#somethin' bad

[summersnow82]

Somethin’ Bad - Part 20

Fanfiction_The Quarry

Fictober 2024_Prompt 19: “This is getting ridiculous.”

Summary: Annabelle and Travis come to an agreement of sorts.

Author’s note: Guys. I’m so sorry it’s taken me so long to get this piece out. I have not abandoned this fic, but life can be ruthlessly demanding sometimes. I love y’all. I appreciate y’all. Thanks for sticking with me. We’re nearing the end.

…

Part 20

Travis blinked. He’d pictured this evening going many ways, but this… this was not it.

Annabelle tightened her grip on his suit lapels. “Where is Sean?” She repeated.

Under normal circumstances Travis would’ve told her to shut up or untangled himself from her hold with little effort, but tonight… tonight his mind was drawing a blank on what to do or how to reply. Tonight she looked stunning with red lips, long black lashes, and curls that framed her face in a flattering retro style. Her figure was emphasized in a classic skirt and blouse, and the heels made her legs look even more delectable. She was polished, perfumed, and before he realized it his arms were snaking around her back like an old lover. The surprise was evident as her eyes widened, and she opened her mouth to protest; enough time for him to lean in and close the distance.

… and be greeted with a palm to his face.

“Oh, you must be kidding me,” she grumbled, shrugging out of his hold, whirling on her heel, and marching back to the grand house. Before she entered she turned to face him adding, “Don’t worry. I’ll find him. It’s what we do.”

Travis felt his face burn with embarrassment as he watched her go, and he adjusted his suit for a moment, hoping the blush would die down. He did notice, however, with a small quirk of his lips that she had left the door open this time.

………..

“Well, isn’t this nice?” Darlene asked, finally sitting down at the dining room table. She’d been running back and forth to the kitchen, insisting Annabelle sit still across from the smirking sheriff. Frank wasn’t helping, either. He seemed perfectly content to let the two of them sit in an awkward silence without any assistance on his part. Instead, he sat at the head of the table watching the two of them with an ever growing grin on his face. “Frank, would you like to bless the food,” Darlene asked, casting a knowing smile at her husband.

“Of course, darling.” Frank bowed his head, and said, “Heavenly Father, we thank you for the food we are about to eat, the hands that prepared it, and the company we are about to enjoy. We ask You to nourish our bodies to Your Holy Service, to bless this time together, and to help us put aside our stubborn pride and see the gifts before us. In Your Name, Father, amen.” He looked up to see Darlene ducking her head to hide a smile while both Travis and Annabelle both seemed just a touch more humble.

“Thank you for inviting me over, Frank,” Travis said, breaking the silence. “Darlene, everything looks wonderful.” His dark eyes flicked up to look at Annabelle. “Absolutely everything.” Annabelle’s mouth opened just a touch, her surprise evident at the compliment.

“Isn’t she just the picture?” Darlene asked, smiling over at the younger woman. “You’ve indulged me so much, Alice. I never had a daughter, and I always wondered what it would’ve been like.” She reached over, taking Annabelle’s hand in her own, and offering an affectionate squeeze. “Thank you for that.”

“I should be the one thanking you,” Annabelle said, staring down at her empty plate. “I’m not used to such kindness.” She glanced up for a moment, and caught Travis’ eye. “But gracious hosts seem abundant in North Kill.” It wasn’t an apology or forgiveness, but it was a step in the right direction, and it made Frank smile.

After dinner Annabelle offered to clear the table, and with some silent encouragement from Frank Travis was soon on his feet, helping her carry Darlene’s fine china to the kitchen. The two washed and dried the dishes in silence, and they were finishing up when Darlene popped her head in, stating she and Frank were going to go for a bit of a walk and give the “lovebirds” time to talk more openly.

Annabelle’s protests fell on deaf ears as the door swung shut behind the older woman, and Travis shrugged. “At least I don’t have to call you Alice for a bit.”

Annabelle shot him a glare before returning to her work. “You almost slipped up at dinner. At least twice,” she stated.

“Frank knows,” Travis replied.

She almost dropped the dish she was holding. “He… what? He knows what?”

Travis kept drying the plate in his hands. His mother had been strict about dish duty; he’d put a damp dish away once, and she’d made sure he would never make the same mistake again. “He knows your real name is Annabelle. Knows who Sean is. Knows something’s been going on since the fire, but not all the details.” He polished the dish again, more out of habit than necessity. “Don’t worry. He won’t tell.” He was so focused on the dish he almost dropped it when Annabelle’s hands closed around his own.

“It’s dry, Travis.” She spoke softly, and her concern was evident, but Travis didn’t want her concern right now. He wanted to know if she was still going to help him come the next full moon, and he asked her as much. “I said I would, and I meant it,” she told him, her hands still holding onto his. “How did Frank find all this out?” She took the dish from him as she spoke, deftly taking the dish towel, too, and began to dry the remaining dishes. He recounted the events of the previous night, and though he was tempted to exclude it, he shared the reason why Sean had to be moved so abruptly. She leaned back against the counter, shaking her head in disbelief. “Wow. Travis, your family. I mean - .”

“Don’t.” The word was hard and cold, and his eyes told Annabelle he didn’t want to hear what she had to say. “My family is my family. It is what it is.”

Annabelle shook her head, and turned back to the dishes. “This is getting ridiculous,” she murmured. “I mean, how are we supposed to help your family when they keep trying to kill us? We went from sleeping in a jail cell to being put into hiding, and for what?” Her voice rose as she allowed all her pent-up frustration to tumble off her tongue. She squared her jaw, shook her head, and turned, saying, “Maybe we should just leave…,” and the words died in her throat. Travis was slumped in a kitchen chair, elbows on his knees, his long, thin fingers raked through his dark hair.

“Travis,” she said softly, crouching down in front of him with a gentle hand on his knee. “Travis, I’m sorry. Really. I didn’t…,” she struggled to find the words. “I want to help you, I do. I’m just…,” she trailed off, shaking her head.

“My family… we didn’t mean to hurt anybody,” he said quietly.

Annabelle nodded. She knew underneath the gruff exterior, cold glares, and grunts Travis was a good man. She wanted to believe the rest of his family was, too, but her experience with his parents made it difficult, and knowing what she did about Evelyn, and his past didn’t help. “But people have been hurt, Travis,” she said quietly.

“Don’t you think I know that!” He shouted, throwing his hands in the air as he jerked away from her. His chair scraped the floor at the motion, and she recoiled at the burst of movement, falling back against the cold tile floor. Travis froze, his eyes wide with a mix of panic and horror. “Oh. Oh, no. Belle, I - ,” he stammered, and he looked so lost Annabelle couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. He raked trembling hands through his hair and over his face. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. None of this was supposed to happen,” he cried before quietly adding, “We’re just… trying to survive.”

“I know a little bit about that,” Annabelle said softly.

He couldn’t help but chuckle – a dark, rueful chuckle, but still. “Yeah. I guess you do.” He met her eyes, and then looked away quickly. “I’m no good at this, Belle.”

“People or werewolves?” She asked.

He shrugged. “Both.” He took a cautious step in her direction, hesitated, then extended a hand to help her up.

“I will help you,” she said once he’d pulled her to her feet, “but I can’t do that constantly looking over my shoulder, and Sean has to be somewhere safe once the full moon comes.” Travis nodded. “So,” she began carefully, “we need a plan.”

“You got one?”

She grinned. “I was hoping you had one, Sheriff.”

Travis arched a brow, and had the gall to look down his nose at her before saying, “Ma’am, I need more than a glass of red wine with dinner for that.”

Her smile broadened; there was her grumpy Sheriff. And then an idea struck her, and she could tell by the tilt in his head he saw the gears in her head begin to turn. “Do you have a bar in North Kill?” She asked.

If it was possible, Travis looked at her even further down his nose. “Yes,” he answered slowly. “Right along with electricity and running water.”

“Do they, by any chance, have a karaoke night?”

Travis’ lip curled. “Unfortunately. Why?”

Annabelle’s smile was so wide she could barely contain herself. “Why Sheriff, I do believe I have a plan.” She closed her eyes, hummed a tune, and then sang, “Stand on the bar, stomp your feet, start clappin’. Got a real good feelin’ somethin’ bad’s about to happen.”

[rapidhighway]

more.

[nicecrumbart]

I like the way you draw Scott, may I beg you to draw happy empires season one flower husbands?

…i don’t know how to tell you this but this (what was meant to be a 30 min doodle) got INCREDIBLY away from me i don’t even know how this happened 😭

they are having a picnic :D

[hai-nae]

uno reverse

[youchewnet]

"tits or ass" bro her hard drives

[bunnieswithknives]

OH MY GOD??? HAS IT SERIOUSLY BEEN A MONTH????? I am so sorry guys

Prev | Next

[inkskinned]

you were raised in comparison.

it wasn't always obvious (well. except for the times that it was), but you internalized it young. you had to eat what you didn't like, other people are going hungry, and you should be grateful. you had to suck it up and walk on the twisted ankle, it wasn't broken, you were just being a baby. you were never actually suffering, people obviously had it worse than you did.

you had a roof over your head - imagine! with the way you behaved, with how you talked back to your parents? you're lucky they didn't kick you out on your ass. they had friends who had to deal with that. hell, you have friends who had to deal with that. and how dare you imply your father isn't there for you - just because he doesn't ever actually talk to you and just because he's completely emotionally checked out of your life doesn't mean you're not fucking lucky. think about your cousins, who don't even get to speak to their dad. so what if yours has a mean streak; is aggressive and rude. at least you have a father to be rude to you.

you really think you're hurting? you were raised in a home! you had access to clean water! you never so much as came close to experiencing a real problem. sure, okay. you have this "mental illness" thing, but teenagers are always depressed, right. it's a phase, you'll move on with your life.

what do you mean you feel burnt out at work. what do you mean you mean you never "formed healthy coping mechanisms?" we raised you better than that. you were supposed to just shoulder through things. to hold yourself to high expectations. "burning out" is for people with real jobs and real stress. burnout is for people who have sick kids and people who have high-paying jobs and people who are actually experiencing something difficult. recently you almost cried because you couldn't find your fucking car keys. you just have lost your sense of gratitude, and honestly, we're kind of hurt. we tell you we love you, isn't that enough? if you want us to stick around, you need to be better about proving it. you need to shut up about how your mental health is ruined.

it could be worse! what if you were actually experiencing executive dysfunction. if you were really actually sick, would you even be able to look at things on the internet about it? you just spend too much time on webMD. you just like to freak yourself out and feel like you belong to something. you just like playing the victim. this is always how you have been - you've always been so fucking dramatic. you have no idea how good you have it - you're too fucking sensitive.

you were like, maybe too good of a kid. unwilling to make a real fuss. and the whole time - the little points, the little validations - they went unnoticed. it isn't that you were looking for love, specifically - more like you'd just wanted any one person to actually listen. that was all you'd really need. you just needed to be witnessed. it wasn't that you couldn't withstand the burden, but you did want to know that anyone was watching. these days, you are so accustomed to the idea of comparison - you don't even think you belong in your own communities. someone always fits better than you do. you're always the outlier. they made these places safe, and then you go in, and you are just not... quite the same way that would actually-fit.

you watch the little white ocean of your numbness lap at your ankles. the tide has been coming in for a while, you need to do something about it. what you want to do is take a nap. what you want to do is develop some kind of time machine - it's not like you want your life to stop, not completely, but it would really nice if you could just get everything to freeze, just for a little while, just until you're finished resting. but at least you're not the worst you've been. at least you have anything. you're so fucking lucky. do you have any concept of the amount of global suffering?

a little ant dies at the side of your kitchen sink. you look at its strange chitinous body and think - if you could just somehow convince yourself it is enough, it will finally be enough and you can be happy. no changes will have to be made. you just need to remember what you could lose. what is still precious to you.

you can't stop staring at the ant. you could be an ant instead of a person, that is how lucky you are. it's just - you didn't know the name of the ant, did you. it's just - ants spend their whole life working, and never complain. never pull the car over to weep.

it's just - when it died, it curled up into a tight little ball.

something kind of uncomfortable: you do that when you sleep.

[cloudsofteeth]

_(┐「ε:)_ 🧡

[matchavtea]

practice of yeah

[xxplastic-cubexx]

Chat have we discussed drunk chess with cherik cause i just think. That would be the darnedest silliest thing they could do

[zzzx009]

BAND AU! SKK

(no effects ver)

[desaturate-worlds]

logan falls in love first. not in an unrequited way, but in a way so immediate there was never going to be any competition. he’s in love with wade before he even agrees to move in with him, well before they ever kiss or talk about whatever the fuck their relationship is. he is in love with wade in a way that doesn’t leave room for nuance or argument.

when they do (finally, blessedly) get together in a way that’s more than wade’s boisterous flirting and both of their dancing around the topic, logan has to fight the words slipping out of his mouth practically every minute of the day. he knows it’s too soon to put that pressure on wade, but god he’s in love.

when they’ve been together exactly one month (but who’s counting?) (logan is), it finally forces itself out. when logan makes his way into the living room that evening after a shower, wade is curled up in the corner of the couch, mary puppins snoring away in his lap. he’s wearing one of logan’s softer flannels - they got it at a thrift store so it had that pre-worn comfort built in - and custom pajama pants with the little dog’s face on them. mary is wearing a matching little sweater with wade, logan, and althea’s faces all over it (logan had not been involved in this purchase, but he could admit to himself that it was pretty cute).

he feels a warmth come over him at the sight, a feeling he can’t quite place when he sees the merc being able to relax and cozy up on a random wednesday night with their dog. he knows that life was never exactly easy for wade, he’s there when the nightmares and bad days and assassins hit. he was goddamn grateful that wade could be afforded a kindness like watching a dumb cartoon while wearing his boyfriend’s shirt.

he’s only watching the other man for a few seconds before he’s caught. the mercenary looks up at him and smiles so easily, so warmly, that logan can’t help it. he walks straight to wade, grabs his face, and plants a soft kiss on his forehead. “i’m so in love with you.”

his voice is barely a whisper, but he knows wade hears it by the way he goes shock still. logan pulls back to look at him, worried that he fucked this up before it even got solid footing. but when he looks at wade, he sees the blinding smile on the other man’s face.

��god, i’ve been trying not to say the same thing to you for weeks now. i’m fucking in love with you, peanut.”

[artbyblastweave]

The Quintessential superhero setting doesn't change much. Regardless of how long it runs, how many fantastic elements are introduced, the shape of the world never bends too far from what's recognizable. Worm and The Venture Brothers are total opposites in how they approach this genre convention.

In Worm this idea of the classic comic book status quo is quickly revealed to be a lie, and a tenuous one; the capes are killing the world by inches, and any sense of normalcy or stability, any gesture in the direction that the superhuman community effectively self-polices or can be held accountable, is cooked up as a PR bandaid over the fact that total collapse is pretty clearly fast approaching from some direction, sometime soon. Small towns keep getting wiped out because someone had a bad day. The economy is collapsing. Superpowered Warlords are springing up in the cracks. This has been happening for thirty years- twice as long as either Marvel or DC's internal timeline's run- and, at story-start, it can't last much longer. Venture Brothers takes the opposite tack. The world changes without changing. Jonas Venture certainly isn't around anymore; the paradigm of the show's present isn't the same as when the setting hewed closer to the GI Joe Idiom in the 1980s or the gentleman adventurer idiom in the 1800s. Capes come and go, the membership of the Council of 13 slides around. But the NBA trades people around too, and we elect a new guy president every four years. The fantastic has been so totally subsumed by the mundane. No flying cars, no cures for cancer, no space station, no teleportation. No bold move towards a new status quo, good or bad, that doesn't fizzle out into something weak and quixotic. The series ends with the Venture Family skyscraper nearly being dropped on Manhattan before being gently set down right back where the series started. Lucy with the football, again and again. Go directly to hell if you were ever dumb enough to think these people in costumes were every really going to change anything. That tension, the aching implausibility of all of this somehow having amounted to nothing in the end- not even something uniquely bad- powers the entire show. The world is unchanging as the first principle, and all that's left is to find a way to scrape out some personal meaning living under the shadow of that truth.

[jesncin]

batman: so by splitting the work between former League members, Young Justice team, and current League members we were able to take down a good portion of the meta child trafficking ring and bring one of the leaders of the operation to justice.

wonder woman: but you lied in order to do that. do you feel bad that you had to lie. to do that.

batman (a vigilante): ,,? not. not really.