#one of these days i will do a canon rewrite and then you will realize.

[cleromancy]

tim going from "jason gave his life for this uniform" to "jason was reckless and got himself killed" over the years would have been SUCH a fascinating character development if it had been done like. On purpose abd not just as part of the greater victim blaming narrative retcon lol

[p0rk-guts]

HUSKER!!!! Husk. Whatever. THIS OLD CAT!!!! ^ - ^

comparison + breakdown ⬇️

Look idk what possible lore reasons there could be for Husk having bird wings and tail feathers whether it's hidden somewhere online or to be determined later in the show even though I can't for the life of me even guess why they're there (if you've got any hc's tho I'd love to hear em) but I just got rid of em entirely, at least for the time being. Declutters him a little. They're definitely a little much.

And I've always hated those buttons on his chest fur... Are they part of his pattern.... Are they hot glued on...... What is it with Viv and melting clothing and flesh together.........

He also does NOT look 60-70 like at all (pretty sure that's canon but I just got it off the wiki) so I tried to remedy that by giving him more wrinkles and creases. He's a Persian cat thing now bc some of them really do be lookin like mustache wearing old guys fr. Also his neck fluff is sorta supposed to allude to facial hair w/ some greying sprinkled in! He's officially like... 62 now. + He's fatter bc 1) beer belly 2) Persian cat build and 3) Vivzie twink fatigue

Husk's outfit is objectively silly for his grown ass to be wearing but I like the hc I've seen around as that being a stipulation in his deal with Alastor where he figuratively and literally "took the shirt off his back". Considering how as an overlord he had a nice suit and he (possibly. Definitely In headcanons) doesn't even like showing off sinner features, or his body at all, especially not in such a way. Is this canonically the case? Probably not. But hey 🤷🏾‍♀️

I made some comparatively minimal changes there. I undid his tie bc man's usually drunk and doesn't have the energy to fuss with it. I also gave the ends a bit of a spade shape. The clasps on his suspenders are meant to be clovers and there are still hearts on his hands. For the diamond face... I kinda tried to put it into his tail? But that's kinda iffy so 3.5/4 card faces achieved 👍🏾

Turned his top hat into a more flat wide brim hat that i could NOT for the life of me find a name for... Just wider fedoras I think? but they seemed to be kinda popular at the time. For my Husk, as an overlord he occasionally wore a fancy top hat when he was showing off, and now this is like. His downgrade replacement he's got to wear. + Some playing cards tucked into the hat band!

Made those yellows his primary colors bc in my rewrite greed is gold and I definitely think that would've been one of his major sins in life. Also a bit of gluttony too, which I made orange, so I added some of those tones in there. Allsoo after fussing with the colors for literal days I stilllll kindahateemalittle BUT IT'S FINE. I'll figure it out

And that's all for him!! Realized I forgot to put the little anti Viv banner on my last post but then again idgaf fr it's whatever. If you don't know I hate her you'll learn before long

And, of course, dvelopment sketches 4 sticking around!!!!

Ok that's all bye ✌🏾🧍🏾‍♀️

[doctorbitchcrxft]

The Benders | Supernatural Series Rewrite | Dean Winchester x Reader

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader (Eventual)

Warnings: people are crazy, canon violence, canon gore

Word Count: 2370

A/N: I'm scheduling two of these today since this one's so short!! The Benders episode makes me really uncomfortable, tbh, so I kinda sped through it... lol

Mobile Supernatural Series Rewrite Masterlist

Supernatural Series Rewrite Masterlist

Supernatural Series Rewrite Playlist

You and the boys sniffed out a case in Hibbing, Minnesota. A child had watched a neighbor get dragged under his car. When you spoke to the young boy, his mother didn’t seem to believe him at all. You decided to head to a bar to collect your thoughts and grab a beer. 

You and Dean played darts while Sam explained to you that his dad had earmarked this area due to the insane number of disappearances in this area. In the midst of his explanation, you realized you needed to change your tampon and hadn’t brought any into the bar with you.

“Dean, keys?” you asked.

He tossed them at you. "Why, you stealin' my car?"

“Gotta go get some girl stuff,” you responded.

“Gross. Don’t wanna know.” You knew he was kidding by the smirk on his face.

You scoffed. “It’s not gross, it’s natural! Asshole.” You shoved his shoulder playfully and headed out of the bar. On your way out, you heard a noise and stopped. You turned over your shoulder to the other cars lining the gravel parking lot, feeling uneasy. You pushed through it, deciding that it wouldn’t take you longer than two seconds to get back inside after you’d grabbed your products. 

You turned at another sound, hurrying over to the Impala. You reached into the trunk and grabbed what you needed. Before you could even turn back around, you were lying on the gravel out cold.

***

The next thing you knew, you jerked up in a metal cage covered with hay at the bottom. Your hair felt a mess, and the back of your head was tender from your fall. You looked to your left and noticed the guy you’d originally come to investigate the disappearance of asleep in the cage next to you. You scrambled to your feet, trying to kick the cage door open. Nothing was working.

Stirring in the cage next to you caught your attention. “You’re alive! You okay?” you asked.

Mr. Jenkins groaned. “Does it look like I’m doin’ okay?”

You stretched your neck. “Touché. Where are we?’

“I don’t know. The country, I think. Smells like the country,” the man responded.

“You’re Alvin Jenkins, aren’t you?”

He nodded.

“I was lookin’ for you,” you told him.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” you nodded.

“Well, no offense, but this is a piss-poor rescue.”

You kept up your plucky attitude in spite of the sinking feeling in your stomach. “Well, my friends are out there right now, too. They’re lookin’ for us. So—”

“So, they’re not gonna find us. We’re in the middle of nowhere.” He nodded at the door of the building you were in. “Waiting for them to come back and do god-knows-what to us.”

“What are they? Have you seen them?” you asked.

He looked at you confused. “What are you talking about?”

“Whatever’s got us, what’d they look like?”

“See for yourself,” he said.

At that moment, the door opened and two men wearing black hats and coats walked in. One walked over to Alvin’s cage and kicked the side of it. Alvin moved back into the corner, yelling at them not to touch him as they entered the cage. Instead of doing anything to him, they just left a plate of food on the floor and left.

“I’ll be damned,” you said more to yourself than your fellow kidnappee. “They’re just people.”

Alvin looked at you like you were stupid. “Yeah. What’d you expect?”

You paused a moment. “How often do they feed you?”

“Once a day. And they use that thing over there to open the cage.” The man pointed at a panel on a post a few feet away.

“And that’s the only time you see ‘em?”

He shrugged. “So far. But I’m waitin’.”

“Waitin’ for what?”

“Ned Beatty time.”

“That's fucking gross, dude.”

“What do you think they want, then?”

You began trying to climb the walls of your cage to grab a long metal wire stretching from the top of the pole next to you to the ground. You got hold of it and began pulling down the wire. “Depends on who they are.”

“They’re a bunch of psycho hillbilly rednecks, if you ask me. Lookin’ for love in all the wrong places.”

You continued to pull on the wire, doing your best to hold yourself up, and it gradually began to detach from the pole.

***

Hours had gone by. You were still trying to pull the wire off; climbing back up and continuously slipping down the cage’s metal bars.

“Why don’t you give it up, sweetheart, there’s no way out,” Alvin told you.

“Don’t call me that!” You used your anger and frustration to finally tear the wire down. A piece of metal fell with it. “It’s a bracket.”

Alvin scoffed. “Well, thank God, a bracket. Now we’ve got ‘em, huh?” 

His cage suddenly swung open on its own. He scrambled out of it. “Maybe you knocked somethin’ loose.”

Your heart rate began to pick up. “I think you should get back in there, Jenkins. This isn’t right.”

“Don’t you wanna get out of here?” 

“Of course, I do. But that was too easy.” Your mind was going a million miles per minute.

“Look, I’m gonna get out of here, and I’m gonna send help, okay, don’t worry,” he assured you, turning for the door.

“I’m serious, dude! This might be a trap!”

“Bye, sweetheart.” He pushed the door open and left. 

“Jenkins!” you called. “Alvin! Dude! Come back!”

Moments later, Alvin’s former cage slammed shut. 

You shivered on the floor, hugging your knees to your chest in the center of the cage. You began to count the minutes going by. You counted all the way up to twenty minutes before you heard a distant scream from a voice that sounded a lot like Alvin.

Not even an hour later, another woman was dragged unconscious into another cage next to you. You watched her carefully until she woke up.

“You alright?” you asked her once she’d gotten a glimpse of her surroundings.

She turned her head to you. “Are you (Y/N) (Y/L/N)?”

You furrowed your eyebrows at her. “Yeah…?”

“Your friends are looking for you.”

You laughed, relieved. “Thank god. Where are they?

“I, uh, I cuffed ‘em to my car,” the woman explained.

You sighed. 

Moments later, the door of the barn burst open. You couldn’t see who the figures were, but you backed up into the corner of your cage. Finally, Dean’s face came into view.

“(Y/N)?” 

You scrambled to your feet and grabbed onto the bars in front of him. “Dean!”

“Are you hurt?” Sam asked, looking you over.

You shook your head.

“Damn, it’s good to see you," Dean breathed out.

You smiled at him and ignored the way your heart fluttered in your chest.

“How did you get out of the cuffs?” the woman in the other cage asked.

The older brother turned toward her. “Oh, I know a trick or two. Alright. These locks look like they’re gonna be a bitch.” 

“Try that box over there,” you suggested, pointing to the control panel.

“Have you seen ‘em?”

“Yeah, dude, they’re just people.”

“And they jumped you? Must be gettin’ a little rusty there, sweetheart.” 

“Shut up, asshole.”

Sam walked over to the control panel and started trying different buttons. “What do they want?” 

You shrugged. “I don’t know. They let Jenkins go, but that was some sort of trap. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“Well, that’s the point. You know, with our usual playmates, there’s rules, there’s patterns. But with people, they’re just crazy,” Dean responded. He was still sizing up your cage, occasionally looking to the door to see if they’d been followed.

“See anything else out there?” you asked.

“Uh, he has about a dozen junked cars hidden out back. Plates from all over, so I’m thinkin’ when they take someone, they take their car, too.”

“Did you see a black Mustang out there? About ten years old?” the woman in the other cage asked.

“Yeah, actually, I did.”

She seemed sad.

“Your brother’s?” Sam asked her, looking upset when she nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“Let’s get you guys out of here, then we’ll take care of those bastards,” Dean jumped back in. “This thing takes a key. Key?”

You shook your head, and the brothers set off to find it.

“Guys?”

They turned back to you. 

“Be careful.”

Dean nodded and left with Sam.

***

You abandoned your jacket and looked over to the woman in the cage next to you. “You hurt? Your face is all scratched.”

She shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”

“I’m (Y/N), by the way.”

“Kathleen.”

“I’d shake your hand, but, uh—”

She laughed at your joke. 

“How’d you meet the guys?” you questioned after a moment’s silence.

“They came runnin’ up into my station. The pretty boy nicked an ID off another cop and was raving about some girl he needed to find. That was kinda my first hint that he wasn’t really a cop.”

Your stomach did a somersault. “He seemed worried about me?”

“Yeah, he did.”

“Huh.” A silence settled over the two of you before you spoke again. “You said you had a brother?”

Kathleen nodded. “Riley. Disappeared about ten years ago. I’ve been looking for him ever since.”

“I’m sorry,” you told her.

She didn’t answer. The two of you sat in silence again for quite some time until the door reopened. You could tell it wasn’t the two brothers, though. This man was wearing a hat and a puffer vest and inserted the key into the panel.

‘Fuck,’ you thought and grabbed at the bracket that had fallen to the ground. The door to your cage unlocked and you backed up against the far wall.

The man in the cap opened the door and aimed his gun straight at you. You threw the bracket at his gun, knocking it off-kilter, and used that opportunity to lunge at the man. You tackled him to the floor and began fighting with him for his gun. Shots rang out three times as he attempted to shoot you in the midst of the struggle.

“You son of a bitch, let go!” you screamed. You twisted your body to where your foot was on his throat and leveraged yourself that way. You pushed your foot in one direction and pulled the gun in the other, finally managing to get the gun away from him. You hit him with the but of the shotgun thrice in the head, knocking him out cold. You tried to fire the gun at him, but it didn’t work

“Fuck.”

You quickly took the key from the man on the floor and unlocked Kathleen’s cage. She helped you drag the unconscious man into the cage and relock him inside. You then smashed the control panel with the gun to disable it and keep the man locked inside. 

You heard footsteps approaching the barn and ducked behind a bale of hay. You hadn’t been able to see where Kathleen had gone, and held your breath when you heard the door open.

“Lee!”

‘Oh, that was his name.’

“Where are ya? Lee!” A rough voice called again. “Damn it, Jared, get the lights!” 

The barn stayed dark despite the switch you could hear being flipped.

“They must have blown the fuse,” a second male voice said.

You could hear the men running in separate directions; one clambering up the ladder and the other going in the opposite direction of your hiding place. You suddenly heard Kathleen grunting and fighting one of the men before hearing a gun cock.

“Hey!” you called, jumping up from your hiding spot. You ducked quickly when the man fighting Kathleen turned to shoot you. A voice behind you groaned in pain after you’d ducked and you ran over to Kathleen and the man she was fighting. You jumped on his back and began strangling him in the crook of your elbow. Kathleen wrestled the gun away from him while he fumbled through fighting you. 

“(Y/N), drop!” Kathleen told you, and you listened just before she hit the man with the but of the shotgun. He collapsed to the ground and the two of you turned your attention to the older man on the floor behind you. 

You dragged the man over to Kathleen’s cage and locked him inside. Out of breath from lugging his heavy body, you turned back to Kathleen who was aiming her gun at the older man on the ground.

“I’ll watch this one. You go ahead.” 

You stared at her, motionless.

“Go ahead,” she urged you.

You sprinted out of the barn, trying to make sense of your surroundings. You found nothing but trees, dirt, and old cars. “Motherfucker.” You then heard a snapping twig coming from the woods before you.

“Hey!” you yelled. “Come out, motherfucker!”

“Whoa, whoa, (Y/N), calm down,” Dean told you, appearing with Sam from behind you.

You breathed a sigh of relief. “Dean!” You threw yourself into his arms and squeezed tightly. He hesitated for a moment, but hugged you back strongly. You reveled in the feeling of his touch before forcing yourself to break away. You turned to Sam and hugged him, thanking the boys for coming to find you.

A gunshot sounded before Kathleen emerged from the barn. “Where’s the girl?”

“Locked her in a closet,” Dean chuckled. “What about the dad?”

“Shot. Trying to escape.” She looked uncomfortable, but you took her word for it.

Later after you’d said your goodbyes to Kathleen, the three of you were walking back to the police station to get the car.

Sam walked a little in front of you and Dean.

“Never do that again,” the older brother told you.

“Do what?”

Dean muttered, “Go missin’ like that.”

“Aw, look at you.” You playfully pinched his cheek. “You were worried about me.”

“All I’m sayin’ is, you vanish like that again, I’m not lookin’ for ya,” he grumbled.

You rolled your eyes. “Sure, you won’t.”

“I’m not.”

You giggled. “So, you got sidelined by a thirteen-year-old girl, huh?”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Just sayin’, gettin’ rusty there, sweetheart.”

“Shut up.”

Series Rewrite Taglist: @polireader @brightlilith @atcamillanorrman @jrizzelle @insomnia-bookworm @procrastination20 @mrs-liebgott @djs8891 @tiggytaylor @staple-your-mouth @iloveshawn @jesstherebel @rach5ive @strawberrykiwisdogog @bruhidkjustwannaread @mxltifxnd0m @sunshine-on-marz @big-ol-boat @mgchaser @capncrankle @davina-clairee @chervbs @simpingdeadcharacters @nesnejwritings @stillhere197 @stephshaww @tearsforhan @take-it-on-the-run @iloveyou2mia @maxinehufflepuffprincess @ohgeehowdigethere @here-for-the-extravaganza @seninjakitey @berarenado @s0urw00lf @princessleahorgana @quarterhorse19 @rei0812 @isla-finke-blog @silverdoragon @karacaroldanvers @gayandfairycore @examishbookwyrm

[makeyoumine69]

Last Memory (Memory Reboot x5)

𝐏𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆: Patrick Bateman x gn!Reader

𝐒𝐔𝐌𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐘: Some time after Patrick and Evelyn got married, Bateman thought he could live a normal life and finally forget about you, but he didn't realize that he was already starting to lose his grip on reality, slowly but surely.

𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒: NSFW, Patrick's POV, angst, lots of sex, canon violence, blood, near-death experiences, dark themes, obsession, strong hallucinations, blowjobs, pussy eating, rough vaginal and anal sex, cum eating, tainted love vibes, drug use, depressing thoughts and intentions, blackout and fainting, rough choking, spanking, masturbation, cheating, dirty talk and slurs, pet names, degradation kink, self-harm and panic attacks implied, unstable Patrick is a warning himself, I might have forgotten something because this chapter is long af, so forgive me if I really did.

𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐒: 15k

𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐆 𝐑𝐄𝐂: VØJ, Narvent—Last Memory; Timecop1983—Back to You

ᴀ/ɴ: Hello dear readers, I'm sorry to keep you waiting, but I just wanted to make this chapter as good as possible! After several rewrites, I think I am finally happy with the result. I'm very sad that Memory Reboot will end in the next update, but I hope you enjoy this angsty story! Also, there are some easter eggs in this chapter, so be on the lookout! And please be aware that there is a lot of trigger material in this chapter, so be careful! Thank you so much for sticking with me, you are all incredible!

𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒: [MASTERLIST]; [SERIES MASTERLIST]

An annoying, sonorous alarm sound woke me up and I had to hit it with my fist, almost breaking it, to make it fucking stop. Yawning, I sat on the bed and realized that I was still in Evelyn's apartment; these cream-colored sheets made me want to cry from how much I hate them, but instead of ripping them off, I stretched my arms. The tension in my body, coursing from my shoulders down to my groin, was an eloquent sign that I needed release. With a loud groan, I stood up and briefly grabbed my dick through my white underwear, which seemed to have been hard all night since that bitch Evelyn, who was my wife by the way, refused to have sex again. It was the second time in a row. Sliding my messy hair back, I walked into the living room and noticed that Evelyn had already left. I sighed with relief that I didn't have to see her irritated face since I was already on the verge of going nuts.    

In the kitchen, I took the bottle of Evian from the fridge and made a long gulp before checking the time on my Rolex, frowning right away as I remembered Evelyn yapping about me always keeping them on, even when I went to bed. 

God, why can't women have their mouths shut sometimes?

With a wry grin, I placed the bottle on the counter and paused for a moment to check my reflection in the gleaming metal door of the refrigerator. Today’s day in the office was going to be tough as hell since I had a fuck ton of stupid meetings I tried to convince Jean to cancel, but she reassured me that it would be too rude to ignore my business partners for too long. Hmmph…

A bit later, when I was almost finishing my work out, I suddenly realized that it had already been two months since me and Evelyn got married. And no, I couldn’t really believe this since all days were like one long day��a day that seemed to never end. Huffing, I did another push-up, the 50th in a row, feeling not tired at all. Small beads of sweat rolled down my tensed forehead and I could care less about brushing them off as I was so focused on the pleasant feeling of my muscles flexing each time my chest almost touched the mat. Normally, sports could easily help me to distract myself, to let off steam, to feel refreshed and clear-headed, but now I was more detached from reality than ever before. And it seemed that no amount of exercise could help. Also, my condition was aggravated by the lack of sex, proper sex. When my muscles finally began to hurt, I stopped doing everything and just lay on the mat, panting and looking at the ceiling above. Then, I slowly looked down at my groin—still hard as rock–before my hand involuntarily grabbed it, eliciting a small gasp to fall from my wet lips. Fuck, I was about to explode from my own touch. That was not normal at all. It was pathetic.

Frustrated, I was certain that even a quick release in the shower wouldn’t soothe my mounting tension. It never did, considering that over the past few days I couldn’t even sleep, and what was worse was that even violence couldn’t bring me this much-needed relief. As I made my way to the bathroom, I was thinking, literally drowning in my obsessive thoughts.

I need more…I really need to get this done. I REALLY NEED IT! I NEED THEM!

 I bit my lip and turned on the shower, then got rid of my white boxers, stepped out of them, and strided on the cold marble. The water washed over me like a tidal wave. I closed my eyes and let the steam splash along my flushed face. My skin felt like it was on fire, as if I were about to crash into the sun. I couldn't find any way to relax. I felt desperate and angry. I was pretty mad, too. But would killing you have helped me find peace? 

If I knew you were gone, if no one could ever be with you the way I was, would that be what I wanted?

 I let out a deep, exhausted sigh and pressed my forehead against the wet tiles, ignoring the way the tip of my cock brushed against the wall, sending tingles into my very core. The images of you covered in blood, trapped beneath me, almost sent me over the edge. I didn't let myself think about it for too long, though, because I knew it would lead to addiction. As if I weren't already hooked. My breathing got a little uneven, and I started scratching at the white tiles as I got hit by a sudden, intense rush of memories. I remembered your voice, your moans, and the way you screamed my name. I wanted to ruin you, to make you bleed, to tear you apart and leave you just like you left me. The pain you caused was so deep, it lingered. I was so caught up in the moment that I didn't realize what I was doing. I let my hand rest on my throbbing length while the fingers of my other hand slid down my lower back, right between my legs. The moment I touched my tensed asshole, I moaned. I was loud and needy. I was embarrassed but also aroused. I thrust into my hand, slowly at first but gradually losing control, while my digit slid inside my ass completely with ease. I couldn't hold back my whimpers as I was about to cum. My vision was filled with blood, intensifying my fantasies about you. With my eyes closed, I was on the brink of losing it when I suddenly heard some commotion coming from behind the bathroom door. 

"Damn!" I groaned and hit the wall in front of me, my dick pulsing even after I let go of it.

"Honey," Evelyn's voice echoed through the bathroom. I turned to see her casually walking to the shower, her blue eyes curiously examining my bare frame as if she was seeing me like this for the first time. "You didn't close the door."

Fuck, I really didn't.

Scrunching my nose, I pushed my wet hair back and spun around completely, giving her the full view of my nakedness. "I thought I'd leave before you got back..." my reply was brash and sharp. "...at least I hoped so."

Evelyn didn't react, she just stood in front of the shower, blinking and staring at me—at the way the water flowed down my sculpted body, to be exact—and something told me that just watching wasn't going to be enough for her.

"So... are you just going to stay and watch?" I said aloud before opening the glass door and letting some steam out of the shower. 

The blonde grinned broadly but remained motionless. "You're not trying to bait me like that, are you?" 

Jesus Christ, this woman is really driving me crazy.

Irritated, still struggling with my boner, I wanted to drag her into the shower without even asking and make her freshly bought Chanel suit so fucking shitty that she would definitely throw a tantrum, but I managed to control myself.

Leaning against the wet glass, I watched her unclasp her jewels, gems that shone in the dim bathroom light, my hands instinctively slipping down to my aching cock as I was now the one watching Evelyn take off her jacket, the delicate shape of her collarbones forcing me to admit that my wife was, after all, absolutely gorgeous and even though I didn't feel anything... sublime towards her, I couldn't deny that every time she did things like that, she stirred up a burning desire in me.

"What if I do?" My voice dropped lower from the tension building at the base of my spine. "You'll find another stupid excuse to deny me, like you always do?" I gave myself a slow stroke, biting my lips and quickly licking them as Evelyn removed her blouse and placed her leg on the edge of the tub, pulling up her skirt so I could see her black stockings. "Why didn't you go for Bryce when you had the chance?"

My body stopped listening to me as I said these words, as if I was hypnotized, but I felt no remorse, only a pang of conscience for how pathetic I probably was right now, standing in the shower jacking off to the woman I didn't really love, who was probably having an affair with my best friend all this time as a bonus.

"And you're bringing up Bryce again," Evelyn murmured, grinning like a vixen, her hands working meticulously to remove her stockings, stopping only when she was done with her expensive clothes, leaving herself only in a white Vanity Fair lingerie I'd bought her a few days ago to stop her hysteria. "Why is this only bothering you now...after we got married?"

"W-what?" I almost choked on my breath, my hand around my cock stalled in its momentum. "What are you talking about? It...it never bothered me."

Still, her words struck a chord within me and now I was even more angry with myself than before. Evelyn obviously thought she was in control of this situation—her extra confident demeanor, the way she moved and talked, even her blue eyes looked different now, as a wicked spark glinted in them. 

For a fleeting moment, I just stood there, trying to lose myself in the warm streams of water, not really knowing what to say, and a suffocating panic crept into my chest, but then, as I found myself gripping the glass shower door with all the force I could muster so that it wouldn't shatter, my vision blurred for a second before I noticed Evelyn's slender body pressed against the glass, her small but pretty breasts looking so damn inviting that I couldn't hold back a groan.

"What were you saying?" She asked indifferently, the water gurgling mixing with her voice inside my head pulling me into a trance.

"Nothing," I replied, leaning forward and pressing myself against the glass door from the opposite side, my dick brushing against it ever so slightly, but even this mere contact made me close my eyes for a dear moment. "I said nothing..." my eyes darkened, pupils dilated. "Now...get in...will you?" I grinned and tilted my head, watching my wife flutter her thick eyelashes like bird wings.

Evelyn didn't answer, standing still with her body pressed against the shower door, and I couldn't hold back anymore—I just dragged her in, not caring about her expensive lingerie getting soggy—I'd buy her a new one if I had to. With a surprised squeal, she then giggled as the streams of water ran down her fit body, her elegant fingers stroking my cheek for a fleeting moment before I picked her up and turned her around to press her against the cool marble wall. Evelyn's gasp echoed through the bathroom, sending a shiver down my spine, as if I were really into her, into all of this, and if that was not me imagining you in her place, if that was not making me want to be somewhere else right now.

Somewhere where nobody could find me. Us. 

"Patrick," Evelyn's voice pulled me out of my thoughts. "Can you hear me? The water's too hot..."

"Too hot?" I repeated, finding her statement so funny for no reason, but I cooled the water with my free hand anyway, still holding Evelyn in my arms as if she weighed nothing. "I'd say something like..."

"It's not the water that's making it hot, it's me," she cut me off, her face turning into a serious grimace, and for a second I felt like I was going to lose my shit. Is she making fun of me? "I've heard that enough, honey."

Frowning at that fucking nickname I really hated, I noticed the way she was pressing on my shoulders, implying that she wanted me to get her down on the floor, and I did—I didn't want to think, I didn't want to guess what was going through her mind—I just wanted to follow. To feel at least something beyond hatred and disgust. But I guess that was too much to ask.

Without saying a word, I knelt before Evelyn, leveled myself with her perfectly waxed pubic area, her breath hitching as I planted a soft kiss on her mound before tracing a finger along her wet from the water folds through the absolutely drenched fabric of her panties, which were now clinging to her like a second skin. I looked up at her with a mischievous grin, the water hitting my eyes painfully, but I held on to watch that raw need emanating from her body—savoring it like a vampire thirsty for blood.

My actions were smooth, calculated. When I got rid of her damp lingerie, I let the wet clothes that were now spread out on the shower floor fall to the ground, forgotten, and I was sure that Evelyn would have to throw them in a garbage can when we were done. The involuntary arch of her back, her hips brushing against my face and the moan she let out when the tip of my tongue flicked around her feverish clit, that was something I could live with. 

Letting Evelyn grind against my face, I began to eat her pussy more feverishly, my one hand holding her open while another was wrapped tightly around my hard dick as I jerked off in sync with my oral ministrations. It was actually a turn-on, but only because I managed to block out all thoughts of you... In another situation they would have helped me to orgasm, but now... now they would only destroy everything. 

I groaned when Evelyn pulled my hair harder than I liked, but I didn't want to punish her for it, not now, because I was still going to fuck her and this would be a perfect moment to show her how I felt and what I really needed. But then again, all of this made me feel pathetic in some odd, twisted way, that I was a starved dog who had to struggle to find barely any food to survive—what was my life—I was not living, I was surviving.

"Yes...yes...just like that," Evelen keened again as I tongue fucked her flushed cunt. "Keep...g-going..."

I could feel that she was so close to collapsing, it was kind of amusing how fast I could always make her cum, if only she knew that I always did it for myself, not for her, but for me. "Cum around my face," I spat out, my overalls buzzing from the tensind at the base of my cock; these little tingles were going to make me explode, but I didn't hesitate, increasing the pace of my own stroking. "Let it go. Now!"

My voice was muffled, gruff, I was sure its vibration only added to the overwhelming rush of bliss that was about to descend upon my wife as her legs began to tremble, her thigh on my shoulder jerking as I dipped my tongue inside her while my thumb caressed her oversensitive bud. And then she climaxed, convulsing and barely holding herself from screaming, I watched as she silenced herself with her palm, her eyes closed tightly, I reveled in such reactions, I always had, so I didn't stop as I wanted to prolong this scene—a scene full of fake emotions and this was just an echo of something I had experienced and lost— because if I stopped, I would fucking die.

Maybe this is what I always needed? Just to...stop existing?

Panting, I finally moved away from her hot, now swollen cleft, my own heart pounding so fast, but I couldn't move, I just stayed on my knees, the water falling on me like a heavy rain from that day I followed you to the airport and watched the plane take you away from me. For the second fucking time in a row.

Meanwhile, Evelyn was slowly coming down from her high, her chest heaving and falling so fast that for a moment I thought she was going to pass out, but then she turned and leaned against the wall, swaying her hips in the most inviting gesture I'd ever seen her make.

"Shit," I murmured almost imperceptibly, my basic instincts finally taking over. "You want me to fuck you?"

Gasping, she nodded and craned her neck to look back at me, I quickly stood and hugged her from behind, my lips tracing a short trail of kisses along her shoulder as I aligned myself with her entrance, she was so aroused and ready for me that I felt no resistance as I pushed myself into her malleable body. Just a few fleeting seconds for both of us to adjust before my pace picked up, the sound of wet flesh against flesh filling the room, and I pressed closer to Evelyn, her high-pitched moans fading in my delusions as I gave in—the images of you were so clear in my mind now that I clenched my teeth to hold back my own moans—I was weak and I hated myself for it.

Luckily Evelyn was on the pill so I didn't have to worry about a sudden pregnancy, but there was still some fear I tried desperately to ignore, my thrusts became ragged, raw and deep, I was about to spill myself inside her, both palms cupping her breasts, rubbing soft mounds, but then I squeezed them quite roughly and Evelyn's loud whimper was a sheer testament to my ferocity. Feeling my whole system shatter, I managed to stop myself from sinking my teeth into her neck as my vision turned white as I reached my peak with your name on my lips, though I never let myself say it out loud.

A little later that morning, as I dressed in my freshly tailored dark charcoal flannel double-breasted suit with wide white pinstripes, the sun was high in the zenith and its rays bathed Evelyn's bedroom in a soft golden hue. This brief encounter of intimacy with my wife gave me some hope that maybe there was still a chance to live a normal life, the one my mother and father always wanted for me, the American dream family they always told me about, but my parents never really tried to understand me, but since Sean chose a different path in life, not the RIGHT one, the legacy of my family fell on my shoulders.

Trapped in my thoughts, I didn't even notice the phone ringing somewhere next to me, I turned around to see a small black phone on the nightstand. At first I decided to ignore it, since I didn't really care about Evelyn's business, I didn't care at all, but this time something inside of me started to sting.

Who can call her at this hour?

With a soft click of my tongue, I finished adjusting my cufflinks and looked back at the buzzing phone, deciding to pick it up and find out who the hell was calling my wife. "Yes? Who's this?"

"Hello, Patrick," your voice crawled into my brain like a parasite, I swallowed, my skin covered in goosebumps and I sweated almost instantly. "How's it going? Don't you think it's a bit pathetic to think of me when you're banging your lovely wife?"

"You?" Was the only thing I managed to say. "Where did you get this number?"

I heard you laughing as if you were right next to me. "Tim gave it to me," you replied with blatant audacity. "Uh...you're not happy to hear me? That's a shame because I thought you missed me."

"Listen," I spat into the phone, gripping it so tightly that it was about to break in a half in my hand. "I don't know who you think you are...but believe me when I say I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOU AND YOUR FUCKING LIFE! DO YOU HEAR ME?!"

"Patrick? Who are you talking to?" I turned to see Evelyn standing in the doorway, her blue eyes full of concern.

Caught red-handed, I took the phone away from my ear and chuckled. "It's just...a random call...nothing serious." When I said that, her face became even more worried. "Is something wrong, darling?"

Evelyn blinked several times before answering. "I definitely remember turning off the phone before I went to sleep...I always do..."

Her words hung in the air for some time before I could actually continue, and when I finally did, I tugged at my collar from the sudden lack of oxygen in my lungs.

What the fuck?

Under Evelyn's attentive gaze, I looked up at the receiver as if seeing it for the first time in my life, then I pressed it to my ear again and all I heard was silence—a deafening, eerie silence—even a single beep could not be discerned. My throat tightened uncomfortably and I felt like throwing up from the tight knot in my stomach, for I'd never felt such fear before.

"Patrick...are you okay?" The blonde woman asked, not daring to come closer. "Are you taking the medicine your psychiatrist prescribed you..."

"Evelyn!"

"No, I'm serious! This isn't funny Patrick, I'm scared," she suddenly confessed and I swore I couldn't remember seeing her so worried. "You need help...why don't you let people help you?"

With that Evelyn stormed out of the bedroom and I was sure she was crying. Damn women, never give you a chance to explain yourself. I cursed before slamming the phone down on its station with a thud, probably shattering the plastic, but who fucking cared? All they cared about was whether I was taking those fucking pills, but no one really cared about...me. 

It took me some time to calm down and finally go to work. I didn't talk to Evelyn before I left, as it was pointless in her current state. As soon as I was outside, I breathed in the fresh air and watched the passers-by walking here and there without even noticing each other, this scene I saw every day, I picked out my Walkman like in a slow motion movie, put the headphones on my head and then attached it to my belt, the next moment I heard Madonna's deep voice surging through my head.

The taxi ride to the Pierce & Pierce office took longer than usual because of the heavy traffic. When I finally entered the high-rise building, I didn't take off my headphones because I didn't really want to talk to anyone, I just walked through the long corridors like a ghost without a name. It was really interesting that I never really thought about my fucking coworkers constantly messing up my name—they didn't know who I was even though we met every week—but you—you remembered it so clearly, there wasn't a single day that you mistook me for someone else. Jean greeted me as always with her sweet smile. Today she wore a dress and high heels. I smiled at such details and pulled up my headphones so I could hear her. 

"Did I miss anything?" I asked casually, thinking I was late as I often was.

Brushing her blonde hair, my secretary rose from her seat, clutching her favorite notebook to her chest. "Timothy Bryce called to ask about lunch."

My eyebrows raised in skepticism at her words.

Bryce. Wants to see me after not talking to me for almost a week. Interesting.

"Uh, right, but I thought I had a pretty busy schedule today?" I asked nonchalantly.

"Well, yeah," she quickly opened her notebook and then raised her bright eyes to me. "But you have a little window..."

At some point, Jean's voice became as much white noise as Madonna's song, the lyrics of which slipped away from me like a leaf in the wind. The thought of Tim finally revealing that he and Evelyn were having an affair behind my back, as if they really thought I could be stupid enough not to notice, brought me a strange sense of relief. It was like an itchy splinter in your finger that you couldn't bring yourself to pull out, but you knew that the longer it stayed there, the worse it would get.

"Okay, Jean," I heaved abruptly. "Be a doll and make a rez in a good place. Then call Bryce back."

Jean was noticeably confused, but I was too overwhelmed with my own chaotic thoughts that there was no room for anything else. With a devoted nod, she returned to her seat and I opened the door to my office, where everything was the same, all things in the places I had left them. At least there seemed to be something constant in my life.

The rustling of chatter and the clinking of silverware against plates mingled in a wild cacophony of sounds I was quite familiar with—I was born in the middle of this madness, to say the least, the lush life of people like me was something you couldn't really avoid, though I never tried to avoid it, I enjoyed every little benefit I got from being rich. 

So now I was sitting in Delmonico's lash interior, holding a glass of J&B on rocks in one hand and a cigar in the other. I waited for Bryce to come and soon I noticed his approaching figure, his black hair slicked back as usual, and I even chuckled at how fucking punctilious this man always was. Tim ordered a glass of Russian vodka and some seafood appetizers. After a short casual conversation we both fell silent and just when I was expecting him to tell me the reason why he wanted to see me, he suddenly picked up a shiny cardholder and put it on the table, then took out a pack of cigarettes to grab one.

"New cardholder?" I asked, definitely remembering that Bryce used to have a different one. "Looks...nice."

"It's platinum," Timothy commented before lighting his cigarette, his gray eyes scanning the room before focusing on me. "It's a gift...from our mutual friend."

Friend?

I almost bit the inside of my cheek to the point of bleeding. "Really?"

Bryce let out a puff of smoke and pointed to my empty glass. "I heard you quit drinking," he grinned and dabbed the ash from his cigarette. "That you're on... some medication."

"I wonder who told you that," my jaw almost snapped in anger, I had to claw at my knee to regain some composure. "And yes, I had to take medication for a while...but I'm on a break now." I hoped he could tell by the tone of my voice that I wasn't going to continue this conversation. "Who else would know how it works better than you since you went through rehab. Am I right, Bryce?"

I knew how much he hated talking about it, so his recent bravado faded like a cloud of smoke, but his cheeky grin never left his face.

"I get it, I get it," he laughed softly before sipping his drink. "You definitely got off on the wrong foot today, but it's okay," the man swirled his glass in his hand, watching the ice cubes clink against its walls. "I just wanted to tell you that... you're definitely missing something. Or maybe I should say—someone."

Narrowing my eyes, I tilted my head to the side. "Maybe you can tell me something more...specific, or are we going to play that crappy guessing game?"

Bryce shifted in his seat and wanted to say something, but he was interrupted by two familiar voices—Craig and David.

Shit, why did those two idiots have to come right now?

The moment was ruined, and so was I.

"Wow, I can't believe my eyes! See, I told you they had a date," McDermott let out a loud chuckle, my fists clenched, and if we were somewhere else, preferably alone, I'd fucking break my glass against his smug face. "I called Jean and she said you two were having lunch together. Isn't that sweet?"

"Oh, fuck you, McDermott!" Bryce retorted, but he wasn't really angry. "Fuck you and your cheap jokes. Your sense of humor is as flat as the ass of that chick you met in the Tunnel yesterday. Besides, how was she?"

The Tunnel, that damn club that started all this shit. I closed my eyes and tried to shake off the unwelcome memories of that day, but all I wanted to do was leave this place. Bryce's words became a breaking point, they helped a cup of weights to turn to another side without him even knowing it. Slowly I rose from the table, ignoring any questions, dismissing them with a clumsy gesture.

This evening was destined to be spent in the Tunnel after everything that happened today. I didn't tell anyone about my spontaneous venture to find some escape in the nightclub full of drug-addicted chicks and yuppies like me. My mind was racing with the idea of doing some coke, all I had to do was find the dealer that Bryce and I always hang out with and get a gram. A very simple plan to forget about all the shit that was going on in my life for a while.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, they say.

As I strolled across the dance floor, I noticed the bar was pretty empty, so I decided to have a drink before finding the dealer, as the glass of whiskey I had at lunch was not enough. The bartender greeted me with a polite smile as he cleaned the bar. 

"Good evening, sir," the man took a shiny glass and set it in front of me. "What would you like to drink?"

"A J&B straight and a Corona." I replied, taking a seat and fumbling for my wallet.

The bartender nodded and went to get my drinks. While I waited, I looked around when I noticed the only person sitting at the bar—it turned out to be a redheaded girl, a very good looking one—I hummed to myself, absolutely sure that such a girl was definitely not alone tonight. 

"Your drinks, sir." The bartender placed an open bottle of Corona next to my glass, now filled with my favorite whiskey.

"Thank you." I handed him a few bills before he could even tell me how much I had to pay. 

The young man babbled something incoherent that I couldn't even make out, but after I gave him a dead stare, he just took the money and finally left me alone. Annoyed, I checked the time on my Rolex before grabbing a bottle of Corona to take a sip, but I was interrupted again. This time not by the bartender.

"Hey," a soft female voice hung over my ear, sending a massive wave of excitement through me. I turned to see that the chick from the other end of the bar was now standing so close to me that I could smell her flowery perfume. "Are you here alone?"

I wish I could say that, but my thoughts of you were always here, with me, but instead of saying that bullshit, I nodded and grinned, checking her body in the most humiliating way, thinking it would scare her away from me, but the gleam in her green eyes only increased after my move.

God, she doesn't know what she's asking for.

"Yeah, you could say that." I smiled again as she sat down next to me. "What about you?"

The girl leaned against the bar, her ginger hair cascading down her elegant shoulders, and for a moment I couldn't take my eyes off her. "I wasn't supposed to be alone tonight, but...you know how it is...most men are total jerks."

I could barely keep myself from bursting out laughing. "Did someone offend you?" She played with the gold bracelet on her wrist and nodded shyly, a move I suddenly found very sexy. "Do you mind if I get you a drink?"

"First, tell me your name," she muttered in a challenging way—a blatant provocation that I ate like a starved man. "Then I'll think about it."

This girl is so sweet, I bet her insides are the same.

At first I wanted to use a fake name, like I always did, but then I just gave her my real name, because in the end it would make no difference. "Patrick....Patrick Bateman," I finally took a sip of Corona and savored the taste. "And you?"

"Nicole," the girl said, still fiddling with her jewelry. "But I used to have a lot of different names."

"I like this one," I chuckled, smiling charmingly. "It suits a girl like you."

"A girl like me?"

"A beautiful girl...very beautiful I must say." My voice was deep and soft like silk, I noticed the way she straightened her shoulders, slowly but gradually relaxing. 

"You really think so?" She asked me, her eyes roaming over my mischievous face, then down to my lips.

Instead of answering, I just smiled in the most enchanting way possible before calling for the bartender to order her a drink. Nicole and I talked for a while—she told me she was from Canada and didn't really have any friends in New York—it was strangely satisfying but I tried to be sympathetic and supportive even though my mind was so far away from here. The ginger girl didn't even notice how she finished one cocktail and then another, while I didn't even touch my whiskey, just idly sipped my bottle of Corona because for some reason I wanted to be as sober as possible.

As the club was getting more and more empty, Nicole was ready to give me a blowjob right at the bar, but I convinced her to go to my place and to be honest, I didn't expect it to be that easy since I hadn't really planned anything like that. I forgot about the drug dealer because now I had to worry about what I was going to say to Evelyn tomorrow because I was definitely not going to spend the night with her. 

"Patrick..." Nicole nestled into my side as we sat in the cab. "Did I tell you I know...F-French?"

I crossed my arms and shook my head in dismay. "No, you didn't," I said, looking down at her red, messy hair. "But it's nothing special...you're from Canada and French is your second official language."

Nicole let out a cartoonish giggle that made me cringe. "Oh...you know it? Damn, you're such a smart man...Mr. Bateman...so fucking smart...most guys I've slept with....didn't know that..." she giggled again and tried to pinch my nose, but I shooed her away. "Can you believe that?"

At a certain point, I was even starting to regret bringing her along, but I hoped I'd be able to shut her mouth with something...sharp and maybe deadly. "It happens, Nicole. Like you said, there were so many bad people in this town. Fortunately, you're lucky to have met someone like me."

The girl hugged me at my words, I could feel her drunk breath next to my lips, but instead of turning away I let her kiss me and it felt better than I expected. Soon the cab pulled up to the American Gardens Building. The walk up to my apartment didn't take much time, I was already thinking about how I was going to dispose of her body after I was done with her. Nicole, completely unaware of my dark thoughts, walked around my apartment barefoot as she kicked off her shoes, complaining about how fucking uncomfortable they were.

"Oh, this place is so fucking...c-cool!" She managed to say, swaying from side to side while moving. "Jesus, is that a telescope? Why do you even need that?" Nicole giggled like a child seeing one for the first time, but who knew, maybe she really was seeing it for the first time. "Do you... spy on people with that... thing?"

"No, Nicole." I replied curtly, standing next to her with my hands hidden in the pockets of my tailored pants. 

"Are you...an astronaut...from NASA?" She asked, then winced when she finally noticed my looming figure. "Are you... going to send me to the moon tonight, handsome?"

"I'll do more than that," I crooned, placing my hand on her waist and pulling her closer. "But I must say one thing you may not like..." a short pause, then a soft rumble left my throat. "I prefer that beautiful mouth of yours to be closed. Do you understand?"

I was expecting anything other than this bitch dropping to her knees and immediately working on unbuckling my belt. The way she was behaving was both amusing and enticing, but what I enjoyed most was that she was so naive and completely dumb.

"Look at you," I murmured before grabbing a handful of her ginger curls that were blocking her vision. "So inpatient, huh?"

By the time she managed to undo my pants, I was already so hard that my dick sprang out of the confines of my clothes and almost slapped her face, but it didn't bother her at all—I could only see an uncontrollable desire in those big green eyes that were now looking at me as if asking for my permission. 

Shameless, pathetic whore.

With a practiced move, I grabbed the back of her head to pull her closer to my crotch, then pressed my engorged dick against her lips, sliding it along them and making her lick off my pre-cum. "Yeah," I croaked, biting my own lips. "I definitely like you more like this...open your mouth, bitch."

Nicole obeyed and the next thing I knew I was thrusting into her mouth, her warmth welcoming me and making me grunt as I bucked my hips into her face, pushing myself further until I heard her gag around my shaft.

"'C'mon, choke on my dick," I snarled, pulling on her hair with brutal force, her nose rubbing against my pubis and I snaked my hand down to rest on her throat, wanting to feel my cock slide along it. "I'm sure no one has ever face fucked you like that...am I right, honey?"

I used that ugly nickname Evelyn always gave me and pulled myself out of her mouth to hear her answer, but she just gulped desperately for air and grabbed my legs for any semblance of support. 

"Oh-Christ...you're...s-so fucking big," she wept, trying to wipe the liquid mixture off her chin, but I wouldn't let her, pulling her head back. "Shit...you're really one of those guys...who likes it rough?"

With a devilish smile, I gave myself several quick strokes before answering. "Oh, darling. You can't even imagine how MUCH I like that kind of thing."

Panting, Nicole was not ready for me to invade her mouth again, but I didn't care, just as I ignored her little protest when I fucked her throat and felt the curve of my dick slide into her wet, tight channel. It was a bliss I had always sought, that fleeting moment of raw control over another human, once you tasted it you couldn't stop yourself.

Perfection.

As time passed, I came at least twice in her abused mouth, each time making sure she swallowed every drop, but then I got bored of fucking her face and left her sprawled out on my expensive living room floor, which I would definitely have to call the maid service to clean. Barely alive, Nicole literally vomited my sperm mixed with her blood, her plump lips swollen and bruised from my beatings—I couldn't stress her pathetic whimpering anymore, so I had to act—but she would last a while longer, I was sure of it.

As I rummaged through my stuff in the bedroom to get a condom, Nicole's pathetic whimpering was like music to my ears, but at some point I considered turning on some real music to muffle the girl's screams, although to my surprise she was not that loud. But just in case, I returned to the living room and stepped over Nicole, who was still lying on the floor, to get to my stereo and put on the latest Talking Heads album, True Stories.

"I didn't ask you what kind of music you like," I suddenly chuckled and moved closer to the sobbing girl to crouch down beside her. "But I doubt it would change anything."

After that, I stood up and decided to strip completely, every move I made calculated and mastered to perfection. One second, two seconds....ten seconds and I was almost naked, when the only thing left on me was my gold Rolex, I heard her weak, shaky voice:

"Whitney Houston," she murmured, barely audible. "I love Whitney Houston."

I stopped in my tracks. "Oh...really? What is your favorite song?"

My lips were curled in a smile that came dangerously close to something insane as I carefully placed all my clothes on one of my black chairs before picking up the girl and moving her to the window—away from my white couch that I didn't want to stain with her fucking blood. She didn't struggle, she didn't struggle at all as I positioned her against the window, pressing her bruised face against the cold glass.

"Take Good Care of My Heart," the redhead added as I began to poke at her soaked pussy, which was not shaved like most of the girls I used to have, and to be honest, I really liked it. "I...I really love the whole album."

"Oh yeah," I chuckled into her ear, fixing her in place as the tip of my cock plunged into her, causing her legs to shake. "This is such a good album..."

With that I bottomed her out completely, my balls slapping against her ass, red from my spanking, I thought I could see the outline of my hand. Her little cunt felt no worse than her mouth, but it was not as tight...after being with you, nothing seemed tight enough to me.

Fuck it!

Cursing under my breath, I sped up to pound into her as hard as I could. Thank God the glass didn't break, but I changed our position anyway. Now Nicole was bent over my black leather chair, her ass wiggling every time I thrust into her and I couldn't stop myself from spanking her, I wanted her to fucking scream and cry out in pain but all I could get from her was nothing that could signal that she was in pain. On the contrary, this girl seemed to enjoy it so much, as her hips moved in rhythm with mine, she bucked in my direction to meet my movements.

"Shit, you fuck like a whore," I blurted out, grabbing her hair in a self-made ponytail. "Is that why you came to America? To be a fucktoy for men like me?"

"Mmm...f-fuck me...please...fuck me!" Nicole didn't seem to hear me, I had to squeeze her throat to shut her up. "Ye-yes...fucking...c-choke me...please!"

Stupid bitch.

In one swift motion, I pulled out only to slam into her unprepared asshole, making her scream in pain and fuck, she sounded amazing. Quickly wiping the sweat from my forehead, I pushed her down on my cock, noticing the crimson drops of her blood on my dick, which only spurred me to move faster and more ferociously. This bitch didn't see it coming, but she was still pretty obedient, which started to seem pretty weird to me, because usually by this time women start to panic, fight and try to escape, but this fucking hoe didn't even say a word about the way I was treating her.

And that started to disappoint me.

When I thought I was not going to climax, I closed my eyes and let my imagination take control of my brain. Huffing, I rammed into Nicole harder, fantasizing about you—how we could go 69, your fingers buried deep inside my asshole - I could fucking feel the sensation of them and it sent an electric shock right through my tensed sac.

"Oh, fuck," I gripped her waist with both hands, fucking her with pure abandon. "You...fucking...arrogant prick...I hate you! I hate you s-so fucking much!"

All my curses fell on deaf ears as Nicole only whimpered in response, gripping the back of the chair and the next second I found her cumming around my cock, her inner walls spasming around me, triggering my own orgasm.

 When I was finally finished with her, I stood over her trembling body as she lay on the floor again. The girl was shaking and giggling, I thought she probably lost her mind already, so instead of using a knife or something, I decided to just strangle her with my bare hands. I wanted to see life slowly leave her body. I fucking craved it.

"Nicole," I shook her before getting on top of her, pressing her down with the weight of my muscular body. "Look at me."

Nicole's bloodshot eyes couldn't focus on mine for some time, she was stunned, dazed, ruined and intoxicated, I had to slap her face several times before she finally locked her hazy gaze with mine. The sweet anticipation of the kill enveloped my mind, my cock grew hard again as I placed both hands around her fragile neck, I began to squeeze it, lightly at first but then more and more forcefully.

"You made a big mistake coming to America, Nicole." I let out a taunt, not really expecting her to hear it or respond to it.

Everything was going according to plan when she suddenly smiled and covered my hands, not to take them off, but to stroke them with a wicked... attraction?

"Please...kill me already...I beg you..." She couldn't stop herself from crying and laughing. 

This was a psychotic episode I had experienced so many times, but I never expected to see it with my own eyes. I froze in shock, losing my grip, and as I did, Nicole pulled my hands back to her throat, shaking me as if to wake me up.

"No, no, no, no! Please...don't stop...please...I want to die! Patrick, please...set me free!" Nicole's voice cracked and I could finally see the sheer desperation in her green eyes, but this kind of desperation was different. 

This wasn't the kind of despair I'd seen before...this was something completely different. It was kind of a turn-off for me. The whole evening was fucking ruined, I couldn't believe it. Shaking my head, I stood up and stepped away from her as if from a fire. 

"Patrick...please!"

"Shut up!" I yelled, looking down at my own hands—they were shaking so badly. "Shut the fuck up!"

In a panic, I rushed to the bathroom to wash my hands for who knows what reason, then grabbed my robe and put it on. I couldn't really explain what was happening to me, but when I got back to the living room, I picked up Nicole's clothes and threw them at her.

"Get dressed," I ordered, and then I went into the bedroom to unlock my safe and take out several bundles of money. What was I doing? Panting, I paused in the doorway to watch her get dressed, then walked over to her and handed her the money. "I want you to take this, go to a hospital and get back to Canada. Do you hear me, Nicole?"

The redhead was silent, just looking at me with her pleading eyes. "But I don't want to go..."

"You have to." I emphasized the words by lowering my voice. "Just do what I say and everything should be... okay."

"But I don't want it to be okay." Nicole tried to touch me, but I pulled away.

"Just go," I repeated my previous words, this time in a more serious voice. "And never come back."

I spent the rest of the night sitting in the shower, literally sitting on the floor, crying. A lot. My eyes were so red and puffy that I didn't know which ice mask would help me look normal tomorrow. The hatred of myself that rose from my chest to my cheeks and made me nauseous—I hated myself so much that I finally admitted that I had changed—you had changed me and there was no going back. The man I was before died, now I was just an empty being, or maybe a new man had been born in my shallow soul?

When I finally managed to drag my ass out of the bathroom, the phone rang and I was sure it was Evelyn trying to fuck my brain for not coming back to her apartment and to be fair, I wasn't ready for anything like that at that moment, but considering how much of a pain in the ass she was, I didn't want any more consequences if I didn't pick up the fucking call.

As I walked into the bedroom, I took the phone from my nightstand and finally answered the call. "Yes?"

"Patrick! Jesus, I thought you weren't going to answer the call!" It was you, damn it, it was you.

My teeth almost creaked with anger and disbelief. "How many times do I have to tell you to fuck off?! Are you stalking me or what? How the fuck did you know I was in my apartment?"

"I... I didn't know... I just decided to try my luck and here we are," you replied, your voice was different than it sounded this morning. "Listen Patrick, I'm in New York right now...maybe we can see each other?"

"See each other?" Those words made me sick. "Do you even hear yourself?"

"I know that...things are pretty tense between us, but...maybe we can at least talk about it?"

"No, we can't," I clutched the phone as tightly as I could. "I don't want to see you and I don't want to hear you. Do you understand? If you ever call me again, I'll fucking find you and KILL YOU!"

With that, I dropped the phone on the floor and screamed so loudly that my throat began to hurt. Right now I was nothing but a living madness, the things that were happening in my mind were like an open chasm to hell—a place I'd be one day, I had no doubt about it.

The few days I spent in a dizzy state, I couldn't really remember what I was doing, but the only thing I was sure of was that I couldn't stop thinking about you. Also, I didn't kill anyone for lack of thrill, there was no more adrenaline or excitement—you changed me and now spilling some blood couldn't help me to relieve myself anymore. I felt like I was being shattered into pieces, decomposed into something primitive, for the first time I saw myself as being even more inhuman than I really was.

Inhuman.

What a perfect word to describe everything about me, but I still couldn't understand where I belonged? If not here, could there be a place for a creature like me?

This question was swirling around in my head like a brain worm; that damn rainy evening when I decided to stalk my dear wife. After my rather long absence, Evelyn was about to go to the police, but then I showed up at the door of her apartment at night, high as hell, but she didn't seem surprised at all. I expected her to be mad and angry, but instead she treated me really nice, I could hear her crying and her desperate touch when she hugged me, weeping and sobbing something about being so scared and worried about me and although I didn't believe a single word that came out of her mouth, something stirred inside of me.

The raindrops were falling on my umbrella like Morse code, hitting the surface with such a precise rhythm that I really thought maybe something or someone was trying to send me a sign. The level of absurdity was over the top, and if I were in a different state mentally and physically, I'd be laughing my ass off at this shit, but today I couldn't do anything funny. I couldn't smile, I couldn't sneer, I was like a ghost, a shadow of the person I was before I met you. So here I was, following Evelyn down the street after the taxi ride until I saw her stop at some hotel—a luxury hotel in Upper Manhattan to be exact— and then, after some time, when I thought nothing interesting would happen, a sleek black Cadillac stopped by the street and I saw Timothy Bryce get out of the car—he was holding a black umbrella just like me. Evelyn was so excited to see him that she didn't even wait for them to go inside the hotel, she kissed him now and then without holding back her emotions. This scene made the stone fall off my shoulders; I was so damn happy that I was right and that this fake marriage was about to collapse, but I still couldn't understand why Evelyn married me at all. To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if one day, when we finally had a serious talk about it, she would confess that she loved both of us—me and Bryce— and suggested that we all live together.

Say hello to an altered version of the American dream family.

The reality was always cruel, and I knew it too well.

A loud clap of thunder echoed through my apartment, waking me up in my living room, drenched in sweat. Breathing heavily, I turned around to register some pornography playing on my TV, my robe was undone, I was completely naked underneath, some remnants of my cum stuck to my stomach.

Shit, I just blacked out jerking off? This porn really sucks.

And this was the 5th or maybe 10th porn tape I had watched, and I only managed to cum once. Cursing and scowling, I fidgeted on my couch to find a remote control. I was disgusted with my current situation, but then I noticed two thin lines of white powder on my glass coffee table and a twisted $100 bill. Now everything started to fall into place.

Fuck, where did I even get this gram?

I rubbed my head, and instead of turning off the porn, I turned it up louder—two perfect bimbos making out, their oiled bodies wrapped around each other like two snakes—my hand instinctively sliding back to my hard cock, throbbing and soaked with my cum.

"Oh-fuck..." I murmured through clenched teeth as I pumped myself, watching the girls play with their large breasts. "Yeah...suck her tits...suck them like a fucking pacifier..."

The louder their moaning got, the more excited I got, and just when I thought I was about to climax again, I heard... a fucking phone ringing loudly—it hurt my hearing. Confused, I stopped doing anything, ignoring the fact that one slut was now riding on the face of another. There was only one thing I could think about right now— had I turned off my phone or not? Because I definitely remembered pulling the fucking cords out of it, but that thing kept ringing? 

Slowly I got up on my stiff legs and walked to the kitchen island to grab the phone, the only light coming from my playing TV and I bumped into something pretty hard before the fucking receiver was in my hand.

"Patrick Bateman's apartment..." I almost whispered, pressing the receiver harder against my head.

"...Pat..." the echo of a familiar voice wailed from the other end of the line, but I still couldn't make out who it was. "...need... -h-help!"

"Who...am I talking to?"

"Patrick, please, help me," your voice sounded so clear now that it echoed inside my skull, drowning out all the sounds of the bad weather outside. "I'm...I'm at Paul Allen's...I need help...please...I think I'm gonna die..."

Was this some kind of prank? 

I turned around and scanned my apartment as if someone was watching me right now. I felt insane and cornered, if I was really losing my mind the best option now would be to take more coke and trigger an overdose and then...

"Can you hear me? Please, come here, I'll... give you the address..." and then I heard loud interference and noise, so I had to pull the phone away for a second. "Patrick? Please...talk to me!"

"What...what happened?" I asked, still not believing what I was doing. "Are you in pain?"

"No...yes....Patrick...listen...you should write down the address..."

Without thinking, I grabbed the Vogue magazine lying next to the phone and a pencil, and the next second I was writing down the address where Paul Allen was supposed to live. 

"Hold on! I'll be right there!" I suddenly said into the phone, but all I could hear was the agonizing beep. "Hey...I'll be there...do you hear me? I'LL BE THERE!"

Fuck!

I dropped the phone and took several deep breaths before I finally came to my senses, or so I thought. Then I rushed to the bathroom to clean up and put something on without worrying too much. So I grabbed the first suit out of my closet, fixed my hair and left my apartment to take a cab. All the way to Paul's, I was holding a crumpled page of Vogue that I had to rip out. At first I didn't even notice that I wasn't surprised when the cabbie just nodded and we drove off, so this address was real? It meant you really called me? And what about all the previous calls?

Perplexed, I leaned against the cool glass of the car window and watched the nighttime cityscape blur into something unrecognizable, almost falling asleep, but the driver turned on the radio with some cheesy pop songs that kept me awake, as I was too irritated to ignore how much I disliked such music. When the car stopped in front of a towering building like the one I lived in, I paid the driver twice what I was supposed to and got out of the cab. There were no pedestrians and for a moment I really thought that maybe I was still asleep and had to pinch myself to wake up in my living room?

As I entered the building I saw a table where the concierge should be sitting, but there was no one, so I casually opened the journal to find the number of Allen's apartment—I felt a creeping shock when I actually found his name in the journal.

Okay… this feels…too real.

Feeling a strange thrill of the rush, I closed the journal and sauntered quickly across the large lobby to the elevators. Paul's apartment was on the 15th floor, so when the door opened on the floor I needed, I stepped out of the elevator with a heavy weight in my chest. Every step I took resonated with the fast beating of my heart, and when I reached my destination, I didn't know what to do - whether to ring the bell or knock or…

Shaking myself off, I first rang the doorbell—nothing. Then I knocked several times, then again, still no answer. Finally, I put my ear to the door to listen, but I couldn't hear a single sound. Anger overcame me, so I kicked the door and turned to leave. How stupid was I? Maybe mixing my pills and coke wasn't the best idea, but this...

When I got back to the lobby, an old man, who must have been a missing concierge, greeted me with a fake polite smile. "Greetings, sir. How can I help you?"

Annoyed as hell, I stopped next to his small table, adjusted my leather gloves, and pointed to his journal. "I was looking for Paul Allen's apartment, he's my friend and I wanted to see him, but it seems...he's out tonight."

"Oh, Mr. Allen left on a business trip this morning." The concierge said casually, but then he noticed how pale I'd become. "Sir, is something wrong?"

"Did you say he left this morning?" I asked again, feeling a few beads of sweat on my tense forehead.

"Yes, sir," the old man opened the journal and began to leaf through it. "I can even tell you the exact time he left..."

"No need. Thank you." Was all I said before I turned on my heels and headed for the exit.

Outside I noticed that the taxi that had brought me here was still standing by the side of the road. It was strange but I didn't even think about it. I got in and asked the driver to take me back to my place, but first I asked him to give me a moment to sit and think. With shaking hands I picked up the crumpled piece of paper with the address on it, I traced my handwriting before throwing it out the window, my temples pounding so hard I thought my head would explode. Exhausted both mentally and physically, I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples, not noticing that the concierge I was talking to literally ran out of the building, looking around, seeking someone.

"Let's go." I ordered the cab driver with my eyes still closed. "And can you please turn off the music...my head is killing me."

The taxi drove off and I didn't see or hear the old man following the car. "Sir, wait! I made a mistake about Mr. Allen-"

Today, after I refused to go shopping with Evelyn and help her choose a fucking curtain for her living room, she finally told me that she never loved me, that she wanted a divorce and nothing else from me. The relief I felt was comparable to a good orgasm, to say the least, Evelyn was shocked at my reaction—did she really expect me to beg for forgiveness? But the single mention of Bryce made everything come to its place, I wasn't angry, no, I just couldn't solve this fucking puzzle, what was all this for? If she really liked Bryce, why couldn't she just tell me and go for him? How many times had I told her that? A hundred? A thousand? Millions? Luckily, I wasn't inclined to leave my stuff in her apartment, so I finished my busing with 'moving out' pretty quickly and smoothly, because something glorious and important was waiting for me. The last moment of my drama.

I imagine that maybe someday there will be a show on Broadway based on my life—a great example of a life that no one should have lived—I smiled at the thought, as I always liked to romanticize things in the most clichéd and poetic way. After all, Bryce was right, I was mental, and no matter how hard I tried to run away from the dark version of myself, it would catch up with me one day. And that day seemed to have finally come.

As I walked down Wall Street, wearing my favorite headphones and listening to Huey Lewis and the News, I stumbled by the phone booth—a random idea plagued my mind before I could really think about it. Opening my briefcase, I found my notebook, and soon I was dialing your office number, hoping you wouldn't answer. But my hopes were never to be fulfilled. 

To my surprise, I heard a male voice coming from the phone and all the words stuck in my throat like a lump. "Uh...hi...can I talk to..."

"Sorry sir, I can't hear you properly...it might be the bad connection," the voice replied and it made me really nervous. "I'm sorry, but if you want to talk to my boss, they are out of the office right now."

Out of the office…shit.

"Who am I talking to?" I asked, almost fainting.

"Vinc..." an unpleasant static noise came over my brain and I held my eyes closed for a second from the stabbing pain in my temples. "My name is Vincent...I'm .... assistant."

"Listen, Vincent..." I started to speak, not even knowing that he could hear my words. "I want you to tell your boss that...Patrick Bateman called and...this would be my LAST call," I laughed hysterically, leaning against the phone booth door. "I'm going to, uh... disappear..."

A short pause seemed like an eternity.

"You mean you are leaving New York City, sir?" Vincent's question surprised me.

My lips twitched in a wicked smile. "No...I mean...yes..."

"Are you going somewhere in particular, Mr. Bateman?" The man asked me and I stopped breathing for a second.

"I'm going...to a place where no one will ever...find me..."

And with that I hung up the phone. There was already a line of people by the phone booth, and as I walked away, they looked at me with the most disdainful look I could ever dream of mastering. Unfortunately, I wouldn't need it anymore.

Soon the white walls of my apartment would be the only witness to my last confession. My apartment smelled so fresh and good, the maid had just finished cleaning, and I was glad that if the police found my body, they would see that wealth and money were not a panacea for a happy life, although I had believed in it fervently for almost all these years. With deliberate steps, I walked into my bathroom, grabbed a small bottle of medicine prescribed by my psychiatrist, and popped a handful of pills at once. Then I looked at my reflection in the mirror and somehow realized that the mask I had worn for most of my adult life was about to slip. Right now, at this very moment, I was about to die. An abnormal dizziness washed over me, I could barely stand on my feet when I suddenly saw your silhouette behind me in the mirror. I gulped and turned around to see nothing but the empty doorway, my hands shaking so badly that I failed to put the bottle back in its place, dropping it on the floor and scattering pills all over the bathroom.

Holy shit.

A strong gag reflex suddenly took over me and I managed to get to the toilet faster than I could throw up—I threw up all the pills—Jesus Christ, I was so weak I couldn't even finish this... I was so pathetic. In the end, I finally accepted that as the darkness took me in its cold embrace.

Knock…knock…

What is this? Am I still alive?

I kept questioning myself because I didn't feel anything, no pain, no remorse, nothing. But if I were dead, I wouldn't hear that strange sound, would I? I opened my wet eyes and looked up at the white ceiling—I was still in my bathroom— lying on my back, covered in my own vomit, saliva and bile. My mouth smelled like a rotten rat and I knew what I was talking about. The annoying knocking kept coming from my front door, and although I didn't want to get up, I felt that if I didn't, this fucking knocking would never stop.

With careful, unhurried movements, I crawled to the sink and, leaning on the bathroom counter, managed to stand up and quickly brush my teeth, avoiding looking at my reflection because I was sure I looked like shit. After that, I took off my stained clothes and put on a new robe that I had bought myself for no reason a few days ago. 

As I approached the front door, the knocking stopped and I thought it was just another hallucination, but I decided to open the door anyway and to my surprise I saw my concierge who looked very worried and even scared.

"Mr. Bateman, thank God you're all right!" The man blurted out, holding his concierge hat in his hands.

"Of course I'm okay," I replied nonchalantly. "What happened? Or did you just come to check on me?"

"Well," the concierge looked away before rubbing his gray mustache. "Someone was looking for you..."

My eyebrows furrowed, and I peered out into the long corridor. "Who was it? Did they give a name? Was it a policeman or something?" 

"No, sir." The old man gave me an awkward smile that made me even more angry. "They were so desperate...they were literally storming around the lobby...constantly saying things about you not answering calls and not opening the door...I told them maybe you just left..."

The rest of what he said fell on deaf ears, because now I was absolutely sure who was looking for me. "What time is it now?"

"11 a.m., sir."

"Today is Friday, right?" I asked, my head spinning. "It should be Friday."

The concierge paused. "It's Sunday, sir."

Sunday?

A sharp pang of nausea crept into my stomach, nearly breaking me in half, but I managed to grab hold of the doorjamb for support. "Where is this person?"

"Mr. Bateman, I had to call the police because they were being...kind of aggressive," the concierge explained, stepping back a bit. "The cops arrived pretty quickly...they found out this person had drugs, sir."

I stagger to the side as if from the hard blow. "And what happened next...did they arrest them?"

"I...I guess so?"

I let out a tired sigh, rolling my eyes and trying to keep it together - this poor guy was not guilty, it was just an accident, but how did you get caught with drugs? It was so fucking illogical to me.

My voice was unnaturally soft as I tried my fucking best not to snap at the man across from me. "Did the cops really take them away? Did you see that with your own eyes?" The concierge just nodded, and I could tell by his nervousness that he felt it was his fault at some level. "All right, thank you for your information, remind me to tip you next month." And with that, I closed the front door, leaving the man in a completely bewildered state.

Shit...this whole situation seemed like a fucking joke, but I had to think fast—I needed a plan how to solve this bullshit and maybe I could get some answers if I could help you. I took a moment to collect myself and told myself that one way or another I had to go there...to rescue you.

I'll do it even if I have to burn down this police station.

In record time, my impeccable appearance was ready, and now I confidently walked down the long, dimly lit corridor of the police station that was closest to where I lived—I hoped you were in that station, but if not, I would visit all of them until I found you.

Finally, I reached the reception area, where a pretty policewoman greeted me with a friendly smile. "Good afternoon, sir. What can I do for you?"

"I'm looking for..." I opened my briefcase and showed her my notebook with your full name written in it. "Are they here, in this department? I believe they were arrested today."

The officer smiled at me before she turned around and started to rummage through some papers, folds, notes... With each passing moment I was getting more and more impatient, but I had to play it cool.

"I think I found the person you were looking for," the woman said, placing several documents on the reception desk, implying that I should take a look at them. "They were delivered here an hour ago."

"Can I see them?" I asked, putting on my casual, seductive smile.

“And what is your relationship to the suspect?” 

Damn, not this fucking question.

I was a little stunned at first, but then I quickly tugged at my red tie and tilted my head in a condescending way. "I'm their lawyer, and I need to see them as soon as possible."

I noticed that her expression suddenly changed, her eyes gliding over my massive form—she was obviously trying to access my appearance and compare it to the look of a successful lawyer living in New York City—when I gave her an intense look and then winked, she visibly blushed.

After a small cough, she took the documents and only then dared to look at me again. "The suspect is now in interrogation room number one. Don't get lost."

"Thanks." I grinned broadly and, after closing my briefcase, left the reception.

It didn't take me long to find the interrogation room I needed. As I stopped right next to the door, I checked myself in the reflection of the nearby window—I looked perfect, not as perfect as I used to be, but not too horrible either.

A light knock on the door before I opened it. "Good afternoon, sorry for the long wait. How is my client? I hope you haven't done anything inappropriate in my absence?"

The moment our eyes met, I could see a mixture of shock, disbelief, and something beyond human understanding.

"And who the hell is that?" One of the officers—a rather fat guy with a messy beard—asked his partner, then looked at you. "You said you were from Chicago and your lawyer had to catch a flight here."

"Yes, that's exactly what I said. Why are you telling me my own words?" You crossed your arms and gave me a scorching gaze, I seized the moment of your confusion to nestle into the empty chair next to you. "Probably...my lawyer has handed this case over to his colleague in New York, so he doesn't have to come here."

Both policemen looked at us as if we were idiots—which we definitely were—but I hoped this affair would work out.

"But you asked to be allowed to make a phone call... the whole damn time," another policeman replied, pointing his finger at you and then at me. "I'm going to send you both to jail if you don't tell me what-"

"Jesus Christ, I told you several times...I was at a party...I took someone's coat by mistake and there was...this fucking bag of cocaine, but it's not mine! You can check the fingerprints and you won't find mine on this fucking bag! HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU?"

"My client is right. Before we get the results of the fingerprint analysis, the presumption of innocence should not be forgotten." I started in the most serious tone I could manage. "Remember that."

Both officers started arguing with each other almost immediately, using many different insults that I would definitely have to remember so that I could present them to Tim— he would love to hear them. I was about to say something clever when the door suddenly opened and a woman with dark hair stepped into the room.

"What the hell is going on?" The woman asked her colleagues, looking disappointed and quite angry. "Everyone can hear you outside."

"Oh, Miss Moore," one of the officers murmured like a guilty child. "Well, we..."

"Detective Moore to you, Rogers," she replied, her posture radiating confidence. You and I both stared at her for a while, I noticed her tanned skin and thick curly hair, she was definitely Hispanic, the accent was also quite noticeable. "Can I confide in you at least once?" Officer Rogers looked at his partner, neither of them said a word, and that made the detective even more annoyed. "We'll talk about it later, now go."

The cops didn't dare protest, and soon they left. Now it was just you, me and Detective Moore in the interrogation room. The tension was palpable in the air, my hands were sweaty and shaking, I had to brush them off my open coat, but before I could, you caught one of them and squeezed it barely sensibly—I gasped, almost choking on my saliva.

After a brief examination of the documents, the woman across from us raised her brown eyes and smiled, not too friendly, but not too menacing either. "So, my name is Andrea Moore," she turned to look at you, holding a piece of paper in her hand. "I already know your name," her piercing gaze finally stopped on me. "May I have your documents, sir?"

Swallowing hard, I unlocked my briefcase to hand her my ID. "Yeah, sure."

"Mr. Bateman...have we met before?"

"No...I don't think so."

Andrea hummed to herself. "Well, I hope you brought your law license with you?" 

Your grip on my palm tightened, I almost let out a hysterical squeal. "I... I must have left it in my office."

"Listen," you suddenly spoke up, gesticulating as if you were at a school presentation. "I need to call my assistant, Vincent Eisenhower...he will help sort things out-"

"Wait a minute...did you say Vincent Eisenhower?" Andrea suddenly stopped you, obviously surprised.

"Uh, yeah, he's my assistant at the company I work-" 

"...in Chicago?" 

"Yes..." you replied in confusion. "Is there something wrong with that?"

The detective didn't answer, and it made me nervous as hell, but you holding my hand in a gentle manner was strangely comforting, even though I despised such displays of affection.

Looking puzzled, Andrea finally took the pen and a clean piece of paper. "Can you give me the number...I'll call Mr. Eisenhower and ask him for...a real lawyer. Mr. Bateman, I hope you understand the consequences of your actions-"

"Leave him alone, it's not his fault," you cut Andrea off before I could say anything in my defense. "He didn't know what he was doing coming here...please...he hasn't done anything bad...he's just going through a hard time in his life and..."

"Enough," the detective raised her hand in a halting gesture. "I hope I can reach out to Mr. Eisenhower....You two better pray for that."

Andrea left as abruptly as she had come. We were finally alone. Both confused, frightened, and lost.

"Why did you even come here?" You asked, not looking at me, but not parting our hands. "How stupid of you to come here and act like you were my lawyer."

"I HAD NO CHOICE!" I almost screamed, turning in my seat to cut the mere distance between us. "Not after you terrorized me with those damn phone calls..."

As I said that, time stood still for us and I could see the inner conflict in your deep, mesmerizing eyes—you were broken and lost just like me—I looked down at our intertwined hands, waiting for your answer.

"What calls, Patrick? What are you talking about?" 

"You know WHAT I'm talking about...don't try to fuck with my brain," I husked, inches from your lips. "You think this is funny, huh?" 

"And you think it's funny to call my office and tell my assistant about your suicidal intentions?" Your warm breath wafted pleasantly around my face as you moved closer. "You think it's funny to appear and disappear in my life like I'm a toy you can play with whenever you feel bored?"

At first I didn't answer. Instead, I just kept eye contact with you, then I lowered my eyes to our hands again—my palm was bigger than yours, this little detail always made my heart flutter. Did I ever think that such a small thing would stir such strong emotions in me? Probably not.

Definitely not.

"By the way, did you manage to find out anything about that machine you told me about?" I questioned abruptly, putting my arm around your shoulders. 

You frowned and chuckled in disbelief. Well, at least the tension was relieved.

"What machine?" You fidgeted in your seat as I pulled you closer. "Hey, don't change the subject..."

"A memory reboot machine," I crooned, leaning forward so our noses rubbed against each other. "If you're here... that means you probably didn't find it."

The urge to indulge in this moment, to follow the passionate momentum and just kiss these lips I'd been thinking about all along, was unbearable, but I didn't want to be the first to fall apart and drop my defenses.

"Maybe I never needed this machine," you replied, pressing your forehead against mine for a brief moment. "Because I never wanted to forget...you?"

Was it a question or a statement—we never knew as we both moved towards each other, my burning lips pressed against your soft ones as we shared the most desirable kiss I could ever imagine. Gasping into my mouth, you let go of my hand only to wrap both of them around my neck as you responded with no less favor than mine. It was so hot, so desperate, so tragic. And it was all mine— your pain, your anger, your hatred.

Because you were my salvation.

With precise deftness, I carefully tilted your head back a little to deepen the kiss, my arms eagerly but not persistently roving around your back, knowing every little detail of your body, every dent and bump. As much as I wanted to tell you how fucking perfect you were for me, I didn't want this kiss to end, but as if you could read my mind, you suddenly pulled me away a little too abruptly and roughly.

"God, I hate you..." you wept, covering your face so I couldn't see your tears. "I really... I really thought you were going to do something bad... I was afraid it was too late..."

I was at a loss, I didn't know how to react or what to say—everything about you confused me, made my brain overload with different thoughts about what you said and why—now was no exception.

"But I'm here now...in one piece," I decided not to touch you, my hand resting on the back of your chair, ready to hug you at any moment if it was needed. "You should understand that...if I really wanted to do this, no one would be able to stop me..." I whisper above your ear and place my hand on the back of your head, gently stroking your hair as you rest your head on the table. "Even you."

I knew that this confession would mean nothing, just like all my previous ones, but as soon as I said it, you raised your tear-stained eyes and whimpered. "Don't say that...don't fucking say that! You can be a total asshole, but that doesn't mean you deserve to die..."

"Darling," I gently brushed your stray locks from your face, trying to distract you and keep you from saying words that would only make things worse. "You know so little about me...but I don't want you to say something you'll regret..."

"I've already said too many things that I now regret," you replied, turning away from me. "Have you ever thought about your family and how they would react if something bad happened to you? Have you thought about Evelyn?"

My eyebrows knitted together, the words you said pierced my heart like sharp daggers, but I didn't want you to stop, because you were right, I was always selfish, but you knew so little about my family, who would surely be sad about the loss, but they would recover pretty quickly, since they still had Sean. And Evelyn? I would laugh if things were not so sad.

Trembling and sobbing, you still sat with your back to my face. "I'm not going to ask you for anything except to promise me that you'll never even think about...hurting yourself."

Oh, dear.

With a soft clink of my chair, I stood up and placed both of my hands on your trembling shoulders. "I promise... if you stay with me, I'll never look back... on my previous life." I felt your body tense under my touch. "We can't reboot the memory, but we can...reboot our lives?"

This was it—the moment I had fantasized about so many times, considering different outcomes, scenarios—I was waiting for your answer when the door creaked and Detective Moore appeared in my vision. She was much more cheerful than before, which worried me a bit.

"So," she took a seat, opened a folder with documents and wrote something on it. "I spoke to Vince, and luckily for you, he has already contacted your lawyer-"

"Vince?" You asked in shock, but at least you stopped crying.

Andrea stuttered and cleared her throat. "I mean..." she paused and twirled the pen in her hand. "It happened that Vincent and I used to know each other..."

What?

We were both speechless, how the hell could such a coincidence have happened? 

"Well... I really didn't see it coming..." You murmured, brushing the remnants of tears from your face.

"Neither did I," the detective chuckled curtly before resuming her work on some papers. "Listen, we should wait for the results of the fingerprint analysis, and while we wait, you are forbidden to leave the city. Please put your sign here."

"What is this?"

"Your ticket to freedom," she explained. "A street bail."

I saw you hesitate, so I gave you a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder and you looked at me, I simply nodded, and you placed the sign. 

"And how long have you known Vincent?" You asked after you handed the document back to Andrea. "Just asking."

"Since childhood, I think."

"Oh... that's... a lot."

"Vince has always been known for being a good boy..." the woman paused, coughing awkwardly. "Uh, you can talk to him about... that if you're interested." Andrea closed the folder and shifted her gaze to me. "And you, I highly recommend that you never do anything like this again."

"So you're not going to put me in a cell?" I replied in a slightly teasing manner.

"No...not this time. But the officer who allowed you to come here will be severely punished, maybe even fired," Andrea explained, getting up from her chair. "It's her first day at the police station, but she let a man go through without even checking his papers. Such violations are very serious."

And although I didn't feel sad for this woman I would probably never see again, I looked at you and your big doe eyes. "Maybe there's a way not to fire her? I assured her that I was a lawyer and...I could pay a fine if I had to."

Detective Moore said nothing, she just grinned and beckoned us to follow her.

An hour later we finally left the police station. For some time we walked in complete silence, the surrounding commotion drawing out my shallow breathing, my mind overclocked with the search for topics to talk about after all the shit that had happened.

"So... where did you stay?" I asked casually, looking at you from above, your eyelashes shimmering in the sunlight. "In the Plaza?"

"No," you replied almost immediately. "Not the Plaza this time...it was all booked up."

"You were really in New York... for the whole time?"

"Depends on what time you mean exactly," your slight smile made me almost stumble, but I pretended to see someone familiar. "Maybe I haven't left New York at all?"

No, that can't be.

"You know, since you can't leave the city... maybe we should spend some time together and... you didn't answer my question."

My offer made you stall, and I followed suit. Passers-by walked past us, not paying attention even though we were standing in the middle of the street.

"Was it really a question?"

"And what do you think it was?"

"A plea?" You smiled and stepped closer to me until there was no space between us. "If you weren't so stubborn...everything could be so much easier."

"And YOU tell me that?" I let myself pull you closer to me. "I have an idea...fuck the place where you stopped! We should go to Newport."

"Newport? Would it count that I left New York?" you asked me a little shyly. "Do you have a house there or...?"

"My family has a house there and since they are out of town we can use it to kill time...have you ever been to Newport?" My hands rested possessively on your waist and before I knew it, I added. "Me and Evelyn are getting divorced..."

"No, I haven't," you replied, finally resting your hands on my shoulders. "But I really want to...since I've heard a lot of good things about this place..." then you suddenly froze. "What... What did you say? Are you kidding me? God, I can't believe this...I..."

You continued to bubble something that made me smile in amusement and I couldn't help but hold you tightly in my arms— the place you always belonged to, though I understood it too late. The fresh breeze of change swirled around us, playing with our hair and clothes. Yesterday I didn't know if I would make it to tomorrow, but today I was sure that there would be so many tomorrows because I wasn't alone anymore.

With you, for you, in your name—I was still alive and finally free.

P.S. Thank you for reading until the end! I don’t have a taglist. You can follow my writing community to know when I update!💞

[crushedsweets]

I fear to stain your clothes with blood; Stain them, I don't care 'Eyeless' Jack Nyras in Creeped: PRESENT DAY

PT. 1: BACKSTORY General disclaimer: This AU is an amalgamation of headcanons, fanon, canon, and the occasional rewrite. There is an overarching story that HEAVILY strays from their canon stories.

PROXIES

➣This life became Jack’s reality for nearly a year. He would spend days completely unconscious, until he suddenly wakes up to a new crime scene. Every time, the taste of iron lingered in his mouth, even long after he washed his sins at a nearby river.

➣In rare moments of clarity, Jack tried to find himself. Sat anxiously at the river, scrubbing away at his rapidly changing body.

➣Black, hard keratin began to form on the tips of his fingers, of which the nails were torn off months ago. They resembled claws, only adding to Jack’s struggle. His ears seemed to stretch to a point and resemble bats, but he was still adjusting to the echolocation. While he got the gist of his general shape, he was almost grateful that he couldn’t see himself. 

➣The echolocation was pretty helpful, too. He had four pesky stalkers constantly on his ass. The most frequent two were pretty troublesome. One was quite small, but she was fast. By the time Jack realized she was in the area, she was already on him. Luckily, he was able to fling her off. It’d lead to a frustrating chase of her constantly attaching herself to him and him throwing her off, until something shifted in her and she retreated. For her, it was about persistence.

➣The other frequent stalker was odd. Jack would be miserably eating a raw deer, until he clicked his tongue and realized that one was hiding in a tree. His stalker had climbed through the branches. While Jack thought it was goofy, that stalker had terrifyingly accurate aim and power behind his throws. Jack was frequently assaulted with a hatchet to a limb or his back, and while the flesh would quickly knit itself back together, this stalker was more persistent than the other. 

➣For a damn year, this went on. Jack was barely a human. He became a local cryptid in the Tuscaloosa forest, and the proxies were beyond pissed about it. They didn't want more attention on this damn forest. He caused so much trouble, and he bruised Toby’s ego while doing it. 

➣Toby just got lucky one day. Jack had spent nearly a month fully conscious, the entity seeming to release his body entirely. He was in full control of himself once again, but it meant very little when he had no idea what to do with himself. 

➣He pathetically sat at his river, his keratin-coated fingers resting beneath the softly rushing water. He knew Toby, whose name he heard yelled amongst his stalkers, was watching him. Jack just chose not to do anything about it. He washed his hands and tried to relax in the water. When that familiar hatchet came barreling his way, he didn’t even hesitate. His hand reached up and he caught it by the handle. The second hatchet came and he caught it once again. His head didn’t even turn. 

➣He heard the same exasperated, angry shout from Toby. “What the hell is your problem, dude?!”

➣Jack’s ears perked up. He turned his head to face Toby, more as a formality. “My problem…?”

➣His voice was deep and horse. At this point, Toby’s voice was more familiar than his own. It startled both him and his stalker. So of course, Toby had to ask, “You can talk?”

➣Although hesitant, Toby made his way to Jack. The monster of a man never tried to hurt him or the others before, he mostly fought to defend himself. And Jack wasn’t concerned, he still held Toby’s hatchets. Jack offered a weak explanation of his situation, leaving major details out. He didn’t say Jenny’s name or bring up their relationship. Just mentioned a club, the torture, and his new body. 

➣Toby connected some dots for him. Explained the issue of Slenderman, the Operator, and Zalgo. They went back and forth, with Toby poking fun at Jack’s somber, stoic attitude. It seemed that Jack’s body purged itself of those entities, an unclear anomaly for the proxies.

➣Toby thought Jack was really cool. And figured he could be useful, too.

JACK’S ROLE

➣Jack was brought to the proxy cabin by Toby, much to the frustration of Tim and Brian. Jack was dirty, bloody, and uncomfortable as Toby bickered back and forth with the older men. It didn’t help that Brian was currently dealing with a nasty wound in his thigh, further amping up the frustration and fear between the group.

➣Toby insisted Jack was alright. He was big, he was strong, he had scary instincts. Tim repeatedly declared that he’s dangerous and useless to their job as proxies. He caught wind that Jack’s attention was geared towards Brian, who was propped up on the couch and bleeding onto it. A pathetic excuse for a tourniquet was wrapped around his thigh, and it got Tim riled up. ➣He shouted at Toby to get Jack out of the damn cabin, implying that some sort of monstrous instincts were bound to overtake Jack, especially with a bleeding man before him.

➣Jack finally spoke up. He defended himself quietly at first, saying he wasn’t staring because he was hungry. He was staring because of how poorly the tourniquet was done. The men were all a little taken aback by this, with Brian sarcastically asking if Jack could do better. 

➣Jack could, and tentatively, they let him. They let him explain his situation again, and with their understanding of his inhumanity and half-completed graduate degree, they realized how good of a problem this could be. They could take advantage of it, despite Tim's apprehension.

➣Jack was designated the ‘proxy medic.’ He was ushered to a small, one-bedroom cabin with a tiny bunker beneath it. He was given permission to live peacefully in the forest, away from public scrutiny, if he just took care of the proxy’s wounds.

➣It was a nice little place. Sure, it was dusty and bothered his heightened senses for a while, but Toby helped him tidy it up. The furniture was old and Toby had to drag an old mattress from a thrift store to replace the rotting one at Jack's cabin, but it worked out.

➣The bunker was a bit shameful for Jack. They managed to get large fridges hooked up down there, giving Jack the opportunity to keep himself fed over longer periods. It made the whole arrangement safer for everyone.

JACK'S RELATIONSHIPS

➣He eventually found himself settled comfortably in his cabin. Toby was the main visitor for a good period of time, until new faces began popping in and out. 

➣Kate ‘the Chaser’ was the second most frequent visitor, though she was commonly dragged behind Toby. She very rarely came on her own, unless her situation was dire.

➣Eventually, he began meeting people just as weird as himself. A girl who insists her name is Clockwork, tall and lanky and snappy. A pair of short guys came shortly after, one constantly littered with wounds that Jack would stitch up. He’d bring Jack meals as payment. Jeff and BEN were their names, who heard of Jack through Clocky. Eventually, a pretty young woman on Toby’s arm came by frequently. Nina was all over Jack for a few weeks, until she eventually settled down and their friendship could become steady. Some days, he walked another eyeless college student named Lulu back to her hospital.

➣Albeit appreciative, none of these friendships filled the ache. Jack grew up family-oriented. He grew up with so many little siblings to take care of, and he spent a year fantasizing about a family with Jenny. He was riddled with too much shame to return home.

➣It wasn’t until a little demon girl came kicking and screaming into his life. Lazari was the daughter of Zalgo, the same entity that took over his body for nearly a year. Just like him, the proxies were hunting her, and just like him, she evaded every attack. 

➣Jack was able to reason with her. He caught her sniffling and crying. He brought her into his arms and into his home. He made her dinner, brushed her long brown hair, and told her it would be okay. They were like siblings, weren’t they? Both were made this way by the same demon.

➣From here on out, Jack’s dedicated himself to Lazari. Quickly, Lazari filled the role of a little sister. 

➣If Lazari could be just as monstrous as him, and yet filled with so much love and life…

➣Maybe Jack could be alright with his wavering humanity, too.

[bamboozledbird]

HOWLING: TST Rewrite // Chapter 1 / next.

Characters: Thomas, fem!reader, Newt Pairing(s): Thomas x Reader (the slowest of burns) Word Count: 3.2k Tags: Mix of book and movie canon, newt!sister!reader Warnings: Canon typical violence and gore, sad times are ahead my friends

A/N: I honestly do not know where this came from. Mostly from my middle school love of Newt probably. Purely maternal. I thought that boy was gay way before Dashner. So here is newt!sibling!reader, and of course, the angst of being in love with your brother's 'killer' :( I think this will be more like snapshots of instead of a full story, mostly due to my schedule, but I do have a lot of moments in mind.

This place is full of bad omens. Broken mirrors, red skies, night terrors that bleed into daylight. They say you’re safe here, but you felt more at ease inside the Spring’s looming walls than you do in this quiet bunker. The concrete is cold, and the steel surfaces gleam menacingly, even in the dark. You always tuck your fork from lunch into the waistband of your sweats, just in case something jumps out from the other side of the funhouse mirror. 

You count 13 new immunes today. You should’ve known then that there was something wicked brewing in the wind. 

None of them stand out to you at first; they look just as dirty and shell-shocked as all the others did when they first arrived. You’re sure you looked the same on your first day at the compound. 

You poke at your apple with your fork, chin drooping onto your knuckles as your eyes lazily trail over a boy with spiky hair. A few tufts are clumped together with sweat, and he somehow looks unimpressed and exhausted at the same time. Your gaze shifts to a tall girl with messy black curls. Her face is delicate, pretty, even through the dirt and scrapes on her cheeks. She appears to be the only girl in the group—poor thing.

Sighing, you roll the ache out of your neck until it pops, and your eyelids start to wilt with your alertness. New arrivals stopped being exciting after you realized they were all going to disappear, one right after the other. It was just a matter of time. 

Your eyes are almost entirely closed when they land on a boy in the center of the pack. His Henley is torn, soiled like everything else, and his eyes are wide—calculating in the way he studies his surroundings. You don’t know him, and yet you’ve never wanted to strangle someone more. 

It’s striking, the anger, and it suddenly occurs to you that you’ve been angry for so long there might be nothing left in you but this rage. How odd, you think distantly. How odd how something can build in an instant; how you can remember a feeling from a void of nothing. 

You don’t know the why, but you stare at the boy and you know he’s the who. 

You’re on your feet before your brain can catch up to your legs. The boy turns to you, and his mouth parts—most likely to ask why the hell your gaze is so murderous—but you hit him before he can utter a single word. A solid jab to his eye socket that sends a jolt of pain through your thumb to your wrist. The grinding of your snapped bone makes your empty stomach churn, and you feel a little woozy with adrenaline and low blood sugar. 

It’s a good punch, but you’re the one who ends up on the ground. The guard escorting the new group drops you with ease and pins your arms behind your back. A few kids come to the boy’s aid, gripping his shoulder like they’re afraid he’ll jump on you, but he doesn’t look angry. He holds a hand over his eye and stares at you, dumbfounded and confused, but not angry. Somehow, that just makes your scowl even more bitter. 

You’re dragged away from the cluster of new immunes and directly deposited in a sterile examination room before anyone has the chance to say anything. It’s hauntingly silent in the room, and your thin tank top does little against the chill in the room. 

You should be more worried about what your punishment will be—if they’ll send you away to where all the missing children go—but you aren’t. It’s just so…loud inside your mind, a million ravenous locusts buzzing, feasting on your ear canal. You can’t make out what they’re saying, what they’re trying to tell you—what you’re supposed to remember about the boy with the bambi eyes and a dark cloud casting a shadow over his face. 

It’s been a long time since you’ve felt this much. For as long as you can remember, literally, dread consumed every one of your thoughts—no room for things like anger, hate, betrayal. You’re spilling over the missing pieces of yourself WCKD chipped away with their mindwipe. It would be fascinating if it wasn’t so awful.

Anger is a nasty feeling and so is weakness. They're bitter, poisonous, and you're afraid you might leak onto the rest of the kids in the compound. This feeling, this bright burning you’re trying to swallow, it's an epidemic of its own. 

A pair of guards with ridiculously large guns flank a mouse of a woman in a stark white lab coat. They’re there to protect her from you, you realize, and you feel like laughing. Two hulking men equipped with high-powered grenade launchers just in case you try to backhand someone else. They must be bored; there really isn’t much guarding for them to do in the middle of nowhere. 

You watch the doctor examine your thumb with mild interest. You’ve gotten used to the pain, mostly. You curse under your breath when she moves it, and the woman flinches like she’s been struck. You grin a little. You probably shouldn’t be so amused, but it feels kind of nice being on the other end of scary, even if it means being stared at like you’re a wild animal. 

The doctor mumbles something to someone in her earpiece, and they all move to leave. “What—that’s it?” you sit up on the examination chair and hold your injured hand to your chest. No one responds. They leave the room without looking back, and the groan that’s ripped from your throat sounds a lot like a growl. “So, I’m good? Nothing’s broken?” The steel door doesn’t answer your question, but the awkward angle of your thumb certainly does. Evidently, they just need you in one place, not one piece. 

The doctor could be coming back, but you’re impatient by nature; sitting around doing nothing after years of running for your life does that to a person. Besides, you’ve done this before. There were no white coats and examination rooms in the Spring; there were only your hands and a stick to bite on. A broken thumb couldn’t be that different from a dislocated shoulder and a sprained ankle, right? 

There aren’t any sticks in the room, so your shirt will have to do. You bunch the hem into a thick wad and shove it between your molars so that you don’t chip a tooth—and then you pull on your thumb until a sickening pop fills the silence like a gunshot. Your eyes water, and the fabric of your tank top is soaked through by the time you’re certain that you won’t make any noise. You release the material from your mouth and examine your work; the digit is certainly straighter, but the color and swelling are decidedly nasty. 

The whoosh of a door sliding open distracts you from bluing skin, and, for the second time today, you see a stranger and feel an overwhelming wave of familiarity. This time, however, it’s warm. You stare at him and feel the strangest urge to ruffle his floppy hair and crush him into your arms so that he can’t slip away from you. Again. The foreign thought strikes you in the heart, and it hurts. 

He sits down next to you, limbs loose and lax, and his head crooks down like a swan to examine your bloated thumb, “That doesn’t look too good.” 

“I haven’t ever punched someone before,” you mumble and lift a shoulder, “guess my form isn’t the best.”

Humming, he cradles your injured hand in his palm like a baby bird and looks around the room, “All this tech, and they don’t have a single bandage.” 

Your teeth catch against your bottom lip, and the constant gnawing starts to hurt almost as badly as your thumb, “Or the good drugs.”

He smiles at you, lopsided and familiar, and you feel like you’re home. “Surely they have some ice somewhere.”

It finally registers that he sounds different than the rest. You suppose that’s probably the first thing most people notice about him, but it’s a distant thought for you. You sound different too, after all. Your cadence isn’t quite as thick as his. You probably sounded more like him before your strong-voweled, mush-mouthed friends infected your inflection. You wish, strangely, that they hadn’t now.  

The corner of your mouth ticks up, “And to think, I never wanted to see another speck of ice again.”

He looks equally confused and amused. 

“Our maze,” you wave your good hand in the air, pulling a face as the phantom frost creeps up your spine, “it snowed all the damn time. Hated it.”

He lets out a low whistle, “I suppose sweating is better than freezing in hindsight.”

You give him the same look, and his face twists in a grimace that rivals your own, “The Glade was sweltering. Dreadful really, almost worse than the Grievers.”

“I imagine.” You nod sagely, face solemn, “All those boys and such a limited supply of soap.”

The boy’s head cocks back with his laugh, and it’s so heart-wrenchingly familiar you could cry. You really could. At least, you can blame any bizarre behavior on your broken thumb. 

“So,” he tilts his head, “Tommy.”

Your face wrinkles in confusion, and he nods towards your injured hand. Ah. So, the black eye had a name. 

“Tommy,” you repeat, far more glumly.

He smiles a little crooked thing, “I know he can be a pesky little shank, but thirty seconds hardly seems like a fair shot.”

“I don’t know what happened,” you say quietly, keeping your eyes on your lap and the ballooned, bruised proof of your guilt. “I saw him, and then everything went red.”

He hums softly in his throat, “Think you knew each other?”

“I don’t know.” Your cheek takes the brunt of your teeth’s abuse this time, “I don’t think I want to.” 

“Whoever he was before, whatever he did…he’s not the same,” he catches your eye, and the flash of hickory feels like an echo, “none of us are.”

You swallow and nod stiffly. He’s right. You know he’s right, but there’s still a little irrational twinge of anger when burnt umber clouds the back of your lids. “Why are you here,” you finally say. Your voice is small, like a lost little girl, and his arm wraps around your shoulders in an easy, fluid motion. You sink into it, still feeling small, but it’s not so terrible now. He’s a comforting weight, a shield you turn into reflexively. “I socked your friend in the eye,” you mumble towards your lap, “think that entitles you to a little hostility.” 

He laughs again, and his chest rumbles with it, “I can’t quite blame you. I’ve wanted to do it a time or two before.”

“Hmm.” You’re unconvinced, and he tugs on your hair a little. 

“Come on, let’s get you that ice.”

You follow him, your hand in his, and feel a little dizzy. There’s a hazy scene layered over the present. A much smaller boy flickers over his long frame; they have the same sandy hair, the same sweet smile. The little boy tugs at your arm, pulling you down the dark hall of a different facility, just as cold. Just as scary. The concrete walls don't loom so largely in your peripherals when he clutches your hand. 

It feels like a fever dream, that place between consciousness and sleep, the lingering brightness when you squeeze your eyes shut—so real for something cloaked in so many shadows. 

There are two faces looking back at you when he turns over his shoulder, the soft cheeks of a child overlapping with the hard lines of a young man. “Newt.”

It’s an odd thing to say, seemingly unrelated to anything around you, but somehow you know that’s his name. You give your own without a moment of hesitation.

Newt looks at you, still and sure, “Had a feeling.”

**************

One bag of ice and lengthy lecture later, you figure you should find Thomas and apologize—for Newt’s sake, not his and certainly not WCKD’S. You eventually find him sitting on a bunk. His face is clean, and his hair is wet, curling at the nape of his neck and over his forehead. Without all the dirt and blood, the purple under his eyes is stark against his pale skin. He looks like he hasn’t slept since he was dropped in his maze, maybe even longer.

You feel a little guilty when you see his black eye.

His head tips up from his hands when you step into the room, and his shoulders immediately tense. You hold up your hands and lean against the opposite wall, as far away from him as you possibly can be in the same room. “I’m not gonna hit you. Promise.”

His shoulders don’t relax, but his fingers uncurl and fall flat against his thighs. His jaw is tight, and you can’t help but notice how it sharpens all the lines of his face. He looks like he’s made of granite, a sculpture from a different time, a time before all this ugliness. There isn’t a lot of room for art in this place, this world; beautiful things don’t last long in the Maze, the Scorch, a society rotten with the Flare—but he has. You hate to admit it, but Thomas is striking. The bruising just makes him look more like a Greek antiquity, a tragic hero with a pretty face.

Thomas looks restless, looking at a spot on the wall just left of your head, and you realize that you’ve been staring for too long. Gritting your teeth, you glance at him and then look down at your shoes, “I’m…I probably shouldn’t have hit you.”

Thomas blinks at you, eyes big and brown…and bruised. You wince a little and fold your arms over your chest, shrinking into the wall, “I definitely shouldn’t have. Sorry.” There’s a part of you, one you don’t understand, that thinks this is more than he deserves. Another part wonders how the hell that’s possible.

He lifts a shoulder and looks to your right now. You aren’t sure if that means he’s forgiven you. You aren’t even sure if he heard you. He looks like he’s in another dimension, a glaze of isolation. You wonder where he’s gone; if it’s nicer there than it is here, or if it’s a bad place. A night terror leaking through the cracks.

Thomas licks his lip and finally looks at you. His face is grim, somber, like you’re visiting your own wake. “I saw you,” his voice is scratchy when he speaks. You’re curious if it’s from disuse or too much use. You’re curious about a lot of things; what exactly is this boy like? This boy who introduced you to the sin of wrath. 

You lick over your teeth and push yourself off the wall, “I figured.” He watches you cautiously until you sit down on the bunk across from him. “Question is, can you still see me?” You hold up three fingers to his swollen eye and hum, “How many?” 

His face remains solemn, not even a hint of a smile, and you sigh, “So you saw me?”

He nods and digs his elbows into his thighs, “In a memory.”

That gets your attention. “You remember things?”

Thomas gestures to his purpling eye, “Don’t you?”

“Feelings,” you pull your knees to your chest tightly, nosing into your kneecap, “just feelings. Not all the time, but sometimes I get that annoying itch you get when you can’t think of the name of a book, but you know you know it.”

He nods, “I get those too; this was different.” He pauses, and presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth like he’s waiting for the right words to roll onto the tip. He doesn’t look entirely content when he speaks again, but his struggle is valiant, “Griever venom...it made me see things—memories, like…a movie I’ve seen before, but I forgot the ending."

Your brow pinches, “Griever?”

Thomas hums a little, “WCKD’s cyborg guardspiders.”

Ah. You pick at some lint on your sweats, and a kittenish whine vibrates through your throat, “Lucky.” He tilts his head and studies you so seriously that a small grin slips through your stoic exterior, “Ours had wings.”

There’s a ghost of a smile on Thomas’s face, and it’s nice enough you’re curious what a real one would look like. It fades once he starts talking again, “I know why you hit me. The mazes…they were mine—that’s what I saw. I watched so many of them…” His eyes fade, and you know he’s in the bad place. The place you go when you think about that day. The day half your friends were ripped apart by WCKD’s pets. 

Clearing your throat, you pull him back to the present with a quiet voice, "And then you saw me.”

He nods, and his throat bobs as he swallows, “And then I saw you.” 

The corner of your mouth tugs into a sad little smile, and his responds in kind. “I think I knew you.” Thomas chews on his lip and picks at his nails, doing his best to tear himself apart, “Not well…you were in a different group, but I knew you…because of Newt.”

Your eyes widen, “Newt?”

“I think…he was your brother—is, is your brother. You were close. Like twins.”

The fever dream is back. There’s sun-drenched flashes of a boy reading to you, pelting you with snowballs and laughing, eyes bright, nose pink. They’re too bright to see everything clearly, but it’s enough to wind you. 

Your eyes flutter open, and you see that Thomas is watching you carefully. Concerned. Odd, considering you broke your thumb against his face a few hours ago. “It could be a plant. Who knows what they put in our heads when they took everything away.”

Thomas tilts his head and then shakes it, “This is a good thing. WCKD doesn’t give us good things.”

Your eyes burn, and you aren’t quite sure why. “Is it?”

Thomas looks confused. It’s a common expression on the munies, confusion. Tends to happen when you don’t know who you are or where you came from. For some reason, it makes you sadder than it usually does.

“Come on,” you curl in on yourself, squeeze your shins tightly and peek at him over your knees, “why’d you tell me before you told your best friend?” 

Thomas looks down at his hands. Caught.  

You answer for him, “You and I both know the last thing that kid needs is one more person he’d die for.”

The solemn look is back on Thomas’s face, and you sigh, “You want me to trust you?”

He nods sharply.

“Don’t tell him. Don’t tell anyone.”

[girlbowser]

gonna go completely insane for a second here.

was thinking about mspar. who will obviously not. appear in hsbc. bc it makes almost no thematic sense for that to happen

but like… i made a connection. that i want to talk about.

mspar in pq is defined by two things, early on

really, really, really fucking hating the direction the epilogues took the "story", and wanting to take it into their own hands to fix it.

like, the imagery about this being a Bad Thing is pretty unsubtle. in the prologue, mspar literally tramples over homestuck panels, crushing them underfoot. and by the end of pq, what they have done isnt just create a new timeline where "everyone is happy," they've overwritten homestuck to do it. theyve Literally retconned the story and replaced it with their fanon ideas of how to "fix" things. that's why ultdirk and the director have to come and tell you that it needs to stop.

there's a lot more about mspar's actions in pq being like… pretty unambiguously villain shit, in my reading, but thats a sort of separate ramble to what i wanted to be insane about (let me know if you want me to ramble about. mspar being the bad guy. another time.)

basically. mspar's design looks a hell of a lot like doc scratch. obviously. theyre both round-headed narrators.

doc scratch's textbox is literally just mspar's inverted. theyre foils, in a sense. scratch enables canon while hurting everyone to do it, and mspar enables fanon (…while hurting everyone to do it, differentways.)

and that got me thinking like. a lot of this description i just wrote applies to another character too.

someone in the text who was introduced as a reader of the stories of the heroes, as an author of fanfiction and fanart

though, obviously meat and candy calliope are accounted for. it's not literally that mspar is calliope. besides, its not even like calliope wears a similar hooded black outfit to them, or makes a huge fucking deal about loathing the complexity of postcanon,

hey wait a minute

and theyve got a lot in common. even beyond the superficial. for example, they both just. appoint themself as the guardian of their timeline, because they have to "fix" homestuck. (whether the characters in homestuck want this or not.)

jade harley literally tells *both characters* "well, what if we don't want your protection!!!! why won't you leave us alone!" and then they just sorta ignore her wishes

and the connection keeps going. like. mspar and altcallie have both stood outside of the green sun with aradia and absorbed a canon into themself so they can rewrite it.

this extremely specific thing they have in common!!!! kinda fucked up!!!!!!

like, im not saying this because i literally think mspar is going to crack their head open and reveal altcallie a la Lord English in that intermission.

but THEMATICALLY.

they have a lot in common.

way more than i realized until literally two days ago!

like mspar is LITERALLY another narrator at least on the scale of ultdirk and doc scratch and the like and LITERALLY ALL OF THEM ARE VILLAINS shdashjfhasfhsajdhgashfkgshjdgsdfgsdhjg. there is stuff to think about.

(conspiracy brain.) and of all the outfits mspar wore in friendsim, it's specifically the black hoodie up that they got sprites for….

anyway.

obviously pesterquest and hsbc werent referencing each other because the second one did not exist yet.

but like! i think theres something there. in terms of da Themes and Motifs.

(if there are more close readings of pq, id be SUPER curious to find em :3)

[artificialchaoscola]

another ramble about some blue dude

AREN'T YOU TIRED OF BEING NICE, SONIC?

DON'T YOU WANT TO GO APESHIT?

But nah seriously the whole plot thread of Sonic getting his "I don't kill people teehee" attitude pushed back against constantly is the coolest part of IDW to me. He bounces back and does what he thinks is right but I just love that you can tell it's not 100% easy for him to do it. I mentioned this when I talked about Scourge + rewriting zombot!Shadow in other posts but I just love how you can debate on whether or not this attitude of his is a flaw or not.

IMO the Eggman in IDW feels much darker than the one in the games, more cold and calculating as well as sadistic in a lot of ways. I do enjoy the difference, since IDW Eggman to me feels like more of a threat, which in turn makes Soinc's constant sparing + moments like the page above feel more intense. I was honestly surprised in the recent Riders arc that Sonic would team up with Eggman at all at first, but then I realized how Sonic has likely not been pushed as far as he could be. Yet.

Something I liked about Sonic Prime was Nine clocking Sonic for the reason he saves people (in that particular interpretation of Sonic, of course), and I 100% want more of that. It would be interesting for a different character to expand further on the things Shadow, Espio, and Surge yelled at him for, to finally connect the dots as to why he even bothers giving the guy so many chances. Granted, in the recent arcs he did say he'd do what was right, that he didn't care if people saw him as a bad guy, etc., and that's all AWESOME and in line with how I see him. I just wonder where this thread is going to go, and if he'll snap in some way. Not killing Eggman or anything silly like that, but basically, an exploration of how "doing the right thing" all the time can stress you tf out maybe. Or some kind of expression on how ticked off he is that Eggman is pushing his luck constantly. Certainly, it's all bubbling up toward something...

(On the topic of different interpretations of Sonic's character, I'm also just so happy we get so many perspectives on how he can be. Some ARE pretty out there and not well written, but I hope SEGA allows the IDW team to expand more and more on the canon characters. I was talking with a friend about this the other day, but I feel a lot of the fun, more interesting writing tends to be given to the IDW OC's outside of the main characters, and that's likely because there's not as much pushback into how they're written. That's just my speculation though, and it's obviously not as true for characters like Sonic and Eggman. I just kinda want SEGA to let these people COOK more.)

[the-s1lly-corner]

TADC CAST COMFORTING THE READER WHEN THEY HAVE A NIGHTMARE

been a minute since i did a group post like this; might make a crp version of this too later.. though i already kind of have one of those, i might rewrite it mwehehehehe genuinely unsure if i did this before, i know i did this with jax and i had a bad dream scenario where the canon characters are the ones with the bad dream plus it wasnt the full cast but shrugs

CAINE:

i dont think he would waste anytime in waking you up, probably shakes you awake.. maybe talks really loudly too because this man is probably incapable of speaking in a whisper. he explains that he noticed you getting restless in your sleep.. what? no he totally wasnt watching you sleep...! thats not the point! since you dont need to sleep in the digital world and hes well aware of that i dont think he would try to get you to go back to sleep. if anything he might be thrilled that youre awake again because that means he can spend time with you... is it selfish? a little, yeah, but does it truly matter if you dont need rest? leaving that up to you! takes this as a chance to get started on the days activities and as a moment to have you all to himself

POMNI:

shakes you awake too, but much more gently than caine.. probably just grabs one of your shoulders and rocks you until you wake up. you likely woke her up, but i dont think she would tell you... she doesnt want you to feel bad about that... lets you know that if you want to talk about it , that shes all ears! takes one of your hands and gently pats it while you speak... offers to take you outside so you can walk around on the grounds and get some of that cool simulated fresh air.. it probably turns into both of you talking about your dreams to one another.... though, now that i think about it, can you have dreams in the digital world?

RAGATHA:

sleeps simply so she can rest her mind, so you probably wake her up with your nightmare... might take her a moment to fully realize whats happening, but i dont think she would be upset that youve woken her up due to you being freaked out. very very understanding.. switches on her bedside lamp for you if you dont want to sit in the dark. takes you into her arms and rubs circles into your back. you both kind of just sit there in bed for a while, until you calm down enough to talk about what happened.. if you feel embarrassed or ashamed about it, ragatha is going to stamp out those feelings. nightmares happen to the best of us and its nothing to feel terrible over.. i think she would check in on you throughout the day to make sure youre okay

JAX:

will not take kindly to being woken up. i dont think he would be mean or like. actually get mad at you, but i do think he would be a little annoyed... his attitude kind of says that hes 'so over it'... might even dismiss your fear in his groggy half asleep mind.. tugs you closer to him to try to get you to stop squirming. though if youre still asleep and having the nightmare i think he would wake you up just so that it gets cut off and you can recollect yourself. very blunt in telling you that you were dreaming, and that everything is fine and nothing bad is happening. tries to get you to go back to sleep so he can go back to sleep... though i do think if youre upset about his lack of attention he might try to make it up in his own way during the day when hes more awake and aware

KINGER:

he gets nightmares too, so you guys might be able to relate over that... and in a way it kind of takes away that embarrassment of getting scared and having to wake the other person up... though i dont think kinger sleeps much.. hed much rather stay awake and alert, keep an eye on his surroundings in case something terrible happens.. so your nightmare only lasts for a second, just long enough for kinger to notice and shake you awake. hushed but rushed tones while hes whispering to you asking if youre okay.. visibly calms when he realizes youre not in pain and you just had a bad dream.. offers to let you hold onto him, or maybe even walk around the halls... or would you rather he construct a pillow fort so you feel more secure? really just tell him what to do and hes going to instantly get on it

ZOOBLE:

i think they would be similar to jax in regards to them not being... that attentive when theyre woken up. i do think they would put in more effort than him, though. probably asks whats wrong.. i think they would offer a massage.. i cant explain why, i can just see it in my head. not the best given they feel like hard plastic and theyre uncoordinated from just waking up but the effort is there and it doesnt go to waste.. groggily asks if you want to talk about it.. even props themselves up so they lower the risk of falling back to sleep.. solid effort, giving them a gold star

GANGLE:

i think she'd be a light sleeper so she wakes up fairly fast when you start having your nightmare. very gently shakes you awake... going to take a minute for her to work up the nerve to wake you up since shes unsure if youre actually having a nightmare or just trying to get comfortable in the bed... very quietly asks if youre okay, is slightly relieved that you were in fact having a bad dream and she did not wake you up for nothing.. offers to le you talk about it, i think she would be a good listener... i dont think you guys would go back to sleep, you probably end up getting started on the day... or at least do some activities with one another; likely sticking to one of your rooms instead of going to one of the common areas

[kurithedweeb]

In my recent post about base game Minecraft mobs in MCD rewrites, I mentioned that I like to include random little scenes from canon and I got a comment from @lucky-guess asking if I’d include Aph eating rotten flesh. I thought “maybe I will, it’d be funny.” I remember the time Brendan startled her and she accidentally ate the zombie brains in her hand. I was thinking about this comment and I had a Very Good Idea.

You know how Garroth was pretty hands-off with Aph at the start of Season 1? They’d talk, sure, but he just let her wander around and fix things up, he had bigger things to worry about until he realized that, hey, she’s basically a Lord now.

Here’s how it goes:

You’re the head guard of a tiny rundown coastal village, and you’ve been scrambling to keep everything together ever since a mysterious fire killed your Lord. Your apprentice has been a great help and he’s the only one who knows the real scope of your worries, your guards have been stressed enough with all the suspicion and accusations and extra patrols and they don’t need to carry the same weight you have on your shoulders.

It’s another dreary day of rain, one of your guards is recovering from a bad injury, and you’re not halfway through evening patrol when a random maiden crashes out of the woods. She’s only wearing what amounts to underwear, drenched, barefoot, her arms and legs are covered in mud and there are twigs in her tangled hair. She looks half-feral and the look in her eyes does nothing to discourage that.

You, obviously concerned that she’s being chased, ask her what happened, is she injured? Please, miss, come inside and take a seat by the fire before you catch your death. The maiden does not care even a little. She says she was chasing a mysterious man in green and have you seen him because she wants to know what’s up with that guy. You have not, and the idea of some random man being chased by this tiny woman is slightly concerning, but all you’re worried about right now is getting this woman inside before she dies of hypothermia. She does not care about hypothermia, she just wants to chase her mystery man.

Suddenly, a sound! A man in what might be green, it’s hard to tell in the rain! That’s the man, the maiden cries! After him!

You will go after him. The maiden will be going inside with your apprentice, right now, please, please go warm up. Your apprentice manages to wrangle the half-feral woman into the nearest open building, the library, and you take off after the mysterious man in maybe-green. You chase him through the trees, down the slippery slope of a hillside, into a clearing. You’ve lost your lantern somewhere along the way, and in the dark you trip on the lip of a crater you’re sure wasn’t there when you last passed through. You know these woods like the back of your hand, but the crater and the mud and the rain have blinded you in a moment of confusion and the man is gone by the time you get your bearings. Any tracks he may have left are too murky to follow. You stumbled back to town in the dark to check on the maiden.

You can call her Anastasia. That’s all your apprentice has been able to learn from her while you were gone. She’s washed, more-or-less dried and in proper clothes thanks to Emmalyn the librarian, maybe you’ll have more luck now that she’s bundled in front of the fireplace with some warm broth in her stomach. She tells you again of the man, of a clearing she didn’t recognize, and nothing of any use. You leave her to rest, thinking maybe she’ll remember more in the morning. She’s gone in the morning.

You’re half-convinced you hallucinated the whole event, but the time you spent that night furiously scrubbing down your armor convinces you it’s true. Anastasia reappears a few days later, breezes past you without a word and starts doing something to the road on the edge of town. You’re a little concerned you’ve possibly begun to lose your mind from the stress except other people are stopping to stare at her too.

For weeks, it continues like this. Anastasia appears in town, drops whatever she’s collected while she’s away at the library (infuriating Emmalyn more and more each time), messes around with a broken-down road or some fences or digs through the bed farmland, and then vanishes for days or weeks at a time. No one knows what she’s doing or what to do about it, but so long as she’s not hurting anyone it’s fine, right? She even helps clear out monsters from time to time.

You think, wasn’t that fence broken last week? Wasn’t that road in disrepair last month? Was that condemned plot of farmland suddenly sprouting healthy grass? Weren’t these Anastasia’s projects? Oh, you realize, she’s been fixing up the village for some reason. She’s been doing a surprising number of Lordly things, actually. And that little hut up on the cliff—was that also her? What else was she doing? She was making her own gear, her own house, helping with farms and patrols, and also apparently taming wolves and teaching them to fish—where did she learn all this stuff anyway?

You ask. She says she doesn’t remember. She says it just seemed obvious to do it like this. She says it seemed like these are just things people are supposed to do. Aren’t they? No? Well, that’s the way she’s doing things. You think she’s joking about not remembering how she knows, well, everything.

And then, as she’s helping clear away the bodies of yet another small horde of zombies, Brendan startles her and Anastasia shoves the zombie flesh into her mouth. SPIT IT OUT, everyone who’d seen this tragedy yells, SPIT IT OUT SPIT IT OUT RIGHT NOW! But no, this crazy weird woman has committed to her mistakes and you can see the disgust on her face as she chews. And swallows. You are fighting the urge to jam your fingers down her throat and make her throw up because you know her well enough to know you’d get stabbed for it on reflex. Within minutes, she is heaving into a bucket, miserable, and saying that she wouldn’t have done it if she’d known it’d make her so sick.

You, holding her hair back as she throws her guts up, realize that she was not joking. She was not joking about not knowing anything. Anastasia, the half-feral maiden from the woods who's been doing basically half a Lord’s duties around the little town under your care, is an amnesiac. She has actual, literal amnesia. That’s the only explanation. Everyone knows never to eat zombie flesh for this exact reason, everyone, no one is that dumb. Oh dear Irene, she’s going to end up doing this again, isn’t she? Anastasia, the woman who’s been caring for this town just as much as you have, is going to die from food poisoning because she can’t remember which berries are bad for you. If not that, then hypothermia. If you leave her alone, she’s done for.

That’s how you end up personally guarding the new Lord of Phoenix Drop. And how you end up breaking her out of jail when she gets wrongly arrested for murder a month later.

[mukimokai]

hey you!!!

wanna hear one of my fic ideas for a canon rewrite that will absolutely shatter your heart????

yeah...

you've been warned..

.

TW!!!

dr//g ab*se, attempted su!c!de

⠀

alhaitham attempted to overdose after the argument with kaveh over their thesis.

.

they basically screamed each others throats off that day; they've argued over their differing ideals before but it was never this bad, and the fight eventually got a bit physical, and there was a lot of hairpulling, scratching, pulling each other up by the collar, because they weren't just arguing about the thesis anymore, they were mad at each other. until alhaitham pointed out kaveh's fatal flaw, how his altruism is going to fail him one day, and kaveh, who can't handle the truth, yanks at alhaithams hair again, telling him to fuck off, that he wishes he never met him, all through pained, angry tears. and then, he lets go and leaves, bolting out the front door and not even bothering to close it.

it was one of the first times in alhaitham's life that he had ever let his emotions get the better of him, and he watched kaveh run out of the door, panting and shaking, tears prickling the corners of his eyes out of pure, unadulterated frustration. and alhaitham realizes at this moment that he'd lost someone. again.

oh yes, alhaitham's all alone again!! no one cares about him anymore!! he'd just lost the last person in the world who gave a damn!! silly alhaitham!! all because you're you. because you had to open your mouth again. because you had to say something. all you wanted was to help, but nobody understands that. nobody ever will. to them, you're just a cold, calculated, arrogant, cocky, bastard. and look what you've done now.

the thought breaks him, and he crumbles to the ground in what can only be described as a meltdown, a very violent one. vases are shattered, kitchen wear chucked across the room, books thrown around carelessly, all while he screams curses into the air, directed at no one, maybe at Kusanali, maybe at Celestia, who knows, but he screams anyway, bordering on babbles as he stumbles to his room, dizzy and distressed and grabs the bottle of prescription drugs (working on what kind of drug currently). It's not full, it's almost empty actually, only about 10 tablets at the bottom, but alhaitham, hands shaking, laughs incredulously at himself, and eats all of them.

or at least: tries to...

the commotion he'd made upset his neighbours. initially, they were storming over to his house with the Matra beside them to have him taken care of but upon arrival, they were horrified. The matra with them practically tackled alhaitham, making him spit out the 3 pills he had in his mouth when they found him in his room; he had already taken 5. they dragged him to the bimarstan as fast as he could, the neighbours following in terror and worry.

alhaitham was saved that day and the memory still haunts him. he was so clouded with emotion he'd lost all sense of what he was doing and just felt, and it scared him how his own feelings took control of him. At that point, alhaitham only closed up even further, basically forcing on his poker face and shoving down his feelings because he never wanted to feel so vulnerable again. he doesn't want to feel. it hurts to feel. strong feelings only bring pain. more pain than alhaitham could bear.

so alhaitham chose to hide this story, he never told anyone about it, not even a single detail. but kaveh, who moved back in eventually and now lived with alhaitham for about a year since their argument, was tidying up when he found a bottle of pills under alhaitham's bed, it was practically empty, only 2 pills remained.

concerned, he questions alhaitham about it later and it was the first time he'd seen alhaitham genuinely look scared. when kaveh explained he'd found it under his bed, alhaitham snatched away the bottle and disposed of it in the trash, cursing himself for not having found it last year when the incident happened and couldn't believe it had been there the whole time.

kaveh isn't an idiot, he pieced it together the moment he saw alhaitham's reaction. he just stands there, completely speechless and horrified. all he can say is "when..?"

and alhaitham, for the first time since their school years, responds in a shaky, miserable voice, "a year ago."

and kaveh is stunned, just staring at alhaitham, who seemed so unreachable when he moved in, suddenly looking so heartbreakingly vulnerable.

he doesn't say anything.

kaveh just hugs him, buries alhaitham's face into his shoulder and hugs him. and he swears he can hear soft, weak sounds coming from the scribe, and he swears the fabric over his shoulders became damp, but he doesn't say anything.

he just holds him.

i'm sorry. come at my throat all you'd like.

⠀

⠀

⠀

[jerzwriter]

Second Thoughts If it were cannon... AU

A million years ago, someone asked me if I'd write a series that mimicked canon but with Tobias Carrick as head of the Edenbrook Diagnostic Team. While I don't have the bandwidth to take on a series at this point, as I'm doing my Open Heart re-read, I will rewrite select scenes that I think could be interesting.

Part one was the first night at Donahue's when there was a serious connection building between Dr. Tobias Carick and new intern, Dr. Casey MacTavish. But now, they've had a chance to sleep on it, do things look different in the morning light? Lack of sleep, misunderstandings, and a dash of fear lead Casey to make a choice. Will it be one she comes to regret?

Book: Open Heart Book 1 / Chapter 3 Pairing: Tobias Carrick x F!MC (Casey) Featuring: Bryce Lahela, Jackie Varma, Landry Olsen Rating: Teen Words: 2,200 Series: If it were canon... AU Summary: See above

A/N: A quick thank you to @angelasscribbles for helping me come up with a new nickname lol I was at a loss. And thank you to @alj4890 - because of you I'm inspired to continue with this!

Series Masterlist Tobias x Casey Masterlist My Masterlist

The second day of her internship was not going as planned. Casey hardly managed to get any sleep in the miniature closet she called her room. At least the stairs above her came in handy today. She accidentally set her alarm for 5:00 PM instead of 5:00 AM, and if not for someone stomping down those steps, she would have overslept and likely decided to return to Philadelphia in shame. Now, with barely 30 minutes before her shift began, she threw on a ratty old Henly that paired perfectly with the wrinkled pair of jeans at the foot of her bed. Hair and make-up? Not today. A messy bun and brushed teeth would have to suffice. Somehow, she managed to arrive at Edenbrook with ten minutes to spare; when she saw a group of surgical interns playing basketball outside. Bryce Lahela was amongst them, and suddenly she wished she had spruced up just a little bit more.

“Up top! I’m open!” A shirtless Bryce barely got those words out before he flew by her, catching a pass and dribbling confidently toward the hoop. He dunked the ball, then screamed out in celebration. “Ha! Who’s the king now?”

“King?” Casey laughed, “You nearly killed me getting to that ball! I think the king should at least get a traffic infraction."

“Damn! I didn't realize. I would  have gladly given up two points for a chance to collide with you.”

Casey laughed as the other interns whooped and hollered when she saw the ball suddenly flying in her direction and caught it with both hands.

“Well, come on then, MacTavish!" Bryce goaded. "You gonna play, or you gonna send that back over?”

With a determined smirk, Casey slowly dribbled the ball, taunting him. “Come see if you can get it from me." Bryce sauntered toward her with what she’d come to know as his signature grin firmly in place.

“You’re making me look good,” he whispered upon approach. “I really am the king.”

“King of the surgical interns,” she laughed. “I guess that’s something, but....” without another word, she dribbled the ball around him, rushing toward the hoop with Bryce at her heels.

“Gonna make it tough on me, huh?” he laughed, wrapping his arm around her waist and spinning her around, but not before she shot the ball right into the hoop.

“That’s gotta be a foul, Ref,” she hollered, giggling in Bryes’s arms.

“It’s not a foul if you’re on my team,” Bryce defended. “And you are definitely on my team.”

Casey caught her breath as he put her on his feet, crossing her arms defiantly. “Says who?”

 “Says me!” He replied with a playful shrug. “But seriously, you want to join in?”

“Nah, my shift starts in five, and I’d really like to make myself look decent before it starts.”  

“You’re already looking good, MacTavish. Don’t go too crazy; I don’t want competition for hottest intern.”

“Ha!” she laughed, reaching up and flirtatiously pinching his cheeks. “I’ve already got that in the bag, Lahela!”

"Quite possibly," she beamed. "Hey, lunch later?"

"Sounds like a plan."

He smiled as he watched her run to the hospital entrance, pushing her way through a group of staff who had stopped to watch the game and assess the new talent.

“Excuse me. Pardon me,” she pushed through.

“You looked really good out there,” a pretty nurse winked.

“Thanks,” Casey smiled. Completely unaware that her handsome attending was quietly sipping his coffee nearby.

“She was impressive, wasn’t she, Dr. Carrick?” The nurse asked.

“Yep," he nodded. "She sure was.”

After a quick change, sprucing up her hair, and even applying a dab of lip gloss, Casey was the last of the interns to enter the atrium, but still on time. She was eager to meet her senior resident, and when Dr. Ines Delarosa called her name, Casey gently pumped her fist. “Yes!”

“Why are you so excited?” Jackie asked.

“I met her yesterday, she’s amazing! Bubblegum and rainbows incarnate!”

“Gross!” Jackie grimaced. “I’d rather take my chance with the grumpy ass I've got. I’ll catch you on the other side!”

Ines clapped her hands with joy to gather her charges. “All right, young ones! You’ve got your assignments! Go forth and shine bright!”

And Ines greeted her interns with the same enthusiasm when they returned a few hours later. “I hope you’re all excited! We’re about to begin rounds!”

“Woo-hoo!” Casey yelled as Ines gave a thumbs up with approval.

“That’s the attitude I want to see! You’ll be even more excited when I tell you we have a very special guest! Dr. Tobias Carrick will be joining us for rounds today!”

Casey turned to see Tobias leaning against a wall, looking up from his clipboard at the mention of his name. He curtly nodded at the interns, and Casey’s mouth went dry. Why did he have to be so beautiful? One glance made her knees go weak, and when his ice-blue eyes locked with hers, she could feel her cheeks begin to flush. She had been fueled by liquid courage when she approached him at Donahue's last night. What kind of intern flirts mercilessly with her attending on her very first day? But with his eyes still on her, she felt the heat rising. Yeah, she thought, that’s why I did. But when he turned away without acknowledging her, she began to question her judgment again.

“Let’s do this,” Dr. Carrick said gruffly.

“We’re doing rounds with Dr. Carrick? This is amazing! Also, I’m going to puke!” Landry whispered softly but loud enough to hear.

Tobias stopped short and looked over his shoulder, catching Landry chatting with Casey. “Less chatting and more moving!” He scowled. “Or do you think you’ve learned enough to keep your patients alive with just one day on the job?”

Casey’s brow furrowed. He didn’t seem at all like the man she met yesterday: the one who patiently guided her through an emergency procedure before her shift even began, one whose jovial attitude kept the interns energized throughout the day, or with whom she flirted shamelessly last night, perhaps that last one was the problem. Still, she shook her head and whispered to Landry.

“He was so cool yesterday. Why is he acting like such a jerk today?”

Dr. Carrick screeched to a halt again, causing several interns to trip over themselves to avoid toppling on top of him.

“Something to say, Dr. MacTavish?”

Her wide-eyed peers whispered amongst themselves. How did he already know her name? Dr. Carrick didn’t expect an answer, but Casey was giving him one all the same.  

“Yes, actually. I was wondering why you were so irritable today. I liked the Dr. Carrick I met yesterday much better.”

Tobias crossed his arms, biting his cheek to stifle a laugh, and Ines looked nervously between them. “Ha-ha!” She laughed. “Dr. MacTavish is so funny... haha! That will help make you a good doctor, but why don’t we get on with our rounds.”

“Wait,” Tobias held up a hand. “Dr. MacTavish, what role do you think attendings will play in your residency? Do you they – myself in particular -  are here to amuse and appease you?”

“Nope," she replied, not backing down. "Not at all.”

“Good. Because all of us will be putting in long hours, sometimes you won’t sleep for days on end. You’ll be dealing with life-or-death issues, and sometimes, the losses will nearly destroy you. No one is going to be rainbows and sunshine all the time. So I suggest you learn to deal with irritable colleagues and patients alike. It’s as much a part of this job as anything else.” He looked directly at Casey, and even as he was admonishing her, his gaze still made her melt. “Is that clear?”

“Crystal,” she grinned as Tobias forced himself to look away. Casey was completely unaware, she had the exact same effect on him. b

“Good. So why don’t we start rounds with your patient then?”

Landry wanted to question Casey as they walked away. He wasn’t sure if she was his hero, if she was out of her mind, or a combination of both, but he didn’t dare speak after that exchange.  

Casey and Landry went on to present. Or better said, Casey did. Landry was so starstruck by Dr. Carrick’s presence that he couldn’t bring himself to utter a word. Casey eyed him nervously, but when it was clear he was stalled, she jumped in to bail the duo out. Calmly and succinctly explaining that their patient had been in an accident and had internal bleeding as a result. She offered their prognosis and defended their treatment plan, even reassuring the patient when he expressed concerns about the length of his stay. Tobias was impressed with her, and halfway through her presentation, he couldn’t help but wonder why he was being so grumpy after all. It wasn’t like him at all.

“... so we have to get you healthy, Mike,” Casey said sweetly. “There are people counting on you.”

“Excellent, Dr. MacTavish,” Tobias approved, looking pointedly at Landry.

They proceeded to watch Elijah, Sienna, Jackie, Aurora, and other interns present.

“Congratulations!” Ines chirped. “You survived your first morning rounds! That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“Depends on who you ask,” Landry droned.

“Landry,” Casey frowned. “Don’t worry, you’ll get a chance to...,” but Tobias began speaking and drowned her out.

“All right, doctors! Your patients are all alive... let’s make sure they’re still that way when I see you tomorrow. You’re dismissed.”

Casey turned and walked away with the other interns, but she didn’t get far when Tobias called her back.

“Not you, Newbie. You have one more patient to see.”

“I... I do?” she stammered.

“And do I?” Landry asked.

“Did I say you?” Tobias glared.

“Nope,” Landry gulped, turning to Casey. “I guess I’ll see you later.”

Casey walked toward Tobias; while some interns gossiped, not even attempting to hide.

“What’s with them? One asked “Nothing! She just made a good a good impression on him.” “Yeah,” Another sneered. “A good impression on him at the bar last night!” “Well, I guess that’s one way to get ahead.”

Tobias didn’t hear, but Casey did, and she couldn’t conceal a frown as she walked his way. Seeing her distressed, he hoped his attitude had nothing to do with it. He greeted her with a warm smile.

“Hey there, Newb. Why so glum? You doing OK?”  

“I’m good,” she sighed. “Very sleepy, but good. Hey, I want to apologize; I’m sorry if I was a jerk back there...”

“Nah,” he replied, and she realized his graveled voice had the same effect on her as his damn eyes. This would not be easy. “I was the one being the jerk. That’s why I wanted to talk to you...”

“Wait,” she crossed her arms with narrowed eyes. “Are you telling me there’s no patient? You just wanted to talk to me?”

“Two things can be true at once, grasshopper,” he smiled. “That’s good to remember in medicine. But I am sorry for being grouchy. It’s not like me; I guess we all have bad days.”

“And we're all entitled to them every so often,” she winked. “Just don’t let it happen again.”

She wasn’t your standard intern, and he couldn’t help but laugh when he caught a nurse looking at them intently. She scattered away when he met her stare, refusing to shift his gaze. Casey followed his eyes and understood at once. She lowered her eyes as he returned his attention to her, his voice taking on a more serious tone. “Listen, about our talk last night..”

Casey felt herself becoming sick, and she didn't think skipping breakfast was the culprit. Her cheeks turned red, and her breath quickened. What would all the gossips say about the two of them standing this close? She was a kid from the wrong side of the tracks in Philly, worked her ass off to get here despite all those who said it was just a dream. She wasn’t going to have anyone saying her success was a result of flirting with her attending. But, God, she wanted to pursue him. She hadn't felt a connection like this in so long, and he had said they could find a workaround. Then she felt her blood go cold. Listen, about our talk last night...

Oh, God! She thought. I made a total ass out of myself, didn’t I? I’m an intern, for God’s sake. He’s Dr. Tobias Carrick; he likely has his choice of any person in this hospital. Any person in Boston! What the hell was I thinking? Convinced he was about to tell her he wasn’t interested. Her blatant flirtation was about to make her look like nothing short of a desperate fool, and Casey never wanted to be a desperate fool.

“It’s alright!” she interrupted, though right now, nothing felt alright. “We both had a few drinks, and it was late... it’s not surprising that we both said some things we didn’t mean.”

“Oh,” Tobias said, clearly taken aback. “I didn’t realize that...”

“Hey, Casey,” Bryce smiled, walking past with his team. “See you at lunch!”

“Oh,” Tobias repeated, images of the two of them kissing and their flirtatious game on the hospital court rushing to his mind. He recovered quickly this time. “It’s fine. I’m glad we’re on the same page then; this way, we don’t have to be awkward. We’re cool?”

“We’re cool,” she faked a smile, not understanding why his apparent dismissal brought the sting of bitter tears to the back of her eyes.

“Good! So, I do have a patient for you,” he said, nodding in the direction they were about to walk. “Her name is Kyra Santana, and her doctor thought a golf outing was more important than being here today. But, his loss is your and Ms. Santana’s gain...”

Casey took notes as he spoke. She never needed notes; she remembered almost everything, but she'd find any excuse to avoid looking into those eyes.

 “Hey, Dr. Carrick,” a beautiful nurse winked. Casey looked up momentarily but rushed her eyes back to the pad in her hand.

Thank God she quickly covered, she thought, her cheeks flushing with a mix of relief and embarrassment. He was Tobias Carrick. As if he’d have any real interest in her. It was bad enough that she had it this bad for her attending—the last thing she needed was for him to find out. That would be no way to start this phase of her life.

Tobias stood before the door, and, damn it, he smiled again. "You ready, Dr. MacTavish?"

"I like to think I am," she smiled as she walked through the door.

@choicesficwriterscreations @openheartfanfics

Tagging others separately.

[jordosprout]

I Need To Know TBB Headcanons (S3 SPOILERS POSSIBLE PLEASE BE WARRY)

What do you think the batch spends their time doing on Pabu? What occupies their time now that they are retired? I have only pieces of ideas but I have been tryna find some other folks thoughts. But to get er' rollin' I'll share my ideas.

Wrecker

• He's definitely a community man from what we saw so

- Maybe he babysits

-Maybe he helps fish like we saw in the past

- Or perhaps he carries heavy equipment for repairs/building

Hunter

- Maybe he helps figure out the best fishing spot for every passing day

- Maybe he builds boats or surfboards? Definitely got old surfer vibes from him at the end of Bad Batch (I am so sorry but I could not get Barbie's dad(?) from that one surfer movie out of my head)

Crosshair

• Cross was the hardest to figure out for me due to how little of what he is skilled at outside of being a soldier. But once I thought about it I couldn't stop LMAO

- I think for a long time he struggles with figuring out what he wants to do now that he's free to be whoever he wants to be. He's used being told what to do, and now that he doesn't have someone controlling him he's having a difficult time adjusting. He probably asks Hunter to give him tasks frequently, and after a while he's given the task of taking care of himself. Learning what he wants.

- I definitely imagine him trying multiple things such as: fishing, farming, all the good stuff

- I see him landing on something creatively driven like tattoos and painting. But I do think it takes a lot of time and soul searching before he gets to that point.

- Probably really distant for awhile, he wants to be around the others but feels he doesn't deserve it

- Reluctant on getting a prosthetic, I can see him choosing not to have one

Omega

• Omega wasn't too difficult for me, seeing what she ends up going off to do at the end of the last episode.

- After using pieces of the Marauder to fix up her own ship with Phee (and Tech depending on your thoughts on it), I see her convincing Phee (again, and Tech depending on your opinion) to give her flight lessons.

- She practices the Tech Turn often, doing her best to perfect it. (If you think Tech should stay dead then let's say she does this late at night on her own and has gotten in trouble for it a plethora of times. She can never quite do it as he does. But if you're like me and he lives, then of course he'll help teach her.)

- Omega probably sneaks off a lot, wanting to explore her new home

- Then I think she eventually gets into contact with Herra, and that she's the one who convinces her to become a rebel pilot

Tech

• In my perfect Bad Batch, Tech is alive. He will always be here in my mind; even if I'll have to mourn him as a character in canon alive and well.

- Tech spends much of his time recording and noting down the things he learns about the new island he lives on. Likely going off with Omega.

- I think Tech and Phee try a relationship at one point or another, maybe they decide to break up, maybe they're together for the long run. His calm nature mixing with her unpredictable one perhaps. She helps him feel more comfortable with himself, and he reminds her she doesn't need to change her stories to make them enjoyable. I think he'd love hearing about the artifacts she brings to Pabu. But it's possible their personalities don't mix well. We didn't get to see as much of their relationship on screen as I would have liked. (Came to rewrite this a bit. Was worried with how I wrote it didn't come across as I wanted)

- Tech probably has his own repair shop, or maybe he creates his own inventions.

More Group Stuff

- Definitely live together at least for a long while

- I think Hunter would get into a relationship before anyone else, then Wrecker getting into one kinda on accident? He'd be super oblivious and go on dates without realizing that's what they are. I think Cross n Tech would be last if they were to get into relationships (personally I see them on the aromantic spectrum, specifically Tech being demi and Cross being recip-romantic or Grey-romantic)

- They do a lot of stuff together, swimming, getting tattoos from Cross, therapy, family dinner all the lovely stuff

And I Think That's All I Got

Thanks for letting me ramble in your feed :)

[doctorbitchcrxft]

Bad Day at Black Rock | Supernatural Series Rewrite | Dean Winchester x Fem!Reader

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Fem!Reader

Warnings: panic attack/PTSD, recovering from a sexual assault (HEED THESE WARNINGS ESPECIALLY FOR THIS CHAPTER), canon violence, canon gore

Word Count: 6673

Mobile Supernatural Series Rewrite Masterlist

Supernatural Series Rewrite Masterlist

Supernatural Series Rewrite Playlist

“What?!” you exclaimed. “She’s a demon, and you didn’t gank her?!”

Sam had just finished telling you and Dean about this Ruby girl he’d met. 

“No, (Y/N), I mean, she seemed pretty helpful on the Seven Deadlies case.”

“Wait, she’s the blonde chick?!” you realized. “Why the fuck would a demon help me?”

“I don’t know,” Sam answered. “That’s what I’m trying to understand, too. And if she helped us then, I don’t see why I shouldn’t have at least listened to what she had to say.”

“Because ‘demon,’ that's why,” Dean snapped angrily. “I mean, the second you find out this Ruby chick is a demon, you go for the holy water! You don't chat!”

“No one was chatting, Dean,” Sam huffed.

“Oh yeah? Then why didn't you send her ass back to Hell?”

“Because she said she might be able to help us out!”

“With what, though, Sam,” you chimed in. “You’ve never said how she’s supposed to be able to help us. Or with what.”

“She told me she could help Dean,” Sam said quietly.

Dean seemed to not understand.

“With the crossroads deal, I’m assuming,” you told him.

Sam nodded.

The older brother looked at Sam incredulously. “What is wrong with you, huh? She's lying, you gotta know that, don't you? She knows what your weakness is; it's me.” Dean paused for a second. “What else did she say?”

Sam was quiet again.

You and Dean leaned in expectantly. “Dude?” the older brother questioned.

“Nothing. Nothing, Okay?!” Sam snapped. “Look, I'm not an idiot, guys. I'm not talking about trusting her, I'm talking about using her. I mean, we're at war, right? And we don't know jack about the enemy. We don't know where they are; we don't know what they're doing. I mean, hell, we don't know what they want. Now, this Ruby girl knows more than we will ever find out on our own. Now, yes, it's a risk, I know that, but we need to take it.”

“You're okay right, I mean you're feeling okay?” Dean asked.

Sam huffed. “Yes I'm fine. Why are you always asking me that?”

You looked between the two brothers when a phone began ringing. You checked your pockets; no buzzing. Sam and Dean’s phones weren’t ringing either. 

“Check the glove box, it's Dad's,” Dean suddenly realized.

“Dad’s?” Sam questioned.

“Yeah, I keep it charged up in case any of his old contacts call.”

‘Smart boy,’ you thought.

Sam opened the glove box and found the ringing phone. “Hello? Yes... this is Edgar Casey… No! No, no, no, don't – don't call the police, I'll handle this myself. Thanks. You know, can you just uh, can you just lock it back up for me? Great. Uhm, I- I uh, I don't have my - my book in front of me—” Sam gestured to you for a pen, which you quickly handed to him— “do you- do you have the address so I can... Sure, okay. Go ahead. Right, thanks a lot.” He then hung up and turned to Dean. “Dad ever tell you he kept a container at a storage place?”

“What?” Dean asked.

“Outside of Buffalo?”

The older brother shook his head. “No way.”

“Yeah. And someone just broke into it.”

***

“No demons allowed,” Sam noted upon entering his father’s storage container. A large Devil’s Trap was etched into the ground, and two sets of bloody footprints traveled right through it. 

“Check this out,” Dean said, stooping to hold up a tripwire. It was attached to a shotgun hidden in a large animal skull. 

“Whoever broke in here got tagged,” Sam said.

“I got two sets of boot treads here,” you announced, “looks like it was a two-man job. And Buckshot Boy looks like he kept walking.” You nodded toward the bloody footprint trail leading into the container.

“So, what's the deal?” Sam wondered aloud. “Dad would do work here or something?”

“Living the high life, as usual,” Dean quipped.

The three of you crept around John’s storage locker, and the two brothers chatted about how much of a mystery their father still was to them. You took in the varying types of clutter. To your surprise, the room was filled with old memorabilia; photo albums, a graduation cap and gown you assumed was Sam’s, and a few boxes whose contents were written on the outside of them in a woman’s handwriting you assumed belonged to Mary. 

You smiled at a trophy on a shelf nearby. “Check it out,” you said, picking it up and dusting it off. “Sam Winchester, 1995,” you read aloud, “Soccer Division Championship.”

Sam grinned and came over to you. “No way! I can't believe he kept this.”

“Yeah,” Dean smiled lopsidedly, “it was probably about the closest you ever came to being a boy.” He wandered over to another table with a shotgun laid on it. “Oh, wow! It's my first sawed-off. I made it myself. Sixth grade.” The older brother laughed and pumped the dusty shotgun.

“You made that?” you questioned.

“Not bad, eh?” he grinned excitedly.

“No, not at all,” you giggled. “Damn, dude.” You took the gun from him and inspected it, impressed with Dean’s craftsmanship. He smiled proudly at you.

“Guys, over here,” Sam said. You followed his voice over to a door to a back room. The chain on the door had been cut, and you cautiously made your way inside.

You waved your flashlight around the room to find varying weapons and lockboxes that no doubt held nasty supernatural objects.

“Holy crap. Look at this,” Dean called, “he had land mines. Which they didn't take. Or the guns. I guess they knew what they were after, huh?”

You took in the lockboxes on the shelf on the far wall. “This is binding magic,” you pointed out. “Curse boxes.”

“Curse boxes?” Dean questioned. “They're supposed to keep the evil mojo in, right? Kinda like the Pandora deal?”

Sam nodded. “Yeah, they're built to contain the power of the cursed object.”

“Well, Dad's journal did mention a whole bunch of stuff, y'know? Dangerous hexed items, fetishes. He never did say where they ended up,” Dean added.

“Must be his sulfur-sludge dump,” you joked. You noticed a rectangular-shaped hole in the dust that had settled over the shelf. “Well, they found what they were looking for.”

“Great,” Sam groaned.

“Well, maybe they didn't open it,” Dean suggested optimistically. 

“Cute thought, but I’m sure they did,” you replied flippantly. You looked around the exterior of the storage unit for anything that could be of use to you; footprints, tire tracks, and… aha! A security camera.

“That’s helpful,” you noted, pointing up at it. 

The boys helped you fish the SD card out of the security camera, and you hooked it up to your computer. 

“There, license plate,” you noted. “And now…” you pulled up an alternate tab and copied the license plate number into it. Immediately, pages began scrolling of places the license plate had been seen at. Most recently, an apartment not too far from you. 

“Ta-da,” you announced childishly, and the brothers looked at you in shock.

“Jesus, (Y/N), how’d you get access to all this?” Sam asked.

“Oh, y’know,” you smirked, trailing off. 

Sam looked at you expectantly. 

“Same way any hackers do,” you shrugged. “Had this guy on the hook for a bit when I was, maybe, twenty. Found out he was an FBI agent in the cyber unit— not the brightest of the bunch— and I phished his computer. Of course, as soon as I did, the computer broke and shut down. Told him I was good with computers and could fix it for him, and then, I cut and run. Fixed the laptop up and had access to everything he had access to. Exported it to my laptop, ditched his somewhere in Arizona, and here we are.”

“That is…” Dean trailed off, “incredibly hot.”

You rolled your eyes, suppressing a smile. 

“Get a room,” Sam mumbled, moving over to the Impala.

***

You and the Winchesters crept into the apartment belonging to the drivers of the stolen Connecticut vehicle, guns drawn. You could hear two men chattering about their poker game, and then you finally burst into the room on Dean’s nod.

“Freeze, freeze! Nobody move!” he commanded.

“He said don’t fucking move!” you ordered, pinning the bandaged, redheaded man to his seat with your gun.

“What is this?” the other man questioned.

“Stop!” Sam demanded. 

“Alright, give us the box. And please tell me that you didn't–”

Sam cut Dean off. “Oh, they did.”

“You opened it?!” Dean grunted. He shoved the dark-haired man against the wall.

“Are you guys cops?!” the man pinned wondered.

“What was in the box?” Dean questioned angrily.

You noticed a rabbit’s foot on the edge of the table. ‘Oh, fuck,’ you thought. 

“Oh, was that it, huh?” Dean laughed coldly. “It was, wasn't it? What is that thing?”

The man used Dean’s distraction to knock the gun out of his hand. When it fell to the floor, it fired, and you had to drop to the floor to avoid being hit in the face by the bullet.

The bullet ricocheted off the radiator and hit Sam’s gun, and he dropped it. The same bullet somehow ricocheted and hit a lamp, breaking it. You dove across the floor, trying to grab Sam’s gun, and the redheaded man pushed Sam down on top of you.

“The fuck, Sam?!”

“Sorry!”

You scrambled toward the redhead, and he backhanded you, somehow knocking you off balance and sending you to the floor. You normally wouldn’t have been so thrown off by such a simple move, but that rabbit’s foot was definitely working its magic. 

“Dean, I got it!” Sam announced. You turned around to see him holding the rabbit’s foot.

“Fuck, Sam, no!” you cried upon seeing him holding the cursed object.

The dark-haired man moved forward holding Dean’s favored gun and cocked it in his face. The man pulled the trigger in Sam’s face, but the gun jammed. 

‘Thank god.’

A quick scuffle ensued in which the two men opposing you had a bookshelf fall on them and a carpet got wrapped around their ankles and tripped them. Both men knocked themselves out, and Dean laughed triumphantly.

“That was a lucky break!”

“No, not lucky!” you shrieked. “Sam, that’s a rabbit’s foot!”

“Uh, yeah?” he said, as if it were obvious.

“Do you have any idea what you just did?” you panicked. 

“No, what are you—”

“I’m calling Bobby,” you said, storming out of the apartment and back to the Impala. 

“Whoa, whoa, why? I’m not seeing how this is a bad thing, (Y/N),” Dean countered, catching up to you. 

“Because that’s a rabbit’s foot, Dean! A cursed object! Its literal function is to bring bad luck,” you explained.

“How?” Sam asked. 

“Once you touch it, you’re marked. Luck’s gonna be on your side.”

“Better buy some lottery tickets then,” Dean chuckled excitedly.

You glared at him. “But if you lose it, you’re fucked. It’ll keep bringing you bad luck till it eventually kills you.”

“Well, I just won’t lose it, then,” Sam tried. 

“Everybody loses it, Sam! That’s the whole point!”

The two boys looked slightly shaken; Sam more so than Dean. Dean was laughing all the way to the bank on this one, and he dragged you and Sam to a gas station to get lottery scratch-off tickets. Then, he drove you to a restaurant chain location called Biggerson’s for some dinner. 

You sat on the phone with Bobby, the two of you angrily muttering about the insanity of the situation to each other.

“Gotta say, kid,” Bobby started, “was hoping the next time I heard from ya, it’d be on happier terms than this.”

“Trust me, me too,” you sighed. “Do you know of anything that can stop this?”

“I’ll dig around—”

Bobby’s voice in your ear was cut off by Dean triumphantly exclaiming, “twelve-hundred dollars! You just won twelve-hundred dollars!”

You grimaced and put the phone back to your ear.

“I’m guessing Sam’s luck’s still good,” Bobby drawled.

“For now, but I don’t know for how much longer.” You got out of the car, suddenly feeling suffocated in the Impala. You paced around, as did Sam, and you watched as he walked over to something glistening under a newspaper on the ground. 

“I’ll figure somethin’ out. Lemme look through my library and make some calls,” Bobby said. “Call me if anything else goes to shit.”

You laughed, and Sam stood up holding a golden watch. He turned to Dean who stood next to you and mouthed something like, “Awesome,” to his brother.

“Will do,” you told the older man on the phone. “Hurry, Bobby.” You hung up as Dean calculated the winnings from the scratch-off tickets he made Sam fill out.

“Oh, man!” Dean grinned. “We’re up fifteen grand!”

You and Sam half-smiled, both feeling unsettled still.

Dean continued to laugh as he walked into the restaurant with you hot on his heels. 

“In case you forgot, Dean, we’re still technically fugitives,” you hissed. “If Sam’s luck goes to hell, we could be royally fucked.”

“Don't worry,” Dean said easily. “Bobby 'll find a way to break it. Until then I say we hit Vegas, pull a little Rain Man. Sam can be Rain Man.”

“Look, we just lay low until Bobby calls back, okay?” Sam whispered. He turned to the man behind the host stand. “Hi, uh, table for three, please.”

The man’s face broke out into a grin, and he hollered, “Congratulations!” An alarm began to sound through the restaurant.

“It's exciting, I know,” Dean quipped.

“You are the one millionth guest of the Biggerson's Restaurant family!” the man announced. 

The staff surrounding you began singing and taking photographs while they shoved a giant check into your hands. Balloons fell from the ceiling, and you and Sam would’ve rathered been anywhere else. Dean was ecstatic, though, which you were happy to see. You’d suffer tremendous embarrassment fifty times over just to see him smile. That thought scared you a little bit; how you'd do anything for him. You had a tendency to be an extremist.

You were escorted to your table, and a gorgeous waitress in what was clearly a black bob wig approached your table. 

Her coy smile was alluring, but something about her wasn’t sitting right with you. Still, nothing seemed off through the rest of the meal. Sam clacked away on his laptop rattling off bits of lore he was reading on rabbit’s foot Hoodoo magic while you and Dean shared a bowl of ice cream. 

“I think from now on, we only go to places with Biggerson's,” Dean commented. 

The waitress came back over to your table with a pot of coffee and grinned at Sam. “Can I freshen you up?”

Sam nodded. “Thanks.”

The waitress poured, still smiling, and spilled some in her flirtatious stupor. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “Let me mop up here. Sorry about that.” She hurriedly cleaned her mess and left the table, appearing to flirt with Sam over her shoulder even as she left.

“Dude. If you were ever gonna get lucky…” Dean trailed off.

Sam smirked. “Shut up.”

You smacked Dean’s shoulder. “I’m right here.”

Sam went to pick up his coffee, but he knocked the cup over and spilled it all over himself. Before you could process what was going on, he jumped out of his seat and into a waiter with a full tray. Things went flying through the air as Sam rushed profuse apologies. 

“Sam, check your pockets,” you said evenly. 

He did, and his hands came up empty.

“Son of a bitch,” Dean growled.

You and the brothers threw a wad of cash on the table and raced into the parking lot after the waitress. You noticed the black bob wig ditched on the ground a few feet from the door. “I knew it was a wig!”

“What?” Sam asked, turning around to you. He immediately tripped and fell flat on his face. 

“Wow! You suck!” Dean laughed, turning back to a groaning Sam.

“Ow,” the younger brother whined while you helped him up. His knees were bloody and raw through his ripped jeans.

“So what, now your luck turns bad?” Dean questioned.

“Yeah, Dean, I believe I’ve said that,” you remarked, and he glared at you. 

“Well, how bad does it get, genius?” 

“Really bad. C’mon,” you urged. 

“Where we goin’?” Sam asked.

“Back to the two jackwads that got us into this mess,” you said, hopping in the driver’s seat. 

“Whoa, who said you could drive?” Dean questioned.

“Me. Don’t be a child,” you said. 

***

You broke into the apartment once again to find the brunet man sadly downing a bottle of tequila. 

“Oh, man. What do you want?” the man asked.

“Heard about your friend. That's bad luck,” Dean tsked, referring to the death of the redheaded thief. 

“Piss off,” the man spat.

“We know someone hired you to steal the rabbit's foot. A woman,” Dean continued.

“Oh yeah? How do you know that?”

“Because she just stole it back from us.”

The man laughed. 

Sam stepped forward. “Listen man, this is seri—” and then he fell to the floor mid-sentence, pulling a CD player and a shelf down on top of him. 

You turned back to help the younger brother up. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” he said, smiling awkwardly in thanks for your help. 

“I want you to tell us her name,” the older Winchester continued to the man. 

“Fuck you,” was the only response he got.

“It wasn't a freak accident that killed your partner,” you tried, coming out from behind the couch.

“What?”

“C’mon, don’t tell me you haven’t been thinkin’ it. I thought you’d be smarter than that,” you challenged. That seemed to get under the man’s skin, so you continued. “That series of unfortunate events that had to happen to kill your partner— like, had you not seen it with your own eyes, you wouldn’t have believed it— that was the rabbit’s foot. If you don’t help us stop this thing, those deaths are on you, my friend.”

The man in front of you looked worried. 

“And I gotta tell you, it doesn’t seem you’re cut out for the whole killin’ thing. You don’t wanna be a killer, do you?” you continued to press.

The man shook his head, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “No.”

***

You left the apartment repeating the woman’s last name over and over in your head. The man told you “Lugosi” was the only name he and his partner were given when they were hired. 

You took out your phone and called Bobby. 

“Hey, (Y/N), glad you called,” you heard the man say. 

“Hey, we got a situation here—”

“I found a heavyweight cleansing ritual that should do the trick,” Bobby continued. 

“That’s awesome, thank you, but uh…” you trailed off, trying to decide how to phrase your next words. You decided not to sugarcoat it in the end. “Sam lost the foot.”

“He what?!”

“I know, I know,” you sighed. You turned back around to see Sam and Dean trying to use a broken storm grate to get gum off the bottom of Sam’s shoe. You shook your head at their faces when they noticed you; seeming like two little kids caught with their hands in the candy bowl. You returned your focus to your phone call. “Listen, you know anybody by the name ‘Lugosi’? Maybe mid 20’s, super hot, my height—”

“Aw, crap. It’s probably Bela,” Bobby said. 

“ Bela Lugosi? That’s cute, but never heard of her,” you replied.

“Bela Talbot’s her real name,” the older man continued. “Crossed paths with her once or twice.”

“How the hell would she know John had the rabbit’s foot? She a hunter?” you questioned.

“Pretty fuckin’ far from a Hunter, but she knows her way around the territory. She's been out of the country,” Bobby explained. “Last I heard, she was in the Middle East someplace.”

“Well, she’s back!” you mock-cheered, exasperated.

“Which means seriously bad luck for you,” the older man added.

“Thanks for the encouragement,” you quipped.

“Well, kid, if it is Bela, at least I might know some folks who know where to find her,” he finished. 

“Thanks, Bobby. For everything.”

“Just… look out for those two idjits.” And with that, he hung up the phone.

You sighed and turned back around to see Dean reaching through the storm drain and Sam looking dejected. 

“What happened?” you asked.

“I lost my shoe,” the brunet replied sadly. 

Your eyebrows furrowed sympathetically, and Sam’s head hung low. Dean seemed annoyed and huffed, standing up from the floor. 

“C’mon,” the older brother asserted.

***

Bobby did actually have a pretty good lead on Bela; she apparently lived in Queens about two hours away. 

“So what are we doing here?” Sam questioned, referencing the motel you’d just gotten a room at. 

“You, my brother, are staying here 'cause I don't want your bad luck getting us killed,” Dean stated. “And (Y/N), you’re staying with him.”

“What?! Why?” you protested. 

“Because Sam actually listens to you when you tell him not to do something. And you’re way more responsible than me,” Dean shrugged simply.

“Fair point,” you sighed. “Knowing you, you’ll touch the stupid rabbit’s foot, though.”

“Pfft, c’mon, it’s me we’re talking about—”

“That’s what I’m worried about,” you dryly stated.

Dean glared at you playfully as he walked Sam into a motel room. You followed close behind and peeked out the door to make sure you weren’t followed. 

“What am I even supposed to do, Dean?” Sam whined.

“Nothing! Nothing. Come here. I don't want you doing anything. I want you to sit right here—” the older brother pulled a chair into the middle of the room— “and don't move, okay? Don't turn on the light, don't turn off the light. Don't even scratch your nose.” Dean turned to you. “If I’m not back by midnight, take off.”

“What, you gonna turn into a pumpkin or something?” you snickered.

“(Y/N), I’m serious.”

“Since when?”

“(Y/N)—”

“Okay, okay, fine, I heard you.”

Dean smirked down at you and kissed your forehead. “I’ll be back,” he said.

You watched him leave, a bit of your heart tugging at being anywhere without him. Your feelings for him were certainly growing stronger, and it frightened you how constantly you needed to be near him. 

You turned back to see Sam wrinkle his nose a few times before finally risking a scratch at it. 

“Hey! None of that,” you said. 

Sam’s sad eyes turned to yours. “This fuckin’ sucks, man,” he sighed.

“I know it does. Kinda the whole point of the rabbit’s foot curse,” you commented.

He ignored your smart remark.

“Found anything on how to break Dean’s deal?” you asked.

Sam shook his head. “No. Did find out something interesting, though.”

“What?’ you asked.

“All my mom’s old contacts? All her old friends, the nurse who delivered me— they’re all dead,” he explained.

“What?!” you shrieked. “And you didn’t think to mention this before now?!”

“Shh, keep your voice down,” Sam said. “Didn’t wanna say anything in front of Dean; he’d go berserk.”

“You know I have to tell him, right?” You crossed your arms over your chest.

“No, no! Please don’t,” he begged. “Please. You know he’d flip. And, uh, probably more because of the way I got that information than the information itself.”

“What do you mean?” you asked.

“Ruby told me.”

“Oh, god.” You rolled your eyes and dropped your head back. 

“C’mon, (Y/N), I mean, I called, and it all checks out. It’s got something to do with me and the demon; I know you recognize that pattern,” Sam tried.

“I do, but I don’t like being constantly stuck in the middle of you and Dean,” you said. “I’m supposed to be Switzerland, remember?”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean Switzerland didn’t have information on the two sides, she just didn’t pick one,” he shrugged.

“Sam,” you warned, “You know how I feel about keeping things from Dean.”

“I know, I know, but you wouldn’t necessarily be keeping it from him, you’d be…” he trailed off, trying to think of a way to phrase his next words, “fulfilling a promise to me.”

“But I didn’t promise anything,” you argued.

“Please promise me you won’t tell Dean. Not till I’m ready,” Sam begged.

“Sam!”

“(Y/N/N), c’mon. Please, man. Please.”

You stared at Sam for a prolonged moment; you stared intensely and Sam looked up at you with puppy-dog eyes from his chair. You sighed and dropped your head forward. “Fine. But you are gonna promise me that you’ll tell Dean eventually. That’s my one condition.”

Sam nodded. “Deal.”

You shook your head and sat down on the edge of the bed next to Sam’s chair. “You Winchesters and your secrets.”

“Oh, like you don’t have any,” Sam deadpanned.

You looked up at the television and saw the reflection of your guard uniform and scratched-up face staring back at you. You took in a sharp breath and let it out slowly. “Touché.” You paused for a moment. “Sam?”

“Hmm?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“What are you gonna do when—” you cut yourself off, tears beginning to well in your throat. You took a deep breath to push them down. “When Dean’s gone?” 

Sam shook his head. “(Y/N), no. He’s not gonna—”

“Sam,” you said. “We are trying everything we can. We’re two months into this thing and no closer to saving him than we were on day one. I stopped looking. Not ‘cause I don’t care anymore, but because I’m not gonna send you to Hell just so Dean can live. I mean, Bobby’s been lookin’, too! And he hasn’t found a damn thing. So I just think we have to be real with ourselves.”

Sam shook his head, tears in his eyes.

“I don’t wanna lose him,” you said, putting your hand on Sam’s knee to make him look at you and beginning to cry, too. “I don’t. He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. But… I’m scared, man. When I lost my family…” you closed your eyes at the memory of some of the awful things you’d done and would never forgive yourself for, “I don’t wanna do that again. And… And I just think that if we kept huntin’ together, we could keep tabs on each other. Make sure the other doesn’t go rogue, y’know?”

“I can’t believe you’re just gonna give up on him like that,” Sam spat, disappointed. 

“I’m not!” you argued. “But I’m not gonna help you kill yourself, dammit! Dean would never forgive me. I would never forgive myself!”

“Look, we’ve got ten months left. We’ll find something,” Sam continued. 

“I hope you’re right, man. I really do,” you said.  

Neither of you said anything for the next few hours.

During that time, you took out your journal and wrote. You didn’t usually keep journals when you were done with them as your duffel bag would be filled to the brim with them by now, but you were definitely going to keep this one; especially after Dean was gone. 

It was somewhat poetic that the first day you met the boys was the first time you’d written in this particular journal. Its pages were filled with your, at first, disdainful musings about the older Winchester brother and slowly but surely became your attempts at discerning your feelings for him.

You liked to buy quite thick and large journals to have enough room for your drawings and to be able to continue writing in them for months and occasionally years. This was the longest you’d been able to stretch one, though, and you were a little over three-fourths through writing in it. 

“I can’t help but wonder what comes next after all this,” you wrote, the pen gliding easily against the page in time with your racing thoughts. “I’ve always been awful about ‘futurecasting’ as Dad called it, but it’s even worse now. Every second I’m with Dean, I can’t help but think about how this is all gonna be over in less than a year. And it’s awful. I wanna be present with him. I just can’t. I don’t want there to be an end to us. I don’t even know if we are anything! He can’t even tell me he loves me.

“And I get it to some extent. ‘I love you’s are hard for him. Fine. I just wish he’d figure out some way to communicate with me that isn’t sex. I mean, the sex is great, but. I don’t know. And just after everything that happened, I’m not feeling great about having sex anyway. And I know it’s upsetting him, even if he won’t say anything; he’d never pressure me, and I know that. And I’m getting better about sex and related things. But it just sucks.

“And I don’t wanna bring any of this up with him and start fights because, as I’m painfully aware, that deadline is getting closer and closer every day. I just want him to be happy with me while he still can be.”

You dropped your pen when the air conditioning unit next to you began to smoke. 

“Oh come on, I- I didn't- I wasn't—” Sam whined.

“Just stay put,” you said. You jerked back in surprise when the unit suddenly caught fire. You grabbed the comforter from the bed next to you and began to put the fire out with it. Thankfully, the fire stopped. 

“I’m gonna see if I can get someone to fix that for us before your luck kills us both with carbon monoxide poisoning,” you said, starting toward the door. 

Suddenly, the door to the motel room burst open. However, it wasn’t Dean who opened it. It was two men. You drew your gun and cocked it, trained on the two men. “Get the fuck out,” you ordered. 

“I don’t think so,” said the older-looking man. He almost reminded you of Willem Dafoe, and you mentally pegged that as his name. The other man with a bizarre-looking mustache charged you, and you fired. Somehow, the bullet missed its target despite him being in such close range. 

“What the hell, Sam?!” you exclaimed. “Your luck’s rubbin’ off on me!”

“Sorry!” he winced.

The man charging you tried to restrain you in a headlock, but you kicked him squarely between the legs. You jutted your elbow back into his nose simultaneously, and the man dropped you. 

Unfortunately for you, though, Sam had been trying to help you by taking on Willem Dafoe. You turned around to see Sam unable to land a punch on the other man’s face. You tried to help him, but Sam ended up punching you across the face, and you were knocked out cold.

***

When you woke up, your arms were bound behind your back, and your legs were taped together as well. The men had laid you on your stomach, and you immediately began to struggle and panic, feeling your current position was too similar to the one you’d been in with the guard. 

“Dean! Help me!” you wailed without thinking. Your body was in autopilot as you struggled, and you couldn’t even focus on the men in the room. 

“Quit whinin’,” the man with the mustache told you. 

You could barely hear him over the roaring in your ears. “Dean!”

“I said shut up!” the man in front of you roared, slapping you across the face.

You couldn’t, though, continuing to flail like a fish out of water.

“Creedy,” the other man said, turning away from Sam and to his accomplice, “shut her up, please.”

“With pleasure.” The man took a rag out of his shirt and shoved it in your mouth, your muffled cries coming out around it. 

You vaguely heard Willem Dafoe beating the crap out of Sam while he talked about his mission from “god” to kill Sam. Then, the man drew his gun. His partner was unsettled, too, as you strained harder to get out of your binds. 

Suddenly, your saving grace appeared in the doorway. “Dean!” you cried through the gag in your mouth. 

Willem Dafoe turned around and aimed the gun point-blank at Sam’s forehead. 

“Nope. No destiny,” Dean said coolly referring to the man’s earlier comment about god and destiny leading them to Sam. “Just a rabbit's foot.”

“Put the gun down, son, or you're gonna be scraping brain off the wall,” the man replied, his tone ice cold.

Dean waved his Taurus around. “Oh, this thing?”

“Yeah, that thing,” look-alike-Dafoe responded. 

“Okay.” Dean put his gun down on the nightstand beside him, looking smug. “But you see, there's something about me that you don't know.” Dean smoothly picked up a pen off the nightstand beside the gun. 

“Yeah? What would that be?”

“It’s my lucky day,” Dean grinned. He tossed the pen toward Willem Dafoe, and it lodged in the barrel of the gun. ““Oh my God, did you see that shot?!” 

Forgetting all about your current situation, you started yelling through the gag, “You fucking touched it? You fucking idiot!” But all that came out was a muffled garbling of words. 

The man named Creedy lunged at Dean, but missed his punch completely. The man ended up running straight into the wall, and Dafoe was busying himself trying to dislodge the pen from the barrel of his gun. 

“I'm amazing,” Dean said smugly. He picked up the television remote and threw it hard at Dafoe. It hit the man square between the eyes, knocking him out cold. 

“I’m Batman,” you heard Dean suavely state, but you were too busy returning your focus to getting your binds undone. Now that the immediate danger was over, your body went back into panic mode. You yelped when you suddenly felt a hand on your back and fought even harder. 

“Hey, hey!” Dean coaxed. “It’s just me.” He saw you weren’t listening, and he immediately set to work cutting the duct tape binding your legs and wrists. Your hands shakily yanked out the rag in your mouth. Only then did you realize Dean was the one in front of you, and you leapt into his arms. 

He caught you easily, one hand around the underside of your back and the other around the topside your legs. You curled up into him and buried your face in his neck. 

“Whoa, hey, it’s okay,” Dean tried, but your shaking wouldn’t stop. You could feel your sobs slowly subside, but it took quite a while of Dean holding you for you to regain your composure. He pressed kisses into the side of your hair while he held you and tried to soothe you by telling you you were safe. 

You finally uncurled your legs from around Dean and let him put you down. 

Sam came up behind you to place a comforting hand on your shoulder. “You okay?” he asked. 

You nodded as you sniffled. 

“What happened?” Sam asked in that very unique-to-him soft voice. 

“I dunno,” you lied. 

Dean gave you a look that let you know he’d be asking more questions later. 

“C’mon, we gotta get the hell outta here,” you said, wiping your eyes with the back of your hand. You could feel the boys giving you questioning looks as you gathered up yours and the boys’ things and stalked out to the car. 

*** “Alright,” Sam began, sprinkling cayenne pepper into the embers of a small fire you and the Winchesters had started in the middle of a cemetery. “Bone ash, cayenne pepper, that should do it.”

“One second…” Dean said absentmindedly, scratching off the last of his lottery tickets. 

“Dean—” Sam complained. 

“Hey, back off, Jinx. I’m bringing home the bacon,” Dean quipped. He stashed the cards in his jacket that he’d slung over a gravestone. “Alright, say goodbye, wascally wabbit.” He dangled the rabbit’s foot over the top of the fire. 

“Hey!” you shouted, whipping out your gun at the sound of a twig cracking. You aimed it at the sound, and Bela emerged from the darkness with hers drawn as well. 

“I think you'll find that belongs to me,” she said firmly. “Or, you know, whatever. Put the foot down, honey.”

“Oh, hell no,” you said, cocking your gun. 

Bela cut her eyes at you, shooting Sam in the shoulder.

You exclaimed, “What the—!” and Dean cursed, “Son of a—” as Sam collapsed to the ground. 

“Back off, tiger,” Bela told you. “Back off! You make one more move, and I’ll pull the trigger. You’ve got the luck, Dean. You, I can’t hit. But your brother? Him, I can’t miss.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?!” the older brother roared. “You don't just go around shooting people like that!”

The woman rolled her eyes. “Relax. It's a shoulder hit; I can aim. Besides, who here hasn't shot a few people? Put the rabbit's foot on the ground now.”

“Alright!” Dean mollified. “Alright. Take it easy.” He moved to drop the rabbit’s foot, but instead, he threw it at Bela. “Think fast,” he smirked. 

Bela caught the foot and immediately realized what she’d done. “Damn!”

“Now, what do you say we destroy that ugly-ass piece of dead thing?” Dean smiled in satisfaction. 

Bela sighed, aggravated. She dropped her arm and uncocked her gun, but you kept yours aimed at her as she moved over to the fire. 

“Would you stop pointing that at me?” her smooth voice came without looking at you. 

“Sorry, love. Don’t trust you,” you smiled in fake-politeness. 

She rolled her eyes and moved back to the fire. She dropped the foot into the fire. “Thanks very much,” Bela continued. “I'm out one and a half million, and on the bad side of a very powerful, fairly psychotic buyer.” 

“Wow. I really don't feel bad about that. Sam?” Dean turned to his brother.

“Nope. Not even a little.”

Bela’s gaze hardened. “Hmm. Maybe next time, I'll hang you out to dry.” She turned around and moved toward the gravestone where Dean’s jacket laid. You knew exactly what she was doing. 

“Have a nice night, girls,” Bela smirked. 

You glared at her. “Uh, uh! Turn around!” you ordered. 

“What?” she sighed, clearly annoyed. 

“Gimme the tickets,” you commanded.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replied. 

“Yeah, you do. You can’t con me, angel.”

She grumbled angrily but took the stolen tickets out of her pocket and threw them to the ground. 

“Thanks a million,” you called after her. 

“You’re fuckin’ awesome, woman,” Dean admired, you assumed in reference to the tickets you noticed Bela stole. He came over to you and kissed you boldly. You giggled against his lips, and he held your waist firmly. 

Sam cleared his throat. “Hey! Bleeding out, here!” 

You broke away from Dean. “Oh, sorry!” you grimaced, moving to head back to the Impala. “C’mon, I’ll get you patched up.”

When you ensured the rabbit’s foot was burnt to a crisp, you and the Winchesters moved to the car. 

“You good?” Dean asked his brother. 

“I’ll live,” he responded. 

“I guess we're back to normal now, huh? No good luck, no bad luck. And we're up forty-six thousand.” Dean threw his arm around your shoulder and kissed your temple, waving the tickets around in the air. 

“Maybe we should hit Vegas, see how good our luck still is,” you suggested, smiling lopsidedly. 

“I like the way you think,” Dean nodded. “Whaddaya say, Sammy?”

“I think you guys are gonna end up blowing all our money on slot machines,” the younger brother dryly commented. 

“Ye of little faith,” you said. “If not Vegas, we can at least get ourselves a nicer motel room. Maybe we can graduate to hotels!”

“Ooh, yeah. One of those hotels with a jacuzzi tub.”

“Hell yeah—”

“Guys,” Sam groaned. “Still bleeding out, here.”

Series Rewrite Taglist: @polireader @brightlilith @atcamillanorrman @jrizzelle @insomnia-bookworm @procrastination20 @mrs-liebgott @djs8891 @tiggytaylor @staple-your-mouth @jesstherebel @rach5ive @strawberrykiwisdogog @bruhidkjustwannaread @mxltifxnd0m @sunshine-on-marz @big-ol-boat @mgchaser @capncrankle @chervbs @simpingdeadcharacters @nesnejwritings @stillhere197 @tearsforhan @take-it-on-the-run @iloveyou2mia @maxinehufflepuffprincess @ohgeehowdigethere @seninjakitey @berarenado @s0urw00lf @princessleahorgana @quarterhorse19 @isla-finke-blog @silverdoragon @karacaroldanvers @gayandfairycore @examishbookwyrm @star-yawnznn @real-sharena-h @fandomloverrr @metalmonki @onlyangel-444 @yu-winchester @benniwiththefanni @daisychaingirl @immagods @missmieux @yoongi-holland @littledebbieinabigworld

[holdinggrudges]

the chain — voulez-vous

pairing: sam winchester x reader

content: supernatural rewrite; canon-typical violence. rated MA

word count: 17k

summary: "Chain keep us together." - Fleetwood Mac, The Chain

“Thanks,” Dean mutters, knocking you with his shoulder. You’re still not sure this is a good idea. You can't shake that feeling in the back of your mind, that sense that something isn’t quite right. But when you look over at Dean, he’s smiling—a small, earnest thing that you rarely ever see on his face. And isn’t that why you left Sioux Falls with him in the first place? “‘Course.” You lean over to knock your shoulder against his too. You think you’d probably ignore every instinct if it meant helping your boys.

notes: hi! this is quite literally the largest fic undertaking i have ever undertook , but i am so beyond excited to begin this journey. i have a lot of ideas and plans made for this fic, so if you're starting this journey with me: hi! hello, i see you and i love you <3 i hope you love my brainchild as much as i do

Read chapter one, voulez-vous, on AO3!

PREVIEW

“And here we go again; we know the start, we know the end.” — Voulez-Vous, ABBA

Sunnyvale, Texas — 1992

You are nine years old, and you’ve never been very good at sticking to a bedtime. It’s not even necessarily that you don’t want to go to bed, but there is a monster in your room. Under your bed, in your closet, somewhere—you swear you can feel someone there, staring at you. Watching you. 

Your mom is trying to put you to bed. You all go through this every night—you, your mom, and your dad. A struggle: your mom understanding and patient, and your dad with an ever-growing frustration at the ghost stories. “There’s your night light,” your mom says, strained as she stretches to plug in the little Care Bear night light beside your bed. “Okay, now goodnight, angel. I love you,” she whispers, pressing a kiss to your forehead. Her fancy perfume overwhelms your senses, even after a day of wear. 

You pout, looking around your bed dejectedly. “Where’s Cassidy?” You carry your stuffed rabbit, Cassidy, with you everywhere. You haven’t slept without her in years. 

Your dad frowns from the doorway. “It must still be in the car, sweetheart. You can’t sleep without it?”

He knows you can’t. The night light doesn’t help. There is something in the dark, and it is watching you. It watches you all the time; you know it does. “No!” you protest, your lip beginning to tremble. “She protects me from the monster. I need her.” 

Your dad sighs as if annoyed, but it’s your mom who speaks up first. “Don’t, Matthew, I’ll get it. She’s not going to sleep without it; you know she isn’t.” 

Your dad follows her out, muttering, “I don’t know why you let her believe in all that boogeyman crap—”

You can feel its eyes on you. Ignoring the shaking in your hands, you stick your tongue out at your empty room. 

Three hours later, you’re snuggled in bed with Cassidy, safe from boogeymen and watchful eyes in the dark. Until you aren’t.

There’s a cracking, splintering sound downstairs, loud enough to wake you in your bedroom on the second floor. Blearily, you blink, listening to the muffled sound of voices on the first floor of your home. You’re not yet awake enough for your heart to pound. 

Louder than the ones downstairs, you can hear your parents’ voices in the room across the hall. Though you can’t quite make out what they’re saying, they sound frantic. It’s the creaking of their door that truly wakes you up, gets you scrambling out from under the covers to huddle against your headboard. You hug Cassidy tight. She’s going to protect you. 

“Matthew, don’t,” comes your mom’s voice in a frantic whisper from the hall. 

“Take her and hide. When the police get here—” 

“Matt, please—”

“Amber. Go.” 

Your mom enters your room a few moments later. It doesn’t take you more than a second to realize she’s crying, and that’s when you start to tremble. “Hey, angel,” she says, sitting on the bed next to you and petting a hand over your hair. “I need you to be real brave for me. Can you do that?”

“What’s happening?” you ask, scared and confused.

Your mother smiles at you, but it looks off. She’s still crying. “You’re going to be just fine, okay? You’ve got Cassidy watching over you, remember? But listen, I need you to remember what I told you about the phone number on the fridge.”

You sniffle, your grip going white-knuckled on Cassidy. Footsteps begin to pound up the stairs. “Momma—”

“Call the number, okay? You’re going to ask for John Winchester—you tell him your name, you tell him my name, and you tell him you need his help.” Your mom’s hands cup your face, keeping your eyes fixed on her. “Do you hear me?” 

“Momma, I’m scared,” you whimper. 

“Well, this is just pathetic,” a stranger’s voice booms from the doorway. Your and your mom’s heads both whip around. The man is average height, unassuming in general. Except, of course, for the way evil seems to radiate off him in waves. You can tell from a glance that this man is dangerous, not for being particularly large or intimidating, but because he is pure evil incarnate. You begin to cry. “Didn’t even close the door behind you, Amber? I expected more from you.” 

Your mom doesn’t respond to his taunt. Instead, she presses a firm kiss to your forehead. “I love you, angel.” 

One moment, she’s there. In a blink, she’s across the room, her body slamming into the wall with a sickening crack. You scream, burying your face in Cassidy’s fur. You can only imagine the actions accompanying the noises you hear next, cracking and squelching that makes you gag through gasping sobs. 

You close your eyes tight. This must be a nightmare. You have those sometimes, though they’re not usually as violent as this. This is all a figment of your unconscious mind. Any moment now, you’ll wake up, your parents will be in their bed, and the front door won’t be splintered. 

“I’ve always hated children,” the stranger says, plucking Cassidy out of your grasp. You open teary eyes to see him studying the plush rabbit before tossing it carelessly aside. “I’m sick of her screeching. Did they always make kids so…weepy?” There are two more men in the room. “Whatever. Kill the damn thing, get this over with.” 

He turns to leave, and you swear for a moment you can see his eyes glow, but you don’t have time to think about it before your stomach drops out and you’re flying across the room, your body slamming against the wall with that same, sick crack. 

You’re almost surprised when you wake, head pounding and body aching. You thought for sure you’d died when you hit the wall, but instead, you open your eyes to the metallic smell of blood. 

The phone. You need to get to the phone. 

As best you can, you keep your eyes off the bodies littering the floor of your once spotless bedroom—three of them, two men and a woman now nearly unrecognizable as your mother. You try not to throw up remembering the squelching sounds you’d heard. 

Cassidy’s fur is singed. You walk past her before turning around to pick her up. You’re alive, after all. She’d done what she was supposed to. 

Your hands shake as you dial the number and hold the phone up to your ear, trying not to think about how you nearly tripped over your father’s dead body at the bottom of the stairs. 

“Hello?” comes a gruff voice through the phone. 

“Is this John Winchester?”

Read the chain on AO3!

[hopelessrromantix]

Part 2 to this

Miguel had first met you a very long time ago.

By then, he was Spiderman, seeking out one of your partners they'd gone slightly rogue.

The only thing he hadn't realized then, was that your project had affected you too, creating a symbiote that attached itself to you.

After many encounters in and out of your suits, you and Miguel got along surprisingly well.

Until you'd sacrificed yourself for him. Sure he was alive, but he always regretted not knowing you better.

And when he found a universe where he was happy, he got to see your face again.

An alternate version of yourselves had gotten both your powers under control. You started a family, adopted a daughter, and settled down to have a normal life.

Until he replaced his dead self.

At first it was… nice.

Not just being with his daughter, but you too.

He regretted not knowing you even more after that. His life picked up where his alternate self had left off.

And when everything came crashing down, you let him carry your daughter. He could see the mix of pain and shock in your eyes as you faded away, breaking apart into nothing.

Soon, Miguel was alone again.

And now, in an alternate world, you were Spiderman. He should've expected it, really.

"You should leave, Y/n." Lyla imitated, puffing up her chest and placing her hands on her hip. Miguel didn't expect her glare to be so effective.

He only rolled his eyes, walking back toward his computer.

"See, that's my impression of you saying something dumb." Miguel stayed quiet, swiping through data he'd left open, organizing his space. "You didn't even answer when he asked if you knew him. What's going on with you? We both know you wanted to talk to him."

Miguel's eyes narrowed. "It's not that simple. I'm dead in his world and he's dead in mine, we can't go rewriting history and destroying Y/n's Canon."

"Oh please," She scoffed. "Forget the 'High and Mighty' schtick, trying experiencing emotion for, like, two seconds and talk to him."

Miguel whipped his head toward her, but she had already disappeared, probably anticipating his argument.

He let out a heavy sigh into the stagnant air. He missed you more than he wanted to admit, even if he never got to know you nearly as well as he wanted.

For days, Miguel attempted to process the conversation.

You hadn't come to find him since he'd told you to leave days before, but he'd seen you around. You usually blended into the crowd right after, making him feel slightly guilty about telling you to leave.

He just brushed it off, going back to his work.

You, on the other hand, had no such plans.

Miguel was stubborn as an ox, but you weren't about to give up just because he asked you to leave.

If there was any hope he'd hear you out, you'd be willing to take the risk.

"What are you doing here?"

A question you expected to get. It was so much harder to answer when he was staring at you.

"Any chance we could talk?" You asked, half expecting him to close the door right there.

To your surprise, he stepped back, leading you into his (oddly dark) workspace.

"Let me j-"

"I wanted t-"

You both froze, hearing the other speak. You chuckled, gesturing to him.

He sighed, taking a breath. "I wanted to apologize."

"You did?" You blinked at him. Apologies weren't Miguel's thing (unless you made it clear you expected one)... maybe he was more different than you thought.

Miguel's expression was stiff, his mind still focused on you. "When you were alive, I didn't know you as well as I wanted to."

He watched your face shift, first in confusion, then in understanding.

You didn't need to hear it all right now. Or maybe he just wasn't ready to tell you.

But either way… "I'd like to get to know you now."

"Yeah! Yeah, I'd like that too." You agreed, nodding your head before remembering why you'd come in the first place. "I'm sorry for springing everything on you. I mean, it's a lot all at once… I didn't mean to force you to talk to me."

He nodded slowly. "You didn't. I… I want to do this."

"You do?" You asked again. Whether to be certain or just to hear him say it again, you didn't know.

"Yes."

And you felt truly, unashamedly happy for the first time in far too long.