team member, you’d asked yourself, you’d even asked Spencer in a few of the letters you wrote to him, and then there had come a point where you just stopped. 

You were torturing yourself more than enough, day after day, and every single night, asking yourself a question you wouldn’t get an answer to. Not as long as he was locked up in that hellhole and you were out here, trying to keep together the pieces of something, that was on the verge of breaking. 

You felt a hand taking hold of yours, and for a second, you tensed up. Pulled out of your thoughts, you looked up and were met with chocolate brown eyes, full of worry - Emily’s eyes. 

You glanced around the room, only to realize it was empty, save for the two of you. You hadn’t felt when the others had left, that’s how deep in thought you had been. 

“Where did you go? I’ve been calling your name for a while now,” she spoke gently, squeezing your hand. If you were honest, that’s the first time she asked you anything about the situation. You’d spent weeks suffering in silence and trying to pretend that you weren’t slowly dying on the inside. 

You briefly thought about lying, it wouldn’t be the first lie you’d told since Spencer had been incarcerated, but you didn’t have it in you to hide anymore. 

And so, for the first time since Spencer’s hearing, you told the truth.

“Nothing makes sense anymore, Em,” it left you in a whisper, “I’m barely holding it together. I feel like I’m drowning sometimes, and just when I breach the surface, I’m pulled back in. My mind, it’s...I question everything, all the time. My mornings start with thoughts about him, and my nights end with tears over him, over this entire…this nightmare. I keep waiting for my alarm to go off, to wake up and realize that this has been a plot of my imagination, some cruel joke my mind has conjured, designed to show me... "Your eyes welled with tears, prepared to admit something you should have long ago. Emily gave your hand another squeeze, prompting you to continue, and so you did, admitting it for the first time aloud. 

“Designed to show me that I can’t live a life that doesn’t have Spencer in it.” You wiped at your eyes, willing your tears at bay. When you dared to look up, you were met with the eyes of the only other person besides Spencer who has been a constant rock in your life for the last 11 years. What you saw in her eyes then wasn’t surprise like you’d thought, but relief. It took you a moment to fully read her, but it was like a switch had gone off when you finally did. 

“But you’re not surprised to hear this, are you?” you smiled sadly, a light laugh leaving you. 

“I wouldn’t be a good friend if I didn’t have my suspicions, and I’d be an even worse profiler,” she smiled at you, “Plus, there are some feelings that you just can’t hide,” you blinked, and then you blinked again. You hadn’t come right out and said it, and yet she knew, she somehow knew. 

“I didn’t mean it like that.” you tried to backtrack, but you knew it was a losing battle. Emily knew you well enough to smell your bullshit from miles.

“That’s exactly how you meant it, and don’t even try to deny it. I see it every damn day. It’s how you leave the room whenever you hear someone talk about visiting Spencer. You don’t want to hear how he’s doing because you wouldn’t believe it, not unless you see him with your own eyes. But you can’t, so you’ve resigned yourself to the torture of not knowing instead of giving yourself the smallest amount of peace by asking. You’ve been suffering in silence for almost three months, too stubborn to say anything, thinking you were doing yourself a favor. And what for? You’re crying yourself to sleep every night and coming to work the next morning, pretending everything is fine when clearly it’s not. You think you’re fooling everyone, but the only person you’re tricking is yourself. And how’s that working out for you?” she had a point, and it’s not like you weren’t aware of that fact. You knew what you were doing wasn’t okay or healthy. You had the most stable support system imaginable to get you through the hardest parts. It was hard, though, especially when the person who was suffering the most was the person who’d taken your heart with him. 

“Way to call me out, boss.” you were just about ready to end the conversation, you couldn’t take any more of this. You’d promised each other long ago that you wouldn’t profile each other but you had a feeling that was exactly what Emily was doing right now. Maybe not on purpose, and with every good intention imaginable, but you didn’t want that. You didn’t want one of your best friends to try to understand you based on behavioral analysis right after you’d spilled your soul out to her. 

“Just calling it the way I see it, someone has to,” she smiled, but then she shook her head a little before continuing. “What I want to know is why you didn’t say something earlier. You know I would have been there to listen, and so would have the team.” Damn, Emily Prentiss.

You didn’t have to think hard about it, you’ve been ruminating over everything for days. You were trying not to, but whenever your mind wasn’t focused on a case or the many drinking nights spent in Penelope’s purple adobe, that was where your mind would take you.

“Out of fear, I think,” you started, unsure for a second, still nervous to admit it. It wasn’t exactly what she was asking, but it was a start, “I was afraid, and I still am. I’ve been baiting myself into thinking it was just some sort of fondness, a little stronger than that which you feel towards a friend, and far lesser than what it actually is. I thought that if I didn’t say anything, I could go on lying to myself, and nothing would have to change, we wouldn’t have to change. Because words hold meaning, and an admission like that holds weight. What would I have done if it was just me who felt like this? I would have ruined the one thing we’ve both cherished for over a decade.” It felt good to finally say all of this out loud instead of holding it inward. But then again, Emily always knew when you'd had enough. 

She’d told you time and time again the same thing Hotch had asked of her when she returned to duty after faking her death: “Let me know when you are having a bad day.”. Honestly, you’d held off long enough, and so had she. It was a whole miracle she hadn’t pressed you about your behavior earlier. 

“That’s not what I was asking,” you said, shaking your head with a smile to let her know that you weren’t done speaking. 

“Everyone was suffering as a result of what happened in Mexico, what I was feeling wasn’t any different, Emily.” You were flippant about it, you always have been. You preferred isolating yourself and hiding everything instead of seeking a shoulder to bear the weight of what you felt. 

“Our sadness came from the fact that our friend was framed. And yours? That’s different.” 

“It isn’t,” she scoffed, getting up. Now you really felt like you were about to get scolded like a child.

“Yes, it is. God, you and Spencer are the same. It’s like I’m looking at his doppelganger without the whole… IQ of 187. You share some of the worst qualities a person can have,” you laughed at that, “You are both changeophobes-” you cut her off

“Metathesiophobia, fear of change.” She only raised her hand at you, as if to say, “See, you even sound like him,” which made you laugh even more. 

“You close yourselves off after a sad or traumatic experience, silently hoping you’d be able to get through the worst of it on your own. Most of the time, it’s evident that’s not the case. You only ask for help when you’ve reached rock bottom or have no other choice, but you’ve had a choice from the get-go. Your stubbornness even stems from the same anxieties, it’s infuriating,” she seemed to calm down then, in defeat maybe, or she hadn’t been mad, to begin with, she sat down again. 

“My point is, it shouldn’t have taken you learning that he might be coming home today to tell me all of this. I’ve known for a long time that there was something far more than platonic friendship on your end. You shouldn’t have tortured yourself since his trial to try to put the puzzle pieces together. You aren’t late, you have all the time in the world to say what you feel and what you want, and rejection shouldn’t be a factor, believe me. You need to make peace with that fear because Spencer is coming home today. And whether you are ready or not, you both need to have a serious conversation.” You appreciated her determination about Spencer being released, but then again, you had more than circumstantial evidence to support the fact that he was innocent. But, as always, Emily was right. He was coming home today, and after months of not seeing each other, there were a lot of things you needed to say. 

“I know. Thank you, Emily, for everything,” you whispered, squeezing her tight. 

Spencer’s POV

The first breath of fresh air after being on the inside for months felt far more overwhelming than he thought it would be. Being in charge of your being and your responses and emotions felt almost unnatural like the feeling of it didn’t belong to him. The sound of the wind and the traffic, people’s voices, and even the simple act of getting comfortable in the leather seats of the jet overwhelmed any ability to concentrate and think straight. 

In itself, it was strange. The prison was loud, the prison commissary at breakfast, lunch, and dinner was a cacophony of prisoners talking, cells being opened, and guards barking orders. The yard was loud too, although, in the middle of nowhere, nature could still be heard - the sounds of trees and the lone birds, if he had to guess a mix of Mourning Dove and Field Sparrow. Their songs were soothing most of the time, a welcome distraction from the usual noises around him. 

Without the atmosphere he’d gotten used to and subjected to all of those sounds and people whose presence he found comforting before, he now felt almost out of place. He wanted to feel at peace, he wanted to feel free, and although he technically was, his mind was more trapped than he’d actually been in that 2 by 2 cell in cellblock C.

He kept replaying some of the hardest moments from his time in, every threat, every punch he’d gotten, and the phantom feel of the fists connecting. Luis’ blood on his hands, the smell of bleach incorporated with the drugs, the tip of the sharpened toothbrush embedding into his thigh. All he’d done to survive, harm, and more harm, only to make it out alive. 

He barely recognized himself. He’d deliberately ignored looking at himself in the small plastic mirror in his cell, for fear of seeing what he’d had to become. Gone was the Spencer who’d use his brain to get out of situations, whose obliviousness more often than not helped to balance his intellect with the socially acceptable. Gone was the bubbly personality of a kid excited to share a plethora of facts with his friends. 

In his place sat a man, tormented by the reality of the hatred felt towards him. The reality of being a pawn in a game whose complexity could have been his downfall. A man whose genius, as much of a blessing, could sometimes be a curse. A man who had felt too much and was made to experience far more loss than his quaint heart was able to take. In the end, he kept losing, be it his father, by no choice of his own. His mentor, at the hands of a killer’s insanity. His friends and loved ones, hoping for a better life or his freedom, made to rot in a place he didn’t deserve to be in. 

Some would doubt that he had anything at all left to lose. All in all, how much more could the scrawny twelve-year-old child prodigy, left to survive in a public high school, take? 

His mind had been plagued by that question for years. He’d thought about that more than he’d like to admit. After every loss, there’d been a split moment where he’d asked himself what was next. What would be the next thing life would take from him? And every time, he’d had to wonder if, next time, life wouldn’t reach for the one thing he couldn’t allow to be taken from him. The one thing that, were he to lose, he’d never recover. He had hoped, sometimes prayed, that after everything he’d seen, everything he’d lived through, this would be the one thing that’d be spared. 

Locked in that cage, he’d tried even harder to ensure that there wouldn’t be another loss in his life - not anymore. Be it good or bad, he’d done everything. For 70 days, he’d had to assure himself he was doing what he thought was right, and what he wasn’t saying, he’d be forgiven for. He’d had to dodge questions and see the disappointment in his friend’s eyes, and when that wasn’t enough of a burden to bring all of his anxieties to the surface, he’d resigned himself to reading the words of the person he was doing all of this for - you. 

He’d reread every letter to the point where the edges of the papers were worn out, even though he’d known the contents by heart on the first read. He tortured himself by looking at your handwriting, analyzing the slanting of the words and the pressure of the pen. The little stains on the paper, he didn’t have to be a genius to know, were your tears. It broke his heart, to know he was causing you this much pain. He didn’t need to be there to see it, he felt it through your words.

He often questioned if it was worth it, if he was protecting you, or himself, or maybe even what you were or weren’t.

Even now, the weight of your words sat heavily on his mind, and right by his heart, in the pocket of his jacket, he felt the weight of the 9 letters you wrote. 

As he looked over from the little window of the jet, he couldn’t help but wonder if, in his desire to shield you from everything, he hadn’t gone too far. Ultimately, was he going to be forgiven, or be forced to pick up the pieces of the reality broken by his own doing?

“Don’t do that.” JJ’s gentle voice startled him from the overwhelming nature of his thoughts. She’d spent the last 30 minutes since they boarded silently observing him, waiting for him to pick up a conversation. But he’d decided to stay num. 

In every twitch of his fingers, in his desire to get comfortable but being unable to, she could see that he was restless. If she had to guess, his mind was much the same. 

“Do what?”

She gave him a look, one, had he not known her long enough, he might have been offended by. Clearly, she was offended herself, watching him play the clueless card. 

“Spence, I don’t need to profile you to know that your mind’s running a thousand miles a minute, contemplating your decisions, and I don’t think you should. You did what you thought was right, and no one blames you for that, not for Mexico, and not for what you did after,” she spoke evenly, gathering even Penelope and Alvez’s attention from where they sat. He looked over, receiving a smile and a nod from both before focusing on JJ again. 

Rationally, he knew she was right about everything. He didn’t need to run himself ragged with everything he could have done differently, or search for the perfect way to explain, or overall, the perfect outcome of his own decisions. He knew there wasn’t one, there was no perfect way to say what he needed to, no perfect words to pick so he could fix this and erase the pain he knew he’d caused. 

Perfection wasn’t something you could strive to achieve, because there’s no such thing as perfection. The term was diverse, everyone had a different perspective on what that might look like. If for JJ, perfection was the family that waited for her at home every time she returned from a case, for Spencer, perfection was vastly different. 

For him, perfection was the rich aroma of coffee that could cause someone’s insulin to spike because of the amount of sugar in it. The softness of a book page between his fingers, or the familiarity of a book he’d read before but needed to revisit. 

Perfection was the sound of your laugh whenever he was the one to prompt the sound. The way your eyes lit up every time you listened to him babble on. Perfection was the time he got to spend with you every day, every hour, and every minute that he could remember with almost scary accuracy. 

He could sit and wonder what the perfect way to go about this was, but there simply wasn’t one, there was only the truth. And as painful, hopeful, or even a little dumb as it was, that was the best he could give.

And maybe that’s what his mind should focus on instead, the truth, in its simplest form, at its core the truth he’d hidden for months, and then the truth he’d hidden for years. 

He had wondered long enough if he’d made the right choice. He spent plenty of time focusing on the shame he’d felt, prompted by the disappointment he’d seen in his friends’ eyes whenever they brought up your name. How he’d sit, silent, or give an answer so short and angry, it’d add even more shame to the one he already felt. 

Beyond his time in prison, where he spent most of his time questioning his decisions, he spent years before that questioning himself as a person. His place on the team, his intelligence, even his failings. His inability to form relationships where he’d be seen as more than Dr. Reid, or the skinny kid, pretty boy, or a genius. A relationship that’d make him feel like simply Spencer, without the added adjectives, that sometimes made him feel like a circus clown. 

Only when he’d been locked up, had he started to realize that he’d finally built a relationship with someone with whom he could be himself. The most basic, boring, and peaceful version of himself, and slowly, all had started falling into place. 

How content he felt whenever he was around you, the desire to tell you every good or bad news he received. How when you asked about his mother, it warmed his heart, or how worried he felt when you acted stupid in the field. How out of control he’d felt when you’d gone missing last year. Or even, at the time, the unexplained jealousy he’d felt seeing you talk with another man.

Morgan had asked, once, twice, a lot, if maybe he didn’t have a crush, but he’d denied it, every time. And every time he’d question himself, he'd dismiss the idea just as quickly. 

Yet, upon being forced away from you, the pieces had started mending into one. 

Every realization he’d had was like a new broken piece being glued to the overall mosaic. And every new piece added built everything he felt about you. And it was a lot, and it was overwhelming, and so, so right, it sometimes felt wrong. Because he was inside a prison of his own doing, and you were out there, made to wait for him, for an explanation, for the truth. 

And he’d vowed to himself that the moment he was out, he’d put everything on the table, no matter how much he’d fucked up or how much he’d hurt you. He’d sit there, and he’d let it out, and if necessary, he’d even beg for your forgiveness. 

Because there wasn’t a moment in this life, he wanted to live through, without you there with him.

Your POV

You pulled the trigger, your eyes focused, and your hands steady. Three consecutive shots were fired, each one hitting its intended target. Three more followed, and then as many as it took to empty the magazine. 

You put down the gun and took a deep breath, steadying your heartbeat, trying to rid yourself of the deep-seated anxiety you felt. An odd sense of calm overtook you whenever you found yourself at the shooting range. Maybe it was the everpresent scent of gunpowder or the quiet only disturbed by the firing of a gun. Or even the possibility of escaping your rising thoughts, the desire to run or scream, sometimes both. 

There was a sense of solitude there that almost made it easier to breathe. The repetitive motion and the weight of the gun in your hands felt like second nature. 

Front sight, trigger press, follow through, just like Hotch had taught you all those years ago. As long as you held that gun, your mind was quiet, and you focused on something other than the worry you felt. 

It made sense you found yourself there shortly after Emily had shared the long-awaited good news - Spencer was finally free, and JJ, Penelope, and Luke were on route back with him. For a short moment, you’d felt the weight being lifted from your chest, and then it dropped again, now tripled. 

Suddenly, your earlier conversation with Emily had gotten as real as the target before you. Even with the sense of peace, you’d felt after, your thoughts on the matter clear, you still felt a sense of dread at the idea of seeing him. 

As if he wasn’t your best friend, the man who’d long ago won your affection and captured your heart, but rather a stranger who held your future in his hands. And he might as well be, because whatever the truth to the questions you wanted answered was, one thing was for sure.

It’d either make or break you both.

You picked up a new magazine, and loaded the gun, aiming at the target before releasing the safety. Before you fired again, you released a breath, and with it, all the feelings within you - fear, uncertainty, yearning, and the sense of madness, which, although mild, was persistent.

You fired once, twice, your aim impeccable, and then, out of nowhere, you missed. 

The hair at the back of your neck rose, your heart rate quickened, and the feeling of another’s presence in the room was unmistakable. It took you just a second to put the pieces together, the intrusion felt like anything but that. 

Instead, for a brief moment, the person brought with them a familiar feeling of calm. In the next instance, though, reality came crashing like a tidal wave, and you knew you’d run out of time. 

Your hands shook as you put down the gun. You could feel him watching you, probably standing next to the door, as if he couldn’t will himself to move closer. The anxiety was palpable in the air, although you couldn’t really say if it was yours or his, most likely, it was a mix of both.

You went to reach for your protection but hesitated. Once you took it off, there’d no longer be an excuse for you to ignore him, you’d finally have to meet the reality he’d so carefully crafted for you.

Even though you felt like you could barely breathe, the desire to finally lay your eyes on him won out. 

Without missing another beat, you took off your earplugs and then your eye protection. You could faintly hear the sound of shoes squicking against the floor. He could never stay still when he was nervous.  

You picked up on the sound of your own breathing too, the beating of your heart was almost erratic. You were waiting, what for, you weren’t sure. 

He was waiting too, for you to turn around, to lay his eyes on you. Like a sadist, waiting to see the pain he’d caused, or a masochist, wishing for his own in turn. 

70 days of slowly killing you both.

When you finally dared to turn around, it took you a moment to fully take him in. He looked like the Spencer you knew, yet there was something different about him too. Dressed in his usual suit and tie outfit, he didn’t look comfortable. His posture was rigid, almost defensive. It wasn’t a conscious decision, that much you were sure of.

His hair was longer, pushed back, curling at the ends, and he’d lost some weight. Not much, but enough to make an impression after all this time. He looked pensive, like the weight of the world sat on his shoulders, but maybe it was just the weight of the consequences he had to face.

Your eyes ran over every inch of him multiple times, intentionally avoiding his gaze for as long as possible. Seconds and minutes passed, and you weren’t really sure how much exactly. 

Spencer knew, though, of course, he did. If his fear of meeting you eye to eye was as great as yours was, you knew he was counting until the torture of the act itself was over. 

89 seconds he’d counted, although now with you there, they felt longer than the days without you did. 

When you eventually met his gaze, you felt a part of your heart chip on the inside. What people said about the eyes being a portal to one's soul couldn’t have been more right in that moment. Spencer, a man who excelled at hiding his emotions when he really wanted to, had let them out as clear as day for you to see. 

His eyes sparkled with so much sadness and guilt that it threatened to take you apart even before he had the chance to talk. Something softened within you at that moment, but in the next instance, it was like someone else took over. 

One moment you wanted to cry for him or with him, and the next you felt like your whole being needed to be let out. 

“Is that…is that all you can offer me right now? More of your silence? Don’t you think I’ve had enough of that?” The questions, a few of many to follow, had a bite to them. 

His face fell a little, taken aback by your tone. He fidgeted with his fingers, unsure what to say, or where to start. How could he answer your question? He pictured a scenario where his words flew freely, where he gave you an explanation worthy of forgiveness and a confession, so earnest that it ended with you in his arms. 

Try as he might, the words didn’t come to him, just a barely audible accusation. 

“That’s not fair.”

You scoffed, as if in outrage. A madness, one born out of so much heartbreak, took over, it was blinding. If someone had asked you to explain yourself, you’d say that wasn’t you. You’d never be so forward, almost cruel, to him, but at that moment, being mad sounded so much better than being vulnerable. Like a shield, you weren’t ready to let go of yet.

“How exactly is this not fair, Spencer? It’s the truth!” you yelled, and you felt free, finally letting it all out. “You want to know what isn’t fair, though? The way you isolated me OUT of your life! For three months, I’ve had to stand on the sidelines and beg for scraps, just to know you were okay. Every pitiful look I’d get from the people I consider family felt like another stab to the heart. That’s what’s not fair!” You were screaming so loud. It was a good thing the range was soundproof, otherwise, the whole of the BAU would have been deep in your business by now. 

If he looked surprised by the accusation, he didn’t really show it. His posture took a turn, though. The rigidity disappeared, and in turn, it opened, as if the need to comfort you overpowered the uncertainty or the mask he’d had to hold while imprisoned. 

You didn’t want his comfort, not right now. Maybe later, when all was said and done, you’d get to have a normal conversation without the frustrations of the past. At that moment, you just wanted everything out of your system. You wanted the questions, the answers, and the truth. 

His silence continued as he started closing the distance between you. You wanted to move, to create more distance, but there was nowhere to go. You were squeezed between the range, and him. Whatever else was left than to continue begging for clarity.

“It’s not fair being sent away the first time I came to see you. To learn you didn’t want to see me! Each time it was my turn to visit you, do you want to know where I was? I sat outside that fucking prison, wishing for a glimpse of the person who’s been my rock for 12 years! Holding back tears, thinking you didn’t…you didn’t care like I did. Is this what I really deserve after 12 years by your side?” You almost slipped, you almost told him, and maybe you should have, it might have prompted him to talk or to say something. But no, he stayed silent. Step after step, he limped, his cheek twitched, and his brows furrowed, but like a coward, he remained quiet. 

He was meters away from you, three more steps, and he’d completely close the distance, and meet you face to face. 

“Say something, Spencer, damn it!” Your throat burned from the strain, and he advanced even more. “Anything,” you finished in a whisper, and all of a sudden, all the fight left you, and your eyes watered and your vision went blurry. 

He was just a step away then, and when you looked into his eyes, you couldn’t help but see how they shined. 

He reached forward, one hand taking hold of your arm while the other went to hold your waist, but you shook your head. “No, Spencer, please,” you whispered. You didn’t want to find yourself in his arms, because that would be the last of your composure, gone. You’d surrender to the feel of him like you even had a choice not to. 

He didn’t stop, not until you were snug into his arms, one of his hands at the back of your neck, holding your head tenderly, but the arm around your waist held onto you as if he was scared you’d slip away from him. 

Once in his arms, you finally let go, breaking down into pieces, hoping he’d be able to hold them all from crumbling to the ground. 

“Hey, shh, it’s okay. I’ve got you.” He kept repeating, his thumb rubbing soothing circles on your pulse point. All the while, you could only stand, your arms at your sides, as if paralyzed.

Being in his arms felt like being home somehow. It felt so right after having been deprived of the feeling for so long. It felt like there was nothing wrong, and nothing could go wrong at that moment. 

Even though you hadn't initially wanted his comfort, somewhere deep inside, you craved his tender touch. You craved the feel of his body near and the faint scent that was so uniquely him - a mix of coffee, fall, and old paper, books. You realized then that you craved the sound of his voice too, another part of him you’d been deprived of. 

The voice of the always rambling boy that never failed to bring a smile to your face, even when you couldn’t understand him sometimes. 

And the more he whispered, his voice broken and shaky, the harder you cried. You’d thought nothing could match the heartbreak of his actions or the anger of his silence, but the reality of being held against him brought the realization that your suffering mirrored his own. 

If you’d been dying on the inside for months, he’d been on the other side of the link holding you tethered to each other, dying just as much. 

And you couldn’t hold yourself back any longer after that. You buried your head in the crook of his neck, and your arms finally circled his waist underneath his suit jacket, fisting the back of his shirt as if it were your one lifeline. 

You felt him exhale when you finally returned his touch, most likely in relief, before he dropped a light kiss on your head. 

You cried for the relief of having him back and close. For unspoken truths and time wasted, years of figuring out feelings clear as day. For all the anger, for all of his silence, for all you felt for him. 

He cried for all the pain he’d caused you and for all the time he’d wasted being alone instead of being with you. He cried for himself, he cried for you, and he cried, overwhelmed by his feelings for you. 

You clung to one another, crying, and minutes were passing and neither of you cared. Not when you had each other. 

After a while, when both your tears dried out and your cries quieted, but you still felt the need to hold each other close, you dared to murmur a broken “Why?” hoping he’d hear, hoping he’d understand. 

It didn’t take him long to mumble a reply, no longer silent. 

“All the words in the world available, and I wish I could explain.” it came out just as quietly, both of you scared to break the little bubble you’d found yourselves in. 

You pulled back from him, wanting to look into his eyes, red-rimmed and still sparkling when you felt yourself begging again. 

“Then try, please, because I’d rather know, and not understand, than not know at all.” And it was the truth. He could speak in riddles if he wanted, but you needed to know why he’d made that choice. 

You looked at him expectantly before he pushed a piece of hair back, and his hand once again settled at the back of your head, gently cupping it. 

“I wanted you safe from a world you didn’t belong in,” he admitted on an exhale, like a lifelong secret he’d gotten tired of holding onto. 

You looked at him in wonder, and it was on the tip of your tongue to tell him he didn’t belong in that world either, but just as you opened your mouth to speak, he shook his head. 

“I was ashamed when I had you removed from the visitor’s list. I didn’t want you to see me like that, like a criminal,” he started, pulling you into his arms, not wanting to admit it to you eye to eye, out of fear of being right. Of course, he was wrong, but that didn’t stop him from wondering. 

“The first time JJ visited me, they leered at her like they were being fed fresh meat, taking her in, committing her to memory. A cage full of animals. I knew then that I didn’t want that for you, and any guilt I had at keeping you away disappeared that day. It hurt me, knowing I was failing you and whatever trust you had in me,” he whispered, wishing to keep the reality of his thoughts and his feelings in a little bubble as if you only existed in it.

“I’m not the same person I was before, I couldn’t be him, even if it meant losing a part of myself in the process. I couldn’t really be a decent human being without bearing the consequences. Everything I saw, everything I did, and everything that was done to me, I don’t think I’d ever fully be the person I was before. And that too, I’m thankful I spared you from seeing.” It would explain his rigidity, a defense mechanism he’d had to get used to. 

And while everything he’d said thus far was true the biggest truth, he’d had yet to say. He had yet to really explain why he’d done what he’d done in the first place. He was stalling, still afraid, but the longer he held you, the longer he felt your heart beating in time with his, the more sure he became. 

To hell with the consequences, to hell with whatever happened after, he was right here in the now, alive, breathing, his arms around you, finally at peace. 

He pulled back, took your face into his hands, and finally whispered.

“Most of all, though, I knew I loved you enough to risk us if it meant keeping you safe.” It left him in a rush, a confession waiting to be let out for months. A feeling he’d had for years, and a moment where he could finally be open about it. 

“What…?” you licked your lips, shocked that you might not have heard him correctly. ”What does us mean?” This part of the conversation felt like you were daydreaming about it, it just didn’t feel real. 

“It means whatever you want it to be. Whatever you want us to be.” All of a sudden, it was that simple. 

“So, you love me?” You had a hard time taking it all in, yet your heart fluttered in pure happiness. “And you…you want us?” 

"Yes.” Even before you were done speaking, he was already answering. He was desperate to finally admit he was absolutely smitten by you. 

Months of figuring out your feelings, years of hiding them, a conversation to finally prompt a confession out of you, and all this time it was reciprocated. You could have cried, happiness like no other coursing through you, pure bliss. 

You wanted back into his arms, you wanted to kiss him so badly that your blood was burning from the need to feel him like you'd never been able to before. And yet, you knew there was something else you needed to do before you could finally do it.

“Spence, you don’t push away the people you love, no matter the cost. You rely on their love to help aid you when you’re at your lowest.” You gave his sides a light squeeze before you looked back into his eyes, only to see them hopeful and uncertain at the same time.

He looked hopeful, for the possibility that you might actually love him back, but uncertain because it felt like you might be pushing him away this time. 

“I can’t go through this again. Having to watch you wither away, in prison, at home, or by your own thoughts, I won’t be able to handle being pushed away again,” whispers, cries, pleas, memories full of heartbreak intertwined with present confessions full of joy. 

His eyes watered then, his lips trembling. Any sign of hope was gone, and in its’ place stood the realization of a man who’d maybe gone a little too far. He’d pushed you away, and now, it was your time to be the one sticking and twisting the knife deep, breaking his heart in the process. 

If someone were to ask him at that moment what his biggest regret was, he’d say this. This was his biggest regret, his own choices. 

A tear escaped him, and you reached up, wiping it away gently before you spoke again.

“If..if this is going to go anywhere, you need to rely on me. You need to believe that I can handle anything and everything, just as long as you are by my side. All those years of being pushed away - your addiction, Maeve and Gideon’s deaths, your mom’s diagnosis, Cat Adams - you weren’t alone then, you aren’t alone now, and you won’t be alone in the future. You’ll always have me by your side, you’ll always have my support. Most of all, you’ll have my love, but when things get hard, I need you to lean on me, and trust that I can help you because together we can pull through everything, anything is possible as long as we are together.” You finished on an exhale, full-on crying now. You could barely see him, but from the little you could, you saw tears streaming down his face, and a smile that grew wide, happy.

Those words, he knew them word for word. For 13 days, he’d repeat them, no longer needing to see them written down, he had them engraved in his brain. Your letters he could recite, but your final one he’d remember as long as he lived. 

“I promise to lean on you and trust that you’d help me because together we can pull through everything, anything is possible as long as we are together,” he whispered back, his eyes searching yours for just a moment before he pulled you in, and finally, his lips met yours. 

He kissed you, tentative at first, testing the waters. He wanted to take his time, commit your lips to memory, gentle, and plump, exactly how he’d imagined they’d feel. The more he kissed you, the more he couldn’t stop. Passion, urgency, desire - his kisses turned desperate like he wanted to swallow you whole and never let you go. 

He bit your lip gently, asking for access, before his tongue intertwined with yours and he pulled you flush against him, closing any gap left between you. Chest, hips, there wasn’t an inch where you weren’t touching. 

It felt so familiar, even though you hadn’t kissed before. So right, like no one's kisses had felt before. As if your whole lives, kissing each other was the missing piece in a complicated puzzle, waiting to be put together. Coming together as one, it felt magnetic, a feeling of euphoria, pure ecstasy, no one else mattered, no other feeling mattered at that moment, other than your hands on each other and your lips locked together. 

Time was passing by, and you didn’t care. Years of missed opportunities, hidden feelings, and long-awaited realizations all led to this moment. Starved for each other, a kiss full of fervor and even the taste of tears was present. Unimaginable, but very real.

When you finally pulled apart, he wiped your tears, and you wiped his in turn, before he gathered you back in the comfort of his arms, laying a kiss on the side of your head.

And between the four walls around you, nestled in each other’s arms, the place where no one could touch you, in a shared breath you both whispered. 

“I love you.” 

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[starkwlkr]

you should definitely have Olivia + her brothers do that challenge where it’s like “who’s more lenient” “who’s more strict” and the kids dunk Hugh and Mom head into water or something like that 😭 and then have Mom & Dad do it to them “who is more rebellious” “who asks for more money” “who does their school work” etc

do it for the tiktok | hugh jackman

an: thank you anon for the request!! olivia back at it again with the tiktok trends 😭

marvel actress!reader masterlist

“But I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Well for starters, you’re not supposed to drown me in the bowl!” You were nervous, but prepared yourself.

“Mom, you have to do it for the tiktok!”

Olivia had the bright idea to do a tiktok trend with her family. She found the audio for the trend then quickly explained the trend to her parents. On the table were two large bowls filled with water. When Olivia explained, you were certain so many things would go wrong. You sat next to Hugh, who was more than ready.

“Alright, are we ready?” Olivia asked everyone. Alex and Reese mumbled a ‘yes’ while Hugh have a thumbs up, you nod. “Okay, lets start.”

“Who’s more strict?”

You were dunked into the water by all three kids without warning. It was fast, but it caught you by surprise. “Oh my god.” You said when you came back up.

“Who’s the messiest?” You and Hugh stayed safe for that question. You were both pretty organized people.

“Who’s is the worse driver?”

You already knew it was coming. Your head got dunked in the water by Olivia.

“I’m not that bad!” You protested.

“Who snores the loudest?” Finally it was Hugh’s turn to get dunked. Water spilled everywhere, some splashing on your clothes.

“I don’t like this game anymore.” Hugh wiped his face off with a napkin.

“Who’s more likely to get arrested?”

None of the kids knew the answer so they didn’t do anything.

“Who’s the cooler parent?”

For that, both you and Hugh went down. At least the kids thought you were cool and that was all that mattered.

It was now the kids turn to be dunked into the water bowls. You added a third one since it was Alex, Reese and Olivia. You and Hugh were more than ready to get some revenge.

“Who’s the messiest?”

Hugh and you put Olivia’s head in the bowl. She was already expecting to be dunked anyways.

“I’m pretty sure she has a coffee pot under her bed. Stop trying to be Nancy Thompson, Liv.” Reese teased.

“Who got into trouble more growing up?”

You dunked Alex’s head, Hugh let you do the honor. You had lost count of how many times Alex’s principal called when Alex was in school. You never received any complaints about Reese, while with Olivia it was just a few.

“I’m pretty sure my teachers hated me.” Alex laughed, grabbing the napkin Hugh passed him to wipe his face off.

“Who asks for more money?”

Since both Alex and Reese had their own, that left Olivia to be the one that somewhat relied on you and Hugh financially. Hugh was the one that dunked Olivia in the water.

“Speaking of asking for money…” Olivia smiled.

“No, I’m not giving you money.” Hugh said.

“Fine, a birkin will do just fine.”

“Who is the most rebellious?”

Easy, none of the kids. (But if you were to ask that question a couple years ago, it would be Alex getting his head shoved into the water.)

“Who is the favorite child?”

For the last question, you and Hugh dunked all the kids’ heads in the water.

@kellyxo1

[robertreich]

When the KKK Murdered My Childhood Friend 

When the Ku Klux Klan murdered my protector, it made me see the world differently.

I was always the shortest kid in school, which made me an easy target for bullies. To protect myself, I got into the habit of befriending older boys who’d watch my back.

One summer when I was around 8 years old I found Mickey, a kind and gentle teenager with a ready smile who made me feel safe.

Over the years, I lost track of Mickey. It wasn’t until the fall of 1964, my freshman year in college, that I heard what had happened to him.

Several months before, Mickey, whose full name was Michael Schwerner, had gone to Mississippi to register Black voters during what was known as “Freedom Summer.”

On June 21, Michael and two other civil rights workers, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman, were arrested near Philadelphia, Mississippi by Neshoba County Deputy Sheriff Cecil Ray Price, for allegedly speeding.

That night, after they paid their speeding ticket and left the jail, Deputy Price followed them, stopped them again, ordered them into his car, and took them down a deserted road where he turned them over to a group of his fellow Ku Klux Klan members. They were beaten, shot at point-blank range, and buried in an earthen dam. Their bodies weren’t found until August 4.

The state of Mississippi refused to bring charges against any of the Klan members. Eventually, the U.S. Justice Department brought federal charges against Price and 17 others.

An all-white jury found seven of the defendants guilty, including Price. Ultimately none would serve more than six years behind bars.

When the news reached me that Mickey, my childhood protector, had been murdered by white supremacists — by violent bullies who would stop at nothing to prevent Black people from exercising their right to vote — something snapped inside me.

I began to see everything differently.  Before then, I understood bullying as a few kids picking on me for being short. Now I saw bullying on a larger scale, all around me. In Black people bullied by whites. In workers bullied by bosses. In girls and women bullied by men. In the disabled or gay or poor or sick or immigrant bullied by employers, landlords, insurance companies, and politicians.

Sixty years after the Freedom Summer murders, America still wrestles with bullies — a rise in hate crimes targeting people of color, LGBTQ people, immigrants, Jews, and Muslims — new laws restricting the right to vote, banning books, and stripping Americans of reproductive freedoms — leaders who insult and demean people with disabilities, women, and trans kids.

We must never give in to cruelty and violence. It is incumbent on all of us to stand up to bullies and be each other’s protectors.

[pressureplus]

I actually have this request in my head for a while now... but I'm not sure if you be up to do it so thank to let me know if you will do it or not. Fem! Reader who is happily married and live together with Sebastian (when he still human). Until, Sebastian was arrested and sentence to dead. Reader found no long after his dead that she was pregnant. Years later, Sebastian manage to escape Hadal Blacksite probably very injured in the process. He was soon spotted by the kid that look similar to his human self (the kid probably be now close to be a teenager now), as the kid call up their mother. Sebastian was shocked to see his wife come to view.

I'm looking 👀

Love this dramatic shit, I'm SO here for it!

I'm going to be referring to your son as S/N, so y'all can name your boy yourselves! (I'm real interested in the stuff you might choose, so if you wanna put them in the replies, I'd love to see your baby names!)

Smaller Hands

Pairing: Sebastian Solace x Fem!Reader

Au: [Unnamed]

Warnings: Mentions of Pregnancy, an Absent Father, injury, and Imprisonment

◞꒷◟ ͜ ͜ ◞ྀི◟୨୧◞ྀི◟ ͜ ͜ ◞꒷◟◞꒷◟ ͜ ͜ ◞ྀི◟୨୧◞ྀི◟ ͜ ͜ ◞꒷◟

He had been running a very long time before he got to where he was now.

Escaping the Blacksite was only the beginning of his long, long journey home. He had wrestled himself from the depths of the deep ocean and fought his way all the way up to the light far, far above him.

Breaking through the surface of the water had provided him with a hope he never thought he'd see truly grow into something he could really hold. Sunlight and open air and a horizon that stretched endlessly in every direction... Sebastian hadn't known freedom in over 10 years, but there it was.

The way the natural light caught the glint of his wedding ring had him already tearing through the water with a grin, energy back in his tired body. It certainly wasn't his original ring, no, that one wouldn't fit on his new, much larger hand anymore, but the replacement that he got so he could wear a ring on his hand and not just as a pendant was enough of a visual reminder of his love, sending him treading the water the way this body was made to do. He had to get to his wife.

He had to see his Y/N again. That's always what his efforts were for.

It was days before he even reached a beach, and weeks of dragging himself through the shadows and the alleyways, keeping himself out of sight. He would squint at road maps and try to figure out how he was going to get himself home, not very well able to get on the public transport or drive himself there with a body like this. He had to be more than a little creative with how he was going to cross the countless miles between his lover and himself if he wanted to make it there at all. He'd spend his seemingly endless days hopping trains and swimming rivers just to close the distance faster, like it may wash away the last decade he's had to go without her.

Sebastian could only hope she waited for him, though those chances were next to none. She had been there the day he was 'executed', watching him get taken back to the chair that was supposed to put his story to its end. She has every right and reason to think he died that day, and he could never be angry or upset if she decided she still needed to be held the way his other hands used to hold her... Would these hands even fit her anymore? They'd outgrown his first ring... Would they be too big to hold hers anymore? The painful thought was a reoccurring one, and it plagued every dream he had in the moments he would manage to rest.

He's nearing his old cottage now, beaten and scarred from the long trip home, more than a little bit tired and definitely hungry. He's barely going to make it if he manages to get to the doorstep at all, but more thankful than ever he'd made his home with her outside of the city and out into the woods so he might have a moment to his thoughts. He could very well find her with another man, or he could find a completely new family, or even find nothing but flowers and trees- The life that he made with her could be all but ashes on a breeze that swept this place years ago. She could be a memory and this could all be for nothing just as easily as anything else. He wouldn't even have a right to be angry... He wouldn't even feel a right to cry if she's decided to move on.

"SNAKE MAN! SNAKE MAN!!!"

He's shaken from his pondering by an unfamiliar voice, a starry eyed child fumbling out of the bushes like a little animal.

He nearly panics and flees before the brave, feral little boy reaches out for his hand and looks up at him like something right out of a story book- Which, he supposed may be fair given the way that he looks now.

"Are you a forest monster!? Do you grant wishes and eat people and stuff?!" It's clear the boy doesn't know fear, young and small still, with new eyes... But familiar ones.

Sebastian's heart drops into his stomach when he begins to recognize the thick, dark hair and deep brown eyes. This boy is the spitting image of the way he looked when he was around 10 or 11... It's like he's been pulled right from Sebastian's old childhood photos.

Too dumbfounded to speak, Sebastian stands there, every muscle in his body tense while his eyes flick around the boy's face trying to figure out how this could be.

"S/N! What are you doing talking to strangers, you were supposed to be at least playing in the yard and not the woods before the sun started setting." Y/N rounds the trees with a stubborn look on her face and immediately freezes when her gaze meets Sebastian's.

The air is knocked out of the both of them, leaving them only able to stare, and he notes the way she's remained nearly the same as the day that he was forced to leave her behind. Like a flower that never wilts, she stands as beautiful and as amazing as she was when he had first met her. Frozen with an expression he can't place, she makes no motion to do anything at all. The larger man acts first at the realization she must be frightened of him, going to put his two unheld hands up and open his mouth to explain himself-

"You said not to talk to strangers, this is CLEARLY a forest monster." Little S/N beats both of them to the punch and confirms to Sebastian all at once that his attitude is as strong in his blood as that unruly dark hair is.

"Heed your mother, would you? I could very well eat you." Sebastian ushers the child forward with a playful threat, the boy in reference pouting and looking back up at him.

"Come on, I'm only out a little bit late! It's not dark yet! Monsters only eat people in the dark." The boy argues, unfamiliar with the idea of real danger, it seems, but certain of himself the way only children really can be.

"Sebastian I can't believe it... Is it you? Am I losing my mind?" Putting the scolding and corrections on her son's statements off for a better time, Y/N looks up at the mutated form of her lover, hoping she might be right. When Y/N speaks, it's soft and uncertain, a hand going to rest on her child's shoulder so as not to lose him while she's distracted.

"You recognize me?" His heart practically jumps into his throat and he struggles to cope with how quickly she's guessed it was him.

"If not for the way one soul knows another, then for your voice and... Our ring." Unafraid just as well, she walks right up to the towering creature and brings her hand up to the necklace it's strung onto around his neck.

"Am I too late?" Sebastian asks, still scared.

"You're late, but never too much. You had better come home now though." She gets firm near the end and he laughs, melting.

"Awe that's no fair! I'm in trouble for being a few minutes late and he gets to be gone forever!" The boy whines and Y/N seems to laugh when she ruffles his hair.

"You can be out of trouble because it's a special day. Now, let's go home and get you to bed." Y/N's eyes stray back up to her husband, the fondness that was there in those beautiful eyes he fell in love with was something that had grown blurry and hard to recall until now. The way her gaze rested on him so softly brought him back like he'd never left in the first place.

"I think I have some things to talk about with your monster, here." She smiles at him and goes to slide her hand into his, the cold feeling against his palm of her own ring -the matching one to his from the promise that they'd made at that altar a long time ago- made him feel warm again, and made him feel alive.

"Yes, I've got a lot of things I've been waiting to tell her for these years we've spent apart."

[glow-worms-are-believers]

Full Baby Back Guarantee Not Included (dp x dc)

“Look, lady. It was a joke, ok? I don’t actually want your newborn baby,” Danny said as he held up his hands trying to back away from the woman with a bundle of blankets in her arms.

“We made a deal, you can’t back out now,”  The woman said as she narrowed her eyes at him. “Your kind can’t break their words.”

“My kind?” Danny exclaimed incredulously, because what the hell was she on. “Lady, you are delusional.”

Then his eyes caught on the awkward way the woman was holding onto the bundle and he frowned.

“Wait a second.” The halfa’s eyes went big. “Is that even your kid?!” his voice turning into a shriek at the end. “Did you kidnap some random child?”

“It’s my sister’s,” the woman cut him off coldly. “She and the father are both dead.” That was pretty awful, Danny thought as he winced. But then she turned to look blankly at him.

“Nobody will look for her.”

Dear skies above, he was supposed to be the ghost here, why was he the one getting chills.

“Holy fuck,” the halfa let out softly. 

He had to get that baby away from that psychopath.

“What is it you want again?” Danny asked faintly.

“Make me the new chief operating officer,” the woman answered.

“What?” The halfa choked out.

“They’re giving the position to Shwartz this monday. You need to make sure that doesn’t happen,” she continued evenly as if she wasn’t currently selling a baby in exchange for a fucking promotion.

“Yeah sure, deal,” Danny answered, eager to get away from her as soon as possible. 

“Give me your word,” she insisted.

“I give my word, I swear,” the halfa said. “Gimme the kid and you’ll get your job.”

The woman looked at him for a second before seemingly being satisfied. 

She extended the bundle of blankets towards him and handed him the swaddle baby. As soon as the kid was in his arms, Danny zipped away, fully intent on never seeing the woman again. He sure as hell was not getting her that promotion. Not that he would’ve been able to, what the hell, lady? At least research better before making a deal for your sister's baby!

Though in retrospect, it was a good thing she hadn't.

As Danny flew over a few buildings, he thanked the ancients the woman hadn’t had any ghost restraining tech, and only the summoning ritual. Which was a thing he had not been aware existed but he he would have to circle back to that because, right now, he had a whole ass baby nestled in his arms.

What the hell was his life.

Danny slowed down the flight once he felt he had put enough distance between them and the psycho and landed on a nice patch of green next to a road. He looked around and took notice that they’d gotten out of whatever that city had been, or at least the more populated part. He gave a quick look for people or cameras around before de-transforming. If he was spotted with a baby in his arms, his human look would help his chance of not getting shot.

The halfa started walking away from the road and towards the green vegetation. Still walking, he took a deep breath before looking down at the baby.

“You ok, kid?” Danny asked softly as their small (so so tiny!) face twitched in their sleep. “Oh you’re sleepy, huh?” he murmured gently. “Sleep tight sweetheart, I’ve got you.”

Then he secured the blankets around the baby again, making sure none of the wind was reaching her. It was probably a her? The blankets were pink but he couldn’t know for sure since the psycho had only called her an it. Danny felt his lips curl. And as the night replayed in his mind, he felt the weight of the situation settle down on him.

Ancients what was he going to do?

He couldn’t pull up in Amity with a baby in his arms and no explanation of how he got her. He’d be arrested for kidnapping, which was technically absolutely what he was doing. But then again he couldn't just give that baby back to her aunt.

“What are you doing here?” came a voice from ahead of him.

Danny startled out of his thoughts to find himself facing an older man in a suit with a severe look on his face. The halfa instinctively brought the baby closer to his chest and the movement drew the older man’s eyes towards it.

Danny could see the realization of what it was he was holding settle and the man's face softened. He sighed deeply as his gaze went back up to meet the halfa’s.

“Despite what the media fancy printing, Wayne manor is not actually an orphanage.”

Danny had no idea what he was talking about so he just stayed silent and did his best not to look like someone who kidnapped babies.

The older man took the silence in stride. “If you need some help, there are programs to help young people in your situation,” he continued delicately.

Danny frowned as he tried to figure out what the guy meant by that before his eyes grew wide. “I’m not her dad!” He cried.

“I see,” the man said evenly as he looked back down at the bundle. Danny held her closer in response. “I see,” the guy repeated with a slight change in his voice.

The two held each other’s gaze for a moment before the older man sighed again. 

“Shall we continue this inside? It is getting windy and we wouldn’t want the little one to suffer, would we?” The man offered in a soothing tone.

Danny hesitated but one look at the kid’s face that had grown pink from the cold decided him.

“Ok,” Danny said. “Lead the way.”

And with that the three of them started  across the grassy lawn.

[ckret2]

Chapter 85 of human Bill Cipher getting a ✨💅 makeover 💇‍♀️✨ so he can seduce a government agent into not arresting him and/or the Mystery Shack gang: a flashback to Scalene & Euclid on Bill's birthday, Pacifica receiving the world's most inept lesson about fatphobia, and the continued adventures of the Pines family attempting to get a flash drive out of a goat's guts.

####

Scalene braced one shaking hand with the other as she reapplied her lipstick—a red so bright it was nearly orange, all the better to make her look a little less sickly than she felt.

She tried to pretend she didn't notice Euclid glaring daggers at her.

She'd come out of her swoon as she was being helped outside by several shapes, including Euclid supporting her with one arm and carrying Bill in the other. Once they were outdoors, someone had shoved the trophy and knives Bill had won into Euclid's hands, and then they'd been left outside as everyone else's attention turned to dealing with the mysterious fire that had spontaneously ignited inside; and for the past few minutes, Scalene had been putting herself back together while Euclid tried to soothe Bill.

Finally, once she deemed herself sufficiently presentable, she held out her arms to Euclid and their still-whimpering child. "All right, I can take him."

Euclid didn't move.

"Come on! You're not gonna hold a grudge against me for fainting, are you?"

Euclid said, "What did I tell you?"

"I brought my cane," Scalene said indignantly.

"Well, where was it?"

There was a long silence.

"Lene..."

"Oh, don't give me that look, it was just behind the curtain! I wasn't about to bring it on stage, I had to make sure Billy looked good!"

"What does your cane have to do with how good he looks?!"

"And the mayor didn't hand over the trophy fast enough," she said, ignoring Euclid's question. "If he had, I could have leaned on that. But no, he just kept yammering on..."

Euclid's copper blue eye had the most piercing glare in town. The fact that he also had the worst eyesight in town did nothing to dispel its power. Scalene much preferred when it was aimed at other people.

But then Bill wiggled his tiny hands toward Scalene with a displeased coo; and with a warning, "Careful," Euclid finally handed him over. "So. He didn't do too bad for his first outing. We've got a winner on our hands?"

Scalene was off the hook. She relaxed. "I think we do. The judges were very impressed he showed up to his first contest on his birthday." 

"You'll only be able to do that once," Euclid pointed out.

"Sure, but for the rest of his life he can tell judges he went to his first pageant on the day he was born—can't you?" She directed the question to Bill. "Yes you can! That shows real ambition!" She poked one of his sides just beneath his eye. "And they were impressed by his good looks and how calm he is."

That was well deserved. Bill had entered the world with eye wide open—rather than face scrunched up and eye retracted to cry like most infants—and looking around for his parents, as though he were already used to the light and recognized his surroundings.

"Glad the judges didn't find it creepy, at least," Euclid said.

Scalene waved him off. "What did those nurses know? They should've been grateful to get a kid that isn't wailing in their faces! They couldn't appreciate how adorable he is—but look at him. From the front you'd think he's an oval." It was true: his corners were soft and rounded, and his angles were so flexible that his top angle squashed down toward his feet, making it look more like a right angle than acute. On top of that, his bright, shining pupil was so wide it took up half his face. "One of the judges said he looks downright cherubic. That's going on your resumé, young triangle."

Bill blinked sweetly up at his mother. He would never in his life need to write a resumé, for all the worst reasons.

"And—" Euclid lowered his voice, "—none of them realized how many birth defects he has?"

She swatted his arm. "Shh! No. Everything we've got is too obscure. As far as the pageant circuit is concerned, they're birth assets. My corners were still round when I started competing, and the judges thought I was adorable, too. As long as he goes on stage without braces on, they'll think he looks unique instead of deformed—just like I did."

"If he keeps going on stage without braces, he'll need a cane before he's middle-aged, just like you do."

"Not until his best pageant years are behind him," Scalene said icily. "Besides, we'll do better by him than my mother did for me. We already know what he has—"

"—we think we do, you left before the doctors could examine him—"

"—and I've already got appointments lined up for him with the best orthopedic doctor in the county and your and Euler's optometrist. We'll make sure his face stays pretty, his angles sharpen up, and his organs don't collapse in on themselves. He's just lucky he's got a mother that knows how to make that big eye of his look cute instead of bulgy." She pointed at the trophy, "As long as his good looks keep winning prizes, he'll be able to pay off his own medical bills and bring home a few bonuses."

For the first time, Euclid turned his attention to the trophy and the Knifeco gift box, and he laughed sharply. "Knifeco's still got the myor convinced that the next sample set he gives away for free will get everybody excited to order a full set from him, huh?"

Scalene scoffed. "I don't know why anybody would bother to order one. If they wait long enough and show up to a few city events, eventually they'll win a full set. How much of his own money has he spent on knife sample sets by now?"

"Last I heard? 30, 40k? We probably won't find out how much he's embezzled from city funds 'til next election."

"Otto's an idiot," Scalene said. "After all these years, you'd think he'd figure out the only way to make money at that company is to recruit more salesmen and get a cut of the profits from the kits they sell."

"You'd think." Euclid shrugged impassively. "But as long as I'm still getting 5% from each of his sales to himself, I'm not about to tell him that." He rubbed a thumb on one of Scalene's corners, rubbing off a bit of waxy red side liner to expose the duller pink underneath. "We probably wouldn't be able to afford your makeup habit without him."

Scalene swatted Euclid's hand away. "Well, we can throw away your old chipped set." She patted the dark wood box. "From now on, we're using the set Billy won for us—isn't that right, Billy?" She bounced Bill lightly by her side. He was staring at the box, transfixed. "I think he likes it! That's right, these are your birthday knives, sweetheart."

When his parents looked at the box, they only saw the dark wood; but Bill saw through the wood—over the wood—to the silvery needlelike knives within. They gleamed with starlight shining down from a higher dimension. And then Bill looked up at the stars, glittering far above. He wiggled in Scalene's arm, but couldn't figure out how to move his limbs in the direction he saw above.

Euclid looked at the wiggling child, and tensed up. "Lene. Look at his eye."

She did, and sucked in a sharp breath. "What happened to him?"

"If this is because you dropped him..."

Bill's pupil had disappeared, leaving his eye looking empty and bloodshot silver. But at the change in the tone of his parents' voices, he blinked and focused on them curiously, his pupil back where it belonged like it had never disappeared.

They stared speechlessly at him.

"Did you and Euler's eyes ever do that?" Scalene asked. "Before those surgeries you got as kids?"

"Not—not that I remember. But I could ask Mom and Dad," he said, already knowing the answer would be no.

She stared at Bill's eye a moment longer; but when he didn't do anything but stare back innocently, she sighed. "Well, that's something else we can ask your optometrist. Maybe he'll have a fix for it."

####

While Pacifica was in the bathroom cleaning up after their makeup experimentation, Goldie stood from his folding chair to lean on the desk next to Mabel, staring with a look of intense concentration into the air over the chair about where his head had been.

"What's up?" Pacifica asked, leaning out of the bathroom.

Distractedly, Goldie said, "Nothing, just watching you do my face."

Pacifica frowned. "What? I'm over here?"

Mabel leaned between them, laughing nervously. "What he means is, he does this thing where he, uhh, imagines that he can see what happened around him in the past, so he's... pretending he's watching you put makeup on his face a few minutes ago." At Pacifica's skeptical look, Mabel hastily added, "It's not like a psychic thing or anything! It's just a... um..."

Goldie mumbled, "Mindfulness visualization exercise."

"Yeah! It helps him memorize stuff! Right?"

"You bet. All the best venture capitalists are doing it."

Pacifica said, "Oh, I think a CEO my dad invited over was talking about that. Is it like a meditation thing? You think about what you want to get it?"

"Say it until you believe it, believe it until it's true!" Mabel said.

Goldie elbowed her. "Look who's been paying attention." She beamed at him.

Pacifica packed the makeup, brushes, and spare hair ties and pins he'd need in a bag, and handed it over. "Okay, that should take care of your face. When you shower tonight, remember to wash all the makeup off, you do not want this messing with your pores; remember to moisturize or your skin will crack apart like a mummy's"—one of her mother's favorite threats—"get Mabel to help pin your curls tomorrow, and just do what I showed you for the rest. Now we just have to worry about clothing." She sized up his hair color, his skin color—couldn't quite bring herself to look at his eye color, though. "I think you're a spring. You can probably pull off some autumn colors too. But usually springs are supposed to tan easier than they burn..."

"I do!" He gestured at himself, sunburns and all, and said proudly, "This took hard work!"

That answered a question she'd been asking herself all day, and brought up half a dozen more. "Not going to ask. So, you want to go for bright, clear, warm colors. And you'll look better in gold accessories."

"I know," he said smugly.

Colors were the easy part. She wished she'd had time to call up her personal tailor to bring by some dresses that could be adjusted. Goldie had such a weird body shape—narrow shoulders, sticklike arms, slender calves, and then a wide waist and even wider hips. There couldn't be much clothing that fit him, masculine or feminine. "Do you have any cute clothes in colors that flatter you? Feminine clothes?"

"What's feminine? Dresses?" Goldie turned to Mabel. "Everything else is hit-or-miss, but dresses and skirts are still universally feminine around here, right?" Pacifica was dying to know what Goldie's life had been like.

"Yeah," Mabel said, "I think we managed to get that yellow summer dress at the mall."

Pacifica winced. "Is a summer dress all you've got?" Not the worse choice, depending on the cut, but it probably wouldn't do his figure any favors.

"It's either that or Jesús's grandma's skirts," Goldie said, shrugging. "Did we manage to snag that sparkly dress with all the pink peacock feathers?"

"That's more of a third date dress. You don't want him to think you're out of his league," Mabel said. "It's too bad we didn't get that galaxy print skirt."

"You know what I could really use? Halter top trapeze dress. Maybe stick a petticoat under the skirt for extra volume. They've gotta make trapeze dresses with petticoats somewhere."

"I could probably make one," said Mabel (who wasn't even sure what a trapeze dress was but was over the moon to see him voluntarily express an interest in human clothing).

Pacifica's face twisted in a grimace. Pityingly, she said, "Oh, you really don't know your body type at all."

He gave her an unimpressed look. "Don't I?"

The thing was, a trapeze dress in and of itself wasn't a bad idea: it was tight around the bust, flared out like a tent underneath, and stopped before the knees; so it could highlight his slim shoulders and arms, let him show off his thin calves, and do at least a bit to conceal those thunder thighs and flabby waistline. But... "A halter top would make your shoulders look way too narrow; and a petticoat would completely undermine the flattering effects of a trapeze dress, and—where would you even position the petticoat? Trapeze dresses doesn't have a waistline."

"About where the skirt starts," Goldie said, drawing a line in the air around bust height.

He couldn't be serious. "Absolutely not. You'd look like a walking triangle."

A smile of near maniacal glee stretched across Goldie's face. Before he could say anything, Mabel grabbed his arm and said, "I think you should just go with what Pacifica says! Pacifica, what do you think?"

"Just—stick with the dress you already have." Between a triangle trapeze dress, the threat of pink feathers, and galaxy print, suddenly Pacifica was grateful for the yellow summer dress. "It's great. Summer dresses are flirty. Do you have shoes that match it?"

Goldie pointed at his fish slippers. "It's these, black oxfords, or foam clogs."

"No," Pacifica said. "Sandals, flats, or open toe heels. And throw away the fish slippers."

"Never."

Mabel said, "You could reuse the sandals you borrowed from Dipper for your Summerween costume?"

"Please don't tell me what they look like," Pacifica said. "Okay, dress, shoes—accessories... just, get something nice but understated. And classy. Do I need to explain what 'classy' looks like?"

"Relax, I used to have a collection of gold that put Albion Art to shame," Goldie said. "I know how to do 'classy.'"

"I'm going to pretend I trust you," Pacifica said. "Okay, underwear—got to wear a bra unless the dress has built-in support; and if you hurry, it's probably not too late to go wherever poor people shop and grab some shapewear for your..." she gestured vaguely toward Goldie's abdomen, "problem area..."

"No," Goldie said flatly. "I'm drawing the line at shapewear. I look fine."

Ooh, not good. His attitude toward everything else about his looks ranged from "apathy" to "disgust," why was flaunting his not-flauntworthy curves the point where he chose to push back? She should've been more direct with him.  "Hon, I love the confidence, but..." Pacifica grimaced apologetically. "You're fat. Like, really fat. And you're not gonna win this guy if he thinks you've let yourself go."

Mabel shot from slouching to sitting straight up. "Pacifica!"

"What, it's true! He probably thinks having skinny arms hides it, but back me up here—it is not subtle."

"Don't say that, he's beautiful!!"

Pacifica had been braced for Goldie to be outraged, embarrassed, ashamed, go into denial, something—just about anything except snort with laughter. He waved them off when they looked at him. Pacifica wondered whether he'd misunderstood the conversation. "Listen to you two! You're letting the subtext do so much of the heavy lifting that you don't even realize half the things you're saying." His gaze on them was cold and faintly amused; and for a moment Pacifica felt like a bug whose behavior was being studied by some immense alien being, and who had been judged inferior.

"Anyway, I'm not trying to hide anything—and I'd make it less subtle if I could. I love my shape!" He pantomimed his shape with his hands—although, where most people would sort of draw an hourglass shape if they wanted to their body's curves, the shape he drew in the air looked more like a triangle. Which, admittedly, was more true to his actual appearance. "And you're changing it over my dead bo—" He winced, muttering, "Maybe not the best way to put that."

Now Pacifica wondered if she'd misunderstood him. "What."

"Look, kid..." Goldie stood straighter, put a hand on Pacifica's shoulder, and adopted the most patronizing tone she'd ever heard. "I know your parents taught you the only things contributing to your personal worth are how rich you are and how attractive other people find you, so let's agree that's all that really matters, right?"

"Um," said Pacifica, who was pretty sure she was about to receive some twee lesson about 'inner beauty' but had never heard one that started with the lecturer agreeing that wealth and looks were the most important things.

"And I know Missy Priscy's got you convinced that your beauty and your weight are engaged in a battle to the death over the right to terraform your flesh. So this might blow your mind—but you've been lied to! The sight of a human female over size 4 doesn't cause the contents of a human male's gonads to curdle! Fat chicks have been successfully getting hitched and passing the genetic baton to their offspring for all of human history—and reproduction is the only objective benchmark evolution has to measure who's hot and who's not, so you can rate that higher than the opinion of a tarnished trophy who thinks enough botox will make her immortal. Hear what I'm saying, Alpaca. Absorb it. Incorporate it into your worldview."

She bristled at the description of her mother, but swallowed back the urge to lash out. He was bitter and taking it out on her. He was feeding her a load of sour grapes. This was just the kind of thing fat people told themselves to feel less bad about being fat. "Riiight."

Goldie's patronizing smirk curled down at one corner in irritation. "Ah, who'm I kidding! You're not gonna believe me! Your mom, your modeling job, the pageant world, the beauty industry—they've burrowed way too deep in your head, and there's no digging them back out without a lobotomy." He scoffed. "You're one snide jab at the wrong time away from an eating disorder."

"Hey! How dare you!" Pacifica thought that was way meaner than anything she'd said.

Mabel snapped, "B—Goldie! Be nice! What's gotten into you two!"

"Yeesh, touched a nerve! Excuse me!" He raised his hands apologetically, but he was grinning impishly. "Anyway—" he raised his voice as the girls attempted to scold him again, "Anyway! More to the point—our target looked me up and down in a bikini and asked if he could help slather sunscreen around my waist, so I think he thinks my body looks great in the shape it's already in. And getting the guy is the only important thing—right?"

If Goldie was telling the truth, Pacifica couldn't think of any other reason some guy would volunteer to rub sunscreen on him—even if she found it hard to believe. And if he was making it up, then whatever, he could sabotage himself if he wanted, she didn't care. She rolled her eyes, grit her teeth, and muttered, "Fine."

"Not fine! Both of you hold on!" Mabel stood, decided she wasn't tall enough, and climbed on the folding chair.  "You two were just really mean to each other! That's terrible—especially after you were getting along so great! Apologize to each other!" She crossed her arms, glaring them down.

Pacifica stared at her in disbelief, brows raised. "I beg your pardon?"

But Goldie didn't look like this was odd to him at all. He just rolled his eyes—"All right, all right,"—and looked at Pacifica. "C'mon. You can't be that mad. You've heard worse."

She scowled at him, but she supposed she had. From her mom, her old pageant coach, her manager that got her modeling jobs—she was just more used to warnings about getting fat than she was to warnings about fearing getting fat. "So have you."

"Worse than you can imagine," Goldie said. "We're good?"

"We're good," Pacifica said.

Goldie looked at Mabel. "We're good!"

Mabel looked between the two of them suspiciously. "That was an apology?"

"Got the job done, didn't it?"

Mabel didn't look pleased, but she sat down on the folding chair and crossed her arms.

Pacifica said, "Okay, you're off the hook for shapewear—but if he thinks you look like a slob, it's on you."

He rolled his eyes. "Noted!"

"But you've got to wear a bra. What are the straps like on the summer dress, do you have a bra that'll fit under it okay?"

Goldie groaned. "We can reuse my bikini and pad the cups or something. We don't have time to go to the mall and figure out what size I am."

In horror, Pacifica quietly asked, "Do... do you not even own a bra."

"Why would I?" Goldie asked, like he couldn't imagine a single practical reason. Hard to tell his size through an oversized t-shirt; he was definitely small, but it wasn't like he was flat. "I've never really cared about local fashion outside of batiks, brocades, tie dyes, and sarcastic t-shirts, but now that it's affecting me personally? I cannot wait for that particular fad to die."

Since when were batiks local. And who calls bras a fad. That's like calling shoes a fad. "What is your life like," Pacifica asked.

Goldie grinned. "You wouldn't believe me even if I told you."

####

"That's it. That's all I can do for you," Pacifica said. "Good luck on... whatever it is you're doing. Because I'm pretty sure you're not actually into this guy?"

Mabel said, "Wooing a federal agent to avoid getting the whole family arrested!"

Pacifica nodded. "Oh, cool. Let me know how that goes."

Mabel stopped to hug Giorgio on the way out.

As they left Pacifica's barn, Bill turned to face Mabel. "Welp!" He pantomimed like he was playing a violin, "Ready to bow on some poor sucker's heartstrings until we yank out his aorta?"

"Ha ha. Yeah. Sure." Mabel tried to smile and it came out as a grimace. "Sounds great."

"Hey, don't give me that look!" He shoved Mabel's shoulder. "You've heard me say gorier things than that!" He flashed her a grin she could only describe as bloodthirsty, and bounced off toward the road back to town, so cheerful he was very nearly floating.

And she watched him go, biting her lip.

Something had been bothering her since his argument with Pacifica:

She couldn't figure out why he wasn't better.

####

Bill nudged Mabel. "Hey. Am I in trouble?"

"What?"

"You've been giving me the silent treatment since we left." That had been about fifteen minutes earlier. "Is it because of the eating disorder thing? Do I have to apologize to you for that? It's not like I was insulting her! If anything, I did her a favor by warning her—"

She gave him a sour look—that had been very rude, even if not Bill's typical existential horror cosmic nightmare level rudeness—but said, "No, it's not that. I'm just thinking about stuff."

"Are you gonna share it, or do I have to wait until I can crawl inside your head again to find out?"

Mabel was silent a moment. "Do you actually like tie-dye?"

"That's what's bothering you?" He pulled his eyepatch back on—Pacifica had told him putting it back on would probably mess up his makeup, but that didn't really matter until tomorrow. "Of course I do, who doesn't! It's chaos on a shirt." He shrugged. "I've never had any—but, y'know, it's nice to look at, anyway."

"Wait, never? We should do tie-dye together! I can get us some white shirts and we can dye them outside," Mabel said. "Maybe I can invite Grenda and Candy!"

"Sounds like a party! Let me know when, you know what my schedule looks like."

"Great!" She beamed at him.

But as they walked, her smile slowly faded as she drifted back into her own thoughts.

His ideas about flirting were very hit or miss, but Mabel thought they were probably hits more often with aliens that thought dead salmon smelled sexy. He'd had a girlfriend, at any rate.

And he'd gotten chummy with Abuelita (even after she tried to poison him), he'd charmed Gideon's mom in like ten seconds, Wendy thought he was cool and so did half her gang, Candy and Grenda said he was fun, Mabel was pretty sure Stan kinda liked him even if he wouldn't admit it... He'd even managed to develop a rapport with Pacifica—Pacifica!—which had taken Mabel like two-thirds of the summer!—and he'd done it even though they'd insulted each other!

He was charming, he was fun, he clearly got romance...

So how come he didn't have true love and best friends that weren't evil?

The question itched at her brain.

Mabel firmly believed that the only thing that made people bad was not getting enough love. Family love, friend love, romance love, adorable cuddly pet love, whatever. Put love in, get love out; put nothing in, get a swirling vortex of loneliness and hatred where the love should have been stored. Like Prickly Bee in Color Critters! Who during season one had been one of the color-hating bad guys, but in season two had inexplicably joined the good guys due to network executive meddling, and it wasn't until season three that they did a flashback episode showing that the critters had won her over by showing her the kindness and caring that her old boss Serpent Grey never had!

And at the beginning of summer, after Mabel helped Bill get his hair back, he'd said it had been a long time since anyone had been nice to him; and he'd been nice to her since then, so that seemed to support her theory. All it took was a little love!

She just couldn't figure out why he didn't already have enough.

He had all those monster friends he'd tried to conquer the world with last year, but maybe they were those "people who claim to be friends but are actually allies who hate each other" that you see amongst cartoon villains. (Like Serpent Grey's minions.) Was it because they were aliens? Were aliens not good at friendship? Had he been deprived until now?

She remembered how heavy even the smallest glimpse at his pain had been—listening to him grieve over his own death. It was clear that, whatever he'd had before, what he needed now was better love, more friends—enough to share that psychological weight without collapsing—but how much would be enough to untwist his crooked morality?

Mabel was running out of time. Summer was almost halfway over. She only had seven more weeks to reintegrate Bill into society—to help him make amends for everything he'd done last summer—or else... or else she'd failed. She'd failed him. 

And she knew she was making progress with Bill, but she didn't know if it was enough. She wished he'd go faster. She wished summer would go slower. She wished she had more time.

She remembered what had happened the last time she'd wished for a little more summer.

So she'd just have to figure out how to save him in the time they had left. She couldn't just pick up a broken teacup, glue half the pieces together, then abandon it half-repaired to leak tea all over the floor. She was a problem solver, it was what she did. She had to solve this problem—or else everything she'd done this past year would be for nothing.

As they walked, she reached out to grab Bill's hand. He gave her a curious look, but he didn't pull it back.

"Was all that stuff true about you doing pageants as a kid?" (There must have been something in his past to explain why he didn't have enough love—maybe in his childhood.) "Or did you just make that up to make Pacifica relax?" (She guiltily remembered him accusing her of trying to "fix" him—how badly he'd been hurt by the thought.)

She felt his hand tense in her grip, but he shrugged dismissively. "They're not exactly identical to human beauty pageants—no real fashion component, for one thing—but, yeah. Did 'em as a kid. I went to my first pageant on the day I was born."

"So you lied when you told me you didn't do them yourself?"

"I did not," Bill said indignantly. "I just didn't correct you when you guessed wrong!"

At Mabel's sour look, Bill rolled his eye and said, "What, am I supposed to correct you every time you say something wrong? Because humans are wrong about just about everything—"

"Bill."

He huffed. "The specifics weren't any of your business, okay? It's—not something I talk about with humans. Or any other aliens, for that matter."

"Why not? Was it—"

"Because it's ancient history," he said sharply.

Mabel gave him a worried look. When he didn't elaborate, she said, "So, is it really as stressful as you and Pacifica made it sound?"

"Stressful!" Bill scoffed. "Name a part of life that isn't stressful. School, work, breeding a family, yadda yadda—better to learn how to handle it early, right? And it's only stressful if you're bad at it! I was good. I was very good."

"Good at what?" Mabel asked.

"Uh..." Bill had to grasp for a moment. "Being... cute. Charming the judges. Wowing 'em at the talent portion—when I wasn't starting fires. I really did play the piano! I mean—not a piano, but the closest equivalent my world had. There's nothing cuter than a kid playing an instrument he can hardly reach each end of." At Mabel's continued worried look, he said, "What! It was harmless. It was just a bunch of baby shapes bumbling around the stage looking adorable, that's all! It wasn't that bad!"

He was quiet for a moment; and then he repeated to himself, "It wasn't that bad."

####

"Don't get any closer," Stan said. "This place is about to be a toxic waste dump."

Bill and Mabel looked around Stan. In the middle of the clearing behind the Mystery Shack, a tent had been set up. Inside, a goat bleated in a plea for help.

Mabel asked, "Why?"

"Poindexter and your brother's plan to get that computer doohickey out of the goat the old-fashioned way didn't work. He wouldn't eat the concoction they mixed up. So they're getting it out of him the other old-fashioned way."

"Vivisection?" Bill asked hopefully.

"No—" Stan fell silent, squinted at Bill's face, and decided not to comment on his new look. "Vomit. You remember that witch's brew we used to chase off the flying eyeball that you—er—you knew?"

Mabel screwed up her face. "Oh, yuck, that was the worst thing I ever smelled."

Stan tipped his head toward the tent. "Well, they're about to detonate what's left of it."

"'Detonate'?"

Ford's voice came from the tent: "On the count of three! One... two..."

There was a muffled boom. The walls of the tent billowed outward and an orange ball of fire illuminated Ford, Dipper, and Gomper's silhouettes. Gompers let out a loud bleat of distress.

Voice strained, Dipper said, "Ugh, that smell—I think I'm gonna be—" He had to try a couple of times to unzip the tent, then stumbled out and landed on his hands and knees in the dirt, gasping for fresh air.

Ford—wearing a gas mask—ducked out of the tent. "I told you you'd want a mask."

"Smelling it in close quarters is way—" He clapped a hand over his mouth and gagged, "—way worse than I thought."

"Well?" Stan called. "Did anything come up?"

Ford peered back into the tent. "No."

Stan flung his hands up.

"Don't lose hope," Ford said. "I have a spell to induce vertigo somewhere. I don't remember all the words, but..."

Bill spent several seconds pretending he didn't notice Ford was staring directly at him before he said, "Can I help you?"

"You know the spell, don't you?"

"What, the Maximus Vertiginous? 'Course I do. Classic prank."

Ford stared at him expectantly. Bill said, "What?"

"How does it go?" Ford asked impatiently.

"Oh, you expect me to teach you?" Bill rolled his eye.

Mabel frowned up at him. "Come on, Bill, don't be a jerk."

The back of his neck started heating up as he realized the whole family was staring at him. He stood a little straighter. "Listen to you, ya little hypocrite! Aren't you the one who keeps showing me those cute cartoons telling me to be myself?" To Stanford, he said, "I don't tutor my dropouts. Go find your own notes, Stanford Pines."

Ford glowered at Bill, but then he left the tent, zipped it shut behind himself, and trudged toward the shack. His irritated muttering was muffled by the gas mask.

As soon as the door shut, Stan clapped his hands. "Okay! Ford's gone, now we're doing this my way." As he passed Dipper, he said, "C'mon, kid, chop chop. I need your help, your hands are smaller than mine."

Dipper groaned, but got back to his feet, pulled his shirt over his nose, and trudged back to the tent with Stan. "What are we doing?"

"The same thing you and Ford were—but more assertive! Sixer nixed my plan, but his obviously didn't work." Stan unzipped the tent's flap. "All right. I'll hold the goat's mouth open, you reach in."

"Ohhh no."

Bill's face lit up. "Heeey, that sounds fun! Let me try! My hands are small and I can actually see the flash drive!"

"Oh no you don't," Stan said. "We can't risk you picking up the eyeball repellant stink, you've gotta stay pretty until loverboy shows up!"

"What, so suddenly I'm too pretty to grope a goat's guts?" Bill stared at Mabel in disbelief, waiting for her to commiserate over this injustice.

Mabel—who was still a bit miffed about being called a hypocrite—said, "Let's just go in." As they walked to the porch, she said, "'Be yourself' doesn't mean be a jerk. It means 'don't hide your talents' and 'keep doing your hobbies even if other people think they're boring' and stuff."

"Yeah, well, what if one of my talents is being a jerk?"

Mabel groaned. "There's gotta be an episode that covers this."

As Stan entered the tent, he said, "Phew, that reeks! Hey, zip the tent when you come in."

Dipper hung back nervously, half in the tent and pinching his nose shut. "Grunkle Stan, I'm not sure about this idea."

"Come on, it—it can't be hard! Farmers do this. I think. Look, I'm doing the hard part, all you have to do is reach down his throat! Lemme just... get my fingers between his jaws...

Gompers bleated angrily. Stan hollered in pain.

"Oh, no!" Dipper dove for Gompers and landed in the dirt as the goat shot past. From the porch, Mabel and Bill could only watch as Gompers headed the other way.

Soos walked around the corner of the shack. "Hey, du—whoa!"

"Soos!" Dipper shouted. "Catch him!"

Soos dove to the side to get out of the way of the charging goat, watched him vanish into the forest, and said, "Aw—dude, I just did the opposite of what you asked me to do. That's totally my bad."

Ford opened the back door with a handful of papers and his gas mask pushed up on his forehead. "I heard shouting, what happened?"

"Uhhh," Soos said. "Gompers just escaped into the forest."

"What?! How?!"

Stan stumbled through the tent's flap, cradling a hand. "It was—it was totally unexpected. Just ran off for no reason. Completely unprompted," he said. "He also bit my hand. Don't ask why my hand was so close to his mouth."

Ford said, "Which way?! We have to follow him immediately! If the agents detect the drive's signal before we retrieve him—"

"Don't bother," Bill said. "As long as he's in the forest, if he doesn't want to be caught, he won't be. There's nothing you can do until he comes out."

Ford narrowed his eyes. "How are you so sure?"

"He ate some magic rocks."

"Ah. Well." He shrugged in defeat. Nothing they could do if he'd eaten magic rocks. "But what if he does want to be caught?"

Bill gestured toward the forest with a flourish. "If you think he's eager for more of the hors d'oeuvres and perfume you've been offering him today, go get 'im."

Stan cleared his throat. "Well—the good news is, when the agents get here, they won't find the thingamajig in the Mystery Shack! Eh? Ehhh?"

"Oh, yeah, that's what I was coming over to tell you guys," Soos said. "I was taking out the trash, and I saw this car parked just up the road, and it looked like the car the government dudes were in today, so, I think they're watching the shack now?"

There was a long silence as the group processed that.

"We can't be outside," Ford said. "If they see Stan they'll want to interrogate him, if they see Bill here after hours they'll know he's not a passing tourist, and if they see me they'll realize I'm not a superior officer from Washington—"

Bill slammed his fist on the back door. "Then stop rambling and let me in!"

Ford opened the door and ushered everyone inside. "Hurry!"

"But what about Gompers?" Dipper asked. "We've gotta at least try to find him before the agents do!"

"What if the agents follow you to Gompers?" Ford asked. Dipper hesitated.

Mabel said, "We can make disguises so they won't recognize us!" She took off her half of the enchanted friendship bracelets, chucked it toward the coat rack just inside the door, and ran upstairs. "Come on!"

Dipper shot one last worried look toward the forest, then followed her.

Ford shut the door and asked Stan in a low voice, "How long is Gompers usually gone when he wanders off?"

"No telling. Sometimes I don't see him for weeks at a time."

Soos said, "So if they're gonna keep looking until they find that drive, but we can't go looking because they're watching us, and Gompers doesn't come back, so we can't find the drive, and they can't find the drive... then, how do we get rid of them?"

"We don't," Stan said. "Unless they find something more interesting than the drive."

As Bill added his end of the bracelet to the coat rack, he was keenly aware of three sets of eyes on him. He could see the cold gray walls of his cell in the— of the surgical suite in Hangar 618. Oh, he was certainly a billion times more interesting than some lousy drive; and if the eagles figured that out...

"Distracting them for a few hours won't cut it, will it," Ford asked him.

Bill pushed away the phantom psychological weight of heavy ankle cuffs and cheap orange fabric. "Doesn't look like it. You'll need some other way to make them leave."

Grimly, Ford said, "It looks like your job just got a lot more important."

####

(Your "what was edited due to TBOB" roundup: as mentioned in an earlier chapter, some of the specifics of the pageant scene came from TBOB—the name of the "best baby ever" award and the mayor handing out free knives. But everything else was plotted well before TBOB—including Bill being born able to see the stars, having a condition that makes him unusually flexible (which lines up with Baby Bill's squishy look quite well), and his parents getting him medical treatment at a very young age due to, among other things, his weird eye. Most of the rest of the chapter was written pre-TBOB.

Although my god did i rewrite the conversation about Bill's weight a hundred times. This has been a high priority to work into the fic for some time! I wanted to make it clear that Bill's body shape isn't merely a cosmetic part of his character design but something with actual in-world impact, that for him it's a positive and not meant to be punitive or a joke, and that Pacifica's got issues and we're gonna be dealing with them. The hard part was doing all that while avoiding Bill sounding like an enlightened angel spreading the gospel of fat positivity to the ignorant masses, rather than what he actually is: a selfish alien who realizes humans are being stupid but whose only personally investment in this issue is convincing a 13-year-old not to make him wear spanx. 

Next week, the agents are finally back, and Bill gets to put all that flirting practice into action! I'm sure he'll do a great job.)

[persevereforahappyending]

A Legacies Secret |2|

Pairing: Tara Carpenter x Reader

Summary: You just wanted a happy life with your girlfriend but then Ghostface attacks, revealing long thought to be buried family secrets.

Warnings: None?

Word Count: 2.9k+

Main Masterlist | Series Masterlist

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15

You let out a sigh, finally clocking out for the night. It had been a busy night. To some it might seem weird for a bar to be so busy during the week but for some reason Woodsboro had a lot of alcoholics. You weren’t complaining though, they tipped pretty well and were the reason you could afford an apartment. If it weren’t for the tips, you would be living out of your car most likely, or more likely, unofficially, living with Tara when her mom wasn’t home, which was often.

After starting your car, you pulled out your phone, opening your messages with Tara. You hadn’t heard from her since your phone call earlier in the night. Tara knew you were at work, but she still had a habit of messaging you throughout your shift. You furrowed your brow, seeing all the messages you sent still showed that they had been delivered but hadn’t been read yet. You had an uneasy feeling, it wasn’t like Tara to not answer you, she always answered. You weren’t trying to panic though.

Y/N: Still good?

Y/N: Did you already fall asleep?

Y/N: Going to be a little later than expected

Y/N: On my way

You sent one last text, trying to calm your nerves. Everything was probably fine. Tara probably called over Amber or one of the others and they just got caught up watching movies. It wouldn’t be the first time you got to her place, and she was still up with one of her friends or all of them, watching movies. Sometimes you got to her place, and you shook your head at the sight of them all passed on the couch, popcorn bowl tipped over and mouths hung open as the movie continued to play.

Tara’s house wasn’t too far from your place of employment but when you turned down the street you were met with flashing lights and police cars lining the street. There were multiple cop cars parked outside of your girlfriend’s house. You slowly drove up, parking on the side of the street as you watched an officer pull out yellow police tape, taping off the front door.

As soon as you were parked you jumped out of the car, and ran across the yard, not caring about any of the police. You were under the first set of caution tape and halfway across the yard when strong arms wrapped around you, holding you back.

“You can’t be here,” a gruff voice said.

“No!” you screamed. “What happened?” you thrashed against the man, trying to get out of his hold.

“This is an active crime scene,” he said again when he finally put you down, on the other side of the yellow tape.

You stared up at the officer. He had his arms crossed, staring you down to make sure you didn’t try and rush past him again. You huffed, glaring at him. Despite knowing you’d fail you still lunged at the man, trying to get around the tape again. He was quick to grab you and keep you from passing.

“What part of active crime scene do you not understand?” he said, clearly irritated.

“What happened?” you asked again. You peered around the officer, your eyes darting all around the house, searching for any signs of Tara.

“Can’t say, it’s an active investigation.”

“Is Tara alright?”

“Kid, go home before I have you arrested.”

“This is my girlfriend’s house! I have to know if she’s alright. Is she okay?” Your breathing was becoming rapid. You weren’t sure if the fact that you couldn’t see Tara anywhere was a good sign or a bad one.

“Don’t make me arrest you.”

You were about to give the officer a piece of your mind when out of the corner of your eye you saw the sheriff. “Sheriff!” you yelled, directing your full attention to her. “Sheriff! Sheriff Hicks!”

“Kid, get out of here,” the officer got in your line of sight again.

“Sheriff!” You ducked under the police tape, avoiding the officers’ arms as he tried to grab you. “Sheriff!”

“Alright, that’s it.” The officer grabbed you, pushing you into the grass as he yanked your arms behind your back, handcuffing you.

“Sheriff Hicks!” you continued to yell as the officer hauled you to your feet and began to drag you to a cop car as you continued to fight against him. “Judy!” you let out in another desperate scream, finally gaining her attention.

Judy was holding a clipboard, talking to another officer when she finally looked up, looking around to see who was yelling her name until her eyes finally landed on you. You didn’t need to be close to know she had let out a deep sigh and if she didn’t roll her eyes, she was definitely holding one in. Judy made her way across the lawn towards you. The officer was trying to push you in a cop car when she finally got over to you.

“It’s okay deputy,” Judy said. “I got this one.”

“Are you sure?” the deputy questioned. “She’s a wild one sheriff.” He narrowed his eyes at you, and you just scoffed at him.

“Yes, go help the others.” Judy watched as the deputy walked off before facing you again. “Turn around.”

“What happened?” you asked as you did as she asked. “Where’s Tara?” You kept trying to turn around, trying to look at Judy as she took the cuffs off your wrists.

“Where have you been?” Judy asked, ignoring your question.

You quickly turned around when you felt the handcuffs leave your wrists. You started rubbing your wrists, though it had only been a moment the jerk of a deputy had put the cuffs on pretty tight. “Is Tara, okay?” you asked again, searching Judy’s face for any clues. Judy was clearly being kinder, but you could tell she was in full on cop mode, something bad definitely happened.

“Where were you earlier tonight?”

She wasn’t answering your questions, she was actively ignoring all your questions actually. “Is she-” your voice cracked, cutting yourself off by trying to contain a sob, your mind immediately going to the worst.

“She’s alive,” Judy said softly, resting a hand on your shoulder.

You relaxed for the first time since pulling up to the house, letting out a relieved sigh. “What happened? Where is she?”

“She was attacked.” Your breathing started to become rapid, your heartbeat was the only thing you could focus on. “Where were you tonight?”

“Where is she? Is she okay?” your eyes darted around the scene, seeing police tape, officers, red and blue flashing lights, the front door wide open. There was no ambulance but there was also no Tara.

“She’s at the hospital. Probably in surgery by now.” You brought a hand to your mouth, trying to contain your sob. Tara was attacked. Tara was attacked bad enough to be rushed to the hospital and in need of surgery. You couldn’t begin to imagine who would ever even want to attack Tara, if this was some sort of break in gone wrong. “I really need you to answer my questions.”

“Can we do it at the hospital?” you asked, needing to be near her even if you couldn’t see her. “Please? Please?” you begged. Judy looked at you and finally gave a sympathetic nod. “Thank you,” you whispered, before following her to her police cruiser.

The ride to the hospital was the longest of your life even though the hospital was only a few minutes away. When you got there, you trailed behind the sheriff, suddenly nervous, terrified of the news you might be walking into. Judy guided you to a seat in the waiting room while she went to the front desk. Your eyes never left the sheriff, watching as she whispered to the nurse. When Judy finished her conversation, she took the seat across from you.

“She’s still in surgery,” Judy whispered softly. You buried your head in your hands. You should have been there. You should have been there with her. You jumped when you felt a hand rest on your knee. “I need to ask you some questions.” Judy rubbed your knee for comfort. “Okay?”

You nodded, lifting your head from your hands. You wiped at your eyes, wiping away the tears before they could begin to fall. You cleared your throat, straightening your back as you prepared for her questions. You knew she had a job to do. You knew she had to ask you questions simply because you were Tara’s girlfriend and that automatically made you a suspect if anything happened. You decided to focus on helping in any way you could and would try not to be offended or defensive about the questions she may have.

“Where were you between 9pm and 10pm?” Judy asked. She leaned back in her chair, pulling out her notepad but never losing her warmth.

“Work,” you rasped out. “I got there at five and was there until I got to Tara’s.”

“Will others be able to confirm this?”

You nodded. “Yeah, in fact my boss yelled at me for talking to Tara. There were customers throughout the night and some that were there my entire shift.”

Judy nodded, writing everything down in her notepad. “You talked to Tara?” her pen froze mid whatever she was writing.

“Yeah.” You scrunched your eyebrows not sure how that was relevant. “She called.”

“What time was that?”

“We were just starting to get busy so…” you tried to think back to just a few hours ago. You hadn’t really looked at the time and now there were a lot more pressing matters on your mind. “Probably just before nine thirty.” Judy sucked in a breath before dropping her eyes back down to her notepad, quickly scribbling down the new information. “Why?”

“What did you talk about?”

You scrunched your eyebrows again. “She was bored, she wanted me to entertain her.” You smiled thinking back to your conversation, back to when everything was normal. “We discussed the future, and I said I would come over when I got off.”

“Nothing was off?”

“Of course not,” you frowned. “Why? What don’t I know?”

Judy cleared her throat, trying to hide any of the emotions she might be feeling. “It seems Tara was texting Amber.” You tilted your head, you might not have liked Amber, but they were best friends, it wasn’t surprising Tara would text her if you couldn’t come over. “Someone cloned Ambers number to make it seem like Tara was talking to her, but they were using it to distract her. At the same time Tara answered an unknown number on the landline.” You blinked a few times, trying to clear your mind, trying to figure out what Judy was saying. “Based on the timeline it was minutes after you got off the phone with her.”

“What?” you whispered, your heart shattering. When you had talked to Tara, she had been okay, she had been safe. Maybe if you had stayed on the phone with her nothing would have happened, maybe you could have helped.

“What are you saying?” you shot to your feet, beginning to pace back and forth. “You’re saying someone toyed with her? Someone planned this?” you gripped your head, trying to make it make sense. “Why would someone do that? Who would do that? Who would want to hurt Tara?” you looked to Judy for answers, tears already threatening to fall.

“Tara was still conscious when my deputies got there,” Judy said slowly, keeping her voice even. “As she was being loaded into the ambulance, she said the person who attacked her was wearing a Ghostface mask.”

Your face paled. You lived in Woodsboro, of course you knew the story of Ghostface. You believe you saw the first movie a long time ago, but they weren’t really your thing, you honestly only watched horror movies when Tara did, and she wasn’t into Stab. You had never read any of the books either, they didn’t appeal to you. You heard the basics of the attacks though; you remembered seeing the 2011 killings on the news, you had been in sixth grade, and it was pretty big gossip at the time.

Despite your lack of knowledge there were two things you knew about Ghostface, two things all of them had in common. The victims of Ghostface were always connected to whoever was Ghostface or connected to his true target. That’s where you were lost, Tara wasn’t connected to anyone from the previous killings. Tara wasn’t connected to Sidney Prescott in anyway and she wasn’t connected to any of the past killers. Tara was chosen as this Ghostface’s first victim though, there had to be a reason.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” you whispered, slumping back down in the chair.

“I’ve only ever been through this once,” Judy said, pocketing her notepad. “From my experience though, I can say that it rarely does. There’s no logic to people like this.”

Before anything else could be said you caught sight of a white lab coat out of the corner of your eye. You shot to your feet again, turning to face the doctor as he approached. Judy followed, standing behind you and giving a comforting rub to your back as you waited for what the doctor had to say.

“How is she?” Judy asked.

“She lost a lot of blood,” the doctor said. “She was stabbed seven times.” You brought a hand to your mouth, trying to hold back the sob. “Once through the hand.” Your tears finally fell. “She also has a broken leg.”

“Will she be, okay?” you managed to ask, trying to control your sobs.

“It’ll take some time. A lot of rehab. But she’ll live.”

You nodded, letting out a shaky breath. Tara was alive and that’s all that mattered. “Can I see her?”

“Are you family?”

You scoffed. “I’m her girlfriend.” You knew it was hospital policy or whatever, but you would lose it if he didn’t let you in to see Tara for yourself.

“I’m sorry, visiting hours are over and only family is allowed to stay the night.”

You opened your mouth to argue with the man but stopped when you felt Judy’s arm leave your back, she stepped forward, so she was almost between you and the doctor. “Her mother is out of town,” Judy said softly. “She’s the closest thing the girl has. Surely you can make an exception doc.” The doctor didn’t look convinced, he looked like he was about to deny Judy as well. “Look, doctor, I get it’s your policy,” she smiled brightly. “But if you don’t let her into that room, she will be sleeping in your waiting room and harassing the nurses until she can get in.”

The doctor narrowed his eyes at Judy, but she just smiled sweetly at him. The doctor glanced at you, and you could only shrug and nod your head. It was true, you wouldn’t leave the hospital and you wouldn’t sleep until you could see Tara, therefore you would spend time annoying the nurses who probably had better things to do than listening to you.

“Fine,” the doctor said begrudgingly. “I’ll show you to her room.”

“Thank you,” you whispered to Judy.

Judy smiled, giving a small nod in return. “I have a deputy on the way, they’ll be outside Tara’s room until this bastard is caught.” You nodded, knowing that the guy who attacked Tara was still out there and would most likely come back, most Ghostface’s didn’t like when their victims lived. “I know I probably don’t have to say this but, don’t leave town.”

“Don’t worry,” you said. “I don’t intend to leave Tara’s side.”

“I figured,” Judy smiled at you, before taking her a seat again. “I’ll be right here until the deputy arrives.”

You gave her one last nod before following the doctor to Tara’s room. You knew she was alive, and you knew of her injuries, but your leg bounced the entire elevator ride. The doctor didn’t say anything as he led you through the empty halls until he finally came to a stop. He gestured to the door, and you whispered a small thank you to him as you rested your hand on the handle. You took a deep breath before pushing down on the handle and entered the room, quietly closing the door behind you.

Your eyes instantly filled with tears again as you saw the state of Tara. She was asleep, lying in the hospital bed. Her right leg was in a large boot and her left hand was all wrapped up; she even had an oxygen tube in her nose. You slowly moved to her bedside, looking down at your girlfriend, noticing how small she looked in the hospital bed.

You rested a hand on top of her head, running your fingers through her hair as you bent down giving her forehead a kiss. “I’m sorry,” you whispered into her hair. “I’m so sorry.”

You quickly wiped away your tears, making your way around to the other side of her bed. You took a seat, moving it closer to her bedside. You were on the side with her injured hand, meaning as much as you wanted to, you couldn’t hold it as you waited for her to wake up, but this side was the only side that gave you a full visual of the door. Tara already got attacked once when you weren’t with her, you wouldn’t let that happen again.

[theyonagoda]

Interesting things about the Cold Boys' families

I thought the Terror enjoyers might find some of this neat and/or horribly depressing. I only did genealogy research on Gore, Tozer, Leys, and Armitage, the rest are thanks to a collaborative effort on RtFE.

1. Graham Gore's neice and nephew got together and had 3 kids. The Gores were one of the first Australian settlers, so, uh... Maybe there's not many other folk around? Either way, it's real awkward.

2. The Armitage family has a strong naval tradition; amongst the many, many Armitages who were in the navy, his grandson died at sea while serving in Gibraltar. Poor guy.

3. William Gibson's father is apparently literally named Steward. Talk about nominative determinism.

4. Henry Collins' father, Henry Sr, was forcibly confined against his will multiple times at mental asylums; he claimed that his institutionalization was a ploy his family made to cut him out of Henry Jr.'s inheritence.

5. The whole Cornelius Hickey debacle gets worse as someone recently found a newspaper clipping listing his father as "Denis Hickey," and another as "Mr. Hickie." Aside from the spelling variations, none of the 3 Cornelius Hickeys that could've been him (baptized in Limerick at around the same time) had a father named Denis, meaning we now have a 4th potential candidate. Oddly in-character

6. The last of the Des Voeux baronets (A title somewhere between "Knight" and "Baron," basically) died in ww2.

7. One of Solomon Tozer's massive, massive amount of siblings is Charlie Wilson (not his birth name,) an early transgender figure who ran away from an abusive marriage and proceeded to become a semi-successful painter who racked up a decent amount of girlfriends (and arrests!) over the years. Good for him!

[steveseddie]

my heart burns there too

steddie | rating: t | wc: 4,7k | cw: none | tags: misunderstandings, light angst, pining, eddie jumps into some crazy ass conclusions, but it’s all good in the end

for @steddie-spooktober day eight, prompt “bonfire”

read on ao3 here

The bonfire is Robin’s idea, but Steve is who extends the invitation to Eddie when he stops by Family Video one day.

“A bonfire? Won’t that get us arrested?” He asks, leaning on the counter and watching Steve operate the tape rewinder with a bored expression.

“Nah, man,” Steve says with a shrug. “Hopper is Chief again and you’d be surprised by how easy it is to get him off your back if you play the ‘I fought monsters with your kid’ card.”

Eddie lets out a snort. “Wish I had that all those times that he picked me up for dealing.”

Steve sniggers. The tape rewinder makes a loud clicking sound, signaling that it’s finished, and Steve removes the tape, putting it back in its case before rewinding a new one. “So are you in?”

“Sure,” Eddie says, never one to turn down the opportunity to spend time with Steve— and Robin, of course. “But I’m not holding hands with you and Buckley and singing Kumbaya.”

For some reason, that makes Steve blush. He ducks his head, fiddling with another tape. “Um, well, it’s not just us, Nance is coming too.”

Ah, Eddie thinks, now the blush makes more sense.

He tries not to let his disappointment show. He doesn’t want Steve to think he has anything against Nancy because the truth is that he doesn’t. Nancy is great— she’s nice, she’s smart and she’s fucking badass. He wasn’t lying during that Spring Break from Hell when he told Steve that he should win her back, Wheeler is a fucking catch. Even Eddie, gay as fuck as he is, can see it.

Only now things are different. Not the fact that Nancy is a catch, she still is. But now she’s single, and she and Steve have been inseparable since she ended things with Jonathan.

Oh, and now Eddie is stupidly and hopelessly in love with Steve so he’s just waiting for the day when they finally announce that they’re back together and break Eddie’s heart.

He doesn’t know what they’re waiting for and he kinda wishes they would just get the fuck on with it. At least then, Eddie could stomp down any hope of anything ever happening between him and Steve. Right now they’re in a weird limbo where some days Eddie will catch Steve’s gaze flickering down to his lips or he’ll feel his touches linger a little too long and he’ll think maybe, but then he’ll walk into Steve’s kitchen to find Nancy and Steve whispering with their heads pushed together only for them to break apart and go quiet the moment they see him or he’ll try to make plans with Steve only to watch him fumble for an excuse before admitting he’s hanging out with Nancy. And every time his heart shatters a little, so better to just rip the bandage off once and for all.

“Eds?”

Steve’s voice snaps Eddie out of his thoughts and he realizes that he fell uncharacteristically quiet at the mention of Nancy. So much for acting like he doesn’t have a problem with her. Goddammit.

He plasters a smile on his face. “Wheeler is coming, you say? Great! The more the merrier!” He says, hoping it sounds convincing enough. “Should I bring something? Lighter fluid? Marshmallows? Child sacrifices?”

A woman standing to the side of the counter, letting the kid in her arms pick something from the candy display gasps audibly, scowling at Eddie and switching the toddler from one arm to the other, further away from him.

Whoops.

Steve gives him a look— why are you like this? it says. Eddie shrugs.

“Just bring drinks, okay?” Steve whispers to him after giving the woman a placating smile.

“Sure thing, big boy,” he says, delighting in the baffled little pout Steve makes every time Eddie calls him that. “Anything else?”

“Well,” Steve purses his lips, thinking. “I’ve got everything we need for the bonfire, Rob is bringing the music and Nance is in charge of the snacks.”

“Tell her I want s’mores.”

“She’s way ahead of you, man,” Steve says with a chuckle. Eddie’s eye twitches— of course perfect Nancy already picked the perfect snacks.

Nancy isn’t your problem, Eddie reminds himself, the problem is that Steve’s straight and still hung up on his ex-girlfriend, and frankly, out of your league.

He sighs. “Sweet, I’ll see you and the ladies on Friday then.”

“Oh, you’re leaving already?” Steve asks, sounding almost disappointed. Other than the woman and her child, the store is empty and has been for the entire time Eddie has been here. He’s probably dreading being alone for the rest of a slow shift.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” Eddie says, “I promised Red I’d drive her to the skatepark and if I’m late to pick her up, she’ll beat me to death with her skateboard and I’m too pretty to die.”

Steve smiles at him, that little lopsided smile that Eddie likes to believe is reserved just for him. He’s never seen him smile like that at anyone else— fond, amused, endeared. “Yeah, you are,” he says and winks.

Eddie’s breath hitches, his traitorous heart thinks maybe but his brain stomps down that hope real quick.

“Careful, Stevie, or Wheeler might get jealous,” he jokes but it doesn’t come out as lighthearted as he wishes.

Steve’s eyebrows furrow but before he can say anything else, a group of kids comes barrelling through the door followed by an exhausted parent and they all walk up to the counter to ask Steve for recommendations for their movie night.

Eddie quietly slips away from the counter, giving Steve a lazy salute and getting a finger wiggle in return before the kids loudly demand his attention.

Six little nuggets, Eddie thinks, recalling a conversation between Steve and Nancy that he wasn’t supposed to hear.

His heart breaks a little more. He wonders how long it’ll take before it shatters completely.

***

To no one’s surprise, Eddie is the last one to arrive at the bonfire.

He parks his van between Steve’s car and Nancy’s station wagon at the spot Steve circled on a map when he gave Eddie directions. After swinging his guitar over his shoulder and grabbing the cooler filled with sodas and beer, he follows the smell of smoke and the sound of Buckley’s boombox through the woods.

He spots Robin first— feeding dry leaves and twigs into the fire and singing along to some pop song Eddie doesn’t recognize.

Eddie whistles appreciatively. “That’s one impressive fire, Birdie!”

Robin jumps, dropping the leaves and the twigs to the ground with a startled yelp. When she spots Eddie, her face breaks into a big grin and she clumsily steps over the logs arranged around the bonfire to hug him as best as she can with the cooler between them and Eddie’s guitar on his back.

“You made it! And you brought your guitar!” She says, bouncing on her feet with excitement.

“Yup, there’s no way I’m letting you make my ears bleed by listening to pop tunes all night,” he teases and gets a light punch on his arm for it.

“I didn’t know you could play metal with just an acoustic.”

“Metal isn’t all I know, Birdie, I have hidden depths,” he says, thinking about all the country and folk songs he knows thanks to Wayne.

Robin cackles. “Sure you do, Munson.”

He sticks his tongue out at her and then glances around, looking for Steve and Nancy but they’re nowhere to be seen.

“They’re picking up more wood,” Robin says when she notices him looking. “They should be back soon.”

Unless they got distracted making out, Eddie thinks, biting down on his tongue to not let the bitter comment slip past his lips.

As if on cue, they hear leaves rustling and then Nancy and Steve step out from the treeline. Steve is carrying the wood and Eddie gets to enjoy the way his biceps bulge from the weight before his eyes zero in on Nancy’s tiny hand wrapped around Steve’s arm. They’re in deep conversation, Steve listening intently and nodding as Nancy speaks to him with a soft voice, her hand never leaving his arm. They don’t even notice he’s there until Robin points it out.

“Hey! Look who’s here!” She says, oblivious to the downward turn of Eddie’s mouth.

Both Nancy and Steve’s heads snap in their direction and Eddie tries really hard to school his features into something casual and less green-eyed monster.

Nancy’s hand falls from Steve’s arm and the pile of wood he’s carrying falters a little before Steve hoists it up again, biceps flexing. Eddie tears his eyes from his arms to look at his face, expecting him to look like he just spent the last ten minutes making out with Nancy or like he just got caught red-handed but instead, he’s grinning widely at Eddie, eyes twinkling under the moonlight.

“Hey, Eds!” He says, attempting to wave with his elbow but giving up when a piece of wood falls to the ground, his cheeks pinking up in embarrassment. “Shit, Nance, can you—” he starts but Nancy is already picking it up and placing it back on the top of the pile. “Thanks.”

Eddie carelessly drops the cooler in front of him. “Hey, Stevie. Hey, Wheeler,” he says, sweeping down in an over dramatic bow. “I come bearing drinks.”

Robin whoops, throwing the lid open and grabbing a wine cooler while Nancy picks up a beer.

Steve forgoes the cooler, dropping the wood on the ground next to it and walking around it to pull Eddie into a hug.

It takes him a little by surprise but he recovers quickly, wrapping his arms around Steve’s waist. “Hey, sweetheart,” he whispers against Steve's neck, feeling him shudder, probably from the cold. He's only wearing a polo shirt, and despite the fire burning next to them, Eddie feels a slight chill in the air even though his jacket. “You smell like smoke.”

Steve snorts. “Oh, so I smell like you?”

It’s Eddie’s turn to shudder as his brain provides a handful of other reasons why Steve would smell like him. He tells his lizard brain to cool it and pulls back. “Yup, exactly! And you should know the smell is a bitch to get rid of.”

“It’s okay. I don’t mind,” Steve says, shrugging. With a wink, he adds, “I like it.”

Which to Eddie sounds flirty and a lot like ‘I like the way you smell’ and it takes his brain a moment to recover from that, but he does it just in time to catch the beer Steve tosses at him, even if he fumbles with it at first.

“You did a good job with the fire, Stevie,” he says, expertly popping the bottle open and gulping half of it down.

He catches Steve watching his throat as he drinks and the way he gives a little shake of his head before glancing at the bonfire. “You only say that because you didn’t see my first two failed attempts,” he chuckles. “It was actually Nancy who got it going.”

Eddie’s grip on the bottle tightens. “What would we do without her?” He says, voice a little clipped.

Steve’s smile falters but luckily doesn’t ask what Eddie’s problem is. “So are you gonna play for us?” He asks instead, gesturing at the guitar still hanging from his shoulder.

“Not just yet, Stevie. I was promised snacks, I’m hungry.”

“Me too!” Robin jumps in.

“Oh, the snacks are in the car,” Nancy says, digging through her bag for the keys. “I’ll go get them!”

“It’s okay, Nance. Eddie and I can go,” Steve volunteers, and with a secretive smile, Nancy tosses him the keys.

“Don’t forget you gotta—”

“Jiggle the key to open the trunk, I know,” Steve finishes with a smirk.

Eddie doesn’t realize he’s pouting until Steve points it out. Luckily he thinks it’s because he volunteered Eddie to get the snack too, and not because Steve is finishing Nancy’s sentences. “Stop pouting, Eds, it’s not that far.”

“You only say that because you didn’t have to carry a cooler and a guitar all the way here,” Eddie responds snarkily before setting his beer down on the ground and falling into step next to Steve.

“I’ll do the heavy lifting this time,” Steve smirks.

Eddie squeezes Steve’s arm, feeling the taut muscle underneath. “Seems like you already have, big boy,” he says, his voice coming out lower and flirty now that they left Nancy at the bonfire.

With an undignified yelp, Steve trips over something and Eddie, who hadn’t let go of his arm yet, tightens his grip to keep him on his feet.

“Careful, sweetheart,” Eddie says and Steve curses under his breath. Maybe his foot got caught on a root and he hurt himself— it’s hard to see the ground when all they have is the moonlight filtering through the trees. “You okay?”

“Yup, yeah, thanks, man,” Steve stammers out, giving Eddie a tight smile. “Come on, we don’t want to keep Robin waiting, you know how she gets when she’s hungry.”

Eddie snorts. “Oh yeah, I know. I still have her bite mark on my fucking arm,” he says, rolling up the sleeve of his jacket to point out the fading bruise from their last movie night when the pizza was taking too long to get there and Buckley decided to chump on his arm. “As if getting chumped on by demobats wasn’t enough!”

Steve sniggers. His eyes sparkle with something when he says, “Don’t think I can blame her for wanting a piece of you, though,” matching Eddie’s tone from before— low and flirty.

Eddie’s eyes widen, he stops looking at where he’s going to gawk at Steve and trips on a rock. With no one grabbing his arm, he goes down, landing on his hands and knees.

“Motherfucker,” he curses, his face burning with embarrassment.

“Christ, Eddie,” Steve mutters, hurrying to help him up.

“Well, that was embarrassing,” he laments with a chuckle, brushing off dirt from his pants and his hands.

“You okay?” Steve asks softly and then Eddie feels hands cupping his cheeks and tilting his head up until he meets Steve’s eyes. “You didn’t hit your head?”

Eddie shakes his head no, but the truth is he isn’t exactly sure— maybe he hit his head and now he’s hallucinating how close their faces are or how Steve’s eyes linger a little too long on his lips as they dart over his face, looking for any sign that Eddie hurt himself.

“Um,” Eddie clears his throat which feels a little dry. “We should get those snacks before the girls send a search party after us.”

Steve nods, and after letting his right thumb brush over Eddie’s cheekbone once, he drops his hands from his face.

Heat builds up on Eddie’s face, making his cheeks burn hotter than the bonfire.

They stay like that all the way to Nancy’s car.

***

Back at the bonfire, Robin snatches the marshmallows from Eddie’s arms. “What took you guys so long?” She asks, ripping the bag open and unceremoniously shoving one into her mouth.

“Gee, and they call me feral!” Eddie says and is rewarded by Robin hitting him with the bag of giant marshmallows. It doesn’t hurt, they’re marshmallows, but Eddie is nothing if not dramatic.

He grabs his arm where she hit him and falls to his knees, as if wounded. “This is what I get for braving the woods at night for your snacks, Lady Buckley? The nerve, the ungratefulness! I shall never recover!”

Robin lets out a giggly snort. She offers him a marshmallow on a stick for him to roast as an apology which he graciously accepts.

When he looks up, he finds Steve looking down at him with an amused expression. “Why do you insist on dropping to your knees in the middle of the woods? Your jeans are ripped enough as it is!”

Eddie’s mouth acts faster than his brain, leering at Steve as he says, “You don't like how I look on my knees, sweetheart?”

Steve’s eyes widen almost comically, his cheeks flaring an alarming shade of red. Eddie doesn’t get to enjoy the sight of a flustered Steve for long, his head snapping to his right when there’s a loud gasp that doesn’t come from either of them.

His eyes meet Nancy’s wide ones as they dart from Steve to Eddie to Eddie’s knees and back at Steve, her lips mouthing a silent, “Oh.”

Oh? Eddie thinks, ‘Oh’ what?

She can’t possibly mean— even if Steve said this isn’t the first time Eddie drops to his knees tonight, she can’t possibly think— oh Christ, does she?

Eddie is about to blurt out something along the lines of, ‘I didn’t blow your secret boyfriend in the woods, I just wish I did’ when Nancy’s eyes meet Steve’s and out of the corner of his eye, Eddie sees Steve firmly shake his head. That seems to be enough for Nancy, whose shocked expression melts away as she stands up and joins Robin where she’s roasting her marshmallow.

Eddie sits back on his heels with a sigh.

“You okay?” Steve asks, knocking his Nike against Eddie’s leg.

No, your girlfriend just thought you cheated on her with me! Eddie wants to say. “Yup, come on, let’s make some s’mores,” he says instead, pushing himself off the ground to go sit on one of the logs arranged around the bonfire.

He expects Steve to sit with Nancy, to appease her further but he sits next to Eddie, leaving no space between them despite there being plenty of room.

Eddie doesn’t mind, he loves having Steve close. Still, he can’t help but send surreptitious glances at Nancy every once in a while, averting his eyes when he finds her staring right back a few times.

He stops glancing at her when he gets distracted by Steve eating his s’mores— more specifically by him messily licking his lips and fingers clean. Not even his own marshmallow catching on fire can make Eddie tear his gaze away from Steve’s tongue lapping at the melted chocolate on his fingers, not until Robin screeches and points at the blackened little thing at the end of Eddie’s stick.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Eddie curses as he pulls it out of the fire to blow on it, extinguishing the flames. Next to him, Steve laughs, lips stretched in a smug smile that it’s a little too knowing.

Holding the stick between his legs, Eddie squeezes the marshmallow between the crackers and the chocolate before taking a bite. There’s a slight burnt taste to it but it’s still good, so Eddie eats it enthusiastically.

He can feel Steve’s eyes on him as he does and he considers putting on a show like he did— licking and sucking on his fingers in an obscene way. But before he can, Steve is reaching out and wiping chocolate from Eddie’s bottom lip with his thumb.

Eddie’s breath hitches, his eyes widening.

Red blooms on Steve’s cheeks and he drops his hand to his lap. “Uh, you had chocolate on your lip.”

“Thanks, Stevie,” Eddie mumbles. He jerks his thumb over his shoulder, “I’m gonna— I need a beer.”

He scrambles to his feet, stepping over Steve to get to the cooler. He nearly drops the beer when he looks up and finds Nancy staring at him, lips pursed and a tiny frown between her eyebrows.

Did she see Steve do that? Is she mad? Eddie wonders, averting his eyes and staring at the flames instead.

And more importantly— what the fuck is Steve playing at?

***

Eddie finally gets his answer about an hour later.

The four of them are sitting around the bonfire, drinking beer and talking about everything and nothing. Robin and Nancy are sharing a blanket they grabbed from Steve’s trunk because, despite the fire that’s still burning, the air has only turned colder as the night goes on. Eddie is sharing a log with Steve— or he was until Steve stood up to put on his Members Only jacket and sat down on the ground instead, leaning against Eddie’s leg.

Eddie didn’t question it at first, assuming that Steve wanted to be closer to the fire while still leeching some of Eddie’s body heat, which is fine by him. But then Steve wrapped his arm around Eddie’s calf and dropped his head on Eddie’s thigh, essentially cuddling Eddie’s leg.

That’s also fine with Eddie. At least until Steve’s hand starts rubbing up and down Eddie’s leg, his fingers occasionally coming in contact with bare skin where his jeans ride up and his sock rides down while, at the same time, his hair is tickling Eddie’s skin through the rips in his jeans.

He reaches for Steve’s hair, intending to move it away from his leg but the moment his fingers touch the strands, Steve shudders and melts under the touch. Eddie doesn’t have the heart to push Steve’s head away so he ends up playing with his hair instead, brushing his fingers through the strands.

It’s maddening. All of it— Steve’s head on his lap, his fingers in Steve’s hair and the small noises it drags from him, Steve’s fingers playing with his ankle bracelet and his wiry leg hairs.

Suddenly, Eddie feels hot all over, and it has nothing to do with the flames bathing them in red and yellow and orange. And when Steve tilts his head and kisses Eddie’s knee it feels as if he might burst into flames.

But when he looks up and finds Nancy staring at them with what can only be described as a scowl —a jealous scowl— it’s like being hit in the face with cold water. Cold water and a realization. The realization that Steve might be doing all this to make Nancy jealous.

Eddie doesn’t know why exactly. Maybe he’s ready to go public with their relationship and he’s trying to bait Nancy into accepting. Maybe he’s getting back at her for whatever happened with Jonathan when she was still dating Steve. Maybe it’s just a weird fucking kind of foreplay.

It doesn’t matter what it is, Eddie knows he doesn’t want to be a part of it.

So he pulls his hand away from Steve’s hair, and as carefully as he can, jerks his leg free.

Steve turns his head, looking up at Eddie with big confused eyes. “You okay, Eds?”

“I, um. I need to smoke,” he lies, scrambling to his feet.

Steve looks even more confused at that. “You can do it here, you know? We literally all smell like smoke already,” he says with a chuckle.

But Eddie shakes his head. “No, I- I gotta go, sorry, Steve,” he stammers out, tripping on the log as he hastily heads back to the van.

Without stopping, he digs a cigarette and hiz Zippo from his jacket, lighting it up as he walks. He hears Steve call out for him once, twice then nothing. Eddie pretends it doesn’t hurt that he didn’t come after him but he’s got Nancy, so why would he?

“Goddammit,” Eddie curses, running his hands through his hair with a frustrated groan, lit cigarette dangling from his lips.

It falls on the ground when Eddie lets out a strangled scream as Steve materializes out of fucking nowhere.

He hurriedly snuffs it out as he tries to get his heartbeat under control. “The bonfire wasn’t enough, Harrington?” He scoffs. “Are you trying to get me to start a real fire sneaking up on me like that?”

“I didn’t sneak up. I was calling for you.”

Oh. Eddie might’ve missed that from the blood rushing through his ears. “What do you want?”

“Why are you leaving? What happened?” When Eddie doesn’t answer, Steve’s face scrunches up. “Did I do something?”

Whatever Eddie’s face does at that is answer enough and Steve’s shoulders slump. “Shit, was that too much— I’m sorry, Eddie, I thought—”

“That you could use me to make your girlfriend jealous? Yeah, well, a heads up would’ve been nice,” Eddie says bitterly.

Steve jerks his head back as if he’s been slapped. “What?”

“I’m just saying that I probably would’ve said yes if you asked. At least then I wouldn’t have gotten my hopes up, y’know?”

“I- I don’t know, Eddie, what are you talking about?”

Rolling his eyes, Eddie asks, “You were trying to make Nancy jealous by being all over me, yeah?”

Steve splutters. “Uh, no?”

Eddie frowns. “So what? You guys are in an open relationship or something?”

“We’re not in any kind of relationship!” Steve says, his voice loud and hysterical at this point.

“Please!” Eddie scoffs. “You two have been inseparable since she and Jonathan broke up! It’s obvious you’re back together!”

“We’re not, Eddie, we’re friends! Yeah, we’re closer than we were before but that’s just because—” he hesitates.

“Because?” Eddie prompts with an impatient hand gesture.

Steve sighs, glances over his shoulder to where Nancy and Robin are and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Oh, what the hell!” He says to himself. “We got closer because we both realized we have a crush on our best friend.”

Eddie’s nose wrinkles. “Buckley?”

“No,” Steve says, dragging a hand down his face. “Well, Nancy does. She has a crush on Robin and I hope she’s telling her right now and that she won’t care that I just outed her to you—” His eyes meet Eddie’s and they’re open, vulnerable, hopeful. “But no, I don’t have a crush on Robin, Eddie, I have a crush on you.”

Eddie blinks. Then he blinks again. Then he pinches his arm hard but the world doesn’t fade away, he doesn’t wake up, he’s not dreaming. This is happening.

“Me?” He asks in a small voice. Steve nods. “So all of that— you weren’t making Nancy jealous you were—”

“Making a move on you, yeah,” Steve admits shyly, hanging a hand from his neck.

“Oh,” he says as he recontextualizes everything that has happened in the last couple of hours— hell, in the last couple of weeks. “Oh,” he repeats. “For what it’s worth it would’ve worked. If I wasn’t, you know, an idiot.”

Steve chuckles softly. “Well, good to know.”

Eddie bites his lip and goes on, a little nervous. “Yeah, and since I’m not an idiot anymore, if you wanted to like, make another move right now, I wouldn’t storm off or yell at you or—”

Eddie’s words are cut off by Steve making his move, which consists of him cupping Eddie’s cheeks, guiding his face to his and catching Eddie’s lips in a kiss.

Eddie stands frozen only for a split second before he loops his arms over Steve’s shoulders and kisses him back, feeling a fire bigger than any bonfire they could’ve built blaze wildly in his chest.

Steve dragging his teeth across his bottom lip only fuels the fire and causes Eddie to make a punched-out groaning sound that Steve chases with his tongue, deepening the kiss in a way that makes Eddie’s knees so weak they threaten to give out.

Before they do, causing Eddie to fall on them for a third time that night, Steve slows the kiss down to a full stop, ending it by nuzzling their noses together.

“You still are by the way,” Steve says.

“Huh?”

“An idiot,” he says, kissing the corner of Eddie’s mouth. “I can’t believe you thought I’d use you to make Nancy jealous!”

Eddie groans, dropping his head on Steve’s shoulder, embarrassed. “I’m never gonna live that down, am I?”

Steve wraps his arms around him, kissing his hair. “Nope.”

“Yeah, I deserve that,” he says, nuzzling Steve’s neck. He jerks his head back as he thinks of something— “Wait, if Nancy wasn’t jealous then what’s with all the scowls and the glares?”

“Oh, she was jealous. Of me. For making a move on you while all she did was share a blanket with Robin,” Steve says with a laugh.

And Eddie can’t help but giggle at how ridiculous this all is. “Should we make her jealous a little more?” He asks, grabbing Steve’s hand with a wicked grin.

Steve nods, intertwining their fingers together and letting Eddie drag him back towards the bonfire.

***

They find Robin and Nancy making out next to what’s left of the fire, wrapped up in the blanket and each other. Quietly, they make their way back to the cars, climbing into the back of Eddie’s van, kissing until the sun comes up.

[shanastoryteller]

Happy birthday! Could you continue the naruto daughter of the homage series?

a continuation of 1 2 3 4 5 6

Naruto doesn’t feel comfortable going back to the tower until the Suna kids have collected their scroll and arrived. Gaara had killed nine people – three teams total – in that time. None of them Konoha, thankfully, but that’s mostly due to her team and Itachi engaging in some creative luring and misdirection. The Konoha Twelve can be redirected outright by one of her clones, but the other leaf genin that she doesn’t know as well have to be lured rather than instructed. Getting their own scroll is more an afterthought than anything else.

They probably should have thinned the herd a little more. Now they’re having preliminary matches, which is just another chance for Gaara to kill one of her shinobi.

Great.

“Is that Orochimaru?” Sakura hisses, looking up at the spectator box. “Isn’t he a missing nin?”

Naruto flickers her glance upward, but she’d already known he was attending. What does surprise her are the two people by his side. “Yeah, but he’s also the Otokage, and one sort of trumps the other. Dad gave up on that one a long time ago, and Sarutobi still likes him besides. That’s not the interesting part.”

Jiraiya sends intelligence back to the village frequently enough, but she’s never thought she’d seen Tsunade back in the village.

~

Orochimaru is already bored.

He barely attends chunin exams when they’re in his own village. But Kabuto had given him an interesting report, and he hasn’t seen Minato in something like fifteen years, so he figured it couldn’t hurt. Besides, Anko is proctoring a portion of the exam, and she always complains that he doesn’t visit.

Jiraiya found out, somehow, which was bad enough, but then the traitor told Tsunade, and the two idiots insisted on coming with him for some reason.

Probably because they were worried Minato might try to arrest him, which is frankly insulting. He can and will kick that kid’s ass if he has to.

Hm. Maybe that’s what they’re intending to prevent, on second thought.

Minato’s daughter has her father’s coloring and her mother’s bone structure.

“I’m surprised she’s made it this far,” Jiraiya murmurs.

Kushina throws him an irritated glance, but the white knuckled grip she has on her armrests seems to imply she agrees with him. Minato doesn’t look at either of them, not that he’s looked at Kushina at all. There’s really no point in them playing the part of happy couple in front of foreign ninja if they can’t commit to the deception.

“She’s got a solid stance,” Tsunade says. “Don’t need working chakra coils for that, I suppose.”

Minato’s lips thin, but he keeps his silence.

“Gaara of Suna versus Rock Lee!” shouts Hayate, pausing to cough halfway through.

Orochimaru leans forward now that something interesting is finally happening.

It’s not as immediate of a bloodbath as he thought it’d be. Lee holds out, demonstrating a mastery of taijutsu truly can make up for an awful lot. He fiddles with the weights on his wrist, but then he glances up. It seems as if he’s looking at his sensei, who’s shouting encouragement, but standing just to the left of them is Team Seven.

Naruto’s lips tug down at the side and she shakes her head just slightly, the movements so small thar Orochimaru wouldn’t notice them if he wasn’t focusing on her.

Lee’s shoulders droop even as he backflips to avoid another deadly arm of sand. He’s not even close to exhausted, and he’s lasted longer against Gaara than anyone else has, but he raises his arm and says, “I surrender.”

Everyone is stunned, an air of disbelief surrounding them.

Gaara acts like he hasn’t heard, more sand barreling for Lee. Hayate moves to interfere, but he’s a lot slower than that sand is.

There’s a smudge of yellow across the arena, there and gone, taking Lee with it.

Orochimaru turns, expecting to see Minato’s seat empty, but he’s still there, eyebrows raised.

He frowns, looking back down, and Naruto is back out of the arena, putting Lee back on his feet. “It seems you didn’t hear him!” she shouts, grin so wide her eyes are slits.

“I didn’t know you taught her the Flash,” Jiraiya says.

Kushina stares between her husband and her daughter, eyebrows pushed together.

“Yes,” Minato says stiffly, “well.”

Interesting.

It appears Kabuto’s report was accurate.

[callme-holly]

hii can you do handholding prompt 21 (holding hands while one is balancing on a small wall) with dally 🤍🤍

𝐔𝐧𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 [𝐃𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐬 𝐖𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐧 𝐱 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫]

𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲 - Dallas has always been a little rough around the edges, but there are some times when you see through the cracks 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭 - 684 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 - brief mentions of fighting and getting arrested

The sun was high in the sky, the midsummer breeze doing very little to cool the already warm air.

The street was mostly empty, the occasional car passing by, their windows rolled down, and their radios blaring, but it seemed most people were content to stay inside and avoid the heat.

Beside you walked none other than Dallas Winston, a cigarette dangling from between his lips, his arm slung lazily over your shoulders. There was a cut on his jaw, one that hadn't quite healed over during his time in the cooler, and he had several bruises littering his knuckles, none of which seemed all too new either. Dallas always did love a fight; that was something you wouldn't ever be able to change; still, that didn't mean you couldn't try.

“Why'd you do it?” you asked him, breaking away from his hold to step up onto the little wall lining the path, glancing over at your boyfriend. “Why did you bother fighting those guys in the first place? You could've just walked away." You trailed off, knowing the suggestion wasn't even worth considering.

“I told ya,” Dallas mumbled around his cigarette, his cheeks puffing slightly as he took another drag. “They deserved it, talkin' shit about us like that.”

He steps closer to the wall, reaching out to grab at your hand, steadying you as you stumble forward slightly.

“You're gonna hurt yourself, man,” he comments, poorly concealed concern in his eyes as he glances up at you. It seems he doesn't want to discuss what happened before he got hauled in, and you decide that it's probably best to just drop the topic before he snaps at you about minding your own business.

So instead, you carry on walking, Dallas' fingers laced with yours, squeezing gently. The sun feels nice on your skin, warming your face and arms, and you breathe deeply, taking in the scent of the summer air, your perfume, and the smoke from Dallas' cigarette mingling somewhere in the mix.

"You gonna let me stay the night, doll?" he asks after a moment, giving you a quick glance. He hasn't let go of your hand yet, and it seems he's entirely unaware that he's still holding it, too busy searching your face for an answer.

You look over at him for only a moment, the corners of your lips lifting into a smile at the sight of him; the light catches the blonde strands of his hair, turning them white, making him look almost angelic. But that's ridiculous—Dallas Winston is everything but angelic. One close look at him would reveal everything—all the little imperfections, the scars that marred his features and made you wince every time you saw them, the way his brow was almost always furrowed in frustration, his eyes sharp and cold, the way he was so often silent and angry, the way he could make even the most innocent action seem like anything but.

“We'll see..” You reply eventually, though you know you've already given him an answer, because you can't bring yourself to deny him anything, and he knows that all too well.

For a split second, you notice the way the corners of his lips turn up into a smile, crooked and lopsided, and you know that underneath all that toughness, there's a kid who just needs someone to care about him.

Dallas raises a brow at you, letting out an incredulous chuckle as he drops your hand, instead bringing his arm up to wind around your waist as he hauls you up and off of the wall.

“We'll see, huh?” he repeats, smirking as your arms wrap around his neck, clinging onto him as if he'd drop you at any given second. Your breath comes out in small gasps of laughter, and he leans down, bringing his lips to yours in a kiss that's both passionate and demanding. Dallas doesn't do sweet and soft; he never has, and he never will. But that's one thing you’d never change about him.

[kittenshift-17]

Omg I feel like any teen wolf fic (sterek fic) you write would be amazing, on that topic ur an amazing writer and I’m glad that one day I stumbled upon one of your fics. And also speaking of sterek fics (or any teen wolf fic) do u have and recommendations on what to read for that fandom???

Okay, so I took my time with this one because I had read some, but not a lot... but oh boy, did I deep dive into the research to bring you some top tier Sterek Fic Recs.

TOP 20 STEREK RECS

Play It Again by metisket ***I LOVED THIS ONE***

In which Stiles goes along with one of Derek’s plans and ends up in an alternate universe as a result. He should’ve known better. He did know better, actually, and that means he has no one to blame but himself.

“Laura wants to lure the kid in with food and kindness and make a pet of him, like a feral cat. Derek wants to have him arrested for stalking. They’re at an impasse. (And the rest of the family is staying emphatically out of it in a way that suggests bets have been placed.)”

So Shed Your Skin and Lets Get Started by halfhardtorock

He's sixteen and in the woods on the wrong side of the town-line and he's so fucking fucked.

He knows he's not supposed to run, they teach that to you in preschool (don't run from a Were, back away slowly and walk with care), but they never told you how it would feel, standing alone in the dark with your heart beating in your throat as those glowing eyes tracked you from the shadows.

Don't Feed the Wolves by Amazonia_8

Stiles took the dare, because what else was he supposed to do when the whole lacrosse team was chanting his name? Even though the werewolf pack had left Beacon Hills years ago, nobody was stupid enough to set foot on the Hale property.

Except, apparently, Stiles.

Now he's got a feral werewolf following him around town with the sole purpose of claiming Stiles as his own.

so now you've got the best of me (come on and take the rest of me) by mangotangos

"It doesn't matter how hot Derek is, how Stiles barely comes up to his shoulders or how Derek's hands could probably fit really snugly around his waist. None of it matters, because he's basically a glorified babysitter for the foreseeable future and Stiles wants him out. Operation annoy Deputy Derek Hale into leaving begins now."

~or, the one where Stiles' dad hires Deputy Derek to be Stiles' bodyguard, Stiles hates him on principle and then 2 seconds later falls in lust (and love) and tries to seduce him into bed with his sexual prowess.

There Are No Wolves In California by kitsunequeen

Hunter!Stiles accidentally hits a wolf with his car and can't bear to leave him in the road to die. It's not till he gets the wolf home that he sees its eyes glow red... ------- Even everyday roadkill is upsetting, but this thing… Moments ago it was probably a majestic beast, and now it’s a mangled pile of soon-to-be rotting flesh. He presses a shaking hand to the only part of its chest left intact, not even thinking about whether it'll give him rabies or some other awful disease.

He’s about to pull back when something even crazier happens.

He realizes the wolf is breathing.

(not so) Pure Imagination by theroguesgambit

"There is a world where whenever someone fantasizes about you, you can physically feel it, but you have no idea who is thinking it about you."

Stiles knows it's wrong, but he's been Fantasizing about Derek and he can't bring himself to stop. Derek doesn't know who's taken an interest in him, but he's enjoying it way more than he probably should.

Little Wild Animal by DiscontentedWinter

Derek Hale finds a feral human on his pack's property. Humans are supposed to be extinct. But then, Stiles is full of surprises.

The Darkness Inside by isthatbloodonhisshirt (wasterella)

The sheriff watched him for a moment, then he sighed and turned slightly. He reached out to open a cabinet door beside him, and pulled out a shelf. It was on a track, so it rolled out of the cabinet fairly easily, and held a small CCTV. Derek frowned and inched his chair to the side a little bit so he could get a better angle.

He was looking at a teenager, or someone at least young enough to be the same age as Scott. He was sitting on a bed in what looked to be a larger room, the area he was in surrounded by four glass walls, with his legs crossed and head tilted.

He was also staring directly into the camera, as if he knew someone was watching. A creepy smile slowly slid onto the teen’s face, and he held up one hand, wiggling his fingers in a slow, eery wave.

Derek felt his mouth run dry. He didn’t know who this kid was, but he didn’t like him.

“Who is that?” he asked quietly.

“That,” said the sheriff, “is my son.”

What I Did On My Summer Vacation by grimm for missingsun

There's something weird about Beacon Hills that Stiles can't quite put his finger on. The way everyone in town knows his name the day he arrives. The way they insist the melancholic howling that echoes through the forest every night is just a dog. The way his dad denies getting a dog, even though Stiles comes home to find one sprawled across his bed, some big black thing whose eyes gleam red in the right light. The way that massive oak tree out in the woods vibrates under his touch, pulsing with sickly life.

There's something weird going on in this town, and Stiles is determined to get to the bottom of it.

Patterns of Intention by drunktuesdays

Derek looked like the stuff of his deepest fantasies. His shirt was rumpled where Stiles had his hands in it, and he was breathing hard as well, chest heaving. His eyes—his eyes were glazed over and he looked stunned, like he’d been—like Stiles had—

“No,” Stiles said, blood draining from his face. The word was croaky and felt like it had to be wrenched out of his chest. “God, no.”

Wants & Needs by MadcapRomantic

Derek Hale has been participating in the Beacon Hills Mating Run for a decade, each year coming up without a mate. His mother, convinced this is his lucky year, persuades him to run one last time.

Enter Stiles, a young Omega with an unwanted Alpha nipping at his heels.

Family or not, Peter is determined to have Stiles.

But convinced they are True Mates, there isn't anything Derek won't do to keep Stiles safe.

I don't know why, but I guess it has something to do with you by LunaCanisLupus_22 for xXxClassifiedxXx 

“You smell like me,” the guy says, scowling as he crowds in and Stiles staggers back between the coats and finally hits the wall. “Why do you smell like me?”

He barely lets out a garbled sound as the blood rushes to his cheeks. “No reason,” Stiles yelps, struggling to get his footing and grasping at a whirlwind of puffy fur.

Or the one where Stiles goes thrift shopping and steals an alpha's shirt. And gets a lot more than he bargains for.

Sleeping Dogs by starsystems

Let sleeping dogs lie. Prov. Do not instigate trouble.;Leave something alone if it might cause trouble.

Derek Hale is asleep in Stiles's bed. And it just escalates from there.

Because of course it does.

We've Written Volumes (in Blood and Scars and Ink) by notthequiettype

Stiles is on his back on hard-packed dirt. He's cold and there are leaves stuck to his neck and there's a four inch gash in his side that he thinks he can feel his ribs through. There's so much blood around him he feels like he's floating on a pond and everything is so much dimmer above him than it was a minute ago, which is saying something because he's in the dark center of the forest in the middle of the night. And the worst of it is that he's alone, totally alone with the smell of his own blood drowning him and the soft side of him run through by a tree.

As his eyes slip shut, the last thing he thinks is, "This is going to kill my dad."

In Case You Didn't Know by Blu_Crowe

Stiles moves into the lofts, and he and Derek start to get closer. Unfortunately Stiles is a moron, and Derek is bad at feelings. They figure it out... Eventually.

Stilinski's Home for Wayward Wolves by owlpostagain

“At least your puppies knock first,” Stiles snorts. “Here I thought their alpha raised them to be well-mannered.” 



“There’s a sign,” Derek responds stiffly. 



Stiles, whose curiosity outweighs even his hardest of grudges, abandons his chilly façade of nonchalance in a heartbeat. He jumps right up and all but pushes Derek out of the way in his effort to get to the window, and sure enough when he leans outside there’s a laminated strip of cardstock duct taped to the vinyl siding: 



DON’T FORGET TO KNOCK Stiles gets cranky when we scare him

---

Or, in which Stiles Stilinski moves to Beacon Hills for his junior year of high school and accidentally adopts a pack of teenage werewolves.

Lock All The Doors Behind You by entanglednow

He has no idea what you're supposed to say when you find one of your...werewolf acquaintances, completely out of their mind, growling like they're about to see what your insides taste like. There's no handbook for this. Stiles is thinking that if he survives he might write one.

Feral Formalities by Aleandri

"There was silence as no one seemed to breath at the table.

Derek had just gifted Stiles, an unmated Omega, with food.

Right in front of another Alpha.

Who he was on a date with.

To discuss being heat partners...."

*In which, Stiles presents as Omega, and everyone wants a piece of the alpha-baby-making ass!*

for a good time, call... by EvanesDust for kalika_999

Stiles unlocks his phone to send out a quick text asking his father what he wants to eat, even though he’ll get salad regardless, and notices a strange number on his recent call log.

His face scrunches in confusion before realization dawns on him.

Oh shit.

Events from the night before peek through the hazy fog of his mind. Stiles thought, or he was hoping, that the phone call was a dream. But there it is, staring at him in the face—a one minute and 57-second call to an unfamiliar number.

Oh God.

Did he seriously call someone—possibly an alpha werewolf!—for phone sex?

...Or the one where Stiles drunk dials a very grumpy alpha werewolf and propositions him for phone sex. Hilarity, misunderstandings, and feelings ensue.

Golden Boy by trilliath 

Apparently it still amuses his uncle to buy sex slaves for him, no matter how steadfastly he refuses to use them. Derek ducks into his tent with a resigned sigh, prepared to dress and reassign whatever new beauty Peter has bought him. They do make for loyal servants, so he can't really complain about Peter's 'gifts'. But it is annoying to deal with, to have to spend his evening sorting out a slave instead of being able to go right to bed. It's just something he has to learn to accept as a byproduct of serving alongside his uncle.

But when he lays eyes on the boy laying amid his furs, he finds his breath catching in his throat. His skin is golden with the candle-light glimmering against the sheen of oil that has been slathered on his bared body. His lips are parted, and they work over inaudible words or sounds. His skin is flushed, nipples peaked and pierced with simple but unexpected golden rings. He's spectacularly beautiful in the candlelight. The many glowing candles that have been added to his usual lighting cast glittering edges and shadows, imbuing an almost unearthly golden color to his skin.

It's enough that Derek hesitates.

[snakeredbirdbatkatana]

I will be your Blade Point Me

Loyalty was a trait Janet Drake respected above all others.

It can give you power, fame, money to have someone's loyalty was to have their life.

Tim has always given his all. His people whatever they need they have. May it be his mind, his skills, or even his weapons.

If Dick Grayson demanded the shirt off his back he would remain naked till the end of his days.

Very few times has anyone actually used it the first to test it was Jason.

"Hey Jay.. What's up you never call?"

Tim's phone is always ringing from Wayne Enterprises to his assorted friends he can't remember it being silent. Yet the shock when HighWay to Hell started blaring almost sent him into cardiac arrest.

"Need a favor. Think you could meet me at that safe house you keep pretending not to break into?"

"Yah no problem also it's not breaking in when you leave the window unlocked. Give me ten."

~

Jason doesn't do favors. He would rather die again than ever ask for shit.

When it comes to Tim though he's not an idiot. During his return to Gotham he researched, knew everything about him from his favorite color to when he fucking peed.

Part of his research specifically including who trained the third Robin. Nevermind that watching the kid fight for more than ten minutes gives it away.

Lady Shiva, Ra's just to name a few. He moves almost exactly the same as Cass. Hides in the shadows better than Damian. The whole creepy debacle with Mr. Old as Fuck just furthered Jason hypothesis.

Baby Bird, Bruce's prized protege isn't none lethal.

"I need you to kill someone."

~

Tim in the back of his mind expected it.

Jason for all he is exactly like Bruce doesn't respond the same. To him protection is blood soaked, a knife to the throat is a greeting. Kindess was shrouded and wasn't offered without losing a part of yourself.

"Joker I'm assuming?"

~

He expected a bit of a fight maybe a lecture at least for him to pretend, not whatever it is Replacement is doing.

"He hasn't broken out of Arkham in months haven't heard shit and I hear your in the same business as me nowadays. What you say about helping a brother out?"

~

He wonders if Jason is aware of how his voice cracked. The pleading that was heard the unspoken because I can't. Tim couldn't imagine looking Jason in the eye and saying no. Watching your son bend and demanding he break.

"Hate to burst your bubble, but I already did, I know you think the worst of me but I wasn't gonna let your murderer keep kicking his feet."

He tosses the drive he's been sitting on almost three months before heading back to the window.

"I know we got our shit Jay but your my brother. This is something you needed to be able to sleep at night. You shouldn't feel like you have to beg. I honestly thought you had known and didn't want to acknowledge it."

~

Jason can't breathe as he shuts his computer. Thirty hours of torture his baby brother broke the Joker in ways that turned his stomach.

He climbs into bed his eyes shutting sleeping without a nightmare for the first time in years.

He can't ever repay Tim nothing will ever be enough but he is gonna do everything to try.

He wonders if Ra's might need the same treatment?