#the shenanigans are beginning

[laurel-finch]

'I Don't Bite' S1.Ch08: Stay

Summary: The Winchesters move on to their next hunt while the reader takes some time to herself... Referenced Episodes: mentioned S1 E15 "The Benders" CW: None. Word Count: 4349 Recommended Song: I Want To Break Free -- Queen Previous Chapter -- Masterlist -- Next Chapter

It had been three days already, but it felt like minutes. To their surprise, I had refused to allow the boys to take me home. I had barely shared my logic, saying I didn't want to endanger them. That was the most I had said in days.

To say I was shocked by my actions was an understatement. Never had I experienced such brutality, not even with Chikaltio. But it wasn't just the shock that was getting to me, it was the horror as I recalled what I had done. It was so much worse than last time because this time I was truly angry. The lack of control was what frightened me, not the action itself.

We had driven as far west as we could the day after and settled in a motel. It was in a rather small farming community in North Dakota. I was thankful the boys were willing to stay with me, although they both seemed rather wary. They understood my situation though, and how much it was weighing on me.

I had been wrapped up in the same thick comforter for two days as if that could stop me from lashing out if I snapped again. I hadn't left the motel room and the most I moved was walking to the bathroom to take a long shower. At least one of the brothers was always with me, though I wasn't sure if it was for my safety or theirs. My hands shook and my lip quivered every time I slowly lifted my gaze to look over at whichever brother was busy babysitting me. It’s not like they wanted to be stuck with a hopeless monster.

The trip back to the motel the night of the incident was quiet. We had parted ways with Deputy Hudak on relatively good terms – she had agreed not to report the boys, regardless of her knowing Dean's real identity. Her warm eyes kept meeting my ragged form, covered in ragged, ripped clothes and a large coat thrown haphazardly around my shoulders. My jaws were clamped firmly shut as I swallowed the taste of blood down, using my tongue to scrape away the last of the flavor on my teeth. It was numbing and claustrophobic all at once.

For once, I tolerated the discomfort of the backseat of the Impala. I didn't have the energy to complain. I knew I should have been excited that Sam was back in his rightful seat, but I just couldn't. The scent of vomit hung in the air, and I believe it belonged to Sam. I couldn't blame him. I had half a mind to empty the contents of my stomach.

The near full moon was above the horizon, a sight that normally brought instinctive excitement. However, I wanted nothing more than to skin myself and hang my pelt as a flag of surrender. The thought of using my furred form made me sick.

I thought I had better control over myself now. I thought I wouldn't let it happen again.

I barely remember entering the motel room. I know I shrugged off any offer of assistance thrown my way nervously, fearing that I may hurt them too. I know now that I never willingly would. They're family. 

I say that as though those two words summarize every emotion I felt regarding the Winchesters.

I threw myself face-first onto the couch and curled into a ball before the boys had even set their stuff down. The room was silent for some time. I jumped, feeling a pair of arms lift me, and hissed at my gentle assailant. The rustling of fabric could be heard and I cracked one bloodshot eye to see Dean pulling back the covers on his bed. Sam carefully deposited me and the brothers worked together to smooth out the blankets. I didn't have the heart to argue.

I fell asleep to the sound of the brothers bickering over who would take the couch, my heart heavy and still covered in dried blood. The next morning I woke in the back seat of the Impala. I didn't remember being carried to the car, or even the start of our drive. I was still in the oversized old clothes that I had been loaned. We barely spoke.

Dean finally spotted a motel to his liking as the sun was setting. Sam paid for the room and the brothers brought in our minimal luggage while I took a shower. I was in the bathroom for a long time, scrubbing my skin raw and fighting with my now matted hair, twisted into bloody curls. To say it was an unpleasant experience was an understatement.

This trend continued for two more days, with utter silence from me unless asked a question and concern from the brothers. My presence felt bothersome and my skin itched with an anxious heat. Now I was seated on one of the motel beds, still wrapped in my comforter and willing to talk for the first time in days.

The boys sat at a small table under a window. I sat on the edge of the bed, my feet poking out from underneath the blanket wrapped tightly around me. I stared at my feet, not sure what to say. None of us were sure how to begin.

Sam sighed and ran a hand down his face before facing me with a stern look. "I'm going to go out on a limb and say this isn't the first time you've lost your cool like that." I flinched at the harshness of his words. Dean sputtered in his seat across from his brother. "Most people when they lose their shit look shocked. You looked terrified."

"Of course, I was terrified," I snapped back, voice no longer a whisper for the first time in days. "I didn't mean to. I just... was angry."

The room was silent once more until Dean finally spoke up. "What about the first time this happened? Did you...?"

The implication hung in the air. The brothers were always quick to put two-and-two together – my steadfast aversion to human dinners had to come from somewhere. The boys looked stressed but made no move to confirm or deny. I dropped my gaze once more. "Yeah," I whispered.

"Were you angry then, too?" Sam asked quietly.

"No. Far from it. It's... a bit of an embarrassing story." I lifted my head, locking eyes with them as they motioned for me to continue. "It was about a year before my mom died. I was fifteen, and my... boyfriend at the time had come to visit me at my home. My parents weren't in the house at the time," I exhaled shakily. "You can probably guess where this is going."

My eyes settled on Dean's as the realization hit him. "Oh shit. Were you..? Wait, you guys were-?"

"Kissing,” I said with a pointed look. "I accidentally bit him. Broke the skin. Even if I hadn't killed him, he still would have turned." Fuck, this was hard to talk about it. Even with my parents, we just… ignored it and moved on. At least they did around me. I heard their fights when they thought I was asleep. "I tasted his blood and... kept biting. Next thing I know, my parents are storming in and I'm covered in blood.

"We had to leave after that. Moved to a new state. A year later, my parents got into a fight – nothing unusual there, they had a lot of fights, but this one was really bad.” I swallowed dryly and kept my gaze firmly rooted on the floor. My cheeks were red and my head hurt, disgusted with myself after silently vowing to keep this quiet for so long. “She was pissed. Went on a rampage for the first time since she had been bit. She… begged my uncle to put her out of her misery. Dad left after that and my uncle took me in. It was never supposed to happen again."

I felt sick just thinking about it. The taste of copper flooded my tongue and I swallowed, taking the flavor into the back of my throat. My tongue burned and I scraped the fresh wound across the back of my teeth. The pain was a good distraction. Horror, shock, pity. I hated the piteous looks.

"When that guy hit Sam... I don't want either of you to get hurt ever. It's... been a long time since I've had human blood, torn human flesh. It’s just… instinct, you know? You can fight it, but sometimes it just…” I huffed out a tired breath and pulled the blanket tighter around my shoulders, hiding in its thick folds. Maybe if I buried myself far enough down, no one would see me, want me, fear me, touch me. Maybe I was better off not being seen.

"I’m gonna leave for a while, I think. Clear my head. It's hard enough for me to think about it, let alone for you to have watched. I need some time to… sort myself out."

My voice was becoming raspy over unshed tears. I had exhausted my ability to cry already. I played with the hem of my shirt beneath the heavy blanket and waited for their response.

"You don't have to leave," said Sam quietly. I raised my head in surprise, eyes wide. "We trust you."

My brows furrowed and my eyes narrowed. Two monster hunters who had known me for, what, a few months were saying they trusted me? “Why-?”

"You've never given us a reason not to, aside from trying to beat the crap out of us when we first met," Dean responded with a small, reassuring smile. "What you did, yeah, it was awful, but you had a reason. Everyone loses it from time to time – you losing it is just a bit bloodier than us losing it."

"Thank you," I sniffed, surprised to find tears welling up again. "And I won't let it happen again." I flashed them a weak smile.

—

"You don't have to go if you don't want to," Sam offered, helping me pack my bag. He took a wad of cash and shoved it into one of the small, hidden pockets of my backpack.

"But I do want to. I've distracted you guys long enough. You need to go find your dad and get back to hunting things. That's what you do best, not moping alongside a traumatized girl," I joked back, smiling reassuringly. He chuckled softly.

"Dean's not going to like it.."

"Dean can pack sand. I'm not just doing this to protect you idiots – I'm doing it for myself, too. Think of it as... my spiritual journey, or whatever." Sam cracked up at this, a wide grin spreading across his features.

He handed me a few more of my clothes and an old but warm jacket that I recognized as Dean's. I quirked an eyebrow, too which Sam shrugged. "Dean doesn't wear it anymore, and I don't think he'd mind you taking it. You need something to keep you warm."

Right. No fur.

Sam called my name quietly, and I hummed in response. He brushed a brown lock out of his face, a worried expression settling upon it. "Are you sure you want to leave? You could at least wait for Dean to get back so he can give you a ride."

"I've never been more sure of anything in my life," I attempted to reassure. My movements were hesitant as I reached a hand out to touch his shoulder. I swallowed dryly and attempted to ignore the sound of his pulse in his throat and the feeling of warm flesh beneath my palm. "I'll catch you later, Sam. Take care of your brother for me, make sure he doesn't get into too much trouble."

"Will do," he said, throwing up a mock salute.

With that, I was off and out the door of the motel room. The early morning sunlight nearly blinded me, but I didn't care.

I was momentarily free, and that's all that mattered.

—

Despite it not quite being spring yet, the North Dakota weather was quite warm. With not a tree in sight, it was just me and the bright sun, its rays beating down on me until I was dripping sweat. It didn't take long for me to remove my leather jacket and wrap it around my waist, the hot sun warming my now exposed shoulders.

I wasn't far from the eastern Montana border. I was in the badlands at this point, enjoying the scenery and the steep, jagged cliffs. Nothing like back home. The view rivaled that of the vast flax fields I had passed some hours ago, their stems and shoots a vibrant green. In just a few short months those fields would turn a pale purple from the sheer number of tiny purple flowers blossoming from the browning stalks. I wished I could be here to see that.

After hours of walking my limbs had found an odd rhythm with my feet thumping haphazardly against the paved highway. Sometime later I would take notice of my throbbing feet and aching knees, and tread a little more gently. Eventually, I would lose interest and continue with my thundering.

I was sure that by now Dean had been alerted to my absence. I knew he would be furious, but I hoped that he would eventually understand – after all, it wasn't a true goodbye. I knew that, had either of the boys asked me to, I would have stayed. Sam trusted me and my judgment, although he may not have agreed with it, and knew that my mind was set. He wouldn't try to change it. Dean, however, always believed there was a better way. He was pushy that way, always getting so fixated on the task at hand and finding the best solution. He wasn’t methodical about it like Sam was. No, he was all heart. That seemed to be a trend with my family – my mother and my uncle, despite being adopted siblings, shared the intensely passionate feelings of loyalty and pride that most hunters felt.

I remember the day I learned about his death. I had received a call from an officer in Georgia; they had found a body they wanted me to identify. I hardly believed it until I saw it with my own eyes.

It hit me like a semi when I saw him. I had expected him to look nightmarish, but the only flaw in his appearance was his ruptured skull, his missing brain, and his hair shredded. It was obvious that he had been attacked by the very wraith he had been hunting.

His face was immaculately clean, having been washed by the coroner before his autopsy. His eyes were closed and what I determined to be a faint smile was etched onto his lips. The skin around his eyes was wrinkled with age, and laugh lines were visible.

He had been a better picturesque father to me than my real father. My father had loved me, that was obvious, but he had never wanted children. The arguments between my parents had always been over what to do with me, and how to raise me.

My father showed his love through harsh tutelage. There was hardly a lesson he taught that didn't have me on my ass in the dirt. He taught me to fight, saying one day I would need to know how. I wanted to resent him, but I just couldn't. I loved him. After all, he was my father. The only thing I did resent about him was the fact that he left when I needed him. For all I knew, he could be dead.

I stretched, tossing my arms high in the air. I felt joints pop and muscles release their tension, brought in by my rather morbid thoughts. It was a good feeling. Despite my stature, I felt like I could nearly touch the sun. I was on top of the world, alone and free for the first time in months.

Alone.

The sun was sweltering now, and I was almost sure I would receive a burn from hours under its strong rays. In maybe two more hours the sun would set behind the tall plateaus, leaving me in darkness. I quickened my pace, still not sure where I was headed. Perhaps I could make it out of the badlands before the sunset.

—

I found a rest stop on the edge of the badlands where I happily spent the night. Sure, sleeping on the hard tile floor wasn't my favorite, but at least I was warm and had a roof over my head. I woke with the sun the next morning, feeling surprisingly refreshed and ready to face the day.

I knew I was deep in Montana, but I wasn't sure where. I was somewhere towards the western Montana border. I could see the Rockies towering above me, clawing at the sky.

I sighed and gently rubbed my tired eyes. There was a McDonald’s and a gas station built into the restaurant that my stomach demanded my perusal, despite my groan of protest. McDonald's was not food and no amount of pestering would ever make me think so. Give me a salad and an elk heart any day over fake, processed chicken nuggets, likely not even made with real meat. That was just the monster in me, craving fresh food. Preferably raw.

I scowled up at the taunting golden arches – I felt like they were laughing at me. With a loud, disgruntled huff I marched towards the glass doors of the small fast-food restaurant.

"The ice cream machine had better be working," I snarled quietly to myself.

I threw open the door a bit more roughly than I was anticipating - the entirety of the small restaurant glanced up at me in surprise and bewilderment. I smiled shyly and shut the door quietly behind me. With a rather fast gait, I made my way to the counter and hurriedly placed my order. I didn't want to be around humans more than I needed to.

Slinging my heavy backpack over my shoulder once more I made my way toward the restroom. It was hidden around a corner, not easy to spot at first. With a grumble I shoved the heavy swinging door open to the bathroom and tossed my bag on the floor, immediately rummaging through it.

I looked up, hearing the sound of a toilet flushing from one of the stalls, and caught the eye of a woman exiting.

The scent of a forest hit my nose, but it wasn’t the typical scent of pine trees. No, her scent made me picture towering forests and a thick layer of fresh, powdery snow lying on the ground. The tree limbs were bending under the weight of the snow, and eventually, they would tip just enough to deposit their powder onto the ground. I pictured mountains soaring above the tops of the trees, snow sprinkled on the sides of the towering giants, reminding me of powdered sugar.

My eyes widened and latched onto the girl's once more, finally refocusing. Her lips split into a shocked expression, her icy eyes wide. I had only met one other person with such an intense scent, and even then Dean spurred the image of cherries, not an entire wintry scene.

“I’m sorry, I- this isn’t? Is this your territory? I’m sorry I didn’t- uh… I'm Calliope," she said with a vague gesture to herself.

I uttered my name in return, returning her wide-eyed expression. I shook my head, scaring away the daze.

She looked to be about my age. She was more rugged than me and was rather muscular. She was tall and lean, but she didn't look like a fighter, more like someone who spent a lot of time running.

Her eyes were glacial, an odd color given her dark hair and tanned skin. Her hair was not quite brown, but not quite black. It was more gray, like dark charcoal, and was pulled into a tight ponytail. I imagined that if she had it down it would easily lay between her shoulder blades. Her skin was ashy but warm in color and dotted with the rare freckle.

I turned and fled.

My food still wasn't ready, causing me to growl out of frustration. Rather than asking them to hurry up, I grumbled lowly and marched out the door. I stopped and sighed, my breath fogging in the cool night air. The moon was waning again and in a few weeks, it would be gone.

"Remind me where you're headed again?" Calliope chirped behind me. I jumped, forgetting that she was there. I had half expected her to stay in the restaurant.

I sputtered, trying to gather my answer. "I-I'm just kind of wandering, really. I don't have a destination."

She grinned heartily, her eyes wild with enthusiasm. "Me too! Maybe we could travel together?" she offered. I scowled at this, and I could almost picture her ears drooping.

"I'm traveling alone for a reason," I stated, harsher than I had intended. The dejected look on her face made me want to take it all back. I shook my head and averted my eyes before taking a few steps toward the road.

"At least let me travel with you for the night," she offered. I glanced back over my shoulder at her. "It's not safe to be out here alone at night."

I huffed and flashed her a small smile. "I think I can handle it." Once more I turned away from her, her eyes glaring daggers into my back. 

She turned to me with a soft pout and began talking. "You know, you could get to wherever you're going a lot faster if you just changed shape."

I tensed and shrugged it off, doing my best to hide my discomfort. "I'm enjoying taking it slow."

She quirked an eyebrow and faced forward again, her eyes scanning the empty road in front of her. "That's a lame excuse." I tensed once more and tossed a frigid glare at her, my grip on my backpack straps tightening. I was capable of shifting, it wasn't like I was physically incapable, but each time I grasped for that familiar feeling of my body blanketed in warm fur, it just… slipped between my fingers like grains of sand. Hard to cling onto and force to the surface. A mental barrier. Fear.

I had tried to shift shortly after the incident, one of the first few nights with the boys. I tried, and I came close. My fur had grown out and I could feel my bones trying to rearrange, but I hadn't been able to go all the way. Since then, anytime I tried I just regressed further. Now I could hardly make the molten color surpass the regular color of my eyes.

"You are a skinwalker, right? Don't tell me I-"

"I'm a skinwalker," I interjected, my eyebrows furrowed and anger rising on my features. "And I can shift. I'm not... defective or anything."

She shrugged in response and faced forward once again. "I suppose that explains why you smell weird, though." At this, I quirked a brow.

"What do you mean?"

She chuckled and clasped her hands behind her back. "You smell... almost scared? And human. Like... really human. Were you turned recently or something?"

I barked out a laugh and she jumped, thoroughly not expecting that reaction. "No, I wasn't turned recently.”

“Neither was I.”

I quirked a brow and stared from the corner of my eye. She matched me step for step, her eyes locked forward and brows furrowed.

“When?” I asked.

She hummed thoughtfully for a movement, contemplating where to begin. “Long time ago. I was young, it was targeted.” She scowled at that last word and turned away for just a moment before continuing her story. “My parents didn't know what to do when I started turning into a puppy all of a sudden.

"They put me in foster care when no one believed them," she said the last part with a chuckle. "I ran away from the group home I was in a couple of times – finally got away with it when I was about thirteen. I've been on my own ever since, save for the occasional other monster I've met and hung out with for a while." She grinned at me and turned around, walking backward again. "What about you? What's your story?"

I chuckled softly, not wanting to share now. My story felt… like nothing compared to my staggering tale. "Not too much to tell. I wasn't turned. I was born like this."

She stopped in her tracks, her blue eyes widening. "That’s new.”

“It's not common, but it's not impossible."

"So then why aren't you shifting?" I stiffened again. I glared suspiciously at her and her eyes were wide with curiosity. "Is that another reason why you smell weird? Cause you’re... what, purebred?" I huffed and grabbed onto the straps of my backpack again.

"I don't know what I smell like, so I don't know."

"Earthy," she said softly. "And strong... but also afraid..? But not afraid like an animal is when it's being hunted. More like... insecure, if that's possibly a smell?"

"So I smell like dirt, power, and insecurity?"

"Yeah, pretty much."

I chuckled, a light blush blossoming on my features. "Well I don't know about the power or insecurity, but the dirt is probably from the fact that I haven't been able to shower in the last three days."

She wrinkled her nose. "Yeah, that's probably it. I bet the power is from your pedigree. And I think you know more about your insecurity scent than you're letting on." She wiggled her eyebrows playfully.

I smiled slightly, flashing white teeth at her. "Probably. Maybe if you stick around long enough, you'll find out."

She smirked widely, looking ecstatic. "Does that make us traveling buddies?"

I chuckled. "For now."

[dduane]

Please read this. It is deeply, DEEPLY freakish.

[Robin, a librarian] received a message from a patron of her library system that there was something wrong with an audiobook they had borrowed. The patron reported that during a quiet part of the audio, there seemed to be a tiny portion of another recording inserted into the silence. It happened more than a few times and the patron also provided a timestamp, because this patron is very awesome. Robin says that this isn’t unusual, and the process is pretty routine:  “It’s usually just a corrupted file transfer or something. And we contact the publisher and let them know, or let OverDrive know, and it gets re-uploaded.” So then what happened?  Robin: “So I went to look up the specific book to see who the publisher was. Mostly because I wanted to know. We would contact OverDrive about the error, and they would fix, or talk to the publisher directly.” Digital files get corrupted often enough, so this isn’t alarming. But then, Robin and her coworkers noticed the name of the narrator: “Scarlett Synthesized Voice.”

And that's just the beginning of it. Who is "author" Blake Pierce, and how do they have more than seven hundred books??

[ruporas]

captain's warm hugs! (id in alt)

[goldensunset]

when people refer to canon story-relevant kingdom hearts games as ‘spinoffs’ it makes me sad not only for the obvious reasons i always say but also bc like man i WISH this series had spinoffs. imagine what they could do if they had permission from nomura to truly go off the rails and ignore the greater canon for a second and just do some fun whimsical plotless thing in an alternate universe. imagine a fishing/boating game on destiny islands. kh fighting game. it is an injustice that we have been deprived of kingdom karts. can anyone hear me

[muzsmocsing]

Xie Lian can roast him to the moon and back about his unforgivable crime of not being pop idol level blindingly handsome but there is not a mf in this series as classy, mature, and level-headed as Yin Yu.

[tubbytarchia]

I don't know what this is all I know is that LimL Joel makes me really emotional

[help-itrappedmyself]

Dead on Main Part 5

Masterpost

“We have to stop for snacks!” 

“We are not stopping for snacks.”

They started this conversation two whole minutes ago.

“We have to stop for snacks! It is a quintessential part of the road trip experience. This is our first road trip. Do you really want to deprive your family of the full experience?”

Apparently, the Waynes have never been on a full road trip, usually flying places instead, so Dick is insisting we make this a whole experience. Danny is willing to bet car games will be played at some point.

“It’s a long drive, we’re not stopping unless necessary.”

Danny wonders how long the discussion can last as it reaches the four minute mark. 

“ But-”

Tim taps Dick on the shoulder to shut him up. “I have to go to the bathroom.” He deadpans at Bruce. 

Bruce looks at him in the rearview mirror, looks back at the road, looks back at Tim. Bruce sighs.

“Everybody is going to the bathroom. We can get some snacks, and then we are not stopping for at least four hours.” 

Dick cheers, and Danny chuckles at Tim’s smirk. They’ve only been on the road for forty-five minutes, by all rights no one should have to go to the bathroom yet, but Danny was enjoying the family banter in the car.

The first forty-two minutes of the drive was mostly just everyone settling in, Dick in the front as navigator, though it didn’t seem like Bruce needed directions. Danny had asked and he’d never been to Illinois before, but they’re probably still in familiar territory, he might need a map later. Danny is in the back seat, sitting behind Bruce, Tim is sitting behind Dick. Dick and Tim both brought backpacks with them for the drive, Tim has at least two tablets in his. Danny knows they put a bunch of stuff in the trunk as well,  overnight bags and other assorted items, he thinks he saw a pillow. Danny knows somebody went to pack something for him/Jason when they get there, but doesn’t know who. He doesn’t have any entertainment, because he doesn’t have anything except Jason’s phone on him. 

They pull into a gas station, Bruce is determined to get the most out of this stop. Bruce pumps the gas as Danny, Dick, and Tim head inside. They do all go to the bathroom, and Bruce comes in to use the restroom as they raid the snack aisles. Tim has three canned coffees in his hands.

“You know if you drink all of those we’ll have to stop again.” Danny points out. “ Plus it’s late, can you not sleep in cars?”

“Can’t sleep at all usually. We’ll see, but I have some stuff to work on anyway.” Tim points to the drink displays. “Anything you’d like?” 

Danny knows that they don’t mind paying for him, at this point it has been debated multiple times, and he knows he won’t make the whole trip without any snacks. He grabs a Monster and a Gatorade for the road. They meet Dick in the chip aisle. It looks like he’s already grabbed one of every candy, and he’s well on the way to one of every chip.

“Hey, what do you like Danny?” Danny stares at all the food precariously balanced in his arms.

“If you’re sharing, I think we’re good.” 

Dick and Tim laugh.

“We will be sharing most of this. I got all of our favorites, but everyone has something that they’re not willing to share as well. Why don’t you pick out something that’s just for you.”

Tim has grabbed sour gummy worms and is making his way to the checkout counter where Bruce is waiting with a very resigned look on his face. Danny grabs a bag of beef jerky and walks with Dick to the checkout. The look on Bruce’s face when Dick walks up with his arms full is hilarious and Danny actually snorts at Bruce’s ‘I can’t control these children’ apologetic look he gives the cashier as Dick dumps his haul onto the counter.

They pile back into their seats, the seat between Tim and Danny now stuffed with all the snacks. There is not one empty cup holder left in the car. They spend the next short stretch getting resettled, opening up their first snacks and drinks. Tim Pulls out a tablet, but doesn’t start working on anything, too busy texting someone. Danny considers pulling out his phone, remembers it’s not his, and then decides not to. He wouldn’t know the password anyway, maybe he can ask if his brother’s know what it would be.

They’d just about hit the first hour mark on their 12-hour trip when Dick turns around in his chair to face the backseat. Danny sees him slip his phone away.

“Hey, Danny, why don’t you tell us about yourself?” Tim has put his phone down.

“Well, I’m still in highschool. Should graduate soon, hopefully.” Danny starts tapping his fingers on his thighs. He hopes he can graduate. “You know I have a sister in college. I have another sister, she’s a traveler, she doesn’t do school.” 

“Do you like school?” Dick prompts.

“It’s okay.” He shrugs. “I’m not great at it. I like learning, but it’s not a great school and there’s only so much learning you can do from inside a locker.” 

“You fit in a locker?” Tim asks.

Danny looks at himself, quickly realizing that they have no idea what he looks like as he sees Jason’s bulky frame. He chuckles, rubbing the back of his head with a hand.

“Ha, yeah. I’m more…. Tim to Damian size? I think I’m around your height.” He said in Tims direction. “Maybe an inch or two shorter, but I have no muscle mass, so It’s a bit of a squeeze but I fit well enough. Never get stuck. Tucker got stuck once.” 

Dick frowns. “Do a lot of people end up in lockers at your school?” 

“Sure. Me, Tucker, Mikey… Maybe Wes if he ever really pisses someone off. But he’s more likely to annoy me than Dash, and I’m not going to shove him in a locker.”

Tim nods sagely, like he understands high school. Dick is frowning like he doesn’t. 

“Dash a sports guy?” Tim asks.

Danny nods. “Football quarterback and basketball.”

“Geek or nerd?” 

“Personally, nerd probably.” Danny thinks about it. “But there’s not much opportunity to explore engineering and space in high school, so I’m mostly average. Tucker is a big geek, he’s great with computers. Does most of the coding for my more technological fixes when I’m working on my parent’s stuff.”

“You work with your parents a lot?” Dick’s phone chimes, but he ignores it.

“Not with them so much as on their stuff. They create it, they come up with a lot of cool stuff. I reverse-engineered a lot of it once it’s done.” 

“You said a lot of it was weapons?” Tim’s phone dings. “Damian says not to ignore his text.” 

“Oh!” Dick grabs for his phone.

“Some. They built other stuff as well, but they specialize in weapons and defenses against ghosts.” 

Dick immediately turns back to look at him. “Ghosts?” 

Danny could hear the doubt in his voice. He sighs. “Yeah, they’re ecto-biologists. Amity has a big ghost problem, that’s why we live there, they wanted to study them.” Danny has a slight shiver, but suppresses it. “They develop a lot of technology using ectoplasm-” Danny shudders for real this time. His squeezes his eyes closed, feeling a deep roiling in his gut that is vaguely nauseating, and a fire in his brain that is making his blood feel like it's burning. This is strange. His brain goes on overdrive, thinking about his parents, the blob ghosts he has had to free from their basement, the threats they make, them shooting at him. Danny recognises the churning in his body as ectoplasm riling up a core. His core.

But he’s not in his body, he shouldn’t have… Jason has died too. Danny opens his eyes and they’re glowing.

[zara-renata]

Even the rocks on the roadside in the N109 Zone could tell | ao3 | masterlist

Summary: How could you tell I was nervous?" -mc, phone call with Sylus "Remote Support". Sylus makes one final miscalculation. You wake up from a nightmare in a place you weren't ready to revisit. Sylus has to reckon with the inevitable consequences of how he treated you when you first met him, but you're paying the higher price.

Notes: Sylus x gn reader, Sylus x mc, second person POV, some Kieran and Luke POV. Slow burn, enemies-to-friends-to-lovers. This story contains: grief, angst, a panic attack, self-destructive behavior, threatened violence (both real [against other characters] and imagined [against mc]), reference to in-game violence on Sylus's part, mc with PTSD, mc with self-esteem issues and negative self-talk, hurt/comfort, a shampoo epiphany This is probably the lowest point in their relationship, and has the least amount of comedy of the series. But Sylus's bullshit from their beginning needs to be addressed before true love can really take off.

You’re here again. You think you’ve always been here, and any other memory is the dream. You have always been here, in this echoing house, the worn floorboards under your feet, still polished, still perfect for sliding along on socked feet, competing to see who can careen down the hall and hit the door at the end first. You have gotten so many bruises from slamming into the door at the wrong angle, but every one was worth it, to collapse with Caleb into a fit of laughter at the end. Even when he lost, and hit you instead of the door, slamming your body back into the door a second time—doubling your chances of concussion, as your grandmother would scold afterwards. But you’re not wearing socks now, and no matter how far you walk, the door at the end never comes closer. The closed doors lining the hall approach and pass with your steady booted stride, landmarks that offer no guidance at all.

You look back on the fever dreams of what you thought was your real life until you found yourself here, in this place again. The first time you reached out and clasped Xavier’s hand in yours, pulling him to his feet, trying to help him brush off the dirt from his beautiful white battle gear. Being held in his arms as the shimmering starlight of his evol lifted you both into the air to safety. Offering him a bite of your snack, watching his normally placid face light up with pleasure at the taste.

The first time you startled Rafayel off of his stupid, unsafe ladder. Walking barefoot with him along a deserted beach, the warm water sweeping over your ankles. Picking up seashells, and asking him if this one would fit in with his jumbled collection of knick knacks contained in his chaotic studio? Coming upon an eel trapped in the sand at low tide, the only sign of life an occasional gasp for oxygen—watching him carefully dig it out of the sand and release it back into the water. It swam away energetically. He said it was a dumb little eel, and would just get stuck again with the next low tide. You told him that you’d both just have to come back often to ensure that wouldn’t happen. 

The first time you saw Zayne again as an adult, crisp white lab coat over the broad shoulders of a man, so incongruous to your memory of the narrow shoulders of a little boy. His achingly gentle touch, when he listened to your heartbeat through the stethoscope, how he inexplicably held your wrist in his soft fingers to count your pulse instead of using the fingertip monitor. How he kept the flowers you gave him on the windowsill in his office and shook his head every time he had to stitch your wounds.

And … Sylus. 

The first time he held you bound before him, the glow in his eye blinding as he ransacked your soul with all the care of a corrupt cop. How his rough palm wrapped around your throat, and the paralyzing strength with which he tightened his hold. The suffocation, and the hate, and the fear, crushing your breath. The first time he called you a disappointment. All of those things, and everything after—the soft caress of his hand in your hair, his warm body wrapped around yours. Those achingly gentle faux memories, not even dreams, probably. Just daydreams, fantasies born from the pathetic need to be held gently again, in the way you hope someone held you as a child before you lost your memories.

Because you’re here again. And it feels so timeless, and so real, compared to these other faded memories. You must have always been here. You hear someone cutting an apple, the dull thunk of the knife hitting the butcher block, the juices misting with each snick. You press your ear against every door you pass. He’s so close. You’re sure of it. You lift your steel-toed boot and slam the flat of your foot into the next door in this endless hallway. It doesn’t even rattle. You kick it, again, and again. You’re sweating. Your head is pounding. You’re losing your breath and you can’t feel your legs anymore. You kick again. And again. And again. With what little breath you have left, you start to scream, the tears and the snot running down your face. He’s right there. If you’re strong enough. If you’re persistent enough. You can get to him. You can break yourself out of this nightmare, if you’re just enough. 

You scream, and you scream, and you kick, and you kick, until your throat gives out.

You wake up, and the scream from your dream is just a whimper in your throat. Your legs are asleep from how your body is folded in on itself, lying in what seems to be a bed.

You wake up in the dark.

You have no idea where you are.

Your heart is pounding in your chest, a jackhammer in the cracked cement of your body.

Your hair, your face, the pillow, the sheets on the bed you’re lying, what you’re wearing—wet. Sweat. Tears slipping from the corner of your eyes into the hair at your temples.

Where the fuck are you?

You sit up, wince at the tingling returning to your legs. Feel along the bed. Nothing. Your hand finally hits something smooth and hard. You pat around, find the base of what you hope is a lamp, let your hand drift up. You switch on the light.

Impossibly, your heart begins to beat even harder. No. No. You don’t want to be here. You aren’t ready to be here. As long as you see Sylus anywhere else—on the street, in a crowded club, in your apartment, even in your bed, you can keep the memories squashed deep, deep down with all the other things that frighten you, that cause you pain, and you can handle being near him. But you can’t reconcile your memories from this place with the memories of being swayed gently in his arms in a crowd, the tender touches on your couch, your bed, a glass of water held to soft lips, your head pillowed against a strong chest with a steadily beating heart as you fall asleep.

You can’t be here.

You crawl to the edge of the bed, land on bare feet on a plush rug over a cold marble floor. The room is empty. The bookshelves, the imposing desk in the corner, the chaise lounge at the foot of the bed, the black leather armchairs and marble topped coffee table. The dark walls, the record player. You recognize each and every object, although you have refused to return here in your mind since you were allowed to leave. You could walk through here blindfolded. You wish you were blindfolded.

The thin sweater you find yourself wearing is soaked through with sweat. You shiver in the air of Sylus’s silent bedroom. You swivel your head, searching for your own clothes. For your boots. Nothing. You don’t want to go deeper into his room, away from the door, an exit, toward the bathroom and his huge walk-in closet for your clothes, or even to borrow more of his. You want out. You can live without shoes. You can’t live if your heart explodes from the panic clawing its way up your throat.

You silently slip out of his bedroom into one of the echoing corridors of his base, with its deep maroon paneled walls and marble floors, the dense gloom of the N109 zone filtering through the huge windows lining this hallway. You remember every single detail. You hear nothing. Just the thundering of your heart. You stride through the labyrinthine halls, the high ceilings soaring above you along with the elaborate, savage designs of the chandeliers. You avoid going near the dining hall or the kitchen or the den or living room, sticking to the outer edges of the wing you know will lead you to the front door. To the way out of this place filling you with so much dread you could collapse under the weight if you falter for even a stuttered heartbeat.

Miraculously, you make it without seeing a single soul. You turn the gothic monstrosity of one of the double front door handles, fully expecting it to be locked from the inside, but it shifts easily in your hand. You open it only as far as necessary to squeeze your shivering body between the doors and let it close softly behind you.

The night is cold. It’s autumn now, after all. Since there are no natural trees in the N109 zone, the wind gusts unchecked against your already cold body. Sylus’s base sits on a cliff overlooking the valley of the N109 zone with its towering skyscrapers thrusting into the perpetual night like crystalline stalagmites in a vast cave. His house is accessible only by a long and winding road up the hillside. A proper villain’s lair. It’s going to be a long walk through the cold and dark if you don’t figure something else out.

You hate yourself, for your tendency to make assumptions. For not asking enough questions. For refusing to think about all the things that you should keep in the forefront of your mind every single second of every single day. Why had you assumed that Sylus was taking you to a hotel to wait for the evol linkage to dissipate? Why didn’t it occur to your stupid ass that he’d take you to his fortified base, where he is the safest, where it doesn’t cost him any money, where it is his home, since you were already in the N109 zone at Amnesia?

You just fell asleep in his big fucking tank like an idiot, without asking a damn thing.

You will deserve the walk ahead of you. Hopefully it will be what you need to never forget again that this man is using you for his own purposes, and probably every single thing he has done up to this point has been to further his goals involving his need for your resonance. After all, the shopkeeper made it plain from the very beginning: you can’t resonate with someone who frightens you. Someone you dislike. Someone who disgusts you. Sylus has never disgusted you. Quite the opposite, unfortunately. But fear and hate, individually, are probably sufficient to block whatever it is in you that allows you to connect to another in such an intimate way.

And what’s the best way to get someone to stop hating you? To stop being afraid of you? Determine what they need the most, and then give it to them.

Your insomnia. Your desperate loneliness, always there, under your skin, for as long as you can remember, but amplified in the aftermath of losing your family. Your craving for human touch and connection, the kind of touch and connection you can’t bring yourself to ask of your friends. That you can’t stand to seek in strangers anymore, after so many failures.

And of course, Sylus has known what you so desperately want, since the very first night you met him. Your mind drifts to your hand, wrapped securely in his. To him pulling you against him, and reading you bedtime stories about indemnification and allocation of risk and remedies in case of breach. To his soft kisses along your shoulder. How many times did he drop in at your place after he released you from his base? Three? It’s only taken three evenings to accomplish his plan that probably began with the deal about the brooch. Lull you into complacency, acquire your affection instead of your hate, and your willing help instead of your fear. Three evenings, to replace him choking you until you blacked out. To replace … everything that came after.

You look down at your bare feet and bare legs. You can survive this. You can survive anything.

You make an inventory of your current situation. You’re barefoot. Unarmed. Soaked in sweat, and the wind is gusting. You don’t have your phone. But you do have your Hunter’s watch. That’s enough. You’ll get far enough away from the base to avoid Sylus or his minions alerting to your absence and finding you outside, call for help, find some shelter, and wait for someone to come pick you up. You recall that the landscape along the winding road leading up to Sylus’s base is fairly isolated. You gamble that there won’t be anyone coming all the way up here at this time of night.

Once you’re home, you will be able to think straight. When your heart isn’t jackrabbiting in your chest. When this jittery feeling, like you can run a marathon without breaking a sweat, isn’t coursing through your pounding veins. When the lingering despair from the nightmare about your grandmother’s house has faded to the tolerable thrum of grief you’re used to these days. And you will uphold your end of the deal with Sylus. You meant it, when you let the coin decide. You can be as resolute in your decisions as he is. You will be his friend. Why, when you know that most of his behavior toward you is calculated, manufactured—a talented forgery? Because Sylus is very good at getting what he wants. He wanted your affection, and your willing help. And he has been successful in acquiring it, despite your best efforts to resist his charm. You’re honest enough to admit that to yourself. And what even is friendship, if you expect something in return? He may only be able to think of friendship in transactional, cost-benefit, return-on-investment terms, but you don’t want to live that way. Despite your best efforts, you like him so terribly much, and that’s the beginning and end of it. 

You will help him with his love, for whatever your help is worth, and you’ll finally wipe the slate clean. You just need… you just need your heart to stop for a minute. That’s all. And that can’t happen here, in the place where Sylus treated you more honestly than he has ever treated you since you were allowed to leave.

You take a deep breath and begin to jog. You can survive this. You can survive anything.

After being thoroughly entertained at Amnesia by Sylus’s Hunter, Luke and Kieran finally managed to dump Noah with Linda after settling the terms of their bet regarding how long they think it will take their boss to successfully woo the object of his unhinged obsession.

The one rule: no interference that could tip the odds one way or the other. Luke, Kieran and Noah must act as neutral observers of the hilarious conundrum their boss finds himself in regarding the highly skilled, highly oblivious Hunter not being able to see what is obvious to anyone who has the unfortunate opportunity of being within a five kilometer radius of the two of them: that Sylus is head over heels, and so is the Hunter.

Each concerned party committed to upholding this sacred rule of non-intervention. Each of them lied through their teeth while making such a commitment. But Luke and Kieran can tell that countering whatever Noah will likely come up with to drag out this complicated courtship will require all of their combined talents to ensure the odds remain in their favor, and that Sylus will convince the Hunter to accept him sooner rather than later.

Luckily for them, this shitshow is a win-win situation. As long as Sylus is happy, Luke and Kieran are happy. And they can tell, the Hunter is already making Sylus happy. They can see it in how drastically his mood has improved ever since the protocore auction. He no longer vacillates between the few emotions he has shown in the years they’ve known him—rage, utter boredom, and the worst: an unsettling blankness. A cavalier attitude regarding whether he lives or dies, whether he wakes up in the morning or not, whether his heart is beating or at a standstill. He’ll sometimes make off-hand comments about the banality of just… surviving, of waking up to find that he’s still alive and being utterly indifferent to that fact. Every time he says shit like that, shivers run down Luke and Kieran’s spines. They’d much rather he punch holes in walls in a fit of rage or blow up buildings out of boredom than encounter him when he’s at his most… empty.

But ever since the auction, the twins have seen a veritable rainbow of emotions clear as a Linkon City’s sunny afternoon on their boss’s otherwise impassive face. Amusement. Worry. Fascination. Yearning. Pining. Longing. Craving. 

“Luke, I’m truly proud of you for actually reading the thesaurus,” Kieran says from behind the steering wheel of their sleek, powerful muscle car. It was a present from Sylus. He claimed it was a bonus for their help in a particularly ugly business feud that ended up in more corpses than anticipated, but they both thought it was hilarious that the “bonus” arrived on the exact date of their latest birthday. Their boss really is the best.

“Thanks, man. It was like, really mind-blowing to learn how many words there are for Boss’s thirst for his pet.” Luke leans back in the sexy black leather bucket seat and enjoys the seat heating. Tonight is the coldest it’s been this fall. He fiddles with the sound system.

Kieran swats his hand away. “Driver’s choice. You know the rules.”

Luke pouts. “I’m not in the mood for Bach. Boring. I want Rachmaninov.”

“You don’t need to get wound up this close to home. It’ll take forever for you to settle down if you listen to Rachmaninov right now, and we really need to get some sleep. I have a feeling we’re about to get really busy with how distracted Boss is going to be with the Hunter.” He drums his fingers along the steering wheel. “He’s going to need all the help he can get.” 

“Ugh, fiiine.” Luke hunches further into the comfy seat and stares out the windshield, watching as the bright headlamps slice through the dark gloom, lighting up a swath of the deserted road leading up to their home. Suddenly, he jolts in the seat.

“What the fuck—”

“Is that—?”

“The Hunter, yeah—”

“And, what the fuck—”

“Yeah, no shoes—”

“Call—”

“Boss. On it.”

Luke already has his phone clutched in his hand, and the ringing fills the car through the sophisticated sound system Sylus ensured the car had, along with the fastest, strongest engine for this model on the market.

Kieran watches the Hunter disappear in the rearview mirror, while simultaneously slowing the car as quickly as possible without making excessive noise that could spook the Hunter.

Sylus’s deep voice suddenly fills the car. “Speak.”

“Uh, Boss?”

“Who else, Luke?” Sylus says dryly. “Speak.” 

“Do you know where your Hunter is?”

The line is silent for a beat. “I left Kitten in my bed, asleep, while I went to take care of some paperwork in the study.” He pauses. “Is there a reason you’re asking me this?” Anyone who didn’t know their boss like they do would think his tone of voice was indifferent. But all Luke and Kieran hear is a spike of worry.

“Uh, I’m pretty sure we just passed someone on the hillside road to base who looks, like, a scary amount like your Hunter. With no shoes on. Or coat.” Luke winces in anticipation of their boss’s response.

The line goes dead.

Kieran has slowed the car sufficiently to be able to pull a u-turn without tires screeching, and expertly swings the car around. He cuts the headlights, counting on the light from the blood-red moon to provide sufficient visibility. He then accelerates until he has the Hunter in view, and slowly follows the lonely figure, ready to provide protection until their boss can arrive and take the situation in hand. Luke and Kieran can tell that whatever you’re experiencing, this is not a situation that they are equipped to handle, and if they come up too quickly behind you, they’re worried you will bolt off-road and be even more difficult to collect again. They really, really hope you don’t notice their presence behind you until Sylus arrives.

Fuck. You’re being followed. And you haven’t found one damned area along the roadside that looks like it could serve as good cover since leaving Sylus’s long, convoluted driveway, because this region is a lifeless wasteland of bare dirt and rock and only small outcroppings of earth along the hill’s descent.

You didn’t remember it being so desolate. Probably because you were just so relieved to be escaping with your life, you were looking at the world through rose-colored glasses and failed to notice that the area leading up to Sylus’s base is as hospitable as the N109 zone’s red, red moon.

You had stiffened, almost pausing in your steady jog along the roadside as a sleek, sexy car that looked like it was built for racing came careening around a bend in the road, the two figures in it just silhouettes behind the blinding headlights as they roared past in a huge gust of wind and gravel. You had hoped, with all of your wildly out-of-control heart, that they were just business associates heading to the base for a meeting or something, and that whoever was in that vehicle wouldn’t recognize you or care about a lone nutcase going for a middle-of-the-night run in the middle of nowhere.

But you’re a highly trained Hunter, and you’ve gotten more sleep lately. Without turning around, you can tell that the same car is following behind you, which would be alarming enough, without the fact that whoever’s driving it is trying to be a sneaky shit with the headlights off. As if you can’t hear the purring of that sweet engine even over the strong wind. Idiots.

Your mind races. You have no weapon. You don’t even have shoes. Surprise is the only means of gaining an advantage. You half-turn, wrap your arms around your stomach and drop into a crouch, as if your stomach hurts and you can’t keep jogging because of the pain. Head down, you watch out of your peripheral as the car keeps slowly approaching in the dark. You let one arm drop from your waist on your side not in view from the car, and feel around on the ground until you find what you’re looking for. Then you wait.

When the car is only just a couple meters from you, you launch yourself from your crouched position and sprint directly at it. Its brakes screech as the driver is taken by surprise, but it’s too late. You’ve already vaulted from the hood onto the roof, and you’ve brought the heavy, dense rock clutched in your hand as hard as you can against the driver’s window. As it shatters, you reach through the now open space with your other hand and grab the driver by the throat, half pulling him out of the tinkling window frame. You hold the rock high above your head.

“Why the fuck are you following me,” you bite out through clenched teeth.

You hear the other car door open, but remain focused on the person you have by the throat.

“Don’t come any closer or I will make your friend unrecognizable for identification at the autopsy,” you snarl. You see the other person freeze in your peripheral vision.

You return your focus to the driver. Staring into his grimacing face, you see a young man, one you don’t recognize. He has a riot of floppy dark curls, shaved to a sharp fade on the sides and back of his head. His big dark eyes reflect the light of the red moon as they dart all over your face. He takes a deep breath.

“If I told you that you do not have anything to fear from me, or my brother, would you kindly put me down?” he asks in a voice that sounds alarmingly familiar. Your stomach cramps almost as painfully as your heart has been for the past hour. Without letting go of the driver’s throat, you turn and look at the man standing at the open passenger door, looking back at you with the same face as the man you have in your grip.

You let go, and Kieran sinks back into the car with a grunt. You scramble off the car roof and back away from it.

Just as you’re about to apologize, you see headlights cutting through the dark. You’re suddenly overcome with the wish that Sylus had killed you when you first met, because you can’t imagine how he’s going to react now, when he sees that you assaulted his employee and damaged his property with the rock that is now falling out of your nerveless hand.

You want to turn and run. You want to put this fucking night behind you. You hate that you’ve been thinking that so often lately. Every single time, you just want the night to be over. You’re so tired. Your heart won’t fucking stop doing that horrible thing in your chest, and you still feel like you need to run until you collapse to make it stop. But you’ve learned by now that there is no running from Sylus. Not in any way that matters. So you just stand there, waiting for the hammer to fall.

Thankfully, he doesn’t appear to enjoy toying with his prey tonight, because he quickly comes to a stop and parks the tank behind the twins’ car. He gracefully climbs down from the driver’s seat, slams the car door, and strides up to Kieran’s side, his black biker boots with the chains crunching on the broken glass. You wince with each footfall. He leans down and looks at Kieran. “You good?”

You can’t hear Kieran’s response, but you see Sylus nod and straighten. He gestures for Luke to get in the car, who obeys without comment. He then taps the roof firmly, twice, and strides toward you as Kieran pulls the car into the road, hangs an efficient u-turn, and disappears into the night.

You close your eyes and wait for Sylus to… you’re not sure? Hit you? Slam you with his evol? You brace yourself. Just because he’s been affectionate up until now, even through you throwing the duffel at him in front of an audience, doesn’t mean he’ll suffer you hurting his employees for no good reason. It doesn’t matter that this is the first time you've ever seen them without their masks on, and that it felt incredibly threatening as they followed you, for some unfathomable reason, with their damn headlights off.

Sure, you could fight back. Try to block his blow. But at this point, you feel like you fucking deserve it. You want to punch yourself in the face for hurting Kieran. You don’t know him, but he’s never been mean to you. The worst he’s ever done is give you a flare gun and pretend a pair of handcuffs could magically restrict Sylus’s evol. He didn’t deserve to be scared half to death and choked through a broken window because of his earlier prank. It occurs to you now that maybe stalking you with the headlights off was the twins’ idea of another prank? And you broke their car window and choked one of them. For fuck’s sake, at this point, you’ll welcome Sylus’s fist.

But instead of the hit you’re still bracing for, you jerk a little when you feel the heavy weight of a warm coat being draped around your shivering body.

You open your eyes. Sylus stands in front of you, wearing a thick cable knit sweater.

“If you wanted to go for a run, sweetheart, you could have just told me. We have a perfectly functional home gym, equipped with treadmills with big screens that make you feel like you’re running on a serene mountain path or along the beach. There’s no need to endure the desolation of the N109 zone’s ‘scenery’ when you’re here with me but want to work out.”

You just stare at him. 

“What’s wrong? Crow’s got your tongue?” One corner of his mouth lifts as he taps the corner of your mouth gently with his index finger.

What the hell is happening? “Are you not mad at me?” you ask, completely at a loss.

“Why would I be mad at you?”

You gesture a little helplessly. “I hurt Kieran. I damaged your property. I interrupted whatever you were doing since you’re now out here instead of back at your home.”

“You didn’t damage my property. The car belongs to Luke and Kieran. Can I touch you?”

“What?” Your heart is a bloody, clenched fist, punching your body from the inside out. Sylus’s apparent calm in the face of all the mess that is you is making you feel like you’re insane.

“I said, can I touch you?” he repeats, as if he has all the patience in the world to repeat questions you clearly heard the first time.

“Like, can you hit me? Or strangle me? You want my permission to give me what I deserve?”

Sylus’ face changes. If you hadn’t been spending so much time recently watching videos on micro expressions and bluffing and acting, you might have missed it. He looks furious for a microsecond, and you want to take a step back. But you deserve whatever it is he’s feeling right now. You force yourself to stay still. You look up into his now neutral, lovely face.

He breathes in through his nostrils. “I will repeat this as many times as you need to hear it,” he says calmly, as the wind sweeps his silver hair across his forehead. Your heart is going to kill you, as you live through the eternity of the pause in this sentence. “I will never, ever hit you. And I will never think that you deserve to be hurt, for anything that you do, or don’t do.”

Okay. Okay, weird. He’ll strangle you, but he won’t hit you? He thought you deserved to be held captive for three days, denied food and water, forced to resonate, but he expects you to believe that he doesn’t want to punish you for fucking up as big as you did tonight? Where is the thin red line here? How can he say that he will never think you deserve to be hurt, when he hurt you so terribly during those first three days?

“Ask your question,” he says, but it’s not a command. It sounds more like a gentle invitation. What alternate reality have you stepped in tonight?

“I don’t understand how your mind works,” you say instead of obeying him.

“If you don’t ask, then you’ll continue not knowing how it works.” He still sounds infinitely patient. “As much as I’d like to, I can’t read your mind. Unless you ask, I won’t always know what you need from me.”

You shiver, even under the warmth of his heavy coat, but can’t bring yourself to answer. You close your eyes against the memory of his calloused hand around your throat. Of him tossing you in front of a huge mecha battlebot, sneering “You can handle it.” Of him telling you to survive the night, or else enjoy your last meal at his table. You open your eyes.

Sylus is watching your face, thumbs hooked in both trouser pockets. He shakes his head a little. “All right. I propose that we go back to the base, and you can pose all your questions there, no strings attached, without you standing out here freezing to death on your bare feet.”

This time you do take a step back, shaking your head. “No. No, nope, no thank you. If you could just dump me somewhere closer to the city, I can just get someone from the Association to pick me up. We can talk another time.”

He watches you closely, and you feel naked, with your heart a sledgehammer against the brittle framework of your ribs, and the sweat still soaking your hair. “Is there a particular reason you’re reluctant to go back home with me?” he finally asks.

You choke a little on a laugh. “You could say that,” you say dryly, with all the calm you can muster through the chaos in your chest.

“Care to share?” 

You’re so tired. You’re so, so tired. None of it seems to matter anymore—whether he hits you, leaves you on the side of the road, or splatters you onto the gravel with his evol. “Do you really not know, Sylus? With all of your insight, do you really need your aether core to figure out why I wouldn’t want to go back to your criminal headquarters?”

“I thought you were getting used to the idea of the criminal aspect of my life,” he says slowly, as if that’s the important part.

“You’re right. I care less and less, every day, that you’re a wanted outlaw. But I really have no interest in reliving the days you spent choking me out and trying to brute force your way into resonating with me,” you murmur, because it’s so hard to say out loud, let alone think about it. You’re shaking. You’re shaking so hard, your bones hurt. Your teeth are chattering. None of these things have anything to do with how cold you are.

Sylus becomes very still, with the red, red moon above him, the wind still gusting through his hair, pulling at his sweater, and the dead earth stretching behind his tall figure.

“Can I touch you?” he asks again. 

Can he touch you? Of course he can. All he has to do is what he has always done. He can just reach out and take what he thinks he deserves from you. As he has done since the first moment you met. But you don’t want to have to give him permission for it. You know you deserve it, but you still have enough of a sliver of self-preservation, or pride, or backbone—something in you refuses to give him this last bit of yourself by being complicit in whatever he wants to inflict on  you right now.

“Can I touch you? Not to hit you. Not to choke you. Not to cause you any pain, in any way, whatsoever.”

You’re so confused. “Then why are you asking for permission, when you’ve never done that before?”

“Because I can see that bringing you to the base tonight, without talking to you about it, when you haven’t been back since our first few days together, was a mistake on my part. I may be many things, but stupid isn’t one of them. I do not intend to make the same mistake more than once.” 

“I was stupid for not asking you where we were going,” you try to protest, although you don’t know why, through your clicking teeth.

“No, you weren’t. You trusted me to take you somewhere you would be comfortable. It was my fault for not considering that you would not feel safe in my home because of the way we began.” His voice sounds so resolute.

You just look down at your toes.

“Can I, please, touch you?” he asks, yet again, but this time he sounds a little strained.

Now that you know he’s not going to try to hurt you, you can finally nod. As soon as you start to bob your head, you feel yourself swept into the air, his strong arm under your knees, the other under your shoulders, and he holds you tightly, so that your face is tucked into his throat.

He carries you to the tank and manages to get the door open without letting you go, but instead of putting you on the passenger seat, he sets you on one of the bench seats further back in the vehicle, pulls the door shut behind himself, and sits next to you. He pauses, taking you in from head to toe, and then leans forward next to the driver’s seat and fiddles with something on the dash screen. He then sits back and pulls you onto his lap. Apparently, he hadn’t turned off the vehicle when he first arrived, because it’s so warm in here. He rests his hand, somehow still warm after standing out in the cold, against your heart.

“I know you want to go home right now. But it’s over an hour away. You need to get warmed up sooner rather than later. Do you trust me enough to allow me to take you back to base until you’re no longer shaking so hard it’s vibrating the whole armored vehicle?” he speaks, lips against your wet hair.

“It’s a tank, Sylus,” you protest, because even now you can't help yourself.

“Do you trust me enough to allow me to take you back to base until you’re no longer shaking so hard it’s vibrating the whole tank?” Sylus murmurs into your hair.

You don’t want to go back there. You just want to close your eyes, and be anywhere else but inside your body right now. Your mind drifts back to how thirsty you were in that house, the house he wants take you now. How thirsty you were, and no water was given. And when the terror would recede and exhaustion seeped into its place, the awareness of your hunger, and no food was given. How did you ever trust him to come near you again? How can he possibly ask you if you trust him enough to take you back there?

But being in his arms like this, despite everything he has done to you, his hand against your broken heart, is calming you in a way that makes trust and choice seem meaningless. You want to just stay right here, in this moment, where the past and the future are just fever dreams, and the only reality is Sylus’s hand, his lips, his chest against your shoulder and side. You want to carve your way into him, force him to carry you inside his skin so you’ll never be cold again. Even though he's the reason you're cold to begin with. You're so tired of this tangled, terrible bond with this terrible man.

And yet. Like always with him, when he's right here, holding you with such fierce tenderness, you find yourself surrendering to the temptation, to the seductive illusion that you’re safe with him, and you let him have whatever he wants.

You just nod, your cheek rubbing against the soft sweater over his clavicle. You feel his chest expand in what might be a relieved sigh, or just exasperation, and the vehicle begins to move. You startle, but he shushes you. “It’s in self-drive mode, we’ll be back in a few minutes.”

You relax again, and the way back is a blur. You don’t want to look, as he lifts you from the car and carries you through the underground garage beneath the base, into the elevator that lifts you to the floor on which his bedroom is located. The same expansive windows, soaring ceilings, subtle light in wall sconces stream by as he strides forward.

“I can walk,” you try to protest, but again, he softly shushes you. 

“No, you can’t.”

“I’m cold, not paralyzed,” you counter, exhausted, amazed you still have the capacity to argue with him.

“Yes, yes, but you haven’t seen your feet. And I have.”

“What?” you lift your head, but he presses your face back into his chest.

“You ran five kilometers without shoes on a semi-paved road, kitten. I’m pretty sure you’re not accustomed to barefoot running, based on the state of your feet.”

You shudder even harder. You hadn’t even noticed the pain.

And then, you’re back in his bedroom. You feel him shift, toeing off his shoes at the threshold. He passes the lounge area, his hulking desk, the bookshelves and the bed, and takes you into the black marble cave of a bathroom you recall from your hunt for the brooch. He sets you on the padded bench thingy that probably has a fancy name that you imagine every rich person has even in their bathrooms and then goes to the walk-in shower and turns on the water. Almost immediately, steam begins to fill the expansive space. He returns and kneels at your feet. 

“Your clothes need to come off,” he says softly, but loud enough that you can still hear him over the spray.

Since you’re back here, the place where you spent so long helpless and trapped, it’s easy to slide right back into that space, but this time you don’t have the energy to even try to help yourself—you just nod again, but don’t move.

Sylus pauses, but then slowly reaches out and slides his coat from your shoulders. Then, so, so gently, he lifts the lower hem of the sweater you’re wearing, knuckles drifting along the sensitive skin of your stomach, and gathers the material under your armpits. With his other hand, he lifts one of your arms and pulls it through and out of the sleeve, and gently rests it back at your side again. He repeats the movement on your other side, and lifts the sweater over your head. Then, with one arm, he scoops you from the bench, gently but efficiently peeling the sleep shorts from your hips and over your legs. You’re left in just your underwear.

He carries you to the shower, the steam warm on your skin, and lowers you on one of the marble benches built into the wall. The water streaming from the shower hits him full on, and his own clothes are soaked through almost immediately. He reaches behind himself and pulls the sweater and undershirt over his head and tosses them back into the bathroom. He then grabs his belt, unbuckling it in practiced moves. Unzips his trousers, slips out of them, tossing them behind him as well. Clad in only a black pair of boxer-briefs, wet hair tarnished silver, he sits next to you on the bench and pulls you onto his lap again, your back to his chest. 

And then… the two of you just sit like that, floating together in a timeless space composed of water, skin, and the steady shush of the shower water. His arms around you are as tight as a straitjacket, securing you against him as if he thinks you’ll dissipate like the steam and drift away if he doesn’t anchor you to his own body. He doesn’t say anything at all. He doesn’t ask anything at all. He just holds you, his cheek resting in your hair, and doesn’t let go.

Slowly, so slowly, your heart slows in your chest. Your body-wracking shivering ebbs in violence, until, finally, you are completely still. Now that your muscles aren’t locked into defending against the convulsions from the cold, and… everything else, you melt into Sylus, head lolling on his chest, the spray of the water soothing everything that hurts, and his steady heartbeat at your back soothing everything else.

But of course, because you’re you, and this life is your life, this peaceful emptiness doesn’t last long. You slowly become aware of the most terrifying need welling up inside you, one you’ve managed to resist since… now that you think about it, since the last time you were in Sylus’s home. You need to fucking cry. 

All of your efforts to avoid this feeling—the terrifying loss of control, the exposure of the weakest part of yourself to yourself, or to another—refusing to speak about the terror and the pain inside you, the terror and pain you carry through every minute of every day, to your friends, to your doctor—all in a desperate bid to keep the floodgates of your tears bolted shut, are crashing onto the shore of this ocean of need. The need to cry. You’ve tried so desperately to avoid it, because once you start, you’re afraid that you will never, ever stop.

But now, being held by this man, who is so deeply threaded into the source of this feeling, somehow triggers the switch in your brain that says safe, safe, you can release the flood behind the gates, and you will not drown, because he’ll hold your head above water, no matter the cost .

You have no idea why your brain thinks this. You can guess why your brain considers a gunshot the same as a bomb, or why your first instinct when approached from behind is threat threat threat, neutralize first, ask questions later . But you cannot fathom for the fucking life of you why your brain sees Sylus and whispers, Shelter. Sustenance. Safety.

You can’t help it. The first tears begin to gather at the edges of your eyes. Your breath quickens, your chest begins to heave with the effort of holding it in. Your face is hot. But despite all of your will focused on not. fucking. crying... the tears begin to fall. At first, silently, but then from deep inside your chest, the sobs clawing their way out of your lungs through your throat, and suddenly you’re howling.

It hurts. It hurts so much. You hate it. You hate that Sylus is here as silent witness to all the weakest parts of yourself. You twist in his arms, straddle his lap. You wrap your arms around his neck and bury your face in his throat, and then you weep. You wail, snot and spit and tears sliding down his chest, because you’re blocking the shower’s spray.

And Sylus? He keeps his arms wrapped around you, his cheek still in your hair, and doesn’t say a thing. After a while, you realize that he has started to shift on the bench, gently rocking you as you fall apart in his arms. One big hand, pressed flat on your back, runs firmly from the top of your spine to your lower back, and then back again. Still anchoring you to him. You feel a low vibration in your chest, under all the other sounds of the loud shower, and realize he’s humming very quietly. You have no idea if he’s humming something in particular. But the feeling in your chest is so soothing, eventually you realize that your sobs, and your tears, have slowed, just as the shivering of your body did while wrapped in his arms.

And then you’re done. You don’t have anything left—just the hollow relief of not being afraid, not shivering, not crying—the relief of not feeling much of anything at all. You try to hold on to it, grasp it in your fists. But like everything else, it slips through your fingers all the same, and you feel the shame come.

Miraculously, the shower water is still hot. It’s beating down on your back, your lowered head, still tucked under Sylus’s chin. You try to sit up, move away, but he just tightens his hold.

“Where do you think you’re going, sweetheart?” he asks, sounding like he has sounded since the end of the auction. Slightly amused. Curious. Infinitely tolerant. 

You can’t say anything. You’re so embarrassed that he just witnessed all of… that. You just want to escape now.

“Hmm?” he murmurs into your hair, to emphasize his question in the face of your refusal to respond. And then, “Why are you always trying to leave me?”

You’re so surprised by the raw vulnerability in his question that you pull back to look into his face. He’s still holding you so tightly, your noses brush. His eyes are wet from the shower spray, droplets clinging in his dark lashes.

“What do you mean?”

“You leaving the base without saying a word is the second time in just one night that you were considering leaving me, without even telling me,” he says evenly, big hand still spread across your back. “Why?”

Suddenly, you’ve had enough. You are so tired of not understanding him, of trying to decipher clues from his inexplicable behavior, the incongruous way he touches you, treats you when you’re at your lowest, compared to how he treated you when you first met. “Why do you even care, Sylus? No amount of utility that I may have for you is worth you putting up with… this,” you gesture to yourself, face twisted in disgust.

“Utility?” he repeats, tilting his head. The hand on your back drifts upward until he has his big palm wrapped around the back of your neck, thumb along the side of your throat, fingers plunging into your hair.

“The dating advice… the resonance,” you remind him, though you don’t know why. You assume he knows exactly what you were referring to, that he’s just buying time to think of an answer that will make you stop asking inconvenient questions.

“You think I’m… ‘putting up’ with you, as you so charmingly phrase it, because I want your help with convincing my beloved that I’m sincere, and because I want you to resonate with me again? Is that what you’re saying?” he summarizes your thoughts.

“Why else would you go to all this trouble to spend so much time on me, when at every turn I end up doing something ridiculous? First, almost having a panic attack at the auction. Then, the very next time we’re out in public together, I make a scene during one of your business meetings. Then, the same night, because I’m just that awesome, I have another panic attack and almost kill one of your employees because I thought they were some human trafficker thinking he had an easy target tonight.”

“Why did you think they were human traffickers?” Sylus asks.

“He was following me with his fucking headlights off in the middle of the night on a deserted road in the N109 zone! What would you have assumed?” you demand, forgetting the whole point of this conversation.

He tilts his head, makes a little moue with his mouth. “Fair enough,” he acknowledges. “And that’s exactly why I’m not mad at you. I didn’t believe for a second that you would attack him for no reason. And, neither did he, by the way. Which is why you’re still in one piece.”

You eye him. “What do you mean?”

Sylus considers you for a moment, and then sighs. “Do you think you’re up to getting washed up before we unpack what you just said? I’ll make us something to eat and we can talk about everything once you’re clean and dry.”

You look down at your fingers, and see that their tips resemble raisins. You’ve made Sylus sit in this shower for at least an hour while you lost your shit. Despite the rich bastard being able to afford never-ending warm water, apparently, you can’t imagine this is how he wanted to spend his version of his evening. You nod.

“Finally, some sense from you,” he smiles slightly, lifting you in his arms. He sets you gently on the shower floor, and grabs a bottle from the built-in shelving containing a bunch of shower products. He kneels in front of you, his broad back blocking the spray from hitting your face. Despite the heat in the room, you shiver as he reaches toward you, as you feel his fingers slide from your calf to your ankle. Your brain stalls out and you can’t bring yourself to protest as he lifts your leg and gently foams some fragrance-free soap, and as delicately as possible washes the now-stinging sole of your foot. He gently lowers it back to the shower’s marble floor, and does the same with your other foot. When he’s done, he simply holds your foot in his palm, looking at it contemplatively, thumb running along the skin near your ankle. 

After a few moments, he eyes your face, and then his gaze drifts to your hair.

“I probably suck at washing someone else’s hair. Can you teach me how to do yours?”

You start shaking your head. “I may have hurt my feet, but I’m still capable of washing my own hair. You really don’t have to do this for me,” you begin, but he shakes his head.

“Just indulge me. Please.” He looks steadily at you. Something about the way he says please, and the fact that it’s the second time tonight he’s asked you so earnestly for your permission to touch you, has you nodding, again. 

He gently squeezes your foot, and then moves to get a few more bottles from the veritable drugstore he has stashed in the shower shelves. He then kneels back at your side and shows you, to your amazement, the same products that are sitting in your own shower back home. “Show me how you use these,” he says.

You stare at the bottles. Then you stare at his face. His eyes seem to gleam through the shower steam.

“Why—?” you ask, but he just shrugs.

“I was hoping you’d visit me,” he says nonchalantly, like it’s the most normal thing in the world for him to stock all of his friends’ personal hygiene products in his bedroom’s en suite bathroom.

Your mind drifts over all of the assumptions you’ve held about this man since you met him. All of the assumptions that have been utterly incorrect. You think about your assumption that he was dreaming about someone else, as he was biting your neck. You think about your assumption that the person he was describing in the Lethe lounge was someone else—anyone else, either one of your friends, a fellow Hunter, or someone you don’t even know. You think about the deal he made with you tonight—the help he says he needs in convincing someone that his feelings are sincere. Someone who refuses to consider that he doesn’t have an ulterior motive in treating them with kindness. In spending time with them. In devoting his precious free time to caring for them. Your gaze drifts between the bottles of the mid-range shampoo and conditioner he’s holding in his strong hands, because you can’t afford the really fancy shit you would really like to splurge on but you have too much pride to just buy the stuff from the grocery store. 

You understand the nature of tools. You work with tools every day in your job. Your knives, your swords, your guns. You maintain your tools with a diligence that others may consider fanatical, but which you know will help you survive, in the end. A whet stone, to sharpen your blades. Gun brush and oil, to clean and ensure the weapon doesn’t jam when you need it the most. These things are essential in caring for your most useful possessions. 

If you are a tool, the only things Sylus needs to maintain your utility are an absence of fear, your willingness to help him, the strength of your body in being well rested and well fed. Everything he has done up till now could be interpreted as serving the purpose of maintaining a tool he intends to use in the future. But a tool doesn’t have to be attractive. A tool doesn’t need clean, well-moisturized hair to function. The cosmetics of the thing are irrelevant, as long as it can efficiently serve its purpose. But you also know that Sylus likes shiny things. He likes the best, finest things. But if he wanted you to be as attractive as possible for aesthetic purposes, he could have bought the expensive, top-of-the shelf products that you’re sure he buys for himself if he was hoping you’d visit and inexplicably be showering in his bathroom. But no. He bought the products that you use. That you’re used to. That he knows you like because you had bought them for yourself. You cannot understand how the presence of your own shampoo and conditioner in his shower could serve any of the purposes of an owner maintaining the utility of a tool. 

You look back up into his face, and he’s looking at you patiently, but also with an eagerness to get started on helping you with your hair. Aside from everything else—how you started, how he treated you in this house—you don’t dare believe that the assumptions you’ve been making up until now are wrong. You aren’t ready to handle the emotional devastation if you begin to hope that the person Sylus wants in his life is… not someone else, only to find out that such an assumption is also wrong. You can’t. You can’t, not yet.

So you just gesture at the shampoo. “I start with this.” 

He sets the conditioner down. You proceed to tell him how you take care of your hair, and he follows your instructions silently, with a clumsy obedience that is incredibly endearing. His fingers along your scalp are so soothing, you melt into him as he washes your hair, your back to his chest. When he’s done, he takes the same care with the conditioner, touching you like you’re made of the most delicate blown glass instead of the scratched and scuffed stainless steel you imagine yourself to be.

When he’s done, he withdraws his hands from your hair and says next to your ear, “I’ll leave you to finish washing up. Towels and clothes will be on the bench. Call for me, and I’ll bandage your feet.”

And then you’re alone, with the water still beating down on your chest and shoulders. You peel off your underwear, and just sit there, knees drawn to your chest, letting the soothing heat stream down your back.

Your mind drifts. Again, you think of his calloused hand around your throat. You think of him sneering that you’re such a disappointment. You think of the thirst, and the hunger. You think about him dragging you across the floor with his evol, every time you tried to claw your way of the room where he forced you to resonate, over and over again.

You think about his embrace as you danced at the auction, your clasped hands as he let you decide when to detonate the bombs before you slipped into a panic attack. You think about the first time you fell asleep with him, on the back of his motorcycle. You think of a pot of poisonous flowers, wine the color of his eyes in a glass held to your mouth, his hands in your hair tonight.

You know that you can’t continue like this. Something has to give. You can’t be his friend, while being terrified of your memories of him. You need to do what he has asked and ask him questions, so that you can finally reconcile the man who just washed your feet so tenderly with the man who suggested cutting off your hand to break the linkage between you the first time the energy shackles bound you two together. The man who brings you wine, and more food than you could eat in a week, with the man who starved you for days.

You slowly get to your feet, wincing at the pain in your soles. You must have cut your feet up pretty bad, but you don’t want to look. You hobble to the shelves and let your hand drift over the array of neatly organized bottles. Your hair products are the only familiar products. Everything looks fancy as hell, with minimal branding, dark and masculine. You find body wash, and squeeze some onto your palm. The scent of citrus rises to your nose—you’ve finally found the source of oranges you sometimes detect on Sylus’s skin. You eagerly lather the soap between your hands and quickly cover your body with it.

When you’re done rinsing, you hobble out of the shower and find the towel and clothes stacked neatly just as Sylus had described. You even find the same type of towel you use specifically on your hair. You wrap it around your head, slip into the silky tank top, shorts and robe, and sit for a moment, elbows on your knees. You see yourself in one of the huge mirrors above the large sink and counter. You look so fucking tired. It’s time. You can’t keep shoving everything down, down deep. You need answers.

“Sylus,” you call. You wait. He appears in the doorway, leans his long body against door frame, shirtless with black silken pants hung low on his waist, warm looking slippers on his big feet.

"Yes, my dearest treasure?"

You laugh a little at the absurd endearment. Somehow, even when you're feeling at your worst, he always manages to make you laugh. It would be so easy, to close your eyes. To pretend that the way you began with him was the dream, that his gentle touch and silly endearments are the real Sylus. The only Sylus. But you're tired of lying to yourself. If you try to shove it all down, down deep, what happened tonight will only repeat itself, in possibly worse ways. You need to find a way forward, a way to realign the conflicting images of Sylus, to sift through them like mirages in the desert. You'd rather see him clearly, from his most malignant to his most tender selves, than continue to be lost between your horrific memories from those first three days and how he's looking at you right now. As if you're somehow precious to him. You take a deep breath.

 “Can we talk?”

[lattien]

the silly mascot phone comic i got to make for @tgaaizine !! ✨️ thank you so much for having me 💖

[thatkoiboi]

Sleepovers with April are the best! ...and normally accidental-

omg also i binge read dandy's "i may be invisible, but i still look good" and the reference is random but i needed it cause it was funny in the fic and references are my data collection-

[rcmclachlan]

okay, so if you’re not writing the aquarium scene in the 118/217 scheming fix-it (god i love this) can you at least share what mishap and or shenanigan gets them banned from the aquarium?? (since you mentioned it in the tags i assume you picked one!)

The aquarium is Christopher's idea, because getting Buck and Tommy back together is the one thing he and Eddie can talk about without it devolving into shouting or week-long silences that make Eddie want to put his fist through his living room wall.

So if plotting to interfere in the open bear trap that is his idiot friends' breakup gets him an hour of uninterrupted screen time with Chris three times a week? He'll meddle in a way that would make even his abuela say, "cariño, that's a little much." He'll change his legal middle name to el metiche.

"Buck used to take me to see the otters when I was younger; they're his favorite. But the exhibit has been closed for a year because they've been redoing it," Chris says, then texts him a link to the aquarium website. "The big reopening is next week. If someone asked Buck to take Jee-Yun, he wouldn't be suspicious."

"Chris, you're a genius," Eddie says, a little awed. His entire body aches to reach through the laptop screen and across state lines to pull his kid into a hug, but all he can do is sit on his hands and hope his face shows all the love he feels.

A small, but genuine grin unfurls on Chris's face. "That's not news, dad."

Eddie decides to take the aquarium idea to what Chimney keeps calling the weekly 118-217 Shadow Summit to see if the rest of the group thinks it holds water—no pun intended—and is extremely offended when Dana gives him a slow blink and says, "That's actually not bad. Who came up with it?"

"Is it that hard to believe it was my idea?"

"Very."

Dana presses the rim of her wine glass to the sly, crimson curve of her mouth. With her victory rolls, winged eyeliner, and tattoos, she looks like the winner of a car show pinup contest. She also looks like an evil queen out of an old school Disney movie. At least five people in their general vicinity look like they'd thank her if she force-fed them a poisoned apple or turned into a giant dragon.

Eddie reaches into the bowl of popcorn by his elbow and throws a handful of it at her. She just takes a sip of her wine and serenely lets the kernels bounce off her.

"Knock it off before I put you both in a time out." Lucy drains the dregs of her beer and says to Chimney, "Having Buckley take your kid is the perfect excuse—she's, what, two? Three?"

"Five," Chim says with the heartache of a man whose baby is almost old enough to rent a car. "As long as we don't tell my wife that Jee's playing the part of the cutest MacGuffin ever in this little plot, we should be good. But how do we get Tommy there?"

"Short of planting a bomb in the penguin tank, I can't think of a reason Mr. Nature Boy himself would ever voluntarily go." Hen roots around in the popcorn bowl for the kernels with the most butter. "Actually, he might be thrilled if we did that. I don't think he likes birds very much."

Dana lifts a brow. "I smell a story."

"Does it smell like KFC?" Chim pops a pretzel in his mouth and chews loudly, grinning. "Once we've adjourned the cabal for the evening, remind me to tell you about Maurice."

Eddie doesn't know Nico very well—he can't get a read on the guy to save his life—but the smug smirk he's sporting looks entirely out of place. Nico takes the last mozzarella stick off the platter they'd ordered to share and puts it between his teeth like a cigar. He looks like the world's lamest oil baron.

Eddie looks at Dana in askance. Wordlessly, she plucks a piece of popcorn out of her hair and throws it at him. It nails him right between the eyes.

"Let me handle Kinard," Nico says. "I'll get him there, no problem."

To his credit, Nico does get Tommy to the aquarium the day of the sea otter exhibit grand reopening. And thanks to Chimney planting Chris's idea in Buck's head at the start of their next shift, Buck does take Jee-Yun.

Unfortunately, their paths never cross, because while the penguin habitat doesn't explode, the sea jelly gallery does, completely flooding the first floor. When the aquarium is forced to evacuate everyone, Buck and Jee-Yun end up at the Chili's down the street, while Tommy ends up riding in an ambulance with an old woman who gets stung by a box jellyfish.

"I don't understand how this happened!" Lucy shouts, keeping her fingers on the ankle pulse of a man in the middle of an allergic reaction to a lilliputian jelly sting as Hen and Chim pump him full of epinephrine and then start administering compressions.

Eddie would help, but he's carrying three kids—two in his arms, one on his back—through shin-deep water to safety while attempting to dodge all the bluebottles floating on the surface. Dana glides past him to get the next group of kids waiting to be rescued, not a hair out of place. She looks like a fucking mermaid. He's gonna trip her the next time they pass each other.

Annoyed, Lucy casts around and then asks, "Has anyone seen Nico?"

Just in time for the man himself to sedately walk through the pandemonium, two bewildered penguins tucked under his arms like purses. He smiles brightly. "Hey, did Kinard pass through here, by any chance? Phase two of my plan is ready to go."

Eddie stares at him. "What was phase one?"

He never does find out what exactly phase one entailed, but it's enough to get them permanently banned from the aquarium for life.

"If you ask me, the punishment so does not fit the crime," Nico says, digging an elbow into Eddie's side as he jostles for room in the back of Athena's squad car.

Eddie says nothing. He's too busy mentally composing the short-answer portion of his application for the El Paso Fire Department, although, in the end, it doesn't matter. He completely forgets everything he plans on writing when Athena slides in, glances in the rearview mirror, and shouts, "Those better not be penguins in my back seat, Edmundo Diaz!"

He and Chris spend two hours talking about it during their next call, so Eddie calls it a win.

[cads-the-cat]

Ah yes, my favourite season is about to begin: Sleep Token Tour

Where I will wake up in the morning to find the fandom in a frenzy and while I sleep drunkenly try to scour the Internet to find out what the hell happened, I only find single words, incomprehensible screaming and maybe a very blurry pic or, if I'm lucky, video. It will take me ages to get some sensible information that they did something insane or weird or unexpected and after the initial thought of what the actual fuck, I will nod because it's Sleep Token and why did I ever question it.

[d8tl55c]

[fynori]

i need a skk-centered spinoff thats just their dumb mafia hijinks so bad you guys dont get it. like imagine them figuring out the gun trick for the first time in the middle of a mission where dazai just hands chuuya a gun like "you know what to do." and chuuya just??? no?? the fuck i dont?????? and so, best guess he's got, he shoots dazai. there arrival back at hq goes something like this:

dazai: why the FUCK DID YOU SHOOT ME??

chuuya: YOU TOLD ME TO??

dazai: NO?? I DID NOT??? I TOLD YOU TO USE YOUR ABILITY TO SLOW DOWN THE BULLET JUST ENOUGH IT PIERCES MY SKIN WITHOUT REACHING MY SKULL OR BRAIN AND THEREFORE FAKE MY DEATH WITHOUT CAUSING ANY REAL HARM. AND THEN I WOULDNT BE AT ALL INCAPACITATED AND COULD JUMP THE GUARDS WHEN THEY GO TO CONFIRM MY BODY. OBVIOUSLY

chuuya:

[kelsochronicles]

I’m fully convinced Erend’s missing boot from the base is bc Talanah took it as a prank and no one can convince me otherwise. They give such sibling energy and I want to see more shenanigans between them

[stars-obsession-pit]

Ghost boy, lost in luggage

Danny wants to go on vacation with his friends, and they have the brilliant idea of souping him so he can nap and take a ride in their luggage without paying for an additional plane seat!

Which would have gone perfectly, if not for one sliiight issue…

Danny was loaded onto the wrong plane.

Oops.