#rubber coated chain

[anonymousangstmonster]

Prompt #34

Little three year old Danny Fenton died when he accidentally zapped himself with a live wire. The parents were devastated, and tried all that they could to bring him back, and they succeeded!

In a week they managed to resurrect their baby by making him half-ghost.

But ever since then he would have random and unpredictable fits of aggression and violence. Sometimes they would be mere days apart, other times they would be several months apart.

So unfortunately they had to keep him under control. To do that they put a padded shackle that he couldn’t phase out of around his ankle, chained to the wall with a rubber coated, lightweight, double-reinforced, long chain.

His new room was a little corner of the lab sectioned off by a semicircle of glass with toggle-able fogginess. You might have thought that it was plain and sterile like the rest of the lab, and you’d be wrong, it was pretty cozy. The space was bigger than his old room, and the ceiling was twice as high. He had a desk and chair, three bird nest-like hammocks(one of which was more like a hidy-hole), his old bed, a couch and tv with a wii console, a mini-fridge for juice and water, a shelf for snacks, little model spaceships hanging from the ceiling, and monkey bars. The hammocks and monkey bars were attached to the wall, though that wasn’t a problem for him since he could fly. The wall was painted with a mural of the night sky and there were NASA posters plastered everywhere.

Even with the parents busy schedules they took the time to homeschool him, and encouraged his love of astronomy.

The Fentons hired a whole team devoted to his wellbeing, a doctor, a therapist, a tutor for when neither of them had the time, a lawyer, and even a specific CPS agent came to visit him every once in a while to bring him his favorite tea.

The FentonWorks lab was heavily secured, with voice activated and handprint required entry, so many firewalls that the place was harder to hack into than the Pentagon.

Fortunately for Sam, her best friend has had plenty of experience hacking into the Pentagon. So she brought him along to break her in when she heard that there was human experimentation going on in FentonWorks.

What she didn’t expect to see was a healthy looking(if a bit pale) boy, lounging on a couch playing video games on a large tv while snacking on a bag of Doritos at three AM.

A boy that would soon be let outside the lab for the first time in eleven years to attend high school.

Man, I really like making Danny grow up thinking that being the product of your parents lab experiment is normal.

[fuckmycrane]

Testing — Dr. Jonathan Crane.

— CW: 18+, smut, noncon! (DNI if uncomfortable 😴), fisting, slight spit kink, Crane using medical language? Rubber gloves! | word count: 2k!

— a/n: I don't know how to tag! This came to me before bed the other day. SUPER GRATEFUL AND FOREVER IN LOVE WITH @pictureinme for beta-reading this! I love you so much pookie 💌.

A shiver runs down your spine as Dr. Crane's camera on the tripod flashes red— an ominous light that warns your humiliation is being recorded.

Your legs are stretched out wide on the cold metal table, chained to the bars on each side, strains reserved for patients in the consulting room who refuse to be sedated. Reserved to those who will involve to be a problem to Dr. Crane, your boss. Hands above your head, your fingers curl around the wire he used to tie your wrists together. Too tight, it felt like a punishment. The blood circulation was slow, causing them to feel numb.

He had to improvise, the sedative he administrated in your morning coffee was a mild dose, enough to keep you knocked out for at least 40 minutes— enough for him to drag you to his private laboratory, undress you, and tie you up. 

Reaching inside the pocket of his pristine lab coat, Crane brings the voice recorder to his mouth, clicking the thick button and twitching in excitement at the mute sound of the tapes rolling inside the device.

“October 14th, 2001,” He speaks, looking at you from behind his thin glasses. “Test subject is awake now, they appear to be responding normally. I will be monitoring them for the next few hours to ensure continued stability. Will report any significant changes in behavior immediately.” 

Clicking the button again, Crane returns the recorder inside his pocket, approaching you with cautious steps— similar to a predator looming over its helpless, little prey; even his eyes hold that harpy gaze. Cold and relentless, your body shivers in fear. The same fear he thrives on, the same fear that makes his blood circulate and sends an excited beat to his heart. 

Your mouth opens but before a sound comes out he raises her hand in a shutting motion, to which you surprisingly obey in response. “Don’t even try,” he warns you, reaching for a tiny box on the tall desk next to your bed. “This experiment is happening either way.” 

Sliding the blue rubber glove over his right hand, Jonathan stretches it, letting it snap with a loud sound. His eyes never leave your face which is a remarkable show of professionalism, taking into consideration your lack of clothes, and the awkward, obscene position. Standing next to you, his index finger traces from your knee to your hip, relishing the way your body squirms uncomfortably. Grasping the recorder once more, he turns it on before leaving it next to the box where he retrieved the gloves from, returning his attention to you.

“Subject internally rejects light physical stimuli,” He repeats the action, going from knee to thigh over and over, the rubber sliding smoothly from the cold sweat of fear that grants your body a soft glow. “Their body appears to be affected by the fear and anxiety. Mild sweating, constant twitching.”

Crane’s finger ventures to the inside of your thigh, raising goosebumps on your skin. An eternity passes until he finally comes in contact with your mound, pressing it softly with his fingerpad. The uneasy pressure makes you choke a sob, a sob that isn’t acknowledged by the doctor. Lower, he begins to circle your clit in slow, methodical circles. The sensation makes your legs tense, instinctively try to close them but are not allowed to do so, thanks to the restraints. Crane watches you with an unamused expression, noticing how lost you are in distress to notice how his leg twitches slightly at the sight of such a pretty face denying the pleasure. The pressure over your clit increases but the pace stays the same, giving you a similar feeling of breathlessness and dizziness. He knows what he is doing, how couldn’t he? Such a brilliant mind, such skilled fingers�� he knows.

Closing your eyes shut, your brain shortcuts for seconds, trying to reject the pleasure that Jonathan’s ministrations provide— you shouldn’t, succumbing isn’t an option. Tears silently trickle down your flushed cheeks, embarrassed by your own natural body response. The slick is slowly but surely building up in between your legs, and it’s just a matter of time for Crane to notice it. You wish you could scream, curse him, damn him, and send his soul to hell— but it’s difficult to even breathe. The confusing mix of fear and innate pleasure clouds your common sense.

“Patient is responding correctly to clitoral stimulation,” His deep voice snatches you from your internal battle, snapping your eyes open and finding those same blue eyes that you grew accustomed to, watching you as if you were a mere lab rat. “But, they appear to be having a moral conflict.” 

Perhaps you are. 

When he stops his circling over your clit, a sigh of relief escapes from your lips, but you are disgusted by the sting of disappointment that your body sends you; The ease doesn’t last long, as his finger slides between your folds, gathering the slick and bringing back to your clit briefly. 

He inserts a finger, unhurriedly. He has all the time in the world— it is not like you are leaving anyway. Jonathan breaks the eye contact and focuses on opening you up carefully; It’s easy to read he is not doing it because he is scared of hurting you, it is because causing you pain in this state will lower his experiments. The pace of his digit mimics the one he created before, methodical. Everything about him appears premeditated. Curling his index finger, it takes him around eight seconds to locate your G-spot, rubbing it with expertise and ease; “It appears to be a considerable amount of lubrication,” He continues speaking to the recorder, speeding up his movements slightly. “Corporeal response is positive, the experiment is going as planned”

Planned. That word strikes a cord inside your hazy mind. So he already intended to do this.

A second finger joins, spreading you, but not in a painful way. In fact, the remorse falters, as the pleasure begins to build, strong and hopeless to avoid. Repeating the same curling motion, Jonathan’s hand twitches when he hears the first moan of the evening. It’s weak, but something like that will never go unnoticed. 

“Patient is showing vocal responses after two fingers, vaginal stimulation is going as expected.” 

A wave of heat starts to crumble the last bits of your will, he knows what he is doing— the bastard fucking knows. A new set of tears swell up in your eyes, falling without you doing much to stop them. A meek sob that breaks into a choked moan catches the doctor’s attention, his rosy lips curling into a wicked smile. This is probably the first time you had ever seen Crane smile. Your cunt and his fingers work together to create an obscene wet sound, smearing it all over your labia and printing it with fire and fear in your mind.

A third finger prods outside your aching hole, threatening; When it joins the party, that same stretch comes back— once again not uncomfortable.

“Three fingers have been inserted now,” Crane says, his voice faltering at the end of the sentence. “The patient shows no signs of pain nor discomfort”

Faster, his fingers are going faster now. Three fingers plugging in and out of you without any hint of mercy or consideration. You dare to bend your neck, a sick need to watch his hand invading you, only to find his hand soaked. Involuntary, your cunt clench around his fingers, something that also was noticed.

Expecting him to talk again to the voice recorder, only to encounter a quicker pace, your back arches, the cold laboratory bed suddenly too cold for the boiling temperature of your body. A cloud of guilty pleasure numbs your brain— unable to register the fourth finger peeking at your pussy.

The intrusion hurts, the current lubrication not enough to save the painful stretch. Jonathan notices this, an expert in reading body language; “In response to the fourth finger, the patient has experienced slight pain. After a quick thought, I have come to the conclusion that the rubber gloves inhibit the vagina lubrication to be sufficient.” 

Removing your fingers from your cunt, you watch with half-lidded eyes how he practically rips the glove off his hand, almost frustrated. Returning his now bare fingers to your poor hole, a mewl escapes your lips when he returns three fingers, humming at the clear difference of sensations.

His fingers, his skin is a whole different sensation than the damn rubber. His pinky finger sneaks in again, but your pussy clenches, making the intrusion painful again. Crane huffs in annoyance, bending over and hovering over your crotch, gathering saliva in his mouth and spitting right in your pussy. The action, which perhaps holds strictly experimental intentions, is so perverted it makes your stomach flutter— erotic, that was erotic.

You find Dr. Crane spitting on your pussy erotic.

“Fucking finally,” he whispers.

In no time, and thanks to the skin-to-skin contact, the penetration is easier, for him at least. Four fingers slide in and out effortlessly, as your legs begin to shake, and the tight knot in your lower region threatens to snap.

“You are not allowed to come,'' his stern voice is like a fork scraping against a porcelain plate— dominant and authoritarian. “Hold it, or there will be consequences.”

The promise of a punishment for disobeying is even scarier than the possible consequences, causing you to nod and succumb to his wishes— although you don’t have much choice.

His other hand, which had been fidgeting around ever since his touch over your skin started, approaches your clit dangerously, pressing his thumb on the swollen nub, reminiscing of the circles he did an hour prior, this time tighter— faster.

His actions are lewd, definitely illegal— your noises are lewd, definitely unwilling. Your body thrashes over the metal, yanking the restraints with little success to lose them. The rational instinct screams at you to move, fight— but the overwhelming sensations act like a drug. His fingers curl in an odd position, and before you can react, his thumb slides in.

Fitting his whole hand inside your poor, stretched, wet hole. 

He moves his hand slowly, testing the waters. This is the crucial part of the experiment, one false move and everything will be extremely painful to you.

Torturing your clit, Jonathan uses the lubrication and his saliva to move his hand, keeping his fingers straight and still— ignoring the uncomfortable erection straining against his slacks. 

“The experiment has been a success. The patient has been able to fit my hand inside them. There are no signs of pain, discomfort, or physical rejection—” His voice shakes slightly, as if he was fighting to keep composure the same way you fought the pleasure that his unwanted touch gave you.

That's when the real thing begins.

Crane’s hand curls into a fist, making you moan louder. How can something so twisted feel so good? Lowering your watery gaze, the borderline pornographic view of being fucked by your boss’ fist sends you to a frenzied state. He keeps forcing his fist inside you, uncurling his finger lightly every now and then just to add a new sensation. 

“Good…” He pants, biting his lower lip. “Come. You can come now.”

And you do. Oh, you do. 

His hand assaults your pussy, stretching it beyond limits and giving you the most mind–blowing, earth–shattering, painful orgasm you had ever experienced in your life. Your clit burns from the rough treatment, and something whispers in the back of your drowning mind, that even if you manage to see the light of another day if Crane decided to let you go; you will never find something as pleasurable as what he just did.

To you. To your body. To your mind.

The realization, the crude reality— breaks the thin veil of lust. Crying, sobbing, screaming— the voice you seemed to have lost while he experimented with you finally came back. 

Jonathan wipes his wet hand with his lab coat, reaching for the recorder. His black shoes click on the white tiles of the consultation room as he approaches the camera, clicking the «play» button off, the red light winking at you before disappearing.

Until next time. 

Dr. Crane licks his lips, his cold blue eyes glistening with morbid excitement. His hand trembles when he brings the recorder to his lips, piercing your soul with those orbs just like he pierced your body and dignity with his fist.

“The experiment was a success.”

[lieslab]

So different from the crowd

꘎♡━━━━━♡꘎ ꘎♡━━━━━♡꘎

Pairing: Lee Minho X gn reader

Summary: An evening in the park goes quiet after you reveal your inner struggles.

Genre: Comfort/hurt

Word Count: 2.1K

Trigger warning: Self-hatred and identity issues.

A/N: I hope this comes across to the people who need it most right now. I'm feeling emotional, so consider this a love letter from me to you. You're going to do great things, I know you will <3

_ _ _

No matter how much time passed, it always still seemed to sting. There’s always different kinds of rejection in life. Sometimes simple words can easily be brushed off, but other times, they dig into sensitive flesh. Words worm their way into your brain and they follow the blood flow until they reach your heart. 

People try to learn how to take constructive criticism, but with a heart full of stitches and oozing holes, sometimes it feels impossible. Would it ever feel right? When would words start slipping off you like a water resistant coating instead of silencing you? Your hopes. Your dreams. Your identity. Why did it have to be so hard? 

For some, their identity is as simple as slipping on a t-shirt. It fits perfectly and it doesn’t feel wrong. The wool doesn’t irritate the skin. The cotton isn’t too tight. There’s never any questioning because the skin on their body fits properly. 

For some people, it will never feel right. The color of their skin, the way their bodies are formed, whoever they choose to love, it will always feel off; a tag scratching against the back of their neck, even if they try to cut it off. 

Will self-love ever win? Will it ever fill the aching void deep inside and settle the unrest? Will it finally feel as easy as breathing? When would it be your turn to experience the joyous feeling of loving yourself? 

���Wee! Look at me! Look at me!” 

You glanced over at the sound of a voice. Across the way, Minho was kicking himself higher and higher into a golden sunset sky. The diminishing sunlight caused his eyes to sparkle. He grinned when your eyes met his. 

His smile was infectious, so you felt your own start to grow on your face. “What are you doing?” You called out to him. 

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m swinging! Look how high I am?” A giggle spilled from his mouth. “I’m gonna go straight to the moon!” 

It was silly to be a grown adult and act so childish. Luckily for you, you liked silly. Minho and you had been close friends forever. He finished recording earlier in the evening and asked if you’d like to hang out. How were you supposed to reject the offer? 

The clouds smeared the skies with dark yellows. A gray-blue was swallowing the clouds whole across the way. Fleeting birds passed and swooped down along the ground. They were attempting to find the last bits of food before the fading sunlight disappeared. 

Minho’s legs pumped back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. Again and again and again. He constantly propelled himself higher and higher. You watched with a smile. 

Between the swings and creaks of the rusted swing set, Minho turned into a boy again. Youth filled his face and his laughter rang out louder. How many times must he have done the same thing as a kid? Back when swing sets felt like rocket ships and slides were space launchers. Quick adrenaline bursts at recess left him breathless and giddy for another chance to go higher or faster. 

Childhood was so fragile for some and strengthening for others. After all, it was the paved way into your teenage years. Your teen years dipped into adulthood and that’s why you were the way you were. 

“Come join me!” 

You shook your head. 

“Come on!” 

“I’m not interested. I don’t remember the last time I was on a swing set. Besides, the connecting chains are so rusted and what if I-” 

And then he was flying. The swing pulled back and swooshed forth, but he didn’t second guess the high speed. He shifted his hands and propelled himself off the rubber bottom. 

You gasped and jerked upright from the wooden picnic table you were at. The moment his feet dragged along the sienna mulch, you were up in an instant. You rushed over with wide eyes. “Hey, are you okay? You shouldn’t have done that! What if you would have gotten injured?” 

He said it with a mischievous smile. “You worry too much. Come on!” There wasn’t time to respond as he looped his hand through yours. 

He jerked you through the mulch until the two of you reached a blue-based mary-go-round. He gave you a gentle shove and stepped up to the side of it. When you hesitated, he patted the cool metal base. 

You climbed forward and sat down. Lowering your body onto it, you grabbed one of the white railings and let out a soft sigh. “Just don’t make it go too fast, okay? You know I get nauseous easily.” 

“I know, I know. I haven’t forgotten about it, so just try to relax.” He curled a foot around the nearest white mound and placed his other foot in the bed of mulch. He kicked off and the two of you began to slowly spin in a circle. 

“So what’s on your mind?” 

“Nothing.” 

“It’s written all over your face.” 

A creaking sound filled the air. The old spinning mechanisms beneath the machine hadn’t been used in quite a while. This specific playground was hidden away at the end of a dead end street. 

It wasn’t filled with lively children. It was so small and there weren't many kids in the area. A bigger and well maintained park lied in the heart of the town. Instead of maintaining this park, it just slowly seemed to rot away. 

Old paint peeled and was never repainted. The slide had a long worn spot along the metal where people used to slide down over and over again. The once playful laughter of kids had been replaced by a haunted stillness. 

The rocking animals were covered in a layer of heavy grime and rust. Over the years, the weather poured and snowed. Temperatures skyrocketed and then they froze again. Without maintenance and proper upkeep, the smiling bunny rabbit, and what looked to be a dinosaur, had been left to fend for themselves. 

“So what’s it really?” Minho tried again. 

It’s the one thing that you had bittersweet feelings about. No matter what you felt, he always picked up on it if it was a negative feeling. As if he was personally skimming through the thoughts in your brain and reading them word-for-word. 

“Do you ever feel like you’re not in the right body?” 

All that was left was the squeakiness of the merry-go round. His foot had picked up as you spun in a slow circle. He glanced off to the side and slowly blinked. The words were echoing in his head as he attempted to put a response together. 

“I suppose that I do feel like that sometimes, yeah. I’ll question different parts of myself, but at the end of the day, I’m me and I think that’s pretty cool.” 

You scoffed and shook your head. “Pretty cool? Yeah, well, it’s not pretty fucking cool when you don’t have half the population simping over your good looks.” 

“I hit a nerve, huh?” 

You shook your head and shoved your leg out to stop the spin. Instead, Minho kicked wildly at the ground. You yelped and clutched the pole you clung to while your body jerked back by the force of gravity. 

“Don’t go. I was half-kidding, but I was also serious. The great thing about life is that a person can change. We can fix our features and we can change our clothes. If we don’t like our hair color, we ca-” 

“And what about the color of our skin? What about the people we’re sexually attracted to? What if I feel like I’m in the wrong body with the wrong parts? If I’m just a puzzle and all the pieces are scrambled? What then?” 

“I’d say fuck the people who ever made you feel that way because you shouldn’t have to worry about things like that. Those are things that you shouldn’t have to change to please people.” 

“I just want to be accepted,” you finally whispered softly. 

The creaking began to fade away as the two of you came to a slow stop. The sun was disappearing quicker and quicker. Darkness was creeping from above, but it couldn’t hide the pools of sadness in your eyes. 

It didn’t stop the way your body curled in around itself. The flicker of the past and present colliding. Your young self pushing through the reflection of you and searching for that same praise and validation that you always had. You craved validation like a kid craved a proud parent. 

You’d go to the ends of the earth for someone, as long as it meant being recognized. At the end of the day, it was all you ever wanted. You wanted to be seen. You wanted to be heard. You wanted someone to reach out and clutch onto you and say it back. 

“I exist. I’m alive. I’m here and I’m breathing. Despite the hate, despite the disappointment, despite it all, I’m still here. I’m fighting, I’m trying, and I’m surviving.” 

The world wasn’t always kind to those with differences. How could it be? To be different was to be bizarre. An outcast. A freak. A weirdo. It terrified people to be different. 

“What if I’ll never be good enough?” You finally uttered weakly. “What if I’m just what people say I am?” 

“But what if you're not? What if you’re someone with an amazing heart? What if you’re someone who heals people in ways you don’t understand? What if you radiate sunshine and you don’t even realize it because the rain clouds are blocking your vision?” 

You hated how much hope you found in a single person because it felt like the world was screaming at you. You were being swallowed and thrown into a vortex with nowhere to scream. 

Rumors ran wild on social media. Society always seemed to throw you into a molded stereotype, even if you didn’t quite fit. You were stretched to be someone you weren’t. Squashed down just to be another statistic in a textbook. 

“You know…” he leaned back against the metal pole. The coolness sat among his spine and straightened his posture. “Sometimes there’s not enough people out there that speak up. Sometimes they’re anxious and other times, they’re just scared in general.” 

“But sometimes,” he continued, “some people admire others from afar. Things aren’t always so black and white. You don’t have to pretend to be someone you're not. You might feel like you have to, but you don’t.” 

His foot swung out again. Slowly, he shifted and he pushed himself backwards with the force. “This life can be a blessing or a curse, it’s up to you to handle however things are thrown at you.” 

Your eyes found the ground. He noticed it instantly, but he didn’t let up. “I hope one day you find the peace you need to find within yourself. I know I’m not a hundred people, but I know we’re friends and you value my opinion. No matter what you struggle with, I’m happy that you’re you.” 

He pushed a bit faster and a loud creak sounded. At that moment, it was just the two of you. Nothing else mattered as he spoke. You drank his words like a special elixir because you needed them more than ever. 

Life could be hard and people could be cruel. Self-doubt could slither in like a snake and have you choking for air before you knew it. It meant so much coming from someone like him. 

“I like you more than other people.” 

“Why can’t you just say ‘I love you’ like a normal person?” You tried to keep it together, but your voice cracked. It gave away just how vulnerable and lost you were feeling. 

“Love?” His face scrunched up. “Bleh. I don’t have time for that. I don’t think love is anywhere in my vocabulary.” 

“I love you too.” 

“Yeah, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” 

He shoved his foot hard across the ground. A handful of mulch fluttered in different directions and you screeched. He grinned and launched himself up onto his feet. He kicked again and again and again. You spun faster and faster, it felt like flying. 

That childish happiness was back. Around and around you went and where you ended up, nobody knew. How you landed was up to you. Your laughter tangled together beneath the yellowed streetlights. 

The abandoned playground finally felt the familiar warmth of innocence and laughter once more. 

| ♡.﹀﹀﹀﹀.♡ | ♡.﹀﹀﹀﹀.♡ | ♡.﹀﹀﹀﹀.♡ |

Taglist: @lina-linny @straykidsstanforeverandever @seungnishi @stellasays45

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[agentsquirrelsgotrobots]

The Rescue Bots vs snow tires: the saga

Thank you @transingthoseformers for the idea.

It was that time of year again.

The first few snow flurries had been a week ago, and the weekend forecast called for snow. A lot of it.

It was now Charlie's least favourite day of the year.

Getting four massive, touch repulsed robots into their snow gear.

Unfortunately for Charlie, Heatwave had picked up a boat alt mode of all things, which made things a little bit more complicated.

Unfortunately for the bots, their tires don't adapt to icy roads, meaning that their tires have to be swapped manually.

Fortunately, there weren't many places they could hide from the dreaded tire iron.

"Heatwave! You first." Kade said, a shit eating grin on his face as he swung around the ratchet. "Don't be shy, it's like going to the dentist."

"You are never going to let me live that down, aren't you?"

"Absolutely not."

Blades chuckled off to the side. His weatherproofing was just a spray coat over his paint job and some rubber grips on the bottom of his landing gear. "It's a good day to be a flyer." He crowed.

Chase was waiting obediently for his turn. His tires had to be replaced frequently because of normal road hazards and all the high speed chases, so this was a monthly occurrence.

Next to him, Boulder fidgeted with his newly attached snow chains. He, unlike Chase and Heatwave, had figured out a way to put those on himself. He still had Charlie and Kade check his work just in case.

Heatwave grumbled as Kade and Charlie worked. They were getting faster at it, at least. He still tried very hard to think happy thoughts while little fingers poked and prodded his wheel wells.

After a long hour and a half, all of his wheels were swapped out, his old tires stored away for the spring. As always, he made himself scarce to sulk. Charlie made a note to hunt him down to winterize his boat mode later.

Chase's tire swap always went faster, having less of them while also helping where he could.

But finally, after adjusting Boulder's snow chains for a better fit, the whole ordeal was done for the season.

[oldtvandcomics]

The Lucifer/Alastor rivalry is so fun, because, well, Hell's Greatest Dad sing-off, but also, while they have strikingly similar designs, Alastor is much, MUCH better at being satanic than Lucifer is.

First of all, they really look VERY similar. In a show where every character has such a unique design, I remember feeling disappointed the first time I saw a picture of what Lucifer would look like, because it was so similar to Alastor. Same general shape, same coat, they even both have a staff of some kind. Only of course, if you were to remove all the apple, snake and radio elements from their costumes and show this picture to someone who doesn't know Hazbin Hotel and ask which of the two is the Devil, they would definitely pick Alastor. He is taller, wears dark red instead of white, and his ears look like horns.

It goes even further. Among all demons, Alastor is by far the most demonic. When he transforms he really becomes absolutely monstrous. Lucifer meanwhile is angelic.

Within the story, Lucifer doesn't do much, especially not any Devil activities. He's just trying to dissociate from his depression by making rubber ducks. Meanwhile, Alastor is the one who is working hard on gaining power, he is the one manipulating people, killing those who get in his way and chaining souls to himself by making deals. He is the one who uses his political connections to get Charlie an army at the end, and despite not being able to kill Adam, he does a very good job holding his own against him.

Hell's Greatest Dad was not about being Charlie's father figure, it was about Alastor trying to take Lucifer's place. Quite literally. "Can you butt out of my song!" "Your song?! I started this!" "I'm singing it, I'll finish it!" Yeah, so this is at the same time about 1) the literal song they're singing, 2) Charlie's life, and 3) Alastor taking Lucifer's place by pushing him to the side.

I still don't know why Alastor decided that picking a fight with Lucifer upon sight was a good idea, but, like, we can all agree that he is aiming for his place, mostly by getting Charlie to depend on him. Which is also what his line in Ready For This was: "She's filled with potential that I could guide / Stick with her you'll be on the winning side!"

Many people theorize that Alastor is the final bad guy in the show. I don't think so, he is WAY too likeable. He is, however, firmly on his own side, and will go against Charlie if he thinks that he'd benefit from it. And then switch back the last moment, obviously. He panicked now about being too kind, next season, he's going to try and be more ruthless, try to stop caring about the people he clearly started to consider his friends. But he has to end up on the side of the heroes for the audience to be happy. Villains need to be destroyed, we do NOT want Alastor to be destroyed.

No, in my opinion, he is going to take Lucifer's place as the Devil.

[passivenovember]

Night Shift (for @catharrington )

--

The first thing he sees when he comes to is Max. 

She’s crying in her sleep, the liquid timbre of it slipping loosely in time with a heart monitor, somewhere to the left, fading in and out of view as the steady drip of morphine fights to drag Billy under.

He realizes, that. The heart monitor is his. He’s plugged into it and he hurts. More than Neil. More than anything.

What’s left of his mind is liquified, sloshing around in a body strapped to a bed. It turns the memory of Maxine over in his hands like a rubber duck in an ocean of guilt.

She’s alive. Billy made sure of it, so. She’s alright. She’s okay–

It aches to breathe, burns so bad that his vision blacks out and Billy thinks, eyes glued to the grounding shock of red hair on his sister’s head, that he’s too young to die. 

–

The first time Billy’s strong enough to crash awake and stay there, he wishes for death. 

Fuck being too young. 

Everything burns, and then he’s gasping around a pain unlike any he’s ever felt as warm amber light filters through his eyelashes. He’s bleeding, from the very center of his chest, watercolor seeping through a cloth. He watches red bloom, bloom, bloom over white gauze and thinks. He should call for help. 

But then someone snuffles, deep in sleep and Billy flinches toward the sound, teeth on edge. 

Maxine looks like she hasn’t moved or showered or eaten in days, and Billy grunts. Her angry, cave-man big brother even knocking on death’s door. He tries to sit but something else escapes him, a fucking. Whine. 

More blood.

He’s crying. He doesn't know when he starts crying, but he’s fighting to get to Max, he’s wading through shit and fire and and then someone says, “Don’t move, Hargrove, you’ll rip yourself open again.”

Steve Harrington looks like he went three rounds with a meat grinder. Like someone tried to kill him. Like Billy–

“Shh, it’s alright,” Steve’s fingers are soft, through the searing pain, gentle as butterfly wings on the caps of Billy’s shoulders. “Lay back,” Steve tells him, blue and black and purple, like spilled paint, “Lay down, okay?”

Billy gets lost in the fat bulge of Steve’s bottom lip. Thinks. 

He probably did that to Steve. Everything’s fuzzy, he doesn’t remember anything but he remembers wanting. Steve. Everyone dead. Everyone and then himself. 

He didn’t think everyone included Steve Harrington.

“It’s alright,” Steve cards those soft, sweet fingers through Billy’s hair. “Lay down,” He says, “Rest.”

Billy does.

–

The next time he wakes it’s because Maxine is throwing a temper tantrum. 

Billy would know the sound of her voice in death. The shrill, ear-splitting soprano of Max’s screams could yank him out of hell and catapult his body through the lid of his coffin, startled lips gathering earth between his gums until he’s awake, again. 

Alive.

A man in a white lab coat tells Max to calm down. 

She spits, instead, phlegmy and gross and just like Billy taught her, in the Doc’s face, “You’re not moving him.”

It’s half-way unintelligible. Billy squints, like there’s sunlight streaming bright and relentless from his sister’s throat and he’ll go blind if he doesn’t protect himself. 

“Kid,” The Doctor says, “He’s not awake. He’s not getting any better–”

“If you take him to Chicago I’ll kill myself,” Maxine declares. Stubborn bitch. “If you take him, I’ll. I’ll chain myself to the bottom of the helicopter. I’ll stop eating. I’ll starve myself–”

She will. She’s a man of her word, the fuckin’ loser. 

“A hunger strike?” The Doc frowns, regretful. “You can try, kid. Won’t bring your brother back.”

Billy smirks. Almost. It hurts and his head splits open and across the room, on his feet and ready to restrain Billy’s very own red-headed tornado from punching a hole through the Doctor’s sternum, Steve Harrington watches Billy. 

His face looks normal now. 

Almost. 

He’s yellowing, sort of, like an old photograph, but. He’s beautiful. 

Billy’s chest aches. 

“--His entire life is here,” Maxine says, voice wobbling dangerously. Billy knows she’s about two seconds from decapitating this Doctor with her bare hands, “His family. I’m his family, you’re not just going to take him away from–”

“--Kid–”

“--Don’t call me kid, you fucking asshole,” Max says, “Don’t–”

“--If we can’t get him somewhere he’ll wake up, he’ll die.” The Doctor says. Not a teensy bit regretful.

Billy doesn’t exactly blame him. 

But you’d think a bomb has gone off. You’d think society’s on the brink of collapse, by the way Maxine goes shocked still, and then.

She moves. 

Or, She tries to move, screaming and screaming as Steve holds her back, never once taking his eyes off of Billy. “Max,” Steve says. His lip���s not bulging anymore. 

Maxine wails against the Doctor, anyway, her tiny fists not packing much force because the fucker just looks sad, about it. For her. Max will break her thumb, doing that. 

Billy tries to call her a dumb fucker and fails.

Tries to sit up and fails.  

“Max,” Steve tells her, putting himself in front of the Doc, “Look.”

Her eyes are blue, like his.

Somehow Billy forgot about that while he was treading water in the sea of everything else. Billy and Max stare at each other for ten long, breathless seconds. 

And.

All Billy can think is that he should’ve stayed dead. He should’ve followed his mother’s voice into the pits of hell, like she wanted him to, he should’ve stopped fighting and in that stretch of breathless anticipation, he knows. 

Maxine is going to open her mouth and tell him that he fucked it up. Again. Die, she’s thinking. If you’re not going to do it, I’ll kill you myself.

Max blinks and then she opens her mouth. Makes a terrible noise. It’s the worst fuckin’ thing Billy’s ever heard, and turns out he was right, her fists don’t pack much force but she knocks him one across the jaw, anyway. Maybe an accident, but then again. Maybe not.

“You fucking asshole,” She says, scratching and clawing until Steve Harrinton grabs her around the chest in a barrel hug, lifting her off the hospital bed like she weighs nothing. 

It’s alright, Billy wants to say, I deserve it. It’s the least of what I deserve. And besides. It’s the only place on Billy’s entire body that isn’t screaming in pain, so. 

Small victories.

“Let me go,” Max shouts, but Steve doesn’t. He holds her tight, watching Billy. 

The Doctor stares, too, like he’s witnessing a miracle. Like he isn’t sure what to make of all this. Like he’s going to run screaming into the halls and take all the credit even though he was ready to ship a corpse off to Chicago this morning.

Immediately, Billy hates him. 

Max elbows Steve Harrington in the gut. He drops to the floor, groaning, and Billy has the nerve to feel proud as his sister climbs over the lip of the bed with a fire in her eyes, unlike anything Billy’s ever seen, and.

He was standing at the mouth of hell, once. 

Billy notes, distantly, that he shouldn’t have worried so much about her. Shouldn’t have risen from the dead to make sure she’d be, not. Alright, but. Something. Maxine can take care of herself and Billy never should’e doubted it. She’s gearing up to take care of him, now, let the trash out to roost, but.

But.

Maxine collapses on top of him, instead. Billy thinks, distantly, that she might be trying to suffocate him because she’s laying flat across his oxygen tube. 

But. 

She’s crying. Her body shakes hard enough to rumble the bed and the linoleum floor and the entire building beneath that. It hurts. Billy wants to lift his arms and hold her to him, but he can’t. He can’t feel his arms, he can’t–

“I’m sorry,” Maxine says, clutching at his neck, “I’m so sorry, Billy.”

Steve Harrington and the Doctor are gone before Billy thinks to ask about the hole in his chest. When the door slams shut behind them, Maxine sits up and O2 hisses through the plastic around his nose. 

Billy can breathe, again.

–

“What did it feel like?”

Billy’s grateful that his room has a window. The trees have been good to him.

Maxine knocks her sneaker into the hospital bed, shooting pain up Billy’s left side. He ignores it, biting against the fleshy patch of his cheek until blood drips on his tongue. “Billy.”

Billy shakes his head.

Steve Harrington stands watching, backlit with bright September skies. He’s been perched under the window for hours with his arms across his chest, holding vitriol in the birdcage of his ribs, just. Watching. Billy and Max together.

“Dipshit,” Max says, “I know you can hear me. You’re mute, not deaf,” Max kicks him, ignoring his wince of pain, “What the fuck happened to you while you were–”

“Max,” Steve tells her, coming to life, “He can’t talk.”

Or think, Or move. 

“I know.”

“You’re stressing him out.”

“How the fuck do you know, Harrington?”

Billy smirks, a little, watching the roll of Steve’s neck muscles. Irritated, like Billy. Like a brother. “Look at him,” Steve says, “He’s begging me with those big blue eyes, Harrington, she’s stressing me out, make her stop.”

Billy wants to smile. He tries to, but.

“I can’t stress him out,” Maxine says, kicking at him again. “He’s not even doing anything.”

It’s lighthearted. As bright as things can be when Billy’s still on a respirator, but he knows she’s pissed. Out of everything, he knows that. The shape of Maxine’s rage. 

“Jesus Christ, Mayfield,” Steve exhales, exhausted, and every tree branch outside the window moves with him. “You have to give him time.”

Maxine kicks the bed again, hard and insistent until Billy has to look at her otherwise his lungs will explode with the pain. He doesn’t want to. He manages, anyway, and. Maxine deflates. A wilted red balloon.

She’s crying. Suddenly. 

He frowns at her, like. What, shitbird? 

Max seems to hear him. “What happened to you?”

Blue eyes, blue like his. Their anger falls the same way, like a sledgehammer against tempered glass. Pain spiderwebs out from him, varicose veins devouring all the light and warmth from the room with guilt.

Max’s face wrinkles, a raisin in the September glow, and Billy forces air through his lips. I’m sorry, he wants to say, I’m sorry I can’t put words to it right now. I’m sorry I can’t make sense of it for you. I’m sorry you have to carry it on your shoulders like a backpack full of algebra homework. I’m sorry–

Her fingers are cold when they curl into the palm of Billy’s hand. He’s sorry this is happening to them. To her, so.

“See,” Harrington says, “You stop flapping your gums for five seconds and he’ll give you what you want.”

Billy rolls his eyes and holds her fingers tightly, trying to press every syllable into Max’s thundering pulse. Billy hopes she understands, knows she does, and when he turns back to the window Steve Harrington is there. 

Watching Billy with pink cheeks, a pink nose. Not sepia at all anymore. 

Healed. 

–

“We have to change your linens,” The nurse says. 

Billy doesn’t know what a fucking linen is. He wrinkles his nose, waiting for Maxine or Steve Harrington to jump in and gather context clues, but they’re useless. Basically wallpaper, anytime the nurses come in. 

He’s never seen two storybook heroes more squeamish at the sight of blood or the sound of discomfort.

The nurse raises her eyebrows at them, already pissed off. “Bedsheets,” She says. “We need to change them so he doesn’t get sores.”

“Sores?” Maxine says, finally serving as Billy’s voice box.

“Yes, he hasn’t learned to walk yet–”

“--What if he never learns to walk again?” Max wonders, “Will he get sores from laying around all the time–”

“--He’ll learn,” The nurse says, done deal. She’s a bitch. Billy’s favorite, so.

He knows right away that it’s going to hurt. Makes a noise like a fork caught in a garbage disposal, completely involuntary, and his backup helper snaps out of it. “How do we change his bedsheets?” Steve asks. Which. 

Douses Billy in cold water. 

He would rather die than let Steve see that. And he has. He almost stayed dead, too, and now–

“Little girl,” The nurse says to Maxine, “Wait in the hall.”

“No way,” Max says, crossing her arms, “No fucking way I’m leaving you in here with my brother, alone–”

“--I’m here–” Steve says.

“--Little girl, do you want to watch your brother thrash in agony and wet himself?”

The nurse waits, her eyebrows disappearing into her hairline while Max comes to terms with losing the bitch-off in a hospital room, of all places.

“No ma’am,” Maxine says finally.

“Perfect. do as I say.”

Max nods, pinning Billy with a flat stare. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

He nods.

The second the door shuts behind her, the nurse tears the blanket from Billy’s legs, “You hold him still while I jimmy the sheet out from under him.”

Steve Harrington looks nervous. Comical. “Isn’t there another nurse who can help–”

Billy’s torso lights on fire when the nurse yanks on his bed sheet and one of the elastic corners snaps around his foot like a claw. She’s not gentle but she’s fast. The linen drags him into a sea of pain, Billy’s arms move independent of the rest of his body, yanking the I.V. out of his arm, and he’s embarrassed but he can’t stop. 

Humiliated when the nurse says, “Lay still, sweetheart,” Like his chest isn’t a gaping wound. “You’ll just make it worse for yourself.” 

Billy screams as best he can. Thrashes. Tries to center himself in the reality that Steve Harrington is watching him, nervously shifting his weight from foot to foot.

Billy’s asshole nurse shouts, “Come hold him down, alright?”

Harrington has the nerve to look terrified.

“Alright,” Steve says. “Okay. Yeah.” His jaw squares with determination and then he’s leaning over Billy, palms white-hot and stubborn against Billy’s shoulder caps. 

He smells good, like pine needles.

“Hey,” Steve says, smiling softly, “You’re alright–”

Billy’s nurse yanks the sheets out from under him, jostling Billy up and back down again on the lumpy fucking horrible mattress.

He must scream. 

It must be awful, because Steve rubs his palms up and down, up and down, trying to soothe him, “There we go, Malibu, doing so fuckin’ fantastic,” He says, “Just a little bit longer, right nurse?”

Malibu.

Malibumalibumalibu–

“We still have to sit him up to put the new sheet on the bed,” Billy’s nurse says, just to spite him.

He won’t survive it. He’s being torn apart. Billy thrashes in Steve’s hold. Can’t take it. Won’t–

“Hey. Look at me, Hargrove.”

Billy. Gets lost in the expression on Steve’s face. It reminds him of the court, of a time when Billy wasn’t this pathetic, whimpering mess of torn skin and bones. 

Steve rubs his thumbs, gently, over Billy’s jawline, “I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying right here with you, yeah?”

Billy nods, blinking against tears. 

“Good,” Steve says. He turns to the nurse, “Alright, when do we–”

Billy bends at the waist, sitting heavily in Steve’s arms. 

And.

Death smells like pine. Feels like warm hands, rubbing circles into his back.

–

He lives.

–

It’s like the flood gates open. Steve touches Billy whenever he wants, after that, and when Billy goes into surgery to replace the tattered skin on his ribcage, Steve’s there.

Holding Billy’s hand when he falls asleep. Holding Billy’s hand when he wakes up.

–

Eventually, Steve starts talking.

He brings up high school, which has disappeared into the rear-view of where they are now. Rivalries and broken plates and bloody knuckles don’t matter, anymore, in retro-spect. 

Maybe they never did.

Steve helps him learn to use his vocal cords, again. He waits with patient, sparkling brown eyes, stubbornly insisting Billy can answer small questions.

When it finally happens, Steve calls him a hero.

They share stories, dreams, pudding cups and cold lasagna from the hospital cafeteria. 

Steve Harrington is funny. 

Billy never gave the possibility much thought. Steve’s earnest and loyal and beautiful, but Billy never considered that Steve would say and do things that make Billy laugh so hard his stitches nearly pop. 

The hospital staff hate Steve as much as they adore him, and when Billy learns to sit again, Steve Harrington is right there, holding Billy’s hand. Rubbing circles into his wrist that Billy senses like lightning in the heartland. 

Steve. Has tears clinging to his lashes, looks like he’s never been more proud of anything in all his life, and Billy thinks. He could be worth something, again. Someday.

Worth Steve.

–

“I’m so fucking proud of you,” Steve says that night, when they’re alone, in the dark. “You’re not what I thought you’d be, you’re. Billy; you’re amazing.”

Billy can talk, again. He thinks he should say something, but the words won’t come.

–

Maxine has to go home at the end of the day. That’s the deal. 

The hospital Billy’s staying in may know about monsters and dimensional tears but they still make preteens go home to sleep in their own bed once their brothers are out of the woods. It’s the worst part of Billy’s recovery. The dark.

Max fights it, tooth and nail. They both do. 

Round and round she goes with the Doc. She’s his sister. She can’t leave him alone because she doesn’t want to leave him alone, blah-blah-blah, and. 

Maxine screams and cries so much that, eventually, Owens and his goons make an exception. Steve Harrington volunteers to serve as Billy’s discount little sister because he doesn’t have school or a job or a girlfriend. No one to miss his body like Billy does, so.

He's always at the hospital. 

Not much changes, in retrospect, because Steve was there on that first afternoon and he’s there always, day and night and back again, Billy blinks and then suddenly he can’t remember a time when Steve Harrington wasn’t two feet away from him, complaining about whatever cassette tape Max brings from home that week. 

Steve’s only ever gone for an hour at a time. He disappears in the early morning to go home and shower, change his clothes, and then he’s back, again, to keep Max’s cot warm for her while she’s playing Only Child.

Neil never comes to the hospital. Like Billy said. Small victories.

–

Will Byers is the first to notice that Billy’s a faggot.

Well.

He’s not the first but he’s definitely the most gentle. 

Billy clocks that about him the first time someone knocks on his hospital door and he has to do a double take because Maxine is doing her calculus homework on the cot next to him, and Steve’s the one that pulls himself away from Billy’s dinner long enough to swallow a hunk of cold lasagna to open the door.

Everyone in the entire world who cares about him is already here, but Will Byers leads a group of doe-eyed, worried looking people behind him, all bundled up in winter coats because it’s February. Somehow. 

Billy slept through most of 1985 so he’s shocked when Little Boy Byers is tall enough that his mom looks like a munchkin when she bullies her way into the room. Joyce, Billy thinks she’s called. 

Mrs. Byers introduces herself while she drapes a blanket over the foot of Billy’s hospital bed and scolds Steve Harrington for picking at Billy’s dinner. Freak Byers stands next to his brother looking high and uncomfortable.

Mostly high.

“Waa?” Steve demands, Bambi through and through with a roll sticking out of his mouth, “But. Joyce, Billy said–”

“It’s alright, Mrs. Byers,” Billy tells her, wary when the Chief of Police lumbers over to clap a huge, concerned paw onto Max’s shoulder, “I don’t like the hospital food, anyway–”

“You have to eat, honey,” Joyce says.

Honey. 

Honey feels like Malibu but tastes so, so different.

When Bill doesn’t say anything, Mrs. Byers nods. “I’ll bring you something. And. It’s Joyce.”

“No, that’s alright,” Billy tries to sit, wincing when his chest bandage tugs at the tender, curling pieces of raw across his pecks. Steve leans forward with the lip of a putting cup in his mouth and helps him settle against the pillows, hands warm where they stay, sleeping against his stomach. 

Like he’s worried Billy might stand up and run away.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mrs. Byers says, piling another blanket onto the foot of Billy’s bed, “If you’re going to get out of here, you need your strength. You need your food,” Mrs. Byers says, yanking the pudding cup from Steve’s teeth.

She tosses it to him and Steve grabs it from the air.

“Alright, open up, hero,” Steve tears it pop tab loose with his teeth and feeds it to Billy, one spoon full at a time. A little gets on Billy’s nose and Steve uses his thumb to wipe it away, lingering.

“Your nose,” Steve says quietly, voice thick with vanilla, “You’ve got a cute nose. Like a goddamn rabbit.”

Billy smiles. They smile at each other, big and dumb like always, only.

Across the room, Little Boy Byers watches them. 

Billy thinks he might catch on fire.

–

“I want to take you out of here,” Steve says in the dark. 

It’s late. So late the sky has started to turn silver. 

Steve’s thumb rubs circles into Billy’s wrist, where they’re stuck like paper dolls. It’s the only way Billy can sleep, but. He’s awake, streaming with consciousness when Steve says, “You have to get strong. You have to get better, for me.”

Billy. Feels the press of lips against his hand. Thinks.

He’d crawl if he had to.

Wherever Steve wanted to go, he’d crawl.

–

He learns to walk. Has to get out of here, someday.

—

Steve Harrington asks what Billy’s going to do when he gets out of here. 

Doesn’t know that Billy was awake, that night.

Doesn’t realize–

Billy just got the clear to ditch his oxygen tube and it’s got them both giddy. Smiling at each other and the Doc when he says, “Almost home free, son.”

It’s the closest Billy’s felt to joy in longer than he can remember. Steve’s laugh soothes a part of Billy that’s been aching since before the monster made a home inside of him, and the question fills him with an unfamiliar kind of hope.

Steve’s eyes sparkle when he says it. “What are you doing after this?” Like they’re finishing up an afternoon of basketball practice and Steve’s been trying to work up the nerve to ask Billy. Not on a date, but. Something. 

Billy feels naked without his oxygen tube. Exposed. “What do you mean?”

“When you’re strong enough to go home,” Steve says, sinking lower onto Maxine’s cot. She’s at school, and they’re both graduated, so. Steve takes up residence in the daytime, eating Billy’s hospital food and listening to him read whatever books Max leaves behind. 

Usually, they sit close together, thighs pressed close together, but.

Not today.

Billy without an oxygen tube is unstoppable. Free. He almost misses it. Thinks. Can’t be worth it if Steve’s not holding him together.

“I dunno. Maybe I’ll go back to California.”

“Can’t do that,” Steve says, like. Done deal.

“Why not?”

“Because,” Steve says, searching for the words. His nose scrunches like it does when he’s deep in thought and Billy fills in the blanks for him. You can’t leave because we’re friends now, Ghost Steve says, even though they’ll never admit it. You can’t leave because I want to play basketball with you, again, even though Billy’s still about an inch from blowing a fuse when his legs pick up speed. You can’t leave because. 

I love you.

Steve hums, still searching for the words. Billy sits on his hospital bed and waits for him to sort through, heart pounding, until Steve grins at him. “You can’t leave because I need a roommate, Malibu.” Steve decides.

It’s a relief and it’s not. It’s death. 

Billy’s dying. “What?”

“My parents never use the house,” Steve tells him, sitting forward so his elbows leave little indents on his thighs. Billy’s always thinking about Steve’s thighs. “I have a million empty rooms. Empty beds.”

“Plural,” Billy teases.

“Yeah. I was born with a silver fuckin’ spoon in my mouth, sue me.”

“I’m not a charity case.”

“You’re not a charity case,” Steve says, grinning, “You’re my roommate.”

Billy imagines it, as those brown eyes pin him to the hospital bed. Steve Harrington in his space, or Billy in his, always. Forever. 

Billy shrugs. Nothing hurts so much he can’t breathe, anymore. Not in the physical sense. “I can’t.”

“Why not? Better offer?”

“No. I’m an invalid.”

“So am I,” Steve says, “Mentally.”

“You’re not, you’re–” Perfect. Billy ignores Steve’s eyes as the go soft and gooey, cookies fresh from the oven. “I can’t make you take care of me.”

“I want to,” Steve says loudly. Stubborn like Billy. Like Max. “I like taking care of you–”

“We weren’t friends before.”

“That doesn’t matter, I didn’t know you before.”

Billy smirks, “And you know me now?”

“Yeah,” Steve pokes at him with one cold index finger and leaves it there, “Yeah, I. C’mon. Move in with me. Let take you out of here.”

–

In the middle of night sometime just after May Day, 1986, Steve Harrington has a nightmare. Maybe he was always having them.

Billy wakes slowly and then all at once, surprised that the pain doesn’t knock him out cold, anymore. Apparently. Steve is a shaking meld of blanket on the cot next to the hospital bed. Billy can just make out the pad of Steve’s foot where it vibrates, toes flexing the cotton expanse of his sock like he’s climbing something, in never-never land.

Billy lies awake and counts the steady beep-beep-beep of his heart monitor, too afraid to get up because Steve’s monsters might eat his head and crawl out of the mass of him, plopping wet and slimy onto the hospital floor.

But.

Steve thrashes violently, and Billy can’t take it anymore.

���Harrington—”

Steve huddles away from the sound of Billy’s voice and it’s a war, not to take it personally, to harness his bravery and toss his blanket to the side, to shuffle off of his lumpy and uncomfortable mattress and stand over the cot, thinking he’s not afraid of me. We’re friends now. Steve–

“Steve,” Billy tries again, teeth clenched against the sound Harrington makes in the throes of his nightmare. Like he’s being chased. Hunted. He twists under the blanket, and the dull, eerie light from Billy’s health monitor catches the sweat on Steve’s forehead, and. The fuckin’ look on his face–

“Please,” Billy says thickly, “Please, Harrington, wake up–” 

Steve jolts, ripped out of dreaming by Billy’s hand on his shoulder. The usual calm, sugary warmth of his eyes has disappeared and he zero’s in on Billy, face contorted with rage and fear. 

Steve swings wildly, shoving until Billy falls back onto the hospital bed. Harrington watches the fall, coming back to himself just as the air knocks loose from Billy’s lungs.

He hurts, again. Like last summer. Like he always has, the beautiful boy in front of him flashing like lightning, and. 

For just a moment. Looks like Billy’s father.

“Billy,” Steve says, cheeks dripping with emotion, “Billy, I’m so–”

Billy flinches away from him on impulse, and.

Steve cracks. Breaks. Before Billy can tell him that it’s okay, it was accident, Billy’s stronger than he used to be–

Harrington bolts from the room, door slamming shut behind him.

–

Freak Byers starts driving Max to the hospital.

–

Billy can’t say he’s surprised when the only people who come to see him are his sister and her stupid little friends, riding their bikes to spend all day at the hospital when the weather is nice enough. 

They’re loud and annoying but Billy likes them. Will, at least. 

Steve vanishes, so.

It hurts and it doesn’t. They were on to something good, before that night, something Billy wants with the same intensity that he needs air and water. He’s grateful, in a way, that the possibility of roommates has died before it ever began. 

Less he can fuck up. Less that can make him bleed.

Bygones. All that.

–

On July 20th, a year after death, Billy moves into Joyce Byers’ house because he has nowhere else to go.

It’s as simple as Will Byers helping Billy into the clothes he brings from Jonathan’s closet, clutching Billy’s elbow until Joyce’s tiny brown car swings into view. “Let’s go home,” Will says.

So they do.

Steve never comes to visit.

–

Two months after moving into the Byers’, his Camaro appears in the driveway good as fuckin’ new. On the windshield they’ve taped a check for five hundred thousand dollars and a note that says, sorry for your loss.

Billy watched a monster tear his only friend in half, dozens of people in half, and all of them were carted around in this fuckin’ car like lambs to the slaughter. 

He had to learn to walk again.

It’s good to know what their lives are worth, Billy guesses. What Big Brother is willing do to keep him quiet.

–

“I saw you, once,” Will says, not long after Billy settles onto the couch. 

The Byers’ place smells like pancakes and cigarettes all the time and it’s fuckin’ weird. Joyce is trying to quit for Billy and so is Hopper even though they don’t know that Freak Byers rolls joints for him, and the whole thing is huge and uncomfortable. Like how kids hide things from their parents to protect them.

Billy’s starts to think of the living room as his. 

All that time he hid on Cherry Lane in that fuckin’ room and all it takes is the soft care of Joyce Byers and a beer from Jim Hopper and Billy’s home. The safest he’s ever felt even though he’s out in the open and vulnerable to Will Byers’ soft declarations. Eleven’s wide, staring eyes.

Billy looks up from the book he was reading, startled, “Huh?”

Will fidgets in the doorway, dressed and ready for the first day of school. Billy resists the urge to snap at him, spit it the fuck out. Will’s not tough like Maxine. He’d melt, probably. Keel over, and. Billy likes the kid. 

Sue him. 

So he waits, fiddling with the worn edge of his library book, until Will exhales everything all at once. “I saw Steve Harrington feed you pudding at the hospital that day, when you were just learning to talk and walk again–”

The book falls shut.

“--He said you were cute. That you have a nose like a rabbit. And. I was just wondering,” Will says, choking on his words, “I was just thinking. That.”

“Don’t think about it,” Billy says. “Steve and I–”

“--I just–”

“Will,” He says softly. Thinks he should probably be afraid. Hopper’s in the kitchen. Joyce is at work, and. She won’t be able to stop him if Hop gets the wrong idea about Billy. Or the right one. 

But.

He knows he’s safe. In the pit of his stomach, curling like warmth through his bones, Billy knows it.

They’re safe, here.

Will shakes his head. Afraid of other things, himself maybe, so. He shakes his whole body. “Billy, I think I might. I might be–”

“I’m driving you to school,” Billy stands up, his blanket falling to the ground. 

–

It’s hot enough now that Billy’s arms stick to the leather in the Camaro. 

He doesn’t let anyone ride with him, but not for the reasons he used to pull out of his ass pre-’85. Now it’s wrapped in bodies, the skin of dozens and dozens of people who will never make it home because–

Will is silent most of the way, fingers white-knuckle on his knee caps.

Billy loosens his hands on the wheel and it feels like his knuckles are breaking. He itches for a cigarette. Plays Eagles instead. Waits for the other shoe to drop.

They’re parked in front of the high school, watching the excitement of everyone’s first day, when Will says, “I think I like boys,” and. 

His voice cracks under a pressure unlike anything Billy’s ever heard.

He gets it. And he doesn’t. 

In his own life it was never news. Neil let him know what was happening right away. Three letters thrown back at him, sharp enough to leave scars in their wake.

This is supposed to be news, for Will Byers. The end of the world. Billy’s supposed to look over at the kid and call him a faggot, tell him he’s an abomination, fuckin’. Whatever. He won’t, though. Pot calling the kettle, right?

Billy watches hundreds of teenagers on their path toward a higher education. “Me too,” He says. Life goes on.

Will turns to him, shocked. “You do?”

Billy’s closet is glass. Always was. “Thought you saw me and Steve.”

“I didn’t know Steve likes–”

“He doesn’t,” Billy replies, not. Swallowing. His throat might click with unshed tears. Break and split open, so. “He’s just. Good. A good person, to me.”

“I understand,” Will tells him, “My friend, Mike, is. He’s like that, too. Not like us.”

Us. 

Billy breaks for him. Didn’t think he was capable of it, but. 

He breaks, anyway.

–

In November, Billy opens the door to his bedroom and Steve Harrington is sitting on the couch right where Billy sets his pillow every night. He jumps to his feet, hands balled at his sides as if caught. Guilty of something else, and all Billy can think about is burning his hand-me-down pillow and sleepin’ with his nose pressed to the place Harrington was sat, watching the front door.

“Billy–”

“I’ve been calling all day,” Maxine says, steamrolling him. She grins at Billy, planted firmly in Hopper’s chair. Queen of the castle. 

Neil doesn’t like them to see each other, so. 

Billy’s chest expands like a springtime rose at the sound of her voice. He doesn’t take his eyes off of Steve, “I don’t sit around waiting for you to call me, Max, I’m not glued to the phone.”

Steve flushes red. Spilled paint.

“You should be, it’s the only way I can ever get a hold of you,” Steve’s bright yellow sweater is eclipsed by red when Max pulls Billy into a hug, crushing him. “How are you?”

He doesn’t take his eyes off of Steve, “I’m fine.”

“Good, is Will home?”

Billy looks at her, then. “I thought you were here to see me?”

“No. We’re starting a new campaign and you happen to live here, now, I figured,” Maxine pinches him, “Two birds one stone.”

“Great, thanks,” Billy rolls his eyes, padding toward the kitchen, “He’s probably over at the Wheeler’s. Did you check there?”

“No,” Max says, “Steve–”

“Fuck Steve,” Billy says, not caring. Caring so, so much. “They’ll be back soon. If the station wagon’s gone that means Joyce went to grab him.”

Max hovers in the doorway, frowning when Billy digs through the refrigerator for a beer. 

Her eyes are blue like his, judgmental like his. “You’re not supposed to drink that shit,” Max tells him, wrinkling her nose.

Billy cracks the pop top. “And you’re not supposed to play DND on a school night.”

“Things are different, now.”

They watch each other, silent, until the front door swings open and a hundred teenagers swarm the living room. Max hugs him once, right around the middle, before following their voices to Will's room. The door slams shut and all the fuckin’ racket gives way to muffled silence.

Different.

Things are different now.

Billy leans against the sink and sips his beer. Waits for Joyce or Freak Byers to round the corner into the kitchen until he remembers that they’ve both got work tonight and Hop’s at the cabin.

Joyce does that. Carts teenagers around in between shifts at the general store because she’s a good mom. Good person. 

Steve Harrington appears, arms crossed over his chest. “Fuck Steve, huh?”

Billy’s heart thunders in his chest. It’s been months, and. 

He shrugs.

The air rushes from Steve’s lungs. “Don’t have to be an asshole about it.”

“That’s just what I am,” Billy says, “An asshole.”

“Maybe.”

Billy holds his can out, “Want a beer?”

Steve stares at him. Then the slick rim of the can. Then at Billy. “No.”

“Suit yourself,” Billy says. “Where’ve you been?”

“Playing chauffeur, I guess.”

“Couldn’t stop to say hi in between shifts?”

Steve flushes. “Billy–”

“You never came to see me again,” Billy says, “You disappeared. I made it out of the hospital and–”

“I shoved you, Billy.”

“It was a nightmare.”

“Right. Exactly,” Steve shakes his head, like. It doesn’t matter. But the thing is, Billy knows shoving with intent. He knows men who plot to draw blood, and he knows monsters and Steve, just. 

Isn’t that.

He is an asshole, though. “Maxine couldn’t ride her bike over?” 

And Steve folds like a house of cards. “C’mon, you know Neil doesn’t let her ride that thing around, especially when it’s cold like this.”

“I know Neil. He was my dad.”

Steve looks ready for a fight. Poised to run at any second. 

Billy’s never been more exhausted in his entire life. “Glad you can be her big brother, now.”

“Billy–”

“No, they’re some huge fuckin’ shoes to fill. I’m dead, anyway.”

“You’re not dead–”

Billy tosses the can into Joyce’s recycling bin. It clatters and causes a scene and Billy wants to take it back. Steve deflates like a balloon. “Shouldn't you rinse that before you throw it away?”

“Yeah well. I make a shitty roommate.”

Steve watches, spooked, as Billy shoves past him and disappears.

–

Christmas 1986 and January, 1987 come and go. 

Joyce gets him a sweater. 

Billy wonders if he’ll ever feel alive again.

–

In April, he starts to miss the sea. 

Conscious enough to think of home.

–

“I think–”

Max stares at him, a cigarette pinched between two fingers. 

“--I think I want to see California.”

She cut her hair over spring break so it twists, too lazy to be called a curl, under the determined jut over her chin. It’s what girls are doing, in 1987. Cutting all their hair off. Max looks older, all of a sudden, and Billy doesn’t know when he missed it. 

She hands him the cigarette because he’s comin’ up on two years post recovery and, dramatics aside, he could shave a couple years off the impending decades. The smoke burns through his lungs pleasantly, paints the sky purple when he lets it go. 

“You want to see California,” Max repeats, staring out across the quarry as the words settle on her tongue, “Like–”

“--I think I could stand a change of scenery.”

She takes the cigarette from him. “That’s not a change, you’ve lived there for most of your life.”

“I’m not looking for LBC, I want–”

“--Mountains?”

Billy thinks about it. Really, he wants two-thousand miles between him and everything, but. “Yeah,” he says, because it’s simple. Low stakes. “Mountains could be good, like. A cure.”

“Like tuberculosis victims?”

“Sure. Claws aren’t that different.”

Maxine snorts. They smoke for an eternity in silence, basking in the sunset, and Billy thinks she’s on board. She’s okay with it, because she’s older now, but then she throws the lit cherry at him and it scathes his jaw. Sears him to the bone. 

“Ow, Maxine, what the fuck–”

“You’re pathetic,” She says, full of venom.

“Probably.”

“Why are you always running away?” Max slides off the car hood and gets in his face, and Billy.

Two years ago he would’ve–

He can’t think that way anymore. 

“Max–”

“So, what? You save everyone and become the hero and fuckin’. Sulk around for two years like a dickbag and now you want to run away? Just when everyone’s starting to love–”

“No one fuckin’ loves me,” Billy says. A non answer. Tastes like a lie, but. It’s the truth. He clears his throat. “I don’t want to run away.”

Max shoves him, “I love you. Asshole.”

“I know. Love you too.”

“Don’t I count?”

Billy grabs her hand, “Of course you do, dipshit. The most.” Maxine’s crying for real, now. Billy hates it so fuckin’ much. 

“Can I come?”

“Your a minor,” Billy supplies. Regrets it more than anything that he’s got to leave her behind, but. “Don’t worry. Not about anything, alright? Steve’ll–”

Max shoves him again, “This is about Steve Harrington, isn’t it?”

“No.” Billy lies.

“Steve’s going to–”

“--He’s not gonna do anything,” Billy snarls, “He’s not. We haven’t spoken in months.”

“He always asks about you,” Max says simply, and. 

Billy’s got a flat tire. It lets all the air out of the sky. It shouldn’t matter, shouldn’t put his brakes on, but. 

He blinks. “Okay.”

“You’re so fucking stupid,” Max says. “He’s not going to let you leave, Billy. Not without–”

“--He doesn’t get a say, in this.”

Maxine stares at him, eyes polished like Riverstone. “Are you going to say goodbye to him? At least?” 

“No.”

“Alright,” Max says. She shoves him again, “Dumbass. I hate you. I hate you so much–”

Billy hugs her. 

Loves her, just. So much his chest aches and burns like he’s back in the hospital, day one, July 20th, 1985, and. 

He thinks.

Worries about how many people he knows he can’t say goodbye to.

–

Will takes it the hardest. June just makes the pain turn raspberry on his cheeks and Billy hates to see him cry, so. He isn’t surprised when Little William locks himself in his bedroom to make shit easier on the both of them.

Freak Byers hugs Billy, slips a joint in his pocket, ruffles his hair.

Hopper gives him a beer. The last they’ll share in all the world. Maxine tells him to call. El tells him to write, and.

Joyce Byers slips a sheet of paper in his glove compartment. 

It sits funny, in retrospect. He took his hush-money and ran off to the sea and she left him something to remember her by, and that’s death. Burial. It’s her fault and it’s not. It’s the thing that breaks the dam. The last straw and suddenly the weight of everything is too much. 

Really, it starts before that. With the rumble of truck tires into the cracked driveway of a new home, thousands of miles from the sea. It begins with the pier, months before that. A boy with beautiful brown eyes that could only ever raise suspicion in Neil’s gut because he was right about this. Everything. Billy. 

Truthfully, it starts with a phone call and a shitty, half-baked apology from a woman Billy would never see again. 

He isn’t smart enough to keep track, though. 

So he almost dies and then doesn’t, and decides pretty quickly that it's Joyce. It starts and ends with summer air licking at the tender, still-healing pink of a hole punched through his chest 630 days ago. It begins with the glove box, and a note that’s gotta weigh less than an ounce.

It starts with Joyce Fuckin’ Byers.

Billy figures maybe Hop did the dirty work for her. That he took a rolled-down window as an invitation, once Billy caved on the beer he was always offering and let it spill that he was leaving so they thought. Now is the time for action. Hop slipped the thing in between Billy’s vehicle registration and insurance proof when he wasn’t looking. He played his part.

The paper is definitely from Joyce, though. 

He’s seen her handwriting, before, all over the fuckin’ place, swooping, swirling cursive that reminds her to get milk the next time she’s at Melvalds. Billy’s seen it pinned to the fridge in sappy, sweet-sick notes that she leaves for Hop and Freak Byers and Byers’ little brother, telling them to eat something while she’s gone, to remember to take out the trash, fuckin’. Whatever.

Point is, Billy knows it was her. And when he finally digs it out of the glove box, when he runs into it looking for an old pack of smokes somewhere outside of Nebraska, it’s folded in half three times and stamped with his name and feels like an attack.

Billy. 

Only, Joyce calls him William when it’s something heavy and important, so. William. Might as well be, as far as Billy’s concerned. 

Billy, she starts. Good a place as any, sparking a fuse she isn’t equipped to monitor. He doesn’t deserve shared beers and hidden notes.

Billy, Joyce says, with all the weight of William. I know that you’re having a hard time adjusting. I should’ve checked on you but I wasn’t sure what to say and now you’re gone. I wasn’t always the best mother to my own kids, and sometimes old habits die hard. I know you’ve had a hard life, even though you never talk about it, and I know all of this shit must hurt like hell, but you have to know that I’m proud of you for everything. Making it out of the hospital in one piece. Especially that–

His palms sweat, smearing the page when he flattens it against the wheel, smoothing its surface in the moonlight so he can read it, and can’t, because Hop insisted they have one more beer before Billy took off for the coast, and now–

We should’ve checked on you before. That’s all I want to say. You’re a good kid, Billy. You pretend not to be, but you are, and seeing you with Hop, how he loves you like a son…I’m here for you. We all are. I’ve included a list of phone numbers you can call any time. We’re here to help–

Phone numbers for both Wheeler kids. And Lucas Sinclair. And Dustin Henderson. And the Byers’ place. 

Call anytime, Joyce says. 

Anyone. Anytime.

Seeing you with Hop, how he loves you like a son–

Billy sniffs and chokes on a sudden, violent wave of emotion. Joyce Byers doesn’t know what the fuck she’s talking about.

–

He should’ve said goodbye to the one person that came second to mattering the most.

It eats at him, tearing away chunks of his flesh with small, sharp teeth. He moves into his new apartment by the sea and thinks about drowning himself in it.

–

A month after landing in California things are different.

Worse.

–

He tries not to think about Steve Harrington, who he hasn’t spoken to since that cold, shitty night in November when they shed each other’s apologies like old winter coats.

Everyone else came to say goodbye, but. 

Not Steve. Should be a clear enough answer that what they had was nothing but that doesn’t matter to Billy. Could never matter. Steve’s memory comes up like gray water in the bathroom sink. Not there one day, and then. 

There.

Sits like a ghost in the corner in the same outfit he wore the last time Billy saw him, delivering Maxine to a brand new campaign. Soft yellow sweater like swallowing canyons in the morning light.

“You look like shit,” Billy tells him. The Doctors said it could happen, off and on, for the rest of his life. Seeing the dead and the left behind, it’s the cruel result of playing bitch to an interdimensional monster. Taking a claw through the chest and surviving an IV drip of internal bleeding that still acts up when Billy takes a fist to the head.

It never happened, when he was in Hawkins, but. 

That’s just Bill’s luck. It’s a punishment. He’s in hell. No two ways about it, because.

Ghost Steve Harrington shrugs his yellow shoulders and everything looks worse, here. Drab. Billy thinks California wasn’t made for gray weather but since it’s November, the sea foam has scrubbed the color from everything until only acid remains.

Ghost Steve’s sweater looks brown in Billy’s bedroom. 

Billy gets used to him, more or less. Ghost Steve never says anything, but he watches Billy fall into bed every night and his eyes spell judgment. Why don’t you unpack these boxes? Why haven’t you used any of that green to buy a half-decent setup? Why don’t you call Joyce, you know she worries–

Once, Billy throws a pillow at Ghost Steve Harrington’s head. “Go away, already.”

Billy wonders if the real Steve, alive Steve, is as pretty as his memory makes out for him. 

He is. Always was.

Billy hates himself. “You’re not real, you know. You’re alive. Most of you is alive, back in Hawkins.”

Ghost Steve just smiles at him, slow and terrible as if to say I’m dead here and so are you. 

It fucking sucks. Billy tugs the blanket over his head and ignores Steve Harrington the Ghost. He ignores everything until it starts coming up like sludge in the bathroom sink.

–

Billy writes a letter to the only person in the world who understands what it feels like to harbor shit for a man who never once noticed him, until they had each other’s blood under their nails. 

So.

As soon as the landline is installed, Billy breaks his rule and scribbles the number down, addressing the envelope to Little William Byers, Who Can Always Hold His Water.

415. 667. 8224. For Emergencies only.

From, Big William Hargrove. 

Will can be trusted. Billy worries about him and it’s a roiling, sore-spot weakness. He’s terrified that Will’s made up his mind to never speak to Billy again.

He sends the letter, anyway. 

–

Billy starts seeing other people, too. In his house. On the street. 

Ghost Steve Harrington isn’t too thrilled with all the extra company, but the only other memory in the world brave enough to stand in his bedroom used to tuck him into his He-Man pajamas at night, so. Nothing Martha Hargrove hasn’t seen before. 

Billy starts to wonder if he’s going crazy.

Heather’s got dominion over the bathroom. Looks exactly like the last time Billy saw her, in that dumb-fucker Lifeguard uniform, except her arm is gone. Torn away. Little bits of her blood get on Billy’s cheek when she turns from her reflection in the mirror, eyes brimming with vitriol and lost potential as if to say, you fed me to that thing. We were friends, Billy, I was your only friend–

“You’re not real,” Billy tells her. Pisses in the toilet bowl, as if to prove his point. 

Heather’s not real. 

None of it’s real. 

–

A week before Thanksgiving Billy calls to tell Joyce he’s suffocating. To tell her that he misses Freak Byers and his little brother so much that Billy can’t breathe sometimes, and it’s Joyce’s fuckin’ fault. She’s a bitch, and Hop’s a loser, and he misses them both so much that he’s packed and unpacked and repacked his apartment four times because California doesn’t feel like home anymore. 

He misses the couch. He wants the dead to stay buried. He wants to go home.

So Billy drinks a bottle of schnapps and calls to say that Joyce can go fuck herself hard, Billy hates her for turning him into this, but Steve Harrington answers the phone.

It’s two o’clock in the morning Hawkins time, so Billy hangs up.

Steve calls back immediately, “Everyone’s asleep,” He says, voice rough with unuse. “Make it quick.”

Billy’s killed himself thinking about Steve, like this. Fresh from sleep. Warm. “Uh,” He says intelligently, “Sorry.”

“Who is this?”

He wonders if Ghost Steve is still in the bedroom, or if he went back to Hawkins. Floating on the clouds. “This is, uh. This is Billy.”

“Billy Hargrove?” Like he didn’t spend months in Billy’s hospital room. Didn’t cry when Billy learned to walk again.

“Yes.”

“Hi,” Steve says, soft. 

So warm and fleece-lined with emotion that Billy wants to curl up inside of it and never, ever leave. Something ruffles as Steve shifts his weight, waking up a little bit. “Hold on, Bill, let me–”

“No,��� Billy says, “She’s asleep. You don’t need to wake her up.”

“You called.”

“I know.”

“She won’t want to miss you, you never call.”

“I know, alright? I just. I don’t want to wake her up,” Billy says, swallowing against the threat of tears. He hates Joyce but he doesn’t want to make anything worse than he already has by just. Living.

“Are you serious?” Steve snorts like Billy’s the most ridiculous, stupid fucker on the planet. “You called at two o’clock in the morning and you don’t want to wake her up?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“That’s so weird.”

Billy sniffs, exhausted, “Who asked you?”

“Nobody,” Steve tells him easily, “No one, I just think–”

“Why the fuck do you care enough to think about it or me or Joyce?” Billy snaps. The receiver groans a little in his fist, “It’s not any of your business–”

“--You know I care about you, Billy.”

“Do I?” Billy sips at his bottle, angry enough to see red, “You say shit in the dark. When you’re tired. When–”

“Hey, dickshit, you woke me up.”

“It’s not dickshit, it’s dip shit–”

“--Okay–”

“Fuckin’ Einstein.”

Steve doesn’t hang up. Billy considers it, seething until he takes another swig, and then Steve asks, “Are you alright?” 

The world comes to a sudden, screeching halt. The tender pink and still-healing parts of himself inflate with vulnerability, which only makes him angry. “I’m fine.”

“Really?”

“Yes, asshole.” 

“You’re drunk and it’s two in the morning–”

“--It’s only midnight where I am–”

“--Well, people who are actually fine don’t drink schnapps at midnight on a fuckin’ Tuesday.”

Billy freezes, back going ram-rod straight against the drywall. “How. How’d you know–”

“Only schnapps gets you slurring like that,” Steve says. Then, catching himself, “I mean ‘you,’ as in. The royal you.”

They partied in high school. Never together, but near. Billy–

It feels like a lie. He lets it go.

“I don’t know what schnapps does to you, as in. Billy Hargrove.”

I miss the way you say my name, Billy doesn’t tell him. He tosses the bottle back, swallowing fire as it bubbles up the lining of his throat. “Kay, well. Tell Joyce I called.”

“You could call back tomorrow and tell her yourself.”

“No,” Billy says, fiddling with the hole in his jeans. 

“Why not?”

“Because it’s none of your fucking business, Harrington, that’s why.”

“She worries about you,” Steve says, fully awake now. Sitting, probably. 

Billy tries not to get caught up in the mental image of Steve Harrington with bed-head and pillow lines on his cheeks and blankets pooling around his hips. 

Fails. 

Steve says, “Joyce loves–”

“--Why are you sleeping at her house?” Billy demands. Remembering himself. Remembering that the couch used to be his, before he ran away. 

“I get nightmares,” Steve says. Billy knows that. Billy knows– 

“Bullshit,” He’s angry about it. What tore them apart. “What’s there to be afraid of, anymore?”

“I saw you get punched through the chest,” Steve says, “On July Fourth. I was up there in the rafters, and I just. Saw. Does something to a nineteen year old, you know?”

He was there after, too. Until he wasn’t.

Billy’s palms grow wet and clammy against the bottle.

He has the sudden and familiar urge to apologize. Sorry Steve had to see that. Sorry the image of it meant nothing, in the long run. Nickels and dimes. He lived and, really, what was the trauma for?

Billy opens his mouth, chin wobbling and–

“Is that why you. The hospital. Why you–”

“Shit, it’s late,” Steve yawns. “I’ll tell her you called.”

“Sure,” Billy says, scrubbing the wet on his cheeks. “Thanks. Appreciate it.”

“No problem.”

–

Max sends him letters. Another thing he caves into, later on.

For Emergencies only. 

From, Billy Hargrove. 

She writes immediately. The envelopes are always crinkled by fingertips and nails, the ink always smudged with tears and grief. He has to imagine that they get that way, dilapidated because a journey across six states can’t be easy on them.

He can’t imagine Max crying as she writes to him. Can’t imagine her crying at all. 

He thinks about her in that house, sometimes. 

He hopes. Prays. The guilt swallows him whole.

– 

Billy develops a system for determining if the person he’s talking to is real. 

“You’re a beach bum,” The guy says. All tanned skin and small, curved lips. No black sludge leaks from his eyes, so. 

Real. Things have gotten worse on the coast.

Billy stares up at him from the sand, counting the seconds. He doesn’t have a towel. Joyce tried to get him to take some, one, but Billy is the spitting image of his father. Old habits die hard, so. He’s got minerals seeping through the holes in his pants and his hands feel grimy, covered in sea stuff for his pride.

“I see you here,” The guy says, “Every day.”

“Sure.”

“Ain’t you got a job, man?”

Billy turns his attention back to the waves. The foam.

“Guess not,” The guy shifts his weight, blocking dull gray sunlight. “You from around here?”

“LBC, originally,” Billy says, surprising himself. He pulls his knees to his chest with a burst of salty, stinging wind off the shore. Somewhere, about a mile into the deep past Manila landing, something massive is rotting in the waves. Feeding the ecosystem. Circle of life, and all that.

The guy nods, “What brings you to Arcata?”

“Just moved back from the midwest.”

“Mm, Chicago?”

“No, Indiana.” Billy says, not in the mood for conversation.

“Got used to small and shitty, then?”

Billy laughs, surprising himself. It's the first noise he’s made in weeks with a person who’s not caught in a ten-second delay over his landline. Feels okay. Weird. “Yeah,” Billy determines, “I like that Arcata’s on the bay and not wide open. Out there, you know?” Billy gestures to the ocean with his sleeve cuff.

Can’t see the other side of it. Landlocked or not.

The guy seems to understand. He watches the shoreline for a long while and then he says, “What’s in Indiana?”

Monsters. My sister. Shadows. “Nothing,” Billy says. “That’s why I’m on the beach.”

“Nothing here either, amigo,” The guy says, grinning slow and easy, “Looks like you traded shit for shit.”

“Alright. Thanks.”

“I’m Argyle,” Argyle says. 

“Billy,” He lifts his hand toward the sky for a shake, just like his daddy taught him. 

Argyle just nods at him, chewing on the inside of his cheek. Billy’s palm falls, dejected, to the sand. 

They watch the shoreline. They watch a seagull try and swallow a crab and then laugh when its throat is nearly torn open from the inside. It’s good to laugh. Weird. Dark thing to find humor in.

“I own a surf place,” Argyle says when the seagull takes flight. “Ever heard of it?”

There are a million out here. “Sure.”

“Not really a surf place, in the conventional sense. I do longboards too. And Mary Jane. Pizza, for Miss Mary’s lovers.”

Billy nods, pulling his knees close again, watching sand tumble from the grip of his leg hair. 

Argyle sparks something that looks like a cigarette and smells like a joint. “You need a job?”

“What kinda job is it?”

“Selling surf supplies. Longboards and weed and pizza–”

“Is that legal?”

“Not yet. Legalize gluten,” Argyle says, with a triumphant fist.

Billy shrugs so Argyle shrugs, casting shadows. Teasing. “If you ain’t got a job, how’d you afford to leave LBC for Indiana, and then bum-fuck for Arcata?”

“Big Brother hush-money,” Billy says, serious as a heart attack but Argyle laughs, and like. 

The skies, fuckin’. Break. Open and pour. 

It’s the best thing Billy’s ever heard. The timbre of it licks at the pink, still-healing skin on Billy’s chest through his jumper. Argyle’s lilting, chaotic beat lights him up and magically casts itself out of Billy’s lungs until they’re laughing at each other. Laughing together. 

It’s weird. Good.

“You’re a bizarre fuckin’ guy, beach bum.”

Billy shrugs, again, self-conscious. “Where’s your shop?”

Argyle points over Billy’s shoulder at a small, driftwood shack he hadn’t noticed today, or yesterday, or last week. The sign looks brand new. Says, Surfer Boy Pizza, In bright, shining letters.

“That’s her,” Argyle says, in love.

Billy stares at the shoreline. “That’s a dump.”

“Hey, I’ve had to hoard money from the Government. We’re not all as lucky as you,” Argyle grins, slow and easy, “You want the job or not? Could use a little silence in the shop. The other guy I work with, Eddie, he’ll talk your fuckin’ ear off about nothing if you give him the chance. Look to me like you won’t give anyone a chance.”

Billy feels like he’s been doused in cold water. 

He rocks back and forth, breathing in and out until the feeling passes, “Maybe,” He says. The best he can do. A non-answer. A remedy.

“Alright, well. Stop in sometime, if you get bored staring at the ocean,” Argyle grins at him, beaming itself onto Billy’s face until they’re mirror images. “Freak.”

–

Billy watches a lot of T.V. 

His living room is cast in a permanent silver hue, painting his hair gray and his lips purple. All that money rotting in his bank account and he’s only pitched together enough to buy a standard television box, and a place for her to sit, and a place for him to sit. 

His apartment is functional, like a prison. His kitchen is made of one bowl, one cup, one spoon (because he can saw into things with its blunt edge, should anything ever come to that), and a hot plate. He doesn’t have a skillet or a soup pot or anything so the shit is practically useless.

He eats dollar tacos from the hut. 

He starves. 

He drinks enough water and beer to send fluid leaking from his pores, and he watches T.V. 

Always. Blue.

This close to Christmas, all three stations are swamped with targeted Ads. Can’t go half a beer without enduring another fuckin’ commercial, selling sneakers and Atari game consoles and brand new VW station wagons. 

Billy chugs another PBR and thinks he could buy a hundred VW station wagons, thanks to Big Brother. He could buy a private plane, and an eight-bedroom house on the coast, and if he ever runs out of green there’ll be more where that came from. That’s the perk of getting possessed by a monster, so. 

Billy finds a scrap of newspaper border and jots down the number that flashes across the screen. Thinks, he could probably visit VW tomorrow. Could pay for the entire thing in cash. Could pack a bag and drive back to the Midwest–

Hallway through an ad for hair plugs, the phone starts to ring. Billy ignores the shrill ding of the bell until it stops. Starts up again. Stops. Starts.

Eventually he yanks his telephone off the hook, swallowing a mouthful of beer. “What.”

“That’s not how you’re supposed to answer the phone.”

Billy pulls away, staring at the receiver. “Who is this?”

“Steve.”

“Steve Harrington?” Billy asks, a mockery of their first phone call. Like Steve didn’t take care of him in the hospital. Wasn’t there when Billy learned to walk again. When Steve doesn’t say anything back, Billy swallows. “It’s two o’clock in the morning.”

“You were kind enough to call at two my time, thought I’d return the favor.”

His stomach swoops, low and dangerous. “That was weeks ago, now.”

“You never called Joyce.”

“So?”

“So, I promised I’d do a wellness check.” 

Billy mutes the T.V., his arms breaking out in goose pimples with Steve’s next inhale. Feeling warm breath against his cheek from two thousand miles away. 

“Well. I’m alive.”

“Barely. Tell Joyce that.” Steve Harrington exhales into the phone. Billy imagines cigarette smoke and fire. 

Wishes it could burn him to the ground. “Look, I appreciate you reaching out or whatever, looking me up in the phone book so I can apologize to Joyce for being the shittiest of all her adopted children–”

“--I didn’t look for you in the phone book–”

Billy’s mouth dries up, tacky and uncomfortable. 

“--No one could look for you in the phone book. Way you run your life, you don’t exist, Hargrove.”

Billy stands. His knees crack. “How’d you get this number?” Sounds like a shitty, drunken cop in a shitty, dark thriller/drama about his shitty, shitty life.

“I asked Joyce.” Steve says easily. The hero.

“Where did she get this number?”

“From Max.”

Billy’s stomach swoops. “That’s bullshit. Max knows my address, not my phone number.”

“Maybe Joyce got it from someone else, maybe she didn’t, maybe she found it on a crumpled piece of paper that was thrown into the trash,” Steve says, “Does it really matter?”

“Yes. You had no right to do that,” Billy says, voice shaking. He wonders if Will threw his note away. If he’s angry. “None of you have any right to do this to me–”

“Totally,” Steve says, “Your sister has no right to know where you are. Joyce, who put a roof over your head for a year after you left the hospital, is supposed to stop worrying and missing you because you want it. Screwed that we care about you, the asshole who saved the town and all our lives and the fuckin’ world, on top of that.” 

We. 

Screwed that we care about you.

Billy’s stomach is full of rocks, roiling and knocking into one another. They throw him off balance and send river water pulsing up his throat. He’s drowning, he–

“You can’t save everyone and then disappear.”

Billy swallows. “I didn’t.”

“You didn’t even say goodbye, Billy.”

“Neither did you,” Billy says, furious. “Before that. At the hospital–”

“I don’t want to hurt you, okay? I. When I pushed–”

“Stop,” Billy says, “Please. Stop.”

“Sure,” Steve Harrington scoffs, full of rage. “My bad. Forgot you can’t accept that you’re a regular fuckin’ hometown hero and I’m a piece of shit.”

Billy hates this. He left Hawkins, to. To get away from this, and. He ran.

Might as well admit that, now.

Billy must make a noise, must fall apart, because. Steve’s stubble scrapes against the phone. “Billy. Look, I–”

“What do you want?” Billy’s voice shakes. Sounds weak. 

Harrington doesn’t seem to hear. “I just called to check on you.”

“Feels more like you’re beating me over the head with a rock.”

“Funny,” Steve says, “Cain and Abel, right?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Not really,” Steve tells him. An awkward silence yawns between them, stretching on until Billy thinks the call must’ve dropped, and then; “I didn’t call to check on you.”

Billy snorts. “And after all the steam you put into that speech?” He’s grateful that they’re even, now. Neither looking down their nose at the other. Liars and crooks, two of a kind. “Jesus Christ, what will Joyce say?” 

“I haven’t slept in two days. I’ve tried everything, but. I keep thinking about Starcourt.”

It takes the air out of Billy’s lungs. 

“I can’t stop thinking about you,” Steve mumbles. Soft enough that Billy isn’t sure he heard it right, but then, “Billy. I just. I needed to hear your voice. Are you okay?”

Billy can’t say anything back. He’s learning to speak, again, he can’t walk, he’s on the brink of death–

“Malibu? You there?”

Not a damn thing can be funny, anymore. “I’m sorry, Steve.”

“It’s alright.”

“If I hadn’t been at Starcourt, you’d be asleep right now.”

Steve snorts, “Don’t be stupid.”

“It’s true,” Billy mutters, sick, “In a roundabout way, if I hadn’t been on the road that night, if that. Thing had never crawled inside of me–”

“If that hadn’t happened we wouldn’t be together now,” Steve says. 

The weight of the world, on their shoulders.

Billy cracks. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for. You. Hargrove, you’re the only person left who doesn’t have to apologize,” Steve Harrington breathes deeply, into the receiver, and Billy swallows it. Fills his own lungs to taste cigarette smoke. “I called because I knew you’d be up. I just. Knew you would be. Cain and Abel, right?”

“Brothers’ keeper,” Billy says. The television screen flickers. The world is blue, and Billy is. Cast in its light.

“Can you sit with me? Just until I fall asleep.” Steve sounds like he’s drowning.

Billy can’t help but to jump in and save him.

–

Surfer Boy Pizza is even uglier on the inside. 

Argyle wasn’t kidding about the surf supplies plus description. From the moment the door shuts behind him, Billy’s at a loss trying to figure out what anyone would stop in here to buy since it seems like the kind of place people are exiled to.

The air is stale. Beach salt and sweat permeate the air as the result of a broken cooling unit, leaking onto the ground that hasn’t been scrubbed clean in months.

“Hello?” Billy asks, barely above a mumble, “Anyone home?”

“Back here!”

Billy tugs his flannel closer, cherry-picking his way through piles of useless shit and garbage. Surfer Boy’s walls are messy with knickknacks and shitty wire shelves pushed haphazardly against white and red checkered tile. Piles of fishing nets, lead-bellied life preservers, and vintage scuba gear mark the landing of the main desk, which has to be a repurposed McDonald’s check-out counter.

Behind it, covered in swirling, snaking tattoos, a man stares at him. 

He’s cute. His fist turns white around a water-spotted glass jar that says, Eddie’s Homemade Fishing Bait. The H has been drawn to look like the devil. 

“Uh,” The guy says smartly. 

“I’m Billy,” He puts his hand out but the guy doesn’t take it, he just stares. Stares and Stares.

“Okay. I’m here to see Argyle,” Billy points to the jar, “I’m guessing you’re Eddie?”

“I’m Eddie,” He says, cheeks turning bright pink. 

Great.

“Okay, uh,” Billy fiddles with the cuffs of his flannel. “I sit on the beach, sometimes.”

“Every day,” Eddie tells him, still not moving, “I see you out there sometimes.”

“Every day, uh. Yeah. Is Argyle–”

“Are you here for a job?” Eddie asks, tacking his jar behind a sign that says the exact same thing. Eddie’s Homemade Fishing Bait, like maybe he’ll lose one or the other if he doesn’t keep track. “If you’re sniffing around for a job–”

“--Look, man, Argyle asked me to come and work for him.”

“Right, yeah, but I’m his partner,” Eddie says, scrubbing his hands on his jeans. “I’m his silent partner. Do you know anything about crabbing?”

Billy frowns, “Crabbing? I thought this was a surf shack.”

“And a fishing place, we sell longboards, too. Contraband t-shirts, homemade banana bread and vintage earrings, bait–”

“--And weed–”

Eddie jumps over the counter, slapping a damp, smelly hand over Billy’s mouth, “Dude, what the fuck? That’s private. That’s a private–”

Billy shoves him off, chest heaving like he’s just been chased. He’s been caught.

Eddie tracks him, eyes wide and afraid. Big eyes. Brown. Pretty.

“Don’t touch me.” Billy says, moving away.

“Sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Your fingers taste like fishing bait,” Billy spits, scrubbing his own hand over his mouth. 

“Sorry, I was making–”

“--Sure–”

“--Weed brownies,” Eddie says, wagging his eyebrows. 

“Weed brownies,” Billy repeats, tasting fish on his tongue. “Why the fuck do they taste like pond scum?”

“That’s my special ingredient,” Eddie says, and. He cackles. High and bright and frightening, like a man brandishing a knife who knows something Billy doesn’t. 

It’s strange.

It startles a laugh out of Billy, anyway. Weird and good but terrifying. Argyle in another font, scribbled in the shape of swirling tattoos and pretty brown eyes. 

Eddie watches him. 

“What?” Billy says. He rubs a palm over his face, suddenly self-conscious.

“Nothing,” When Billy stares at him, wide-eyed and confused, Eddie grins. “When you laugh, you’re just. You’re beautiful. Know that?”

Billy scoffs, “You’re a fuckin’ weirdo.” He says, but his stomach swoops. The Bastard.

“Yeah. When can you start?”

–

“I got a job,” Billy says, instead of hello when Steve calls on Friday. It’s warm, for late January, California finally giving up her quest toward the unfamiliar.

Steve chuckles. “Got a job as, what, a government spy?” 

“No.”

“Supermodel, then. Undercover CIA ops, government supermodel–”

“--Like Nixon?”

“No, what the fuck? Have you seen yourself in the mirror, Malibu? You’re more JFK,” Steve says, sleepy and warm.

“I’m working at a surf place,” Billy tells him. It’s no fun to make Harrington guess when he sounds a minute from sleep.

“No shit? Didn’t know you surfed.”

“Used to,” Billy says, grinning when Steve makes a low, impressed noise. “Don’t get excited, I stopped when Neil moved us to corncob hell.”

“Maybe you’ll get back into it. Being around that stuff all the time, y’know.”

“Maybe,” Billy says. His belly flutters with possibility. He’s strong enough to run now. Hopeful enough to work. “It’s more than just surf stuff, actually. We do fishing bait, and crabbing and long boards–”

“--They sell hand blown Christmas ornaments too?” 

“Probably,” Billy can hear the smile in Steve’s voice, dawning over his perfect pink lips. “High people love interior design.”

“What’s high got to do with it?”

“We sell Miss Mary.”

“Criminal,” Steve says, “I leave you alone for two minutes–”

“Eight months,” Billy tells him. A pin drops. “Not that I’ve been counting.”

Billy prepares himself for something, though he can’t put a finger on what’s got him ready to pace the fuckin’ floor, geared up for the deafening click! Of Harrington’s receiver as it hits the cradle. 

They’ve never hung up on each other, but. Then again, they’ve never held a conversation this long either. Usually Steve just calls so he can fall asleep to the sounds of Billy swishing beer around in a can, pissing into the toilet bowl, blowing his nose when the weather’s cold enough.

But.

There’s a first time for everything. 

“Has it been that long?” Steve wonders, surprising him. 

“Yeah,” Billy says. Lying, because it’s more than that. Two Novembers and a New year, a cut and dry four-hundred days trying to acclimate to all of the rot they’ve been dealt. But who’s counting? 

“When do you start your new job?”

“Sunday,”

“Got the whole weekend to, fuckin’. Skinny dip, rollerblade on the pier, and hike in the mountains.”

“I don’t live in the mountains.”

“Huh. Maxine said–”

“Jesus. Girl runs her fuckin’ mouth too much.”

“She’s just excited,” Steve tells him. Sounds like a big brother, a proud mom. “She talks all the time about joining you out there.”

“She’d hate it.”

Steve snorts. “Kid was born for the ocean. Like you, you know? Your eyes.” When Bilyl doesn’t say anything back, Steve yawns. “I’m sure you’ve got your reasons. Bay Watch not her scene anymore?”

Billy shrugs, “Not as beachy, where I am. LBC was quintessential California.”

“Where are you?” Steve asks, voice full of wonder. “Hold on, lemme get a pen and paper–”

“Not falling for that, Harrington.”

“Why not?” Steve demands, pouting. “I’m not gonna show up at your apartment door one day, y’know–”

“You might. With your pen and fuckin’ paper.”

“You’re right, I might,” Steve sing-songs, “I was able to bully your phone number out of the Byers’.”

“Hah!” Billy says, leaning forward. His beer’s almost gone so it doesn’t slosh when he jabs an accusatory finger at Steve from two thousand miles away, “I knew Will was the one who gave you my phone number. Little shit.”

“It’s not his fault, I wasn’t eating or sleeping, after you left, so. Joyce took pity on me.”

Billy almost cracks with the weight of his heart battering against his ribs. “Joyce?”

“She. Gave it to me.”

Billy swallows, throat clicking with emotion. “She had it the whole time?”

“They all did. Do, I guess,” Steve tells him. Then, after a beat, “You’re not mad, are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Please don’t change your fuckin’ number because of this.”

“Dunno. Might,” Billy lifts the can to his lips, sad to find it empty. “Should probably move, too, before Maxine tells everyone where my apartment is and you’re all pissed to find that the beach here sucks and we can’t even climb a fuckin’ mountain.”

Steve laughs. “But the other stuff?”

“Totally,” Billy says. He stands, pulling the phone as far as it will go until he gets his hand around the refrigerator door.

Steve lights a cigarette, inhaling sweetly into the phone. “Why didn’t you move to the mountains, anyway?”

“Room and board is expensive up there.”

“Didn’t the government shell out some money for your trouble?”

“Yeah,” Billy says, “Not enough.”

“We could combine our shit,” Steve says suddenly, “Y’know. Merge our assets and get someplace real nice.”

Billy drops his beer can. It gushes over kitchen linoleum like an unleashed tidal wave and he swears, stooping to mop it up with a dish rag. “Shit—”

“--Did I say something–”

“--No it’s. Nothing more stupid than the shit you usually say,” Billy tells him. Because. Combine our shit and merge our assets feels like something else. Grows teeth to chew and lips to say remember what tore you apart?

“Billy? You there?”

“I’m here,” Billy says. He dumps the dishrag into the sink, throat drier than it’s ever been in his life. 

He clears it. 

Says, “You want me to be your roommate,” and the words taste like lead. Burn like poison. 

“I want you to be my roommate,” Steve admits. 

It’s dark, through the kitchen window. Arcata sleeps and dreams outward, in every direction, and it makes Billy brave. Stupid. 

“Alright,” He says, playing along.

“Done deal,” Steve says, grinning, “Pack your bag, baby. I’m coming to get you.”

Billy’s heart swells, ignorant to the pain that will come in the morning when he comes to. “You work at Family Video, now?” Can’t. Stand the pressure of the moment.

“Yeah,” Steve says, “The mall burned down, so. Not a ton of other options unless I want to work at the General Store.”

“And you’re gonna come get me on a Disk Jockey’s salary?” Billy leans forward, fingers scrambling for his pack of smokes. “You could open your own ice cream parlor.”

“I don’t have–that’s not what I want to do with my life.”

“Really? Being a lifeguard is what I want to do with mine.” Billy quips. Steve laughs suddenly, smooth as marmalade on fresh toast. Warm. Billy wants to make him do it again. “Rescuing screaming brats from themselves as they run around the edge of the pool and stub their toes and crack chins on wet cement–”

“--Jesus Christ–”

“--Sunburns,” Billy admits. “The lis goes on.”

“That’s bullshit,” Steve says, ruffling the couch face as he sits straighter. “The chicks never shut up about you, that summer. You tanned.”

“Yeah, over my burns.”

“Is that even possible?”

Billy exhales a cloud of pale purple smoke, basking in the light from the television. “Sure, if you know the right elixir of sunscreen, tanning oil, and bomb-pops. Anything’s possible.”

“Another load of bullshit,” Steve tsks lightly, “Y’know, I was held prisoner in that fuckin’ sailor uniform all summer and I never saw you come through. Not once.” He says. Regretful, like it’s a goddamn shame Steve never got to see him in his slutty little shorts.

“Yeah,” Billy grumbles, “Never saw me once and now I’m damaged goods.”

“You’re Clark Kent,” Steve tells him, “You’ve got, like. Superhero good looks.”

Billy chuckles, “Thought I was a CIA Government Plant, Spy–”

“You’re beautiful,” Steve says suddenly. 

Billy stalls. The air escapes from his tires and he’s, fuckin’. Trapped. Stranded in this endless, horrible moment where all the shit he never thinks about lathers like soap suds, tasting bitter on the back of his tongue.

“Needa get your eyes checked, Bambi Boy.”

“Eyes are fine,” Steve grumbles. “How’d you get a bomb pop if you never–”

“--Max would get them for me.”

“Oh! Makes sense, I guess. She was always pink-cheeked and pissed off. Buying two of whatever she wanted that day. Guess I always assumed it was for Sinclair and not–”

“--Her bull-dog brother?”

“Her lifeguard,” Silence yawns again but doesn’t get to settle as Steve lights his cigarette. “Why’d you never come in yourself? Why send the kid?”

“You really gotta ask that?” Billy demands, grinning, “C’mon. Wouldn’t be caught dead in an ice cream parlor before work, pretty boy.”

“Not even for a bomb pop?”

“Not a chance,” Billy says easily, not. Wanting to tell the truth. 

Steve seems to understand, anyway. “I lied.”

“--Yeah?”

“I saw you around. That summer, before. Everything,” Steve says. He’s out there alone, making these swooping declarations, and he always has been, if Billy thinks back on it. If he’s honest with himself, so. 

“I was carryin’ a torch for you, before that summer,” Billy says. Figures. He probably owes Steve the truth after. Everything. 

Harrington sucks in a breath, “Billy–”

“I was scared. Always was.” Steve doesn’t say anything so Billy exhales everything, “Look, you don’t. It’s not–”

“--I didn’t know,” Steve says thickly. “I had a feeling, maybe, sometimes, but. Billy, if I had known–”

“--Then, what, you would’ve dumped your girlfriend sooner? Sucked me off after basketball practice?”

“Maybe.”

Billy’s vision blacks out for a second. Like a hard reset to make room for this new information. Whole machine’s fucked so they’ve gotta restructure, figure something else out. 

It’s whiplash. 

“I wound't have let you,” Billy’s skin is pink and tender, at his core. Not for monsters, for once. “My dad, and. Everything. I wasn’t a good guy, Steve.”

“Neither was I.”

“No, you don’t get it. I deserved what I got, Steve. Everything I did to my sister, and. To all those people–”

“--That wasn’t you.”

“Maybe,” Billy spits, “The shit in the summertime was fueled by a monster, but. Before? Steve, I–”

“--You’ve only ever been around monsters,” Harrington tells him. It sits for a moment, on Billy’s sternum. Weight. Eventually, Steve clears his throat, “I know more than I probably should, but. Max and I have talked.”

“Yeah, she fuckin’. She told me, right before I left Hawkins. Said that you ask about me. All the time.”

“You’re interesting,” Steve says, like, “Even before Starcourt I was interested in you. Understanding you.”

“There was nothing to understand. You didn’t know me, before–”

“Yeah, but I know you now,” Steve tells him. Because it’s enough. In his world, good’s always going to win out in the end, “And, like. I’m just thinking if there are monsters and Russians under the mall and little girls who can throw shit with their minds, it just. Doesn’t matter. I’m thinking it shouldn’t fuckin’ matter that I didn’t know you before you almost died because I was there for the bad shit. I saw you, Billy. I know you taught yourself to walk again, and I know you make me laugh, and I know that I can’t sleep unless I hear your voice, and I know that they night I pushed you down I ruined something. Good.”

Billy scrubs at his cheek. I comes away wet. 

“I’m serious about combining our shit,” Steve tells him, “Merging our assets, or whatever.”

“No you’re not. You haven’t really thought about it–”

“Fuck you, baby, all I do is sit here and fuckin. Think.” 

About you. All I fuckin’ do is sit here and think about you, Billy fills in the blanks for him. Figures, they shouldn’t have to spell everything out after everything they’ve barely lived through–

Billy clears his throat. It scrapes and burns. “What about Hawkins?”

“What about it.”

“I dunno, wouldn’t. Everyone miss you? Max and that curly haired, freaky little boy genius, and–”

“--I can’t sleep without you, Billy,” Steve says. Sounds like he’s drowning, like that first night, when he said– “Everything that’s happened, and it’s like. We’re just animals, you know? Caught up in trying to stand on two feet and we get so fuckin’ consumed by the specifics of everything. What you had to do to survive, the shit I don’t know about, the kids, the mosnters, just. Everything.” 

Speeches. Billy had to sit through so many speeches, when he wouldn’t fuckin’ die already, and. 

Never thought he’d want to listen. 

Never thought Steve–

“All I know is I want to be with you, Billy.”

Outside the window, the sky is turning silver. 

“Let me be with you. Any way I can.”

–

It’s nice to be around people who don’t know where Billy came from. To the boys at the Surf Ship, he is a ghost, born in some long ego era. 

Whoever he was before doesn’t matter.

Argyle and Eddie bring him back to life.

–

Neil Hargrove tries to kill him.

Just after Valentine’s Day, just after we’re animals, let me be with you, all i know is I want to be with you–

Maxine calls to tell Billy that Neil shot himself. 

Yeah. Calls, like. The telephone. Billy can’t find it in himself to be angry about that, because he’s missed her and then she says, something happened.

She says, Dad ate a bullet for his first meal of 1988. And then she says, Your dad. Neil did, like Billy would ever forget. Would ever need reminding. Then she says, he didn’t survive.  

Billy. 

He’s got all sorts of fucked up feelings about it, right away. He folds in half three times until he’s on the floor, marking the way his legs throw shadows on the carpet, large enough to cast doubt over everything Billy thought was true.

He cries. 

Neil is dead and Billy cries, already forgetting the sound of his voice.

–

At two o’clock in the morning the phone rings, again.

His neck hurts from laying on the carpet. The frayed edges of Maxine’s notebook paper plant like tiny, insignificant seeds. They catch and take hold and Billy thinks, distantly, that he should do something before grief roots itself in the apartment, where it was never really allowed to before.

The phone stops ringing. Starts. Stops. 

Another letter has taken control of his life, and that makes him angry. He cries about it, and the phone starts to ring again.

Billy holds the receiver to his face, watching the note flutter when he says, “My dad died.”

“I know,” Steve tells him. “I meant to call sooner. I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner.”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“I wanted Max to be the one to tell you. And she doesn’t have your landline–”

“--I know you gave it to her,” Billy says. Thinks, if Maxine had sent him a goddamn letter through the fuckin’ mail to tell him the last monster is dead, he would’ve lost what’s left of his marbles, he would’ve–

“--Neil ate a bullet,” Billy says. He sounds like himself, but. He doesn’t. Steve holds his breath on the other end of the line, so Billy says, “I’ve never seen someone get shot, before. I’ve seen them get ripped apart.”

“Billy–”

“I shouldn’t have left,” He tells the ceiling. 

Steve goes quiet. It’s terrible, not hearing the cigarette smoke leave his lungs, not sensing his laugh where it blooms and grows like springtime flowers. They don’t deserve this. They’ve never deserved any of this, but. Who fuckin’ cares.

“You had to get out of here,” Steve tells him. The real Steve, alive and unwell in Hawkins, Indiana. “Billy, this place is–”

“Neil’s dead.”

“Maybe he deserved it.”

“And maybe I should be there for Maxine, for once,” Billy says. Aches to see her. Burns to hold her close. 

Steve snorts, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I just. I think that if anyone here was supposed to die–”

“--Stop–”

“--There’s a hole in my chest,” Billy admits. He can feel it, sometimes, rising like tree bark to scrape and tear at the air around him. A monster aiming to carve a place on him.

It’s so late. It’s so goddamn early–

“I’ll patch it up,” Steve says valiantly. The hero. The prince. 

Everything’s so easy for him. Simple.

“Maybe you’re right,” Billy says after a minute. After catching his breath.

“Maybe I’m right about what?”

“None of it matters,” Billy tells him. “Nothing matters so much that I can’t just. Tell you–”

But that’s a half-truth, funny in retrospect. Because almost three years ago, Billy died. Nearly. And he never expected that anything would matter to him ever again, but things happen all the time that have nothing to do with anything. That’s the beauty. They help him live. Will and Joyce and Freak Byers and Maxine and–

“Steve. I,” Billy swallows, throat clicking, “I lo–”

“--I want to see you,” Steve says in a rush, “Just. Tell me where you are. I can be there in a few days.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Maybe but that’s what I want. You. I want you–”

“You’re insane,” Billy scrambles, trying to grasp whatever excuses keep eluding him. “Like you don’t already know my address. Like Max didn’t fuckin’ tell you.”

“You’re right. I still need you to say the word, though,” Steve sounds like he’s moving, on the other end of the line. Bouncing on the balls of his feet in anticipation. “I’m serious. Tell me you want me and I’ll leave right now. If I drive through the night I can be there in a day.”

Billy’s heart soars, emotion flapping like wings in his chest. 

But.

“You can’t leave Maxine. Not with all this shit happening in Hawkins with Neil, and–”

“I’ll bring her with me,” Steve says, “We can take turns driving.”

Tears slide down Billy’s cheeks, full of hope. “She’s a bitch in the car."

"So am I, I only want to listen to Wham."

"She's only got a permit. What if a cop–”

“--We’ll go on a high-speed chase. I’ll get to you sooner.” Harrington says. 

Billy exhales a laugh. 

Thinks about the years spent wondering what he deserves. What he wants. Never imagining the line between them would whittle away and disappear until their weight could kiss like reunited lovers. 

Thinks of death and life. Of Max.

"Y'know, I usually sit on the beach, first thing. Watch the sunrise."

Steve hums. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," Billy scrubs away the tears on his face, shuddering as more slide to take up their mantle. “Got something to write with?”

–

The answering machine gets him. 

"Argyle," Billy says, standing over his kitchen sink. "You're not in. Uh. I just wanted to let you know that Steve's coming to town. Steve Harrington. He's on his way and I don't know what this means, I sorta feel like I'm drowning a little bit, but. In a good way. A really good way."

Billy rinses his stomach bile, watching as it swirls and disappears. 

"I don't think I'm going back to Hawkins, but. I also don't know if I'm staying here. My dad died, and Steve's brining my sister to see me, 'cause. I have a sister, I think I told you about her, and. I have a Steve. You know about him, so."

Billy swallows, wondering how many fuckin' goodbyes he will have to live through. 

What he will have to live through, now until forever. 

"Just," Billy says, voice cracking, "Thank you. For talking to me on the beach that day, and asking me to come work for you, and just. You brought me back to life. That's it. Maybe I'll see you tomorrow. Maybe I won't, but. Give Eddie a punch goodbye, for me. See ya around." Billy sucks a mouthful of air, scrubbing at his eyes, "This is Billy, by the way."

--

Billy's grateful Arcata has a shoreline. The ocean has been good to him, his first true sanctuary. Makes him think of the trees back home, in Hawkins. Has him wondering if it's okay, now that home is a person. People.

It's warm, for February. 

He watches the sunrise with a lump in his throat, knowing that any minute a car will pull into the lot behind him and love will walk back into his life. Maybe it never left. Maybe it's not something he's ever had to work for. 

He counts the minutes. He adjusts his blanket, the very same one Joyce draped over his hospital bed all those months ago, and then a car approaches. Two doors open and shut, one right after the other, and then.

Dawn breaks, driving a knife through the dark.

[captainlondonman]

New Skin Boss

Jed was glad it was Friday. His Boss allowed Friday to be the day when staff could wear what they wanted. During the week Jed had to tone down his gear, just jeans, thick soled shoes and a sweatshirt and anyway he had to wear a warehouse coat over. However on a Friday he did not give a shit what the other two lads in the warehouse thought and he always put on his Skin gear. Christ if you are a skin you have to show that you are, so out came the bleached jeans, the Fred Perry T shirt, the yellow braces and the yellow laced 20 hole Ranger boots. Like all good skins he wore no underwear and you could see the outline of his cock down one leg made more obvious by the piss stains from not shaking his knob when finishing his piss. The other guys wore their jeans and some boring top always looking at him as if he was an alien.

‘Well fuck them’, Jed thought

The Boss , Brian, was young, early 30s and seemed fixated with golf spending most of his free time on the golf course with his boring suburban friends. Jed had to admit he was good looking but God knows if he was straight or not. Had to be Jed thought with all this bloody golf. He was 6ft. good build, gelled hair with perfect parting and one thing Jed always noted was that there was a nice bulge hidden in his chinos. The guy obviously wore boxer shorts so his cock could swing around a bit. This Friday as they were packing up to go, Brian looked at Jed and said.

‘You always wear your Skinhead gear on a Friday, Jed. I just can’t see why and always so tight on you.’

‘Once a Skin always a skin, Brian. You wouldn’t know.’

‘Too right there, Jed, however I do admire you for looking like that. It may not be for me but it actually does suit you.’

 That night Jed met up with his pals at the local Skin club. Great always to be with fellow skins in their gear. Some wore rubber versions of skin stuff and a few of the bigger blokes would bring their slaves in with a thick collar and chain and make them kneel begging for a beer. This was his home and often he would hook up with another Skin for a night of raw sex but it was usually a one night stand. Christ he had probably had half the guys there. He was talking to Otto who was considered the leader of the Skins who frequented the club. Everyone called him Otto because he loved to go off for weekends to the Berlin Skin scene and besides you would not mess with him, he was at least 6’2” and built like a brick shit house, both arms heavily tattooed and a spiders web tat covering his head. Jed was telling the group abut Brian and his comments.

‘Mate it sounds as if you fancy yer boss. I fucking hope not as us Skins stick together.’

‘Shit, Otto, no way am I having sex with anyone other than a Skin.’

‘So what Jed if this boss was a skin, what would you do?’

‘Well IF he was, I fucking love to be his fuck bitch judging from that cock outline I see in his chinos. But that’s not gonna happen ain’t it.’

‘Stranger things have happened. If you are up for it me and two of me mates could help out a bit. Always want to make us Skin boys happy.’

‘You’re bloody joking’

‘Am I? What say we have a go next weekend but I will need all the weekend and you stay out of things till I call you. You will just need to let us in before you leave  and then you bugger off till I call.’

‘Not sure I can believe all this but hey man you are such a boss I’m willing to give it a go.’

‘Great, I like the sound of this commission. Will make for a good weekend.’

 The following week at 5pm the other guys had gone off and Jed did as he was told by putting something Otto had given him into a cup of tea for Brian.

‘Thought you might like a cuppa before I go off, Brian’

T’hat’s nice of you Jed. No doubt you are off for one of your boys night.’

‘You can say Skin instead of boys Brian.’

‘Maybe but that’s not my thing but if you insist yeah, Skin nights. Hope you enjoy. I’ll be another half hour and then I will lock up.’

‘Have a great weekend. I’m sure its gonna be special’

‘Who knows Jed?’

Jed whispered to himself ‘I know’

 He then opened the door to let Otto in and his two sidekicks.

‘You put the liquid in the tea did you, Jed’

‘Of course just as you asked’

‘Christ what have you there? It looks like a bloody huge suitcase.’

‘A bit like that but don’t you worry. Bri’s not gonna know what has hit him but the result will be exactly as you are wanting.’

‘I’m not sure now,’ Jed replied

‘Look fuck off mate and leave this to the professionals. Go.’ And with that Otto pushed him out the door and quietly shut it behind him.

‘Right lads lets give Bri 20minutes. That should be enough.’

They then opened the office door and saw Brian slumped over his desk.

‘Look like it’s worked boys so lets get to action, open up the case. First, hand me the shaving cream and razor as well as the chains and ropes but before we do anything lets get this guys clothes off.’

All three skins quickly removed Brian’s clothes

‘Well’ Otto said, ‘Jed is right, the guys got a good sized cock, I reckon a good 8inches when stiff but well find that out soon enough. A real waste in a pair of chinos. Dom, put these clothes in a bin bag and shove in the bin outside.’

Otto tied Brian to the chair with the ropes and taking out a good thick leather collar buckled that around his neck and then chained it to the back of the chair so his head was fully upright and unable to move.

Otto then took his electric razor and started on Brian’s gelled hair, great pieces falling to the floor. Once most of it was off he sprayed on the shaving foam, mixing it in with a couple of thick heavy globs of spit for good measure. Taking the razor he worked his way around the scalp once and then another go to make sure the head was smooth and properly scalped.

‘Shit that looks better for a start.  He has a good Skin shape of head. Fucking hate blokes with all that gel thinking they look bloody great. Better shut him up before he comes round but first let’s close the blinds and set up the video system for him.’

Brian started to come to and as he started to open his mouth, he felt  a round rubber ball being forced into his mouth almost making him gag and then it was strapped round the back of his head. He could not move his hands were firmly tied behind the chair and his head was immobile. He was vaguely conscious of a thick leather strap around his neck keeping his head firmly in position.

As his eyes still had a fuzz, he could make out in the dark room three men standing in front of him. They all looked dressed the same and he could make out high boots and shaved heads but little else.

One was bigger than the other two and came forwards so his face was up against. The guy looked fearsome and he could make out the guy was a Skinhead as he was dressed similarly to the clothes Jed wore on a Friday. The guy was bulky with thick legs encased in his bleachers and on his head a large tattoo of a spider’s web. On one cheek was another tattoo of a swastika.

‘So Bri, I’ve just put a ball gag in yer mouth to shut you up for now. You might see you’re naked but don’t worry that will get sorted out. Us lads are going to leave you for a while but before going we have a little piece of equipment we think will help you.

Otto opened up the ball stretchers and fitted them around Brian’s hefty pair of balls. As he clicked them in Brian let out a howl of pain as he felt his balls firmly locked and being stretched. You’ve a good pair there, boi, but we want them to give you a lower voice like us and besides you soon grow to love them and never want them off.’

By now Dom had set up the machine with a screen directly in front of Brian so he could not miss what was to be shown.

‘Ready Bri?’

All Brian could do in his anguish was mumble

Otto started the machine. The first video showed a group of skins hanging around some with knuckle dusters and others with bats, a group of chavs started to walk by the with Skins shouting at them. Every word was Fuck this, fuck that, Oi oi. Then the Skins waded in hitting the chavs with the bats punching the lads with their knuckle dusters, showing their power and making the chavs submit and run off. More videos started up all with real aggro Skins, looking for trouble, and always with the volume set loud, Fuck Fuck, Oi Oi. These words kept thumping in Brian’s eardrums

‘Right Bri, good stuff for you to watch. Well leave you now.’

While Brian sat tied up rigid unable not to watch the violence, the aggro, the sheer force and manliness of the Skins, Otto and his mates went next door for a couple of hours for a few beers.

When they returned Brian was wriggling in his seat, trying to force himself free, a look of sheer anger on his face, his eyes bulging with fury. His arms straining to be free.

‘Now what’s going on here Bri. Lets get that ball gag out.’

As Otto forced Brian’s mouth open and took out the gag Brian let rip

‘Fuck, fuck fuck, Fucking Skins. Oi oi ‘which he kept repeating his voice now deeper and his accent different, a working class sound erupting form his body. ‘Fucking skins,’

‘That’s more like it Bri. What I was hoping to hear.’

‘So for now we will leave the gag off but change the videos.’

Ok Dom put the other ones on for our mate here

The machine started up again and the new images flashed on to the screen. Again groups of Skins but this time no fighting, no fists. Instead the Skins were licking their Mates rangers, all in either bleachers or camos, tight, showing off their package, their hands rubbing against their crotchs. Other images showed some young Skins being forced down on their knees and their heads rammed against the older Skins bulges, unzipping and taking out their erect cocks. Being told to get on with their blow job . the older guys grabbing the head of the younger ones and forcing them to take the full shaft down the back of their throat. In other images other guys unzipped their bleachers and took out their cocks slowing wanking for the camera, eyeing each other and some helping their mate out, hands firmly grasped around the dicks, then coming with reams of thick white spunk at the camera. Other shots showed Skins with a rear zip having it undone and the top Skin shoving two or three fingers up their butt, , or getting down to give them a face fuck letting their tongues explore their mate’s arse. Then pictures and a full fuck as the main guy grabbed the other’s waist and pulled him onto his rigid cock, all the time shouting Fuck.  Another video showed a fist fuck with bottom getting down on his knees and sticking his arse up so his mate could slowly start with a. couple of fingers moving then around to open up the guys arse and adding a third and fourth finger as the bottom squirmed begging for the full fist. Then the hand started to disappear in the guys cheeks and finally the arm moved in and up to the hilt. His own cock was out and wanking as he fist fucked his mate, both shouting with Fuck me mate, take my fist you fucking Skin boi.

As these pictures appeared so Otto and his mates decided to leave.

‘Bri needs a good few hours seeing all this, and you two can come with me otherwise you’ll be wanking each other raw. Later OK’

Brian was left alone to force watch the videos

As the guys were downing their beers and smoking their fags they eventually heard a voice next door shouting

‘Fuck the shit out of the bastard.’

‘Go on fucking wank yerself’

‘Get that fucking cock down yer throat’

The words went on and on in  Brian’s new voice

Otto opened a beer and added something to it saying

Time to move on to the next phase boys

They went in and looking at Brian staring at the screen, still shouting

‘Fucking hell, Otto’ Dom said. ‘He’s luving all this, look at that fucking dick of his.’

Brian was sitting shouting at the screen urging on the blow jobs, the wanking and the fucking and his cock was stiff showing a full 8’ of thick manhood with a decent head. It was as if Brian wanted to break free and grab his cock for a wank

‘Good boi.’ Otto smirked. ‘Glad you luvin this what we Skins do to each other. No one has sex like a Skin. So take a beer and calm down’

Brian slurped down the beer and had not even drained the bottle when he conked out.

‘Right lads get the kit out, time for a bit of art work. Otto took out the tattoo kit with all the needles and colours

‘Time this guy looked more like us eh?’

Dom said ‘what you going to do mate’

‘Well we have to make a start and he can always add himself later as he will do. So I’ve worked out a few ideas. There are a couple of obvious ones.’

Taking hold of Brian’s hand he started to etch out Skin on his left hand on each finger, all in black letters a good inch high.

‘Well he can’t hide that now and lets give him another for every bloke to see. Taking the black needle again he etched out a spiders web on Brian’s neck, not as big as his own on his head but one about 4inclhes in diameter and one that no shirt would hide.

‘Looking good. Lets do one more.’

He made a pair of Ranger boots on his right arm with yellow laces.

‘I like a bloke with yellow laces.’ Otto said. ‘Always the sexiest. Right lets clear this up and give him a quick rub with some disinfectant. The bruising will soon go and he can admire himself.’

‘Ok Chas now get the next bit of gear for our friend.’

Chas took out a full rubber hood with no eyelets and just a plastic tube coming out from the mouth. Otto took the hood and put it over Brian’s head zipping down the back to make sure it was a very tight fit. He then fitted a funnel to the end of the tube.

‘Perfect. Christ I’ve been dying for a piss after those beers and cant save it much longer so Bri here is in for a fucking long drink. So lets wake the boy up .’

With that Otto took his hand and gave Brian a resounding slap across the rubber bound mask. ‘Fucking love hitting a bloke in rubber. Take that you fucking shit heap, and take that again,’ whacking Brian 3 times to make sure he was awake.

As Brian came round Otto opened his bleachers fly and pulled out his large thick tool.

‘Shit man,’ Dom said ‘I always luv seeing that big dick of your. Never fails to get me going’ as he started to rub his crotch.

‘Later man but for now lets give Bri here a good drink’

Otto put his dick over the funnel and start to let a stream of hot piss down it. Brin suddenly felt this wave of acrid piss spilling into his mouth but was totally unable to stop swallowing it. At first he hated the taste and tried to block it out as it poured down his throat but something clicked in his mind. It didn’t taste that bad, in fact he loved the taste and the more Otto poured down the more enthusiastically Brian swallowed.

‘You now fucking luv that boi, don’t you. Take my piss, after all those beers there’s plenty for you, as wave after wave poured down.’

Both the guys watching started rubbing each others crotches,  thick outlines in their bleachers showing.

‘Ye see Bri, yer getting me mates all worked up and you can expect some luvly creamy spunk coming yer way from them. So guys hold yerself for now. The guys still rubbed each other precum stains showing through. Brian drank every drop of Otto’s piss.

Otto removed the funnel and then the rubber mask showing `Brian’s skin head glistening with sweat.

‘That was fucking great.’ Brian said. ‘Make sure you get a few more beers and let me have it again.’

‘See boys, the change is working. Well done Bri youre on the right road. Now me, Dom and Chas are gonna stand in front you. I’m gonna remove your neck chains but not the collar, it suits you, and take off the ropes. Us skins like our Rangers nice and clean and with all that piss of mine in yer mouth you are gonna lick every one so now get down on yer knees. ‘

Otto grabbed Brian by his leather collar and forced him down on his knees

‘You got 6 rangers there boi that need a good lickin so get on with it.’

Otto kept his hand on the chain that was attached to the collar and pushed him to start with Chas’s. Brian knew what he had to do and do it right

Chas shouted ‘Get fuckin right down Boi and let me see that tongue shine up me boots.’ Brian let his pissed stained tongue lick deeply on the toe caps using his spit to shin up the spit oozing out his mouth

‘That’s it boi get all the way round.’ Brian was grovelling on the floor licking round the toe caps and the backs of the Rangers his chin buffing up and his hands firmly around the boots. He looked up at Chas to make sure he was doing a good job and saw that he was stroking his crotch and Brian could see the outline of a good sized dick stretching down the inside of his bleachers

‘You lick well boi, gets me going. Me cock now nice a hard., as he unzipped his fly and let his hand go deep inside his bleachers to pull out a long cock.

‘Now fucking lick mine’ Dom shouted. He already had his dick out and was stroking it dropping some spit on to his shaft.

‘Fucking lick and use your tongue and spit boi,’ Otto shouted putting one of his boots firmly on Brian’s head and forcing it down onto the boot. ‘When we say lick you fucking lick got it.’

Chas and Dom now had their hands on each other’s cock giving one another a good wank.

Otto said,’ I’m saving you for later Bri but come on lads let’s see you both spunk over Bri’s face you can see he’s gagging for it

Shit I’ve a load of good spunk ready for him’ Chas shouted

‘Me too’ Dom said ‘I love your hand rubbing me cock, Chas, keep it going. As for you Bri sit up and lets see your face. That’s it, stare at our pricks and get ready for our cum.’

Dom was now using his hand up and down the full length of Chas’s cock and Chas was working Dom’s head knowing he loved his head rubbed with spit.

Otto watched rubbing his own crotch, smirking at his lads getting off on each other.

‘We’re gonna cum together boi so be ready to swallow and what you don’t I’m gonna rub all over yer face’

Dom and Chas had worked one another up to shoot their load.

‘I’m ready now Chas’

‘Me too Dom, yer fucking great at wanking me off, Christ im coming’

‘Take aim’

Both guys let out a stream of cum onto Brian’s face, Brian trying to swallow as much as he could loving their spunk and started using his hands to wipe it into his mouth whilst Dom and Chas rubbed what was left all over Brian’s face

Christ that fels better Ive been dying to shoot ever since we started his on the guy.

Otto said don’t worry I think youll both be at it again soon.

Otto took a wet cloth and wiped Brian’s face removing all excess of spunk.

‘I think its time to get some clothes on you boi, it the only clothes you’ll be wearing from now on, you never want to wear anything else. Once a Skin always a Skin. I’ve your new uniform.

Otto opened the suitcase and brought out the clothes for Brian. A Fred Perry black T shirt with yellow piping, a pair of camos with yellow braces, yellow long socks and 20hole ranger boots.

‘Ok Chas help the guy on with his gear. He needs to know how to do the laces of his boots.’ As Brian put on his clothes he started to feel even more different and wondered what clothing he had ever worn before this weekend. He seemed to know this was right for him and he felt it suited his body, showing off his chest and firm arse. The putting on of the boots was like a sexual surge, feeling them tight around his legs, knowing he could kick the shit out of someone wearing them with their steel caps. The pressure around his legs gave a pressure to his cock as it grew in length down his leg.

,Right Bri time to see the new you. This is what it’s all been about and hope you like what you see.’

Dom brought a mirror in and Otto pushed Brian in front

‘Well boi you look fucking horny,’ Otto said rubbing his dick

Brian was amazed. He now looked just like the others there and his spider Tat looking like a real Skin, but then he is a real Skin. He clenched his fists and could see the Skin tat on his knuckles. By clenching his fists he looked ready for a fight, tough, real aggro and so fucking manly, such a fucking turn on. His cock was rigid.

‘Right Bri time to finish off the transformation and I get the pleasure. Get over here.’

As Brian moved over towards him Otto unzipped his flies and put his hand deep down inside to pull out his thick veined 9inc rampant cock. This ain’t been washed in days boi so all the better for fucking you now bend down over your desk.’

Brian saw Ottos cock and for a moment winced at the thought but seeing this rough man standing in his Skin gear with his massive cock out at the ready, Brian knew he wanted to be fucked by this monster.

Brian did as he was told and Otto unzipped the rear of his camos.

‘I make sure all my bois have a rear zip as I love to fuck them in full gear. Dom you can call Jed now and get him down to see his Boss.. That’s some arse you got there,  Bri, just as I like good firm cheeks and a deep cleft at your hole.’

Otto spat two large globs of spit onto his rancid prick.

‘Makes it a bit easier for you first time.’

As he put his arms around Brian’s waist he moved his cock into the crack.

Dom and Chas were both watching rubbing their cocks knowing how well Otto fucked.

‘Well Dom no point in the two of you just watching and feeling horny so Chas get over to the desk next to Bri and let Dom fuck you at the same time. I know you love his cock.’

‘I fucking do’ Chas said as he leant over next to Brian and  unzipped his rear fly  Cum on Dom give it to me.’

‘Watching Otto fuck the hell out of Bri will make you even more horny.’

Otto took his hands and spread open Brian’s cheeks to let his cock find the hole.

Nice little hairy arse you got there boi and I can see a good slit you have for my big dick.’ With his hands keeping the arse wide open he let his head meet Brains hole and spat another glob to push the head in.

‘Fucking hell Otto what a cock you have, you’ll bloody well split me.’

‘Don’t worry boy once I get the head past, my shaft will glide up your arse right to the hilt. Just look at Chas and how he takes Dom’s cock.’

Chas was starting to move his body back to allow Dom into his arse. Dom had taken Chas by the shoulders and was pushing him against his balls.

‘I want to feel that arse of yours right up tight against my balls. Make em swing Chas.’

Chas rammed his body back as much as he could until he felt Dom’s pubes rubbing against him.

Meanwhile Otto had started pushing in the full length of his cock. That’s it boi take the full load as I’m gonna blast you.’

‘Shit this is fucking great, I’ll never want anything but dick again.’

By now both Dom and Otto were fully up as Chas turned next to Bri and taking hold of his head kissed him plunging his tongue down Brian throat.

‘That’s it bois enjoy one another while we enjoy you.’

‘Come on Dom lets give our lads everything we got and cum together’

The two men fucking started pummeling, grasping their prey and pushing their dicks in an out with increasing force and rapidity. Brian and Chas were giving each other deep throat groaning as they could feel the dicks up their arses ready to explode in side them

‘Christ Bri this is your moment there’s no going back now once I cum inside you. Dom  get your jism ready as I’m about to cum’

‘Me too mate’

And with that both Skins erupted their spunk deep inside Chas and Brian.

 The door opened and Jed stood there transfixed at the scene.

‘Fucking hell it’s a bloody orgy. What have you been doing.’

Otto slipped his cock out of Brian’s arse giving his cheeks a hard slap.

‘Well done Bri, you know how to use that bum of yours. Now see who’s here. It’s your mate Jed who asked us for help to change you.

Otto zipped up Brian’s rear and let him stand up to face Jed

‘Christ you looking fucking amazing’ Jed said staring at his boss. ‘I could never have imagined. I don’t know what to say Otto.’

‘I think you are about to find out.’

Brian walked over to Jed and before Jed knew what had happened Brian had him in a stranglehold making Jed unable to move.

‘So it was you, you fucking little shit who caused all this. You’re the one you has put me through all this, you fucking little wanker. I should have known. It’s you who have made me a skin’, he sneered into Jed’s face  spitting at him and using his spare arm to rub it in. ‘Fucking great life you’ve given me You made me a Skin just like you and Otto here. You’ve changed my life for ever.’

Jed did not know what to say ‘I didn’t know it was going to end this way Brian,’

‘Well it fucking has and let me tell you, its bloody brill. What a fucking great life you’ve given me. Who wants to be anything but a skin but I’ll tell you now having just been fucked good and hard by Otto, my cock needs to get rid of plenty of spunk and its your arse that’s gonna take it all.’

Brian threw Jed at the table and as he undid Jed’s jeans he could feel Jed with a full erect cock.

‘So you like seeing me like this do you. Well all these times I’ve seen you checking out my package you’re now gonna get it as I am so horny after Otto.’

Brian undid his zip by now his camos showing a large stain of precum.

‘Christ I’m ready for you and that arse Jed.’

With one arm firmly on Jed’s back he took hold of his cock and pressed against Jed’s crack which was already moist and waiting. He knew he was going to be fucked and he so wanted Brian inside him.

Brian decided this was no slow fuck he wanted Jed to feel every inch as he rammed the 8 inch prick all the way up so Jed could feel he could go no further. His movements were rapid but Jed wanted it all and was pushing his arse back and forwards to help the sensation and while being fucked he had his hand over his own shaft wanking for all he was worth.

‘Christ Brian fuck me, let me have all your cream as I’m about to spunk all over your desk. Go on faster and faster I want you. Christ I’m ready to explode’

‘You little horny skin you Christ I m ready to give you all my spunk’

‘Me to, shoot mate’

And with that both men groaned deeply and came at the same time a great spray of cum shooting across the desk from Jed and Brian at last cumming as he had so wanted to do during the weekend. He was a Skin and he loved fucking.

‘So guys, looks as if I’ve had another success. I can pack up.’ Otto said

Brian replied, ‘thanks Otto. Jed you’re coming home with me tonight I’ve not finished with you yet. I think you and I have something together and a good night of fucking will see what happens. I may have another job for you Otto.

 On Monday morning Brian and Jed were waiting in full Skin gear for their warehouse staff to arrive. The two guys walked in and saw Brian, no longer in his chinos and light blue shirt, but looking a full skinhead in his bleachers, Rangers and Fred Perry, totally shaved and the spider tattoo showing. He had an arm around Jed and as the blokes took in the scene so he tongued Jed.

‘Well lads as you can see there have been a few changes. You see me as I want to be and I’ve promoted Jed to be my personal assistant. I’ve decided to take the company in a new direction and in order to make the changes I’ve brought in some help, so meet Otto, Dom and Chas.’

The 3 Skins came in and stood behind the employees.

‘You won’t be going home for a couple of days as Otto  will be working on you. We are all going to be one fucking great Skin team.’

[kinkandkreep]

❥︎ 𝐁𝐚𝐛𝐲 𝐁𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧

❥︎ 𝐁𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧!𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐣𝐢𝐫𝐨 𝐒𝐚𝐧𝐨 𝐱 𝐁𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐤!𝐅𝐞𝐦!𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

❥︎ 𝑪𝑾: 𝑳𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒔𝒕, 𝒅𝒊𝒔𝒄𝒖𝒔𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝒂𝒃𝒂𝒏𝒅𝒐𝒏𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕

❥︎ "__" 𝒓𝒆𝒑𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒔 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒏𝒂𝒎𝒆

❥︎ '𝑲𝒈𝒐𝒔𝒊' 𝒊𝒔 𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒏𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒄𝒆𝒅 "𝒄𝒐-𝒛𝒚" 𝒐𝒓 "𝒈𝒐-𝒛𝒊"

❥︎ ᵃ/ⁿ: ʰᵉʸ ʰᵉʸ ʸ'ᵃˡˡ! ʰᵉʳᵉ'ˢ ᵗʰᵉ ᶠⁱⁿⁱˢʰᵉᵈ ᵖʳᵒᵈᵘᶜᵗ ᵒᶠ ᵐʸ ᵇᵃᵇʸ ᵈᵃᵈᵈʸ!ᵐⁱᵏᵉʸ ˣ ᵇˡᵃᶜᵏ!ʳᵉᵃᵈᵉʳ ᶠⁱᶜ! ᵇᵘᶜᵏˡᵉ ᵘᵖ, ᶜᵘˢ ˢʰᵉ'ˢ ᵃ ˡᵉⁿᵍᵗʰʸ ᵒⁿᵉ. ⁱ ʰᵒᵖᵉ ʸ'ᵃˡˡ ᵉⁿʲᵒʸ! 👋🏾

“Kgosi! Be careful love!”

The little tot’s shrieking laughter can be heard in response, his tiny feet carrying him towards you. 

A large smile plastered across your face, you crouch, arms open expectantly. Kgosi tosses himself into your embrace, giggling happily and gesturing to be lifted. 

Standing, you bring your baby boy with you, holding him gently but firmly and twirling a couple times in place. Again, that familiar laugh that never fails to warm your heart can be heard in Kgosi’s excitement. 

“Yay! Again!” Your baby claps, the movement clunky and uncoordinated what with his chubby hands.

“Noo, not again baby. Mama’s a little dizzy.” Kgosi frowns but his disappointment is quickly forgotten when he recognizes where you’re carrying him. 

The baby’s face lights up, black eyes twinkling with newfound mirth. 

“Swing mama, wanna swing!”

You place Kgosi safely in the bucket swing, lightly flicking the fat of one of his cheeks and chuckling as he shies away with a bright smile and yet another tiny giggle. 

“Hold on tight ok?” Kgosi nods determinedly, little hands gripping the rubber coated chains on either side of him.

“Ready mama!” Nodding, you take your place behind your son, pulling the swing up and back until the seat rests just above your head. You’re preparing to let go when a voice from behind startles you. 

“Miss __ __?” 

In your surprise you release the seat, your son’s shrieks of joy sounding as he swings back and forth. 

Turning, you face the man whom the voice belongs to, and you're shocked and a little disturbed to see he's a large scar running almost the circumference of his head, pale against his skin and visible though he stands a distance away from you. 

He’s dressed in all black, and you can see his eyes moving as he watches your son. 

Stepping into the man’s field of vision, you lay your arms defensively across your chest, expression flat and unamused. 

“That depends. Who’s asking?”

The black clad man’s eyes snap up to your face, and for a moment, you two engage in a tense stare down. 

Eventually, he relents, sensing that you weren’t going to. 

“I am here on behalf of Manjiro Sano. He wishes to hold an audience with you.” 

A sudden, sharp bolt of lightning zips down your spine upon hearing that name.

It had been quite literally years, and you’d not heard hide nor hair of the once invincible man. 

You’d managed to convince yourself that that was a good thing. 

“Why?” That one single word is so loaded with other lingering questions and feelings and anger that the man shifts uncomfortably. 

“I was only told to deliver the message, nothing more.”

You can tell the man knows more than he lets on, but refrains from saying anything else. Perhaps out of a sense of respect for Manjiro. Perhaps out of a subconscious desire to spare you the details. 

Whatever the reason, you find yourself a little peeved that he won’t spill, but nevertheless, you acquiesce. 

“Fine. But I’m taking my son somewhere safe first.”

“Actually,” the scarred man moves to take a step forward, quickly aborting the movement when you equally as quickly step back, feeling behind yourself for Kgosi. 

“Stay there. I don’t want you any closer to my son.”

The man nods, returning to his previous position. 

“Actually,” he begins again, one hand slightly outstretched as a sign of submission. “The King requested that you bring your son along. He wishes to see him as well.”

Upon hearing Mikey be addressed as “The King,” you lift a disbelieving brow. 

“Really? He’s having you refer to him as “The King?” You know, I become more glad everyday that he left me alone.”

You’re more so speaking to yourself, and the man clears his throat to draw back your attention. 

“When you’re ready, I will escort you both to the designated meeting place.”

With that, the man turns and begins walking off, your eyes watching him closely as he does. 

Turning, you finally address Kgosi, who has long since stopped swinging and has, rather uncharacteristically, been quietly watching the entire exchange. 

“Who dat mama?”

Unsure of how exactly to answer the question, you respond with the first thing that comes to mind. 

“He’s one of daddy’s friends baby.”

At the mention of his father, little Kgosi begins to bounce excitedly where he’s still seated. 

“Daddy yay!”

Despite your gripe with the man, you can’t help the sad smile that curls your lip at your son’s enthusiasm. 

‘If only you knew, son…’

It takes a bit to get Kgosi situated and gather up your belongings, but once you do, you find the scarred man leaned against a nearby tree, arms folded across his chest, awaiting your approach. 

"Ready?” He queries, standing to his full height. 

You give one solemn nod, following when the man beckons. 

The ride is a quiet one: neither you nor the man asks questions. The only sound is that of your son’s absentminded babbles as he plays with his car toys and the occasional “look mama!” when you pass something he finds particularly interesting outside. 

You try to keep as engaged as possible, but your mind is running a thousand miles a minute. 

‘What on Earth could Manjiro want with us now?’

After about 30 minutes and seemingly endless pondering, you arrive at a little house on the outskirts of the city. It’s not a place you immediately recognize, and this causes you some alarm. 

“Why did he want us brought here?” The question comes out more severe than you intended for it to. The man side eyes you, hesitating before speaking. 

“The King thought that perhaps you’d be more comfortable and apt to talk somewhere that was a little more quaint and a little less busy than his usual residence.”

“Less busy than his usual residence, you say? I can only imagine the shit he gets into.”

“Lang’ge mama!” Your son gasps, causing you to chuckle.

“Sorry baby, you’re right. Mama should watch her language.”

The man watches silently, trying to suppress a small smile at your interaction with your son. 

“Right this way.”

Once you’ve all exited the car- presumably something expensive now that you’ve paid it any real attention- you begin making your way up the porch steps to the front door. 

Kgosi insisted on walking himself, so your right hand is occupied by his left. The scarred man offered to carry your bag, and you let him, figuring he had no want or need for diapers and coloring books. 

The trek up to the door seems endless, and you attribute that mostly to nerves. It’s been so long since you’ve heard so much as a whisper about Manjiro and his current whereabouts and endeavors, let alone actually seen him. 

Ken and the others looked for him for a time after he disappeared, but after some less than savory occurrences, of which you never got the full details, they left that pursuit alone. 

“It’s-...it’s difficult, I know, but it’s better this way, __. Mikey clearly doesn’t want to be found.” Ken’s words were heavy and laced with a barely concealed sorrow. 

You’d agreed at the time, even though the elusive man lingered in your thoughts on occasion. 

Now you were faced with the prospect of meeting him in person again after so long and after so much had transpired. 

And not just you, but your son as well. 

Releasing a breath you weren’t aware you were holding, you take more confident steps into the foyer, lightly squeezing Kgosi’s hand to calm him from where he bounces excitedly on his feet. You’re in the process of removing your and Kgosi’s shoes when the man speaks. 

“One moment. Please, feel free to peruse this area while I step away.”

Before you’re given the opportunity to respond, the man jets off, leaving you and Kgosi to wander around for a bit. 

The house is indeed rather quaint; homey and sensible, while still containing modern fixtures and appliances. 

You peek into the kitchen, finding it to be fully stocked and in pristine condition. 

Not thinking too much about it, and at Kgosi’s insistence, you take a box of apple juice from the refrigerator and offer it to your son, making sure to throw away the plastic wrapping the straw came out of. 

Moving along, you encounter what seems to be the first of two living areas. 

It’s decorated in warm, neutral colors. The couch, upon sitting, is found to be very soft (Kgosi has a blast bouncing on it) and a large flat screen TV rests atop a stone fireplace. 

Behind the couch is open space covered in a large, ornate carpet. Beside it, floor length windows showcase a lush, well manicured garden space, which your son seems quite eager to explore. 

“Maybe a little later, son. I don’t want your clothes getting soiled or to track dirt.”

Kgosi pouts, but quickly goes back to enjoying his juice and bouncing on the couch. 

You, on the other hand, resume being caught up in your thoughts. 

You’re so caught up in fact, that you don’t immediately notice when the scarred man returns. 

“Miss __?”

You jump just a bit at his sudden appearance. 

Standing, you lift and tuck Kgosi against your hip, nodding to the man and following when he motions for you to do so. 

You can practically feel your heart about to beat out of your chest the closer you get to the room where Manjiro presumably is. 

Each step feels heavier than the last, until finally, the floor slips from underneath you entirely as you round the corner.

There sits Manjiro, your first love, and the father of your pride and joy. 

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it, __?”

You’re too stunned to speak, though you can feel yourself subconsciously tightening your grip on Kgosi.

Surrounding Manjiro are three men, each more bizarre looking than the last. From where you’re facing him, on Manjiro’s right stands a pair of guys, both with black and purple hair, though one’s is longer and the other’s is gelled to the side. They resemble one another, and you assume they are, at the least, related. 

On Manjiro’s left is perhaps the strangest looking man thus far. 

His hair is bright pink, and he’s got two large, diamond shaped scars on either corner of his mouth. He sports a wide grin, and you quickly look away from him, deciding you don’t like the way he, or any of them for that matter, makes you feel. 

Mikey simply watches as you observe his men, his dull, black irises remaining fixated on you and Kgosi. 

“What do you want, Manjiro?” You speak suddenly, and the air in the room immediately shifts from tense to even more so. 

“What do you mean, __? I clearly wanted to see you,” his eyes slide to Kgosi. “And our son.”

“Ok, but why now?” You grit out the words, becoming more agitated by the second. 

Mikey doesn’t respond, refraining from moving for a second before he gestures to the seat before you. 

“Why don’t you take a seat, love? You seem irritated.”

“I’m fine right here.”

“__, I’m asking nicely-”

“I said I’m f-...”

“Sit down!”

The sudden outburst catches you off guard, as well as Kgosi, who covers his ears. 

“Loud mama!”

Breaking eye contact with Manjiro, you turn to Kgosi, placing a small kiss on his forehead. “I’m sorry baby,” you throw a pointed sidelong glance at Manjiro with your next words. “We’ll be more quiet.”

You think you can see the beginnings of a smirk start to shape Manjiro’s mouth, but the movement is quickly aborted. 

The silence having returned, you slowly take a seat, adjusting Kgosi’s position in your lap. Mikey watches you closely the entire time, his eyes never leaving you or Kgosi’s forms. 

“Now, that wasn’t so hard was it? Besides, sitting is much more comfortable than standing when you're carrying weight isn’t it?”

You’re not sure why Manjiro is asking such asinine questions, but you can’t help the urge to roll your eyes. 

“I ask again, Manjiro, why now of all times did you apparently want to see us so badly?”

The man doesn't immediately answer, and you can feel your brow twitch. 

"Does there have to be a specific reason as to 'why now?' It's not like you were doing anything particularly important right? I just felt this overwhelming urge to see my two favorite people."

You level Manjiro with a scathing glare. 

"Your two favorite people huh? You don't typically just abandon your two favorite people with no explanation, especially not when they're your son and his mother."

You could swear the temperature in the room drops at least a little bit, your frosty ire palpable to everyone. 

Manjiro simply smiles, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes. His jaw is clenched the most minute amount, and you can't help but feel some satisfaction that you struck a nerve. 

“You’re completely right. This isn’t typically something you do. Unfortunately for us, our circumstances are anything but typical.” 

You can’t suppress another eye roll, Kgosi shifting slightly on your lap. He’s been quietly eyeing the strange white-haired man for the entirety of the conversation thus far. He’s not quite sure, but he feels some sort of strange connection to him. 

“It doesn’t matter what excuse you give, Manjiro. None of your wack ass machinations can justify your decision to abandon us.”

Manjiro is no longer smiling, instead his eyes are boring into yours. His jaw clenches even tighter. 

“I only did what I did to protect you both.”

“From you, right? You and your little freakshow menagerie.” You let your eyes pointedly drift, to one by one land on the other occupants of the room. None of them seem too off-put by your choice of words; the pink haired one’s seemingly permanent grin even appears to widen.

“I mean come on, your little chauffeur here even insinuated it. The kind of crazy shi-,” your son gives you a glance, “stuff, you get up to in your normal residence. Look at you! You’re pale, bordering on sickly. The bags under your eyes are so deep and dark it looks like someone painted them on with black ink. I can see the beginnings of bruises on your arms and despite the air of authority you’re trying to maintain, I can tell you’re exhausted.”

You finally settle back in your chair from where you’d unconsciously leaned forward. Try as you might to suppress them, you can feel the tears beginning to build along your waterline. 

“Why, Mikey? Why on Earth did you choose this life, this life of danger and misery, over us?”

It’s quiet for several long moments, and even the pink haired man is no longer grinning. 

You and Mikey are locked in a severe staredown, but you can feel your resolve crumbling. 

There’s nothing there.

Beneath his gaze, there lies only a dark emptiness, and you can’t help but feel that helping him now is beyond your power. 

Just as you feel the first tear fall, you hear a tiny gasp, and quickly your son shimmies out of your grasp, running over to where Manjiro sits and smacking him on the arm.

“You make mama cry! Bad!”

The pink haired man makes moves to grab something from behind his back, but is quickly stilled by Mikey’s raised hand. You notice this exchange with no small degree of horror and disgust and anger, appalled at even the implication of what that man was trying to do. 

Manjiro leans forward and down, meeting Kgosi’s determined stare with one of his own. 

The two lock eyes for several seconds before Manjiro smiles, and this time, it does seem to reach his eyes. 

“Good boy. I’m proud of you for protecting your mama.” Manjiro begins lifting a hand, and Kgosi immediately retreats back to you, only this time, he remains standing protectively in front of your legs. 

“You a bad man! No touch!”

Manjiro lilts what sounds like a genuine laugh, and the tension in the room somewhat dissipates. You’re not 100% aware of it yet, but a pleased Mikey means less pain and less of a bad time for everyone involved. 

“He’s brave! And smart too. You’ve done an excellent job raising him, __.” Black eyes, so similar to Kgosi’s own, flick down to his little form. 

“Tell us your name, little guy.”

Kgosi hesitates, unsure if he should listen to the man who made his mama cry. He relaxes some when he feels your hand on his shoulder. 

“It’s ok baby, you can tell them.”

It takes a moment or two, but eventually your son mumbles out “Kgosi,” before turning and gesturing to be lifted. You quickly oblige him, settling him in your lap, his head snuggled against your neck. 

“Kgosi…a strong name. What does it mean?”

The words seem caught in your throat for some seconds, before you’re finally able to speak. 

“It means King.”

Another laugh, this time louder and more raucous, escapes Manjiro, his head thrown back. The other men wear small smiles as well, all except the pink haired man, who goes back to sporting his large grin. 

“It means King! How fitting. You truly are perfect. I knew you’d be an excellent mother.”

“And yet you left me. Left me to raise a child all on my own with no support, financial or emotional. Don’t think you get to laugh now and everything is just forgiven and forgotten. I’m still pissed at you, Manjiro. And I get the feeling I will be for a very long time to come.”

The tense atmosphere has returned, and Mikey has long since stopped laughing. 

Instead of responding verbally, he stands, slowly making his way over to you. You can feel your baby shaking, and the thought that this man, who was supposed to serve as protector and provider, causes his own son to shake in fear makes you positively seethe.

Sensing your anger, Mikey stops just a few steps shy of you, and instead kneels down on one knee, never breaking eye contact with you.

“__. I know I’ll most likely never be able to make you understand why I left. I know that in your eyes, what I’ve done is…unforgivable. And I accept that burden as mine to bare. But all I ask, is that you put aside your rage, just for now, so that I may know my son.”

“You’re not entitled to him.” Your words shake around the edges. 

“After what I’ve done, you’re absolutely right.” Manjiro lifts his bandaged right hand, placing it over his heart. “But I have no desire to possess you. Either of you. I only wish now to step up, and do what I should have done from the start.”

Manjiro extends his arms. “May I please hold our son?”

Time slows and seems to drag out endlessly. 

Manjiro wasn’t there when Kgosi was born. He’s never gotten to hold him, though that was entirely his own fault. 

You’d always dreamed of the day that he would, though. The day that Manjiro would sweep you both into his arms and cradle you protectively against his chest. 

The day that he would return to you, fervent apologies and heartfelt whispers of love and adoration falling from his lips.

Snapping back to the present moment, you level Manjiro with a hard stare, before finally speaking. 

“I suppose that’s fine. But, Kgosi gets the final say.”

Looking down, you address your son, who still watches Manjiro skeptically from the corner of his eye. 

“Kgosi hun, do you mind letting daddy hold you?”

Everyone waits with bated breath to see what the little tot will say. 

Eventually, after several lengthy seconds, Kgosi simply nods, and begins to wiggle out of your embrace. You let him go, watching with sad eyes as he carefully makes his way over to Manjiro, whose arms have remained outstretched for the entire exchange. 

Slowly, Kgosi leans into Manjiro’s chest, and you could swear you see the muscle in the man’s exposed chest jump.

Manjiro immediately closes his arms tightly around Kgosi, gently resting his head on top of the boy’s. A shuddering, relieved sounding sigh can be heard from Manjiro, and he begins slightly rocking from side to side. 

“My son, I’m so sorry.” 

He lifts his head to address you, and you startle somewhat upon seeing the unshed tears lining Manjiro’s waterline. 

“My love, I owe you an apology as well.”

You can’t speak, your throat constricting as you fight to hold back your own tears. Instead, you silently watch as Manjiro stands, lifting Kgosi with him. He takes measured steps towards you, finally stopping and kneeling down before you. 

“My decision to do what I did, not even just towards you, but to everyone else I left behind as well, was incredibly selfish. But I truly thought it was for the best. I’m afraid I’ve fallen into the darkness, and I don’t foresee a way out. I would never wish to drag you along into this hell, and so I abandoned you, separated myself as far away from you as possible to protect you from the monster I’d become.” 

The tears are falling steadily now, and you’ve the sudden great urge to snatch Kgosi and flee. Perhaps your eyes communicate some of this desire, because Manjiro leans forward, lowering his voice to almost a whisper.

“I’m not going to hurt you, __.”

A sob rips from your throat, and yet you’re able to remain relatively upright in your seat. 

“You already have.”

Now it’s Manjiro’s turn to cry, silent streaks trickling down his cheeks, hidden from view of the other men in the room. 

“I know, I know I have, and again, I am so sorry. I promise now though that I’ll be there for you, you and Kgosi both. You’ll never want for anything ever again- just say the word and you’ll have it, whatever it is you need.”

At this point, Kgosi is becoming a little restless. He whines quietly and wiggles in Manjiro’s grasp. The man looks to you for help. 

“He’s sleepy. He hasn’t had his nap today.”

Nodding once, Manjiro hands him to you, Kgosi quickly adjusting himself and snuggling into your chest. You begin gently bouncing and rocking him, and soon the little tot is fast asleep in your arms. 

Manjiro lovingly strokes a finger down Kgosi’s cheek as he sleeps, cooing very quietly as the boy subconsciously leans into the touch. 

“He looks just like you.” He eventually says, eyes still fixated on the sleeping child. 

“He’s got your eyes.” You speak in return, somewhat unsure of where that response came from. 

Your heart still aches with the pain Manjiro’s caused, but that same pain, which once radiated sharp and persistent, has begun to fade to a dull echo. You don’t know that you’ve completely forgiven him yet, but as you watch him gaze upon your son with a glimmer of light in his eyes, you think you may be becoming more ok with the notion. 

“I mean it, __.” Manjiro’s voice is stern, his expression determined when he turns to look up at you. “I may not always be there physically, but say the words, and I’ll come running.” 

You search Manjiro’s face, eventually deciding that yes, he’s serious. 

“Alright. But you had better uphold your promise. Else I won’t forgive you next time.”

Manjiro gives one slow, solemn nod of understanding. He stands, gesturing to the scar-headed man for something. 

He brings it over quickly, and from where you’re sitting, it appears to be a paper sleeve with something in it. 

Deciding against immediately launching into asking questions, you sit patiently while Manjiro unsheathes whatever’s in the sleeve out of your view, staring at it momentarily before turning and handing it to you. 

Your eyes shift back and forth between the two, and you wait for an explanation. 

“My other hand’s kind of occupied at the moment so I can’t take whatever this is out of the sleeve.” 

Another gesture and the job’s done for you, and you do your best not to jostle Kgosi too much when you gasp. 

“I-is that-...”

“Yes. It may seem a bit excessive, but this is the best of the best. And I want you to have nothing less.”

“People are bound to ask questions when I use this.”

“Then you’ll just have to tell them to fuck off and mind their own business, hm?” Manjiro smiles at you, and again, it doesn’t reach his eyes. 

“Or,” he leans down, lips inches away from yours. “You could always tell them about how much of an excellent provider your husband is.”

You look away, flustered, and Manjiro laughs, the sound tinkling like a little bell in your ear. 

You take the card, now back in the sleeve, from the scar-headed man’s hands, gingerly placing it in the breast pocket of your coat. 

“Well I uh…thank you, Manjiro.”

The man hesitates, leveling you with a critical stare. 

“No nickname for me?” You’re a little caught off guard by the question. Your brow furrows in confusion. 

“What, you want me to call you Mikey?”

“No, I want you to call me-”

“I am not calling you daddy or some shit like that.”

A snicker can be heard from the purple haired men, which is quickly silenced by a look from Manjiro. 

“No, call me like you used to. When we were kids.”

You rack your brain trying to remember what other name there could be when the memory comes crashing into you. 

“Mani?”

Visible only to you, a bright blush colors Manjiro’s cheeks, his eyelids fluttering slightly. 

“There it is. I knew you remembered. Call me that from now on, yeah?”

You roll your eyes but the movement is fond. “Sure.”

After that, the scar-headed man gathers your things, and you’re escorted to the front of the residence. 

As you leave, you notice that Manjiro doesn’t follow, and panic briefly bubbles up in your chest. 

“Manji-! Mani,” you quickly correct yourself. “W-...will we see you again?”

The man is silent for some seconds, and you fear he’ll say no, before he walks over to you, leaning down and forward and placing a tender kiss on your forehead. 

“There’s a number on the inside of that sleeve. Memorise it, keep it somewhere safe. As I said before, whenever you need me, call me, and I’ll be right there.” 

Manjiro sounds so certain, so reassuring, that for the umpteenth time today, you feel yourself about to cry. 

A wobbly smile curves your mouth, and Manjiro returns it with a steadier one of his own. 

“Remember you said that. I’ll be calling you pretty soon, you hear? Kgosi’s got his kindergarten graduation ceremony comin’ up and you had better be there.”

Mikey lifts his bandaged hand, laying it over his heart. “You have my word. Just send me the details when you get the chance.” 

Satisfied, you turn and follow Mr. Scar out of the room and out to the car. Once you’ve got Kgosi settled, you turn to get into the passenger seat, finding Manjiro watching you from one of the windows. 

You wave, and he returns it, and your heart begins to ache with the thought of having to be away from him again. 

Pushing the pain aside, you slide into the front seat, and soon Mr. Scar is pulling out of the driveway. 

The ride back proceeds smoothly, and some minutes into its duration, you turn to observe the scarred man. 

At this point, you’re frankly sick of calling him that, so you decide to simply ask:

“What’s your name? No offense, but I’ve been calling you variations of “the scarred man” in my head since we met, and if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to stop doing that.”

The man’s eyes slide toward you before sliding back to the road. 

“Kakucho. You can also call me Hitto if that’s easier.”

You think on it for a moment, before finally settling for a name.

“Kaku!”

The car swerves slightly at your outburst, and you laugh at Kakucho’s expression. 

“What, you don’t like it? I tend to nickname all the people I consider close, and I assume we’ll be getting to know each other at least a little more now that I’ve reinstated contact with Manjiro.” 

You smile at him, and you can see the man fight down a smile in return. 

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“You can just call me __ by the way, no need for formalities.”

Instead of contesting, the man only nods, and you relax back in your seat. 

It feels like it’s becoming easier, accepting the notion of forgiving Manjiro. You don’t know the full story, and you can’t deny that you’re still somewhat wary of who and what he’s become, but you know that you still hold love for him, even despite it all. And if he wants to be there for Kgosi, well, even better. 

[thecglcatalog]

Large Animal Vet Set

A special addition to animal playtime, this medical/grooming set is just what the doctor ordered for a slave who feels those animal urges.  With a Veterinarian Bag for quick access to tools and toys, plus a Steel Exam Table for more serious spaces, it lets you set just the right tone for examination, stimulation, or discipline!

 The large Veterinarian Bag is shaped like a traditional trapezoidal doctor’s bag with a snap-open, snap-closed frame top and comfortable padded top carrying handle.  A medical cross symbol details the exterior, which is made from two tones of our special latex-like Rubberina material.  Bag is lined in quilted poly-cotton, which is full of pockets that hold the essential tools of the trade.

What are the tools?  A smorgasbord of helpful, healthful, and humiliating toys for medical playtime!

Start with the Large Rectal Thermometer for a basic reading.  Open up baby with a Locking Speculum for close, deep examination – you may want to use the Penlight and the Magnifying Glass – then make them fill one of three capped and graduated Specimen Tubes so you can check their fluid output.  The Specimen Tubes sit neatly in a matching Tube Rack.  These items are made from sturdy plastic, color-coordinated to the Veterinarian Bag.

If your little animal’s anatomy is in the way, clip it back with the six Coated Plastic Clamps.  This is especially useful when you want to apply the tiny Reflex Hammer – an extra-heavy little wedge for checking nipples and genitals, not joints – or the Faux Injection Syringe, a wickedly realistic-looking tool that pierces slave’s flesh while you depress the plunger, but requires no actual filling before the “slight pinch”.   (See our medical section for real syringes.)  Working parts are hospital-grade stainless steel, as are the Wartenberg Wheel and the three Urethral Dilators.

Zoo and livestock veterinarians are responsible for animal fertility, too, so a battery-powered Electric Prostate Stim that delivers mild shocks to the rectum is a must, as is a Semen Collection Sleeve that has a hollow, textured silicone insert to stimulate the penis and gather ejaculate in a well.  This is surrounded by a “balloon” that can be filled with warm water to help the little stud animal feel comfortable … or cold water to make his task more challenging.

The bag also contains matching nitrile exam gloves, rubber bulb syringes, and nonstick veterinary bandages in three widths.

Collapsible 4’x2’ Steel Exam Table has legs that ratchet from two feet to four feet of total height for easy access to slave’s body.  If a pet is a little nervous about inspection time, then attach the Grooming Arm with its short chain for clipping to pet’s collar. All parts break down to a sleek 2’x’4’x6” package.

Order the Exam Table and Veterinarian Bag together, and we’ll combine them with a striking and useful Carrying Case, a hard-sided compartment on four full swivel wheels, which buckles closed with straps that match the Veterinarian Bag – and can be slipped through its handle to keep the play set together.  Specify case color: Matte Black, Snowy White.

And if slave wants to play along in a different way, consider the Baby Veterinarian Bag, a miniature twin to the larger version that contains a weak electroshock tool, two different vibrating wands, an assortment of colorful sticky bandages, and a set of nitrile gloves without divided fingers for a confining mitten shape.

Specify bag color: Clean White/Candy Red, Gloss Black/Candy Red,  Silky Pink/Shocking Pink, Royal Blue/Little Boy Blue.

[shinypuppytoy621]

You always saw people wearing latex stuff in movies, games and online so the second you got a debit card for your 16th birthday you couldn’t stop yourself from immediately buying stuff for yourself. A full enclosure latex catsuit, a collar and chain, latex paws so you can’t use your hands, a flat chastity cage and a hood alongside a blindfold and gag

After a few months everything arrived, your family was awake but you didn’t care you couldn’t contain your excitement to put everything on, first the cage, it was completely flat and super uncomfortable and painful, the euphoria it gave you to look down and see nothing was amazing but not worth it so you decide you’re going to take it of after

Next the catsuit it came pre polished and lubed so you could just slide right in, you’ve never been so comfortable the skin tight latex clung to you like it was your own skin, you felt amazing, empowering. Following this was the hood you moved your hair back so it fits better and it clings just as comfortably as the catsuit, then the collar which you fastened as tight as possible to the point you couldn’t breath as well and finally the mits making your hands useless

You didn’t even get a second to admire yourself in the mirror before you heard. It

Hey little sis, have you seen my phone charger I’m pretty sure I lent it to you yesterday

Shit, shit shit shit! Panic washes over you, you can’t even get a word out before

Hello? You in there?

“Y- yeah one sec I’ll come out in a minute just give me a second, don’t come in!”

Huh? What’s up? Are you okay? It’ll just be a second, relax

“NO! DONT COME IN”

Your big sis of course ignores you and walks in anyway, seeing you exposed, flustered and panicked

W- what the hell are you wearing???

She bursts into laughter, pointing at you

Seriously what the fuck! This is what you’ve been spending your money on? To look like a freak

“Don’t tell mum and dad please don’t tell them this is really embarrassing”

Your sister is still laughing at you.

What even is that stuff?

She approaches you and starts touching your rubber coated body

Ew! It feels so weird, you actually like wearing this? And is that a fucking dog collar?

She continues to feel you while all you can do is stand, frozen in shame, then, she feels your cage

Oh my god and your wearing a chastity cage? You really are a weirdo-

She stops for a bit and starts looking around your room before…

ahah!

She grabs the key to your cage from a table and holds it above you just out of your reach, you try to grab it but she always keeps it just out of reach

“Give that back! That’s mine!”

Oh? Why cage yourself if your just going to get out of it immediately? And what idiot cages themself? You need a key holder to make sure you don’t give into your desires, so I’ll just hold onto this for now

You continue trying to grab it from her even resorting to pushing and biting and scratching

Are you seriously trying to fight back against your big sister while looking like, that? You don’t look like your in a position to fight back, you’re even collared you should be obeying

She grabs your chain and steps on it with her bear feet and pulls up dragging you down to the floor, unable to get up with her standing on your leash

There~ that’s so much better

“Let go! This is humiliating you had your fun just leave”

Now that’s no way to talk to your big sister, but I’ll leave if you want, I’ll just bring this key with me

“What? No! That’s mine!”

Well I’m holding it so that makes it mine, I guess you’ll have to earn it back

She looks down on you with a sadistic grin

Tell you what, while you’re down there why don’t you kiss my feet?

“W- what?”

You heard me, Look at you you’re probably into it, worship them or I’m keeping the key

“And, if I do this I get the key back?”

Just do as your big sister commands, kay?

You reluctantly start to kiss her feet and toes, they stink, but you force yourself to lick and kiss all across before she raises her foot

The sole too, thats the best bit after all

You continue to lick and kiss and sniff her feet, holding back retches In the back of your throat as she presses down onto your face, you contemplate and regret the events that lead up to this, why didn’t you just wait until night time to dress up none of this would be an issue

Okay that’s enough

“I can have my key back?”

Hmmmm nah, you didn’t seem like you had your heart in it you’ll have to work harder, oh I have an idea

She yanks your chain back and unzips your catsuit from the back you feel something hard press up against your back and suddenly a hot liquid pools down into your suit

You instinctively crawls away only for your big sister to yank you back you know exactly what’s happening and it disgusts you, how could your sister get to such a low

There we are~

She zips you up, you can feel the hot liquid move throughout your body, the suit being skin tight meant it was evenly distributed

Now, you’re going to keep that in you for the rest of the day and when you go to sleep, kay?

Your heart sinks, “all day and night”??? You look up at your sister in disbelief and her face is completely serious, if not for the sadistic smile across her face

You should enjoy it while you can lil sis, tomorrows going to be so much worse~

[goodfish-bowl]

What Little Remains

Chapter 1: Finding the Pieces

Ectoberhaunt 2024 Day 3: Archeology

AO3 Link

Summary: The Terra Zero Archeology Project has received funding to locate a laboratory of both historical and technological importance. What they actually end up bringing back is something of much greater significance.

Warnings: Dissection, gore, blood

Words: 2,374

They had found it on the planet once known as Earth, now known as Terra Zero. It had been buried in a laboratory of historical and technological importance. The laboratory was the target of their mission and this had merely been something they had discovered along the way, but it was likely a much more significant find than their original goal. It was a miracle, really, that the jar protecting this particular specimen was fully intact, and an even greater wonder that they found a second one to go with it. Despite the atypical building practices found at that location, it had managed to survive the several planetary disasters that had befallen Terra Zero since the lab had been constructed. It was truly an amazingly complex and baffling in its own era. The laboratory itself had been buried under tons of sediment, ash, and debris that had built up on the planet's surface over the centuries, yet it managed to preserve the space from the very passage of time. 

The Terra Zero Archeology Project, shortened down to T.Z.A.P, had only been able to discover it through a related digital archiving project, following mentions of its existence along with digital records from the time, particularly a set of patents that were of interest to the team's investors. They read like utter nonsense, completely indecipherable despite running them through every algorithm available and having sloughs of intergalactic experts look them over. The only hope of figuring them out lay in the lab where they had been created. A myzack-chase through several databases and many long message chains and holos later, the mission was underway. The promise of new technologies was what got the T.Z.A.P. its funding in the first place. This lab was sure to have them keep their funding for a while longer. 

The lab itself had been odd, with unknown radioactive elements non-native to the Terra Zero planetary area found in unusual amounts with a positive correlation with the proximity to the lab. Special suits were created just for this excavation, and entire collections of journals were being written based off of the findings. The interior of the lab looked untouched, only a thin coat of dust covered every surface. It was in a general state of disarray like it had been abandoned in the middle of something, but the walls were intact (except for the portion they had drilled through) with minimal rust and decay setting in. It was an astronomically amazing find. 

Then there were the samples. 

Most of the samples, which looked to be biological samples from a dissection, were degraded beyond use, a millennium beyond expiration. They appeared to be humanoid in nature, which ended up being one of the most unnerving portions of the discovery. It wouldn’t be confirmed until they were actually processed and tested. It wasn’t safe to assume, they had found ones made of ‘rubber’ before. One jar, containing a singular, whole hand, was preserved properly, in what appeared to be an isotopic solution tinted green. The next samples of interest were a set of small vials containing a viscous green liquid that actively rested in a set of a dozen, three of which were intact, the rest exposed to the heavy, damp atmosphere of the lab. It was an unnaturally bright green substance with a dull glow, flecked with red. The intact vials wouldn’t be opened until after the samples of the broken ones were processed first. It would give them a good idea of the decay rate of the substance. There was a heavy containment unit, made from glass that could rival modern war spacecraft windows, with a glowing crystal orb inside, floating in a similar solution to what the vials must contain. All of the other samples were labeled “Phantom” with a time and date on their collection date. This one was marked with the name “Danny”, instead. They were all within two days of each other, with the orb being last. 

The most valuable thing T.Z.A.P. managed to collect from the lab, other than just recording of the finding of an intact lab from the early 2000s era, was the intact digital files located on the ancient external hard drive. Someone on the tech team had managed to reconstruct and restore the files on it and found hundreds of files containing everything from lab journal entries to video recordings, to entire papers. It was an almanium mine of information, shining light on many of the patents themselves, though the blueprints and the construction of the technology remained theoretical at best. Whoever had designed these was using a language all of their own that no one else could decipher. 

The samples and digital files were brought into the in-orbit lab and processed while the systems scanned the antique files for relevant information, matching the patents and the surviving samples. The computer pinged a collection of lab recordings almost immediately, curiously matching the time stamps of the sample collections. 

Zavier, one of the many interns assigned to this project, absently clicked on one at random, sound on, in the middle of the main research room. 

Corroded, the audio snapped and popped, showing its age, but it caught the attention of everyone else in the room. Grainy footage of a woman in a teal jumpsuit, with red goggles covering her eyes, and black gloves covered the screen. A large figure in orange moved in the background. 

“This is Doctor Madeline Fenton, it is June 4th, 2006, at precisely 14:23. I am joined by Doctor Jack Fenton in collecting a whole-piece sample from the ecto-entity known as Phantom.”   

Ecto-entity. It was a term that popped up frequently in the study of this particular laboratory and the related patents. There were at least a dozen sets of eyes on the monitor at this point, several different people scribbling down notes of interest. 

“As mentioned in Recording 632006-334 samples collected from Phantom seem to rapidly degenerate once removed from the central entity. To correct this, we have diluted a solution made from the entity’s own ectoplasm mixed with an isotopic preservation solution in an attempt to preserve the sample for further, future study.”

The woman moved the camera to show a prone figure, heavily strapped down to a mental table, distinctly human, despite their odd features for the time. They appeared young, prepubescent in age, uselessly crying and thrashing on the table they were strapped to. They were covered in past incisions, and missing several fingers from their other hand. Several harsh breaths of horror were taken around the room. Zavier should’ve paused the video there, but he hadn’t. 

“Our intended sample is going to be the entire right hand.”

The child on the table let out a heart wrenching whine, barely picked up through the harsh muzzle on their face. 

Something in the room broke, it sounded fragile, but no one moved, transfixed by the screen. 

The woman, Dr. Madeline repositioned the camera over the child’s right hand. They visibly struggled, straining against the restraint. 

“Jack, the bone saw?”

“Here you go, darling!” The man said with a large smile. 

The boy screamed and it echoed around the entire room, the video filled with bright colors of green and red as the bone saw ate through flesh.

The video was abruptly stopped before it could finish, and someone immediately rushed to the trash unit in the corner. A few people did. The scream still seemed to linger around the room anyways. 

“What in the void of space are you all doing?!” A new voice interrupted.

“H-head Doctor! I didn’t mean to! But it started playing and I didn’t want to stop it so I let it play!”

“And?”

“A… a-and?” the intern stuttered. 

“What did you learn?”

“That… that I shouldn’t click on a random video without permission…” Zavier admitted reluctantly. 

“I meant about our subject.”

“OH! Oh… um. Young, possibly male humanoid, unusual features… they cut off their hand with a bone saw…” Zavier’s voice trembled, unable to focus on the words coming out of his mouth with the scream echoing even louder in his own head than it had in the room. 

The Head Doctor’s eyes darkened. Her grip tightening on her tablet, before snapping down the tech and sending out several messages all at once in a furious efficiency. 

“If continuing on this particular project makes you uncomfortable, please report to the main deck for reassignment!” The Head Doctor announced it to the whole room. “I understand that we’re dealing with humanoid experimentation in this discovery. You will not be punished for wanting to be reassigned.”

Several people left the room almost immediately, practically fleeing in terror. Zavier found himself agreeing, but was firmly rooted in place. Others thought about it, before following the rest out. From the two dozen researchers and interns in the room, less than a fourth remained. Zavier rediscovered his ability to move for a moment, and contemplated joining them before staying in his spot. He couldn’t. 

“Intern. I need you to find the video of the collection of the orb. The video should be labeled 642006-1746.”

“Yes, ma’am. May I ask why?” 

Zavier really didn’t want ot have to watch another video when this one was going to be haunting him for the next decade.

“The sample associated with it refuses to be identified, but it has responded to external stimuli, including sounds and being moved about. Several of our preliminary scans have identified something similar to brain waves emitting from it. We need to identify it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Zavier swallowed thickly before clicking on the video labeled just as the Head Doctor had specified. The video pulled up just like the first, popping and snapping before settling in place. The same woman from the first video appeared in the camera, slightly worse for wear. Her suit was splattered with green and red. Zavier cringed and looked away, but refrained from covering his ears with his hands. He had to at least listen, even if that was the worst part. 

“This is Doctor Madeline Fenton, it is June 4th, 2006, at 17:46. Dr. Jack Fenton and I have just finished our full dissection of the ecto-entity once known as Phantom.”

The camera panned to show the same child from earlier, cut up into pieces, a large vivisection cut splaying their chest wide open, cavity practically hollowed out, and several stained jars littered the free space on the table. They boy wasn’t moving anymore.

“We have made an… interesting discovery concerning its biology.” 

The scientist paused for a moment, glancing behind her before she seemed to hesitate. 

“Not… not only did it possess a perfect copy of human biology, it was a functioning one. However, after considerable loss of ectoplasm and substantial damage to its internal organs, its facsimile of life ceased. We were able to locate its core,” she held up the jar containing the small glowing orb. It seemed so tragic floating in that solution. All that blood and viscera for something the size of a pinging ball. She placed the jar on a table out of frame.

“And have successfully removed it and placed it within an isolating containment unit. Reasons for this have been stated in my husband and I’s previous papers on the nature of cores. However, Phantom’s seems to be behaving differently than expected. It’s fallen completely dormant after drawing in all available ectoplasm. Theories on this will be further elaborated in the paper currently being constructed on the ecto-entity Phant-”

There was a flash of light in the background that glitched out the camera for a moment, before the video returned. There was much more red than there was before. The boy was noticeably different, his appearance much more in line with the humans of the era, black hair and red blood. 

The woman swiftly turned around, a weapon she reached for off screen suddenly in her hand. It clattered to the ground soon after. She made a horrible choking noise, like she was being strangled. Zavier didn’t think she had the right to react like that. She and her partner had done this after all.

“Danny..?”

The Head Doctor reached over Zavier and turned the video off, gripping the bridge of her nose and letting out a harsh breath of her own. Zavier himself sunk further into his seat to process the information that was likely going to continue to plague his nightmares. He didn’t know why he felt so terrible, or why it was all knotted up in the base of his throat. That kid had been dead for over a millennium at this point. There was no saving them, just the bits of what little of them that remained, as samples, recordings, and data. He shouldn’t be this horrified and torn up over someone long dead. 

“Intern, what is your name?”

“Zavier, ma’am.”

“Zavier, go make yourself something warm to eat and distract yourself. I don’t want to see you until it looks like you’ve had at least a full cycle of rest. Senior members,” she signaled the three of the older researchers who had remained, one of which was trying to light a smoke in the corner, “We are going to be having a long night to figure out the nature of this research. If… If this lines up with some of my current conclusions, then we may have a much more… interesting project on our hands.”

“Ma’am… what do you mean by that?” 

One of the researchers asked, coming in closer to relieve Zavier from his seat at the monitor. Zavier hadn’t been expecting his knees to be so weak when he tried to stand and the world spun around him for a moment before he managed to steady himself.

“Simple. We have the current approval and supplies to use the D.R.C.R.A. on a suitable… sample of interest,” The Doctor claimed. 

“You don’t mean… by the void,” The researcher with the smoke cackled. “Oh, this is going to get us in so much trouble!”

“Well, it would certainly line up with our objective to study the era. What’s better than a first-person witness?”

Ectoberhaunt 2024 Masterpost

[amenders93]

The Gang Go In

Molly didn't know that Ginger, all her chicken aunts and grandpa, and her two favorite rodent uncles were just outside the farm. And now the rescue gang had made an incredibly clever plan to blast their way inside and get her home safe and sound. After much discussion, a few arguments, a lot of equipment being packed and even the baking of a large, iced cake, the gang was finally ready. Our Wing Leader Ginger announces to her group that it's go time; dimwitted Wool Specialist Babs makes a comic reply that to relieve Ginger that she went before they left. Not that kind of 'go', Babs 🤣.

Phase 1 of the plan contained the element of surprise 😲. Ginger, Mac, Bunty and Babs hid behind the bushes and placed the iced cake on top of a clockwork trolley. The trolley was sent trundling up to the entrance gate. A patrolling guard noticed the trolley with the cake coming towards the gate and came up for a closer look. After the guard took one taste of the cake and blew out the candle, Ginger burst out the cake and handcuffed the guard to a bundle of fireworks. You heard of the Trojan Horse 🐴. Here's a Trojan Cake 🎂. The guard was dragged by the fireworks into the wooded area and slammed into a tree. Bunty cut the chain from the guard's wrist and the fireworks flew up into the air, exploding into a beautiful colorful display. The fireworks distracted another guard inside the facility who was in charge of the security cameras and screens.

Phase 2 of the operation was taking place overhead - the aerial invasion 🎈☁️. This was one of Fowler's specialties from his RAF days. After all, Fowler was the one who piloted the flying machine during the chickens' dramatic escape from Tweedy's Farm. Now he was flying something different - a balloon covered in cotton wool, disguised as a cloud. Fowler, Nick and Fetcher pedaled the balloon-cloud madly over the electric fence. As they floated along, they unwound a fishing line that they had attached to a tree outside. The crack team of cloud-pedallers landed on a security camera and Nick got out a Polaroid camera, taking a picture of the wooded area. It instantly printed out and Fetcher placed it in front of the camera lens. Now when the guard looked at the security screen, everything would look completely normal. The only problem was Fetcher had the photo the wrong way round. The guard stared at the screen in amazement and tapped it. Nick pointed out to Fetcher about the photo being upside down; Fetcher moved fast and turned it the right way up. The guard was happy again.

Ginger watched the whole thing down below. As soon as the picture was mounted, she signaled to the rest of the gang and they all rushed to the electric fence. Bunty pushed a rubber ring under the fence and pumped it up, opening up a chicken-sized gap. Ginger rushed them all through. She was the last one to dive under, then she punctured the ring to cover their tracks.

Next was Phase 3 - the underwater mission to cross the moat without being detected 🌊. The girls pulled on their scuba gear and did what the proper divers do - fall backwards into the water. Babs, however, didn't get it quite right. She fell backwards but in the wrong direction, landing on the bank instead 🤦‍♀️. A guard came past and almost spotted her, but the other chickens pulled Babs under the water in the nick of time. Together the girls swam underwater, avoiding the exploding robot ducks with laser eyes. Once out of the water on the other side of the moat, Mac and Bunty threw a grappling hook made from a coat hanger over a wall. Attached to the hook was a pair of elastic trouser braces. The chickens stretched the braces as far as they could and used them as a catapult to fling each of them over the wall. Everyone landed safely inside and hid behind a pillar. At the doorway, a guard was using the eye scanner to enter the building. Ginger watched him go inside, then led the way, skillfully parkouring to the doorway. The gang followed her, as stealthily as they could, across the courtyard.

Now Nick and Fetcher needed to take a photo for the eye scanner. They grabbed the camera and jumped out of the balloon, using an open umbrella as a parachute. They made a graceful landing right on the ground. Nick commented that it was a perfect landing, right on the button. On hearing the word "button", a confused Fetcher obediently pushed the umbrella button which snapped the umbrella shut on them both. The two blind rats stumbled around the courtyard, trying to get the closed umbrella off. Behind them a mechanical slot opened up and sucked the rats inside, just like what happened to Rocky the night before, leaving the camera on the ground in plain sight. Looks like the plan will have to be improvised.

Along came Mac and Ginger, their backs pressed against the wall. Mac saw the camera lying on the ground. Ginger dashed into the open courtyard and grabbed the camera just before a guard came around a corner. This was Ginger's chance! She hid in the shadows and whistled as the guard passed her. The guard stopped and peered into the darkness. Ginger took a flash picture of the guard's staring eyes, almost blinding him with the light and leaving him stumbling around. Ginger ran to the door and gave the photo to Mac. Mac fixed the photo to the end of an extendable tape measure and hoisted it up the reach the eye scanner.

Inside, the door guard looked at the eye picture through the scanner and checked it against her file labelled Staff Eye Pad. When she found the particular guard with the correct retina, she satisfyingly press a button to release the door and the chicken gang rushed in, too short for the camera to spot. The door guard looked puzzled; where was the guard? She went to the door and looked outside. Behind her, the gang sneaked through and hid behind as many cleaning supplies as they could carry. Finally, they had made it inside! 😄

Only Fowler was still outside. After Nick and Fetcher had floated down on the umbrella, the old sausage had continued to drift along in the cloud-balloon talking to himself. The balloon knocked against the mast where Fowler then attached it and landed. Our elderly rooster comments how this was a textbook landing. He steps onto the roof and spotting a nearby snail, settles down for a nice chat. Here we go again. More RAF stories from our favorite retired leading rooster 😒. What he doesn't see is that snail is trying to inch away from him while he goes on rambling 🐌.

[engr4veq]

《Not a wink of sleep~

《 Pairing: Lady Lesso x !sick !never reader

《 I think purple and green go well together ;)

Tw: !cursing

"I didn't sleep.." You groaned turning over to meet Hester's glare on your body.

"Are you serious." Anadil sighed and turned on her lamp, brushing aside her white hair covering her red eyes. Narrowing them at your fidgeting fingers.

"Well I can get an extra 2 minutes.." Dot wearily said covering her head from Anadil's bright lamp.

"I'm serious.." You sat up, "I drank a cup of warm milk before going to sleep, but I didnt.." Letting out a silent groan your head found its way into your pillow and you internally screamed.

Hester snickered, Anadil followed suit and Dot groaned taking the covers off of her head getting out of bed.

Soon Hester laughed allowing all three of them to laugh and you to sulk. The moment was trashed by Dot ripping open the dark curtains (They have curtains >:(..) making Anadil dive under her bedsheets.

"Time for breakfast!" Dot exclaimed making you all groan.

Anadil looked at your tired form. "You look like you get by with 1 hour of sleep every night. I wont even sugar coat it." Anadil said and chuckled.

As you all walked to your side of the hall, an ever had tripped infront of you twisting her ankle.

"Oh sh_t, are you alright..?" You panicked kneeling down to throw her arm around your shoulder hearing a faint whisper of "yes, I'm fine, thank you.."

"I'll catch up with you lot, go on.." You said walking with the girl.

"But.. you know what will happen.." Dot warned and you smiled.

Making your way to the ever's side of the hall a bunch of fairies blocked your way, looking behind you.

"Hello, uhm, I have to take this girl to the infirmary.. do you know where that.." You trailed off hearing the sound of heavy footsteps and clinking armor behind you.

"You've got to be f*cking me.." You whispered and set the ever down on a nearby chair making the fairies yelp in surprise.

"Look, you take care of her, while I get taken care of.." You narrowed your eyes as your hands were restrainted around your back.

"My name is Kasia by the way!" she winced as you were thrashed to the side by the wolves.

"Pleasure to meet you!" You said presenting your best smile at her from a distance.

"Oh dear, Kasia, you alright?" Another ever ran to her aid.

"Yes, Aaliyah I'm fine.." she winced again as Aaliyah supported her limp to the infirmary.

The wolves shoved you into the icey cold chamber and and clasped the chains around your wrists, ankles and neck almost stringing you up.

"Pleasant customer service.. I rate it.. a 1 out of 5 stars.." You laughed as the wolves growled making sure you were secured.

They then left without a word, you sweatdropped. (The version of the doom room is from the book, I may use both appearances from the book and movie.)

Your head met the wall behind you letting you close your eyes. "What an upgrade.. this room is right beneath the Dean's classroom.. she said it was warmer.. not colder." You let a toothy smirk grace you features.

You heard the sound of rubber gloves coming in contact against skin as well as the clicking of heels against the stone floor and stopped smirking. (I think she'd look hot in gloves..)

'Dont tell me its..' you thought leaning you head off of the wall. Your startled eyes were met with crazy curly copper hair.

"Beast went missing, so I have to deal with you brats.." Lesso muttered looking up before a smug smirk lit up her face. "This is wonderful.." Lesso let out a giggle and pulled on her gloves with her canines, smirking.

With a groan your head hit the back of the wall again, closing your eyes.

"What the hell," You laughed. "I thought a wolf was supposed to be ridding me of my sanity?" You shot a glare at Lesso as her body inched closer to yours. She hid her face in your shoulder and undid your restraints, stepping away.

"What the.." You almost fell but she caught you pulled you closer by your waist. "Why are you treating me like this..?" You muttered, eyes almost closing due to the close proximity of the two bodies.

"You didnt sleep last night, did you.." Lesso glared and took your face in her hands, staring off into your eyes. You dozed off into hers, your body felt weak.. (weak ash :) ) allowing the darkness to envelope your vision.

You woke up in a unfamiliar looking room and observed your surroundings. You looked down, beside you and saw the messy red head staring at you with a wicked smile.

You flinched back and was pinned to the bed by both of your arms. She then straddled your legs and looked down at you with a frown of authority.

"You're not going anywhere.. You're sick." She said and snapped making belts appear like snakes in the air and dove down to your wrists, ankles, and waist.

You blushed and tried to sit up but the pressure of Lesso on your lap wouldnt let you. With a groan you relaxed onto the bed and submitted to her attempt to get you still.

She was wearing a black vest with matching black pants and tie, complementing her white shirt.

Her hand felt your forehead, she saw your red cheeks and thought you were burning up. A look of realization was plastered on her face, then contorted to one of pride. She hopped off of the bed and walked to get a cold cloth from the bathroom.

You looked to the side and avoided eye contact when she placed it upon your forehead.

"I know you would much prefer my hands instead, but this will have to substitute.." She smugly said not before scratching under your chin as if you were a cat with her long finger nails, she kissed your forehead.

You let out an unintentional whimper, before folding your lips. Pulling on her trench coat, and gripping her cane, she sauntered out leaving you with a flustered expression in her bed.

[emptyjunior]

Met gala themes I would pick cause woof we've had some rough ones huh

Horror

I am definitely not the first to bring up this theme but I do feel like it has the best shot so I'm honourable mentioning it first. The opportunity for guests to go victim or slasher, the haunted aspects, the opportunities for construction with their Killer outfits, there's just so Much here, banger theme.

Nautical

Maybe I want to see someone in a big ol yellow raincoat and a beard. Is that too much to ask.

But honestly a lot of fashion history has been inspired by naval themes, sailor uniforms, bucket hats, knit sweaters, working with rubber/waterproof coatings. And you could always get crazy with it and go the mermaid/sea monster/eldritch horror from the depths route as well. (And yes I suppose pirates too but I feel like Anna might eat someone alive like the spirited away guy if they came dressed as a pirate).

Maximalist

Am I just rehashing camp, yes, do I still want it, yes. I feel like the gala has been struggling for a Lot of years now with public perception, I think we're all aware how problematic an event uplifting the wealthy and famous can feel at this point. But I think they can go just fully on the nose, let people know they're Aware of it and be in on the joke. An event showcasing gluttony, heaped on patchworks and colours, mounds of accessories, cartoonish layers of jewels and chains. Just fully embracing it (and the smart designers will Know how to do some interesting dialogue with it).

Hallyu/Korean wave

This one makes me nervous cause with American celebrities there are bound to be some Blunders if we venture into this territory but I do still want to put it on the list. The reality is, South Korean culture is what's Now. It's In. It's the Zeitgeist. Music, tv, fashion. And I think it might be nice to see the "leaders" of the fashion industry acknowledge that in some concrete way. There's korean street style, there's prep/simple style. And hanboks/traditional style have a lot of really cool forms and materials you can base your construction on.

Teddy Boys/Teddy Girls

I KNOW it's way too niche but I Want it. I feel like there's a way to do it that would be so celebratory of androgy and I just feel like it will resonate with the working class of the day. I want subversion, I want a subculture of roaming youth finding identity in a post-war world and I want Silk Neckerchiefs. Also the style is based in Italian fashion so im sure all the big fashion houses will be able to do Something with that.

[transtanium]

Parasitic cablemass crackles with electricity, hundreds of copper nematocists waiting to burrow into anything it can get near, a rampant leaking battery hidden somewhere beneath unending hunger. A chain reaction in each movement.

###

Unbuffered fusion cell crackles and spits, a thousandfold wave of indistinguishable copper points whirls and cooks the air-- intention arcs to ground. Tangles in and out of rotted hull and bunker, seeking likeminded material. The growth has only made it want.

###

An ocean of shredded once-rubber coating and superconductive cables undulates as it rolls across the plains of trash, crushes misfortune underfoot. A bloated starship power matrix-- pulsating, humming, beating with some unforseen heart-- peers out from the moving jungle of high-voltage. A dozen sturdy industrial contacts are swaddled in a new understanding-- nature has began reclamation.

[pipwasreal]

Day 17: mushroom + roleplay/CNC

Characters: Edwin Payne, Charles Rowland, Esther Finch (mentioned), Niko Sasaki (mentioned), Teeth Face (mentioned), Crystal Palace (mentioned)

Content warnings: trauma, kink negotiation, submission, bondage, gags, rape roleplay, clothed sex, rimming, frottage, dehumanisation

It is extraordinarily difficult to force the words out. Even broaching such a taboo subject risks horrifying the love of his afterlife. But Edwin has to try.

"Charles..." he begins, approaching the settee.

Charles, attentive as ever, looks up expectantly. He pats the cushion beside him, but Edwin declines.

He knows Charles can see how tense he is. Charles knows him better than anyone else ever has and ever will. It is a terror and a comfort all at once.

"As you have no doubt noticed, I am... dealing with a lot of... emotions, in the wake of... Port Townsend. What with my return to Hell, Esther's machine..."

Niko's death lingers unsaid between them.

"But the incident that seems to be affecting me the most, at least at present, is our... altercation with the Forest Elemental."

There's no judgement on Charles' face, just curiosity, so Edwin hurries on.

"I have been unable to stop thinking about... how I felt. Utterly helpless, unable to move or speak, dragged toward... eternal absence."

Charles' face twists in sympathy. Of course, he shared that experience. But he seems to have emerged from it unscathed, whereas Edwin feels... too much. He wants to cry, to scream, to... surrender. He must try to explain.

"There was a time in Hell, after I could not say how many years, when I longed for such oblivion," he admits. "But since escaping, since meeting you and finding my purpose, that desire has long passed."

Charles smiles up at him. Edwin returns it, tightly.

"So... in the Forest Elemental's grip, I was afraid again. I did not want to lose you and this existence we have built together. I am grateful Crystal saved us and we were released... but that fear remains."

Edwin takes a deep, unnecessary breath.

"I was able to confess my feelings. Esther has been dealt with. We are no longer on the run from Death. I should feel... comforted. But I do not. I am relieved, of course, but being able to relax in some ways has only made me more aware of other tensions I hold... does that make sense?"

Charles nods encouragingly. Edwin swallows.

"I have been considering how I might achieve catharsis. There is no way to ask this without causing... discomfort. But please hear me out."

He kneels at Charles' feet, takes Charles' hands in his own, and looks directly into his deep brown eyes. He tries to pour all of his love and trust into the gaze.

"I would be grateful, Charles, if you would bind and gag me, hold me down and ravish me."

Charles' eyes go wide with alarm.

"Or rather," Edwin continues, "simulate such an act, as I would not, really, be at all unwilling."

He kisses Charles' fingertips, then presses his forehead to their clasped hands.

"I am so tired of being held down and hurt by things that want only to consume me," he whispers.

"But with you... I would be safe."

Several days, many awkward conversations and a supply run later, Edwin is laid out on the floorboards, supine and stripped down. Just to his undershirt and drawers, but in some ways that feels more vulnerable than being completely naked.

His wrists are tied together above his head, anchored to the floor near the desk by an enchanted croquet hoop. Also attached to the hoop is one end of a thick, rubber-coated iron chain.

The chain snakes all the way down Edwin's body, heavy and clinging. It wraps around his arms, his chest, his hips and legs, looping back through itself. Even if he wanted to free himself, to pass through his bonds, he would only get through the layer of rubber before the iron forced him to be solid again.

Charles loops the trailing end of the chain once around the closest settee leg, then trails it back up to Edwin's head. He kneels down and kisses him, long and thorough, then pulls back and places the last link on Edwin's tongue like a sacrament.

He wraps the chain around Edwin's head twice, effectively gagging him with his jaw held open. Edwin closes his lips as much as he can around the chain and sucks the link deeper into his mouth.

Charles smiles down at him, all trussed up.

"Ready?" He asks. Edwin can only nod.

Charles grabs a point where the chain crosses over itself and uses it as a handle to flip Edwin onto his front. The display of strength and the sudden shift of angle have Edwin's spectral stomach dropping. He lets out a surprised yelp, even though he asked for this, to be tossed around and kept off balance.

"Brills," says Charles. "More of that."

Charles must grab the slack chain between Edwin's head and the settee leg and haul, because Edwin is suddenly tugged backward across the floor. He screams, high and frightened, muffled by the chain.

"Good lad. I know you can be quiet," Charles says. "But you don't have to be, not here. I want you to scream and shout and moan for me."

He gives another yank and Edwin does not have a spine to crack, but he tenses at the strain anyway, chain pulling him taut. He squirms in his bonds, thrilled and terrified when they do not budge.

There is a bell hanging off the edge of the desk, its cord dangling by Edwin's fingertips. He could reach out with the barest movement and make it ring, and this would all be over. But he does not want to.

He is a willing sacrifice this time, however shameful that may be. He whimpers a little, tries to relax into this tethered, exposed feeling. Racked and flayed. No... known and loved. Already, tears prick his eyes.

"Let yourself feel it all, yeah?" Charles says. "Let it all out, I've got you. You're all mine, aren't you?"

Then Charles' hands are on him, ticklishly light against his foot at first, making Edwin gasp and jerk against his bonds, then firmer up his calves. His fingers dig in over, under, between the chains, moving up Edwin's thighs, inexorable, inescapable.

Charles spreads Edwin's arse cheeks and licks him through the thin, loose cotton of his drawers. Then he crawls up and ruts against the crease of his arse.

Edwin moans at that, feeling deliciously helpless. He's rocked slightly back and forth with Charles' movements, a tortuous pressure growing where his clothed cock rubs against the floorboards. But it's incidental. His pleasure doesn't matter.

He is a thing, but he is Charles' thing, and that makes all the difference.