#on the one hand it was viscerally disturbing. it really felt like staring into an abyss of evil

[pinktinselmonstrosity]

i only have three more best picture nominees to watch before the oscars 👀 and i'm leaving the ones i'm most and least excited for til last so i think i'll watch poor things next

[frownyalfred]

I came across a post where someone mentioned that Martha Wayne’s pearls were actually her teeth, but Bruce misremembered or blocked it out…

This has to be one of the most heartbreaking and gut-wrenching headcanons I’ve ever encountered about Martha and Bruce. Just imagine the scene—her teeth falling out instead of the pearls, either from the impact of the bullet or from the way she fell and hit her mouth.

The imagery is so disturbing and visceral. It adds a whole new layer of trauma to Bruce’s memory, making his recollection of that night even more tragic.

Also— I feel like we don’t talk enough about what the Waynes’ deaths must have really been like…

The thought that Bruce might have been splattered with his parents’ blood, or even brain matter, from the impact. .. I feel like the writers never really specified where exactly they were shot or what kind of gun was used, which could have made the injuries even more horrifying depending on the weapon. The unease in his father’s voice—something foreign that Bruce had probably never heard before—from a man who was usually so optimistic and confident, might have been the first time Bruce saw his father truly scared. And then there’s his mother’s screams. In Christopher Nolan’s movies, Martha’s screams still haunt me to this day. The actress did an incredible job capturing that raw terror.

But what really gets me is the time. How long did Bruce stand there, in the pool of his parents’ blood, waiting for someone to come and help him? Did he try to pick up his mother’s pearls, or maybe try to stop the blood from pouring out of their wounds? That time must have felt like an eternity for him—standing there, powerless, with his parents’ blood on his hands, the smell of rot from the nearby trash, the powder of the gunshot lingering in the air, the city’s humidity, and the iron tang of blood.

And another chilling thought: what if his parents died with their eyes open? The idea of Thomas Wayne’s lifeless eyes staring up at his now-traumatized, orphaned son is just devastating.

Anyways, sorry for the ramble… I would love to hear your thoughts !!!

oh my god. yeah…..I mean, yeah. I’m getting smacked speechless by some of these anons today.

I actually saw someone knock all their teeth out once like you’re describing and it is gruesome. seeing teeth where they aren’t supposed to be is horrifying.

I think comics and movie adaptations letting the Waynes get shot somewhere in center mass, away from their faces, by low caliber bullets so they bleed out with last words is a mercy, in some ways.

modern guns could make that scene could look very, very different. I won’t go into them here but…yeah. there’s a reason they die with their faces intact in the comics and most movies, in my opinion. and with a few words or screams, maybe, before they fully die.

but yeah. there’s a world where they both get hit point blank in the head, brain and blood go everywhere, and Bruce has to sit there caked in for a while. until the cops show up, and even then, he probably doesn’t get clean for a while, since he’s covered in the decade’s most haunting crime scene.

[btsinwonderland]

A Drop of Poison - Ch. 4: An Invitation

A Loki fanfiction!

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“You’re late!” Valkyrie said, stuffing a pancake into her mouth as you approached her table in the Great Hall. “And you look like shit.”

You could feel the papery dryness of your eyes. Each blink felt grating. “I didn’t have a great sleep…” you said, hoping that your face did not give away the perpetual embarrassment you felt every time you thought about what happened the night before.

“Was it the dream again?” Valkyrie said, handing you a plate she filled with hash browns and eggs.

You took it gratefully. “No, I...went to the restricted section of the library last night,” you said, looking down at your plate. An image of Professor Laufeyson’s bare chest flashed before your eyes and you nearly dropped your fork.

“What!” She spoke so loud that several of the people surrounding you and at the other tables glanced at you both.

“Shhh! Don’t be so loud,” you whispered.

“You went without me,” she said, stuffing a mushroom into her mouth.

“It couldn’t wait, but I didn’t even find what I was looking for,” you said.

“And what was that?”

You were about to speak when you saw Professor Laufeyson enter the Great Hall. You nearly choked on your hash browns when he glanced at you. “I have to go,” you said and ran out of the hall.

You did not look back, and you did not stop walking until you realized you were back at the library. Your subconscious seemed to have a sense of humour that you did not find particularly funny. As you stood at the door like a deer in the headlights, someone nearly body checked you to the side as they entered the library.

“Out of the way, mudblood,” he said. His blue hair was striking in the daylight.

“Watch it, Talon,” you said.

He turned to you with a glare, then he smiled coldly and walked on.

You nearly rolled your eyes straight to the back of your head. Talon, the one person you would not mind using one or two of the unforgivable curses on. Just a bit of the Imperious to make him wet his pants in class, maybe? Nothing too awful. You still remember the way he laughed when he stuffed you and one other student into a Shrinking Shed in a pawnshop in Knockturn Alley. It was only your second year, and you berated yourself for trusting any wizard that said they “had something cool to show you” since that day. The poor boy you were stuck with broke his arm and may have broken the other, lest Professor Heimdall had not come by the shop; by that time the shed was half the size of a fridge. You still hated confined spaces from that day onwards.

He walked towards a blonde Slytherin girl trying to finish her homework at a large table. She looked less than pleased at his interruption. You rolled your eyes and moved on.

Your thoughts drifted back to the previous night as you headed to the back of the library. And just like that, it transported you into a completely different head space. Professor Laufeyson. You thought about his smooth skin and the way the moonlight glinted off the sweat on his body.

Thinking of him like that put you in a sort of daze, where you were so embarrassed you thought you might die but also so intrigued that you could not stop yourself from wondering. You paused where you were and gazed at the restricted section. From there, you could see the table where he had...relations with Professor Sif. You remembered her panting and writhing in pleasure. The entire night you had thought about only one thing. What did that feel like?

You knew how your own fingers felt, and despite how wonderful that was, you had always been curious about something more. Valkyrie had described it to you in visceral detail several times. She had said that if the person knew what they were doing, that it could be amazing. Higher than high. But if the person only cared about themselves, it could be quite awful. From the looks of it, Professor Laufeyson knew what he was doing.

Something about him felt different. Enticing. The way his lean muscles flexed as he gripped the edges of the table and the way his eyes glowed. Heat coursed through you, and the muscles in your stomach tightened. You had not been this bothered in all your life and had a fleeting thought of whether there was a way to quit Potions class. You rubbed your eyes and face. The book. That was what you came here for.

“Are you alright?” A sweet voice said.

You opened your eyes; it was Pom. She was carrying four large textbooks and placed them on a study table between the aisles.

Putting on your most convincing smile, you said, “I’m fine, I was just looking for a book.”

“Oh? What one?” she said, her eyes lit up.

Pom did frequent the library. Perhaps she could be of use. “It’s about cats, common spells for cats.”

She gave you a look.

“No, I’m serious! I just really love cats,” you said. It was not a lie, though you preferred reptiles.

“Well, where is it supposed to be?”

You thought about how to put it. “Well, that’s the thing. I was informed that it would be in one place, but it’s no longer there. And I don’t think anyone checked it out.”

Pom thought about it for a moment. Then her eyes lit up. “Maybe it’s a switcher!”

“Switcher?”

She nodded with an excited smile. “I’ve only ever encountered one of them. But there was once a book that my brother and I were looking for. I heard it was the journal of a student who created their own spells. And I think we found it, but right before Ken could pick it up from the shelf, it faded and disappeared. About two months later, I saw it again, on the other side of the library. I reached for it, but it disappeared. I talked to one of our senior prefects and she told me there’s a rumour about books in the library. Apparently, some of them like to disappear and reappear. Nobody knows how to catch them, but there’s a theory that they’ll come to you if you need them.”

You raised your eyebrows at the thought of disappearing books. Of course the book you needed to find was evading you. “So if I need it badly enough...I might find it?” You said.

Pom nodded with an unsure smile. You thanked her as she picked up her pile of books and wandered off to study.

A bright pink guide on potions stood out as you looked at the shelves. Flora and Fawna for Beginners. You sighed. This was going to be a long day.

So you roamed. You roamed the bookshelves for hours, reading every title, every author name and every little scroll in the cabinets. It was tedious beyond belief and you stopped to rest a few times. After your third hour of wandering the library and receiving strange looks from the students you passed by for the thirtieth time, you sighed and sat right on the floor, in between the Magical Creatures and Astrocentric Religions sections. Your stomach rumbled from hunger and you wondered if it was time to give up yet. So much for your investigation. It felt quite less glamorous when you were at the start of it and all you could muster up was sitting on your bottom with an empty stomach and dry hands.

You looked out the window at the end of the aisle; the day was overcast again. It has been raining non stop this season. You got up, defeated, and ready to find some food. Suddenly, there was a sharp bang on the window and you turned to see what it was. A dark smudge was streaked across the glass and you walked up to it for a closer look. You nearly jumped a foot in the air when another bird flew into the window. It fell and you could not see where it landed, but you wondered if it was dead.

A few more birds banged into the windows, and other students got up from their chairs to see the disturbance. One girl gasped so loudly that the librarian had to come over and calm everyone down. The librarian looked at the windows and grumbled to herself as she went out to inform someone of the mess.

You walked across the aisles to observe the other windows, and each one was streaked with a dark red stain. As you walked by the first year selection of books near the front of the library, you noticed in the corner, on the bottom shelf there was a new title. Something you had not noticed before. The spine was dark red and your eyes widened at the title “Spells for the Common House Cat”.

Nearly diving for the book, you crouched down and grabbed it, thinking it would disappear right before your eyes. But, you held it in your hands and yelled out a “yes!” This earned you a shush from the students who were studying.

You were so elated to read the book once you returned to the common room that you nearly ran into the door as you exited the library. It was already an hour past dinner at the Great Hall; you imagined Valkyrie had stuffed her face full already and probably wondered where you were. You picked up your pace and raced through the halls with meat pies on your mind and the book in your hands. The texture was of a smooth aged leather, with odd scratches along the spine and cover. The writing on the cover was a rushed scrawl with black ink and you flipped through the inside, only to see pages and pages of the same hurried writing. There was one passage that caught your eye:

Informed though we may be of my house we are not warned to eat live snakes. Wish you well my balloon animal friend. Did you know hats wore cow bells on their noses? Bells bells bells! Nasty business wandering through the dry sun. If there is one watered down lion to know, it’s Muriel and her tacky shoes.

You were so perplexed you said aloud, “What the fu-”

A hard body stopped your momentum, and you fell right on your rear onto the floor. The book fell out of your hands and you rubbed your nose where it was bumped. “I’m so sorry, I-” You looked up and your mouth went dry.

Professor Laufeyson was standing above you, with your book in his hand, and his eyebrows slightly raised. You saw the recognition in his gaze as he assessed you and a whisper of a smile appeared on his lips; it disappeared again into his usual stoic expression. You remained on the floor and stared at him for several seconds, as if you were paralyzed.

He reached down and helped you up. “We keep bumping into one another, don’t we, Miss Eves?” He said, throwing you a smile that almost knocked you down again.

“Y-yes, I suppose so.”

He handed you the book, glancing at the title. “Interesting literature, is it for your classes or for pleasure?”

You bit the inside of your cheek. “Just for fun.”

“Ah, and is this a title you found in your evening forays into the library?” He said, leaning close so you could see the flecks of lighter blue in his eyes.

Your heart skipped a beat. He knew. He knew. Oh god. He knew. Your mind made a split second decision.

“I’m not sure what you mean, sir,” you said, gripping the book tightly against your body.

Professor Laufeyson chuckled and leaned against the wall, further away from you. You breathed a little easier. “It seems that a student has been out of bed and has seen things she should not have,” he said, crossing his arms. His eyes looked down at you with a mocking sort of sternness. “It could lead to expulsion…”

You held his hard gaze, not denying anything but not giving in. It seemed he was testing you, checking your resolve. You took a silent breath and looked right back at him. There was no way he could get you into trouble without admitting his own faults. “I wonder what the protocols are for teachers and acceptable behaviour on school grounds?” You said, sticking your chin up and thinking you sounded more like an insolent child than anything else.

He smiled widely. “Ah, very good, Miss Eves! Worry not. If I wanted to expel you I would have had Professor Sif handle it,” he said.

“I haven’t told anyone, and I don’t plan to,” you said. You finally lost your resolve and looked at the floor. Your cheeks heated at the thought of him half naked. “Th-thank you for not letting Professor Sif see me.”

“Miss Eves, it is simply water under the troll bridge. Though, I have a bit of a favour to ask of you,” he said. “Perhaps we can call it even then.”

You glanced up, and he had moved away from the wall and was now standing a couple of inches away from you. “Yes, sir?”

“That envelope you gave me was an invitation to dinner with the Headmistress and Professor Odinson. That’s just where I’m headed now, in fact. And I would love for you to accompany me,” he said, holding out his hand like a gentleman.

You stared at his hand, and then up at him, dumbfounded. “What?”

He smiled and reached over to your shoulder, guiding you to follow him. As you both walked, he said, “To be completely honest with you, I just hate these family reunion dinners. Terribly awkward. It would be a pleasure to have you there.”

“I’d hate to crash a dinner party. I’m sure Headmistress Frigga just wanted a family affair. Plus, I’m not even hungry!” You said, and then your stomach growled most viciously. You looked down at it with a look of betrayal.

“It will be fun, I promise. Rainbow umbrella,” he said.

You realized you were already at the Headmistress’s office as the statue of the gargoyle began to turn. “But sir,” you started, but he smiled at you so disarmingly that you could not find any words to deny his request. He grabbed your hand and led you up the steps and you were sure that this was an awful, terrible idea.

[hood-ex]

for the batfam prompts thing: any of the kids seeing dick cry for the first time

Tim felt a sense of dread ever since the sounds from the battlefield vanished. He wanted to believe the silence meant that Roy’s attempt to reprogram Indigo to destroy the Superman robot had been successful. The more cynical part of him thought about how easy it had been for the Superman robot to kill Lilith, how easy it had been for the robot to throw Garth into a truck, and how easy it had been for the robot to throw Bart around like a rag doll. 

What if the robot had managed to kill more people Tim cared about?

The thought crossed his mind over and over as he and Roy walked up the hill together, both of them taking it slow since Roy’s arm was injured. The growing anxiety in Tim’s chest threatened to suffocate him, and even though he wanted to speed ahead, he stayed by Roy’s side. 

It felt like ages by the time they got to the top of the hill. Roy was definitely more out of breath than Tim was, but he was also lugging around heavier armor than Tim was, and he had an injured arm to stabilize. Tim would have looked him over to make sure he was okay if it wasn’t for his fear-driven desire to know what had happened to his brother and teammates. 

Tim braced himself for the worst, only to breathe a sigh of relief when he looked down at where Conner was helping Cassie into a sitting position. Cassie seemed okay, if a little out of it. She was blinking her eyes slowly and looked to be working her way up to saying something. Conner looked okay too other than the fact that he was moving a little slower than usual. 

Tim was just happy they were okay. 

It wasn’t until he heard Roy’s sharp intake of breath that Tim realized something was wrong. He followed Roy’s line of sight to where Dick was sitting on the ground with Donna’s head cradled in his lap. Dick’s mask laid in tatters next to them. 

Tim tried to process the sparking remains of the Superman robot, the Indigo robot collapsed next to it, Donna’s unmoving form, and the blood coated all over Dick’s gloves. The more he stared, the more the puzzle pieces clicked into place, and Tim finally realized that his fear hadn’t been unwarranted. 

A fresh wave of horror hit him so suddenly that he stumbled back as if he’d physically been hit, his eyes never leaving the hole in Donna’s chest. Roy seemed to realize the same thing because he was suddenly hurtling down the hill at breakneck speed.

Roy’s voice was high pitched and strangled as he yelled, “Donna!” 

Tim watched in a state of shock as Roy fell to his knees beside Dick with his hands outstretched over Donna’s body. It looked like he wanted to try and press them over the wound that was staining her skin and clothes red. 

“Dick,” Roy said, panicked, “don’t tell me she’s… she’s not…”

Dead Tim’s mind supplied for him. 

Tim felt like he needed to be closer to confirm that he was right. To confirm that Donna was actually dead. He was pretty sure he was right but what if—what if. 

He felt like a newborn foal on uneven legs when he stumbled down the hill and came to a stop at Dick’s other side, careful not to step too close to Donna’s legs. His eyes were immediately drawn to the singed, gaping hole in Donna’s chest that oozed blood. His gaze traveled up until he saw Donna’s wide, unseeing eyes looking up at the sky. 

It was only then that Tim really knew she was gone. 

The sudden sound of Roy’s sobs sent a chill down Tim’s spine and made goosebumps appear all over his arms. Tim had heard a lot of agonized screams during his time as Robin. It was something he’d unintentionally signed up for when he decided to be Batman’s partner. But there was a distinct difference between hearing a stranger going through it and hearing a friend going through it. Tim didn’t usually get choked up over the strangers he helped. Part of it was due to the lack of a personal bond between them, and the other part of it was because he’d been desensitized to a lot of the horrors people went through. 

Roy wasn’t a stranger to Tim. He was one of his brother’s best friends, and he was someone Tim had gotten to know and fight alongside over the years. Roy’s scream affected Tim in a visceral way that brought sympathetic tears to his eyes. It overloaded him with emotion, and in his sudden grief, he turned to the one person who had always been a comforting figure for him to latch onto. 

Dick’s name never made it past Tim’s lips because every thought he had came to a grinding halt as soon as Tim realized that Dick was crying. It was the first time Tim had ever seen Dick cry, and he couldn’t even begin to describe the feeling of wrongness he felt as he continued to stare in alarm at the tears that pooled down Dick’s cheeks. The anguish on Dick’s face was so stark that it made Tim feel sick to his stomach. He couldn't handle the way Dick looked like a lost child with his ruddy cheeks and tear-filled blue eyes. 

Dick looked anything but the composed leader of the Titans that he usually was. His drawn in shoulders made him look incredibly small, and his trembling mouth replaced any traces of his confident, charming smile. Part of his face was also bleeding and swelling up, which just made Tim’s heart break for him even more.  

Dick's gloved hand was stroking obsessively over Donna's hair as if he was trying to comfort her even in death. "'M sorry, Donna..." Dick whimpered. The raw pain and grief behind that simple apology made Tim choke on the lump that had formed in his throat, and he suddenly found it hard to look at Dick, especially when Dick's chest heaved in a way that made it look like it pained him to breathe. 

Dick's wails made his words nearly unintelligible. All Tim could make out was Dick gasping, "You were supposed to come home with us... We're supposed to... supposed to be together..." 

Roy finally tore his watery eyes away from Donna's face, and in a voice sounding just as wrecked as Dick's, he choked out Dick's name. Tim wasn't sure if Roy was trying to get Dick to stop or if he was looking for comfort. 

Dick just shook his head back and forth like he was stuck in a trance. He started muttering things in Tamaranean that probably didn't even make sense. The tears on his face continued to fall in a steady stream, mixing with the blood on Donna's chest and leaving trails of pink on her skin. 

The lack of control Dick was displaying was disturbing in a way that Tim couldn’t quite put into words. He’d never seen his brother like this before, and it was scaring him. 

He didn’t really know what to do with himself. Didn’t know how to help. Not with something like this. 

There was nothing he could say to make it better, so he didn’t say anything at all. He simply stepped closer and gripped Dick's shoulder with his right hand and Roy's shoulder with his left hand, trying to anchor them with his touch. A small whine of sympathy escaped his throat when he realized that both of them were shaking. 

It was hard. It was so fucking hard to try and keep it together for both of them when all Tim wanted to do was turn away from all of this and find a quiet place to deal with his own grief, because he loved Donna too. Not in the same way Roy did romantically or in the way Dick loved her like a sister. No, it was a much simpler love. One of friendship and admiration. It wasn't something that could be compared to the love the Titans felt for her, but Tim felt a sense of loss for her all the same.

He held onto Dick and Roy a little tighter, wishing this was all just a dream.

Tim hated that it wasn’t.

[youreacowgirllikeme]

White Lie

note: this plot entered my head and refused to leave, so here we go. Enjoy

words: 2.7 k

warning: swearing, smut (unprotected sex)

“Bliss!” you thought, taking in the unique smell of the bookstore. The last few weeks had been crazy, work keeping you on your toes even on the weekends. This was your first free day in over a month, and what was better than spending it at your favorite place in town.

You loved aimlessly browsing the dozens of shelves for something new to read, your favorite pastime since childhood. You were still contemplating about the kind of lecture you were looking for when a bright red book spine caught your attention. You had always been a person who could be easily attracted by a pretty, colorful cover, so your hand instinctively surged forward to grab the book out of the shelf. But before you could get a hold on it, another hand got in your way, blocking yours and snatching the volume right under your nose.

You were about to complain to whoever had the audacity to get between you and a book, when you looked up at the stranger.

“He’s so tall.” Was the first thing that came to your mind, followed almost instantly by “And hot.” You could feel yourself starting to get slightly flustered, your initial anger forgotten.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t think anyone else besides me could be that interested in the medias influence on the US’s political relationship with China.” The stranger said. He had a smooth, deep voice, the kind of voice you could easily imagine yourself listing to for hours. You stared at him, your usually quick brain a bit overwhelmed with your body’s visceral reaction to the mans presence .

“Political relationship with China?” you repeated, confused and sounding like the biggest idiot ever to your own ears.

“Yes, because that’s what this is about.” The man turned the book around so you could look at the cover. “You’re aware that you’re in the politics section?” He added, slower, like he was talking to a child.

You tried to collect yourself, you usually prided yourself on your quick-wittedness and you didn’t like how nervous this stranger was making you at all. You didn’t know what it was about him, maybe his imposing figure or his intense gaze, but he was intimidating.

“Oh, yes, I was searching for a similar looking book.” You lied quickly. “My mistake.”

Turning around to another shelf with some new arrivals, you grabbed the first red-spined book that caught your eyes.

“Here. That’s the one I actually want.” You replied, showing the random book to the man. He mustered the cover and a small smirk settled over his face.

“The Hellfire Club, huh? You’re a fan of political thrillers?” he asked, a hint of amusement in his voice.

“Of course, huge fan. I’ve read all of the authors works, been really looking forward to this one. I heard it’s set in New York.” In reality, you didn’t have the slightest clue what this book was about, and even less why you were lying to this random guy about it. Did you just want him off your back, or did you want to impress him, engage him in conversation? He was fascinating and for some reason you felt like this conversation was spinning a bit out of your control.

The man raised his eyebrows at you, looking like he could sense your nervousness.

“It’s a decent book, I guess. But I heard the author is a real prick.” He gave you an almost conspiratorial wink. “I have to go now, but enjoy it. New York is definitely a fascinating city.” He turned around and left in the direction of the checkout.

You opened the book, looking inside to find out who this guy was having such a low opinion about. There was a small picture of the author in there, and as you studied it you felt like you might get sick.

It was the stranger from moments before. Jake Tapper. You had lied to Jake Tapper. You groaned internally, why the hell hadn’t you recognize him?

Yes, you didn’t watch his shows, too little time. But he was something like a celebrity, and you blatantly told him absolute bullshit about his own book in an attempt to appear cleverer than you were. How had this guy been able to unsettle you that way?

“The damn Capitol is literally on the cover, you idiot.” You whispered to yourself, absolutely mortified. You had to go after him and clear this up or you would never rest again.

But as your eyes scanned the bookstore, he was already making his way out, disappearing onto the crowded street.

+++

Two weeks later, you still couldn’t think about the encounter without being totally embarrassed. You had bought the book, and of course it wasn’t set in New York. But it was a fascinating read, you weren’t able to put it away for the whole weekend, finishing it only three days after you purchased it.

At the same time, you weren’t able to stop thinking about Jake Tapper either. Even in the brief moment you shared with him, he had managed to leave a lasting expression, and your thoughts were circling around his dark eyes and deep voice more often than you’d care to admit.

The sound of an incoming email disturbed your thoughts, and as you checked, it your heart did a little jump in your chest. It was the newsletter from your favorite bookstore, announcing an event with no one else than Jake Tapper himself, signing copies of his latest political thriller The Hellfire Club.

Without even thinking about it twice, you signed yourself up for the event. You had to see him again, try to explain yourself and get some closure about the situation, or those thoughts of him would probably haunt you forever.

+++

You’ve been anxiously waiting in line for thirty minutes now, and finally it was your turn. As soon as the man’s eyes landed on you, he raised his eyebrows and a smug smile settled over his face

“And so, we meet again. I sincerely hope the lack of New York content wasn’t too much of a disappointment.”

So he remembered you. Great.

“Ok, I deserve that.” You murmured, embarrassed by the whole situation. You started to regret even coming here, but now you had to get it over with.

“I just came to, well, apologize, I guess. And prove that I’m not an idiot.” Why were you blabbering like that? This man’s scrutiny made you so nervous, his attentive gaze was fixed on you while you were struggling to explain the situation.

“I loved the book, by the way, great style and the storyline was very captivating. Even without New York.” You added, a weak attempt at a joke. To your total surprise, he chuckled, a sound that made you even more agitated. By now, you were sure that your face was the color of a fire truck.

“I’m glad you enjoyed it.” Jake replied. “And no hard feelings about what happened. Maybe I should let my next novel play in New York in reference to our encounter. Also, I am at a bit of a disadvantage here, you know my name but haven’t told me yours.”

You quickly introduced yourself, and he reached over the desk to take the book you held in your hand. When you didn’t let go immediately, his hand stopped, and he looked at you with a puzzled expression. His fingers were brushing against yours, a fact that obviously overwhelmed your brain as you weren’t able to move a muscle to hand over the book.

Touching him made a spark went through you, and from the way Jakes eyes slightly darkened, you could tell that he had felt it as well. You stared into each other’s eyes for seconds until someone in line behind you coughed, and you snapped out of your frenzy.

“I assumed you want me to sign your copy.” Jake mumbled, still holding onto your book.

“Yes, of course. I’m sorry.” You replied hastily, handing him the volume and internally cursing your body for the nervous, awkward way it behaved in front of this man.

Jake grabbed a pen, signing the front page and scribbling a note into the bottom right corner. He handed it back to you, and you opened to read what he had written. It was a row of numbers, and before you could make sense of it, he spoke again.

“That’s my number. I would love to hear some more of your potential book ideas, if you’d be interested. Maybe over dinner, or some drinks?” His voice was smooth, but there was a hint of insecurity, like the smallest crack in his façade.

Was he asking you out? Quick, you told yourself, say something.

“Uhm, yeah, sounds good.” Wow, great response. Pulling yourself together, you added “I’d love to.”

“Great. I’m looking forward to hearing from you, Y/N. Now, I’m sorry, but I think there are some more readers who demand my attention.” Jake said, pointing to the waiting people behind you. “I’ll see you around?”

“Absolutely!” you burst out, your own voice sounding terribly loud to your own ears, and without saying goodbye, you turned around and fled the bookstore.

+++

Back at home, you tried to make sense of everything that had happened. First of all, you had, one more time, acted like a train wreck in front of Jake Tapper. And secondly, it obviously hadn’t bothered him too much, because he had really asked you out.

What brought the next problem, what was an appropriate time to call him? Your head went through every possible option, from phoning him right now to never contacting him again to save yourself from further embarrassment. After some back and forth, you decided to wait another day, that gave you enough time to think about what to say to him.

+++

“Hello, Jake Tapper speaking.”

Hearing his voice was enough to make your own go slightly shrill with nervousness.

“Uhm, hi, this is Y/N, from the bookstore yesterday, you remember?”

“Of course I remember.” Jake replied, “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I was wondering, if the offer still stands, I’d love to have dinner with you somewhere.” You were proud that you managed to keep your voice steady despite your fluttering nerves.

“Absolutely, whenever your free. How does Saturday sound?”

+++

It was Saturday, and the restaurant you had agreed on was packed with people. The food was great, and the company even more so. After a glass of wine, your initial anxiety had eased down a bit, allowing you to engage in some actual conversation with Jake. He was as fascinating as you had expected, and you found yourself dreamily staring at his eyes and the way they lit up when he was talking about something he was especially passionate about.

You discovered your shared love for books, and the bookstore you had met in in particular, it was Jake’s favorite as well.

“How is it that I have never seen you there before?” you asked.

Jake shrugged, leaning back into his chair.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have much time to go there, and when I do its usually first thing in the morning when they open up. But I buy a book every time. And I’m glad we finally ran into each other.” He leaned towards you again, focusing his eyes on you in a way that made your body heat up.

“I’m glad you even wanted to see me again after that awful first impression.” You mumbled, it was still uncomfortable to talk about that. But Jake just chuckled softly, reaching out to grab your hand, intertwining his fingers with yours. For a moment, the soft stroking of his thumb against your skin was everything you could focus on.

“It definitely wasn’t awful, far from it actually. And please don’t assume I wasn’t nervous as well, you are gorgeous and were browsing the politics section of the bookstore. I just had to talk to you.”his voice was dropping a bit as he pressed his thumb down against a sensitive spot on your palm, making you gasp slightly.

Somehow, the knowledge that you had made the Jake Tapper nervous gave your ego a slight boost.

"Well, you didn’t show it, but I’m glad I’m not the only one who felt that way.” You said, squeezing Jakes hand and, in a moment of bravery, began to slide your bare foot slowly against his leg. His sharp intake of breath told you that it had the intended effect on him.

“So you buy a book every time you’re in the store.” You continued, trying to appear unfazed while still keeping contact under the table. “Your bookshelf must be impressive.”

“I have quite the collection.” Jake replied, his voice a low growl now. His pupils were blown, making his eyes appear dark and almost hungry.

With a quick move, he reached under the table to where your foot had almost reached the inside of his tight and grabed your ankle in a strong grip. A tingling sensation went from where was was touching you all the way up to your core and you clenched your legs together.

„Careful, Y/N. Don’t tease me.“ Jake pressed out in a slightly stained voice.

The tension between the two of you was almost palpable by now.

“I’d just love to see your bookshelf, Jake.” you whispered, biting your lip. You wanted this man, and from the way he was watching you, you could tell that the desire was definitely mutual.

+++

One hurried bill and speedy car ride later, you found yourself pressed against Jake Tappers bookshelf by the man himself. Your hands were tangled in his hair as he was kissing you, his own fingers nestling with the buttons of your jeans. Your shirt already lay discarded on the floor along with his own, and the bare skin of his chest felt amazing where it was pressed against yours.

You groaned when Jake moved his lips to your jaw, kissing down your neck and softly biting into the junction of your shoulder. He slid your jeans down your hips, and you hastily stepped out of them before doing the same to his trousers, leaving the both of you in only your underwear.

When you grinded your core against his boxer-clad erection, he roughly grabbed your ass and pulled you over to the sofa.

"Enough with the damn teasing.“ he growled into your ear, pushing you down onto the soft cushions.

“Jake, please.” You whimpered as he unclasped our bra with one hand and pinched one of your bared nipples with the other.

You could barely think straight anymore, aching for his touch, your panties already slick with need. He pulled them down your legs, his fingers leaving a burning trail where they were brushing over your skin.

“Fuck, you’re soaked.” He whispered when his fingers finally found their way between your tights. He circled your clit, but the soft pressure he applied wasn’t enough for you.

“Please.” You repeated, your voice only a breathy moan by now. “I need more.”

Jake softly swore under his breath, retreating his fingers before standing up and getting rid of his underwear. He took a moment to look down at you, taking in your naked body, splayed out on his couch, your legs spread.

The intensity of his gaze made you squirm and bite your lip in anticipation, he looked like he wanted to devour you.

“Look at you, all needy and ready for me. You are gorgeous, Y/N.” Jake said in a stained voice, before moving to lie on top of you, claiming your lips in a bruising kiss. His erecrion teased your entrance, his hands grabbing your thighs with a hard grip as he slowly entered you. You groaned into his mouth as he filled you until he bottomed out.

With a nudge of your pelvis, you encouraged him to start moving. His pace was slow at first, but he increased his speed as you raked your nails across his back and spurred him on with whispers of his name and pleads to go faster, harder.

“You feel so good, fucking amazing.” Jake growled, one of his hands grabbing a fist of your hair while the other one squeezed your ass, his nails digging into your skin, creating just the right amount of pain to drive you crazy.

You wrapped your legs around his hips and he groaned against your skin as he deepened his thrusts, driving you closer and closer to your climax.

His hard, relentless gaze never left yours as he was fucking you and being the focus of his unwavering attention gave you a heady feeling.

When he told you to come, it almost sounded like a command, and you clenched around him as you reached your peak. He followed you after a few more thrusts, holding you tightly as he came inside you.

“Wow.” You whispered, pressing your forehead against Jakes. He stroked your hair, eyes still settled on you, and it felt as if he could see your every thought.

“That was incredible.” you continued, and Jake hummed in agreement before pulling out and rolling off you. He still watched you with the same unreadable expression for a moment, before he spoke out.

“I want to be honest, Y/N. I hope tonight wasn’t a one-time thing for you.”

Your heartrate that had just slowed down a bit sped up again, a broad, happy smile settling over your face.

“That depends.” You replied.

Jake arched an eyebrow at you. “And on what exactly?”

“How impressive the content of your bookshelf really is.”

[ryosei-hime]

Date Night

Continuation of Personal Space. Husk spends the day getting ready for his date with Angel and the rest of the night being a mess. Can also be found over on AO3.

Husk groaned as he rolled off the sofa in the foyer, bottles clattering as he disturbed them. He dragged a paw down his face before a huge yawn escaped. A sound of agony followed as he stretched his back, every vertebrae popping and shifting. That damn thing was not meant for sleeping on. A feather floated down to the floor and he followed it’s trajectory back to the sofa to find more littering the cushions. Oh, great, molting. That’s what he needed.

He checked his phone for the time and saw a message from Angel. It was a picture of him splayed out on the sofa with his mouth open, a bottle clutched in one hand, and a leg over the back. He’d captioned it “Sleeping Beauty” followed by one of those winking kissy faces. 

Husk rolled his eyes as he picked himself up off the ground. If he found that damn thing on his social media, he’d kill him. Nobody had any damn privacy anymore. He texted back a threat and searched around his empties for any remnants - hair of the dog and all - until a static-filled voice interrupted him.

“Good afternoon, Husker.”

“Yeah, what’d you want?” 

“Simply passing through, my friend.”

Husk’s lip curled. Every time Alastor called him friend it caused a visceral reaction. Fuckin asshole. He’d rather the fucker just treat their relationship as it was instead of trying to paint a polite picture. You could put lipstick on a pig but it was still a fuckin pig. 

“But good luck on your little date tonight.”

Alastor’s smile turned sharper and his eyes more sinister. God dammit, Angel. Couldn’t he keep his fuckin mouth shut? Husk just gave Alastor the finger as he moved on with his day. He checked to make sure Angel hadn’t blabbed about this anywhere else. But it must have just been good old fashioned word of mouth.

Actually, he’d barely posted at all today which was weird for Angel. Probably knew he couldn’t keep his mouth shut if he did. Husk sighed and dragged himself to his room. He had a few hours to get himself together enough for this. Plenty of time to go over everything that would go wrong in minute detail.

It was Nifty who helped him get ready. Of course, she knew, too. Whole damn hotel knew. She insisted on helping him get dressed up in an old suit and tie. He didn’t see the need to bother. Wasn’t like he wore clothes regularly and they wouldn’t be on him long.

But it made Nifty happy to get him ready, giving him advice so fast he couldn’t take half of it in even if he’d wanted to. He smiled at her as she fixed his tie and stood back with her hands on her hips.

“You look great! Angel’s gonna love it. I’m so excited for you!” 

“At least someone is,” Husk muttered, resisting the urge to loosen the tie a bit. 

“Aren’t you excited?” 

“Ah, I’m no good at this stuff. You know that.” 

“Don’t worry! Just let Angel help you. He’s great at it.” She started dusting Husk’s own fur off his suit as it shed, her efforts only making it worse. “And he really likes you!”

“Yeah, I know,” Husk replied. “Thanks Nifty.”

Nifty gave him a big hug and he returned it gently. Her slight frame made him extra careful with her. 

“I have to get back to cleaning, but I hope you enjoy your date!” 

“Yeah. I’ll try.” 

He raised a hand in a slight wave as she hurried off. He decided to spend the rest of the day waiting for Angel at the bar. That turned out to be a mistake. Everyone had something to say. They wished him luck. They cooed and sighed like it was some big fuckin show. Their words were supportive but somehow they only made Husk more nervous, maybe even a little bitter. This shit seemed so easy for everyone else. 

It had been easy for him once, too.

Eventually the foyer emptied out as it got late. Husk knew Angel would be returning for him any minute. He finally had to loosen the tie around his neck and decided to fix himself a drink to calm his nerves, but just as he reached under the bar, the doors opened. 

His wings lifted slightly as Angel made his entrance. Husk wasn’t the only one who’d gotten dressed up. Angel’d gotten his hair done or some kind of extensions or something. Fuck if Husk knew. He wore a strapless pink number, the skirt covered with some kinda fake flower and vine decorations. Looked like it was supposed to be a train, but he was too tall for it to do much but brush the floor as he approached. Husk actually thought he looked beautiful all dolled up like that. Maybe he should tell him. Instead, what came out of his mouth was: 

“What’re we going to the fuckin prom?” 

“I dunno. Will you be doin’ my taxes when we’re done?” Angel shot back with a grin. 

He reached across the bar and fixed his tie. Dammit, he’d choke to death before he got through this night. Angel didn’t release his tie right away. He used it to pull him closer for a quick kiss. 

“Ready?”

No.

“Yeah, sure.” 

Husk came out from behind the bar and let Angel take his arm. He had no idea where they were going, but he just let Angel take the lead. Like Nifty had said, he was good at this. When they arrived at their destination, Husk was a little grateful she’d insisted on dressing him up. Angel had chosen some high end, classy joint. 

They got a lot of stares on the way to their table. He knew Angel was the center of attention wherever he went, but he didn’t like being caught in the crossfire of all those lustful gazes. A growl sounded low in his chest before he could stop it, his teeth bared. The stares become a little less overt.

Angel put a hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t scare my fans, Husk. I’m used to it.”

“Well, I’m not. People need to mind their own fuckin business.”

Without thinking about it, Husk pulled a chair out for Angel. At least he remembered something from the old days.

“Whatta gentleman,” Angel joked, batting his lashes at him as he sat. 

Husk gave his chair a rough shove up to the table, taking his own with a grumble. When he looked up, Angel had his chin on his hands, fingers laced to make a cradle, staring at him with such a soft look it took Husk’s breath away. He made himself busy with the menu. As the waiter approached, Angel sat up suddenly.

“Oh, I forgot. This place is Italian. Like Italian Italian. But I can order for ya, if ya want.” 

Angel looked quite proud of himself and Husk hated to burst his bubble. 

“I got it.”

He gave the waiter his order in perfect Italian and looked back to Angel as the waiter turned to him. Angel stared at him in shock for a moment before stumbling through his own order. He waited until the waiter had disappeared before going off.

“You know Italian? Holy shit, Husk! I been dirty talkin ya all this time at the bar and you knew?!”

Husk hid his smirk behind his menu, trying not to laugh. Angel pushed it away and stared him down, motioning with two fingers between them.

“You look at me, look at me!” 

Husk looked up, still grinning. Angel’s face had gone stern, and he held his gaze for a moment before simply uttering,

“You bastard.” 

Husk let himself laugh a little and teased him. 

“You get real creative when you’re drunk, you know that?”  

Angel just smirked and crossed his second set of arms while another hand brought a glass of wine up to his cheek.

“Well, I guess you know what you got to look forward to then, donchya?”

The conversation during dinner remained light-hearted and Angel kept reaching out for Husk’s paw, making eyes at him. He avoided making direct eye contact, insides churning every time Angel tried. Once their plates were taken away, Angel stood and held a hand out to him.

“Can I get a dance before we go?” 

Husk felt a little more confident as he put a paw in his hand. Dancing was something he knew he could do at least. He smiled back at him.

“Sure.” 

He let Angel draw him out onto the dance floor and pull him into a waltzing position. His extra hands found a place to rest on Husk’s hips as they began to move. Angel took the lead, but Husk had expected as much with the height difference. He wouldn’t let Angel know, but he was surprised he knew how to waltz. It seemed a bit old-fashioned for him. Or at least for how he tended to present himself. It was easy to forget he was from an older era than he was.

“Thank you.”

Husk looked up and felt all the air rush out of his lungs again. Angel gazed down at him with such a genuine look of gratitude. If he didn’t stop stealing his breath, he’d never make it through this night.

“A bet’s a bet,” he repeated.

“You didn’t have to go on a date with me, but ya did. I really appreciate that. It’s nice.” 

Husk closed their stance and pressed his forehead against Angel’s shoulder in response. Angel’s secondary arms held him close, his other hands sliding softly over his shoulders and down his arms. Husk turned his face in towards Angel’s neck instinctually. Everything felt so warm and comforting in this moment. Husk had to say something to break the spell before he started purring and embarrassed himself.

“You’re payin’ right? Cause I can’t afford this shit on my salary.”

“Don’t worry. I gotchya, babe,” Angel replied. “The least I can do is buy ya dinner first.”

Husk pulled back and a hand found his cheek as Angel leaned down to kiss him softly. Then again, a bit harder, staring at him through half-lidded eyes. Husk had to close his, but his paws slid up Angel’s back to grip his shoulders as he reciprocated. Angel broke the kiss and lowered his lips to Husk’s ear, brushing over the hairs at the tip for a moment, sending a thrill through his whole body. 

“Let’s get outta here.”

Husk just nodded his agreement as Angel moved towards the table to pay, his hand sliding off Husk’s shoulder as he went. Husk loosened his tie as he focused on breathing. Fuck. This was happening. Shit. Fuck. As he panicked, a feather slowly floated to the floor then another. Oh, fan-fucking-tastic! This shit!

He stepped on the feathers to hide them as Angel returned, trying to keep a neutral expression. He probably wouldn’t have noticed the feathers anyways. He had his eyes locked onto Husk’s as he reached for his arm again. A devious light there had chased away the tenderness that had been prevalent the rest of the night, letting Husk know Angel’d fully shifted gears. 

Thankfully when they returned to the hotel it wasn’t to some kind of fuckin fanfare. He’d half expected some kind of congratulatory party, the way people acted around here. But the foyer was as empty as it usually was this time of night. Just the two of them as it so often was. Angel stopped by the bar and released his arm. 

“Okay, gimme ten to slip into somethin more comfortable,” Angel said with a joking tone. “Then meet me in my room.” 

He made a show of walking away, swinging his hips and looking back at Husk over his shoulder before disappearing down the corridor. Husk just stood there calmly until he was out of sight. Once alone, he threw himself abruptly over the bar, gasping in air like a drowning man. He sent bottles clattering to the floor as he fished around for a drink. He leaned back against the bar and sank to the ground as he chugged whatever booze he’d managed to grab. The chugging became less frantic after a moment and he started to breathe again. Thank fucking god for alcohol. 

“You did this to yourself, asshole,” he muttered under his breath. 

He watched the clock as it ticked away the seconds he had to get himself together. He finally did away with his tie entirely and ran a paw over his head. Okay, this wasn’t such a big deal. God, it wasn’t like he didn’t find Angel attractive. And this would make him happy. 

All of Husk’s limbs went limp and his head banged back against the bar. Dammit, he wanted him to be happy. How had he let this happen? He sighed and let the empty bottle roll out of his grasp before picking himself up off the floor. 

He trudged down the hall to Angel’s room, leaving a sparse trail of feathers in his wake, and gave a light rap on the door before pushing it open. The lights were low and tinged pink from the scarves draped over the shades. Angel had tossed rose petals around the room wildly. He followed their general trail over to the bed where Angel was, of course, poised seductively. 

He’d changed out of the prom dress and into lacy black lingerie, makeup entirely redone to match. How the fuck did he do that so fast? Angel shifted forward and pushed himself off the bed, sauntering over to him the way he approached a pole at a show. He brushed the back of a hand against his cheek as he circled around behind him. All three sets of arms snaked around him, hands working at buttons and sliding under his shirt.

Husk froze as his clothes just fell around him, only brought back to motion by the shiver that went down his spine when Angel pressed soft kisses against the back of his neck. Damn, he was good. His paws rose to find the closest pair of Angel’s hands and slid over them. Angel nuzzled his face into the crook of his neck before finding his ear. 

“I’ve been waiting for this.” 

Husk turned in his arms and tried to think of something to say. All he could think of was how long it had been and how badly he was about to fuck up. He started backing away slowly, but Angel followed. 

He felt his knees buckle as he backed up into the bedframe. He fell back onto the bed and Angel leaned over him, using a pair of arms to hold himself up while the other two ran down his chest. Husk’s throat felt like it had closed up and he gasped for air. 

“W-wait.” 

[stones-x-bones]

It’s Only Slaughter (Day 3)|| Mina and Bex

TIMING: Current PARTIES: @drowningisinevitable and @inbextween SUMMARY: The storm has passed and it’s time to go home. CONTENT:  Head injury, medical blood (blood kinesis mention, paragraph is marked), Domestic abuse mentions, Parental death mention

Bex’s eyes snapped open. Sunlight streamed in through the window for the first time in days. Since they’d gotten here. Her body felt stiff as she shifted, and her head pounded the moment she tried to. A weight on her side made her readjust her eyes, before the girl next to her came into view. Mina. She looked almost peaceful, with the sunlight lighting up only parts of her face, reflecting off her blonde hair. Bex’s eyes stared for a moment, taking her in. She didn’t want to disturb her, even if she was already awake. For a moment, she wanted to just stay like this. Maybe even for a moment longer. Maybe even for the rest of the day. But then the reminder came back to her in the form of little pinpricks in her side and her legs that no, they couldn’t stay there. Her stomach twisting in knots. She hadn’t eaten in days. They had to leave today. She lifted her good hand, the one not covered in a bruise similar to the one on her face, and rubbed her eyes, before reaching over to brush Mina’s cheek. For a moment, her mind worried-- was she even still alive? Had Bex slept through her last breath?-- but the warmth in her cheek dismissed that. “Mina…?” she murmured. “It--” she didn’t know what time it was, “are you awake?”

Mina kept falling asleep without meaning to. She didn’t want to. She didn’t mean to. It just happened. At least she wasn’t dreaming. At least her mind and body both agreed that, with Bex, it was safe to sleep. Even if the world was ending around them, she’d still think it was safe with Bex. She’d been stupid, endlessly stupid, to not trust the safest person in her world with every part of herself. Sometimes the fear of losing someone was greater than your trust in them. And Mina was a coward. She’d always be a coward. 

Mina woke up feeling dry. Her throat. Her skin. Her wounds. She was hot and dry and miserable. She needed water. She probably needed food, but she wasn’t hungry. She was feeling more discomfort than pain, and she didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing anymore. Bex’s voice pulled her further into the present, making her eyes flutter open, briefly. “I’m awake,” she said, before clearing out the cracks in her throat. “I’m awake.”

Bex could tell her mind was coming back to her quicker when a list of To Dos started pouring through her head. First, she needed to check about what time it was. She’d read plenty of things on how to tell the time by the sun’s position in the sky. Her problem would be figuring out which direction they were facing. Second, they needed to assess their wounds. Had they gotten better or worse? Third, they needed water. To drink, to store and bring with them, and to let Mina soak in. She’d need to check the basin, then, and figure out how to portion it all. Maybe they could make it to the lake, it was only a few dozen yards away, down the hill. Bex could check the shack again as Mina soaked. Her mind was in crisis mode again already, but she was pulled very suddenly from it when Mina’s voice broke through. She smiled, relieved, and leaned forward to press a kiss to her forehead. “How are you feeling? You sound--” dry? “--tired.” Frowned. Her mind was still trying to catch up to itself, then. She wanted to stay laying here, but if they were going to leave today-- and today really was the threshold, if they waited any longer, Bex would become too weak with hunger to even try-- they needed to get going. She reached out and brushed Mina’s hair away from her face. Just a moment longer, she agreed. Just a little one. “Did you sleep at all?”

“I…” Mina looked around, bleary eyes taking in the sunlight streaming through the windows. Sunlight. It was morning, probably, midday at the latest. “I had to have slept. I don’t remember anything after-- after you claimed to be right all the time.” She could have drifted back off, wanted to drift back off, really, but she knew that was a bad idea. She needed to get up. They needed to move. They needed to leave. Before Bex got worse. Mina sat up, using one hand as she limply ran the other over her face. “I’m feeling… like I got shot and stabbed and had my leg crushed in a bear trap.” She gave Bex a small smile. “So, bad, but it could absolutely be worse. How are you feeling? Your fever seems to have stayed away most of the night.” That was good. That was still something to worry about, but, if it stayed gone, just long enough for them to get out of there, then it could be treated. Bex could be treated. Mina could be treated. She was scared to move too much, scared to look at her side, her foot. Nothing felt as bad as it did the night before, but it didn’t feel great. She just hoped nothing was infected yet.

“It’s not a claim if it’s true.” Bex frowned and sat up as well. “Not funny,” she mumbled, pulling the blanket down and scooting closer to examine the wounds on Mina that she could see. The wound in her shoulder was nearly closed, globbed over with scar tissue and scales surrounding it like a shield. But that was the least worst of them all. Her side and leg and foot were still wrapped in the torn shreds of the blanket. “I’ll be fine,” she mumbled, “let me look at them.” She pointed at her side, her foot. She didn’t want to look at them, on the chance that they were getting worse, and that they’d look at them and know that there was no leaving today. Mina would make Bex leave, even if she couldn’t. Bex swallowed. “We need to figure out how we’re...doing,” she said more firmly, moving her legs around so that she was sitting beside Mina. If that was the case, then they’d need a new plan, so the sooner she could find out, the better. That was what she told herself. She could look at herself-- let Mina look at her-- after. She was afraid to look at the wounds her own magic had caused her, hidden underneath the ones from her struggle against the forest. “Please.”

“Not funny,” Mina said. “Truthful, though.” She was being truthful. Open and honest in ways that she so rarely was, that she didn’t really know how to be, despite being a creature that couldn’t lie all that well to begin with. When Bex insisted on looking at her wounds, Mina wanted to just pull the blanket back over herself, to cover herself up and hide. She could take care of herself. She didn’t need help. She didn’t want it. But… neither of those were the truth. And if she couldn’t trust Bex, accept help from Bex, then she couldn’t from anyone. “It… probably looks worse than it feels,” she said hesitantly. She didn’t know about that for sure. She moved the shreds of blanket away from her side first, wincing at the way the dried, makeshift bandages clung to her skin, feeling the heat of the injury against her fingers but not looking at it. “It’s probably not that bad.”

Bex furrowed her brow. If Mina wasn’t literally being held together by blankets and makeshift compresses, she would’ve pushed her teasingly. “Still not funny.” She gently lifted the blankets away from Mina’s side as she peeled them away, shuddering at the visceral sound of them clinging to her skin. Dry, caked blood flaking off. She could feel the heat from it and when she looked at it, she didn’t need to know fae anatomy to know it was infected. It looked black and there was something oozing inside. She bit her lip, looking around. There was nothing here to fix that. She hoped being home in the pool would fix it, in the water that she’d bonded with. Bex swallowed and reached for the pot of water, stiff as her own wounds begged for attention. She dipped the cleanest part of the blanket into the pot and began wiping away some of the dried blood as gently as possible. “It’s not good,” she murmured. She thought about suggesting that they stay. “Good thing you heal fast.” 

“I want to say that it felt worse yesterday,” Mina said carefully, still not looking at the wound as Bex poked at it. At least, that was what it felt like. She made sure not to flinch, not to move too much, even if she was trembling slightly. “Very good thing that I heal fast.” If there was any sort of infection, they needed to leave while they could. Mina sat up a little more, gritting her teeth against the pain. “We need to leave while we can. If we stay here much longer, things are going to get worse, for both of us.” There was the chance that Bex’s fever could come back even worse than before, and there was the chance that both of their wounds could get infected past the point of being helped. They needed to get back to people and civilization and proper medical supplies. Even if it meant that things would go back to the way they were. “I can probably just… rewrap everything.”

Bex could sense Mina’s pain, even without noticing the tremble in her entire body as she wiped at her wound. It was as if she could feel the pain herself, except it only made her heart ache and her stomach twist. “I can do stitches, if you think it would...help,” she offered quietly, “I can do them quickly. We-- we can wrap more strips of damp towel around everything, too, before we leave.” They needed to  get going. Judging by the sunlight streaming in, it was getting close to the afternoon, and while the sun hung high in the sky in summer, creatures hid in the shadows enough. She breathed in deeply. “This is gonna suck, isn’t it?” she asked with a huff, moving stiffly, then, prodding at Mina’s legs once she’d finished wiping her side. It didn’t look good but it looked better without all the blood and puss caked on it. She patted her lap, laying a towel across it. “Let me see your foot next,” she demanded, though her voice was soft. They needed to leave soon, but they needed to assess how well Mina was going to be able to move, first. 

“We should just go. I-- I can make it without the stitches.” And Mina knew she could. Not well, and she’d definitely need them eventually, but there was no telling what would happen to them both once they left. They’d do better with leaving and dealing with the consequences. They couldn’t stay. “It’s not going to be pleasant, no,” she said, her voice higher and slightly strangled. Her side would have made it hard to walk by itself, but they still had her leg to deal with. “I don’t think you should do that.” Mina looked down at her wrapped leg. “Mostly because I wrapped it last night and sort of made a splint? I’m trying to hold the bone together, among other things.” That was going to make walking miserable. She could do it. Mina knew she could do it. She’d done it several times. It was just, as Bex said, going to suck. Everything about this was going to suck. “I can probably just soak it again?” She asked hesitantly. If Bex insisted on seeing it, Mina wouldn’t refuse, though. Even if she’d rather they just leave as soon as they could.

Bex flinched at the description. Holding the bone together sounded...bad. She shook her head, bit her lip. “Then you should soak it, at least,” she glanced back around, “we won’t get far if you can’t even walk.” She wasn’t sure they’d really get anywhere if Mina couldn’t walk. She moved herself, then to the edge of the bed and stood on stiff legs. They felt like petrified wood, unwilling to bend or move, until the joints cracked and she stumbled forward. In all honesty, she didn’t want to look at it. She hated seeing Mina injured, and she hated even more knowing she couldn’t do anything about it. Her own side needed looking at, and for the first time since they’d gotten to the cabin, Bex looked down to see black tendrils of magic burned into her thighs. She let out a long breath-- no wonder they hurt. “I’m gonna gather up as much supplies as I can carry,” she looked back over at Mina, “go soak your foot, at least.” She wanted to get back, as soon as possible. She wanted to make sure Mina got better. She needed her to get better.

“Okay, right. I can do that.” But Mina didn’t move immediately, instead sitting up and watching Bex move. She looked her over, taking in the ragged bandages on Bex’s side, the black marks trailing up her thighs. Mina had done that. Bex was injured even more than before because of her. Sighing, she stood up uneasily, both of her legs hurting immediately from the pressure. “Can you…” Mina trailed off. She didn’t know if she’d need help to the tub. She didn’t know if she wanted to ask. She knew that Bex would help her. She knew that. Mina just didn’t know how to ask for help. That wasn’t going to change any time soon, even if she wanted it to. “I’m gonna go do that,” she said, and she started towards the bathroom, one painful step at a time. She’d done it just fine the night before when she’d stumbled through the entire shack the night before. This was nothing. It was nothing. Looking back at Bex, she gave a small smile. “Give me about fifteen minutes?”

Bex gave pause-- she could feel Mina’s eyes on her, she could almost feel the words on the tip of Mina’s tongue, too. Would she ask? She wouldn’t ask, would she? She didn’t ask. Mina pushed herself off the bed and started trying to walk. How the hell were they going to get anywhere if this was the condition Mina was in? Bex shook her head. It hit her, then, suddenly, that Mina didn’t need to ask, not when Bex knew. And maybe that was okay for now. She didn’t have to ask. Bex limped back over to Mina without a word and hooked her arm around the good side of her waist, letting her lean some of her weight off her bad foot on Bex if she wanted to. She hoped she would. That was the point of this. “I need to clean up myself, first, anyway,” she said off-hand, knowing exactly what Mina would say if she told her she was doing this just for her. That was why they fit so well, wasn’t it? “You can lean on me,” she said, quieter, “it’s okay.’

Stiffening, Mina didn’t know what to do at first, as Bex put an arm around her and told her she could lean on her. It was only for a moment, though, before Mina leaned against her carefully. She didn’t put her whole weight against Bex, but it was enough to take some of it off of her leg. It was more of a relief than she could say. She reached up and gave Bex’s hand a squeeze, and, even if she didn’t say the words, Mina was thanking her. “We’re both doing quite terribly, aren’t we?” Half-dressed, half-starved, and wholly injured, they weren’t doing great, especially as they struggled together to the bathroom. And who knew how far they’d have to travel just to get back to some semblance of civilization? With luck, they could run into someone willing to take them back into White Crest, or, at the very least, they might run into someone who would let them use their phone. Mina hoped they could make it back soon. She didn’t think either of them would make it very far. They stumbled to the tub, and Mina sat on the edge, pausing and closing her eyes before she put her leg in.

Bex was quiet, even after Mina spoke up. She didn’t really know what to say. There wasn’t much to say, because it was the truth. They were both doing terribly, they were both suffering greatly. And not just from injuries. She set Mina down gently on the edge of the tub before standing back up, bones creaking. “Maybe that’s what love is,” she said quietly, turning to head back over to the sink and clean her face off, her side, assess her own damage. “Suffering because the other is.” She turned the sink knob and water trickled out. The unfortunate part was that it was untreated rainwater. Maybe not as dirty as water from the lake or from the ground, but it wasn’t the most sanitary for someone like her. Mina would be fine. If her side was already infected, it wouldn’t do to try and clean it with this water. She splashed some on her face, instead, tried to wash the mud out of her hair. Took the still bloody towel and wet it and washed her legs off, peeling away mud and leaves and blood that had stuck there from two nights ago. Two nights and two days. This was day three. She could feel her hunger setting in, despite humans being able to go weeks without food. Bex didn’t eat much to begin with and she was almost sure she’d forgotten to eat the morning before all this had happened. 

Finally, she began to peel her own bandages off. She tried not to whimper in pain, but it was hard when the gauze stuck to her skin, just like it had Mina’s, and peeled away to reveal a throbbing mass of blood and puss and torn stitches. Bex pressed the towel to her side and whimpered again, biting her tongue. She needed antibiotics, desperately. She hadn’t told Mina, but her fever was already coming back, she could feel it. There was nothing to do about it now. “Keep-- keep soaking. I’ll--” she pointed towards the living room, “I’m gonna go get the supplies together.”

Maybe that was what love was, Mina thought, the idea of it making her heart ache more. She didn’t want Bex to suffer because of her. That was probably the last thing she wanted, really. Was it truly too much to ask for them to both be okay? Was it too much to ask for Bex to not have to suffer because of her? But it made sense, didn’t it? If she felt this way about Bex, and she believed Bex when the younger girl told her that she loved her, then it would only make sense for them to both be suffering in the same way, even if she hated it. Even if it made her sick. She swallowed against the emotions as she watched Bex flinch and whimper and hold back her pain. They needed to get her to help. Mina needed to get her to help. Mina… could barely do anything. “I’ll just be right here,” she said, trying to smile. Her leg wasn’t hurting as bad in the water, at least.

Bex smiled back, as best she could, before turning to head out into the living room once again. It was a mess. Bloody bandages and blood on the couch and blood on the floor and a bloody fucking knife on the table. She moved mechanically around, trying her best to ignore her pain-- her pain wasn’t the focus. Her pain wasn’t the greatest. She needed to be strong for Mina, for both of them, because if she wasn’t, they would both die. She’d never had to be this way before, do this before. She was not taught how to take care of herself, how to take care of someone else. She was simply operating on what she’d learned and what she felt might be needed the most. It would be impossible to carry water with them, so instead she tossed the two tin cups into a little makeshift bag she’d tied up out of the leftover blanket parts, as well as the lighter, what was left of the gauze (not much), the sheers, and lastly, she paused, her hand hovering over Frank’s knife. It was still coated in blood. Some of it had washed off in the rain, but not all of it. It was her blood and it was Mina’s blood. She tossed it into the pack before grabbing their tattered clothes. Mina at least needed pants on. She grabbed the tattered jacket as well, setting it all up by the door. She had to sit, for a minute, on the couch, speckles dominating her vision for a moment as her head spun. She was getting sweaty again, and shivering. They needed to go.

She hefted herself back up and into the bathroom, breathing heavy. Made her way over slowly and sat on the edge of the tub next to Mina, their shoulders touching. They were facing opposite ways again. “How’s it feeling?” she asked, looking at her as she turned her head to face her. “Think..think you can walk?”

Mina kept her eyes closed as she listened to the sounds of Bex moving about the shack, her foot soaking in the water. Idly, she leaned down and ran her fingers through it. It was soothing, despite the water being filthy. Her body didn’t care about any of that, so long as it was given fresh water. She’d always thought that she’d never truly need medical attention as long as she had water, but that wasn’t necessarily the case. There were some iron wounds that couldn’t be healed, not without some help. The wound in her side would need help, and soon. Her leg would, too. Bex came in, and Mina looked up. She hesitated before she leaned against Bex and put her head on Bex’s shoulder. “Terrible. It feels terrible.” But her voice was light as she attempted to soften the truth as much as she could. She pulled away, taking her legs out of the water and turning herself to face the same direction as Bex. “I can walk, though. I might-- I’ll need help, though. Just a bit, at least.”

“I think we should try the boat on the river, see how far it takes us,” Bex said, leaning her own head against Mina’s as it rest on her shoulder. This felt so normal, even the injured part. She remembered the whole week they’d spent in bed together. It jolted inside of her, the sudden realization, that by keeping Mina with her, she’d kept her from healing. Every one of those times. She swallowed down the guilt, there wasn’t really time to think about that right now. Mina was sitting up again, turning around. This was it, then, wasn’t it? They had to go now. Bex felt a small pang of sadness. She didn’t want to leave this place, where no one could see them and judge them and hurt them. They’d been half dead the entire time they were here, but the truth was that this place had saved them. Maybe it had even done more than that. She looked over at Mina. Her eyes looked so tired. “That’s what I'm here for. You can lean on me,” she said, hesitating only a moment, before she leaned in to kiss her. If they were leaving, that meant this was the last time she could do this. Lifted a gentle hand to caress her cheek as she did. They needed to leave, but this felt more important in the moment. She didn’t know when she’d get to do this again. This felt more important than leaving right away.

“That’s-- that might actually work, certainly,” Mina said. Of course it would. It was a good idea. Bex had a lot of good ideas. The kissing. That was a good idea. Really, Mina thought that was a great idea, and she put a hand up, brushing it through Bex’s hair, staying close. And she stayed close even when she pulled away. She moved her hand to rest it against Bex’s cheek. “I love you,” she murmured. “I just-- I wanted to say that again. Before we leave. And it’s not going to change even when we do, but I just wanted to say it.” She liked saying it to Bex. It was hard to acknowledge when she was talking about it to other people, and it was hard to deal with it when she was alone, but, here, it was alright. It was real. It hurt, but it was a shared sort of hurt. The fact that she loved Bex and that Bex loved her back was grounding and real in a way that it hadn’t been before this. It wouldn’t feel real if they hadn’t ended up in this shack, injured and fighting for their lives. This was all thanks to Frank. Perhaps Mina would thank him for it before she killed him. She leaned in and kissed Bex again before pulling away and standing. She took a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s-- We need to go.”

Bex almost wished they’d just kept kissing. She didn’t know what to say back, words caught in her throat like a traffic jam. It wasn’t that she didn’t know what to say, more so than she had too much to say. Before, she thought it would’ve been cruel to give Mina the hope of her love-- but she knew, now, that it didn’t matter. Mina loved her anyway. “I love you, too,” she said, and every time she said it, it felt like another weight was lifted from her chest. She loved a girl. She loved a girl. She wanted to be okay with the fact that she loved a girl. “Even if I’m not-- even if it seems like I--” dont. Am pretending. Eddie was still a part of her life. He was safe. He was her safety net. She was using him and he needed to know. She’d need to tell him, when they got back. She didn’t want to tell him. She just wanted this. She wanted to pretend for a little bit longer. “I just love you,” she said quietly, leaning into Mina’s touch. There was one more kiss and Bex wondered if it would be their last. Mina stood and Bex stood with her, looping her arm back under her side. “Yeah, let’s--” she nodded towards the door and started them towards it, stopping by the couch to pick up her makeshift pack of supplies. She paused at the front door, wondering what might be beyond it. Was Frank waiting for them out there? Was her mother? Or Morgan? Or something else, something worse? She didn’t know, but they had to face it. Whatever it was, they’d face it together.

“I know.” And Mina did. She knew that Bex loved her. She knew that now. How could she not, after this? After the hell Bex was putting herself through just to be with Mina, to save her. Bex loved her. Mina could be incredibly stupid, but she would have had to be a real idiot to think that Bex didn’t, after this. She let Bex wrap her arm around her, and she threw her own over Bex’s shoulders, and, together, they headed to the door. When Bex paused, Mina looked over at her. This was it. They were leaving this shack, this hell, this reprieve, behind. Things were only going to get more difficult as soon as they stepped outside. Mina reached out and put a hand on the door. She looked at Bex. “We’re going to make it,” she said as confidently as she could. “We’re going to make it out of this. And I can’t lie, remember? So it must be true.” It had to be true. They were going to make it out of this, and they were going to be okay. That’s all Mina wanted; she wanted for Bex to be okay. And, yes, actually, she’d like to be okay, too. If that wasn’t too much to ask for. After all, there was a warden that she was going to kill, slowly. She just had to get to him. “We can do this.”

Bex hadn’t realized how much her confidence was wavering until Mina spoke up and she found herself blinking back tears. They were partially from pain, but mostly from fear. She looked over at her and then to her hand on the door knob, and drew in a breath. Nodded, putting her hand over Mina’s, before squeezing and turning the handle together. The door creaked open, reminding her once again of its age and its emptiness. Sunlight greeted them. Soft sounds of water, lapping on a craggly shore, and rushing quietly off back towards civilization. The boat sat out front, alone, full of water. But if it could retain water, then it could keep water out, which meant it would float. She looked at Mina with some sense of hope for the first time since they’d gotten there. “Here,” she wriggled out from under Mina’s arm as they reached the end of the porch and helped her lean against the railing there. It was old and wood and she wondered if it might crumble under her weight, but it didn’t, and Bex hobbled over to the boat as fast as possible. She pushed on it with her legs to no avail, before lowering herself enough to grab the edge with her hands and push up, listening to water slosh out and onto the ground. Wincing as every bit of her body ached from the action. But it was empty enough and she set the pack down inside before standing up again and tugging on the rope. “Let’s get…” she looked back over to the dock. “Let’s get this to the dock, and I can check for paddles at the boat house.” There was so much to do. She looked up into the sky and saw the sun shining through the treetops. It was getting later in the day. “C’mon, I can...I can pull the boat if you can walk? A-at least to the dock. You can wait in the water there, if you need.”

The feeling of uselessness, which had never properly gone away, only grew in Mina as she leaned against the railing and watched Bex struggle with the boat. She wanted to help. She wished she could help. Instead, she had to stay where she was and watch, completely and utterly useless. Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore, especially when Bex mentioned taking the boat to the dock and then going to the boathouse to check for oars. She pushed herself off the railing and walked over to the boat before leaning down against the back of it. “I’ll push while you pull.” Then because she knew that Bex would probably protest, she added, “This will help me, too, to have something to lean on. So, really, it helps me.” She dug her good foot into the dirt and pushed at the boat and gritted her teeth the entire time, but this was helping her and Bex, and it didn’t feel like it was making anything any worse than it already was. If it got them to the lake faster, then it got her in the water faster, and that was important enough. 

“But--” Bex had started, but Mina knew. Just like Bex had known back in the house, Mina knew that Bex was going to protest. She sighed and nodded, resigned, before pulling on the rope and feeling the little, wooden boat give way. It was slow and painful, but when they made it, Bex couldn’t help but feel accomplished. She shoved the boat further into the water until it was floating fully before tying it loosely around one of the dock poles. She turned to look back at Mina as she waded out, pausing next to her. “T-word,” she murmured, kissing her cheek, before moving back out of the water and up towards the boat house. “Stay there,” she pointed, “make sure the boat doesn’t float away.” Then the first half of Bex’s poorly thought out plan would go down the drain. She made her way back up to the boat house. There was so much more to see in the light of the afternoon, instead of the darkness of night and rain. A map, for one. She grabbed it and tucked it under her arm. Another jacket, old and dusty, but it was a waterproof one. She slipped it on and stuck the map in the pocket before digging around some more. Still no food, no canteen, no miracle cure for a half dead nymph. She found one whole oar and one half one, sighing, and dragging them back out to the boat. “Guess we’ll have to make do,” she mumbled, tossing them into the boat. She held out the map. “I found this. I um-- am not really good at reading maps, but it might help?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Mina said, leaning against the boat, half submerged in the water. She sunk a little lower, hands grasping the side and just waited there. The lake’s water felt nice, so much nicer than the rain water that had been in the tub. She wouldn’t complain about either, but this was nicer. She didn’t fully sink into it, didn’t fully shift and give into the feeling. It was exhausting. She was already tired and they’d barely done anything. She forced herself back awake. She couldn’t just spend days sleeping in a lake like she had before. They needed to get out of there. Bex couldn’t stay there, and Mina didn’t want to. She remembered being in that portal with Adam, surrounded by water and light and strange life, and she remembered thinking that she could stay there. In the moment, she’d wanted to stay there. She’d thought about staying there. But that wasn’t what she really wanted, not anymore. She wanted to go home. Mina just wanted to go home. She looked up at Bex as she waded back into the water, and Mina stood up a bit straighter. “I can read maps,” she said. There were a few useful things about her upbringing. “Here, I might be able to see where we are. Hopefully, if we go upstream a bit, we should be able to find a trail or something. Anything.”

Mina didn’t look any worse off than when Bex left her, but she could tell the other girl was already getting tired. Taking the boat would be their best bet at conserving energy. It had to work. She shimmied around towards her so she could look at the map, too, wondering if it was helping Mina to know she wasn’t useless. Of course Bex could read maps, there were at least a dozen of them lining her bedroom walls back at Morgan’s. For now, she’d let Mina have this. She swallowed and helped her unfold it-- the map was larger than she thought it might be-- and held one end tightly. “There’s gotta be a nearby trail somewhere, right? This place is huge but it’s not-- it can’t be that huge.” She felt okay, standing next to Mina in the water, knowing it was at least helping her foot, if not her side, too. The water lapped gently around them and Bex couldn’t help but stare at the silvery scales still dotting Mina’s arms, now reflecting the occasional beam of sunlight. “Anything?” she asked, glancing down. It was a relatively thorough map, marking each trail, each river, each road. But there was no “YOU ARE HERE” star marked off, and only some old pencil notes about wind direction and elevation. “It could be any of these,” she mumbled, noting the several keys that marked off lakes littered on the map.

Taking part of the map (Bex could read maps; of course Bex could read maps), Mina looked over it, scanning to see if there was anything that she recognized. “I…” she trailed off a bit. She shook the water droplets off of her fingers so they didn’t get the map too wet before she traced her fingers over it. There was the main road. “I parked my car over here and walked. That’s the trail I used,” she said, her finger following the road. She tapped the map. “This is the clearing where… this is where you found me, so we’re,” she moved her finger down, looking at the legend on the side of the map, “either here or here,” pointing at two different bodies of water. She hoped they were at the closer one, the lake that was only a few miles from where they started. The other wasn’t that much further away, but the thought that Bex carried her so far was terrifying. So was the thought of them being even that much further from civilization. “We’re still going to have to go against the current which--” she looked at the two oars, one of them broken, and gritted her teeth. “I could push the boat?” It wasn’t the best idea, but it would allow her to stay in the water for as long as possible while letting them travel a significant distance.

Bex followed Mina’s finger as she traced along the map. Her eyes stuck to the clearing where Mina said she’d found her. Her heart hammered. She would kill Frank, she would. If she saw him again, she would kill him. He was probably out here looking for them, too. Maybe they’d get lucky and she could just tear his mind apart in a surprise attack. She took in a breath and looked to where Mina was pointing. “What? No! No! You’re not going to push the boat, not when you’re--” But she had a point, didn’t she? They weren’t going to get very far rowing with a broken oar. “No, we-- will figure it out. You need to save your energy, in case we have to walk. For when we have to walk.” She let out a long breath, running a hand through her hair. She already felt exhausted, and the water was making her shiver. “Let’s just-- see how this goes.” She tossed the oar in before going back up around the dock to step into the boat, knowing she didn’t have the energy to climb in from the water. It rocked unsteadily and she realized in that moment that she’d never been in a boat this small before. Only large boats, luxury boats, and she clung to the side. She didn’t know how to swim. “Do you-- need help?”

“If I pushed, we might get somewhere faster, we might not have to worry about broken oars or struggling against the current, we might not have to worry about you getting hurt,” Mina sighed. She knew she could rationalize this even further and bring up the fact that it would allow her to stay in the water more, that she could potentially heal. But she didn’t, instead looking at Bex and nodding her head. “Alright. I-- I can get in, I think.” With less grace than she normally would have been able to do, Mina pulled herself into the little boat with one hand and just kind of let herself lay in the bottom where some of the water had settled for a few seconds before she pulled herself up into a sitting position. She looked at Bex, at the way that she was holding on for dear life, and Mina remembered. “You can’t swim. Should we-- Do we need to not take the boat?” Not that Mina would let anything happen to Bex while they were in the water, but still. She didn’t want to risk anything.

“It’s not just about me, Mina,” Bex said, watching her struggle to get in. She reached to help but winced when her body reminded her that her side was also torn open again. The water in the bottom of the boat sloshed around as she righted herself. “We have to make sure we both make it back,” she said evenly, “I’m not going back without you.” She lifted the good oar and held it out to Mina. “Your arms are injured, so you take the good one. It’ll be easier on you,” she instructed, still in crisis mode. If she stopped moving, stopped planning, stopped doing, she was afraid she’d lose it. Her arms were shaking as she took the broken one and put it in the water. It rippled and she swallowed, staring into the clear surface. She remembered how this lake had saved Mina’s life. She remembered how nice it had felt, floating in its water. How deep was it in the middle? How deep was the river? Her knuckles tightened. “I’ll be fine,” she said quietly, “we can do this.” Her eyes went up to Mina’s. “Together.”

“We’re both going to make it back,” Mina said. She had things to do. She wanted to go home. She wanted to make sure Bex was okay. She wanted to kill Frank. She was going to kill Frank. If she focused on that, then it made all of it, the pain, the fear so much more bearable. “Actually, my arms are the least injured thing about me, but you’re not going to take no for an answer, are you?” she muttered, taking the oar. She held it in her hands and tried not to look too out of her element. Mina didn’t know much about boats. She’d never needed to learn about them. Why would she need to know anything about boats when she could swim wherever they could go? For lack of better phrasing, she was a fish out of water in this. Her hands tightened around the oar and she looked at Bex determinedly. “Together.” They needed to leave. They needed to get back to safety. If this was the way to do that, then they were doing it.

Bex looked at Mina, then to the water, then back again. “Your arm is still injured,” she pointed out, “mine are just--” she tapped one of her forearms, “--tired.” From carrying Mina through a forest, from hauling supplies around, from sleeping on a bathroom floor. They weren’t nearly as spent as her legs, which burned against the warm air. She started paddling the boat as best she could, keeping it close to shore until they reached the mouth of the river. They had to paddle upstream. It wouldn’t be so bad, right? She looked at Mina again, the water again, the way the waves fought against the tide of the river. She couldn’t see the bottom of it and looking in it made her head spin. “If-- if you need to get in the water, to-- to feel better, you can,” she said, keeping her eyes on the path in front of them. The river led to a trail, all they had to do was get to it. “Just-- no pushing.” Mina looked so out of place, holding her paddle, trying to row. Both of them were so out of place, in a boat that was likely going to begin leaking, in the middle of a river, with a girl who couldn’t swim and a girl who had scales. “God...what I wouldn’t give to be a fucking water witch right now,” she mumbled. Her magic was no use here. Not anymore. 

“My shoulder is-- We’re not going to argue about technicalities, right now,” Mina said. “We can do that later.” Even though Mina’s arms were fine, all things considered, whereas Mina knew there were trace amounts of magical backlash on Bex’s arms, on her legs, all over her body. Magical damage was still damage. Mina knew that from when Bex came back to her after what happened with the warden. “I think I’d rather stay in the boat and help you, actually. We’re in this together, remember?” They were doing this together. They weren’t going to be able to do it any other way. “Let’s just… do this, yes?” It was just a damned boat. How hard could it be? Curiously, she glanced over at Bex. “Are there witches that specialize strictly in water magic?”

Bex didn’t particularly want to argue at all, but all they had was time now. Time to sit, time to talk, time to wonder. She sighed and shifted-- cautiously-- over to Mina’s side of the boat so that they were rowing together, upstream. “Together,” she murmured. She wanted to reach out and hold her hand, but the broken oar was hard enough to keep inside the boat, let alone row with. If she dropped it, they’d be shit outta luck. She turned her head to look at Mina, then down at their feet, settled in the water that was gathering in the bottom of the boat. “Nell says there’s witches that control all the elements. Fire, water, air, earth.” She blew a puff of air, blowing a strand of hair out of her face. “Just my luck I'm stuck with dream magic.” She rubbed her head, it was starting to hurt again. “What good does that do?” 

Pressing against Bex momentarily, Mina got to work with helping row, focused on making sure they stayed in time with each other. Even with the broken oar, they were still moving, at least. They were leaving that dingy little shack behind, with its blood stains and fever and tears. She had no doubt they’d have plenty more of all of that. But that place was literally behind them, now. “Do they control all of the elements at once, or do they only have one element at a time?” she asked. “And… it’s not just dream magic, right? You said, before, that it was mental magic? Which seems to have a lot more moving parts to it than just dreams.” Not that Mina knew too much about any of it. She just knew what she was told, what she remembered. Something scraped against the bottom of the boat. Mina looked down into the water, but she didn’t see anything.

Bex rowed methodically in time with Mina. “No, it’s usually just one. They’re called elementals. Most of Nell’s family has fire, but Nell has blood. And summoning.” She’d missed talking about magic. It hurt her heart a little, to talk about it now. She cleared her throat and went on. “Yeah, I have mental magic, too. Nell thinks they’re connected, though. The-- mental magic and my affinity for dream magic. Still-- what good can any of that do me out here? What good did it do trying to get you somewhere safe?” What good was she when all she did was hurt people? She stopped rowing for a moment, taking in a breath. She moved her feet up out of the water. They were cold. So cold. Despite the warmth of the air, she was so cold. “Are you going to tell me?” she asked after a long moment, before glancing sideways at Mina. “What you are?”

“Is-- Is blood an element?” Mina asked, eyes wide. And then summoning. She wasn’t quite sure what that meant other than it was probably how Nell brought her hellhounds to her from wherever they came from. The hellhounds. Was it bad that Mina missed the company of monsters? “Well, not all magics are useful all the time. What good is water magic in a desert? What good is earth magic in the ocean? I think that your magic managed just fine, getting us to safety the other day.” Mina blinked, looking at Bex, then down at her arms, then in front of her. “I’m a nix, a, ah, freshwater nymph, which is a type of nature Fae that tends to bond with a body of freshwater, like a pond or a lake or a river. Which, I’ve always moved around, so I’ve never had one specific connection, and I don’t really know too much about what I am other than biological information that I’ve figured out over the years and, of course, various ways on how to take down other nixes but. That’s what I am.”

BLOOD KINESIS MENTION

“I guess,” Bex said, “we didn’t get that far in the lessons. Nell can control blood, though. Like-- inside of people. But there’s also blood magic, which is like, using blood to strengthen your magic. From what I um-- can remember.” The truth was that she remembered it all, and she recited it in her head every night before she fell asleep. If she fell asleep. Bex closed her eyes. “It just feels so-- intangible. The things that I can do. The magic that saved you-- us-- was just practical magic. Just spells that every spellcaster can learn. It was nothing special.” She opened her eyes and looked at Mina’s hands, her arms. Her legs. They were a mess, and they were covered in scales, but Bex still thought they were beautiful, shimmering in the sunlight. She thought Mina was beautiful. “A nix,” she repeated quietly, before she picked up the oar again and went back to rowing. “Would you ever want to?” she asked as she looked at the water. “Learn about yourself?”

BLOOD KINESIS MENTION END

“That’s…” Mina paused, “strange. And interesting. And-- Magic is a lot. There’s your type of magic, and there’s Fae magic, and there’s the kind of magic that sort of ties everything together, and it’s all rather strange.” Magic was so strange. Sometimes she preferred the simplicity of hunters, the ease of knowing that a knife was a knife. “I mean, I think it’s special. Not everyone can do it. I certainly can’t. I suppose it’s called practical for a reason. But… the mental magic, the dream magic. It is a bit intangible, but it’s still useful and interesting.” And strange. So very strange. But in good ways, too. She glanced at Bex again before she got back to rowing as well. They had a long way to go. “I don’t… I don’t know. If I’d want to learn more about myself. I’m not very good at being Fae. I can’t really be human. I don’t really need to learn how to be a nix. I’m just trying to… be myself? I’m not doing the best job of that, either.”

“Morgan told me a little about Fae magic,” Bex admitted. She didn't understand most of it, but she wanted to. She wanted to because she wanted to be part of that world, too, and because Mina was a part of that world. She wanted to understand her enough to be able to be part of that life. But her face sunk at Mina’s admission. “You know,” she started, slowly, “for the longest time, I knew exactly who I was supposed to be. I was the daughter of two lawyers. I was going to grow up, marry a nice man, and take over the family business. It was all planned out, even my college career and how I was going to adopt my first child. They even had someone picked out for me to marry. He was going to bring in another business to be absorbed into ours. But then--” the “scandal”. “And now I’m here, and I’m realizing that I actually know nothing about myself. About who I am or my magic or what I want to do. Am I a witch? A spellcaster? A mystic? All of them, maybe? I don’t know. And I was afraid, at first, to try and figure it out. Even after I met you and Morgan and Nell. I’m still scared.” She paused, thoughtfully, sighing. “I guess my point is, you don’t have to be good at what you are. And I think…” she trailed off a little, turning her head to finally look at Mina, “it’s okay to not be good at being yourself right now. I know I’m not. Good at that.” Despite herself, she reached over and hooked one of her arms with Mina’s. “Thank you. For telling me.” 

“It’s mostly about language, from what I know, and glamouring. I was taught about Fae from people who hate Fae, and I’ve never really asked Deirdre about it,” Mina said. She didn’t know how. She probably never would. It was like admitting defeat, like giving in to her own weaknesses. She didn’t know if she could do that. “My dad was a hunter, a werewolf hunter, among other things. He’d hunt anything if he could get paid for it. I think the money was more important to him than duty, sometimes. He couldn’t tell what my mother was, when he met her, and he came back to her a few years later, and I was… me. She’s dead. He killed her.” He’d always been honest about that. For as long as she could remember, Mina knew that her dad killed her mother. “He said she would have killed me for being a hunter’s child. And I was a hunter’s child. I am a hunter’s child. I was raised to hunt other Fae. It helps that I can sense them. But I… don’t want to do that.” She leaned against Bex for a moment. “I don’t know what I want or who I am, but I don’t want to be that.” Quieter, she said, “And don’t thank me. I should have told you sooner.”

“She told me a little about it,” Bex said, “one time.” The fae were so mysterious-- a humanoid species that operated almost completely out of human confines, out of human rules, human society, human morality. It was as fascinating as it was terrifying. Bex could understand why Mina would hesitate to want to learn about that side of herself, especially if she was raised to hunt her own kind. The thought made her stomach twist. She couldn’t even imagine what that was like. To grow up hating your own kind, your own species. Maybe she could a little. Maybe it wasn’t the same, but she could a little. She understood very well what it meant to hate herself. Her heart twisted again. Her dad had killed her mother. Bex didn’t know if what she said was true. She didn’t want it to be. She didn’t want Mina to be doomed to either hate herself or be killed by her mother. She breathed in deep. “You’re no more a hunter’s child than I am the child of two lawyers,” she murmured. “Those things...can’t define us.” They were words Morgan had told her and she wasn’t sure she believed them yet, but she could draw enough conviction within herself to make it sound like she might. “I-- I’m sorry. About your mother, your father…” there wasn’t much else to say. Bex didn’t have those answers. “That you grew up that way.” She leaned her head against Mina’s, rowing slower. Her arms hurt already. “Yes,” she agreed quietly, “you should have.” But there wasn’t much else to do about that now, was there? She wasn’t sure she could find it in her to be angry, either. Maybe hurt, still hurt, but she wasn’t sure her hurt about that outweighed the hurt she’d given Mina. “I don’t want you to be that, either,” she tacked on. “I don’t want you to suffer like that.”

“It’s all got different kinds of rules than your magic.” Every Fae had innate magic, that much even Mina knew. It was mischievous and cruel and unforgiving, and the only reason Mina would really want to learn more is so that she wouldn’t abuse it in some way. She didn’t want to abuse it. She didn’t want to hurt anyone. “I’m trying to believe that, I’m not just defined by that. Or, at the very least, I’m letting it define me in different ways. I don’t have to hurt people. I can just protect them. I can make that worth it.” She could make up for all the awful things that she did and didn’t do. That was what she wanted. She wanted that. She shook her head. “There’s nothing to apologize for. It’s -- that’s just the way things are. Neither of them can be brought back.” Neither of them could tell Mina the truth. Neither of them would ever tell her they cared about her or that she was worthy or that they wouldn’t have killed her in the end. “I wish I’d said something. Things would have been better if I said something sooner.” She wasn’t suffering. No. No, that was a lie. She was always suffering, a little, in some way. She wouldn’t be able to tell if it ever stopped. Though, with Bex beside her, it certainly helped. 

“Yeah. Morgan said the rules are so different, Fae magic even affects her,” Bex explained. “It’s-- fascinating.” She wanted to know more. She craved to know more. But she held it in for now because she didn’t think Mina agreed. And she’d been told by so many people how dangerous the fae could be. That meant Mina was dangerous, too, in her own way. Scales and claws and breathing underwater. She wondered what tales had been told about her kind. What sort of monster did normal people see her as? Mina wasn’t a monster, and Bex hated anyone who thought otherwise. She ruffled her brow. “I think that’s a good start,” she said, “it’s more than I’ve got.” She smiled at her playfully, even though it was lopsided and covered in a bruise. Her smile slowly faded. “That’s-- not necessarily true,” she answered, wondering if this was something she should even tell Mina, offer her. It wasn’t like she could do it, but-- “summoning ghosts is a thing. Nell’s told me about it.” She was quiet, listening to the waves lap against the boat, wind through the trees, animals crooning quietly in the trees around them. “I--” she started, then stopped. Her chest ached again. “I don’t know if that’s true, either…” She looked over at Mina with a guilt ridden face. “I don’t know if I would’ve stayed, even then. Even knowing…” her hands gripped the oar tighter. “I-- I do...wish you’d told me earlier. We were sleeping together and you didn’t even--” she held onto the choked words in her throat. The upset that had been begging to come out since she’d watched her change underwater in her arms, “--I wish you’d trusted nothing would’ve changed.” 

“As susceptible as everyone else is to Fae magic, Fae are often just as, if not more, susceptible, so it’s kind of an exchange, from what I understand,” Mina said. What little she understood from hunting journals and things she’d learned along the way. “I’m probably the last person to ask about this, though.” Morgan probably had more actual knowledge. “It’s… fascinating is a word for it, yes.” She tried to smile back, but it died pretty quickly. At the mention of ghosts, Mina just shook her head. “I don’t want that. I don’t want to--” she wanted to say to disturb them if they’re resting. Instead, she said the truth. “I don’t want them to be around people I care about.” She frowned against the words. “Besides, I… I can’t see ghosts, so they’d have to talk through someone else, and that just sounds like a really bad time for everyone involved.” The way that Bex looked at her was so sad that Mina couldn’t help but shake her head. “No, I don’t mean that it would have made you stay, but it-- things wouldn’t be quite like this. They wouldn’t be like this. I-- I’m sorry. I don’t know how to trust something like that. You’re-- you’re the only person I’ve slept with that didn’t know, and that was,” she sighed and it felt like something heavy was locking itself into place in her chest, even as she was rowing. “That was really nice, actually. Which sounds terrible, but it was.”

“Huh,” Bex exhaled. She supposed the promises and the thank yous all made sense now. And Mina’s urgency for Bex to not use them. She’d already figured out Mina was fae, but there were so many different species and no information on any of them, her inquisitiveness had stopped there. “Sorry,” she muttered, chewing her lip, “I suppose that’s just the anthropologist in me. I find all things like that...fascinating.” She found this entire supernatural world as fascinating as it was horrifying. Maybe even more so. Bex furrowed her brow. “That’s--” She didn’t know exactly how it all worked, she didn’t have enough information to answer of refute, but she didn’t quite understand why Mina wouldn’t want answers. She stopped herself. “Fair. Your dad was just a nightmare and he seemed really…” She decided not to finish that sentence either. As terrible as Mina’s father seemed-- raising her to hate herself and her kind, to kill them, having killed her mother-- at least he was just a nightmare now. Her eyes fell away from Mina’s. “It’s a little terrible,” she answered, and it made her heart hurt again, “and a little selfish.” But she’d been selfish, too, hadn’t she? She hadn’t been able to tell a single soul about her feelings for Mina. She’d wanted that little world they had to stay that way. “I just wanted to know you,” she finally said, “all of you. The good, the bad-- and everything in between.” Something knocked against the boat again and Bex noticed this time, pausing her rowing. “Did you feel that?”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Mina said. “I know you like to learn about all of this. I can tell you what I know, even though it’s not much.” And even if she wasn’t the most comfortable with it. She didn’t mind it for Bex. She wouldn’t mind it. She’d make sure she didn’t mind it. “He wasn’t always bad,” she said quickly, feeling the need to defend him even when he was dead. And it was true; he wasn’t always bad. “He wasn’t always someone in my nightmares. Sometimes he was kind. Sometimes I thought he cared.” She desperately wanted to believe that he could have changed. He’d only needed the chance. That was it. Just a chance. She’d been given one, several, really. She was still being given chances. “It was selfish,” she agreed. “I just wanted to appear human, normal to someone. And it was nice that wasn’t what you wanted from me.” She wanted Bex to know her, too. Just maybe not everything, maybe not the parts of herself that she didn’t even know about herself. But she’d tell Bex. She would. She didn’t want to keep making that mistake. She looked down into the water again. “Yes, I-- I don’t know what that is.”

Bex gave a gentle smile. “Maybe someday.” Because the truth was that once they got back, Bex had to go home. She didn’t know when she’d talk to Mina next, let alone see her. Hold her. Touch her. She felt her heart sink into her stomach. “My mother isn’t always bad,” she said back, and she wasn’t sure if she was saying it to prove a point to Mina, or to reassure herself. Her mother wasn’t always bad. Just most of the time. A lot of the time. More so than not. “Bad people can do good things,” she recited, the words Morgan had said to her so long ago still stuck in her head. If she wasn’t bad for loving her mother, then Mina wasn’t bad for still loving her father. “I don’t know why you would want that,” she said, shrugging, “humans aren’t all that great.” Most of the people who had hurt Bex in her life had been human. It was the only true perspective she had. She understood the concept of monsters, she did, but sometimes they felt easier to accept than humans. “I just wanted you,” she emphasized, though her voice was quiet as she searched the water next to the boat for whatever had bumped it, “human or not. It doesn’t matter to--” She was interrupted when something hit the boat again, this time rocking it sideways a bit and Bex fell into Mina. “Okay, that’s not--” she looked at her, squeezing her arm subconsciously, “that’s not good, right?”

“Maybe someday,” Mina echoed, but she knew it wasn’t going to be any time soon. Things were going back to how they were before. It was almost like this had been a vacation, except they were both close to dying and had been relatively miserable the entire time. She looked at Bex. “That… sounds like a Morgan thing. Bad people doing good things.” But it was true, wasn’t it? Bad people did good things, good people did bad things, and maybe people were just… people, capable of all manners of good and evil. People were people and monsters were monsters, that was how she’d been raised. Sometimes, Mina wished she could still see things as black and white. “I only ever wanted to be human. I know you don’t-- Things would have been much better for me, if I’d been human. I would have… enjoyed not having scales or sharp teeth or strange Fae magic. I’m sorry.” She looked down. “It’s hard for me to understand that someone could want me when I--” She reached out to grab Bex as the boat was jostled, grunting a little under the force of it. “No, no, that’s not good. We-- We need to get out of the water, I think.”

“I think I also would’ve enjoyed being normal,” Bex responded, “being born a girl, not having magic, not being ga-” But she was both saved and interrupted by another bump against the boat. She yelped as a crack appeared under her feet and lifted them up. “Yeah, yep! Let’s-- out of the water.” She went to stick the oar back in, but when she leaned over, there was a shadow under the water. “Mina--” Bex started, but again, was interrupted, when a strange, clawed looking appendage wrapped around her arm and tugged. The boat tipped and Bex cried out, grabbing onto Mina, and in one fell swoop, the boat flipped over and they plunged into the water, supplies and all. 

“I know, and that’s-- I should have--” Mina should have done a lot of things, but none of them were pertinent as the boat capsized. She wrapped her arms around Bex immediately, doing what she could to protect her in case whatever knocked over the boat attacked. She kicked her leg and pushed them up to the surface, putting her arms under Bex’s and pulling them to the shore. “I’d like to not be fighting for my life for one bloody minute,” she snarled, eyes gazing out into the water as she looked for something, anything, to try and attack them again. “Is that really too much to ask?”

Bex tried not to panic. She wasn’t panicking, really. She wanted to panic. Even with Mina’s arms around her, the few moments they were floating under the surface of the water made her heart seize. She couldn’t see, she couldn’t breathe. She felt weightless. Suddenly, they breached the surface and Mina was dragging them back to the bank, and Bex scrambled away from the water, panting, clinging to Mina. “I hate...this place…” she said, flopping down. “I hate the forest. I hate being like this. I hate this!” And she hated a lot more things, but the grass under her palms wilted and turned black with her anger. She pulled her hands away and pushed out of Mina’s arms-- she didn’t want to hurt her. Her gaze went back to the water, to the pieces of boat floating away down stream, to-- “The supplies,” she groaned, shoulders drooping. She looked over at Mina. “Is it always like this?” she asked. “This place. Is it…” always such a battle. 

Pushing her hair out of face, Mina sat up and looked over at Bex before she flopped down on her back, groaning. “Always makes it seem like-- I mean, recently I’ve been bringing these kinds of things on myself. I fought a chimera somewhere in here a few days ago, and then there was some portal business, and trolls, and-- I’ve been practically asking the universe or the Fates or whatever you believe in to give me its best shot. And--” She looked to the water, to her side, to her leg. “It’s been giving me its best shot, certainly.” She looked out to their supplies as it moved away from them, sinking below the water. “It’s not always like this, though. I did enjoy coming out into the forest. Sometimes it’s nice, peaceful. Not… a lot. But sometimes.” 

When Bex was sure her hands wouldn’t harm Mina, she crawled over to her and flopped down next to her. She was exhausted already, and now she was soaking wet. At least the late spring air was warm. She curled up next to her, taking one of her arms and wrapping it around herself. “We should’ve stayed at the shack,” she mumbled quietly, staring at the edge of the water as if waiting for it to rise up and consume them both. “Why are you doing all those things?” she asked, knowing Mina would tell her the truth. She already knew, but she wanted to hear her say it. It was Bex’s fault. She’d said Bex had nothing to apologize for, but if Mina screaming at the universe to give her its best shot was the way she was coping, then she had to apologize for that. She had to. She didn’t want Mina to hurt, yet all she’d done was give her more. “Portal business?” she inquired after a moment. “Is it-- do you know if they’re still open?” If there was still a chance Nell could come back.

“We couldn’t stay there. We’d die,” Mina said, shaking her head. It was better that they’d left while they could, while there was still light, while both of them were conscious. “I’m… I’m trying to be useful. I couldn’t protect you, so I just feel like if I can go out and find ways to make sure other people are safe, then it might make me feel a little better. Because if I’m still for too long, it feels like I might explode. So I keep moving and I keep fighting and I keep trying to help in ways that I know I’m useful.” Even if that meant diving into a strange aquatic portal to find a stranger glowing key. “The one in the Commons is still open, sort of. At least, it hasn’t been properly shut. I have a key for it at night house that I’m not really sure what to do with. I meant to figure it out this week.” She leaned into Bex for a moment before she pulled away. “We should get up and start walking.” Half-naked, injured, and through the woods where they didn’t know where they were. Mina wouldn’t lie, not even to herself; this was going to be miserable. 

“I might’ve,” Bex admitted quietly, “but there was plenty of fish in the lake, and plenty of water for you.” She’d wanted to stay. She didn’t want to go back. Hearing all the things Mina had been doing because she’d left just made her heart clench and she grit her teeth, trying to keep the quiver off her lips. “That wasn’t your failure, Mina,” she said, sitting up when she pulled away, “your job isn’t to-- you’re not obliged to me like that. You didn’t fail to protect me. I left. I chose that. Whatever my mom said to you, it-- it’s not true. That’s not-- none of that is on you. There’s nothing to make up for. And you don’t-- I know it’s hard, but you don’t-- you don’t have to always be useful.” Even if Bex still struggled with that, with her worth, with whether she deserved to be treated with kindness and love. “You’re allowed to just-- exist.” She stood on shaky legs as well, reaching out for Mina. She didn’t want to go back. “We could just leave,” she said rather suddenly. “We could just-- not go back to White Crest. What if we just left? You and me. We could go wherever. We don’t-- I don’t want to go back.” She didn’t want to go back to the life that was killing her. She was practically dying out here, but they seemed like better odds. Trudging through the forest, half naked and dying. It seemed nicer than going home.

Clenching her jaw, Mina said, “I wouldn’t let you die, and I wouldn’t leave you, and all the water in the world wouldn’t save me if I bled out or if the wound in my side gets too infected. That knife, the wound it made isn’t something that I can heal from easily. I think… I think I need help.” Speaking of the knife, Mina jerked her head towards the water, looking for it. Did it go down the river? Was it lost? Would she have to come back for it another time? She wanted it. She wanted it desperately. “I still couldn’t protect you. Even if you chose to leave, I couldn’t protect you before that. And sometimes I feel like I can’t protect anyone. I can’t even really protect myself.” She’d almost lost Morgan to a harpy of all things, and she almost lost herself to a warden. Mina shook her head. “I don’t want to just exist. I have to do more than that.” She had to atone. She had to be better. She had to be good. She let Bex help her up, standing on shaky legs. “I… I can’t leave. Not yet.” She blinked away tears. “I don’t want you to go back either, though. I don’t. I wish you wouldn’t.”

It was a relief to hear Mina admit she needed help, but Bex couldn’t be happy about it. The circumstance was dire and forced. Still. She hooked her arm under Mina’s and held onto her side, letting her lean against her as she started them off. Her eyes followed the river back down where the boat had capsized, where the supplies had floated away. Where the knife that had pierced them both now lay at the bottom. “I’m glad you want to protect me, Mina, really. But it’s not-- it’s okay if you can’t or if you fail. Sometimes we fail. I couldn’t protect you, either. But maybe-- maybe we should stop trying to protect each other and-and...work together.” Like the boat. It had gotten them this far, it could get them a little farther, too, right? She swallowed. One step at a time, pain pulsing her legs each time she stepped. “I’m not saying all the time. But it’s okay to...just exist for a little bit and not do anything.” She didn’t know how to convince Mina that she didn’t owe her life to the world, to her duty, to the universe. It was selfish, but Bex wanted Mina to exist for her. “If we go back to White Crest,” she said slowly, “then I have to go home.”

“No, it’s not okay,” Mina snapped. Her eyebrows furrowed together before she looked at Bex sadly. “It’s not okay. I just want-- You deserve better. You deserve to not have to go through everything that you’ve been through, and you deserve good things. I just wanted to-- I wish I could have--” She bit her tongue as they kept walking. She shook her head. “I don’t like that. I don’t like not doing anything. I don’t like standing still for too long. I-- I already overthink a lot. I don’t want to do that more.” She had to keep moving. She had to. It always felt like she’d lose it if she didn’t. Even on good days, even when she was happy, she still wanted to keep moving, keep pushing, keep going. And maybe that had a lot to do with moving around so much as a child. Maybe that came from the knowledge that standing still was a good way to die. Then again, Mina always seemed to freeze up in the face of danger. That was some of the only times she stayed still. She stumbled a bit over a stick, trying not to pull them down. “Sorry. Sorry,” she muttered. She looked back at Bex. “I can’t leave without talking to Morgan. I’d need to say goodbye. I’d need-- we’re both too injured to make it far. I don’t want you to go back, though.”

Bex flinched when Mina snapped at her. She didn't respond for a moment, catching them as Mina stumbled. "It doesn't really…" she paused, careful with her words, "it doesn't really matter what I deserve, Mina. It's… What I got dealt in life. Just like you. Don't you think you deserved better, too? Because I do. I wish I could give you a good life. I wish I could take away your pain. But I can't, just as much as you can't mine, because that's in the past. All you can do now is… All we can do now is be better for each other." She glanced over at Mina. "Maybe you should stop… Maybe… You should explode. I did. Remember?" She smiled, a ghost of itself. "At least yours won't destroy a room. I'd sit with you, if you wanted." It was all she could offer. She paused. "We need to go back," she decided. It was the right thing to do. They couldn't leave Morgan, they couldn't leave their home. Bex would have to leave Mina, but at least she'd know she was taken care of. "We can't… Get better if we leave."

“I don’t think I deserve better.” Mina focused on putting one foot in front of the other, in not dragging Bex down with her. She sighed, pausing for a minute to press tightly against her side. It hurted. It was actually hurting worse as they started walking than it had in awhile. At least the pain was grounding. At least it reminded her that she was still there. “There isn’t a better life for me, Bex. Not after— You’re right, about it all being in the past. There’s no taking that away, not anymore, and there’s no getting better, not with what I am, who I am.” How I am. She gave Bex a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I think you underestimate my destructiveness. I may not be a witch, but I’m quite certain I could destroy a room if I allowed myself to.” If she exploded. If she gave into all those things she ran from, all the time. “We need to go back,” she agreed quietly. She wished that Bex could just stay with her, but she knew that was stupid. It wasn’t happening. Not any time soon. 

Bex wanted to cry again. "I think you do," she argued quietly. "I think there is...a better life for you." There had to be. Bex wouldn't believe anything otherwise. "Wasn't it better with me?" Had her affection not been enough? Could she really not give Mina a better life? Her eyes watered. She rubbed at them and noticed Mina clutching her side. "Here," she angled them back towards the water, "sit and soak for a second." She needed a rest, too. Her legs were burning. They'd made it far, though. The trees were thinning. "I'm sure you could," she agreed, leaning against a tree. "I wouldn't mind, though. Sitting right you through that. I'd still love you," she muttered, "even if you tore me apart " she didn't know how to help Mina anymore. Maybe she just couldn't. Maybe she'd never been enough. She slid to a sit. "I don't know how to help you," she admitted quietly, tears finally leaking down her face. "I just want to make you happy."

“It was better with you,” Mina agreed, and she kept her voice controlled. Just because she had to tell the truth, didn’t mean she had to get overly emotional. She tried not to choke. “And it was better, than before, than a few years ago. I don’t think it’ll get better, though. Nothing better really last.” She tried to protest. “No, no, we need-- We should keep--” She let Bex pull her back towards the water. She sat heavily on the edge of the river. She’d have to come back, soon. She wanted that knife. She was going to get that knife. She was still thinking about it, killing Frank. She needed it. It was as grounding as the pain. It was interesting. Mina was rarely this sure of anything. “I’d mind. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not going to tear you apart. You know that, right?” She looked back up at Bex. “I don’t-- I don’t know how to help you, either. As much as I want to. I want to so much.”

"Who knows," Bex shrugged, "maybe it will, maybe it won't. But saying for sure that it won't feels-- like you're giving up." Like Bex was giving up. She didn't want to give up, not anymore. Not when it was so clearly still hurting the people she'd tried to protect. She looked at the sad smile on Mina's face and wished she knew how to make it real. "I know you won't," she agreed quickly. "I know you won't hurt me. And I'm trying my best not to hurt you anymore." She scooted towards her, coming up beside her. She reached out to caress her cheek. "You can help me by not destroying yourself. You… You don't have to destroy yourself to protect others, to help others, to… Help me. I want you… As safe as you can be. I know you want to do things that… Scare me. You want to fight monsters and save people and protect them, but you're important, too. And if not for yourself then maybe--" she paused, swallowed. She knew Mina loved her, but her mind still hesitated. She didn't deserve her, not after what she'd done. But she wanted her, she wanted her. And she wanted to hurt anyone who hurt her and she wanted to kill Frank. "Maybe do it for me?" 

“Nothing’s certain,” Mina said. “I just don’t-- I don’t think it will. The chances seem low, not worth betting on.” She’d told Bex before; she didn’t gamble when she thought she’d lose. It was more pragmatic that way. “It’s not you. I’m happy with you. It’s better with you. But I feel like you’re going to get taken from me, in the end.” There. More of the truth. More of the wretched, awful truth. She leaned into Bex’s hand, eyes closed. “I don’t want to hurt you.” That was the last thing she wanted. Mina knew that she’d done that by not telling Bex what she was. She didn’t want to keep doing it. “I’m not intentionally destroying myself,” she said. “I’m not. I’m just doing what I’m-- I’m just doing what I was taught. If I can heal from it, there isn’t a problem.” And there wasn’t. If she could heal from it, then she’d be okay. She was aware that there were some things she couldn’t heal from. Her side felt like something she couldn’t heal from, not on her own. “I…” She leaned into Bex’s hand a little bit more, bringing her own hand up to keep Bex’s in place. “I can try, yes.” She could try, at the very least. Mina squeezed Bex’s hand and started to stand up again. “We need to keep moving. We can’t spend the night out here. It’s not safe.”

"I'll bet on it, then," Bex declared. "You're worth the bet." High risk, high reward, right? She pondered for a moment, rubbing her thumb gently over Mina's cheek. It was warm, flushed, and she wasn't sure if it was from the heat or the fever. Bex was warm, too. Her fever was also back. "No one can take me from you," she said firmly, "I'll always be yours, no matter where we are, no matter who we're with. I'm yours." She leaned in closer, sighing. "Even if it's not intentional, you still… That's not a good mindset, you know. You shouldn't have to always get hurt. It does matter, even if you heal." Bex squeezed her hand back, standing and using her shoulder to support Mina's weight. "Alright, let's go.”

[mysticmegaraofficial]

A Pity Party | SOLO

TIMING: A few weeks ago LOCATION: Meg’s house PARTIES: Meg, a ghost, and her two cats: Cleo and Rosie  SUMMARY: Meg’s throwing herself a pity party until she gets some perspective on things. CONTENT: None, but brief mentions of grief regarding losing loved ones. 

“You’ve had significant loss in your life,” Megara’s voice rang out clear and strong, a comforting hand placed on the older man’s arm. “I can feel the pain you’ve gone through, and can see the grief and depression that’s flowed through you.”

“Can you?” The man was skeptical and gruff, shrugging her hand off him.

Megara smiled at him. It was a sad, knowing smile. “I do. Will you let me tell you what else I can see?”

The clip on the television cut out and the TMZ tabloid filled the screen.

“She may have been able to see that man’s pain, but Miss Mystic certainly didn’t see this coming, now did she?” The scene changed again, replaying the moments where Meg and Ayla stood on the winners platform, handing their envelopes to their lovely host. The camera zoomed in on Meg’s face as surprise and hurt slowly dawned on her as she processed what was happening. Everyone could see her eyes fill with tears.

“Ouch!” The TMZ reporter cried, popping back onto the television screen. “Talk about cold. It’s been three months since Miss Mystic Megara was slighted on everyone’s favorite love match reality show LOVE PLATEAU and we still haven’t gotten a good answer on how New England’s favorite psychic is doing. It seems her all seeing eyes have a blindspot --”

CLICK!

The television cut to black as an agitated, purple fuzzy lump on the couch chucked the remote back onto the coffee table. “Dickheads,” she muttered. The fuzzy lump moved, disentangling herself from her fuzzy shell as she got up off the couch. This, Meg decided, called for ice cream.

“Total, absolute, motherfucking dickheads.”

Carefully plucking the purple blanket up off the floor and tossing it back onto the couch, she made her way to the kitchen. “The audacity -- blindspot? A blindspot?! Assholes. Can’t they come up with something more interesting than this shit? Surely some politician has to have worn their pants backwards or something.” Through all her muttering, she ripped open her freezer and dug out the pint of her favorite ice cream: Caramel Fudge Brownie. Only to be used in emergencies.

Or, you know, when you felt like melting into a puddle of goo and evaporating off the face of the planet where no one could ever perceive you again.  Same thing, thing really.

Meg decided to forgo putting the ice cream in a bowl and grabbed a spoon when she felt the presence rush her. It tingled under her skin, a chill running up her spine. The visceral announcement of dead person alert was enough to make her roll her eyes. She ripped the top off her ice cream pint.

“Whoever it is,” Meg said crankily, “Go away!”

“... Are you… talking to me?”

Meg gently put down her ice cream and spoon, and whirled on her heels to stare at the ghost. “Look here --” her voice caught in her throat. Lectures on boundaries and get the hell out and go see my brother stopped cold as she stared at the girl in her kitchen.

If there was one thing she forgot about White Crest from her time away, it was how violently so many spirits died here. The girl looked like she’d been mauled by an animal. The way spirits died here was disturbing, but her mother taught her it was always important to be kind and compassionate ,especially to people who had died violently.

“Miss?” the girl asked. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m here, I just -- I felt like this was the way I should go. And --”

Meg held up a hand, silencing the girl. “I know,” she said. Ghosts were attracted to mediums, almost able to sense them like they sensed spirits. It was uncanny, and Meg was unfortunately very used to it. She knew she should have asked Forest to come sooner to ward off her apartment. “It’s okay. Can you tell me your name?”

“Amelia,” she said.

“Can you tell me what happened to you?”

“I don’t… remember,” Amelia admitted. “I was with my brother and there was this portal thing --” Ah, right. Portals. Meg had almost forgotten about those. She didn’t realize they were real. “And then this huge animal…” Amelia stopped, brows furrowing together.

“Okay,” Meg said softly. “It’s okay, don’t push yourself.”

“What do I do?”

Meg bit her lip, leaning back against her countertop. “I’m going to send you to my brother, okay? He’ll be able to help you better than me.” Help her properly, at the very least.

“You have a brother?”

Meg smiled. “And a twin sister.”

“Oh! Do you two look alike?”

“A little, but we’re not identical twins.”

Amelia smiled back, the bloody mess of her face twisting strangely.

It took a little while to calm Amelia down enough to send her off to Forest, so by the time she cleared out and called her brother -- to both warn of Amelia coming to see him and to ask for some wards to put up --  her ice cream was a little soupy. That was okay, she could deal with soupy ice cream. Meg let out a sigh as she padded her way back to her living room. Her cats, white persian little shits, had taken refuge on her purple fuzzy blanket while she was dealing with the ghost.

“... Traitors,” Meg mumbled, plopping down onto the couch and kicking her feet up onto the coffee table.

At least Amelia was a good reminder that it could be worse. She hadn’t been mauled by some sort of portal demon. She was free to leave her house because she didn’t have death telekinetic powers like her twin sister. Meg leaned forward, swiping up the remote, and clicked the TV back on.

All she had to do was maintain some perspective, and she could get through this little scandal.

[ilovehallas]

Can it not just wait til morning

Relationships: Anders & Justice, Anders & Varric Tethras

Summary:

Anders wanders the streets of Lowtown at night to try and recover from a disturbing nightmare, but the implications of what he dreamed won't let him go and Justice only makes matters worse. When things reach a fever pitch, Anders rushes to the Hanged Man in need for friendship and reprieve.

Tags: Night Terrors, Mental Health Issues, Pre-Dragon Age II - Act 3, Friendship saves the day

Warning for graphic violence

[One of my favorite relationships in Dragon Age 2 is the friendship between Anders and Varric and the change in tone in their banter between Act 2 and Act 3 always gets to me. So I wrote a self-indulgent piece about it that completely went out of hand! There's a lot of other stuff I still wanted to get in there, but I did actually try to keep it brief. This oneshot takes place a short time after the Legacy DLC, between Acts 2 and 3. Please enjoy and let me know your thoughts!]

Read on AO3

Acrid fumes hung heavy in the air of the tunnels. The stench almost had its own physical presence in the way it crept into his air ways and made it hard to draw breath. It had made them all quiet as they tried to avoid stepping on the strange fleshy growths covering parts of the ground and the walls; if Anders looked too long he could swear they were pulsing slightly, feeling every pulse like the beat of his own heart.

Something lived here that Anders didn’t want to see. He tried to keep his eyes fixed to the back of the Warden-Commander, on the familiar griffon heraldry emblazoning her shield. Nothing in the way she moved betrayed whether she could sense it too. Her hand rested easy on the hilt of her sword.

The winding tunnels got progressively more difficult to traverse, forcing them to walk on the growths as the ground became uneven. They would give ever so slightly under Anders’ weight with a sickening, squelching sound. Everything was damp and warm, and Anders hoped that it was sweat that ran along his brow as his breathing grew more and more shallow.

Soon they were in place that Anders recognized well. They were in one of the many tunnels sleeping deep beneath Vigil’s keep, walking past long abandoned dark spawn barricades. How long had it been since they had walked these halls together? Sigrun smiled at him with understanding when she glanced over. When they reached a fork in the road, Anders found a weight finally lifted off his chest. Two massive holes were gaping in the stone, the one on the right side leading down another cramped path, and the other opening up to the inside of a large structure illuminated by an odd blue glow. The walls there were of solid stone adorned with careful geometric designs of lyrium, reaching up so impossibly high that Anders couldn’t even make out a ceiling when he entered. From far away, the soft echo of running water called out to him.  

A flicker of hope lit him up like a spark in dry kindling. This was it! The place they had been looking for! The exhaustion of their grueling eternal march fell off him like opened shackles as he turned and ran back to the others, cursing the way his robes would slow him down. When the canal spat him out, he was back in the deep roads. This time there was not an inch that was not covered in organic matter. The walls were infested with empty egg sacks sprouting from the flesh and Anders’ blood rushed in his ears, whispering to him in clicking and chittering sounds that whatever had nested there was watching him. His body and chest seized up around nothing in anticipation of a threat he couldn’t see, his limbs stiff and useless as the paralyzing poison of panic set in. But no, he could see it. When he looked down, through the grate of the drain under his feet, the thick tentacle of a broodmother emerged from the dark in greeting. When he lifted his head, he looked right into the bulging humanoid face of one of her Children, perched on its grotesque legs.

“We need you, Grey Warden” it spoke with a calm voice. Its claw-like appendages poised, it jumped at him baring its needle teeth and buried them deep into his neck. He didn’t even get to scream, his blood pooling in his mouth as his skin tore. He could feel the way the creature sucked the rest of it right out of his veins. His legs gave in, crushed by the weight of the childer now feasting on him.

“Why can’t I help you?” Justice wailed mournfully from Kristoff’s body, half swallowed by the wall. “I’m stuck here. Anders, what can I do? This isn’t right!”

“I don’t know!“ Anders forced out, his hands pushing fruitlessly at the darkspawn burrowing itself in his body. The fade was silent and sliding away further and further the deeper the teeth went. “Get off of me!”

“I apologize for what I must do to you” the childer said. “But the Father says we need your blood.”

His arms were getting weaker, he still tried to dig his fingers into the creature’s eyes.

“It’ll make us free. Wouldn’t that be just?”

Anders sought Justice’s eye, his own despair reflected back at him. Justice opened his mouth as he struggled, his words coming out as a death rattle. “Why can’t I change this? Why aren’t you letting me?”

“But it’ll hurt us too. It’ll be sad.”

Everything was becoming blurry, colors and sensations mixing together in agony. He couldn’t see, couldn’t smell, couldn’t move, couldn’t feel. There was only the sound of this voice.

“We’ll miss the song. Oh, the beautiful song! How we’ll miss it!”

“I can hear it too, Anders” a woman whispered. The Warden Commander! She had to do something! He had watched her cut down dragons, why wasn’t she doing anything? Why wasn’t she helping? Nothing had ever stopped her before, not archdemons, not self-preservation, not reason.  “It’s heart-wrenching. There is a part of me that understands the darkspawn now. Why they long to hear it so much…”

She began to hum an unfathomable melody that was alien and familiar at once, like the impression of a song he’d forgotten in his childhood. Blindly he tried to reach her so he could make her stop, somehow, whatever it took, but there was nothing, only a great expanse of nothing where her voice became a drop in the ocean of the song.

It thrummed in his chest like it came from inside his bones—

“They call to us! They need us! Please! Grey Warden! Oh, Grey Warden!”

The whole world shaken by the song calling—                

  Anders awoke drenched in sweat with a sob. Eyes unfocused and mentally still entangled in the images of his nightmare, his hands shot up to touch his neck to convince himself that there was no darkspawn there. Relief when he felt that his skin was intact but it was running hot, crawling with something that weren’t there.  He was trembling all over, couldn’t stop gasping, his stomach was rolling, there was a flash of blue. Quick, quick where—

Scrambling to get up, Anders managed to take a few steps before he had to lean against the wall for support and retched once, twice. The nausea was still there, but it receded just as much as Anders needed it to so that he could reach for a cloth and wipe the saliva and vomit from his mouth.

He looked around frantically, taking a moment to recognize he was in his own clinic. It was pitch dark in the room save for a little lantern and it slowly dawned on him that he must’ve fallen asleep in the evening, only to wake in the middle of the night from a nightmare. And how lucky that he did wake.

A nightmare… Anders always kept a bowl or two of clean water around when treating patients. Knowing this place better than the back of his hand, he found one of them even in the relative darkness and splashed his face with the water. For good measure he rubbed his hands over his face, hoping that if he convinced himself enough that he was awake, the sick sense of dread looming over him would disappear. The scratch of his stubble was oddly grounding, but his hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

It had been so visceral. Even now he felt little aftershocks of the “song”. And if there were not the usual noise of a night in Darktown, he was certain that he would be able to hear a faint melody from deep underground.

Maker’s breath, he had to get out of here.

As Anders headed for one of the exits to Lowtown he passed the faces of people he’d seen too many times. There were children that were growing up before his eyes in the dirt. He hastened his pace.

To wander the maze of Lowtown alone at night as a mage was among the most stupid things one could do in Kirkwall. Anders could not find it in himself to care, feeling himself embraced by the night’s chill when he reached the surface. It soothed his burning skin much like ointment did to a wound. A sigh came over his lips as he tipped his head back to gaze upon the stars. See? he thought triumphantly to himself. No ceiling, no stone. Only sky. Just a regular night in Kirkwall, whatever that meant these days.

He drifted in and out of alleyways he’d never seen in the years he’d lived here to stay out of the templars’ sight, along streets he’d last walked before he’d met Hawke. There was no one place he really wanted to be in right now, he was simply grateful for the quiet in his skull that the movement and the cold afforded him. Hadn’t really had much of that lately, or ever, since he’d let Justice in. He looked down from a ledge of a dead end to the docks, his gaze sweeping across to where the few lights of the Gallows gleamed. It was a bit strange, if he thought about it. Justice made it hard to remember dreams usually. Somehow Anders had assumed that if he were to experience a nightmare again, it would involve a templar. It would have been kinder.

The wind tugged at Anders as he stared transfixed at the circle, strands of hair falling into his eyes. The longer he looked, the louder his heart thumped in his chest, the muscle squeezing like a clenched fist as images flashed before his eyes. He tried to push them away, but Justice would not relent. When Bethany’s face entered his mind, Anders pressed the heels of his hands against his closed eyes.

“I was just going for a walk” he muttered, bracing himself against Justice’s reproach. “You know, I thought it was you who said that there’s beauty in this world and now you won’t even let me appreciate the moonshine. That’s more than just a little unfair.”

He raised his head again to the one moon shining bright tonight, hands trembling once more. Something in him stirred at the sight so that even Anders had to smile a little. The serenity of night. The gratitude of a mage holding up pieces of their broken phylactery. The relief when the fever of a patient finally broke against the odds. Finally storming the baroness’ estate. The amulet Hawke had given him that he kept under his shirt, just out of sight but he always knew it was there. Darkspawn blood gleaming on the Warden Commander’s blade. A cat purring on his lap. The granite fortifications of the keep. A ring, a ring made of lyrium, she’d given him a ring. The people of this plane couldn’t hear it, but he could. Like the fade woven into sound, a beautiful song that calls…

Ander’s stomach lurched unexpectedly and he managed to clasp his hand over his mouth before he threw up this time. With great effort and his insides still twisting he swallowed it back down, coughing and gagging as he stumbled away from the ledge.

A spike of irritation. It’s not that kind of song, Anders thought. He retraced his steps to an intersection, taking a path that lead left through a narrow alley as his restlessness returned with a vengeance. And it wasn’t his memory for sure. A rat squeaked in panic when he nearly stepped on it and he cursed as the critter hurried past him. He darted out of the alley, then down a flight of stairs hewn directly into the stone, starting to feel as though something was lurking right behind him.

Why was he angry? The Warden Commander had never wronged them. Because it wasn’t about her or about wrongs. Anders’ coat nearly caught on one of the iron spikes jutting out from the ground. The problem was that he had never wanted to go back there, but Hawke had taken him anyway. And what did he do? What did he hear?

He’s not Vengeance. Or wasn’t he? He’s not a demon. But we’re an abomination. Anders gritted his teeth. Fenris was right on that account at least. He had become an abomination long ago, even if the process wasn’t as sudden as the Chantry would think. Justice wouldn’t like to be reminded, but if it weren’t for Hawke and the others, they would have slain that poor girl they’d meant to protect. And underneath the Vimmark Mountains they’d turned his magic even against his friends. All because—

Anders’ throat was beginning to hurt even though he wasn’t even running. Feverishly he touched his neck to prove to himself once again that there were no teeth. A piece of himself had never left the Deep Roads. And what remained of Justice now? Some memories and a rage that seared him to the bone. Behind him he heard footsteps and the rattle of armor.

What if it was a templar?

Yes, what then?

Somehow the question didn’t come with enough fear. Or any. The truth was that right now Anders almost hoped a templar would come and find him. He didn’t need a staff anymore to defend himself, thanks to Justice magic would pour all too readily through the veil. One dead templar, one dead mage, Anders feared that at this point it didn’t even make a difference anymore. Anders peered over his shoulder. A guardswoman stopped in her tracks when she noticed him, narrowed her eyes, and then continued to walk her round without a second glance.  Likewise Anders picked up his pace again as well.

He wasn’t an abomination. Vengeance was angry now. He was spewing Chantry propaganda at himself because it was difficult to care about this world, beautiful and broken as it was. He couldn’t give up now just because it was difficult. There was too much here that had gone unpunished and not a day would pass without more suffering heaped onto the pile unless this whole damn system crumbled. He wasn’t an abomination.

Anders recognized the area they were in now, the streets broader to accommodate the crowds that usually mingled here. There were people shrouded in darkness in the corners of the market, but none of them looked his way. His nails were digging into his arm and he wondered if maybe he could...

It was a trap; every mage lived in a trap. Push a little to pull your head from the noose and the rope around your neck only tightens, every single time. Vengeance prodded, reminding him of Karl until Anders had to bite the inside of his cheek. Thousands of voices in Thedas were crying out for Justice! Somebody had to answer the call, even if it was a losing battle, even if he was going to try to hold back a tidal wave by himself! He wasn’t an abomination!

He was a liability! Anders took two stairs at a time, his blood boiling despite himself. Chill had turned to cold in the time he’d wasted running around, but he was pretty certain there was a passage back to Darktown nearby. If he was lucky he could get another hour or two of sleep before the daily grind picked back up.

Was he running away again?

He wasn’t running. Wasn’t he? The Warden Commander smiling at him, one of her rare smiles. In war, victory. In peace, vigilance. In death, sacrifice. Anders or Justice remembered her reciting the motto to herself in a light-hearted tune before leaving for Amaranthine to defend it. This was his chance to remedy his cowardice. 

Anders didn’t have the energy left tonight to argue. He knew, yes, he knew there was no turning back and that he had chosen this. There was no escape from the Wardens, no escape from the Calling, from Justice, from himself, from the path he’d chosen, from the path the templars were forcing. But wasn’t he allowed to be angry to know this for a little while? Wasn’t he allowed to mourn that for all the freedom he fought for, Anders had forsaken his own? He hadn’t wanted to be an abomination.

Vengeance didn’t understand anymore. It would be the most beautiful thing of all to see the circles fall, no matter what it took. No more Ser Rylocks, no more Ser Alriks, no more Merediths.

Anders frantically looked around—

It’d be beautiful but it wasn’t all that Anders wanted. He’d wanted to be free, and now he’d never be. He had made a demon out of Justice, he couldn’t trust himself to make the right decisions. All of this had been a mistake. And even if he succeeded, one day the taint would come for him. 

Don’t think like that! It wasn’t his fault that the world had made him like this! This was worth every price! He knew that!

There had to be something to get him out of this, change of course—

He couldn’t be trusted, couldn’t be relied on! He didn’t know what to do!

He would find a way, he had to! The circles had to go! They had never cared about the suffering they inflicted on mages, generation after generation! Whatever he could do it would be justified! They had sealed their fate centuries ago!

They had to go, but—

IT WOULD ONLY BE JUST!

Anders winced, the words booming in his skull with terrible finality. Something in his mind was burgeoning against his defenses, the veil around him straining and warping under its stress. Anders hissed, stemming against the tide of righteous fury and frustration that incensed Vengeance. The pressure abated not long after, but the damage was done. His heart and head were pounding, everything in him was reeling as it had when he’d woken, but suddenly he remembered: he knew where he was. Down this street past the merchant’s stand, one more set of stairs, then turn right. He was nauseous with resentment, though he couldn’t say if it was his own or who it was aimed at. He almost stumbled his way up. It was embarrassing that it felt as though he would be okay if he just made it there, maybe, but he’d lost all of his dignity already running through Kirkwall like a madman. Might as well act like a child and pretend the bad things can’t get him so long as the candle was burning. He rounded the corner, his heart skipping a beat. When he saw it, relief washed over him warmly and he couldn’t help but laugh.

Somehow he’d made it to the Hanged Man just in time.

Not giving himself the time for second thoughts he pushed past a drunken patron through the entrance door, praying that they weren’t closed yet. With a creak the door swung open for him, allowing him to step inside, the tavern reeking of desperation and hundreds of beers and ales spilled over the decades. Barely anyone was still here. The old man who was always muttering to himself was sitting at one of the tables by himself, apparently only half-awake, and a man was leaning on the counter where the tired bartender Corff was already eyeing Anders. No Isabela, no Varric. Shit.

“We’re about to close.”

Anders paused and dug through the pocket of his coat for coins. “Enough time left for me to get a drink, right?” He gave the man a strained smile and slid the silver he’d found across the counter, hating the way he couldn’t keep his hands still. The man caved.

With his freshly-purchased drink in hand and a view to the door Anders plopped down on one of the benches in the back of the room, sinking in on himself a little. He hadn’t planned to actually drink anything, but the longer he sat the more he became aware of how drained he really was. A dull ache spread through his whole body from exhaustion and his throat and mouth were parched while hair stuck uncomfortably to his forehead with sweat. His mind was suspiciously quiet when he raised the bottle to his lips and drank. The sense of doom and the heat of anger however still formed a tight knot in his chest that kept him tense, so he knew it wasn’t over yet. Static buzzed in his ears.

When the entrance door creaked once more, Anders perked up.

Sheer dumb luck, Anders couldn’t believe it, it was sheer dumb luck that the person who entered really was Varric. When he spotted Anders he raised his hand in greeting and made a beeline to his table.

“Varric, we’re closing!” Corff yelled in dismay, but the dwarf only waved him off.

“You know, you should probably consider listening to him” Anders commented as Varric took a seat across from him against the bartender’s protests. “One day he’ll stab you in your sleep.”

“Oh he’s harmless” Varric said. He opened his mouth as if to elaborate, but something in his expression changed when he looked at Anders. Then after some apparent deliberation with a bit too much sincerity: “…You look like shit.”

The corners of Anders’ lips twitched up reflexively, unsure yet if he wanted the concern. “And here I was thinking I only felt like it!”

Anders didn’t feel like joking, he hadn’t felt like it in weeks but there was something soothing about when they both broke out into nervous chuckles over his quip. A bit like a reassurance that oh right, so he could still talk like a person.

“Did you run into any trouble?”

Anders made it a point to yawn. “I just fell asleep in the clinic. I wouldn’t recommend it.”

Varric didn’t inquire further even though Anders could see that he knew it was a bit more than that. There was a twinge of disappointment and unease. Usually Varric would fill moments like this with empty talk but for some reason he was holding off on it. So they sat suspended in unnatural silence until Anders had drunk the last drop from his bottle. He licked his lip, waiting for Varric to strike but nothing came. The only quiet sounds came from the bar and the fire crackling nearby, the static in Anders’ head grew louder. He was getting ready to abandon ship if this was how it was going to go, when it occurred to him what Varric was doing.

Anders studied his companion’s face, who was pretending to read a letter he’d pulled from one of his pockets. It would be terrifyingly easy to tell him about everything that was troubling him; really, a part of Anders yearned to let it all spill out of him in the hope that maybe once it was out this pressure in his head would be gone. That used to work. But there was too much to put to words by now, steeped in too much shame, and too much that Varric for all his kindness simply wouldn’t understand. Or shouldn’t have to hear. Once he said it, he would never be able to take any of it back. But, Anders didn’t want to leave. He desperately didn’t want to leave and be alone with himself. And there was something that he knew would be safest with Varric. It would be a compromise.  

“I should come back in the evening when the others are here” Anders ventured.

Varric didn’t even look up. “Oh come on. You don’t come by the Hanged Man much anymore, would be a shame if you left so soon. You must’ve missed the filth.”

“Not particularly, no.”

“Don’t be so serious, of course you have! It goes great with your look right now. So, are you staying?”

Corff was glowering at them now. “Sure.”

Varric stuffed the letter back to where it came from with less care than one would a handkerchief and got up. Anders hesitated one last moment before he followed suit, swallowing his reluctance as he took the familiar path up to Varric’s room. In all the years he’d known Varric, somehow the room had stayed mostly the same. Much of that was probably to blame on the tavern itself, but it still struck Anders now that it had been some time since he’d last been in there. The biggest difference he could make out was that there were now chairs to accommodate a human or an elf; there were little traces that friends had left. It was weirdly cute.   

Anders sank on the chair closest to Varric’s favorite little throne, stretching out his legs. For a room at the Hanged Man it was really quite nice, even if the lack of windows was depressing. He felt a bit out of place.

Varric took his seat and wrung his hands. “So what are you in the mood for? Need an editor for your manifesto, or do you want to brainstorm—“

“No” Anders cut him off sharply. “Not tonight.”

“Somebody’s touchy” Varric scoffed. “But alright. What is it then?”

Anders tried to collect his thoughts, frustrated with himself that he was so out of practice that he couldn’t be like Varric and talk about things without mentioning them. His gaze lingered on the vase with wilted flowers Varric kept on his desk next to an unopened bottle of a Tevinter vintage. “I’ve been thinking about how I’ve gone into the Deep Roads twice now since leaving the Grey Wardens.”

“Oh? You’re not getting nostalgic now, are you? I know I said you should reconsider your career but…”     

“No. No, not at all. I absolutely despise the Deep Roads. I’m still angry at Hawke for asking me to come along at all. I thought he knew better than that” Anders admitted, the words bitter on his tongue. Acrid fumes, the unnerving feeling of another creature in his blood. “But it’s hard to say no to him, so guess I’m the idiot.”

At that Varric’s expression briefly turned serious again. “It’s just our luck that whenever the Deep Roads are involved, we either get screwed over or somebody’s got it out for Hawke. But I could also live without ever having to go down there again.”

“That isn’t the point. But it’s actually a bit funny. Hawke reminds me at times of the Warden Commander.”

“How so?”

“Charismatic bastards that attract a special kind of trouble and surround themselves with the worst kinds of people” Anders deadpanned, relieved when Varric relaxed again.

“We’re just a bit rough around the edges” Varric replied. “But go on, I’m interested in hearing this.”

“How much have I told you before?”

“Aside from the story of how you were recruited and how mad the templar was that the Hero of Ferelden and the King were both telling her off? A story here and there. If I didn’t already know the Order is fishy, I’d have guessed as much from how you talk about them.”

Anders clicked his tongue. “Well then. Care to hear about my dark past?”

“Sure” Varric said with a wink. “It’ll come in handy if I ever need inspiration for unrealistic Grey Warden characters.”

Anders grinned. “So have you heard this one before: the Hero of Ferelden, a drunk dwarf, an apostate and his cat, a member of the legion of the dead, the son of the disgraced Howe family, a slightly homicidal Dalish mage and a rotting corpse walk into the Deep Roads…”

“A corpse?!”

“And yet somehow the dwarf smelled worst” Anders joked. “Oghren was a complete pig. At first I didn’t really understand why we were bothering with him, but apparently he’d traveled with the Warden Commander during the Blight. Turned out he really had a hand for cutting down darkspawn. So much so that he left his wife and unborn child to go kill more of them. …Thinking about it, I’m sure he would have loved the Hanged Man. Filthy, barely any sunlight during the day, cheap alcohol…”

“Ouch, that was unnecessary” Varric grumbled. “But I’ve heard that name before. Maybe he should’ve just stayed in Orzammar, Maker knows they’re always trying to get their hands on lunatics like that. A corpse though—”

“The strange thing is that they were all like this” Anders insisted. “And if they weren’t from the start, they would be by the end of it. Nathaniel made the classic mistake of trying to assassinate the Warden Commander in revenge for daddy dearest and got recruited as thanks. He was a terrible grump about it too and said he'd rather be hanged. But give it a little time and before you knew it he was fully indoctrinated. So maybe what Orzammar really needs is better recruiters.”

“I’ll let them know somehow” Varric snorted and rose from his seat. Anders watched him grab a bottle and pour its content into a glass. He was beginning to feel as though a string that was cutting into his flesh was threatening to loosen, only a little bit. Varric placed the glass in front of him and settled back into his own chair, keeping an expectant eye on him. “Go on.”

Anders nodded to Varric in silent thanks and eagerly drank the watered down ale. “She’d recruited really anyone who seemed half-way capable and was unlucky enough to cross our path. So that’s how we ended up with Velanna and Sigrun. I think Velanna only listened to us because the Warden Commander was Dalish herself. When we found her she was having a grand time burning down trade caravans because she was convinced her sister had been abducted by humans, when it was really darkspawn. Sigrun got recruited after we fought our way through a thaig together. She was an awfully cheerful lady for someone who was supposed to be dead. Pick-pocketed me at least six times for sport though.”

“And it kept working?”

“She was really good.”

“I’m sure she was. And…?”

“And then there was Ser Pounce-a-lot, the best kitten anyone could ask for. There isn’t much to say about the corpse, Varric.”

Varric put his hands up defensively. “Excuse me, but you can’t drop that in there and expect me to not be curious!”

“That was Justice’s old host” Anders explained, overcome with a shiver that wasn’t his own.  “He doesn’t want me to talk about it. Just know that he was there.”

“Oh.”

Anders’ vision zeroed in momentarily on the wine bottle. Another bottle just like this always stood in Hawke’s study where he needed it most. “But I think that gives you a pretty good idea of what we were like.”

Varric hummed and scratched his chin. “Should I be worried that you’re comparing us to that little cult you’re describing?”

“In our defense, we were a pretty fun cult sometimes.”

Anders set his glass down softly before he crossed his arms, leaned back in his chair and frowned at the ceiling in thought. He’d always kept to the stories that didn’t require context or detail beyond the way the hurlock had tripped over his staff and off a cliff. He hadn’t thought before about how to convey personalities or meaning while leaving the important things unspoken. The Warden Commander wiping blood from her cheek, bent over the dead body of the ogre she’d killed. Hawke breathing hard, checking to see if he had killed the Arishok for good.    

“Think about it: If it weren’t for Hawke, none of us would given the other a second glance” Anders began. “That’s what it was like with the Warden Commander as well. They’re the kind of people that draw others to them and make you want to stick around just to see what they get up to next.”

“That… puts it well actually.”

“How many times has Hawke asked you to join him to do something that is obviously a bad idea? And you went along anyway? That happens practically every other week.”

“Like all the times he decided he’d pick a fight with every gang in Hightown? Or maybe when he took us to the Wounded Coast and got involved with hunting down an extremely dangerous criminal? Everything involving the Qunari? My personal favorite is the time he went to kill some dragons with us in the Bone Pit.”

“Exactly—“ Anders had to swallow, “but you always expect things to go well just because he seems so convinced that it will.”

“And it usually does.���

“It does. Every time we go into a fight I can’t help but trust him.”

He stopped himself there. Why had he agreed to come with to the Deep Roads? Because so long as Hawke was there, it was as though there was a lifeline. The inevitability of this world seemed to hold less power over him and it was eating Anders up with envy and admiration. He had no choice but to want to stay near.  Varric waited patiently. Perhaps he understood what Anders couldn’t think.

Eventually he asked: “So what did the Hero of Ferelden do that gained your trust?”

“Oh, I saw her do a vertical leap and ram a sword straight through an ogre’s skull.”

“…You’re shitting me.”

Anders shifted for comfort, glad to direct the conversation into a different direction. “I’m serious. And she made it look easy, too. It was equal parts disgusting and impressive.”

“What did that look like, exactly?” Varric asked, sounding casual but Anders recognized that curious glint in his eyes.

Anders felt another grin pulling at his mouth. “We were harmlessly traipsing around the Wending Woods killing darkspawn, when suddenly that big stupid beast charged at us. All the Warden Commander did was to jump straight up and angle her sword right and the ogre practically impaled itself. She braces herself against the ogre that is still barreling forward, yanks her blade out and blood explodes everywhere. We’re all hit by the spray while she manages a perfect landing as the ogre collapses behind her.”

“Do you have more details by any chance?”

“She had her sword enchanted with a rune that imbued it with electricity, so it smelled of smoked darkspawn in the whole clearing. Is that graphic enough? If not, I can go on all day. Grey Wardens kill a lot of darkspawn.”

Apparently delighted by what he was hearing Varric sat straighter, his hand hovering near a quill but not grabbing it. Anders took it as an invitation anyway, blowing the spider webs off memories he’d kept stowed away. He started off with the easy things, stories like the ones with the ogre. Violence was mindlessly entertaining after all. Gesticulating dramatically he told of encounters with sylvans, of blighted wolves, of the ghosts of dwarves conjured by stone hacking at impressions of darkspawn, reenacting their deaths until the end of time. He regaled Varric with all the darkspawn heads that had exploded from shield bashes, arrows and magic blasts.    Whatever bound him was unraveling. His heart beat fast in excitement whenever Varric interjected and needled him, when they both laughed at the absurdity of it all. Nathaniel once shot a genlock with its own arrow. One hurlock was so confused to see its fellow darkspawn beheaded in one swing of Oghren’s axe that it suffered the same fate. Velanna’s fireballs had singed Ander’s robes on more than one occasion. Soon Varric began to share his own tales, giving Anders the space to remember the little things quietly by himself. Taking a week to learn that the Warden Commander’s name was Serket because nobody ever used it. Sigrun proudly showing off the brass telescope she’d been given. How he smuggled Ser Pounce-a-lot along on missions and had to chase after the cat through half of Amaranthine.  He was feeling more like a person, more like himself than he had in months.

Vengeance’s ache continued to sit with him through it all but it was different now. What had split his head in half hours ago with every heart beat was just the occasional throb behind his eye. The separation between then and now may only be paper-thin but it was there. No, so maybe he wouldn’t tell Varric of the Architect with his intelligent darkspawn and that Hawke and Serket thus had more in common than immunizing against common sense. He wouldn’t talk about the children or how he was being eaten alive by his choices. But with Varric he didn’t have to for the pressure to ease.

By the end of it Anders was curled up in his chair, his coat hung over the backrest for cushoning. The conversation had trickled away somewhere along the way. The stasis wasn’t uncomfortable, but it was tinged with the melancholy of knowing that morning had come. There was a sliver of light coming from under the door. Varric had gotten up and laid down out of sight from him some time ago. Anders scratched his neck in anticipation, static back in his head as he bated his breath. This silence wasn’t empty yet, the way it was when people decide to go to sleep. This was the twilight hour in between. The backrest dug into his cheek.

“Why did you leave the Wardens then?”

And exhaled. “That’s complicated.”

“So?”

“I was a different person back then.”

“Well yeah, people change. That’s what being a person is like.”

Feeling the fade touch his mind when he agreed to take Justice into him, believing with all his being that this would be the key. A queasy mixture of joy and bitterness accompanied the memory as he and Justice couldn’t agree. The water had only continued to rise around him. What did he have to show for the person he was now?

He could hear Varric turn over. “Listen, Blondie. So maybe you weren’t a good Grey Warden. But you’ve picked another battle that’s about as insane and that unfortunately seems to be working for you.”

Anders stared into the darkness of the room wordlessly, blinking as though stunned. He waited until he was certain that Varric was asleep, listening close for his breathing. “Thank you, Varric.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Of course he’d say that. If he were to mention it to Varric later anyway he’d brush it off and find a way to paint it as the most incidental thing in the world. Anders curled in more on himself even though would become painful soon, finally closing his eyes. A deep calm crept into the space the tension had left behind.

Varric’s friendship was so often understated like that. It made it so easy to want to confide in him, simply because he didn’t ask too much. Nothing had to be serious. He cared in a way that Anders hadn’t had enough mind to appreciate lately. Maybe you couldn’t trust him to keep all your secrets, but you could always trust him to remind you that you were only a person. Varric was a good friend. He’d have to find something to give to Varric, something that would leave a trace of him, something to express… He’d find something… something…

Hours after Anders had left, Varric noticed a single tawny feather on the ground under one of his chairs. He picked it up, held it between his fingers briefly before he placed it gently among his other keepsakes. 

[angelsswirl]

American Style

Chapter 3: Into It

Wrd Cnt: 1k+

Rating: M

Notes: Hi

The weather's only sunny when I'm under it. I haven't really changed, yeah, I'm just confident.

Lisa wouldn't call herself a detective. She would hesitate to even call herself anything close. But she's got a name from a bra that doesn't belong to her, and a laptop that does, but will definitely die any minute. So, she'll detect to the best of her ability.

"What are you doing?" Jisoo had asked her this exact question with the exact same tone of voice for probably the fifth time within the last 45 minutes. And sure, Lisa hadn't answered, but she had thought that the hint would have been gotten by now.

"You're ignoring me. Did I do something wrong?"

And just like that Lisa felt bad.

She set the laptop on the bed in the space to the left of her. Jisoo was in the hotel bed to the right of Lisa and wouldn't be able to see the screen from its position.

"No, Chu. You didn't do anything wrong. I'm just doing some research and got caught up. Sorry for ignoring you." And she meant it. She was sorry for ignoring Jisoo, but next time she's going to the lobby or something, where no one will bother her.

"Ok. Cool." Jisoo's chill demeanor set right back into its normal place.

Lisa grabbed the laptop back up and sat it back on her lap. Jisoo had been successfully deterred and the lobby idea would be a waste of time now. She was on the cusp of something, she could feel it.

She resumed her search.

So, apparently, your name isn't as unique as she thought it would be.

There was a lot of wading through instagram model profiles and random facebook links to things she would never need to inform herself of.

That is until she comes across several articles highlighting the governor of California. That of who Lisa is just now realizing has the same last name as you.

She clicks on the first article titled 'Christopher Y/LN: The Man Behind The Hollywood Sign'. Her doing so is pure impulse and adrenaline. Lisa isn't even sure if she's controlling her own limbs anymore.

The article is by The Washington Post, so she's sure she can trust it enough. The very first thing that pops up on the website after the arbitrary 'SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER' assault is a photograph.

A photograph of a familiar looking man and his familiar looking family.

The man, darker in complexion, stands with his left arm around his wife. His grey-blue suit glimmering in the California sun. His hair is cropped close to his head and his face...Well, his face looks exactly like the person's face standing inbetween him and his wife. The person's face is so familiar, so recognizable that Lisa has to swallow down her visceral reaction as to not disturb Jisoo.

The person's face is your face, and your face is Royalty's face, which means the governor's daughter is a stripper. And how's that for some plot.

'Pictured above, from left to right, New Californian Governor Christopher Y/LN, 47, his daughter Y/N Y/LN, 21, and his wife Michelle Y/LN, 42.'

Lisa took a deep breath. What had started out as a game of six degrees from Kevin Bacon, had quickly turned into reality. Lisa's reality. More importantly, your reality.

Lisa must have been staring at her laptop unmoving and wide-eyed for too long because Jisoo speaks up again.

"Everything okay?"

"No."

Lisa doesn't elaborate and Jisoo doesn't ask her to.

It took longer than she thought it would to find you specifically, and fuck is that creepy, but she can't help but feel like she's supposed to. Something other than her own wisdom is driving her.

You checked your person once more. You were known to forget your keys on occasion, so you made sure to pat yourself down more than once before leaving the apartment. Especially when Ryujin and Doyeon weren't there like they weren't now.

You tucked your soccer ball under your arm and wrapped the laces of your cleats over your shoulder.

You reached for the front door and opened it.

"Lisa?"

Lisa's fist was raised like she was about to knock, or punch someone in the face with terrible form. She had jumped a bit when you opened the door. You only raised an eyebrow. It took a lot for someone to startle you.

"Uh yeah?" Lisa slowly lowered her hand to her side.

"Normally, I don't let anyone see me without makeup until the third date."

Lisa's shoulders slumped a bit, "Neither do I."

You smirked lightly, a stray hair springing free from your ponytail and landing in your face as you tilted your head down slightly.

Lisa can't help herself and rushed out, "You're beautiful."

You would hate to admit that you were caught off gaurd, though, the barely visible tint to your cheeks said otherwise. It's surprisingly not a compliment you heard very often.

'Sexy'? Sure. 'Hot'? Even more so. But none as sincere as Lisa's 'You're beautiful.'

"Do you want to come in?" You could imagine just how uncomfortable it might be for Lisa to stand in the hallway of your apartment building where just anyone could hear them.

Lisa shook her head. You looked like you were about to leave and Lisa didn't want to interrupt any plans you had already made, "Uh, no. I don't want to mess up your plans." She gestured with her hand to your outfit that she was having trouble not raking her eyes up and down.

Seriously, how could you even move freely in yoga pants that tight?

"It's really not a problem." Lisa just shook her head again.

"Aren't you wondering how I found you?" Lisa asked with a wince. Almost as if she was afraid to remind you how damn near weird this entire situation was.

"Not particularly." You would like to spare yourself the details of how easy it is to probably find your address. Somehow, you don't think you'd sleep well with that information.

And yes, you realized that this situation was weird, but it's different. It's different because it's Lisa. With Lisa it isn't creepy or weird or any other negatively connotated word. In actuality, it's sort of endearing. Lalisa Manoban found you interesting enough to pursue. At this point, you just hoped she wouldn't be disappointed with the real you.

"Are you sure you don't want to come in?"

Lisa observed the look in your eye. She's sure you would have her believe that you and Royalty were nothing alike, that Royalty was just a persona. But Lisa thinks the contrary.

Royalty and you were one and the same.

There's no way one person can fake that much sensuality and want with one single glance.

"And do what exactly?"

You smirked once again, you turned your head into your empty apartment, then slowly turned back to Lisa, "I'll leave that up to you."

[starlightbuck]

i wanna be known (by you)

part 2/2 || word count: 5.9k || read on AO3

When he leaves, Eddie checks his phone. Even after all that time he spent obsessing over what to wear, he still managed to arrive at the restaurant early. He left his name and Buck’s at the front so that whenever Buck arrives, he would be led right to their table. It was a conscious decision on Eddie’s part to sit so that he’s facing the front door, that way he can see the moment Buck steps foot inside.

In the meantime, Eddie focuses on keeping his heart from beating right out of his chest. This is the first date that he’s been on in years and it’s safe to say that his nerves are getting the best of him. It’s just that, he likes Buck. Really likes him, which feels almost stupid to say considering the fact that they’ve never officially met.

It is what it is though, a side-effect of living in a world where online dating has become a norm.

Eddie adjusts the sleeve of his light blue button-up for the third time in less than five minutes. Maybe he should’ve gone with the green long-sleeve instead. It was Abuela that convinced him that he looked more handsome in light blue. Then again, she might’ve just said that to get Eddie to stop fussing over his outfit and actually leave the house on time.

“Good evening, sir. Can I take your order?”

“I’m actually going to wait for my date to arrive before ordering anything.”

The older gentleman nods in understanding. “Of course.”

When he leaves, Eddie checks his phone. Even after all that time he spent obsessing over what to wear, he still managed to arrive at the restaurant early. He left his name and Buck’s at the front so that whenever Buck arrives, he would be led right to their table. It was a conscious decision on Eddie’s part to sit so that he’s facing the front door, that way he can see the moment Buck steps foot inside.

In the meantime, Eddie focuses on keeping his heart from beating right out of his chest. This is the first date that he’s been on in years and it’s safe to say that his nerves are getting the best of him. It’s just that, he likes Buck. Really likes him, which feels almost stupid to say considering the fact that they’ve never officially met.

It is what it is though, a side-effect of living in a world where online dating has become a norm.

When Eddie checks his phone again, he sees that it’s a couple of minutes past the time that him and Buck agreed to meet at the restaurant. Eddie goes into their text conversation to make sure he sent the right address. When he sees that he has, he locks his phone and waits. The restaurant is located in downtown LA and traffic is bound to be a nightmare, especially on a Friday night.

Twenty minutes later, the waiter comes back to the table to ask if Eddie wants to place his drink order. He asks for water.

Five minutes after that, the waiter is back at the table refilling the glass of water Eddie all but chugged in an attempt to distract himself from his date’s absence. He texted Buck to see where he was but has yet to receive a response.

Another twenty minutes pass before the waiter is back at Eddie’s table.

“I’m so sorry, sir. But if you’re not planning on ordering anything-”

“It’s fine.” Eddie is already out of his seat and tugging his jacket off of the back of his seat. He’s sure that his cheeks are stained red by the shame he feels about being stood up like this, but it’s nothing in comparison to the disappointment coursing through him. “I’m leaving. Thank you for your kindness.”

He leaves a $20 bill on the table and walks out of the restaurant without looking back.

Buck doesn’t get back to him that night or the night afterwards.

“It’s my own fault,” he tells Hen as they work together to clean the fire truck. It’s been four days since his failed date with Buck and just as long since he’s heard from him.  “I was stupid for thinking I could actually trust someone I met through an app.”

“You’re not stupid,” Hen counters. “He is for missing out on the chance of being with someone as amazing as you.”

He knows Hen’s trying to make him feel better, but the words fall flat. If he’s so amazing, how come Buck didn’t show up? Why did he ghost him? Is it something he said during one of their conversations? Did he scare Buck away without even realizing it?

The worst part is, Eddie misses him. Him, this person Eddie never even had a chance to meet. But it’s true. There’s a Buck-shaped void in Eddie’s life, one that he’s struggling to fill. He got used to their daily phone calls and texts and losing both so suddenly has left Eddie feeling like an addict being forced to quit his habit cold turkey.

Out of the corner of his eye, Eddie catches Chim making his way over to them. The last thing he wants is someone else weighing in on this whole situation. “Can we drop this?”

Hen looks less than pleased by the request but does as she’s asked. “Hey, Chim.”

“Did you guys hear about that big accident that happened Friday night?” Chim asks, in lieu of a greeting.

Eddie visibly winces at the mention of Friday and Hen places a reassuring hand on his shoulder, never once taking her eye off of Chim. “No, what happened?”

“Apparently there was some kind of explosion and a guy ended up trapped under his Jeep. It took-”

Eddie tunes out of the conversation and steps out from under Hen’s hand so he can move on to a different spot of the truck to clean.

After a week of radio silence from Buck, Eddie deletes every single one of the dating apps he has on his phone. He tried using a few and reached out to a couple of people, but none of them ever felt right. And, with the sting of Buck’s rejection still weighing heavily on his mind, Eddie didn’t feel like he could fully trust any of the people he was messaging anyways.

He contemplates deleting Buck’s number, but he can’t bring himself to do it.

Eddie compromises by putting Buck’s messages on Do Not Disturb.

That same weekend, May catches Eddie alone at a family barbecue being held at the Nash-Grant household.

“What ever happened with that cute guy you were talking to? Buck, right?”

Eddie stills and his breath gets lodged in his throat. He hates that he reacts so viscerally to the name. “It didn’t work out.”

Two weeks later, Chris is playing with his dad’s phone as the two of them make the drive to Abuela's house for Sunday dinner.

“Daddy, your phone says you have eight new messages.”

Eddie’s gaze briefly meets his son’s through the rearview mirror before focusing on the road again. He doesn’t remember seeing any new messages when he was on his phone a few minutes ago. “Just ignore them, Chris.”

Eddie has no way of knowing that his son doesn’t heed his advice, choosing instead to go to his dad’s messages app to see who’s sent him that many messages.

“Daddy, can I use your phone?”

Chris has made it a habit as of late to ask Eddie for his phone and his father doesn’t know what to make of that. The last thing he wants is for his son to become reliant on the device to keep him entertained. He knows how slippery that slope can be.

“How about we use those legos that Uncle Bobby bought you instead?”

Eddie expects Chris to be excited about the prospect of using his legos, but all Eddie gets is a pout. “Please? I’ll be quick, I promise.”

As his father, Eddie should be better at denying Chris’s requests even when a pout is involved. But there are days when Eddie will think back to how much of Chris’s life he missed out on while overseas and it makes it impossible for him to say no.

“Fine,” he relents. Chris cheers as Eddie passes his phone over to his son. “But you can only be on it for ten minutes.”

“Okay!”

Eddie makes it a point to check the time on his watch so he can cut Chris off exactly at ten minutes, before getting up to grab the lego set from Chris’s room. By the time he comes back, his son is smiling and laughing at his phone. Eddie assumes he’s either watching a video or playing one of the games he has downloaded on the phone. Since Eddie doesn't hear any voices or music, he assumes it’s the latter.

Two minutes before his time is up, Chris gets up off the couch and hands his father’s phone back to him. “I’m ready to play with my legos now.”

Eddie slides his phone into his back pocket and settles his son on the floor beside him so they can work on their building project together.

“Daddy, my friend is having a bad day.”

Eddie, who’s in the middle of doing the dishes, doesn’t look up. He’s too concentrated on getting the charred remains of his attempt at making pasta off of the pan before it’s too late. If Abuela finds out that he ruined yet another pan with his cooking attempts, he’s almost certain that she’ll disown him. “I’m sorry to hear that, bud.”

“You have to talk to him.”

“Why me?” Eddie turns on the hot water in the hopes that that’ll make this whole process easier.

Christopher huffs, a habit that he’s recently picked up. Eddie doesn’t know where his son learned it from, but he can’t say that he’s a fan of it. It acts as a reminder that his son is growing up and, as much as Eddie wishes he could stop time, it’s not possible. “Because he’s your friend too.”

And that is enough to turn Eddie away from the task at hand. “My friend?”

Christopher puts the phone back to his ear. “I think my daddy forgot about you. I’m going to put him on so he can help you feel better.”

Eddie watches in stunned silence as his son walks over to his side and holds the phone out to him. Chris has that determined look on his face that Eddie is sure he’s seen staring back at him in the mirror. The shock of seeing that expression on anyone other than himself is what prompts Eddie to answer the phone without glancing at the screen to see who it is he’s talking to. “Hello?”

“Eddie?”

Eddie’s still looking at his son, but he’s not really seeing him. His mind is too busy producing images of a man with golden hair, unfairly blue eyes, and a bruise-like birthmark. “Buck?”

It’s been almost a month since Eddie last heard from the other man. He had assumed that the time apart had been enough to erase his presence from Eddie’s mind and dull the effect he felt upon hearing Buck’s voice, but he was wrong. His heart is beating out a rapid cadence and the hand he’s using to hold his phone is shaking slightly. And how, how can he still be reacting like this to someone he’s never met?

“Eddie.”

“I don’t- I-” Words are failing him spectacularly and it annoys Eddie to no end. After the first few days of not hearing back from Buck, Eddie had worked up this whole monologue of things he would say to him. But weeks have passed and everything he thought he’d say when given the chance has all but flown out the window. Then he sees his son, the same person who definitely shouldn’t know who Buck is, sitting at the kitchen table and Eddie knows exactly what he wants to say. “Why the hell were you on the phone with my kid?”

“I can explain-”

“No,” Eddie interjects, feeling all of his anger towards Buck come bubbling back to the surface. He never found an outlet for his emotions after everything fell apart and now it’s coming back full force. Eddie is mindful of the fact that his son is only a few feet away. If not for that, this conversation would be a lot less child-friendly. “No. You stood me up and now, what? You’re using my kid to get back in my good graces?”

Buck has the good sense to not say anything, apparently already prepared for the verbal lashing he was set to receive from Eddie. His silence only works against him as something else occurs to Eddie. “How did you even get in contact with him? Through my phone?”

“I found his messages on your phone,” Chris answers, too young and innocent to identify his father’s tense and poised to lash out demeanor. “There was a little moon next to Buck’s name that was hiding his messages from you. But I saw them, so I responded.”

A lesson about privacy is not something Eddie thought he’d have to have with his son this early on in his life, but apparently it is. Eddie lowers the phone to address his son. “Remember when I told you in the past that you can’t take things that don’t belong to you? The same goes for whatever things you see on my phone, including messages I get from people.”

Chris’s lower lip juts outs and he lowers his head. “I’m sorry, daddy. But I liked talking to Buck. He’s nice.”

It’s the mention of what sounds like an ongoing conversation between Buck and Chris that leads Eddie to open his messages. Right there at the top of the screen with a half-moon next to it is Buck’s name.

Eddie likes to believe he’s an observant person, that the time he spent as a medic on the battlefield made it so that he was equipped to take notice of minor details that others might not. For him, having that ability could mean the difference between life and death for those he was treating. It’s an ability he thought he brought home with him, but maybe he was wrong. Maybe it’s something he’s only good at when out in the field and not while at home with his own son. It’s the only way he can think to explain how he missed the fact that Chris was texting someone he didn’t know with his dad’s phone.

Eddie scrolls through the texts between his son and Buck then. There aren’t too many messages, only a handful of them sent every couple of days, but enough to prove that the two of them have been talking for at least two weeks now. Buck regularly tells Chris that, although he’s happy to talk to him, he’s not sure how Eddie would feel about it. Every time, Chris says that his father won’t mind.

Then, before any outgoing messages from Chris show up, there are a string of messages from Buck that were obviously meant to be read by Eddie.

The first three came through the day after Eddie muted their text conversation.

Buck (12:24pm): I know I’m probably the last person you want to hear from right now but I promise I can explain everything.

Buck (12:25pm): call me if you can?

Buck (8:59pm): okay so you haven’t responded which I understand. I didn’t show up for our date and it’s been over a week since you heard from me but please call me whenever you see this? You deserve better than me explaining myself over text

The next two messages come a day later.

Buck (4:05pm): i deserve the cold shoulder but I promise I can explain

Buck (8:42pm): please let me explain

There’s another message almost a week later.

Buck (6:45am): I really messed this up, didn’t I?

Another message comes a couple days after that.

Buck (3:26pm): I’m so sorry eddie

Then there is one final message from him right before Chris started responding on Eddie’s behalf.

Buck (1:42am): I’ll stop texting you now.

“Eddie?” His name is spoken timidly and it takes Eddie back to the nights he once spent on the phone with Buck. “Are you still there?”

Eddie scrubs a hand over his face, not sure what to make of all of the messages he’s read. Buck says he has a reason for not showing up, but he never actually said what it was. Eddie hates that, even though all of this time has passed, he still wants to know why he was stood up.

It shouldn’t matter, but it does.

“Yeah.”

“I’m really sorry,” he pauses and then adds, “for everything.”

The apology tugs at the part of Eddie’s heart that wasn’t ready, or willing, to accept that Buck stood him up and then ghosted him for no reason.

Eddie is tempted to say, ‘it’s fine’. It’s what he would usually do, brush aside his feelings and absolve someone else of their wrongdoing. It would be annoyingly easy to do, but he stops himself before he says anything because it’s not fine. Not really. “Okay.”

Neither of them says anything and it’s a strange feeling, being on the phone with Buck and not having a single thing to say. Eddie can’t remember that ever being the case in the past during their phone calls. There hadn’t been a month of silence between them back then though. The weight of that hangs heavily over the both of them.

“Well I should-” Eddie begins just as Buck says, “Is there anything I can do?”

“Anything you can do?”

“To make it up to you,” Buck explains, the words rushing out of him as if he’s scared that Eddie will hang up on him before hearing him out. “If not that, at least let me give you a proper explanation of why I disappeared like I did.”

Eddie doesn’t owe Buck anything, but he does owe it to himself to properly turn the page on this chapter of his life.

“Fine.” Eddie hears something that sounds vaguely like a person choking, but he chooses not to comment on it. “But I choose where we’re going, and I plan to bring someone with me.”

“Deal.”

“And, if you stand me up again, you have to leave me alone. For good this time.”

“Understood, but that won’t happen again. I swear. Thanks for giving me a second chance, Eddie.”

“Thanks for coming with us, May.”

May shrugs and takes a sip of the caramel frappuccino Eddie bought her. “It doesn’t take much to convince me to come to Starbucks.”

He appreciates her nonchalance about this whole situation. Initially, Eddie only planned to have Chris tag along with him. The more he thought about it though, the better he thought it’d be better to have an extra person tag along with the both of them. What if there was a conversation that needed to be had between Buck and Eddie alone? Eddie couldn’t, wouldn’t, just abandon his son to accomplish that.

His first thought was to invite Hen along with him, but then he remembered the conversation he had with May about Buck and knew that she was the perfect choice.

“Mmm!” To Eddie’s left, Chris is smiling happily after taking a sip of his strawberry smoothie. “This is really good.”

“I told you you’d like it.” May ruffles Chris’s hair, much to his son’s amusement.

Eddie wants to be strong enough to not glance at the coffee shop’s entrance every few seconds, but he’s not. This is only too reminiscent of the night Buck stood him up and he’s not ready for things to play out like that again.

“Eddie, you alright?”

It’s May that asks the question, but it’s both her and Chris who are carefully watching Eddie.

“I’m fine.” May pointedly stares at him, putting him on the defensive “What? I am.”

She doesn’t say anything, her gaze catching on something that leads her to push her chair back and walk towards the front of the coffee shop. He tracks her movements, unsure of what motivated the sudden need to get it up. It’s not until she pulls the door open and holds it that he understands. The person who’s walking inside is on crutches and had no way of opening the door himself.

It’s not just anyone that she’s holding the door open for though, it’s Buck.

Eddie learned early on in life that it’s rude to stare, but he can’t help himself. How is it possible that Buck looks even better in person? Aren’t pictures supposed to be more flattering than real-life?

May must also recognize him because she’s the one who leads Buck to the table where Eddie and Chris are sitting. She grabs a chair for him so he can join them before taking her seat beside Eddie again. Eddie is sure they’re quite the sight - him in the middle being flanked by a teenager and a child sitting across from a man who easily towers over all three of them and looks like he’s made up entirely of muscle.

“Hi,” Buck greets, resting his crutches against the table. They’re almost twice as tall as Chris’s crutches.

It’s jarring to hear his voice in person when Eddie’s only ever heard him speak over the phone. “Hi.”

“You didn’t tell me you have crutches too!” Chris exclaims a little too loudly. A couple of heads turn in their direction, but Chris pays them no mind.

Buck’s smile is soft as he looks over at Chris and oh, that’s really not fair. Eddie became familiar with Buck’s smile through the photos he used for his dating profile, but this is different. Not only is Eddie seeing it in person for the first time, it’s being directed at the most important person in Eddie’s life - his son. “And you must be Christopher, it’s nice to finally meet you.”

“What happened to your leg?”

“Chris,” Eddie warns, even though it’s the same question on his mind. As far as he knew, there had never been anything wrong with Buck’s leg.

“I’m May,” May cuts in, saving them from what could’ve been an awkward conversation and holding out her hand for Buck to shake. He does, seemingly unphased by the people Eddie decided to bring along with him.

“Buck. Thanks for holding the door open for me back there.”

“Sure.” She stands up again and Eddie wonders if there’s someone else she’s about to hold the door open for. Instead, she grabs her drink and Chris’s. “Chris and I are gonna go sit at that empty table over there so you guys can talk.”

Chris goes willingly, allowing May to help him get his crutches on so they can walk over to the opposite end of the coffee shop. She lets Chris take the lead but turns back around momentarily to address Buck, “don’t you dare hurt him again.”

“Did she just threaten me?” Buck asks once May is out of earshot.

Eddie’s really glad he chose to bring her along. “I think so.”

“I’m pretty sure she’s only a teenager, but I’m still feeling intimidated.”

“You probably should. Her mom’s a cop.”

Eddie shouldn’t take joy in the way that Buck’s eyes widen at that piece of information, but he does. Good, let him squirm. It might put them back on equal footing because right now Eddie is disarmed by just how attractive Buck is, especially this close-up. How and why is someone allowed to have eyes that are that blue?

“Thanks for agreeing to meet me.”

“Mhm.”

Buck rubs the back of his neck. Is that a nervous tick that he’s done before while on the phone with Eddie? “Can I get you anything? A drink? Scone? Cookie?”

“I’m fine.” Then, because they’re here for a reason, he says, “so, that explanation I was offered?”

“Right.” Buck tries to adjust his position, but in doing so, he accidentally knocks his cast against the pole below the table. He winces and Eddie almost does the same. “I was on my way to meet you at the restaurant when I got into an accident.”

Eddie doesn’t know what to make of that statement. He was ready for some sort of pathetic excuse - Buck’s phone died, he confused the day or time of their date, an unforeseen but conveniently timed emergency kept him from showing up - which is why this reason has left him reeling.

“What?”

“I know it sounds fake or like a lie or whatever, but I swear I’m telling the truth.”

Eddie really has no explanation for knowing that Buck is telling the truth. It’s not like he’s had the chance to learn the nuances of Buck’s expression to parse out the truth in a sea of potential lies, but Eddie still believes him. It doesn’t make sense but sometimes the most important things in life just don’t.

All the righteous anger Eddie was holding onto for weeks seeps out of him in seconds. It leaves behind a void that is slowly filling up with a messy combination of concern, regret and sympathy. “I had no idea.”

“How could you?” Buck asks, smiling ruefully. He shifts in his seat again, searching for a comfortable position that Eddie’s sure he won’t find. Not with a cast as bulky as the one wrapped around his leg. He should probably be keeping it elevated, but Eddie refrains from saying so. “The details are pretty fuzzy. All I remember is one second, I was driving to the restaurant to meet up with you and then, out of nowhere, there was a loud boom and I was pinned under my Jeep.”

Something about this story is familiar, which doesn’t make any sense. Where could Eddie have heard it from if not from Buck himself?

“Considering the explosion itself, everyone keeps telling me that I’m lucky to be alive,” he continues, and Eddie can hear the ‘but’ in his voice. It’s as familiar to Eddie as the haunted look in Buck’s eyes, one that Eddie used to see reflected back at him when he first came home from his last deployment. It’s a look he still sometimes sees after rushing to the bathroom to splash cold water on his face after a particularly bad nightmare. Before Eddie can say anything about it, Buck blinks and whatever other emotion was attempting to bubble to the surface is efficiently cut off. “My phone wasn’t as lucky though.”

“Buck,” Eddie murmurs, hand itching to reach out and cover Buck’s. He knows trauma and the last thing he wants is to put Buck in a position where he’s forced to relive his own.

“My sister was able to replace it for me and I had it backed up to my computer so restoring it was easy, but I wasn’t in a talking mood,” Buck presses on, acting as if he hadn’t heard Eddie say his name. “I did think about you though. It was one of my first thoughts when I woke up in the hospital, but I don’t know. How do you tell someone you’ve never met but have very real feelings for that you’re in for a long road to recovery? That’s a lot to put on anyone - I couldn’t do that to you.”

Buck’s last statement is punctuated by a laugh that sounds like it physically pains him. Eddie wants to say something, anything, but he’s never been any good with words. He can’t even figure out if there is a right thing to say. Him and Buck are stuck in an awkward middle ground that exists as a result of online dating.

It’s something Eddie had read about before what was supposed to be his and Buck’s first time meeting. There were countless testimonials about people who had been in virtual contact struggling to find that same spark when meeting in person. It was enough to scare Eddie at the time, but not enough to keep him from showing up at the restaurant that night.

In all the articles he read though, there was never any mention about what to do when the man you’re supposed to meet up with ends up in an accident, doesn’t speak to you for a month, and then suddenly makes a reappearance.

“Anyways,” Buck says, eyes darting down to the table. “I get it. To you, it seemed like I stood you up and then ghosted you and that’s pretty unforgivable. I just wanted to apologize for that and I’m really glad you gave me the chance to do so.”

Buck keeps his eyes downcast and that’s when Eddie realizes this is it, this is everything that Buck showed up today to tell him. There’s nothing else to be said and it leaves Eddie with a steadily growing pit in his stomach.

This isn’t the way things were supposed to work out. They shouldn’t be meeting up for the first time a month after what should’ve been their first date. Buck shouldn’t be sitting across from Eddie, unable to look at him. Eddie shouldn’t already be missing Buck even though he’s not gone.

In a perfect world, or at least a better one, Buck wouldn’t have ended up in that car accident that night. He would’ve made it to the restaurant like he intended to and whatever was growing between him and Eddie could’ve had a chance to continue blooming. But they don’t live in a perfect world and Buck did get into an accident on his way to see Eddie and how is it fair for Eddie to condemn Buck for something that was out of his control?

These thoughts all come at Eddie faster than he can fully reconcile them, all because it sounds like Buck is gearing up to say goodbye and Eddie’s not ready to hear it.

It makes zero sense that he feels this way. Then again, online dating didn’t make sense to him until he tried it out. Maybe this, holding onto Buck instead of letting him go again, is something else that won’t make sense until Eddie tries it.

And that’s the truth of the matter here, isn’t it? Eddie lost his chance with Buck once thanks to a freak accident and now that a second chance has appeared seemingly out of thin air, Eddie’s not ready to let go again.

He doesn’t know what to say, so he decides to repeat some of the words Buck had spoken earlier, the same ones that Eddie’s brain had latched onto the moment they were said. “Very real feelings, huh?”

Eddie sure as hell has never been one to vocalize the way he feels and it’s refreshing to come across someone that does. Then again, haven’t conversations with Buck always been this way? Him speaking exactly what’s on his mind while Edde sat back and wondered what it would take for him to do the same?

“That’s what you took away from everything I just told you?” Buck’s cheeks are a light shade of pink when he says this and Eddie decides he likes that much more than the sad eyes and the goodbye in Buck’s voice from earlier.

“Is there anything else about that statement that I should’ve focused on?”

There’s not a hint of hesitation in Buck's voice only seconds later when he responds. “No, I guess not.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

They stare at each other in companionable silence then and something warm settles in Eddie’s chest. He can’t give it a name, not yet. All he knows is that it’s been too long since he last felt it and what are the odds that it would come back to him in a coffee shop of all places? It’s annoyingly cliché and, if anyone were to question Eddie about it, he’d deny it until his dying breath.

“Does this mean you forgive me?”

Buck sounds hopeful and it tugs at a chord deep within Eddie’s heart, as if the younger man believes that forgiveness is something he must earn and that’s not readily deserved. It’s something Eddie knows all too well. It’s also something he's willing to give Buck. no additional questions asked.

“It means there’s nothing to forgive.”

This time Eddie does reach for Buck’s hand. Buck’s fingers slide within the gaps of Eddie’s with the kind of familiarity that should only exist between couples who have known each other much longer than Buck and Eddie have. Then again, the two have known each other, albeit virtually, for a fair amount of time. There’s more merit to that than Eddie realized.

It might be too soon to think this, but Eddie believes this - holding Buck’s hand -  is something he can get used to.

“Thank you for giving me a second chance.”

“Thank you for striking up a conversation with my son.”

The statement is ridiculous if Buck’s laughter is anything to go off of, but it’s also the truth. Without Christopher, none of this would be possible. Eddie wouldn’t be seated here, across from the man who’s stupid dating profile bio and indescribable good looks were, and still are, almost too good to be true.

“Do you think we should invite Chris and the cop’s daughter back to the table? They’re very openly staring at us.”

When Eddie follows Buck’s gaze, he sees that the younger man is correct. Both Chris and May are scrutinizing them. May much more so than Chris, but it’s obvious that they’re both staring. “I think you’re right.”

With a subtle nod on Eddie’s part, May jumps out of her seat and helps Chris do the same. Her patience with his son is something Eddie refuses to ever overlook. She makes sure to carry Chris’s unfinished drink for him as the two of them make their way back to the table. May helps Chris get comfortable in the seat beside his father before reclaiming her seat on the other side of Eddie.

“Looks like you two worked things out.” May says, her brown eyes focused on Eddie and Buck’s intertwined hands.

Buck tugs loosely on Eddie’s hand, maybe to let go of his hand to make things a little less obvious, but Eddie doesn’t let him. Now that he has committed to giving things another shot, he refuses to let anything deter him. That includes an over-invested teenager and her too-observant eyes. He can trust May to keep this from her mother and stepfather for now, even if it means bribing her with more trips to Starbucks in the future.

“It looks like we did.”

Then. because his son is too smart for his own good, Chris also notices that Eddie and Buck’s hands are clasped over the table between them. “Does this mean you like him too, daddy?”

Buck looks far more amused than he has any right to. It’s not fair but, at the same time, it’s such a welcome contrast from the way Buck had looked earlier that Eddie has no desire to voice his objections. “I do, buddy.”

“You see. I told you he was your friend.” Eddie would be exasperated by his son’s know-it-all tone if not for the fact that it’s entirely warranted. “Can we keep him?”

Eddie should probably correct Chris, explain that Buck is a person and not an object that can be kept. He doesn’t only because, as his mind has a tendency to do, Eddie immediately starts thinking about worst case scenarios. In this case, it’s one Eddie already experienced. It consisted of a long month full of casting frequent glances at a silent phone and nights where he wished a soothing voice might fill his ears and help lull him to sleep.

Buck squeezes Eddie’s hand, bringing him back to the present and to his son who’s still expectantly waiting for his father’s answer.

Before saying anything, Eddie takes a moment to take in his surroundings. His son’s curious stare, May’s knowing smile and, finally, Buck’s encouraging grin. It’s not logical for Eddie to already be imagining a ‘Forever’ in his future with this man who he still has so much to learn about, but that’s not stopping him from doing so anyways.

“I really hope so, Chris.”

[leaiorganas]

Airport/travel AU?

Rebelcaptain Fic - one mile at a time; 1,036 words, hopeful ending

More notes at the end!

Jyn walked quickly down the terminal scanning for her gate;she hated late night flights but her desire to get home as quickly as possibleoutweighed her distaste for late night flights. Arriving at the gate her wholebody groaned when she saw the flight delay notification. Pulling her phone outshe took note of the delay time and resigned herself to an even longer night.

Turning, she noticed a sparsely populated bar and decided itwould do. Tugging her bag behind her, she settled into a corner seat, two downfrom the nearest occupant, and decided on a beer. The bar was quiet, the noisefrom the televisions throughout the terminal fading into the background. Aftershe placed her order, she pulled her phone out fully intending on not engagingwith any stranger tonight.

That was the plan.

Not five minutes into her beer, she hears a quiet voice askher a question. She inwardly rolls her eyes (was she not showing all the signsof don’t talk to me) and looks up from her phone only to meet the darkest pairof eyes she has ever seen.

Like in the movies, her breath catches.

He is saying something, but she is not registering what thewords are, too busy trying to reboot her brain. She is flustered at herself,mad that she would have such a visceral reaction to someone’s appearance. Mentallychiding herself, she asks him to repeat himself.

“I didn’t mean to disturb but I wanted to let you know yourwallet is sliding out. You could lose it, or someone could grab it like that.”

His voice is soft, accent raspy and layered with nuances.She believes she could listen to him recite through a dictionary and never gettired of hearing the words. She is still staring at him, watching the linesaround eyes and mouth deepen as a small smile starts to tug at the corners ofhis mouth. His eyes look like they have stories hidden in their depths;adventures he has lived through.

She is still staring at him when he raises a hand and startsto point down at something. Right! Her wallet.

“Oh,” Jyn flushed, turning quickly to catch her wallet andzip it into her backpack. “Thank you.”

“No problem, I know what a disaster it is to be travelingand not have your wallet.” He waits a beat before continuing, “I’m Cassian, bythe way.”

“Jyn,” she says. “Thank you again. It’s been a week and I’mready to get home.”

“Same. The longest conference I have been to in ages. Iswore if one more speaker got up to repeat the same story, I was going to getup and walk out.”

Jyn tilts her head, “Were you at the civic center thisweek?”

Cassian nods, confirming he was. “Honestly, I can’t standthe crowds, and everyone packed together but I’m the one always sent out to goto them.”

“I was there as well. Normally, I don’t mind these eventsbut this one seemed worse than usual.”

Jyn found herself leaning towards him as they made their waythrough small talk. She learned that he worked for a competitive firm,specializing in the same work that she was doing. He traveled as much as shedid and found the routine of travel both exhilarating and draining. They bothcalled Chicago home base but spent as much time outside the city as in it. Hisflight is leaving an hour after hers and disappointment settles over her at asmall, missed opportunity.

At some point, Cassian had moved to the seat next to hersand after a while quiet settled over them as they finished their drinks. Thesilence wasn’t terrible, in fact, she felt the most comfortable she had inyears in that moment. His quiet demeanor and careful conversation both told hernothing and yet everything. She sighed when she realized it was almost time forher to board her flight, ending this quiet hour she has enjoyed so much.

“Listen, I know this-uh…this is going to be…you can say no,”Cassian is leaning away, shifting his face down as if to avoid the conversationentirely.

Jyn doesn’t hesitate although her mind is screaming at herto ABORT!ABORT!, “Cassian, can I get your number? Do you want to meet upsometime?”

His smile makes the risk seem worthwhile and she isentranced once again by the warmth of his gaze.

“Yes, I would.”

He seems more nervous now and she gently reaches out andtaps the face of his phone on the bar. “Open this and I will put my number in.”

He opens his phone and hands it to her; she quickly sendsherself a text and hands the phone back letting her fingers graze gently acrosshis palm during the exchange. She is probably imagining the small intake of hisbreath as she pulls her hand away.

She opens her phone and quickly returns the text to him,“And now you have my number.”

She lifts her head up as the sound of her flight number iscalled out, “Well, this is me.” She gathers her bag and notices Cassianstanding up. He leans over to her and she realizes he has a good size inches onher, but it doesn’t make her nervous the way some people do.

“Jyn. Thank you for the past hour. I really enjoyed ourconversation. I have never done this before-“

“What? Pick someone up at a bar?” Jyn blurts out to coverher own nerves.

He ducks his head before answering, “Well, yeah. But in all honesty,I just really enjoyed talking with you.”

He extends his hand and she reach out to shake it. His handis softer than she thought it would be and is all gone all too quickly.

“Have a safe flight.”

She walks away, determined not to look back but she can feelhis gaze as he watches her. She boards her flight and wonders if the last hourwas real and if she would ever see Cassian again.  Her phone chimes and she smiles down at histext.

Saturday at 7PM – The Peninsula?

Can’t wait.

 Notes: I have been working on a multiple chapter fic that I needed a break from so why not start to look at the prompts in my inbox. I know this is literally years later nonny but hope this works and kick starts me!!

[justlightlysedated]

part one || part two || part three

for @bestillmyslashyheart 🥰❤💖

*

There is a second of bated silence while Michael looks at the ring that he hadn't known would one hundred percent sure be there, and Alex just stays still, hand raised and frozen right by Michael's arm.

And then he moves, pushing himself back on the couch, drawing attention to the fact that they had been getting closer and disturbing Buffy, who huffs and jumps off of Michael's lap to find a more tranquil place to sleep.

Michael barely notices as he catches the ring and dogtags in his hand before Alex can get too far, making him stop or risk breaking the chain.

"You don't want a divorce," Michael restates this time feeling oddly breathless.

He hadn't really expected to be right. He was going to do what he did best and push and push and push until he got a reaction out of Alex, since Isobel had dragged him here before he was ready to talk.

Alex wraps his hand around Michael's wrist and it drags Michael's attention from the ring he can feel pressed against the palm of his hand to Alex's hand and follows his arm all the way to his face.

Alex's brow is furrowed and he looks like he's trying really hard to stay under control, but the problem is that in-control-Alex is not the Alex he needs to talk to right now.

He's staring at Michael's hand, clenched around the ring and tags.

"Why are you doing this?" He asks, sounding a little desperate, his voice cracking.

He looks away at that, eyes falling shut as he takes in deep breaths, and before Michael can come up with something to say, he's turning back to look at Michael, eyes dark and serious.

"You're too drunk to have this conversation right now," he says in an adamant, I don't want any arguments voice, the same one he uses when they're in a life threatening situation and there are too many cooks in the kitchen. 

Michael shakes his head and lets go, motioning with his chin towards the bottle Alex had set on the coffee table. "I think you're not drunk enough for it."

"Getting drunk is what got us into this mess in the first place," Alex scoffs shaking his head, but still reaches for the bottle, almost like he had forgotten that he wanted to drink and was reminded viscerally.

Michael leans back in his seat and stares at Alex as he tips the bottle into his mouth and takes a hefty swallow, grimacing as he lowers the bottle back down.

Michael reaches over to try to take the bottle for a drink, but Alex puts a hand up, and then takes another deep breath, swallowing convulsively for a few seconds, before he’s tipping the bottle back into his mouth.

He takes two more shots before he lets Michael take the bottle, and then exhales long and loud and leans back in his seat, turning a little to face Michael.

He waits until Michael lowers the bottle back down before speaking.

"Why don't you want a divorce?" He asks, jumping right into it, a strange inflection on the word 'you' like he hadn't expected Michael to fight him on this.

Michael shakes his head. "No. You answer the question first."

Alex makes a face and grabs the bottle again.

"This isn't truth or dare," Michael says when Alex sets the bottle down between them. "You can't just drink to avoid the question."

Alex rolls his eyes a little, "Well, you can't deflect to avoid the question either."

"Touche," Michael says, conceding the point and wrapping his fingers around the neck of the bottle. "Why don't we start with something smaller?"

"Something besides the fact that we're married, you mean?"

Michael inclines his head and takes another shot while Alex taps a finger against his chin while he thinks, which makes Michael bite down on a smile.

He's only ever seen Alex get drunk a few times and everytime it's the same. When he starts feeling the buzz, he acts extra proper as though that will counteract the effects.

He turns back to Michael, and his eyes go a little wide, like he’s surprised to see Michael staring at him, and he closes his mouth, tilting his head, brow furrowing, before he speaks, like he had changed his mind about what he was going to ask halfway.

"What did you do with the ring?"

The question catches Michael off guard, but probably not as much as Alex had intended.

He doesn't even hesitate as he reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out the box, tossing it at Alex, who sets the bottle down in a hurry to catch it against his chest.

Michael takes the bottle up as Alex looks at the box in his hands and then looks at Michael and then back at the box.

Michael takes a long swallow and he's settling the bottle back between them when Alex inhales deeply and then opens the box.

"I don’t keep it on a necklace around my neck, but I did keep it close. It was in the glove compartment in the truck. Didn’t even realize that that was what I was looking for until I had the box in my hands.”

Alex exhales roughly and takes the ring out. Michael grabs the bottle again because he already knows what Alex will see. A ring that's smooth like it's been handled a lot. Michael had never put it on. It had never felt right without Alex, but on the really bad nights he clenched the ring tightly in his hand, and imagined what it would've been like if they had gotten married for real.

Alex looks from the ring to Michael and then shakes his head. 

"We're both idiots," he says, and reaches for the bottle, taking a drink like he's trying to give himself liquid courage for what he's about to say next. 

"You say that I’m the worst thing that’s ever happened to you,” he starts, lowering the bottle and Michael is already shaking his head, but Alex just keeps talking before Michael can say anything.

“But you’re also telling me that thinking that you were married to me is one of the happiest moments of your life,” he continues, sounding a little exasperated but mostly surprised. “I know I gave you mixed signals before, but this is-”

“Wait,” Michael says before Alex can keep talking, because he will keep talking if Michael doesn’t stop him. 

Michael knows this stage of drunk-Alex well.

“First things first,” he says, and makes a face at Alex when he raises a pointed eyebrow at him. “We’ve been over this, more than once. You know I didn’t mean that.”

Alex rolls his eyes a little, but lifts the bottle in his direction to concede the point.

“Next thing,” he continues. “You didn’t just give me mixed signals. You kept walking away.”

“I know,” Alex sighs, lifting the bottle to his mouth. "But those were extenuating circumstances."

Michael takes the bottle from him before he can take a sip. "It doesn't change the fact that you did."

Alex nods his head, a little solemnly and Michael rolls his eyes, and lifts the bottle to his mouth, when Alex wraps his fingers around Michael’s wrist.

Michael looks over at him curiously, and Alex stares at him intently, gaze focused and Michael feels something pulse deep inside of him, making him feel a little bit like he can’t breathe, and maybe, just maybe it’s a bad idea to keep drinking if he wants to keep his thoughts on the conversation and not on anything else, especially given the direction of his sober thoughts whenever he’s around Alex, alone, for more than five minutes.

"I'm sorry," he says, and Michael feels his heart trip all over itself. "I didn't mean to hurt you. And by the time I was trying to do better, you had already moved on, and I'm here, just dragging you back when you've made it very clear that you don't feel the same anymore and I-"

"Stop," Michael says, feeling like Alex is steamrolling past several topics, and not giving Michael enough time to come up with something to say.

Alex stops speaking and he swallows hard, eyes wide and intense and on Michael, and Michael can’t think.

He licks his lips and blinks his eyes several times, trying to figure out what he wants to say, and the words come easily, but he doesn't know how Alex is going to react when he says them.

He inhales deeply and just stares back at Alex, whose eyes go a little bit wider in shock as he recognizes the look in Michael's eyes.

"I never look away," he says, staring at Alex intently.

Alex shakes his head, swallowing convulsively, "You don't really mean that."

"I do," Michael says, and goes to move in closer, but Alex squeezes his wrist hard, reminding him that Alex is still hanging onto his hand.

"Stop it," he says, and he's giving Michael a truly hurtful look. He didn't even look this much in pain when Michael had told him that he was going to try and see where things went with Maria.

 "Alex," he starts, and Alex shakes his head, letting his hand go, and moving backwards in his seat, and looking like he needs to escape, like he needs to run, and Michael is moving before he even really thinks about it

He cages Alex against the other side of the small couch, sinking his knees down on either side of Alex’s hips, and setting his hands down on the arm of the couch on either side of Alex’s head.

Michael hovers over him, and Alex looks up at him, startled, and his eyes dart from Michael’s down to his mouth and then up to his eyes, and then back down to his mouth like he can’t help it.

Michael licks his lips, and Alex inhales sharply.

He looks back up into Michael’s eyes, his eyes full of questions.

“Listen to me for once,” he says, and Alex scoffs immediately, rolling his eyes.

Michael just stays quiet, looking at him intently, until Alex exhales and raises an eyebrow at him.

“You know what my childhood was like,” he starts, and sees the way that Alex softens up immediately, the way he always does whenever Michael mentions his less than stellar upbringing. “You know that there was a lot of shit that happened to me that I never chose for myself. And even though I love them, I didn’t choose Max and Izzy either, they were always a part of me since I hatched from my pod.”

Alex rolls his eyes a little, but this time more amused than annoyed.

“Is there a point to telling me things that I already know?” Alex asks, voice snarky, and Michael just looks at him intently until Alex slips his hand up to his face and mimes zipping his lips shut.

Michael can’t help the smile that spreads across his face, and he shakes his head a little.

“The point is,” he starts mockingly, leaning in a little closer. “Is that I’ve never chosen anything for myself, but you.”

Alex’s eyes go wide, and his lips part and he stares at Michael, expression stupefied.

“You were the first thing that I ever saw that I wanted and realized that I could have,” Michael continues. “I chose you, years ago.”

His eyes drop to the ring resting on Alex’s chest and it’s almost like a gong goes off in his head, and maybe it’s because he’s been thinking of nothing but that night, but he can hear Alex's voice, echoey in his ears, saying, you’re mine and I choose you forever.

Alex exhales shakily, and when Michael’s gaze darts up to his eyes, Alex looks like he’s in a daze.

“You’re mine and I choose you forever,” he whispers, and Michael feels like someone knocked him over the head with a baseball bat.

Alex moves, sitting up, and Michael moves back with him, sitting back on Alex’s thighs, and realizing exactly how suggestive their position is at that moment.

Alex still seems lost in his thoughts, and he opens one of his hands where Michael’s ring is resting in the palm of his hand. He licks his lips and looks from the ring to Michael's face, looking at him seriously.

"I never want to lose you," he continues, and Michael freezes in process of sliding off Alex's lap, so that he's awkwardly, perched on his knees looking at him with wide eyes, lips parted in shock.

"And even though I have to go," he keeps going like he has to get it out or else he'll lose the words. "This is my promise to you that I will come back to you."

He lifts his hand with the ring towards Michael, and Michael is helpless to stop himself from moving forward slightly, holding his hand out.

Alex looks at Michael’s hand and then his eyes dart up to Michael’s face, and he inhales sharply at whatever it is that he sees.

“Do you understand?” he finishes, voice shaky, like he’s expecting Michael to say no.

But Michael just nods his head immediately, pushing back into Alex’s space.

“I do,” he says firmly, and Alex stares at him unblinkingly for a long moment before he pushes Michael back a little and holds the ring out to him. Michael holds his hand out instead, and Alex just inhales deeply before he reaches for Michael’s hand, fingers wrapping around his wrist as he pulls Michael’s hand closer to him.

Michael holds his breath, feeling a little lightheaded, heart pounding sluggishly in his head.

It seems like time slows down as Alex slides the ring on his finger.

They both stare at the ring on Michael’s finger for a long moment, before Michael is moving, reaching out to tug the chain over Alex’s head.

Alex lets him, and his hands are shaking when Michael finally slides the ring onto his finger.

“Do you-?” Michael starts, looking up into Alex’s eyes, and Alex cuts him off, hands cupping Michael’s jaw in his hands, looking back at Michael.

“I do,” he responds back, and Michael feels a bubble of laughter wanting to come out of his mouth, but before it can, Alex is pulling him in closer.

Michael breathes in shakily, and Alex hesitates just for a second, just enough that Michael makes a low protesting sound before he’s wrapping his arms around Alex’s shoulders and pushing in even closer.

Their noses brush together and Alex inhales sharply.

“Wait,” he says, voice low and airy. “We can’t.”

“Why not?” Michael says, whining low at the back of his throat, but not pulling away.

“You’re dating Ma-”

Michael shakes his head, noses brushing together. “We broke up remember?”

Alex’s eyes go a little wider, “Yeah?”

Michael nods his head. “Yeah, because you’re my husband.”

“Oh yeah,” Alex says, like it’s a revelation.

“Yeah,” Michael responds, leaning in even closer.

Alex exhales roughly, his breath hot and heavy on Michael’s mouth.

Michael shudders with his next breath and Alex kisses him, pressing their mouths together softly, just barely brushing their lips together once, before he moves, brushing their noses together as he changes the angle, and kisses him again, harder and longer.

He drags his hands up into Michael's hair, fingers wrapping around the strands before he tugs tightly.

It's almost like he flips an on switch. 

Michael pushes into the kiss, tightening his arms around Alex's neck, and kisses him harder, biting down on his bottom lip.

Alex gasps, fingers going tighter in Michael's hair, and tugging him back. 

Michael's eyes flutter open and Alex looks dazed as he stares at him, eyes riveted to his mouth.

"We're married," he says like it's brand new information that he just figured out.

"Yeah we are," Michael says, agreeing with the assessment.

Alex nods his head and leans in close and kisses him hard and fast before he pulls away again, fingers in Michael's hair keeping him from closing the distance between them.

Michael whines low in his throat.

"We have to talk about this," Alex says, like he needs to put the statement out there.

"We will," Michael promises, whatever it takes to get Alex's mouth back on his.

Alex nods his head and kisses him again, harder and just a little bit desperate.

He bites against Michael's lips and licks into his mouth deepening the kiss.

Michael pushes into the kiss, until they topple backwards, separating their mouths with a gasp.

Michael settles both of his hands on either side of Alex's head and looks down at him, while Alex drags his hands down from  Michael's hair to tug against the collar of his shirt.

Michael licks his lips and looks at Alex intently. "Are you sure?"

Alex stares back up for a long second, where Michael starts to think that maybe he's going to tell him no, but Alex just breathes in deeply, licking his lips, before he pulls Michael in closer, brushing their noses together and murmuring in a hot and low voice, "Yes."

Michael laughs a little, feeling bubbling happiness in the center of his chest and he leans in even closer and kisses Alex hard and fast before he pulls away, dragging himself up to his knees and pulling his shirt up and over his head.

Alex makes a low noise and hooks his fingers into the belt loops of Michael's jeans and he leans up, as Michael leans down dragging a hand across the back of his neck, into the back of his hair and kissing him again.

Everything blurs into heat, and skin, and Alex's laughter pressed into the skin of his shoulder as Michael tries to pick him up and just manages to stumble into the wall and slide to the floor with Alex in his lap, and the look in Alex's eyes and the way his mouth falls open when he pushes deep inside of him, and Alex's breath hot against the side of his face as he whispers in a low, fucked out voice, "I missed you," and Michael wrapping his arms around Alex's shoulders and whispering, "Me too," right against his mouth.

The last thing that Michael remembers clearly is Alex's fingers threaded through his and holding on tightly, pushing his hands back into the pillows, his forehead pressed against Michael's as he moves between his thighs, mouth dropping open to whisper, "I love you."

-

Michael is startled awake way too early for his liking by a high pitched yelp and the slamming of the door and it makes him groan, as he feels how sore he feels all over, and he looks over to the door to see the shadow of someone moving pushing away from it, and he can clearly hear Liz’s voice saying, “Maybe we should’ve called first.”

“Fuck,” Alex says groaning, voice thick and sounding like he’s nursing the world’s worst hangover.

Michael can’t help but agree with him.

[yamisnuffles]

The Angel and the Serpent

Part 7 of Too Much of a Good Thing

Sir Aziraphale of the Table Round must go into battle on behalf of Arthur and Heaven. What's an unemployed Seraph to do when he's left behind?

Read on Ao3

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Wessex 537

Crowley wriggled about to try to get his armor to sit comfortably. Despite it having been miracled on, it never seemed to sit right. He wasn’t sure whether it was something about the armor itself or if the cold rendered everything uncomfortable. It all made him long for the days of togas and long evenings under the stars in more pleasant climes. He didn’t relish the idea of spending the foreseeable future out in the damp but he disliked the idea of being left behind again even less.

After one last adjustment of his cloak and a quick check to make sure his long braids weren’t in any danger of being snagged by a joint in his armor, he hurried out the door.

“Aziraphale! Good, I caught you.”

Aziraphale was just finishing armoring his horse and didn’t look away as he tugged at the saddle to ensure it was sitting where it was meant. “I hope you’ll excuse me for slipping out. You were just sleeping so peacefully. But here you are anyway. I do apologize if I disturbed you, my dear.” With the steed all ready to go, Aziraphale finally turned to face Crowley. The bright smile on his face flickered and he blinked. “Whatever are you doing in your armor?”

“Thought I might ride along. You know how these things with Arthur can go. There’s no saying when you’ll be back.”

“Oh, well, I mean, I wouldn’t want to trouble you. And I know how you are with horses.”

As if to prove a point, Aziraphale’s horse flicked its long, silvery tale at Crowley as though he was a bothersome fly and not an angel. Crowley stuck the tip of a slightly forked tongue out at it which didn’t improve the situation in any way, but it did make him feel better when the horse shuffled nervously off to the side. Or it did until Aziraphale leveled him with an exasperated look which he had to defuse with a smile.

“No trouble at all. Besides, think about how cold and damp it is and how nice it would be to have someone else around to warm your bedroll.”

“It is rather damp, isn’t it?” Aziraphale replied, though the scarlet at the tips of his ears said that wasn’t the part of the statement he was really considering. “Still, it will mostly be a lot of fighting and I know how you detest combat. Not that- oh, that wasn’t-” He flapped his hands before winding them up in each other. “I wasn’t referring to your performance in the War. Or, ah, lack thereof. I only meant these human squabbles I’m handling on behalf of the king. Dreadful things and there’s no reason for the both of us to get dragged in.”

Crowley lifted and dropped his slim shoulders. “Eeh, misery loves company and all that.”

Aziraphale scuffed his boot and then scowled when the armored tip of it dug into the damp earth. “Be that as it may, I think it would be best if you sat this one out. I had a word with Gabriel the other day and he said-” A snort from Crowley that only caused Aziraphale to square his shoulders. “And he said that I ought to be working on my own. And he’s right! This is my job to do and I shouldn’t be passing it off on you. Which isn’t even to mention that Uriel rightfully pointed out how distractible I can be when you’re about or Michael’s point that my paperwork tends to come in a bit tardy.”

Crowley waved it all away with a sweep of his hand. “Eh, forget all that. None of them are ever happy with you.”

“That may be but if I only-”

“No ‘but.’ It’s not on you, Aziraphale. You are always trying to please them and for what? You always get the job done. That should be enough.” Crowley ran a hand over one of his braids and smiled in a way that never failed to make Aziraphale blush, even after hundreds of years. “So what do you say? I can help you out, you can finish in half the time, and then we can get back to more enjoyable things in our warm, dry home.”

Aziraphale’s gaze drifted toward their home before he broke it away. “Crowley, no. Absolutely not.”

Crowley backed away a step, surprised by Aziraphale’s vehemence. “Why? Look, if it’s about the Archangels, you know they don’t check into these things. Just leave me off the report and nobody ever has to know.”

Aziraphale shook his head. “I said no.” The pink in his cheeks mottled with red. “This... this-” He flapped his hands at Crowley. “Flouting of authority. All these questions and temptations-”

Crowley flinched. “Temptations?”

“Oh, whatever it is you wish to call what you do. It’s trouble, Crowley. It’s why you were removed from your place on the Round Table. It’s why you aren’t allowed back in court and why we live all the way out here and why-” Aziraphale snapped his mouth shut and turned away. He looked back with a flutter of lashes that betrayed the moisture that had gathered in his eyes. “Why I’m the only reason things aren’t worse.”

The way he said it, Crowley knew he didn’t just mean Arthur. If this was all about some human monarch, they wouldn’t have been having this argument. There was no denying that was what this had become. Heat burned in Crowley’s cheeks and blazed a path right down into his gut. Embarrassment. Guilt. Whatever it was, it sharpened into anger.

“Well, I never asked you to stick your neck out for me,” he spat. “In fact, I’d rather you didn’t.” He snapped and all at once his armor was back inside and he was shivering in a doublet and leggings. “There. See? Didn’t really want to go anyway. Go play knight on your own.”

“Fine.”

“Good.”

Aziraphale put a foot in a stirrup and swung himself up onto his horse. He started to ride without another word. When the mist was just about to swallow him whole, he stopped. Despite Crowley’s desire to hang onto his anger, he could already feel it dissolving under the tidal pull of Aziraphale.

Turn around. Turn around. Turn around.

He should call out, he knew, but he didn’t and Aziraphale didn’t turn around. Instead the Principality rode on, leaving a vexed Seraph in his wake.

Crowley threw himself to the ground and stared up at the unrelentingly grey sky. He knew if Aziraphale was still there he would have clicked his tongue and told Crowley he was being dramatic. And maybe he was, but Aziraphale wasn’t there to say anything, so Crowley thought he was well within his rights to enjoy a proper sulk. The mud sucked unpleasantly at his limbs. He couldn’t properly glower up at the sky because it was raining just enough that droplets would fall in his unblinking eyes if he didn’t shield them with his arm. There was a growing chill in the air. All in all, it was perfectly miserable.

When it started to rain in earnest, the whole tableau lost its appeal. He could only abide being out in the rain for so long before something tight would coil up in his chest and leave him short of breath. Besides, all that water had kicked up something unpleasant judging by the smell that was wafting through the humid air. He sucked in a breath to sigh and instead ended up coughing over the stench that filled his nostrils.

He wrinkled his nose. It smelled like the mud had somehow gone rancid. Mixed with the smell of wet earth was something like mold and rot and an after note of-

“Evil,” he said in a low growl.

He lifted his legs enough to throw himself up onto his feet. Lightning struck where his head had just been. Crowley watched wide-eyed as fire spread. It should have been impossible but the tingling down his spine told him what he already knew. This was no normal fire.

“Crowley.”

Crowley spun around. “Duke Hastur,” he said, the corner of his eye on the spreading hellfire behind him. “To what do I owe the distinct displeasure?”

“You’ve been a real thorn in my side, Crowley.”

“Me? What did I do that has a duke of Hell making a personal visit? I was under the impression that I was making work easier for your lot. At least that’s what my lot's been saying in all the interdepartmental memos. Dunno why I even get those, since I don’t, strictly speaking, have a department anymore.”

“This! This is what you did,” Hastur said, a bit of angry spittle flying from his mouth. “I shouldn’t have to make ‘personal visits’ to some blathering wank wings, yet here I am. All because you keep discorporating every other demon we send topside.”

“You could just… stop sending them after me.”

“We did, two thousand years ago, but every idiot with an eye for advancement has decided bringing in your head would be a good way to get there.”

“And that’s my fault, how?” Crowley eyed the fire. It had formed a half ring around him. He’d be cornered if Hastur was there for a fight and the fire was too close for him to extend his wings. “Look, I get it. You don’t want to be up here. I don’t want you to be up here. So why don’t you make both our lives better and just-”

Crowley waved his hand. Hastur did not, as he’d half hoped, leave. In fact, the demon stepped closer, a scowl on his face that matched the frog on his head.

“You really think I’d be talking to you if it was up to me?”

Well, that wasn’t good. That meant Hastur was there on orders from higher up. Further down? Whatever the case, someone even more important than a duke of hell had eyes on Crowley and the Seraph didn’t like that one single bit.

“Well, what is it?” Crowley asked, crossing his arms. “Let’s get it over with already.”

“I’m here to extend an offer.” Hastur groaned. “To join us.”

“You want me to- you’re offering- you what? I ssswuh…” Crowley sputtered. “Why would I want to Fall?”

“I think it’s a stupid idea myself. Why should we want a sorry excuse for an angel who’d probably be an even sorrier excuse for a demon? But there’s certain parties that think it would be in Hell’s best interest, since you’re already working for us. Guess it looks better to have a demon doing it than some halfwit angel.”

Crowley felt the suggestion on a visceral level. He wasn’t sure whether Hastur was weaving in some demonic suggestion, but every part of him wanted to recoil. He would have, if he hadn’t been hedged in by hellfire.

He wanted to know who exactly wanted him badly enough to make this offer. He’d known Lucifer back in the day in a vague coworkery kind of way. Old Lucy had worked on some of the oldest, biggest projects in the celestial department while Crowley had been nudging stars into binaries and fiddling about with nebulae. They’d spoken a handful of times. He’d known Lucifer had thought to get him on the rebellion’s side of things but he’d hidden away instead in hopes of waiting things out. Was this an extension of that ages old offer?

Crowley had considered enough times where he’d be if he’d acted differently then. He shook his head. He didn’t want to think about it again.

“No.”

Hastur shrugged. “You’re only delaying the inevitable, Crawly.”

Crowley’s stomach turned, twisted at the reminder of the snake he knew was still inside him. He’d grown somewhere close to comfortable with the idea. In this context, though, he suddenly felt less of an angel. Less of himself. But it also gave him an idea.

“Maybe so,” he said. “But I never did know what was best for me.”

His bared, smiling teeth lengthened to fangs and he fell to the ground, pearlescent scales shining dangerously in the fire light. Before Hastur could react to the sudden transformation, he struck. His fangs sank deep enough to keep him from being flung away. Although the smell was putrid and the taste was worse, he wrapped his coils around Hastur to immobilize him.

“Let me go, you snake!”

Crowley only clamped his jaws further and tightened his full body grip on the demon. This had to end here. He couldn’t take the chance that the demon would go after Aziraphale as a means of convincing him. Some wild, feral pleasure coursed through him at the way Hastur howled in anger. Smiting demons the usual way just wasn’t as satisfying. He rarely took pleasure in it, regardless, but Hastur wasn’t the sort of threat he could ignore.

Unfortunately, Hastur also wasn’t the sort to go down easy. Though he could taste the change in the blood and knew his venom was doing its job, Hastur continued to struggle. Worse, he’d managed to stumble his way closer to the hellfire. The heat of it doused Crowley in cold dread. He pulled Hastur’s legs out from under him by tightening a coil just under the knees. Hastur responded with a flick of his wrist that closed the circle of hellfire around them. One wrong move and Crowley would be worse than discorporated.

“Let me go,” Hastur growled, writhing on the heat dried earth, “and I’ll extinguish the flames.”

Crowley considered. He didn’t trust Hastur as far as he could throw him and, given that he didn’t even have arms at the moment, that was saying something. The problem was, trust him or not, he had no other way out at the moment. He reluctantly released Hastur but remained ready to strike again, should he need to. 

Hastur staggered to his feet. His eyes had gone completely black and veins filled with gold shone from his sallow skin. He looked ready to croak and Crowley was sorely disappointed he couldn’t find his voice to make that exact joke. 

Hastur looked at him with a sneer. “You had your chance.”

And just like that, he disappeared into the ground, leaving the fire behind. Crowley would have shouted after him but words continued to escape him. He was finding it harder and harder to find anything of himself. No legs or arms and certainly no wings. Worse, a mind that increasingly narrowed to fire and danger, a heart with too few ventricles that didn’t feel as much as it should. He hadn’t transformed completely since he’d been freed of this form. Had he trapped himself? Had he unwittingly thrown away the gift of himself? He still didn’t understand how he’d earned it back in the first place and now he worried he’d never regain it.

He longed to burrow into the loose earth Hastur had left behind. Instead he curled in on himself and fixed his eyes on the sky above. It was hard to see anything above the glare from the flames. He had to remind himself that it was all still out there. There were clouds and above them sky and space and stars. And somewhere, out in all that, was Aziraphale.

Even if he forgot himself, he wouldn’t forget Aziraphale. He wouldn’t forget the mercury of his eyes, the honey of his laugh, or balm in his words. He could sink away and become nothing in these flames and Aziraphale would remain.

He wrapped thoughts of Aziraphale around him like armor. While hellfire burned around him, he felt only that angelic warmth. As day became night became day, he thought of all the days they’d spent together and all those he hoped they still had. He lost track of everything- the time, the place, himself- but still he held onto that image of Aziraphale.

Rain came down in a torrent. He could hear the roar of it and feel the vibrations in the ground beneath him. He didn’t feel it, though. It was also, he realized, extinguishing the hellfire at last. He’d have blinked if he was able. Shouted. Sworn. Instead he looked up.

There was Aziraphale, still in full plate, with radiant wings outstretched. There was a hole in the clouds directly above him that allowed sunlight to bathe him. He was golden and glorious and Crowley couldn’t remember when he’d last felt so safe.

Once the fire was completely extinguished, the rain stopped and the clouds cleared. Aziraphale descended to the ground, light as anything. He snapped his fingers and his armor vanished. One last flap of his wings and they disappeared as well. Dressed in soft, cream colored linens and swathed in his fur trimmed cloak, he bent low. He ran a gentle finger along Crowley’s spine. Crowley wondered silently if there had ever been anyone who’d looked so kindly upon a snake. There was nothing but fondness in those eyes.

“So sorry to have missed whatever happened here, my dear. I do hope you weren’t waiting on me long. I’m glad to see you’re alright, of course, though I’ll admit I’m surprised to see you like that. It’s been… well, it’s been quite some time now, hasn’t it, since you last took up that form?” Aziraphale noted. He waited a beat, expecting a reply. When none came, he said, “You can change back. The fire should be well and truly gone. I, er, may have blessed the rains. A bit.”

Oh what Crowley would have done to comply with that request, to fall into Aziraphale’s arms and laugh. He writhed in place, willing his body to obey him, but he could do nothing. Aziraphale’s eyebrows knit in concern. He offered an arm, which Crowley slithered onto as fast as he was able. Aziraphale cradled him close with his hand raised high enough that they were eye to eye.

“Crowley? What’s the matter.”

Still Crowley could say nothing. Do nothing. Panic flooded his system. He wound tighter around Aziraphale’s arm, trusting that the Principality’s strength would protect him from harm.

“If this is some game, I’m not amused. I know it’s you, you silly serpent.” Crowley could feel a shiver run through Aziraphale, could smell the fear come off him. “Crowley? This isn’t… Gabriel said he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. No, I’m sure you’re not- you haven’t been-” A sharp sliver of unease cut into Aziraphale’s voice. He closed his eyes, drew in a slow breath, and when he let it out, he’d collected himself. “Whatever has happened, I’m here. No matter what. I’m with you.”

Crowley had forgotten how confining this form was until his heart filled to bursting with want. Want to reassure and to be reassured. Want to love and hug and hold. Want to go back to the early morning before Aziraphale had left, when they’d still been warm in bed together, before they’d fought and everything had fallen apart.

“I’ve got you,” Aziraphale assured again.

He walked them both into their home. He ignored any chair in favor of the bed. The feather mattress sank under their shard weight as he laid back. He didn’t try to talk to Crowley anymore, simply ran a warming hand over Crowley’s sinuous form. It was nice, in its way. Crowley found it hard to fret over his fate when he was enveloped in a world that smelled of the two of them. It might just be alright, somehow, no matter what happened. He relaxed into the continued touch of calloused fingertips.

Aziraphale’s eyes were pointed toward the ceiling but he turned them down to Crowley with a wobbling smile. “We’ll be alright,” he said, echoing Crowley’s own thoughts. “You know this, I hope? I love you, Crowley. I don’t say it enough, perhaps. It’s simply that I’m frightened.” He worried at his lower lip. “The things the other angels say sometimes… They mean well, surely. Only trying to caution me, to prepare me for the worst. But it troubles me and I think perhaps I’ve tried to keep you at a distance to protect you. That’s all that foolish fight was.”

Crowley nuzzled into the soft curve of Aziraphale’s jaw. He couldn’t tell him how much he regretted fighting. He’d been frightened, too. Not of Falling or whatever it was the Archangels had put into Aziraphale’s head, but that he’d finally gotten to be too much. The last thing he wanted was to push Aziraphale away and yet that seemed all he was good at these days.

And yet, there they were still, together. They might have been in different forms but they still fit just as well. Aziraphale bent his neck, delicately lifted Crowley’s head, and kissed him.  Yes, there they were and there they would remain in blissful accord. Warmth blossomed from the point where lips met scales. Crowley sighed and closed his eyes before he even realized he had eyelids to close once more.

“Well, hello there,” Aziraphale said with a chuckle.

Crowley blinked rapidly. He was no longer a snake. He was, instead, a very delighted jumble of limbs collected haphazardly in Aziraphale’s arms. He wrapped his own arms around the back of Aziraphale’s neck and captured his mouth in a joyful kiss. While he had other senses as a snake, many of his angelic ones were dulled. He could have cried at the sudden return of love that blanketed him. Instead, he pressed in his lips more emphatically, let his teeth nip, and tongue explore deep into the inviting mouth beneath his own. Aziraphale moaned and quickly dug his fingers into the looser hair at the base of Crowley’s long braids.

“Love you, angel,” he panted between breaths. “Couldn’t say it before. Couldn’t say anything, but I do."

He fully planned on showing just how much but Aziraphale caught his face between his hands first. Aziraphale had a determined set to his face despite how wide his pupils had blown.

“What happened? How did you get stuck like that.”

Crowley laughed. “Do we have to talk about that right now?”

Aziraphale wiggled. “I suppose not. Only… I was terrified for you. I want to know it won’t happen again.”

“I know that tone. No matter what you say, you’ll fret silently over this and neither of us will enjoy ourselves until it’s settled.” Crowley groaned and rolled off of Aziraphale. “Don’t know if I can do that, though. Settle things, that is. I can tell you I didn’t change because of some divine punishment if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Tension visibly smoothed from Aziraphale’s shoulders. “What happened?”

“Some time after you left, Hastur came for a visit.”

Aziraphale sat up so suddenly that he nearly knocked Crowley out of bed. “What was a Duke of Hell doing here?”

Crowley cringed. Now that it came down to it, he didn’t really want to say. If Aziraphale was already worried about the state of his immortal being, that wasn’t going to help. “Oh, ehn, well, just came for a chat really.”

“A chat? About what?”

Crowley rolled onto his side so that Aziraphale could no longer look him directly in the face. “Wanted to see if I’d take the old swan dive from Heaven,” he replied with a wrinkle of his nose. “Fall. Become a demon. Make it official.”

“Make it- There’s nothing to make official!”

“I mean, I do sort of have a bad habit of stirring up trouble. You said about as much yourself.”

“You are not a demon.” Aziraphale’s face crumpled. “And I’m sorry I said all that. I’m so frightened for you. It’s no excuse, I simply need you to understand that.”

“I do. Trust me, I do. And you wouldn’t have to worry so much if it wasn’t for-” Crowley gestured vaguely at himself and then wrapped his arms around each other. “Besides, s’nothing. Do you think I ended up surrounded by hellfire because that conversation went well? Even if I’m halfway down there already, I’m not just going to… saunter the rest of the way down because they asked nice.”

“I know, I know. I don’t doubt you. I just-”

“Worry. I know. Sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for.”

“I’ve got plenty, but let’s not beat that dead horse right now, yeah?”

He wriggled closer and buried his face in Aziraphale’s broad chest. For a moment he thought Aziraphale would actually let it drop. One hand rubbed soothing circles on Crowley’s back and the other stroked over his hair. It was quiet and nice and so of course it couldn’t last.

“Wait, you still didn't explain how you ended up as a snake. Did Hastur-?”

“Nah. It was me. He taunted me. Called my Crawly. Seemed like a good way to get rid of a demon at the time. Didn’t think I’d get stuck.” He nuzzled his face into Aziraphale’s collar, pressed his nose in and found the downy edge of chest hair. “Thought at first I’d ingested too much demon blood or something to do with the proximity of all that hellfire. Or maybe that She was mad at me for, well, take your pick.” 

“And now? What do you think now?”

“Still not convinced this isn’t some joke on Her part but I think in this in particular, it was just me. Panicked. Lost myself. The more I panicked, the more I lost. Probably would’ve got stuck without you.” Crowley stretched out his limbs and crawled back on top of Aziraphale. Propped up on his elbows, he looked down, kissed one cheek and then the other, the tip of a nose, and finally lips. “Never feel more myself than when I’m with you. Different, too, but good different. Great different.”

Aziraphale’s answering smile was transcendent, sending the skin around his eyes crinkling in pleasure. He took Crowley’s chin between his thumb and forefinger, lowered it for a kiss.

“The feeling, my dear-” Another kiss. A gliding touch. Pale fingers tangled deep in crimson hair. “-is most certainly mutual. Now-” A testing, upward roll of hips. “Perhaps you were right before  and there were more pressing concerns to consider. I have no assignments in the near future. I think it best we catch up on lost time.” 

Crowley smiled into another kiss. “You read my mind.”

[theexistentiallyqueer]

For the writing meme, 65 and 177 both gave me shuake vibes. Pick whichever you like better :)

66. I didn’t tell you that I love you because I wanted to hear it back. I told you because I needed you to know.

177. You’re a coward, (Name)! You hide away this entirely different part to yourself all because you’re afraid that someone might get close to you! You’re afraid that someone might just care about you more than you think you deserve. That - that isn’t fair.

I wound up taking both prompts and combining them without actually replicating the dialogue in question, because I’m kind of allergic to that. Mild spoilers for P5R.

I’m taking prompts! Please specify the fandom and pairing. I’m currently into shuake, okujima, and edeleth, but I may be open to other pairings or characters.

———————————————————-

November 17th and the air has a bitter bite, a good excuse to stay in with hot drinks and good food. November 17th and the deadline to steal Sae’s treasure is two days away, pulling them in with the promise of bloodshed. November 17th and Akira is in the attic of Leblanc, coffee and curry downstairs forgotten because he’s too busy exploring what the inside of his would-be murderer’s mouth tastes like.

(Coffee and curry, the mild kind sweetened with pineapple and carrot, and something beneath that’s sharp and bitter, almost like blood. Akira knows that taste exactly. He bit his tongue when Arsene finally came to him and his body’s vitality had spilled into his mouth, hot as copper and just as angry.)

The boy leaning over him is thin and immaculate, even in disarray: necktie loose, shirt disheveled and unbuttoned down to the collarbone, his carefully-styled hair disturbed by Akira’s curiously greedy hands. His eyes are ferrous and bright, the edge of his stare dulled in the heady cloud of bad life choices. Akira drinks in the sight of him, reaches up to brush his fingers along the sharp line of his jaw. How can one boy be so beautiful? Akechi slides a tentative hand up the flat plane of Akira’s chest beneath his shirt, bare palm against bare skin. His knee is pinned to the futon between Akira’s leg, and he doesn’t know if the way it brushes up against him is purposeful or an accident, but Akira sees stars.

“I think I might change my mind about being rivals,” Akira says breathlessly, only half-joking. “Are you still taking applications for a sidekick?”

It’s the wrong thing to say. Akechi shudders and pulls violently away.

“I need to go,” Akechi says, fumbling with the buttons of his shirt, deny, deny, deny written into every awkward movement of his body. He pulls his gloves on next. He won’t meet Akira’s eyes.

(There’s a briefcase downstairs with an embossed capital A on the

outside and a gun, probably, on the inside. There’s a bullet in the

chamber of that gun with Akira’s name on it, use by date two steps away and counting.)

An old physics teacher once told him that if all of the molecules of your body vibrated at the same frequency as the molecules of another object, you could pass your hand through it like moving through water. Akira knows the molecules of his body are definitely doing something, if the way his skin seems to ache from how hot he feels (where Akechi touched him) and how warm he doesn’t (where he didn’t). He feels Akechi pulling away like being plunged into a bathtub filled with ice, every point of contact that was sparking with pleasure now sparking with needlepoint pains instead.

“Akechi–” Akira tries, swallowing around his tongue, which feels too thick and uncomfortable in his mouth now that it’s been inside another’s. He doesn’t know how to finish the sentence.

What Akira wants to say is: I listened to your phone call and I still want to kiss you until we both forget how to breathe.

What Akira wants to say is: I know there’s a bullet in your gun with my name on it, and I think I’d let you shoot me if you asked me.

What Akira wants to say is: I don’t think I’ve ever felt known in my entire life until I met you. I don’t think I’ve ever really known anyone the way I know you. I want you to feel the same. Feel the same. Please feel the same.

Akechi finishes straightening his tie, once more that kind of put-together that’s carefully crafted for a camera and not nearly as appealing as he’d looked only moments before. He still won’t meet Akira’s gaze. “Saturday at the courthouse. Noon is a good time, I hope?”

Akira takes a breath and lets it out, feels the way gravity hooks its claws into him and drags his heart down with it.

“Yeah,” Akira says. “See you then.”

——————————

“It’s not a small thing,” Akira says abruptly. He keeps his gaze on his cup, studying the tiny currents of milk and coffee eddying in its depths. He doesn’t see the way Akechi lifts his eyes to stare at Akira and then glare balefully away, but he can feel it, or at least he thinks he can.

“What isn’t?” Akechi asks, his voice clipped and short. He knows the answer. Akira knows he knows it. Akechi knows he knows it. Whose game are they playing at this point?

“Your life.” Akira looks up and catches Akechi’s eye before he can turn away. It’s a ruddy red and brown, full of not enough anger. “Your life’s not a small thing. Not to me.”

“That’s not–” Akechi begins, a furious snarl in his voice. It’s a sound that echoes viscerally in Akira, that propensity towards rage, and he leans in on impulse and grabs Akechi’s hand. Akechi cuts off in surprise, staring down at where their hands are joined but not pulling away.

“It’s not a small thing,” Akira repeats, lifting his free hand to brush the fine hairs away from Akechi’s face. Akechi shudders but doesn’t pull away. There’s been something in seeing him this past month cutting loose in a way that Akira has always wanted to but won’t ever let himself do that’s felt more freeing than anything.

“I’ve seen what you’ve seen and I’m not running away,” Akira tells him. “We’ll fight Maruki and I’ll drag you back with me afterwards.”

Akechi moves to draw back, but Akira won’t let him. He won’t let Akechi pull away now, so Akira instead pulls him in.

“Don’t be stupid,” Akechi says, his voice sharp. “His position is strong and the hold he has over reality is–”

Akira cuts him off before he can finish. “I’m going to need you to stop being logical for one fast hot fucking second.”

Akechi snaps his mouth shut and narrows his eyes, radiating fury. Something electric races up Akira’s spine.

Akira leans into him, leans into Akechi until he’s stumbling back into the bar behind him and bracing his body against in, against Akira’s invasive presence. Akira leans into him and kisses him. He doesn’t push Akira away, doesn’t withdraw, instead kisses him back with a focus that’s hungrier than Akira’s own. It’s nice to have greed matched for greed. Akira pulls Akechi’s bottom lip between his teeth and sucks on it. There’s that same sweet-salt tang of copper again, that taste of blood on open water. Akechi whines, low and restrained, fisting a hand in Akira’s hair, and Akira laughs an Arsene laugh into his mouth, breathing the same air he breathes.

“Stop running from this,” Akira tells him when they break apart, each of them gasping for air. Akira leans in–Akechi lets him, and brushes his mouth against the shell of Akechi’s ear, drinks in the way Akechi restrains his shudder. Akira rests a hand on his knee and runs it up, up, up, thumb dragging over the corded muscles in Akechi’s thigh that twitches beneath his fingers. “Goro. Goro. Be fair. You can’t tell me to give up on you and not acknowledge what we have. You can’t–”

There’s a bright, furious gleam of ruby in Goro’s eyes, the shining facet of some precious stone in his ruddy irises. His mouth is nearly as red, lips swollen and dark as crushed cherries, and even more inviting. “You don’t even know what you’re asking. Do you realize how selfish that is?”

Akira laughs, and leans in, and kisses him again. “More or less selfish than letting you go?”

[spookyspaghettisundae]

Not Killing Him

Orion Crown sat in his big, mean-looking SUV in the old parking lot. The dry heat of Vegas had ripped up the asphalt here over the past years, leaving it pockmarked and littered with potholes. His own car and one other vehicle in the lot were the only ones parked there, immobile, like silent steel corpses, cooling in the shadow of some abandoned warehouse.

The thick windows shielded him from the noise of traffic in the distance, so Orion sat in a weirdly muffled silence. Staring at the entrance of the derelict warehouse with its crooked, ajar doors. He felt sick to his stomach because he had slept little more than a few hours per night and his forehead was burning up.

He picked up his phone from the passenger seat, snatching it from where it was resting next to a loaded semi-automatic pistol. He thumbed through the display, checking his recent direct messages on your social media platform of choice.

Orion Crown, social media darling and super-giant of the statusphere. He flipped through business proposal messages from other influencers, something marginally important from his YouTube video editor, and an array of annoyed passive-aggressive texts from his producer-slash-partner. He let the list slide to a stop, with this finger hovering over the display. Hovering just over the message from “The Glass King” with the preview field only saying that it contained a GIF.

The internet star dithered. He could refuse to walk into that warehouse and refuse to use that gun. His career and life would be over, though.

The alternative was sucking it up, gripping the cold metal of the pistol in his palm, walking in there, and blasting away. Didn’t matter who it was. Didn’t know, didn’t care.

Even though seeing the message’s contents disturbed him every time he reviewed it, his thumb descended in slow motion. Like time almost ground to a halt, like the universe was trying to stop him from watching it again.

He tapped the message and it flicked onto full display on his screen.

The animated GIF flashed with disturbing imagery, all of it cut so quickly and abruptly that it became impossible to take it all in. Words and symbols displayed for fractions of seconds so that the mind could not really grasp what it read, and video footage that may or may not contain clipped recordings of overt violence. Violence he, himself, had authored.

The glare of his phone reflected in Orion’s glassy eyes, pupils dilating with dread and disassociation. Knowing that he recognized some of the things presented here so subliminally and viscerally, feeling guilt even though he had always rationalized the terrible things he had done in the past.

How was anybody better? How could anybody be better?

I am not a bad person, Orion thought. Nobody is.

After watching the animated GIF loop countless times, glued to the phone’s display as if bound in a trance, he put the phone back down onto the passenger seat, a hand’s breadth away from the gun. He barely registered the words that followed far down below the window of animation.

The threats. The instructions.

The sentences that had brought him to the locker where he obtained the gun. The address of this warehouse. And his mission, to kill anybody he saw inside this place.

Why didn’t this “Glass King” person just ask for money? Why this? How did the Glass King even get that footage? It had been destroyed long ago.

None of it made any sense.

No matter how many times he mulled it over, Orion Crown—born with the more unglamorous name of Kyle Howard—his sense of self-preservation, greed, and existential dread always won out. Always looped him back to doing as he was told as long as it served his own purposes. To get this over with, and walk away, and never let anybody know of his dirty secrets.

If the Glass King put any of that out—if they aired out any of Orion Crown’s dirty laundry—then he would be out of the game. Done. Probably also in prison.

Orion looked over to the gun. Stared at it, taking in every hard and unforgiving edge and angle of its sleek industrial design.

He had before, and he pondered it again, now: to just pick it up and stick the nuzzle right into his own mouth. Pull the trigger and end it right now.

But his vanity and pride, masked with religious guilt and eclipsed by copious amounts of doublethink, led him to believe that this was the only way.

He grabbed the gun and weighed it in his hand. Orion licked his lips and they felt funny. Not chapped, but uneven. Slimy. He bit his lip and chewed without realizing it, while his gaze swept up and down the crumbling building of this damned warehouse.

In one fluid motion, he got out of his car, slammed the door shut, and walked towards the entrance of the warehouse. The heat outside his car, even here in the shade—combined with the inexplicable fever he was running—made his head swim as if he had been drinking nonstop for the past day and night.

He gripped that pistol in his fist like his life depended on it. And as far as Orion was concerned, it did.

The rusted hinges on the big metal double doors squealed and he cringed at the sound of it, freezing in place. His heart raced, his pulse thundering in his ears. Eyes darted back and forth, looking for a sign of anybody in there. Whoever had parked the other car had to be in here, and Orion’s job was to gun them down.

Something heavy, like a brick hitting a pile of rubble, echoed through the decrepit and dingy halls.

Orion’s hand jerked and he pointed the gun out in front of himself, aiming at every dark corner and little thing he could perceive. With nobody in sight, the adrenaline pumped through his body, suffusing him with a quiet rage and driving the sweat to erupt from his pores, clouding his senses and sapping his reason.

He sidled through the entrance and crept through the abandoned place, twitching at any possible sound he thought he heard and any shadow he saw in the corner of his eyes, expecting someone, anybody, to jump out at him.

Something chugged and sputtered, causing him to freeze once more. He continued sneaking on when he recognized those sounds to be coming from a gas-powered generator, hidden somewhere deeper within the warehouse’s bowels.

He kind of hoped that someone would jump out at him from a blind spot. Thinking it would be much easier to pull the trigger if it felt like self defense.

Instead, he found a large, wide, pillared hall, awaiting him at the end of a long twisting and turning through claustrophobia-inducing corridors.

Someone had arranged seven door frames in a perfect circle, bolted down with plywood feet to support their weight, sawdust and power tools littering the dirty floors, and that distinct smell of freshly cut wood hanging in the air.

Each door frame held a door, closed and looking far too new to fit into this warehouse. An array of four construction site spotlights illuminated the doors from their center, connected to a tangle of bright orange power cord extensions, leading his sweeping gaze to the generator he had been hearing chug away all this time.

The doors were just standing there, out in the open, connected to no walls. Leading nowhere.

Orion gripped the pistol in both hands, holding it outstretched far in front of himself. He had never fired a gun before in his life. Without realizing it, he both wanted the thing to be as far away as possible from himself, but also wanted to use it and for things to be over fast.

But nobody was here. Right?

Wrong.

Arriving in the center of the seven doors, he blinked and inspected a small pile of objects heaped up in between the four spotlights.

A bunch of broken smartphones, a black wig, a small cracked hand mirror, a pile of about twenty credit cards that had been sloppily cut in half, a bunch of different keys that looked far too old to fit the locks on the doors here, and all of the objects rested on top of a local city map that someone had drawn all over with a black magic marker.

A pebble crunched underneath a boot. But not Orion’s shoe. He swiveled, almost getting dizzy at his own speed as he pointed the gun at the source of the noise.

Standing only steps away from the other person, he held the pistol out and swallowed. No matter how many times he had tried to mentally prepare for this moment, he hesitated and his index finger trembled instead of squeezing around the trigger.

Nobody jumping out at him. Just standing there.

She stared into the barrel of his gun for a split second and then met his gaze. A woman in her twenties, dressed like a man. Or—at second glance—androgynous, like she was in some sort of getup for a rock or punk band from the 1990s. Clad in a ratty leather jacket and dark jeans; covered in studs on her clothing, a chain hanging from her belt, and spikes protruding from a choker around her neck; way too much makeup on her face; and a poorly-cut hair-do of shaved sides and long top that could constitute as a fashion crime.

More distracting, however, was the hand she held in her hand. Orion did a double take on that before he fully absorbed what he saw there. A waxen hand with candlewicks sticking out from the fingertips, gripped firmly in her slender hand.

“Who the fuck are you?” she asked Orion. She squinted at him.

He squeezed the trigger. It didn’t work. The fucking gun refused to work.

Orion turned it over and looked at it and realized that it had a safety setting which he had forgotten to take care of before walking into the building.

Clink. Snap.

The woman flicked a lighter on and guided it to the waxen hand in her hand and he had flicked the safety and pointed the gun at her and the next thing Orion knew, his wrists hurt. And so did his neck. And his lower back.

Chafing against exposed skin, coarse rope and the smell of burnt candles still filled his nostrils. He began thrashing but found that his limbs did not obey his instinct to struggle against his bonds because of how tightly he was tied down. He scraped his skin against something like rough rock or rusty metal behind him.

Blinking and fighting the fever back down, the taste of iron clung to his tongue. His vision blurred here and there and reality caught back up to him with disjointed delay. She had tied him to something in sight of the circle of seven doors.

The woman crouched in front of one of the doors, her back turned to him.

With a loud PLOP, she opened something in her hands and whatever she was doing, it resulted in the door being splattered with something dark and red.

Hoarse, the words croaked out of his throat and left him sounding more like a toad. “Hey,” Orion emitted. “Let me go!”

The woman whispered something and it dawned on him that it was no response to him.

“What the fuck are you doing? You’re gonna get into so much trouble if you don’t let me go,” he said. But it really was just pathetic pleading, masquerading as feeble threats. “Police’ll be all over your ass, lady.”

She continued whispering and splashed more of the dark crimson liquid over the next door, to its left.

Something crunched. It drew both Orion’s attention, and that of the woman. They both stared at the thing crawling into the large hall, emerging from the corridors he had entered from. The way they paused, paralyzed with disbelief—and the failure of the human mind’s capability to process what they were looking at—took in the thing moving along the floor.

It looked like a pile of trash, like someone had kicked over a garbage can and the contents of four weeks of refuse had spilled out over the ground. With a stench to match. But parts of it looked fleshy, or sponge-like. Wobbling but staying whole, like a block of jello. Other bits, like stalks, or tentacles, tiny and too many to count, coiling and recoiling and almost like they were looking in every direction, but seeing without any discernible eyes.

Death and evil incarnate, crawling over the filthy floors. Hungry, but slow. Creeping. Part of the world’s abandoned things, coalesced and fused into something awful, something trapped in between the realm of the living and the realm of non-existence; a vessel to something worse, something spawned in the darkest recesses and the deepest abyss of human sin. Crawling, and more than one. Another pile of living muck and vomit-inducing presence followed. And another. And another.

Rejects.

They headed towards the seven doors with painful slowness. But one of them began veering away from the rest, inching closer towards Orion.

Thwuck. Shlack. Scrape.

Orion wanted to throw up. He started wriggling, thrashing, fighting against his bonds, but none of it helped. He looked back at the woman in desperation.

She breathed through her teeth, “Shit.”

Haste colored her every movement now and she haphazardly sprayed more liquid onto the doors. One by one. She whispered all the while, though the whispers had made way to hectic chanting. Orion had no chance in understanding it, for the words sounded nothing like any language he had ever heard before.

Almost matching the sounds made by the Rejects, creeping forth.

Scrape. Flesh. Shlef. Thwuck.

The Reject crawled closer. Ever closer to him.

Tears welled up in the corners of his eyes, first blurring his sight a little, and then a lot. Orion had no time or space to realize how that might have been better, he only felt the deep-rooted dread in his stomach. The certainty of death by this abomination, crawling up to him. Only an arm’s length away from his kicking feet.

The stench intensified as the thing got closer, robbing him of any speech, making him wretch.

Images of the GIF on his phone flashed in his mind. The violence he had inflicted, captured on camera—his own recordings, not meant for public consumption—sent to him by the Glass King.

Just like these monsters had been sent by the Glass King.

Orion screamed for help.

A figure in a long black duster emerged from the corridors, standing still at the edge of the large hall, staring at the seven doors. Orion screamed for help from him, now. But within just a few beats of his heart, pounding so hard that it wanted to burst from his chest, he knew deep down that this man was the master of the Rejects.

No—this man was the Glass King, and he cared nothing for Orion’s plight. Hell, he probably enjoyed it. Orion sensed that just much malice from the presence of his man, and his imagination ran wild in response to the evil emanating from his body, hitting his entire being like a truck.

“Will you even be you when you return from that place? If you return from the house?” asked the man, directing his words at the woman by the doors.

Cold and uncaring about Orion, who was now screaming at the top of his lungs. Because something cold and wet and slimy slapped against the bottom of his shoe. And slithered up it, tugging at shoe laces, wrapping around the leg of his pants by his ankle, and applying pressure. Pulling itself upwards.

Onto him.

The woman never stopped chanting, flinging blood at those doors and then sticking something white and misshapen into the keyhole of one of the brass knobs, exposed by the glaring cone of light from one of the spots. She stopped chanting.

“You can’t stop change. Everything changes. That’s all you’re really afraid of, isn’t it?” she shouted. Anger making her voice tremble. Also something insecure. Or fear.

She ripped the door open and ran through it and slammed it shut behind her, but she didn’t emerge from the other side.

Just gone. Vanished into thin air.

Orion had neither eyes nor mind for this phenomenon, however. He only felt the many tiny tendrils of trash touching, feeling, finding their way up his limbs. A path of disgusting discovery, exploring his body like an alien creature trying to figure out human anatomy, but in reality just so depraved and sinister that it pretended to be doing so when it fed on his festering dread and despair.

Was this what it was like to be helpless? To be used, and chewed out?

To cry for help, but be ignored?

He had no capacity left for clean, deep thoughts. Only terror filled his being. The Reject crawled up over him, exerting the weight of a full-grown person, pinning him down and amplifying his sense of helplessness.

Some part of him expected to feel tiny teeth from tiny mouths chewing away at him, but the slithering and worming motions only reflected the darkness in his own heart, mirroring the corruption that had always haunted him. His screaming died down, petering out into a hoarse unintelligible something that transformed into whimpering.

The man in the duster—the Glass King—clicked his tongue but ignored Orion, approaching the seven doors.

“You didn’t answer my question, Kimmy. You fear the answer, or you’d say it out loud,” muttered the Glass King.

Orion expected the sensation of cold metal to be cutting his flesh, but the wet something was more like saliva dispersed from tongues, oozing across his skin. He expected for those rubber bands and spongy stalks to wrap around his neck and choke the life out of him, but they only squeezed a little bit. Just enough to be uncomfortable, and just enough for the Reject to enjoy it.

It breathed on him. The Reject engulfed him, not killing him.

The man in the duster turned on his heels.

Eyes wide open, stricken with unnatural knowing accumulated from a thousand lives and a deep-seated and all-devouring madness—staring into Orion’s eyes. The Glass King’s stare reached deep inside, prying away at his secrets like a lunatic ripping away at the fabric padding lining the walls of a forgotten cell, for those crazy eyes had seen the same GIF as he had. Knew what he knew. Knew his every dirty secret.

Much worse was the grin plastered across his face. Toothy, sadistic, and stretched far too wide to look fun or what was natural for that human face.

“Oh, Kyle, my boy,” said the Glass King, with the grin never wiping itself off his face. “You had one job and you bungled it. But no worries, I still have use for you. Your name, your reputation—your face. Enough mojo there for me to milk for a far greater purpose. Good on you for at least coming here, huh?”

The Glass King took a few steps closer towards Orion. Neared. Menace echoing with each step of his boots thumping against the dirty floor.

Orion wasn’t even whimpering anymore. Before a sheet of paper with something cold and wet and fleshy clinging to its underside had fully crept up the side of his face and covered it—before he closed his eyes and lost sight—he wanted to protest.

But he had no words.

Some part of him, matched only by his urge to vomit, knew he deserved this. Every second of it.

The Reject breathed on him, hot and damp and unpleasant. It almost entirely engulfed him, satisfied with the almost.

Not killing him.

—Submitted by Wratts