#~you've got a 9-5 so i'll take THE NIGHT SHIFT

[let-me-cry-in-peace-guys]

GOJO SATORU WAS A TEEN FATHER. A F A T H E R. a DAD to megumi and NOTHING you can say will change my mind!!!!

just imagine teen satoru and tiny megumi holding hands, the sun setting behind them, and they're walking HOME. to THEIR home. cause they LIVE together and EAT together and COMFORT each other and i-

AND TSUMIKI!!!! TSUMIKI IS CANON YALL GOJO IS A #GIRLDAD FRFR

and-and i bet he like lets her braid his HAIR and try on his GLASSES and put lil pink STICKERS on his FACE AND UGYCRHBNDPIUJ

[maiko-san]

Catnap + Dogday x Reader (Part 6)

<<< Part 5

Relationship : Fluff

Warning : ⚠️ Mention of blood, mild amnesia ⚠️

Recap : After inhaling the red smoke, you find yourself awake in Catnap's hidden room. For some reason, you don't remember what happened before you got here....

Yet again, you wake up from your slumber. You let out a groan and massage your temple.

Your head is throbbing and your whole body aches for no reason. Probably you slept on the wrong side of the bed— wait.

This is Catnap's room.

You're laying on his large cat bed and you begin to question yourself...

Why are you here?

You remember being in the infirmary after you exhausted yourself with work. But something doesn't feel right and you swore something happened after.

You try to remember what had happened but nothing came up, everything is a blur.

It made you feel frustrated.

A sharp pain in your head makes you jolt as you hisses in pain. You decide to ease yourself from thinking too much.

"Catnap?" you called out for the feline mascot.

Silence.

Where did the cat go?

You look around the room and notice a tray with medicines on them with a few bottles of water.

You pick up the pills and it was the prescription given by the doctor for your headaches.

You didn't think twice and took the pill so it will make your headaches go away.

After that you lay back down on the soft bed, you can return to your office after your headaches goes away.

As much as you want to walk back to your office, you don't want to stumble around like a drunk idiot and hurt yourself.

You close your eyes and rest....

Purr...purr...purr...

You hear soft purring in your ears, you slowly open your eyes and purple fur fills your vision.

You knew who it was and it is Catnap.

Hugging you close to his body with one arm over you as he purrs softly in his sleep. His body is curled around you in a protective manner.

You unconsciously bring your hand up and rub the feline's head, causing his purring to become louder.

"Star..."

Catnap's eyes open as he stares down at you, he shifts a bit to give you some space.

"How....are you...feeling?"

"I feel a little bit better...hmm...I remember being in the infirmary, did you bring me here Catnap?"

"Yes...I brought you here.... the infirmary bed is...bad...and not good for sleeping"

You hum at his response as you continue to pet him, Catnap closes his eyes and accepts the affection he's receiving from you.

You smile at the sight of the purring cat, you quite enjoy petting him and the other SC. They were made to comfort children in the orphanage after all.

You lift yourself off the bed and stretch yourself, "Well, I guess it's time for me to go back to my office!" this caused Catnap to snap out from his purring state.

"You can't!"

This causes you to flinch slightly at his sudden change of tone, "Why?" you questioned the cat.

Catnap froze, why didn't he think this through? He doesn't want you to go back to your office and see the massacre.

Also, the risk of losing you to the other toys is high.

"Everything.... already closed down"

Catnap said. It's entirely true that it's already past closing time. The playcare and the cable car usually shut down after 9:00 p.m. The only people who have access to everything are the night guards.

"What?! It's already past 9:00 p.m.?!"

You were shocked. You've slept that long? Catnap nods as you rub your forehead, guess you have to sleep in for the night huh.

You pucker up your lips before your stomach lets out a loud growl indicating your hunger.

Catnap's ears perk up at the sound as you smile sheepishly, "I haven't eaten since afternoon...I do remember leaving my lunch on my table" you hummed.

"I'll go get it!"

Catnap said as he stands up on all fours. Before you could question him, Catnap jumps up to the hole above leaving you inside the room.

"Huh?! Catnap, wait! Take me with you!"

You called out for him but to no avail. You let out a sigh as you stare up at the entrance on the ceiling. This room is easy to get in but hard to get out.

You have no choice but to wait for Catnap to come back.

You wait...

and...wait...

waiting....

What's taking Catnap so long?

You wish there's a clock in here and you don't have a watch to tell you the time. You assume he was gone for 15 minutes now.

Then, you hear something and it comes from the hole.

"Catnap?"

Something large drops down onto the cat bed, causing you to flinch. It was a blue box with a star on it. It has a crank on its side too. Is it...a music box?

For some reason, you feel the sense of deja vu.

You stare at it for a while, narrowing your eyes at the box.

You just couldn't keep your eyes away from it, if you do something bad would happen.

You and this mysterious box are engaged in a staring competition.

A few minutes pass and nothing happens but that uneasy feeling hasn't left your guts.

Then, the box begins to wind up and plays the well known 'Pop's goes the weasel'

'Get. the. f*ck. outta. there!'

As soon you take a step back, the lid pops and comes out from it, was a monster with razor sharp teeth and claws covered in fresh blood.

By the blessing from the god, you somehow slip and avoid getting eaten by the red headed monster.

"Sh*t!"

That's the only thing you could cry out as you quickly get to your feet and run.

But...where?!

The box monster springs itself towards you like a charging bull, you scream out in fear as you yet again dodge it but it manages to scratch your leg.

You fall on to the ground as you watch your leg bleed, the box monster stalks towards you with hungry eyes.

Your body begin to shakes in fear.

There's no way you can survive this, there is no escape!

As the monster lunges at you, you feel something sharp hooking itself on the back of your shirt and drags you high up.

The box monster was surprised as you are, it let out a frustrated roar as you feel yourself being dragged away by a strange force.

A/n : I know it's a short chapter but I want to leave a cliffhanger.

Also, the Reader had mild amnesia but having it doesn't mean that she forgot her entire identity!

It is only the memories of the previous event were wiped out and she only forgot the event of her being kidnapped and the hour of joy.

But she does remember being in the infirmary, resting.

[lovebvni]

'Advice From Your S/O' ( Pick-a-Pile ) (old)

I haven't done a pick-a-pile lately, I had covid then life got in the way, but I'm back with some shifting advice from your s/o! 

You will be picking a number between 1 and 5

Breathe in....

Breathe out...

Now, what's the number you heard?

[pile 1, 2, 3

4, 5]

pile 1

Pile 1!

Conformation this pile is for you: Have been having nightmares, waking up in the middle of the night, feeling like things aren't going well for you, 9, 999

Cards: 9 of Swords, Page of Cups, 9 of Pentacles

"I see you've been disappointed with your situation, but you know, things are going to get better. Take a break, look to your material life more than you look to shifting right now. Take a break, stop thinking about shifting. I think you're obsessed." Wow, your partner had NO trouble giving this to you straight up. They are basically trying to say take a break. Think about something else, be creative!

Things I kept seeing/hearing: memer, laughs a lot, is in physical or mental pain, obsession, Addison Rae, overachiever

pile 2

Pile 2!

Conformation this pile is for you: You have a mental illness of some sort, you want to work with a deity, you have a cat (or pet)

Cards: The Devil, 5 of Wands (R), 8 of Cups

You guys may have also been drawn to pile 1

"Hello, my love! I want you to be happy. What's wrong? Do you need to rant? I'm here for you if you do! I love you SO SO SOOO much! I was asked to bring you advice. Positive change is coming. I know, that really isnt advice but you NEED to know that happiness is coming to you, CHANGE is coming to you. You feel suck but, you're actually slowly moving forward! I'll always be by your side to hold your hand, dont worry!"

Things I kept seeing/hearing: The colour purple, 555, blue, deities, 'It's Nerf or Nothing!"

pile 3

Pile 3!

Conformation this pile is for you: You love listening to music, weirdcore, Simp/kin Bakugou, cook, denki kinnie 1, 111, 1111, fighter,  fire sign, childish

Cards: 7  of wands(r), king of wands, Ace of Cups, Ace of Swords

"HII! I'm going to be honest with you, you're not TRYING to do everything you want to! I know you want to do great things but you WONT PUT WORK INTO IT! Can you PLEASE actually try to put work into what you're doing? Put effort into it. You're wasting your potential. Once you do this, something new is coming! I promise, pinky swear!!"

Things I kept seeing/hearing: 111, 1111, January, New Beginnings are coming, JAM SESSION!!, artist, learner

pile 4

Pile 4

MENTIONS OF ABUSE/NEGLECT!!

Conformation this pile is for you: Shoto Todoroki, Hyper, 555, 1010, overachiever, doing more than needed, hard working, shifting for an escape, falling, box (LMFAO WTF??), spiritual, magic wand, have a snake

Cards: The World, Page of Wands(R), 10 of Swords, 5 of Swords, The Tower, 8 of Wands

"Hello. You are my world, I want you to know that. I am sending lots of love, because I know that there is a lot going on with you. The parental figures in your life do NOT treat you the way they should. I want you to know, I'm sending you signs and messages, I don't know if you're getting them/paying attention to them. I want you to know there are NO rules you have to follow, nothing you do will effect your journey negatively, okay? Every thing is downhill from here, a smooth ride, you are going to shift soon. Don't loose hope."

Things I kept seeing/hearing: Nicki Minaj, Billie Eilish, finally, endings coming, childish, blonde hair, red 3.

pile 5

Pile 5

Conformation this pile is for you: Shinsou, 333, 33, artist, drawing, roblox, Katsuki Bakugou

Cards: The Hanged Man, 3 of Pentacles, 3 of Wands, The Empress (R)

"WITHIN TIME YOU WILL SHIFT! CALM DOWN! Take a break, focus on what you want to do in your cr, do you like someone? Talk to them! Work on your script, do whatever! I love you! No matter what, I'll wait for you! Success is coming, you're almost at the top of this mountain!!"

Things I kept seeing/hearing: 333, Black, blue, sunglasses, cars, friends, online friends.

[httpsleclerc]

masterlist

up to date as of 6/12/24!

☀︎sebastian vettel☀︎

you've got a 9-5 - in which sebastian and his ex-wife are still in love with each other

so i'll take the night shift - sebastian and his ex wife have a chat after the last weeks events (part two of you've got a 9-5)

always an angel, never a god - in which redbull!driver!reader's idol takes notice of her eating disorder.

♡charles leclerc♡

charles finds immense comfort in his person, i.e., his girlfriend

charles and his wives first vacation since the birth of their baby girl

just the three of us - charles and his girlfriends eventful Saturday afternoon

a villa in biot - Charles and Gasly!reader are in love with the one thing they can't have - each other.

under the monaco moonlight - charles leclerc is in love with the forbidden fruit, or his best friends sister Y/N Gasly and can’t control his instincts when she’s in trouble.

under the monaco moonlight (part two) - Charles and Arthur try to deal with the fallout after Charles turns you into a vampire and kills your boyfriend.

Masterlist for 'the story of us'

✪oscar piastri✪

oscar takes care of his sick girlfriend

oscars girlfriend gets caught counting his freckles while he's sleeping

❊george russell❊

georges biggest hater, his teammate, seeks comfort from him during a thunderstorm

george and his younger sister have a movie night together

Dad!George looks after his wife and young daughter

Dad!George has a movie night with his wife and sick daughter

❀lewis hamilton❀

lewis drives his bosses daughter home from their date night

✫pierre gasly✫

a villa in biot - gasły!reader and Charles both want the one thing they can't have - each other

welcome home - Pierre comes home to his girlfriend and newborn daughter after a long triple header.

❂max verstappen❂

max helps his drunk girlfriend get ready for bed

max feels underdressed compared to his beautiful girlfriend

Somewhere in the Netherlands - Max realises his retirement from F1 is all worth it.

☆lance stroll☆

kissing your boyfriend in the Monte Carlo rain was more romantic than you imagined

Girl Dad!Lance practicing ice hockey with his baby girl

❤︎arthur leclerc ❤︎

arthur's girlfriends, very bad, terrible, not good at all is easily solved

✬ollie bearman✬

ollie's cosy date nights in with his girlfriend (russell!reader)

⭐︎mick schumacher ✩

somewhere in switzerland - Mick Schumacher is down sososo bad for his girlfriend and everything she does!

out of the woods - Romeo and Juliet without the violence and hate but with race car drivers? yeah that seems about right.

[usoppshoneydew]

"9 to 5" Tasm!Peter Parker x reader🕸️🕸️🕸️

S: After a bad day at work, you get a lucky ride home from your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

Pairing: Andrew Garfield! Spider-man x F! Black reader

Tw: Heights??/ Fluff

Word count: 5.3k

Notes: Reader is described as shorter than Peter; reader has a sister; parted hair is mentioned; This is proofread but there may still be mistakes🕸️🕸️🕸️

It's a normal, bustling night in New York as people walk through the streets of Queens. The sun set a while ago but through a window, a person could still hear civilians revving engines, honking horns, or cursing out someone who almost hit them in the crosswalk. A typical night in the city you live in. It's on a relatively basic night like this, that you meet spiderman for the first time.

“Yeah, I'll be right there. Yeah, I missed my bus so I'm taking the street.” You softly speak into your phone, explaining to your sister the reason you're not home from work yet. You glance around while she lists off all the ways she wants you to watch yourself. You knew this way home like the back of your hand, and it's pretty much the safest one, surrounded by families and the elderly, but that didn't mean you didn't keep your head on a swivel like usual.

“Yeah, okay. Yeah, I've got my mace. Ok, see you in a minute. Ok. Love you too. Bye.” You end the conversation and hang up, before putting your phone in your pocket. You sigh deeply and continue your walk, no earbuds in for safety reasons, just the sounds of traffic and the puddles underneath your feet keeping you company on your way back. With nothing else to keep you busy, you do the exact thing you didn't want to do, and run over the course of your day in your head.

You'd had a pretty awful shift at work. It must've been “be a jerk to customer service employees” day and you hadn't gotten the memo or something, because the amount of pissy customers there were today caught you off guard. So of course you were more than ready to go home when it was time to clock off, right before it's time to clean up and close the store, as planned. You scheduled your hours this way on purpose because you hate cleaning with other people, and because your BUS doesn't run that late. This is what you told your manager, when she gave you some bullshit reason for having to leave early and why you had to stay and close up instead of her. You should have set her straight right then, manager or not, but as per usual, you just stewed angrily and cussed her out in your head for the next two hours while wiping counters. You're caught up in your thoughts when someone suddenly shoves past you with their shoulder,forcing you to stumble out of their way.

“Watch where you're going!” the guy practically spits at you and walks off without even giving you a second glance. He doesn't even give you a chance to respond, but it's not like you would have anyway. Instead you just suck your teeth loudly and toss an irritated glare at him over your shoulder. After all, you're not all bark and no bite. You've got enough in you to give someone a nasty look, maybe even venomous depending on what they did, but for some reason any comebacks you can think of only come to you long after the person is gone.You shake your head and are about to continue on your way when you hear a loud “thwip”, and a surprised shriek. Just when you're about to glance back to see what happened, there's the sound of feet roughly landing on the pavement in front of you.

“Yo! It's not nice to push people, man!” You turn back towards the voice, and right in front of you is spiderman, looking over your head while continuing to berate the guy behind you. You stand there stunned for a moment while the two men argue, your mouth slightly parted.

“What the hell man!? Let me out of this!” The stranger shouts while struggling, and you turn around to see that he's now uncomfortably strapped to the wall beside the street, with a large spider web. His arms are up in an awkward position and the tips of his feet are just barely grazing the ground. It looked embarrassing, and there was no way there wouldn't be a group of teenagers taking pictures of him soon, but hey, the guy deserved it.

“Actually, I think I'll let you stay there for a while! Maybe give you a chance to learn some manners!” Spiderman calls back casually before finally directing his reflective eyes down at you. You just glance back up at him for a short moment in disbelief. In the few years since you first saw Spiderman on TV, you've never once seen the hero in person. Maybe you're always looking down at your phone whenever he swings by or something, because you've never seen any of his amazing feats. There could be news about him stopping crime on the exact street you take to school, at the exact time you get out of your last class, and you'll still only find out about it after you step inside your front door. Now he was standing in front of you, tonight of all nights, and he's taller than he looks in the videos.

“Are you okay?” He huffs breathlessly after his little back and forth with the guy from earlier, the wide eyes of his mask staring down at you expectantly. You blink a few times before stuttering a bit and dusting your jacket off.

“Oh uh- yeah I'm fine. He didn't knock me over or anything.” You mumble absentmindedly while looking down at and straightening your already straight clothes. You don't know why you're acting so skittish. Spiderman isn't a celebrity or anything but he is extremely well known at this point. Maybe that's why it feels kind of surreal that he's speaking to you so casually. That, and you're a bit of a fan of Spiderman despite never seeing him in person, always finding yourself keeping up with his latest acts of heroism.

“Well no- I meant-.” Spiderman says before pausing and tapping at his eyes. You just pause for a moment before finally noticing your stiff cheeks and the tears drying on them.

“What the hell? How did I not realize I'd been crying?” You frown, genuinely confused. It must've been when you were thinking about how you let your manager get away with treating you like a shag carpet. You don't have anything to clean your face with, except for a few small packs of wet wipes in your purse, and you don't want to imagine what that would do to your skin.

“Yeah! I uh- was swinging by and noticed you. You looked pretty lost in thought, so I wasn't gonna say anything but. Y'know, spiderman makes time for all civilians, even- crying ones.” He rambles on, and how awkward it comes out makes you smile a little. You never would've thought that spiderman could kind of, well,word vomit. He always looks so put together in his videos, aside from the compilation of times he's fallen or swung into something.

“No, I'm fine really! Thank you. And for dealing with that guy too! If you hadn't done anything I probably would've just complained about him with my sister later.” You joke after glancing back at the man again. Spider man just nods with his arms crossed.

“I get it, not the confrontational type. Me neither.” He sighs, and you tilt your eyebrows slightly, because his actions just now and a few of the videos you've watched definitely contradict that statement. After a moment you begin to fidget a little, not entirely sure of what else to say to Spider-Man, but not wanting to end your conversation with him either. Who knows when you'll get a chance like this again. The next time would probably have to be when there's some sort of danger, and you're not necessarily looking forward to that, especially not after that horrifying lizard incident when you were in highschool. That had been the first time you saw him, watching your TV in awe while clinging to your mom. He notices your discomfort and jumps to make conversation, not necessarily ready to leave you on your own either.

“So um- are you on your way home? I don't think I've seen you in this neighborhood before.” He asks you before coolly leaning on the wall beside him. He really hopes you actually wanted him to continue the conversation, and that he's not just awkwardly holding you hostage now. You brighten up when you look back up at him though, so you can bet he's inwardly patting himself on the back for making the right choice.

“Yeah,that's probably because I usually take the bus through here. I don't normally walk down this street.” You respond while looking around,noticing the sudden absence of families and the elderly. This is the safest route you know, but it's also significantly later than when you'd usually walk through here, around 11 at night now. Spiderman must've noticed the lack of people too because the thing he says next catches you off guard.

“Do you want a ride?” He asks you casually and you look back over at him.

“A ride?” You ask, confused. From what you've seen, no one's ever posted about a spider mobile or anything of that sort. How would he give you a ride home? Spiderman just nods easily before looking up at the buildings around you.

“Yeah! Y'know, you wrap your arms around me, I wrap my arm around you, and fwip fwip!” He makes a small swishing sound and mimics the way he shoots his webs. You look at him with a dumb face, before finally processing what he was offering.

“You're saying you're going to swing me home?!” You gasp, your voice echoing in the empty neighborhood. Spiderman nods casually, this being something he does pretty often. Well, not that often but he's done it with a girlfriend or two, or one. He doesn't swing people around that often.

“Are you sure that's okay? Don't you have to uh- patrol or something like that?” You ask wearily. Swinging while in the arms of New York’s own Spider-Man is something you daydream about an embarrassing amount, but that didn't mean you wanted to take up his time.

“Well I'd offer to walk you home. But swinging’s faster. And! That high in the air, I can patrol at the same time. It's a win win.” He quickly says while rubbing the back of his neck, trying to appear cool about it. You just falter, at a loss for words. What was happening? You've not only run into and spoken to spiderman, a person you've only ever seen on camera,but now he's asking you if you want him to swing you through the city? All in the same night? How had this day turned around so drastically? You're still lost in thought when spider man speaks up again.

“Besides, I can't let a civilian walk around an empty neighborhood by herself can I? Not at this time of night.” He adds softly and reaches his hand out. After a moment more of contemplating, you sigh. You'd had a horrible day and your favorite hero was offering to take you home. Your friends would only clown you if you missed this chance by acting timid again, overly considerate, and you'd beat yourself up over it too. Besides, you glance around at the dark neighborhood. What could be safer than a personal escort home from the webbed hero himself?

“ I guess you can't. Thank you.” You say and accept the hand he has stretched towards you. Spiderman takes your hand before gently leading it to wrap around his shoulders, and you're surprised by how warm his hands are even through his gloves. You wrap your other arm around him, and nervously start to wonder how this was going to work. The masked hero was taller than he looked in the videos, and you had to reach a little just to get a half decent grip around his shoulders. There's no way you're not flying into a late night hot dog stand like this. As if he read your mind, spiderman suddenly starts to shuffle a bit.

“One second, let's just get a better grip here.” He mutters quietly, and you make a startled sound when he suddenly squats a little lower than you, his chin grazing your chest, before wrapping an arm around your waist and lifting you slightly higher. With the sudden movement and the new height difference, you reflexively wrap your arms tighter around him.

“Oh lord, this is really happening.” You practically cry in your head, your heart starting to beat faster in your chest when it sinks in that you're going to be hundreds of feet in the air in a short moment. After a quick little bounce, just to secure you a little higher, spider man finally looks at you.

“Alright. You ready?” He huffs and watches you nervously glance around at the ground, as if you're already flying through the air. You sigh before meeting the reflective eyes of his masks, pausing when you find reassurance in them somehow, and finally nod.

“Yeah, I'm ready.” You exhale and finally find the courage to look up at the buildings and night sky above you. Spiderman takes a breath too, the quick pounding of your heart against his collarbone making him slightly nervous, even if he's confident that he won't drop you.

“Alright. Here we go!” He huffs, and you hold your breath as he takes a running start, before shooting a web. He latches it to a building and with a leap and a yank of his arm, you both spring into the air. You had built the courage to look up but the moment you feel that drop in your stomach from the rise in altitude, you yelp and hide your face between spider man's neck and shoulder, squeezing your arms even tighter around him. You must be strangling the poor man at this point, but if he feels any discomfort, the masked hero doesn't say anything. For at least four more lifts and swings, you're crouched tightly against spider man's side, hoping that this Roller Coaster drop simulator would end quickly. There's nothing but the wind in your ears and the small noises you make whenever you both drop before catching another web, until he suddenly clears his throat.

“ I uh- probably should have asked this sooner but-! Where am I taking you exactly!?” He calls out above all the noise, grunting in between words whenever he has to yank your combined weight back into the air. That's right, you'd been too busy trying to keep your guts out of your throat to tell him where your apartment is. You're about to pull away from his shoulder the smallest bit to answer him, when your home training suddenly reminds you that you're about to tell a random man, even if he is a hero,your address. Still, if there's ever an emergency, it wouldn't hurt for spiderman to know what window to hop through.

“uuh- itS- ugh. That one apartment complex by the sandwich- shop on 5th Ave!” You utter miserably, trying to hold it together while also avoiding looking at the buildings sweeping by.

“Oh ok yeah! I know where you're talking about!” He calls back and you're ready to tuck back into your hiding spot against his neck when he speaks up again.

“You know! It's alright! I won't drop you! You can open your eyes!” He shouts and you squint your eyes open a little.

“I'm sorry?!” You yell back, trying to talk more towards his collarbone rather than screaming directly into his ear. You still keep your eyes open as lightly as possible, not sure if you can stomach watching the buildings swing by. Spider man holds you just a little tighter when he swings from a higher building than the ones you've taken so far, and you try to stifle another borderline inappropriate sound the best you can. What can you do when it feels like you're on the pirate ship ride at six flags,though? It's either restrained, yet slightly weird sounding yelps, or downright screeching in the man's ear, as if you really are on a roller coaster ride. Spiderman glances over at you before swinging again.

“Open your eyes! I promise the view is worth it! You'll love it!” he tries to convince you and you suck your teeth, thinking about it.

“Uh!” your voice wavering as you try to dredge up some courage. You're still contemplating when you feel spider man turn his head. You look up at him and find that his wide, reflective eyes are on you.

“I've got you. Trust me.” Spiderman reassures you again, and you pause. You search his eyes for a moment, and again even though they shouldn't, they almost have a comforting look to them. You both gaze at one another until you take a deep breath. After one more, you close your eyes tight and turn your head towards the front of you both.

“Ok!” you call out, with your eyes still closed. The wind is cold against your ears, and you can even feel it blowing through your hair you messily parted before work this afternoon. You can't see it but you can tell spiderman brightens up.

“Ok?! Yeah! Alright let's go!” he yells excitedly before latching onto another building and preparing to lift you both to an extremely tall one, one that'll give you the best view. He holds you close as you both drop for a moment, building momentum for the swing.

“You ready?!” He pants with excitement while giving your side an encouraging squeeze. After a deep breath, you nod and wrap your arms tighter around spider man's shoulders, squishing the side of your face against his jaw, something you wouldn't normally do to a stranger. This isn't a normal situation though.

“Ok! Here we go!” He cheers before whooping loudly and yanking you both into the air, the force making you groan. You squeeze your eyes shut, until you feel everything coming to halt. When you open them, you and spiderman are both suspended in the air above the buildings. A gasp leaves you and it feels like time stands still, with your jacket rising around you, as well as your bag. You're only able to take in the stretch of lights around you for a short moment before you feel your bodies start to drop. The view is quickly overtaken by buildings again, and you're still out of breath when spiderman sticks to the side of a nearby building. He makes a makeshift perch out of his knee for you to sit on, and despite that being something you'd usually be embarrassed about, you're too stunned to care right now.

“Are you alright? I'm sorry that was too much wasn't it?” Spiderman apologizes breathlessly as he straightens your jacket a little, your silence making him anxious. Maybe he had gone too high? You finally blink yourself out of your daze, bracing yourself against his shoulder.

“No- I-! That was incredible!” You huff, still not entirely over the sight you just saw. It was like looking out an airplane window, but without any, well, security or walls. Spider-Man just looks at your bright eyes and wild appearance, and bursts out laughing. You aren't aware of how wind blown you look so you just continue.

“No really! It was like-! And I couldn't-! You know?” You flounder illiterately as your extensive vocabulary flies out the window. You look at him to see if he was grasping what you're saying and Spiderman laughs again, finding it cute how quickly your opinion about this whole thing had changed. It was also nice that you seemed to be in a way better mood than before.

“Yeah! No, I get exactly what you're saying! The feeling is surreal. I felt it when I went swinging for the first time too.” He agrees with you, your excitement rubbing off on him. You finally feel your heart beat start to decelerate. It was for such a short time but in that brief moment in the air, you felt completely weightless, your day at work completely forgotten. You look over at him again and Spider-Man’s holographic eyes widen when they meet your gaze.

“I've thought this ever since that night in high school but, you really are so incredible.” you sigh and unconsciously search for eyes that you can't see. But spiderman can see yours perfectly, and the awe you're looking at him with, makes his heart speed up unexpectedly. You both gaze at each other for a moment longer before spiderman remembers to catch his breath and clears his throat.

“So um-. Are you ready to go again? I've uh- still got to deliver you home safely.” He jokes while laughing a little towards the end. You blink before situating your arms back around his shoulders. He wraps his arm back around your waist and you squeeze him a little more securely before bracing yourself.

“Yeah, I'm ready.” You huff and Spiderman springs off of the building and you both descend towards the ground before he shoots a web, swinging away with you in his arms. He whoops and you scream the entire way.

***

If someone listened hard enough, they'd hear laughing and talking from the top of a certain building.

“No but really that was such an underrated movie, and all because the animation was different.” You say around the last bite of the hotdog from the stand that's always parked on your street. Spiderman scoffs and shakes his head before impressively tossing his crumpled foil into a trash can on the street 90 feet below you. You'd whistle if you knew how to do it properly.

“Some people can't appreciate anything beyond aesthetics.” He sighs profoundly, and how dramatic it is makes you laugh, causing him to join in too. After gazing out at the city for a short while longer, you ball up your hot dog wrapper and stand up, making spiderman look up before standing too. You stuff the trash in your pocket to throw away later and sigh wistfully.

“Welp, I should probably head inside now. My sister has been blowing up my phone for the last 10 minutes.” You exhale while rocking on your heels and glancing over at the door that leads to the stairs of your building, not entirely ready to end this incredible night.You really should've gone inside the moment you both arrived, but when the masked hero offered to buy you something to eat, you couldn't say no. It was rare enough that you'd actually met him in person today after never being able to catch a glimpse of him before, so you know it's not likely you'll get this chance again. It only makes it worse that he turned out to be much nicer than you ever imagined through his videos. Spiderman just nods his head and swings his arms a bit.

“Yeah of course! And just tell her that spiderman held you up, if you need a way out of a lecture or something.” He responds, making you both laugh for the nth time tonight. You hum and nod your head.

“Will do. So uh- thank you for taking me home tonight, I appreciate it. Honestly, I've wanted to meet you since I first saw you in high school.” You chuckle quietly and sigh.

“I guess people aren't always right when they say never meet your heroes huh?” You say softly and glance at him one more time, making his reflective eyes widen again, before finally turning on your heel and making your way towards the door. Spiderman just stands still until you call out one more time.

“ Goodnight Spider-Man! Thanks again!” You call from the door and it snaps him out of his little daze.

“No problem! And watch yourself on the way to your door too! People are crazy!” He adds quickly and you shout back a distant ‘Yes sir!’, that makes him grin. Even after the door has closed Peter continues to smile to himself, replaying your conversations in his head as he walks off the building with a jig in his step. He never would've expected that he'd run into you tonight. Despite sharing a class with you and noticing you on your way home sometimes, Peter has never spoken to you, as himself or as Spider-Man. He's had a small crush on you for a little while now, nothing huge, just enough that he notices if you've got on a new outfit or if you missed class, but after the way things ended with Gwen before she moved, he doesn't plan on acting on it. That was never a good idea. He swings for a while longer before pausing for a second once he notices he's passing the street you both were on what felt like hours ago.

“She might need a swing home again though, who knows?” He thinks to himself as he walks over to the unruly civilian he webbed up earlier, still stuck to the wall. Maybe that manager you told him about will flake on you again, making you miss your bus and walk down this street. No, that wasn't likely. He's never seen you walk down this street before now so why would it happen again? It wasn't right to look forward to seeing you like that anyway. After scolding the guy one more time after letting him go, Peter swings back up to the building he was patrolling from. Sure, he was drawing in his sketchbook too but he was mostly watching and listening. He doodles with the noise of New York as his ambiance, and soon there's a tiny, no effort doodle of you in the corner of his page. He scribbles mindlessly on already sketched lines as he thinks of you.

“I can at least say hello in the hallway or something.” He ponders quietly as he adds little coils to your simplified hair, to stand as the curls that had escaped your parts when you both were swinging.

An intense yawn leaves you as the last few minutes of class tick by, with your instructor( who insisted on being called professor despite running a poorly taught class at a small community college) talking about a topic you couldn't bring yourself to care about. You couldn't get much sleep after your amazing encounter with spiderman last night. All you could do is run over the entire ordeal in your head over and over. Which you think you would've been tired of doing after relaying the story to your sister and all your friends about a hundred times, enough for them to get sick of it anyway. You're in the middle of skipping through the songs on your phone when you finally notice other students getting up to leave. Technically you didn't have to stay for your instructor's rambling but it always felt too rude to just get up and leave in the middle of them talking. While stuffing your binder back into your backpack, two classmates you'd consider friends walk up to you while chatting.

“Y/n are you going to the student store? Let's go together, I want some of those fruit snacks!” one of them says while leaning a hand on your desk. The other sits at the desk beside you, a desk belonging to a guy named Peter. Now that you think about it, he'd rushed out of class a while ago and hasn't come back. Maybe he had an emergency. You contemplate grabbing his backpack for him, noticing he'd left it behind, but decide not to. How would you even give it back to him? What if he comes back for it after you left?

“Y/n?” Your classmate calls your name again since you hadn't answered them, making you snap out of your thoughts. You quickly stuff the rest of your things in your bag.

“Oh yeah. I don't know you guys. They haven't changed what they stock in a while now. ‘M getting kind of tired of that stuff.” You hum while grabbing your purse and phone.

“Then just walk with us over there.” Your other classmate suggests and the three of you make your way out into the hall.

Peter weaves through the crowd of people leaving their classes for the day. He had spent way too much time dealing with that bank robbery. If he had just left after webbing them up instead of taking the time to bother them, he would've gotten back in time. Now he's going to miss the chance to talk to you-.

You run into a solid chest the moment you step out of the door, hard, because the person in front of you was rushing.

“Oh man! I'm sorry, I'm so sorry are you alright!?” Peter gasps after almost bulldozing over you. You're busy holding your nose and Peter is trying to catch a glimpse of your face to make sure you're not bleeding, when you both notice that you're talking to the person you were just thinking of.

“Oh Peter. I was wondering if you were coming back to class. Your backpack is still over at your desk.” you report once you realize who you're talking to. Peter just pauses and looks at you for a second. It's crazy that he's seen you plenty of times before today but just because of your half an hour long interaction yesterday, things felt different. He almost felt a little naked without his suit on, like you'd recognize him right away.

“Peter?” You ask him again and he finally remembers to human. He blinks a few times before nodding his head.

“Oh. Yeah. Yeah I had to go take care of something, but thanks. For looking out I mean.” He says hurriedly before letting out a sheepish laugh. He looks up at you with a cute smile that unexpectedly makes your heart stutter a little. This being the first time you've looked at him longer than the time it takes for him to answer a question, or slide past your desk. You blink and shrug casually.

“ Oh nah, it's no problem. I guess we'll see you tomorrow?” You say goodbye as your friends start to walk off ahead of you, seeing one of their other classmates.

“Yeah of course, see you later.” He responds and you give him a small smile before walking to meet up with your friends. Peter watches you for another second before turning to walk into the classroom. The two of you had so many conversations yesterday and now it was odd to exchange more than a few words. He can't do it though. Can't attempt to interact with you more outside of his suit. It would only lead to unavoidable problems that he'd rather not deal with again. Peter stops in the doorway to the classroom and taps at the frame with his finger.

“Don't do it, don't do it, don't do it.” He chants in his head as his feet stay planted to the spot in front of the door.

“Hey y/n!” You hear Peter call you right as you're about to step out into the quad. You peer back and see him jog up to you. When you look at him with big, questioning eyes he sighs and brushes his fingers through his hair.

“Sorry, but could you tell me the assignments for tonight? I missed them earlier.” He asks you with an adorable smile, and just like that, things are on the course to change, for better or for worse.

🕸️A/n: I can't believe I finally finished this, I started it in June last year. I told myself I'm gonna finish all the fics I want to read this year, no matter how long and complicated, and I'm already off to a great start. Super proud of myself. This is my first post on this blog so, thanks for reading!🕸️🕸️🕸️

🕸️Taggies: @cookieswithay, @bokutosbiceps

[redconverseismypersonality]

You've got a 9-5 so I'll take the night shift" But it's Regulus avoiding Sirius after he took the mark.

"You've got a 9-5 so I'll take the night shift" But it's Narcissa looking back at her memory of Regulus's face after taking the mark because her son had the same guilty-haunted look.

You've got a 9-5 so I'll take the night shift" But it's Barty and Sirius getting reminded of Regulus everytime they remember the other is trapped in the same prison.

"You've got a 9-5 so i'll take the night shift" But it's Walgbura and her promise to not become like her parents.

"You've got a 9-5 so I'll take the night shift" But it's Lily looking at Petunia wondering where had they gone wrong, and why couldn't they fix it.

"You've got a 9-5 so i'll take the night shift" But it's Remus in the year '81.

I fucking hate myself

[ciitroner]

What does the princess treatment from the boys look like cause this 9-5 is killing me.

Back hurts, shoulders hurt, feet hurt - If it's a better deal I'll take the kidnapped by two hot men for 200.

🥲

wc: 933 warnings: fluff, you get a massage after a hard day of work :), cute ending(?)

Don't really expect anything nice unless you've "deserved it", at least that's the mentality you'll find in Simon. It's Johnny who falls first, "love at first grind" he claims, grins and humps the air behind you like an airheaded fratboy. You recall the day you met him at the bar, cringe at yourself, and wish you'd kept to your sad little house for the night. Simon doesn't understand what Johnny obsesses over, but he still lets him keep you.

He finds you a bit hot when you're angry and screaming at him, pushing you even further by not responding - only tilting his head a bit. He bets you'd even try to punch him if you weren't bound to the headboard, the dumb little thing you are. Could break your arm so easily, he bets. He finds you slightly cuter when you're clinging to him, though, sleepy and tired after a long night. So what.

Over time, he gets more and more infatuated with you - but he refuses to admit that it's love. Simon Ghost Riley doesn't love. Yet, when he sees you in the kitchen - slightly teary eyed from the harsh affectionate ass-slap you got from Johnny when you asked where the baking powder was for the cake you're practically forced to bake, he gnaws slightly on his lower lip. Johnny showed you the cupboard where the newly bought baking powder was being kept and gave you a kiss before walking away to tend to some other important matter. They don't trust you being alone yet, especially in the kitchen, so Simon had to watch over you.

You whisk the batter, trying to imagine you're anywhere but here. He's scary. Basically acting like a second shadow, following each of your movements with his cold eyes. You scoop up some of the batter from the side of the bowl with your finger and turn around towards him, raising your finger, "want a taste, S-Simon?", you mentally curse yourself over the stutter. Forced to use their real names lately, you're not used to it - you hate how out of control you feel.

"No."

He turns around and walks off to the window, not daring to leave you alone for his quick smoke break. His eyes bore into yours as you shrug and pop it in your own mouth, trying to hide the humiliation from the asshole rejection. You put the batter in the cake pan before finally opening the oven and putting it in. Your body aches, and you lean against the kitchen counter with a sigh, rubbing and half-heartedly massaging your own shoulder. They'd told you to clean the house when you had screamed last night about how disgusting and dusty everything is, and how much you hate them. Johnny had just played it off as you needing a good dicking down, and Simon had just rolled his eyes.

"How long?" His voice suddenly speaks up, beside you. You jump in fright and notice that - for a big guy, he sure is quiet as a mouse. "about 20 more minutes..." you stare up at him, silently trying to figure out why he's so interested. He hums, and ushers you to the sofa, sighing in relief when dust particles don't fly up anywhere when you both sit down. "Did a good job today. Lay down."

You lay down on your back, and half-expect him to pull a Johnny and pounce on you.

"Your stomach, love, c'mon." He turns you around, and you oblige. He shocks you when he pulls your shirt up and unclasps your bra. Simon stands over you for a few seconds, before he scoots you into the back cushions and sits on the small empty space beside your butt. You close your eyes, burrowing your head in your arms, crossed under your face. It starts with slow strokes of his calloused and rough fingers down your back, until they settle at your lower back. Two thumbs on either side of your soft back massage your muscles with precise movements. He slowly moves upwards, taking his time to shift between massaging and stroking, sometimes even brushing his fingers through your scalp. He stops to knead a sore spot under your shoulder blades when you let out a slightly pained gasp and open your eyes in shock.

You both ignore the twitch in his pants.

He focuses on that specific muscle for a while, kneading it to dough, before moving on.

-----

You yawn, open your eyes, and notice the evening glow from the sun through the window in the living room. You'd fallen asleep and forgot-

"The cake!" You try to move up from the sofa, but a tug on your foot stops you, "easy, crazy." Johnny laughs, "Simon took care of it." You notice a blanket draped over you, only exposing your knees and down, he's massaging your feet and calves, as they're laid over his thighs, "Lay back, he told me not to stop unless ye cried for me to." His eyes shift to the TV, while he continues his ministrations. You push your head onto the pillow under your head again, probably put there after you'd fallen asleep.

You sigh, the tiredness and stress from the past few weeks weighing down on your eyelids, and you comfortably drowse off before you can hear the "g'night, princess." that leaves Simon's mouth when he strokes the back of his hand over your cheek.

His slight trance is interrupted by the man beside you, "ye burnt yerself?"

Simon scoffs slightly and crosses his arms, "forgot to use those pink fuckin' oven mitts you bought."

[saintyx-111]

you've got a 9 to 5, so i'll take the night shift

and i'll never see you again if i can help it

[gabbytalksalot]

You've got a 9-5

So i'll take the night shift

[hughchroma]

You've got a 9 to 5 so I'll take the night shift

[papersonghosts]

"You've got a 9 to 5" :

"So I'll take the night shift" :

[diyasgarden]

Your next of kin post I AM ILLLLLL

Now here me out: Night Shift is for Patrick

OH THIS MADE ME ILL.

Don't hold your breath, forget you've ever saw me at my best / You don't deserve what you don't respect / Don't deserve what you say you love and then neglect = Patrick to Art and Tashi after they abandoned him in 2007

I feel no need to forgive but I might as well / But let me kiss your lips so I know how it felt / Pay for my coffee and leave before the sun goes down / Walk for hours in the dark feeling all hell = Patrick to Tashi when they meet in 2012.

Now bite your tongue, it's too dangerous to fall so young / Take back what you said / Can't lose what you never had = Patrick thinking about Art in 2012

You got a 9 to 5, so I'll take the night shift / And I'll never see you again if I can help it / In five years I hope the songs feel like covers / Dedicated to new lovers = Patrick to Art and Tashi from 2012 to 2019. I know she repeats these lines with more desperation each time, and to me that is Patrick feeling more and more intensely about this as he gets older.

[punishtears]

you've got a 9 to 5 so i'll take the night shift

[imgodzilllaaa]

This song is so Stolitz coded and it makes me want to sob. I'll probably make an animatic of this at some point but figured I'd jot this down so I dont forget. If I do end up finishing and uploading it, it'll be on my tiktok @vamp_luvrr

Stolas Blitzø

The first time I tasted somebody else's spit, I had a coughing fit I mistakenly called them by your name I was let down it wasn't the same

I'm doing fine, trying to derail my one track mind Regaining my self-worth in record time But I can't help but think of your other in the bed that was mine

Am I a masochist, resisting urges to punch you in the teeth Call you a bitch and leave? Why did I come here? To sit and watch you stare at your feet? What was the plan? Absolve your guilt and shake hands?

I feel no need to forgive but I might as well But let me kiss your lips so I know how it felt Pay for my coffee and leave before the sun goes down Walk for hours in the dark feeling all hell

Don't hold your breath, forget you've ever saw me at my best You don't deserve what you don't respect Don't deserve what you say you love and then neglect

Now bite your tongue, it's too dangerous to fall so young Take back what you said Can't lose what you never had

I feel no need to forgive but I might as well But let me kiss your lips so I know how it felt Pay for my coffee and leave before the sun goes down Walk for hours in the dark feeling all hell

You got a 9 to 5, so I'll take the night shift And I'll never see you again if I can help it In five years I hope the songs feel like covers Dedicated to new lovers

You got a 9 to 5, so I'll take the night shift And I'll never see you again if I can help it In five years I hope the songs feel like covers Dedicated to new lovers

You got a 9 to 5, so I'll take the night shift And I'll never see you again if I can help it In five years I hope the songs feel like covers Dedicated to new lovers

[ao3feed-dirkjake1]

by Anonymous

For borzoilover69 on tumblr. I have never hated a living being as much as I hate you. You're a sickening fucking asshole. Always being a dick to other artists on Twitter. I wish nothing but pain on you. Dirk gets Jake to lobotomize him.

Words: 393, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: Homestuck

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Categories: M/M

Characters: Dirk Strider, Jake English

Relationships: Jake English/Dirk Strider

Additional Tags: Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Lobotomy, Violence, Implied/Referenced Suicide

[grumpygreenwitch]

The Witches and Wizards Job 9 - 10 - 11

AO3 Link

Buy me a Ko-fi?

Remember: Tumblr has no algorithm. Reblogs give me life.

1-2 + 3-4 + 5-6 + 7-8 + 9-10-11 + 12-13-14 + 15-16 + 17-18-19 + 20-21-22 + 23-24-25 + 26-27-28 + 29-30 + 31-32-33 + 34-35-36 + 37-38 + 39-40-41-42

NINE

Morning came virulently early. No one had gotten much sleep, and in the end the team decided it wasn't worth the attempt. A few calls got enough food delivered to bury the kitchen bar under a variety of donuts, egg sandwiches, coffee and tea, and they stared at each other, simply because it wouldn't have been polite to stare at their consultant.

Harry Dresden, Professional Wizard, was sitting at one corner of the bar, eating slowly, looking like the victim of a bad suntan booth accident. He didn't look nearly as bad as he had when Nate had dragged him up to the loft, at least. As if the shower had washed away the burns.

As if they hadn't been real.

"Hey, man." Hardison was holding a bag of frozen peas to his head with one hand, and a smoothie with the other. He looked profoundly hungover as he took a seat between Parker and Eliot. The sweatpants Dresden was currently wearing were his; the shirt was Eliot's. "Thanks."

"No problem," the wizard replied, unfazed.

"Harry," Sophie asked as gently as she would've out of any of them if they'd been hurt on the job, "what happened down there?"

Dresden sighed and shifted minutely. Eliot knew that motion; he'd grown out of it himself many years back as a dangerous telltale, but he knew it. It was how you braced yourself to focus on what needed to be done, away from the pain. It went right into the hitter's mental file about the wizard, along with the scarred knuckles, the one bandaged hand, the ready way in which Dresden shifted so his back was nearly always to a wall.

"You found a Burning Witchwell." Nate scoffed minutely, but Dresden didn't seem to mind.

"A Burning… ," Sophie repeated carefully.

"Witch's Well," Dresden enunciated more carefully. "Shorthand, Witchwell."

"Is it still dangerous?" Nate asked.

"Probably. I'll go down in a bit and contain it," Dresden sipped at his cup. "It's a trap, a booby trap."

"Can't you destroy it, dismantle it?" Nate insisted.

"I can try." The wizard glared minutely at the mastermind. "Look, you gotta understand, I was not expecting to find a piece of arcane magic on my first night in Boston. Witchwells are incredibly old magic. I've only ever read of them, I've never even known of someone in the past four hundreds years with the chops to make one."

Sophie threw Nate a quelling look before she turned to Dresden once again. She was both amused and concerned that, at the moment, he looked very much like Parker did: frustrated, restive and angry. The wizard knew there was an enemy before him but he couldn't see it, couldn't target it, couldn't act. There was a great deal of physicality to the man; he was obviously rusty when it came to dealing with people, he'd proved that amply in Chicago, when he'd been about as tongue-tied in front of her as a schoolboy, but he was also used to the world lashing out at him while he had to stand there and take it. Parker was mad that Hardison had gotten hurt and there was no one she could hurt back in retaliation; Harry was just mad that someone had gotten hurt on his watch. "Harry, what exactly is a Burning Witch's Well? How is it a booby trap?"

The wizard sighed deeply. "The first thing you have to understand is that there are laws for me, just as there are for everyone else. There's a lot less for me," he said calmly, "but the penalties are a lot heavier. I can bend a lot of them to help you because you already know there's weirdness going on. I can twist some more because you've been put directly in the line of fire, and because honestly, I don't think anyone's going to be able to look you up for an inquest. But there are still questions I won't be able to answer."

"That's not what we hired you for," Nate protested, knowing it wouldn't matter but still wanting it on record.

Unsurprisingly, Sophie threw him a quelling look before turning back to the wizard. "Go on."

"You've read those fairy tales where someone finds a magic book or a magic cauldron, and read the inscription on it, and it activates?"

"'Speak, friend, and enter'," Hardison murmured.

"It works like that. A normal Witchwell is any item, any thing that's been empowered so you read the command words on it and it activates. It does the one thing it's supposed to do, and it turns off. Very neat, very clean - and very hard to make, because, I mean… Just like any other piece of machinery, anything magical needs power to run. You plug in a coffee maker, you charge a phone, you put batteries in a flashlight; magic's no different. A Witchwell doesn't need any of that. All the power it needs comes from its making, from it being used."

Hardison perked up; this sounded suspiciously like a Rule. He liked Rules; science and technology were full of Rules. Hacking wasn't even breaking the Rules so much as it was applying them in new and exciting ways. To hear that magic had Rules was exactly what he'd been hoping for. "Like a Rolex."

"Say what?"

"There's a rotor, a little pendulum thing, inside most Rolex watches," Hardison explained. "You don't need a battery, you just need to wear the watch to keep it going."

Harry looked surprised at this bit of trivia. "You can do that?"

Nate stepped in. "So this thing downstairs," he declared, trying to shepherd the conversation back in place. "It's going to keep running forever?"

"No," the wizard said forcefully. "It's going to run whenever someone reads what it says on it."

"I didn't read it, I couldn't," Hardison said immediately.

"But you tried," Harry said, not unkindly. "That's where the fernflower comes in."

"I'm very curious about this 'fernflower'," Nate said mildly.

Harry gave the mastermind a suspicious look. Apparently he'd already learned that 'mild', when it came to Nate Ford, meant danger. "For starters, it's not a real plant."

Nate pinned a vaguely murderous look on the wizard.

"Harry," Sophie was trying not to laugh. "You and Hardison didn't get hurt by an imaginary flower."

"The fernflower didn't hurt him, or me." He gestured, trying to ferry his own thoughts back into a semblance of order. "Fernflower's a flower of the Nevernever, the world on the other side, fairies, all th-"

"Fairies are real?!" Parker interrupted him.

Dresden closed his eyes and fought to focus. "Yes, they are, no, they're not nice, no, they don't grant wishes, if you see one, run."

"Why? What would you do if you saw one?" she challenged.

"Run," Dresden replied earnestly without missing a beat. "It's rare even there. It only grows in places of power, places were magic naturally gathers. It's that plant you hear about in fairy tales that gives you magical powers, but only for a little bit. It lets you talk to animals, protects you from curses or," he sighed, looking at Hardison, who immediately realized the cause-and-effect involved.

"It lets you read magic," the hacker said slowly, testing the words even as he spoke them.

"That's the booby part," the wizard admitted.

"Because even if whoever found the cylinder didn't know anything about magic, they'd still activate it." Hardison lowered the bag of peas. "That's nasty, Dresden."

"That's the harmless bit," the wizard told him wryly, "hangover aside. The killer in there was the night's breath."

"Let me guess," Nate pointed out dryly. "Another plant that doesn't exist?"

"Oh, no, you can grow night's breath on this side," Dresden replied in the same tone. "It's just illegal and if you do grow it a man in grey with a big sword's gonna show at your doorstep, torch your garden and cut your head off."

There was a very long beat of silence.

"That brought up so many questions I don't even know where to begin," Sophie declared, stunned. Nate scoffed and worked on refilling his cup.

"I got one," Eliot stepped in. "Dresden, you washed off the burns. You were covered in blisters. Hardison was covered in blisters. They were real."

"They sure hurt like it," Hardison muttered.

"But they still washed off. You're hurt, but you're not hurt as bad as you were."

"He doesn't actually have magic." Dresden pointed at Hardison. "Night's breath burns magic, corrodes it. In his case, it burned off the fernflower, not him."

"And in your case?"

"I sloughed off what it had damaged. A bit like scouring a wound that's gone bad; it's not pleasant, but at least the stuff underneath's healthy. And I'm thinking I can't afford to take my time healing, if you're finding Burning Witchwells just lying around."

The fridge began to rattle.

"Getting hurt doesn't work like that," Eliot protested tightly.

"Stuff from the Nevernever doesn't last on this side," the wizard countered. "It needs a power source, energy, will, same as anything else. For starters, the fernflower. But once that burned off, all it needed was belief. If…" He trailed off, staring at Hardison in sudden befuddlement.

"Alec Hardison." Hardison put aside the smoothie and offered his hand.

"Harry Dresden." Dresden shook it.

"Pleasure to meet you."

"You bet." Neither man missed a beat. "If I could get to Hardison before he realized what the night's breath had done, before it had time to cement itself in his mind, I knew he'd be fine."

Hardison started laughing a bit. "You had to catch me before it got compiled." He looked terribly pleased. Despite his words to Parker or Nate, Hardison had expected a hoax and a riddle in equal parts. What he had never, in his wildest imaginings, had expected, was that he (and Arthur C. Clarke) had been right. But he was, they were. In his own way, the partially singed Chicago beanpole was just a different sort of hacker, with a different language, with different tools. Just like Hardison was a master of his own science, so was Dresden. Dresden's tech was just incompatible with everything else.

The big ol' monolith was indeed just a different breed of computer.

"I think I'd like to know what's going on now, if it's not too much trouble," the wizard said evenly, looking at Sophie and Nate.

Surprisingly, it was the mastermind who replied to the request. "You go lock that canister down," he told Dresden. "By the time you get back hopefully we'll have hard copies of everything so we don't have any more screen mishaps -"

The coffee-maker chose that moment to chirp sadly and shut down.

"Yup." Dresden hopped to his feet.

"Eliot, go with him," Nate directed.

"Alright."

"Can I come?" Parker asked hopefully.

"Are you good at following directions in a hurry?"

"The sort of directions people give in a hurry, yes."

A smile twitched along the wizard's mouth, making him look younger and handsome for the briefest of moments. "Can't argue with that condition. Come on."

TEN

If Parker and Eliot had been expecting to see some magnificent display of magical fireworks as their contractor dealt with the canister, they were sorely disappointed. Dresden stepped warily enough into the room, and examined everything else: the table, the camera, the rumpled tablecloth on which the canister rested - everything but the canister itself.

"You got any duct tape?" he asked Eliot, further confusing both thief and hitter. Then, with utmost care, he taped a piece of cardboard from a box of straws on top of the inscription of the canister.

"That's it?" Eliot asked in disbelief.

"Yeah," the wizard shrugged. "Can't read it, it can't activate." He shook the canister slightly; they all heard something sloshing in there, and Dresden grimaced. "I don't like that sound, though." He wrapped the canister in the tablecloth, duct-taped that down as well, set it back down on the table and dragged a sharpie out of a pocket in his weather-beaten duster. He drew a long, deep breath.

Then he sketched a near perfect circle on the table and began to sketch swift, unrecognizable scribbles around the perimeter.

Parker brightened up. "What are you doing?"

"Making it so the owner can't track this thing to here," Dresden replied distractedly. "At least not without warning me that they're doing so. It's a warding circle." He gave them both a very level look. "Whoever did is very, very powerful. Powerful enough that just their image, not even their presence, is messing with your equipment. I doubt I can stop them if they really want their little death bottle back, but I can at least be here to get a good look when they come for it." The fingers of Dresden's bandaged hand twitched restlessly.

With Eliot carrying the camera, they headed back up to the loft. Rather than gathering before the bank of screens, they surrounded the kitchen bar once again, cleared of food and buried instead in any number of documents, printouts and paperwork.

Dresden picked up a chair and slid it back and away a whole two feet when Eliot put the camera down on the table. Nate shot the wizard a pointed look. "All done?"

"As much as it can be without my workshop," Dresden admitted.

"What do you need from your workshop?" Nate asked distractedly as he read from a very official-looking folder.

"The list is endless… Is that… Is that a police report?"

"No." Nate tipped his chin vaguely at the bar. "That's the police report. This is the insurance investigation report."

Dresden's mouth worked emptily for a moment.

"Harry," Sophie said mildly. "I think it's time we told you what we know."

"That'd be nice," he admitted, not quite managing to keep the doubt out of his tone or his expression. It quickly changed to disbelief as Hardison began speaking, even though every now and again the hacker got sidetracked into grumbling while he dug through the mountain of paperwork to find some tidbit or another.

"Is it magic?" Sophie asked into a brief silence when Hardison finished speaking.

"What? Yes." Dresden shook himself. "Yeah, of course it is. I knew that the moment I realized you'd found a Witchwell. Of course there's magic involved."

"You look so unconvinced, it's all," she pointed out.

"I'm not unconvinced, I'm -" He hesitated visibly, and then smiled wryly. "The people who hire me rarely tell me everything they know. Or anything at all."

Nate set a hand on the papers, looking deeply thoughtful. "Honesty, mister Dresden. I believe I mentioned that before."

"You did." Dresden said nothing else. He could feel the mood around the table sharpening, every eye coming to rest on Ford.

"You know what bothers me?" the mastermind said at last.

"That people nearly died?" Sophie suggested.

Nate flapped a hand at her. "That doesn't bother me, that upsets me. Very different."

"That they could have ruined the artwork?" Dresden suggested meekly.

"Argonite systems are designed to be completely safe to the art," the mastermind told him distractedly, picking up and tossing two stapled pages on the center of the table. "The Tetryakov Gallery is delighted, actually, that the Gardner Museum was willing to kill in order to protect the collection."

"Is that… Is that normal?"

"They're Russians, Harry," Sophie explained, leaning closer. "If you really want to see cutthroat, you should try to get an art loan from the Egyptians. Or the Japanese."

"What bothers me," Nate said firmly, "is that we found the cylinder at all." Silence fell around the bar. "Nothing else was this sloppy, not even the ones that could've gotten away with it."

"Rush job," Eliot murmured.

"Why?" Sophie asked. "What changed, what was different?"

"We were there," Parker pointed out.

"We aren't the target." Nate shot that one down. "We hadn't even taken the job at that point."

"Fedorov was there." Eliot picked up their dossier on the Russian enforcer and threw it atop everything else. "He did say this has been targeting people from their side."

Nate paused to consider that.

"I have been meaning to make time for the Sokolov collection, but I am a busy man, mister Ford."

"Fedorov might be a target, but this wasn't for him. He'd planned this visit ahead of time; they would have known he was coming, it wouldn't have been sloppy."

"The woman," Sophie murmured. "Baba Yaga."

Nate grimaced openly, then visibly braced himself. "Dresden, you're up. What can you tell us about Baba Yaga that we don't already know?"

"That I hope it's not her? If she is, there's next to nothing I can do to help you. You could call in a dozen wizards and they still wouldn't be able to help you." Suddenly aware that he had the team's attention, the wizard exhaled resignedly. "Stories and fairy tales aside, Baba Yaga is… a single step down and sideways from a god. Just like prayer and belief, and time, and a bunch of other variables empower a god, she's the same way. She depends on people to empower her, yes, but she's also been around so long that she has gained other sorts of power, magic, knowledge, alchemy, favors. She used to be a kind of litmus test for royalty, not just Russian, but most of the Slavic bloodlines. The Royal had to either trick her or survive her to prove they were worthy of the throne."

"And if they didn't?"

"She ate them," Parker replied before Dresden could.

The wizard, looking sheepish, had to agree. "She ate them."

"She ate p- like, for real she ate people?" Hardison demanded confirmation.

"You'd be surprised how many things out there think we're just convenient little walking snacks," Dresden said, voice tight. "But. It's entirely possible that she also just ate them metaphorically, like… eating their magic, eating their mind, their luck, their knowledge, eating half a dozen things that could, would, leave them alive. Just not in a way they'd appreciate."

"Better to just get eaten," Eliot muttered, daunted.

"Do we agree, then, that she's the target?" Sophie asked.

"No, we agree on nothing just yet, "Nate protested. "Only that she was there, unexpectedly. Someone saw a shot and they took it. So why was she there to begin with?"

"The portrait." Parker rummaged through the mound of paper until she found the printout of Nate's photograph, and frowned minutely at it. "She really does look upset."

"Can I see that?" Dresden asked politely, and Parker surrendered the printout. He squinted at it. "Do you have a bigger one?"

"Sure, the one hanging on a wall at the Gardner Museum, why?" Nate told him flippantly.

"This." Dresden stood up to move closer to the table, then hesitated. Hardison picked up the camera and put it aside, and the wizard set the paper down, pointing at the barely visible flash of green under the man in black's coat. "This is magic."

"How can you tell?" Sophie moved closer.

"I can't, that's why I want a closer look. But the setting around it, that silver, diamonds, whatever it might be? They just saw me draw something like it downstairs. A warding circle."

"Who's the man?" Eliot asked. "Did we figure that out?

Nate stared at the printout. "He was there, too."

"You saw him?" Sophie turned to look at him.

"I'm… not sure." The mastermind closed his eyes, trying to remember that moment. Motes of dust in the golden sunlight, barely stirring. The quiet murmur of a dozen admiring conversations. The portraits all around. Sophie nearby. Parker. Fedorov. The old woman.

The man, passing by the open doorway before the shutters slammed down.

Nate opened his eyes and shook his head. "I saw someone that looked like him, but it was just a quick glimpse. It could have been anything."

"Harry, who is he?"

"He could be anyone, a Royal, a pupil. It's said she took on apprentices every now and again."

"An asshole. That's what Fedorov said." Parker cocked her head. "I kinda agree."

"Hardison, did you get a chance to go through the security camera footage?" Nate shuffled through the paperwork.

"No, because every time I tried, my failsafes started beeping. How do you- is there any technology you can use?" the hacker demanded of Dresden.

"I've got a landline, and a VW Beetle," the wizard was trying not to sound amused at Hardison's plaintive demand. "Anything old. The older the better. Pre-WWII is pretty much guaranteed to work fine."

"Oh, my god, you want me using…" Hardison sighed in exasperation, hanging his head for a moment. "Fine. Fine, I guess backwards-compatible means we have to go way back." He looked at Nate. "I gotta go shopping, but I can have something set up by lunch."

"Parker and I could take Harry to the museum," Sophie suggested.

"Why? The painting's not there anymore." When everyone looked at her, Parker shrugged. "The MET demanded we move the collection to secure storage, and the Gardner doesn't have the vault space. It's in the MFA vaults now."

"How long would it take you to get in there?" Nate asked without hesitation.

"I can be in and out with it by lunchtime, too."

"No, I don't want you to steal the painting, Parker. You and your friend worked too hard to get this loan set up. How long would it take you to get yourself and Dresden into the vault?"

"Oh." She turned to look at him. "Can you make yourself invisible?"

"Uh, no. That's a little involved, and I don't have my workshop."

She huffed. "Magic's not very fun, is it?"

"Parker, how long would it take you to break into the vault if there were no other security concerns?" It was Sophie's turn to look like she was thinking hard.

The thief thought on it and shrugged. "Nine minutes from the front door to the vault. It's a Milwaukee 2300, they're a little temperamental sometimes."

Sophie turned to look at Nate. "We don't need anything from the vault. We just need Harry to get in, have a look and get out."

Nate paused to digest that. "The Mona Lisa?" he suggested. Sophie's smile told him he'd guessed right.

"Mix in a little Golden Fiddle, and we could probably go as long as twenty minutes before the police are even called."

"Hardison, how many decent fakes can you give me in," Nate checked his watch, "five hours?"

The hacker looked delighted. "Give me six and you can have a hundred solid."

"Lunchtime, then." Nate nodded and moved to the door, where Sophie was already waiting for him. "Dresden, make your list."

"My list?"

"You keep saying you need your workshop, which is fair, but I need you working at full efficiency. Make your list. I doubt it's endless but hey, we like challenges around here." The mastermind pointed. "Parker's going to run you through a little escapade -"

"Are we breaking into a museum vault?!" The wizard sounded a little indignant, and a lot full of disbelief.

"Well, yes," Nate admitted cheerfully, "but we're not stealing anything," he added, as if that made everything better, and walked out of the loft.

ELEVEN

The con went off just after lunch. It gave the team time to set up a few failsafes, and gave their hired wizard a chance to stuff his pockets with a variety of very strange things.

Around 3 PM, with the wind rushing down Huntington Avenue and the trains of the Green Line clattering back and forth, the nondescript white van finally found a parking spot a little bit away from the entrance to the museum. There was a sparse crowd hanging around, mostly art students waiting for the brief period when admittance was free. A great many of them had sketch pads and were busily putting down, in broad charcoal strokes or distracted color lines, the ephemera of the people passing them by. The rear doors of the van swung open. "Ladies and gentlemen!" A powerfully built man in faded jeans, heavy steel-toed boots and a comfortable jacket sat on the edge of the van's bed, his voice pitched to carry and catch the attention of those around him, his good looks and the peaceable, charming half-smile he wore like sunlight set to keep it. "How about we engage in some mischief!"

He gestured to the back of the van, where canvases sat in neat, orderly rows, hanging from a specialty shelf. "I have one hundred and twenty pieces of art here. Twenty bucks a pop, only one per customer, no refunds, no returns, no buyer's remorse." The man reached into the rack, gently dislodged one of the smaller canvases, and set it on his lap.

A sigh went up from the crowd. Renoir's 'Madeleine', one of the artist's smallest portraits, well known to be in a private Louisiana collection, gazed soulfully at them. "At least one of them," the man told the crowd while he had their attention, "is the real deal."

Gasps followed that proclamation. "Yeah, right!" Someone yelled. A crowd was beginning to gather around the back of the van.

Eliot grinned merrily. "You don't gotta believe me, man." He set the Renoir aside, reached for a larger canvas. The crowd cried out in disbelief. Titian's 'Salome' stared them all down haughtily. "It's your buck against my bang. You can just walk away."

"How much for the 'Salome'?" a woman's voice shouted from the crowd.

"Twenty bucks for each of the nine."

"Can I buy four?"

"One a pop."

"I'll give you fifty each for four of them," another man exclaimed, rushing up to the van.

"Nope, twenty each, one per customer."

"I can just come back," the man protested.

"My man, you're gonna what, take it off the frame and roll it up to hide it in your shirt? Titian's 'Salome'?" Eliot pinned a level gaze on the man, who caved pretty much immediately. He still passed out a twenty, and Eliot readily surrendered the canvas. "Pleasure doing business with you."

The crowd began to close in. Seemingly at random, Eliot grabbed another canvas and brought it forth.

Every voice went profoundly silent. The hitter peeked around at the painting. A masterpiece, missing since World War II, stared back at him. "Oh, that one." His grin was pleasant, his blue eyes full of cheer. "Got four of those."

"Twenty, I got a twenty!" A young woman surged breathlessly forward.

"You got it, sweetheart. Wanna wipe your fingers before you grab it, though," he pointed out, offering her a tissue so she could scrub charcoal dust off her hands.

The crowd detonated. People rushed forward, chatting, exclaiming, questioning. It was a lottery, yes, but at 100-to-1 odds it was brutally effective as bait. Word went out. Passersby detoured. Not everyone was buying, not everyone was convinced that any of the paintings were real, rather than merely exceptional copies. Arguments exploded discussing brushstrokes, pigments, styles.

Jessamine Lochlin fought her way to the front of the crowd. "One 'Salome'," she demanded breathlessly. "And I'll have you know this is just the worst -"

"One 'Salome' for the gorgeous young lady." Eliot turned the full force of his charm onto the young curator. "Picked it special just for you."

Lochlin went pink to the roots of her hair, her righteous indignation choking out with a squeak. By the time she recovered she was short a twenty, richer by a highly suspicious canvas, and the horrible man peddling a potential masterwork out of the back of a van had moved on to argue with two people who each wanted a copy of 'Madeleine' - except they wanted the same copy.

She huffed angrily, and pressed her mouth into a thin, undecided line. Some part of her still wanted to tell the man fifty different kinds of whatfor. A tiny part of her wanted another one of those gorgeous grins, but she stepped on that part with angry determination.

Most of her, however, was whispering very loudly. What if it's true?

That was the part that won, eventually. It would have won in any of the people there, most of whom loved art in one form or another. She turned and fought her way through the crowd, half-running, half-speedwalking to the entrance to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, rushing through the afternoon crowds and the beautiful displays without seeing either.

"Jessamine!" A familiar voice, a soft Russian burr, called out to her, and the curator turned in both surprise and exasperation. It was the Russian woman, Iggy's friend, the curator, apparently admiring the Japanese exhibit. "Hello, what a pleasant surprise."

"Oh, hi!" Lochlin beamed at the woman, paused exactly three seconds, not even listening to what she was saying. "Bye!" She ran on, leaving the other curator open-mouthed and puzzled. She burst into the main laboratory. "Michael, I need your Titian database!"

There were two men currently in the room, a vast, airy, sealed space full of sedately humming, dormant machinery under blue halogen lights. One was an older man, lanky and silver-haired, the unruly mane braided at his back. He had an indecent amount of stubble and a lab coat over a tee telling the world that finger-painting was an acceptable form of art, the writing surrounded by prehistoric hand stencils. The other was a short, stocky man with little hair on top of his head, but an impeccably groomed silver beard and moustache, a fine button-down shirt and slacks under his own coat. He sputtered in surprise at the invasion. "Jess, what on Earth -"

She hefted 'Salome' and while she didn't quite slam it on the work table between the two men, it was a close thing.

They gaped at it, speechless.

"There is a man out there selling these out of the back of a van. He's promised one's the real deal, I bought a 'Salome', and I need your Titian database, and then I need your Raphael database because he has a 'Portrait'."

"A portrait?" The lanky man straightened up. "The 'Portrait'?!"

Lochlin nodded intently.

"Fakes. All fakes. A conman's game, Eli, don't you dare, Elijah!" The other man was already running out. Michael Erlkist, one of the MFA's most seasoned curators and its Egyptian and Fertile Crescent expert, scoffed. "They're all fakes, they have to be," he protested at Lochlin.

"Michael!" she all but shrieked at him.

"Alright, alright!" The man moved over to one of the computers. "Mel isn't here, though, Jess. She's the Titian specialist, none of us are near as good."

The young curator paused, struck by the truth of that. As much science as one could apply to telling the difference between an original and its replicas, verifying artwork, particularly paintings, was still a matter of skill, of finesse, of expertise acquired on the field. "We're plenty good, you and I."

"I like mummies and you do watercolors." His tone was dry and deadpan. "And you bought this out of the back of a van."

"Michael, he has a 'Portrait'."

"Everyone always has a 'Portrait'."

"Are you willing to take that chance? The one in a million chance that it's the real 'Portrait'? That this is the real 'Salome'? He has nine 'Madeleine's!"

"'Madeleine' is in a private collection in Louisiana," he retorted primly.

"Is it? Would they have said anything if they'd lost it, if it got stolen?"

"Jess, what do you want?" He demanded impatiently.

"I want to know if this is the real 'Salome'!"

"What if it is?" Without letting her answer, he asked, "What if it isn't?"

"If it isn't that means another chance that one of the 'Portrait's is real," she told him with hyperbolic focus.

That shut him up. He turned and typed furiously on the computer. "This isn't going to work, you know. We know the theory, the basics. Never mind that no one can authenticate a painting without taking at least a few hours to do so. You need someone with more expertise, who's actually worked with other collections."

She huffed angrily at him, but couldn't dispute that point. Chewing on her lip, a sudden idea occurred to Lochlin. "Get started with the analysis, I'll be right back."

"Oh, what now," he moaned.

She was already gone, sprinting past the late afternoon crowds and looking about desperately. She nearly ran down a woman and her two kids as she closed in on her target. "Hey! Hi. Hello. Ekaterina, right?"

Ekaterina Yegorov turned and smiled her calm, steady smile at the younger curator. "Please, Jessamine, Kate is fine. Ekaterina is for formal occasions and for customers, you do not need to -"

"That's nice. Have you ever curated Titian?"

"Oh, another personal favorite we share, is it?" The Russian brightened up at once. "The detail work on 'Flora' is just so exquisite -"

"Good. Come with me."

Ekaterina found herself all but hauled along, her sensible heels clacking a harried staccato on the marble floors, her confusion warring with her implacably calm demeanor. Lochlin dragged her past several guards and security locks and very nearly shoved her into the lab.

"Jessamine Esther Lochlin, you do not bring strangers into my lab!" Erlkist cried out.

"She's not a stranger! She's an independent curator. She's good, too, I should know, I've spoken to her before! And she knows Titian."

Both curators turned to look at Ekaterina, who shrugged delicately. "My work is discreet, but not secret," she declared, flicking her fingers to the computer. "You can find it if you search for it."

"Let me just do that, if you don't mind," Erlkist replied with stiff, frantic courtesy, turning back to the computer and tripping over his own fingers.

"Between the three of us, we can surely tell -" Lochlin hissed impatiently at him.

"Ah-buph-buph-buph," he shushed her. "You brought a stranger into my lab, Jessamine Lochlin," he accused her irately, but equally sotto-vocce.

"We need more eyes on this," she snapped. The screen suddenly began to load a vast list of responses to Erlking's query. "Besides, she's obviously not a stranger," she declared, gesturing sharply.

They stared; they read. Ekaterina Yegorov was, as she'd pointed out, discreet but not a secret. Her work was there to be found, everywhere, from small private collections to some names that made both the curators glance nervously at her over their shoulders.

It didn't matter if they were being subtle enough or not, she wouldn't have caught them: Yegorov was curiously examining the 'Salome' Lochlin had left on the table. Lochlin elbowed Erlking minutely, and they both turned as covertly as they could to watch as idle curiosity became radiant focus.

Yegorov began to mutter in Russian. She wouldn't touch the painting, obviously, but she paced back and forth along three sides of the table, leaning close and squinting fiercely at it from each side she could reach. "Bozhe moi," she breathed after a moment, her expression stunned and her voice strangled, "is this 'Salome'? I thought we had lost it to some, some," she sought angrily for a foul enough word, "selfish private collector."

Lochlin gave Erlking a triumphant look.

"That is not proof!" he protested. "That is one opinion out of three -"

Elijah Randall burst into the lab, wheezing, his face red, carrying a canvas. "Oh, my god, I just bought the 'Madeleine' for twenty bucks out of the back of a van." He laid the canvas down on the table next to 'Salome' and leaned down, his cheek nearly on the table, making frantic little noises.

"It's a fake! Elijah, you know this con! We all know this con! This is Brooklyn all over again!"

"Wasn't one of those real?" Yegorov pointed out meekly.

"I know Renoir, Michael!" the lanky man fired back. "Oh, my god, I touched it, where are the glov - Sorry about the 'Salome', Jess.

"But," Lochlin blinked at him. "'Salome''s real."

Everyone in the lab came to a dead stop. He sputtered a question he couldn't finish. Lochlin gestured at Yegorov.

"Obviously I would need to go into more detail," the Russian woman admitted. "But I would readily offer my word that this is the real 'Salome'.

Eli and Jess crossed a look. "He's got multiple originals," she breathed.

"He's got a 'Portrait'," he choked.

"Who's got a portrait?" Yegorov asked in confusion.

"Everyone always has a 'Portrait'!" Erlking yelled. "It's the most counterfeited painting in the history of painting! Everyone wants to be the one who finds it, undamaged, safe, famous!"

"Wait, the 'Portrait'?" The Russian woman's attention sharpened all at once. "'Portrait of a Young Man'?" she asked Randall.

He nodded breathlessly.

"They're fakes! They're all fakes!"

Yegorov looked at 'Salome'.

They all looked at 'Salome'.

Yegorov looked at 'Madeleine'.

They all looked at 'Madeleine'.

"Um, I think, if you do not mind, I will go -" she said most politely, inching for the door.

Randall and Lochlin sprinted past her and raced out.

"No, don't -!" Erlking was too polite a creature to swear openly, but his face was blotchy and his expression was angry. "Stay right there!" he yelled at Yegorov, for lack of any other target to take the brunt of his mood. She jumped and nodded warily. He snatched for his coat and ran after his peers.

The lab was silent, only the quiet whisper of technology surrounding the lone woman.

Sophie gave the curators ninety seconds to get out and succumb to the mob mentality Eliot had provoked outside before she opened the door and peeked out, just in time to see Parker and Dresden coming up to her. "You are going to wreck this place," he told the wizard almost gleefully.

"I'm already breaking into a museum full of priceless art," Dresden shot back dryly. "Destruction of property is low on the list of crimes I'm committing today."

"Oh, you'll be fine, Harry," she grinned wickedly at him, holding the door open for them. While Parker could have breached the security defenses of the MFA, Sophie infiltrating instead had shaved nearly three minutes off their timeline. "It's just computers, machines."

Harry was staring all around him with a little grimace, trying to stay dead center of the room and as far away from anything digital-looking as possible. "The computers aren't important?"

"Not as much as the art. They can replace a spectrograph." Sophie put on gloves while Parker moved to the far end of the lab, where a door stood discreetly to one side, a lock blinking sedately at them all. "'Salome' can never be replaced," the grifter murmured, picking up the canvas with utmost care and setting it aside, safely out of the way.

Dresden blinked at her. "You m- You mean it's real?!"

"Yes, of course. The Golden Fiddle only works if some part of what you offer is real, Harry. Normally you have a fiddle, but sometimes you have to get a little creative."

"So this is the one real painting you had in there?"

"God, no," Sophie took off the gloves and pocketed them. "This con was geared toward people who know their art, Harry. One real work wouldn't have fooled them." The lock, under Parker's ministrations, beeped cheerily and the door hissed open to a tiny room that looked very much like an airlock, since it actually was one. "There's seven originals," Sophie explained.

"What is it you guys do again?" Dresden croaked hoarsely.

"We're past the lab," Parker said mildly.

From his spot in the service parking lot behind the museum, Hardison stared at the screen and the chatter he was getting from the earbuds of the team. There was an almighty amount of feedback trying to whistle into the collective channel from Sophie's line, which he took to mean she was the one currently closest to Dresden. Giving the wizard an earbud had nearly blown the other five; Hardison was sensible enough not to try a second time, but everything in him itched to know one of his teammates, however temporary, was in there without communications, without support. It made him twice as aware of anything else that might clue him as to Dresden's location and general state of being. When Parker spoke, he was ready. "Nate?"

"Internal power's off." Their mastermind had never been the sort to shy away from getting his hands dirty - literally, in this case, when he'd had to hunt down the immense generators that supplied power to the security systems of the museum and do mean things to them. He rubbed grease off his hands and scowled minutely. So much effort wasted for a hunch of 'magic'. "Eliot, how're you holding up?"

"Oh, we're fine, Nate." Normally a Gold Rush would have run with two people, but Jessamine Lochlin already knew three of the team's members, and Hardison had been needed elsewhere. Eliot, shuffling into the van to reach canvases further back, was having a blast with his current partner. "Dresden's security's working like a charm. Right, Mouse?" The immense Temple dog, sitting shotgun in the van, whuffled; after those gigantic jaws had caught and delicately held onto the hand of someone trying to break into the van, no one else had tried.

Hardison shut off the external power feeding into the lab area. Nothing much seemed to change for two of the three people stepping out of the airlock into a dimly lit hallway. For Parker, it was as if an incredibly loud world had gone abruptly silent. Chem-detectors, bubbling microscopically to themselves, went quiet. The delicate subsonic zap of the laser grid faded. The heat sensor began to cool with inaudible pings. Only the lights that dotted the hallway beyond the airlock, which ran on their own dedicated batteries, remained.

She led the way at a quick trot, Sophie a step behind, Dresden three. One of the lights above them crackled and fizzled out, and both women turned to glare at the wizard, who shrugged awkwardly. "Are you seriously going to crack a museum vault in nine minutes?"

Parker grinned at him. "I could do it in four, but I'm not gonna." She lifted a keycard with a picture of a stocky, older man, balding, with a neat beard and moustache. "Hardison, we're here."

"Restoring power now," Hardison replied. The lights brightened. The lock next to the door blinked back to life. Parker ran the card through it and the immense vault door clicked and clanked loudly as several bolts slid open.

"Sophie, tell Dresden to move away from you," Hardison said suddenly into the line. "The feedback's getting bad."

"He is away from us," she replied as Parker dragged the immense door open, glancing at the wizard, who was five steps away and looking decidedly uncomfortable with the proceedings.

Hardison chewed on his lip. "He might be affecting the intranet system I'm piggybacking for our communications." The buds would have never been powerful enough to get a signal past the tremendous amount of steel and concrete currently between the outside world and the three interlopers, but the museum had run its own communication network into the vaults. Unfortunately, as with most technology trapped in direct proximity to a wizard, it was becoming increasingly unhappy. "Hurry."

The door swung open on soundless hydraulic systems. "Harry, we're about to lose comms," Sophie told him tersely. "In, out, now."

He charged past them, his coat flaring behind him. They followed him into the vault. It was a cold, dark space, lighted only as much as necessary. Racks, easels and pedestals stood at regular intervals, granting no space for observation, merely for each piece in storage not to touch its neighbors.

"We need light," Sophie murmured. Both her and Parker reached for their phones.

A warm, silvery radiance filled the space, spilled all around them, touched the shadows and sent them scurrying away. Both of them stared. Dresden had lifted up the plain pendant he carried tucked under his shirt and it glowed like starlight between his fingers. Sophie could only gape; as magic went it was nothing, a tiny trick, likely easily replicated with tech. But it was there, before her, real. She'd thought herself willing to believe; she hadn't realized how far she'd been from taking the actual leap of faith until that moment.

Parker grinned triumphantly at the sight. Finally, some proper magic.

"Where is it?"

"Here." The thief led the way to the largest frame in the vault, Sokolov's double portrait. Harry followed after her -

The buds screeched feedback. Wherever they were, all of the team winced.

"Dresden!" Hardison yelled.

"Sorry, sorry!" Though Harry couldn't hear the hacker, he could readily figure out why the two women with him had jerked violently and slapped a hand to their ears, and stepped immediately back.

"No, Harry, you step forward, we step back," Sophie told him sternly, giving him a little shove, Parker and her moving further into the vault. Just like that, the wizard was before Sokolov's portrait.

Almost immediately he was frowning. "Stay behind me," he told them distractedly. "Can I touch it?"

"No," both women replied tartly.

Dresden lifted his free hand and ran it just shy of the portrait's surface. "Ok, this is -" He grimaced minutely. "This better not be another trap," he muttered and flicked his fingers.

There was a flash of deep, rich green light, brighter than what he'd conjured. On the portrait, the half-hidden emerald brooch shone like a star, as if someone had kindled a light behind it to show it off as one of the most striking jewels in the world.

"What is it?" Parker asked while Sophie stared, open-mouthed.

"A lock," the wizard replied without turning. "A literal lock." He took a full step back and threw his arms open. The entire frame, ancient gilt and carved wood, began to glow. "This isn't just a portrait, it's a door." He went very still. "It's a gate."

"Good or bad?" Nate asked on the line. Sophie repeated the question.

"Well, odds are it opens to the Nevernever," Dresden replied, then seemed to hear his own words. "So bad. Very bad. Except it's, you know, locked."

"Bad enough that we should take it?"

"No," Nate refuted at once. The line crackled over the one negative.

"Parker, no," Sophie gasped.

"I'm not leaving another death bottle lying around," the thief declared sharply. "Particularly around Jess. Harry?"

Dresden dropped his arms and his head and turned very slowly. "You… have a point," he admitted unhappily, then rubbed at his forehead. "You both saw it. It took nothing to activate the lock. Obviously without the key it's not doing anything, but if the key does show up…" He trailed off. "Almost nothing in the Nevernever's friendly. Neutral at best. Hungry, almost always."

Sophie gritted her teeth and made the only decision she felt she could make. "Everything we need to safely move it should be back at the lab."

Nate huffed, rushing out and hopping on the driver's seat of Hardison's van. "Eliot, start a few arguments. They'll need a little more time. Sophie -"

The line squealed feedback, fired off a few angry popping sounds, and Hardison hissed. "I lost the communication intranet. It burned out."

Nate exhaled sharply, turning to look at the museum.

The three people inside rushed out of the vault, Sophie giving out terse directions. "Harry, will taking the frame apart affect th-" They came out of the vault, around the immense door, and face to face with six people clad in black from head to toe.

Everyone came to a stunned halt.

One of the black-clad figures snarled something in Russian.

The three didn't hesitate: they stepped right back into the vault.