#and danny places the notebook in his pocket

[marlenacantswim]

hello hot fuzz fandom. i love you all dearly, and i'm sure it's been talked about before in the years before i found my way into this fandom, but you know what i don't see brought up much? that danny showed up at nicholas's door after he'd left the police station defeated.

what was he there to say? to do? whatever his intentions were, they were interrupted by the slightly more pressing matters of a knocked-out lurch and a nicholas with a relit determination. why was he there? doesn't it feel like, after nicholas decided to walk home alone, that danny sat there in the station ruminating on whether or not to go after him? like there was something he needed to tell him?

can't you imagine the scene that would have played out if there was no lurch? danny at nicholas's door while he's midway through getting ready for bed? saying something about how he hated to see nicholas go off alone, and wondered if he really needed someone with him afterall???

[clockwayswrites]

The Birdritch's Nest part 25

masterpost

“That is a lot of plants,” Jason said. He swept his eyes over the space as he slipped his lock picks back into their little pouch.

“He has a botanist friend, apparently, and she keeps giving him plants,” Dick explained as he squeezed past Jason and into the apartment.

“Why are you here again?”

“Because I have a car which is better to carry all of Danny’s stuff in than your bike,” Dick explained. He went over to the wall of plants in front of the windowed corner and squinted down at something on his phone.

Jason pulled out his own phone to glance at what Tim had sent. “You say ‘all Danny’s stuff’ like the list was long. The guy hasn’t exactly been demanding.”

“The ‘guy’ expects to actually go home in a few days,” Dick pointed out.

“And is an adult and so can, you know, actually go home,” Jason retorted.

“Damian’s attached.”

“…I concede to your point,” Jason said once that thought sunk in. “Double the clothing asked for?”

“Basically. Make sure that he has a weeks worth, Alfred can always do laundry,” Dick said before letting out a little noise of triumph and doing something over by the plants. “There, watering system turned on.”

“Congratulations, you’re a genius,” Jason drawled. “Now go get his medication gathered up and snoop a little while you’re at it.”

“I thought we weren’t supposed to be snooping,” Dick, words a teasing sing-song as he passed by.

Jason flicked him off. “Like you wouldn’t anyways. I just want to know what you find.”

“Only if you tell me what you find in the bedroom.”

“Deal.”

The bedroom was almost startlingly normal after the plant filled living main room. It didn’t look like Danny really spent much time in it beyond sleeping. The bed was absentmindedly fixed, a black down comforter over pale blue sheets. There was a paperback on the nightstand next to a lamp and a pocket sized notebook with a pen clipped onto the bent and battered cover.

It was the first thing that Jason picked up.

The notebook was obviously where Danny made notes when he was already settled in bed. As Jason flipped through the pages there was everything from to-do lists to invention ideas to… a lot of thought about wings. Jason turned the notebook in his hands. That page wasn’t in English. The language felt like it was on the tip of Jason’s tongue but he just couldn’t get it out.

Maybe some sort of dialect?

Jason couldn’t actually read it, but there was enough to piece together from similarities that tugged on his memory. Enough to understand it was about the wings. Something about the process of change? Aging?

“Hey Jay?” Dick interrupted, scattering Jason’s thoughts. “Can you read the label on these bottles? There’s some serious printing issues happening, I can’t even tell what language it’s in.”

The pill bottle felt oddly cold in Jason’s hand when he took it from Dick, but maybe the bathroom just had shit heating in this place. It would be just like Gotham builders to mess that up.

“Oh, that’s the same thing Danny is writing in here,” Jason said passing the notebook to Dick. “It’s something about wings and getting old, I think, but I can’t really read it.”

“Read it? I don’t even know what it is. Gives me a headache just to look at it,” Dick grumbled as he flipped through the notebook. “The whole bird thing has really been on his mind, hasn’t it?”

Jason gave a little huff. “Do you blame him? The guy has wings now. It would be on my mind too.”

“Yeah… guess I really can’t,” Dick said and snapped a picture of the page with the unknown writing to send to the group chat. “Any idea what it is?”

“Nope. It’s like it’s a distant dialect or that it uses some of the same alphabet of something I learned some of once. Like how Chinese and Japanese use some of the same characters, you know?” Jason explained as he opened the side table drawer and then quickly closed it again. That was more than he needed to know about Danny. “Maybe something from when I was catatonic in the league, who knows. There were a lot of languages in that place.”

“Cass or Damian might now it then,” Dick said as he eyed the drawer Jason had now moved away from.

“Don’t, trust me,” Jason said. “Did you get the medications you needed to grab?”

“Yeah, they’re in the bag. Just a standard bathroom, really. Though he keeps his toothbrush in this old mug with a hero I don’t recognize on it, someone called Phantom.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell, but it sure sounds like a hero name. Add it to the list,” Jason said as he started on gathering up the requested clothing and extra enough to last a week. “Check the closet to see if there are any shits in there that work around wings.”

Jason rolled his eyes as Dick threw the closet doors open dramatically and focused on his task. Jeans, sweatpants, underwear, what he guessed was pajamas were all added to the bag.

“So, nothing that looks like it was made for wings,” Dick said and tossed some normal shirts and a few sweaters into the bag. Jason sighed and folded them neatly. “Maybe he hasn’t had time to find any yet? It hasn’t been that long since the bird thing and seems it all started there. Or maybe he’s just always home when he’s had then?”

“Better let Alfred know then. He’ll want to get something as soon as possible.”

“Yeah, good point,” Dick agreed.

While Dick stepped out of the bedroom to call Alfred, Jason took the time to double check the list. It really was pretty basic. Jason didn’t know if Danny was just trying to not be demanding or if the guy didn’t need much, but Jason went ahead and put the bedside paperback and notebook in the bad too. Jason slung the duffel bag Dick had brought over his shoulder (he totally could have ridden his bike like this) and took a little bit of time to snoop through Danny’s bookcase while Dick finished the call. Sci-fi, horror, old text books, and a ton of notebooks filled the shelf with knickknacks and a few figures. Jason at least had to give Danny points for having some of the sci-fi classics, even if the range of works was pretty limited.

“Okay, Alfred is on it,” Dick said. “Anything else we need to do?”

“Nah, I think we’re good,” Jason said. Something made him not want to look through the notebooks, like they had already done enough snooping. It was an odd feeling. “Let’s get going, I’m hungry for whatever dinner is.”

“You’re always hungry,” Dick said.

Jason shrugged rather than dealing with how true that statement was. “I’m a growing boy.”

“You’re a trash pit.”

“Yeah, you want to go there, cereal boy?”

“Leave my cereal out of it!”

---

AN: I do love writing Dick & Jason so much. Can you tell I have an older brother? Also sorry for the mistakes I'm sure are abounding. Guess who turns out to be anemic? This critter! Maybe getting that fixed will help...

[nottivagos]

Hello, it's me again! Welcome to Notti's "Not So Innocent" Notebook where I write some filth to make your Monday a little bit better <3 || 18+ mdni pls and ty

an: he's finally here! sorry for the long long wait but he's finally here! a massive thank you to @emchante for brainstorming him with me a while back (definitely wasn't the 16th jan...) <3

Introducing... Art Student AU : DR3

Art Student!Danny who’s a nervous wreck the first time you talk to him in class. You complement the piece he’s been working his ass off silently whilst standing at the back of the classroom? He’s sure to be a mumbling mess, murmuring a low “thank you” as his ears go a burning red from being so flustered at your kindness <3.

Art Student!Danny who’s the quietest in the class for the semester. He’s always keeping himself to himself by any means, and to be honest, you find it cute and endearing. When walking past him in the corridor one day, you flash him a friendly smile and a wave. He quickly responds with the biggest grin, his braces reflecting the strobe lights of your campus as he walks past.

Art Student!Danny who’s ultimately the biggest sweetheart. Need a new pot of clean water when you’re painting in the studio? He’s on it straight away. Need someone to sharpen your pencils when you’re doodling in your dorm? You can bet he’s already gotten his pencil sharpener just so he can help you as soon as possible.

Art Student!Danny who’s literally an encyclopedia of everything art. Imagine you’re both at an art museum, gallery or fancy exhibition for a project and you just watch his eyes light up at the paintings. His pupils widen behind his glasses, before he adjusts them ever so slightly so his focus is better and he can appreciate the work in front of him. When he’s done ogling over the artwork, he’s definitely the type to bombard you with little niche facts about the art, artist or artist’s technique whilst walking around the other booths.

Art Student!Danny who just needs to get out of his shell. In the first few months of knowing him personally, he’s not very outgoing. You don’t mind, it’s a breath of fresh air from some of the people on campus. He’s always shy when he asks you to pose for a new piece or sketch he wants to work on, just in case you decline. spoiler alert, you’d never decline on him, he’s just overthinking :(

Art Student!Danny that when he’s finally out of his little bubble of nervousness, he’s a little pervert. Sure, the first time you sat on his lap naked after a little session with him, he was jittery and sweaty as hell, unsure on where to place his hands or anything like that. But after that, the image is so etched into his mind that he jerked off to the memory of you bare in his lap whilst alone in his dorm.

Despite Art Student!Danny being too anxious to ask you out straight away, you for sure become his secret muse fast. That sketchbook his mum gifted him for Christmas? You can bet there’s numerous nude sketches and doodles of you in there.

That sketchbook of nudes I mentioned? You can bet Art Student!Danny is jerking off to those drawings helplessly whenever he’s got the time, especially when you’re off campus. When you come back however, you find it hidden underneath a pile of dirty laundry in Danny’s apartment. Upon inspection, you can’t help but wonder why some of the pages are stuck together?

Art Student!Danny that’s so touch starved that he’ll ruin pieces on purpose just so you’ll touch his thigh and give him soft reassurances as you clean up his mess. One time Art Student!Danny messes up badly, however. He spills water all over your watercolour and now he’s freaking out badly. Little did you know that those soft words you speak to him are actually being recorded as he has his phone hidden away snugly in the back pocket of his trousers. In the evening, he’s humping his pillow desperately, listening back to your words as he imagines you talking him through his first time <3.

Art Student!Danny who finally goes out of his comfort zone. Upon his request whilst hanging out, you’re posing for him like you usually would, but little did you know that Danny slipped a remote controlled vibrator into your panties that he wanted you to wear. Dark eyes watch you intently as he watches you squirm and struggle whilst you try your hardest to keep posing for him.

Sometimes Art Student!Danny can get way too frisky. One time he’s painting a picture of you for your birthday and he runs out of glazing halfway through. Being the disgusting pervert he is, he uses his cum instead. How would you know any difference? But also, let’s be real here, he’s probably hard already whilst drawing you in the first place, he may as well relieve himself and use it for good use…. right?

like art student!danny? fancy sending me an ask in my inbox so you can be included in my notebook! - notti <3

[noctilucid]

Day 13: Truth; Day 3: Potential

Doing something a bit different this year! Years ago @the-stove-is-on-fire wrote a collection of poetry for Angst Week and it blew my mind a little. I've wanted to try my hand at fan poetry ever since, so I'm using this Dannymay as my excuse.

The framing for these poems— an assignment from Lancer— is for Day 13's prompt: Truth, since the conceit here is that all the students will be a bit more transparent than they intend to be. Tucker's poem is for Day 3, Potential. (My adherence to the month's prompts will be loose and out of order. They'll be compiled and cross-posted to AO3.)

"Eyes to the front people, we've got a lot of presentations to get through, please save your conversation for after class."  Lancer stood leaning with one hand on his desk as he fixed a level, disappointed stare on the A-Listers still tittering in the back.  Students around the room broke into flurries of activity— several rummaged in their bags for assignments, Kayla zipped three rows down to return a pencil to Sydney, and in the back corner, Danny Fenton achieved a new level of pallor as he bent in Sam's direction.

"Sam—!"

"You forgot it was due today, didn't you?" Sam asked, keeping her eyes on the front.  

"This is the poetry thing?" he asked over the noise as he hurried to flip through his stuffed and tattered notebook.  "I didn't even fucking start!  What— what were the requirements?"  

Tucker slid him a clean sheet of lined paper and a pencil.  "Poem about your life.  Read it to the class.  Use three poetic devices.  The easiest ones are repetition, simile, and imagery." 

"What's simile again?"  Danny grabbed the pencil in a death grip and stared down the blank paper in a panic.  

"Compare two things using the word like or as."  

"Shit, does it have to rhyme?"

Sam clapped a hand onto his shoulder and pressed down the developing hunch.  "Hey, breathe.  Write literally anything and call it free verse.  Just— pick something with emotion.  Write about your childhood maybe, like pick an object or a place and just kinda muse on it."  

"We will be going alphabetically by last name," Mr. Lancer called, straightening as the class began to fall into order.  "You'll turn in your copy of the poem after you read it.  I expect everyone to be respectful and paying attention.  After each presentation, you can show approval by snapping."  

Danny let out a panicked whine.  

"I got you man."  Tucker stood ramrod straight, knocking his chair back so it groaned across the floor.  "I volunteer as tribute!"  

Mr. Lancer appeared staggered for a moment, appraising him.  A few students snickered, and Tucker's smile broadened just a hair.  This was all it took to shift Lancer's optimism.  

"Yeah," Sam cut in.  "Can people volunteer first?"  She glanced around at the other students, briefly meeting Kwan's gaze.  "I mean, we can go back to alphabetical after, right?"  She smiled at Lancer, willing him to soften.  

Mr. Lancer tapped a finger on his desk, weighing it, before sighing.  "Alright Mr. Foley.  Based on your enthusiasm, I hope you have something to share that you're proud of."  He gestured to the clear space in front of the whiteboard.  "Your podium awaits."  

Tuck grabbed a tri-folded sheet of paper and sauntered to the front.  He poised there, tall and easy, as the noise petered to a low hum, still aflitter with whispered conversations not quite ready to end.  With a sly smile's preamble, he shot a pair of finger-guns at Star and Paulina, the two loudest voices, and set off another ripple of giggles across the room.  Paulina finally shelved their discussion to roll her eyes and prop her head on her hand, fixing him with a disdainful stare.  But Tucker was riding the high of collective attention, and shot a few more cheeky looks and tongue clicks at others in his audience, milking the crowd.  

"Mr. Foley." 

Tucker slid a hand in one of his cargo pockets and pulled out a chunky pair of sunglasses, which he flicked open with a flourish and perched over his regular pair, the arms locking and fighting each other over his ears.  He held a hand palm out to the desks in front of him.  

"Love—" he said, pausing with the cadence of a preacher—

"Is a splendid, holy thing

Which moves men to weep and birds to sing,

And of all life's wonders yet divined

Your smile is a wonder yet too fine 

To be put down in the annals of rhyme.

And so at a loss for words am I

That muses fail and angels sigh

And lead me to the oldest verse

That speaks our hearts' true feelings first:

Roses are red

The ocean is blue

And wide and deep and as much true

As is my infatuation with you."

He canted his still folded paper towards the girl who seemed most impressed by his performance— in this case, Martha in the second row— and winked at her, to which she and her friends split into a fit of laugher as she hid her face in her hands.  Then he bowed low— and fumbled as his sunglasses fell off, but he managed to catch them.  His composure was unruffled as he righted himself and said, "Caesura. Hyperbole. Imagery."  

And people clapped.  Some of them hamming it up, some rolling their eyes, and a few remembered halfway through that they were supposed to be snapping instead, but most were smiling.  Tucker glanced over at Mr. Lancer with something approaching smugness, but the teacher's face was introspective.  

"An interesting rewrite of, shall we call it the poetic cannon?" He bent to scratch down some notes on his printed rubric. "Skillful transitions between differing meters, and excellent presentation, Mr. Foley.  You might consider theater in the fall."  Lancer looked up from the paper and made eye contact.  Tuck's needling expression broke to something stunned before closing again.  

"Mmm.  Pass."  He flashed a bright smile as he set his paper on the corner of Lancer's desk.  The creased thirds stirred and stretched, unfolding at the unhurried pace of a morning flower.  The scrawled pencil lines filled more of the page than they should.  

"I mean it," Mr. Lancer insisted.  "You have a real stage presence."  

"Yeah.  I'm just full of potential."  He skirted past backpacks in the aisle on his way to his seat.  Mr. Lancer took the sheet from the desk corner and unfolded it to staple to his own page, only to pause, his forehead creasing as he skimmed.  

"Uh, Mr. Foley..."

Tucker slotted himself into his seat behind his desk resolutely.  Mr. Lancer's eyes made their way to the bottom of the page.  

"...ah.  Never mind."  He took an extra rubric off his printed stack and stapled it to the poem.  "Alright.  Any more volunteers?"

-----

Potential by Tucker Foley

When I first began to run,

Bowlegged and stocky in second hand overalls,

My uncle put a nerf ball by my feet and held my hands so I could kick it.

"He'll be a soccer player!" he said as my mother took pictures.

When I broke the vacuum cleaner open 

With a screwdriver and no plan,

My father put the screws back in with me and said, 

"He'll be an engineer."

When I built a Lego robot for the science fair, 

When I placed in advanced math,

When I programmed the lights in my room,

They said I had potential.

When I was suspended for altering attendance records,

When I "facilitated gambling" and skimmed off the top,

When I climbed in after curfew,

They looked me in the eye and pleaded

And told me I had potential.

How many potentials are undone by loyalty?

White men in Hollywood say love is worth more than success.

They think they know better

Because they are rich and famous and alone and miserable. 

"If only I'd stayed poor and in love."

But I get potentials. My ancestors fought too hard for that.

My ribbons from mathletes live in a keepsakes box

With the first Lego bot and a smooth rock from camp.

Some archeologist can dig them up one day

And put me in a museum.

You misunderstand me: 

All the lecturers, counselors 

Who repeat lines about Steve Jobs

And talk breathlessly about scholarships.

You think I need convincing,

But I know my potential.  

I've done things that will never be caught. 

But I can't leave while they need me.

And he can't leave while— no. He can't leave.

His heart is buried here in his sacred plot of earth.

So I stow my potential,

Lock it in my keepsake box. 

A trophy to my pride, a premature nostalgia

This is my choice.

I only wish I never had to tell them— what became of my potential.

*Yeah, I'm not reciting this one.  

[phantom-dc]

Dad Hood - part 4

Jason is gearing up for patrol. He’d prefer not to leave Danny alone, but he needs to meet with his men to make sure that things run smoothly if he takes a break while he figures this whole situation out. Danny tugs on his jacket.

‘Where are you going?’ asks Danny. Jason doesn’t want the kid to know what he does, so he skims over it.

‘I’m just going to work, kiddo. Can you promise me you’ll stay in here? If you’re a good boy and stay in the appartement, I’ll bring home some Bat-burgers, ok?’

Danny says he wants Nasty burgers. Confused why a kid would want gross food, Jason ruffles Danny’s hair.

‘Ok, now go to bed, kiddo. It’s already late.’

Danny crawls into the bed that’s way too large for him. Jason thinks he really needs to get him his own room. Jason grapples out the window and activates the alarm. Time to get to work. He jumps and lands on a roof, dropping into a roll to cushion the landing. Making his way towards the warehouse where the meeting was taking place, Jason was certain that Danny would just sleep through the night. He’d have nothing to worry about.

Danny tries to sleep, but he just can’t. He gets up, bored. He tries to watch some tv, but all the channels are weird this time of night, so he turns it off. He plays a bit with Mr. Bun-Bun, but soon grows bored. He grabs some juice from the fridge, but the cold gives him an idea. He knows what to play!

Jason had a productive night. He told Bill to take charge of the more illegal side of Red Hood’s business. Sandy would take care of the charity stuff, she was good at that and always eager to help. Together, Jason knew he had nothing to worry about while he tried to sort out Danny’s case. After that he dealt with some thieves, got some kids back home, made sure his girls were ok, and then it was time to head back. After picking up burgers he was heading back home. On the way he checked in on comms. He did it once a night, otherwise his brothers would come and check in on him. Speaking of, it seems he was correct. Sounds like Dick still couldn’t believe how Damian managed to smuggle a whole penguin into the Manor. He’d almost gotten away with it if Alfred hadn’t decided to clean that particular bathroom. Damian still insisted that Sgt. Byrd would have been perfectly happy living in the Manor. As Jason climbed into his window he said that penguins can’t live in bathrooms.

‘They need lots of room and-‘ crunch. ‘Snow?’

Jason hung up. He looked down and saw that he had stepped in snow. In his living room. As Jason gets in completely he looks around, confused. How did all this snow get in here? He goes to the bedroom and sees the bed is empty. Worried, he calls out for Danny. Did Mr. Freeze kidnap him? Then Danny answers back:

‘I’m in here!’

Following the sound, Jason goes to the kitchen. There he finds Danny, happily making a snowman.

‘Jason, look! I made a snowman!’

Realizing there is no danger, Jason kneels down to Danny’s level.

‘I see that buddy. He’s got nice glov- are those my oven mitts?’

Danny says they are. ‘I couldn’t find any snowgloves!’

Jason smiles, it’s kinda cute. ‘Danny, where did you get the snow from?’ Danny says it came from his hands. Jason is confused.

‘Your hands?’

Danny gets exited: ‘I can make SNOW!’ He raises is hands and suddenly it is snowing in his kitchen. Jason takes out his black notebook, and writes down:

Accelerated healing

Invisibility

Cryokinesis

He puts the book back in his pocket and holds Danny’s hands to calm him down.

‘Hey Danny. I love the snowman, I really do. But can you promise me that, if you want to make a snowman to do that in the bathroom? It’s a lot easier to clean things up in there.’

Danny says he’s sorry, but Jason ruffles his head.

‘It’s ok kiddo. Now, who wants some Bat burgers?’

First - Previous - Next - AO3

[cabinofimagines]

Holi-day five; The perfect gift

A/N: The most unrealistic part about these fics is not the story, is the fact that everyone has enough money to buy shit for all like every two months -Danny

Pairing: PLATONIC Annabeth x GN!reader

Words: 789

<- prev - mlist - next ->  

“Food! Foood!” You whined, entering the establishment with flushed cheeks.

Annabeth chuckled, she guided you to your usual booth and took off her scarf.

“Sorry for the long walk, I really wanted to get the other presents out of the way so I could focus on Percy’s.”

“No problem, I got to buy mine as well and I’m always doing it last minute.”

“Buying last-minute gifts is a crime, Y/N,” Annabeth said gravely.

“Oh, I always get them things they love! It’s not like I go to the nearest convenience store and get them a bunch of napkins!”

The blonde girl hummed, unconvinced by your argument. She then pulled out a small notebook and quickly went through the notes, pointing at the things written on it.

“So I asked around our friends because Percy’s being annoying and refused to tell me what he wanted for Christmas— he said ‘surprise me!’ as if that’s not the worst thing he could tell me.”

“And so you spent a whole week taking notes while stalking Percy throughout his daily routine to see what he’d like to get,” you replied, eyes fixed on the menu you were eagerly holding in your hands.

“I wasn’t stalking,” she pouted. “I was just checking the terrain, y’know? I could either give him something useful, or something fun— but I’m kinda lost right now.”

“Well, knowing Percy he’ll like whatever you decide to give him.”

“But I want to get it right! Like, I know that’s not the point of giving but—”

“Annabeth, I’ve known you for years, I know what you’re getting at.”

“Well, I have some ideas,” she pushed the notebook towards you. 

You read through them quickly and recognized a different handwriting. “Who wrote this one?”

“Oh,” Annabeth tilted her head trying to remember. “I think it was Klaus? He was weirdly eager to help me out, says he’s got a knack for picking the best presents.”

You looked at his suggestion intently. “It’s a good idea... I think you should roll with it.”

Annabeth read it, determination adorning her face. “Yeah, I think I should, I could even add something else of my own.”

Before you could add anything else, the waitress approached with a sweet smile. “Hi guys! You want the usual?”

You and Annabeth shared a look and smiled. You would visit this place often whenever you guys had some free time therefore every person who worked in it knew you, it was cozy and not that known, so it was never too crowded, nor too abandoned.

“Actually, we’d like something festive.”

Annabeth wrapped her scarf tightly and locked her arm with yours, you quickly made your way up the street ready to continue your arduous shopping. 

“You got all your presents?”

Rummaging through your pockets you found the small list you’d written before leaving camp, you read through it and hummed. 

“Need something for Jason... and you,” you grinned.

“I’m guessing you’ll get that one later?” She chuckled.

“Right.”

“Just don’t get last minute, please?”

“Hush, you wouldn’t even know the difference if I did!”

“I do now!”

“Fine, I’ll get yours right on time, it’ll be the first one I’ll wrap and place under the tree. Happy?”

“Over the moon,” she nudged you playfully.

“Ohhh!” You dragged Annabeth towards the nativity scene. “Let’s take the picture here!”

Every year you and Annabeth take a picture together when you go to the city to buy presents, it’s kind of like your postcard, though you don’t really send it to anyone, you just put it on the album Chiron keeps for you in the big house.

Each year you choose a different setting, last year you took it on the ice rink that people go to every winter, now you found this cute nativity scene near the Times Square.

Annabeth looks at it critically, she’s trying to find the perfect angle, and then she pulls out the instant camera Leo gave her five years ago. 

“Stand next to that angel on your left,” she tells you in a tone that confirms she’s focused on the task. “The lights here are good, the flash won’t make it look so dark now...”

You obey happily and stand really close to Annabeth so none of you comes out chopped off. She takes the picture and the little image slips swiftly from the bottom of the camera.

“Take a look,” she said proudly. “Honestly, I’m an ace taking pictures.”

“It’s good!” You agree, beaming at the image. You and Annabeth look really good, she was right about the lights. Annabeth takes the picture and puts it away in her backpack. 

“Let’s go get Jason’s gift, we promised to be back at camp before eight.”

[five-rivers]

Feathers and ink are currently winning. When I finish and post this, I will start another ficlet with whatever is winning (or in second place) then.

.

Ghost Writer held out a book to Danny. Its surface was dark leather, tooled in a pattern like overlapping feathers, and the edges of its pages were covered in something gray-green and metallic. It was small enough that it could have easily fit in one of Danny's pockets, and thinner than the composition book Danny had in Language Arts. The one that Desiree had blasted half the pages out of one time. If it wasn't for its vague glow and the obviously expensive materials it was made of, Danny would have thought it was a cheap pocket notebook.

"If you want me to allow you and your... friends into my library," drawled Ghost Writer, "I have one more task."

Danny made a face at him. He, Jazz, and Sam (Tucker's spring break project was revamping 'Team Phantom's' computer setup) had been running around all week doing Ghost Writer's chores. The things he did to get his sister reading material... Although having one less enemy, especially one less enemy who could warp reality as long as they could make a rhyming poem about it, was probably a good idea.

And, as Jazz had pointed out, Danny had wrecked his book. And his Christmas had been ruined, too.

(In Danny's opinion, if the guy could warp reality, he could've tried to warp his poem back into existence before deciding to break the truce and ruin Danny's reputation... But he wasn't going to say anything about that to Ghost Writer's face. The guy was mental.)

"And does this task have a part a, b, and c, too?" asked Danny. Jazz nudged him. He elbowed her back. After all the stuff they'd gone through this week, he thought he was allowed to be a little snarky.

"I want you to read this--" Ghost Writer waggled the book up and down, "--out loud."

Danny sighed. "It's full of insults, isn't it?" he asked. "Or it's the Christmas poem." He wasn't sure which one would be worse.

"Read it out loud," suggested Ghost Writer. "Find out."

"I could read it," said Jazz.

"I want him to read it," said Ghost Writer.

Danny rolled his eyes and snatched the book. He looked over the outside, curiously. It was honestly a bit too nice to be full of insults, which lead credence to the Christmas poem theory. He flipped it over to the back. That cover had a different pattern. Something scaly and pitted, almost demonic.

"You know," said Sam, in the sugar-sweet tone she usually saved for when her parents were being truly impossible, "if that book is cursed after all the crap you've just put us through, I'm going to shove it down your throat. And then some."

Ghost Writer smiled with sharp teeth. "I'd like to see you try."

Sam fingered the button on her custom-built SAMmunition Thrower (Danny disavowed all responsibility for naming the thing... publicly, that is). "So would I."

Ghost Writer, apparently sensing Sam's shark-like appetite for blood, raised his hands. "So long as he's as noble as you all seem to think he is, nothing bad will happen to him."

"Wow," said Danny, "and if I'm not that noble?"

"Then I wouldn't want you in my library. Come now, I thought you were serious about this. Don't beg off like Randy always does."

Danny had no idea who Randy was, but he also didn't want this... conversation... to drag on any more than it already had. He opened the book. Jazz caught his wrist.

"Maybe you shouldn't," she said.

"You say that now?" asked Danny, aggrieved. "I had to fight giant bookworms. And that owl."

"That bastard never returns anything on time," said Ghost Writer.

"Then kick him out," said Danny.

"And disrupt the inter-library loan system? I think not." Ghost Writer sniffed. "If you aren't going to read, I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

Danny resisted the urge to roll his eyes again - if you did it too often, people stopped taking you seriously - and looked down at the book. He squinted at the thick, wiggly, black characters.

"What is this, black speech? Something lifted from Cthulhu?"

"It's Kehnngh," said Ghost Writer, smugly. "It's a very old, very tradition type of Ghost Speech."

"Whatever," said Danny. "I'm more likely to die choking on this than whatever curse you're about to backstab us with, so whatever."

Ghost Writer made an offended sound. "I would never."

"If you know what's good for you," agreed Sam.

Danny made one last face at the book, then started sounding out syllables. "Nelghrù ro-- rlo? Nî dak gegri ghakhumâ kîsh sti chthe ngngîgn... Ew, I don't think throats are designed for that. Se famî lú ghu dizg..." He stumbled over the first sentence, then licked his lips. He'd changed his mind. Ghost Writer was having him read this because it was so far off anything humans spoke that it hurt. "Nelghrù nghftomerra... Yikes. Mglwno hâta nî... Ugh I have to say it again. Nghftomerra nû skog..."

He went on, swallowing back discomfort. This really wasn't a pleasant language to read. "Kal hûh mglwno wgatu phlu ka du hagthu..." He stopped to cough into his elbow. "Kal nghftomerra mglwno lgizgu..." He coughed again. It was like he'd inhaled something. A hair, maybe. "Lgizgu fu chthoh ghishù wgatu--"

This time, he couldn't hold back the coughing fit, which was stupid and embarrassing since in ghost form he didn't really breathe as much as--

Something black splattered the pages of the book. Something black and... What was that bitter wetness on his lips? Not blood. He knew the taste of blood. He knew the taste of ectoplasm, too, and that was far sweeter. He coughed again, the feeling of something in his throat unbearable, and this time the cough ended in a gag as liquid poured from his mouth and nose. He gagged again and dropped to his knees.

Ink splattered the floor and the pages of the book where it had fallen.

Jazz dropped down at Danny's side, her hands on his shoulders, as Sam fired at Ghost Writer, the high-speed ectoplasm ampoules bursting on the wall as he disappeared somewhere.

"Danny," she said, "Danny, can you breathe? Breathe with me."

Danny, incidentally, couldn't. There was something stuck in his throat, tickling like a feather. Like a lot of feathers. Ink dripped off his outstretched tongue.

"What did you do?" demanded Sam as Ghost Writer ducked behind a shelf.

Ghost Writer laughed. "Whatever you meant to do with my library, this will reveal your intentions!"

"Like running around and doing your errands all week didn't?"

"I won't trust anyone who destroys books!"

Oh, yeah, and this didn't count as destroying a book, did it? Even though the thing was now completely soaked in ink.

Danny heaved and something wriggling started to force itself up his throat. His whole body shuddered as more ink spilled into his mouth, this time accompanied by something that felt like masses of frayed wet string.

Or, maybe, fur, from how the thing was moving.

This was the moment Jazz decided to attempt the Heimlich maneuver. It was such a mundane solution that Danny was shocked when it worked, a wad of wet black feathers shooting out from his mouth.

"Feathers!" said Ghost Writer, sounding disappointed.

They quivered, and Danny reached out to pick up the bird and set it on its feet, brushing off the worst of the ink as he did. His hand made a messy print when it fell back to the floor.

"A bird?" This time, the Ghost Writer sounded downright exasperated. "Why is it a bird?"

"Better a birdie than a hole in one, which is what you're going to be," said Sam, venomously.

"I think," said Danny, faintly, "I know why a raven is like a writing desk."

"What?" asked Jazz, apparently baffled by the non-sequitur. Well, Danny was baffled, too.

The bird hopped sideways and ruffled its feathers, shedding black droplets.

"They can both be covered in ink."

"It's a pun?" said Ghost Writer, apparently offended by the whole concept.

"That's more of a riddle," said Danny. "Calling him Edgar Allen Crow would be a pun."

The crow - or was it a raven? - cackled madly.

There was a long moment of silence from Ghost Writer. "Fine," he said, still safely behind a bookshelf. "You can look at my books, but you can't check anything out."

Danny raised his head to stare incredulously at Ghost Writer. Edgar Allen Crow did the same.

"... Let's go home," said Jazz.

I want to do some soft body horror.

[twoidiotwriters1]

Copycat: Agent Zero —(Marvel Fem!Oc)

A/N: Val has been forced to hear me ramble about this phase cause this is THE turning point of the story, and so it begins! -Danny

Words: 1,974

Phase Four Masterlist

Previous Phase // Next Chapter

Listen to: ‘Black Out Days’ -by Phantogram

i: Yelena Belova

The crowd was talking about things Cat didn't care about. 

She dragged her brown gaze with little interest, the drink in her hand had barely been touched, and little droplets were slipping down her fingertips.

A blonde woman walked into the room. For the first time in the evening, Cat's body reacted at the sight.

"Sorry..." a male's voice talked next to her.

Cat went from freaking out to having no coherent thoughts. In front of her was a man with dark hair, black eyes, and a carefully trimmed beard. She moved out of his way, still staring. Cat went to grab her drink but the stranger's eyes found hers and she stopped.

"Hello," he smiled.

"I..." she sat back. "Hi."

"Are you having a pleasant evening?"

"Sure."

The mutant hid her blush by sipping on her drink, when the taste settled on her tongue she grimaced. He glimpsed at her liquor, the ice was gone.

"Not a fan of whisky?"

She looked down at it and placed the glass back on the bar's surface. "I keep hoping my opinion will change..."

"That's a waste of money." His voice was silky, she liked it.

Cat chuckled, she tilted her head and saw the blonde woman getting closer.

"Maybe next time you can buy me a real drink."

The man's brows lifted in surprise. "What about tonight?"

"I have plans, can't get drunk with a stranger," she smiled playfully, "even if I'd like to take them home."

His hand gently landed on hers and she felt a pleasant shiver at the difference in size.

"I'm William," he said, "let's not be strangers next time."

Cat slowly moved away from his hand and put her whisky back on the bar. "Nice to meet you."

She walked away with slow, confident steps. She wasn't a fan of heels, but she'd learned how to walk on them because they could be used as weapons in case of an emergency, or at least that's what Nat had told her. Her dress, a nice shade of dark purple silk, was the only thing she liked about these kinds of parties.

She could still remember the awful sensation her homecoming dress had on her skin, and how Pietro tried to convince her she only needed to get used to it... Cat fixed her posture, the young woman was standing in the corner of the room, and she walked up to her.

"I was wondering when you'd show up," she smiled.

"...sorry, you're mistaking me for someone else," the woman spoke with a thick accent, giving her a confused look.

She'd barely moved a few steps away when Cat spoke up.

"I don't think so, Yelena," she replied in Russian.

The young woman turned but Cat didn't lift her gaze from her nails, though now she was no longer smiling.

"I'm Cat Maxwell," she continued, "we need to talk."

"I'm busy."

"I'll be quick. Just come with me, will you?"

"No," she frowned, "I don't know who you are. Do you think I'm an idiot?"

"I was hoping curiosity would get the best of you," the mutant sighed, "I'm here to talk about Nat."

Yelena didn't move, if anything she got even more nervous. "How do you—?"

"We were friends," Cat walked past her knowing Yelena would follow her, "she trained me."

"Trained you?" Yelena quickly caught up, she was whispering. "You're too young to be an Avenger."

Cat grinned, she wasn't planning on giving much away. "Ya think?"

Yelena examined her looks, squinting a little. "How old are you?"

"How old are you? —You're half my size!"

Cat handed a small piece of paper to a young man and he guided her to where they had her coat. It was a thick, black piece. Yelena helped her put it on after a few seconds of watching her struggle. Cat pulled out a small notebook from an inner pocket.

"Mission accomplished, Lena. Can I call you Lena?"

"No."

Yelena skimmed through the pages, inside there was a list of names: widows that had been sold in the country. Nat had told her about Yelena's mission before the blip, it wasn't hard to guess what she'd been doing all those months.

"How did you get this?" Yelena looked at her intently. "How did you know I would be here?"

"Auctions," Cat made a face, "they attract all kinds of people. Call it a lucky guess?"

Yelena scoffed. "Sure."

"Let's get out of here," she walked towards the entrance, "my feet are killing me..."

It was the blonde's turn to raise her voice.

"I already know she's dead," she declared in her native language.

The mutant stopped in her tracks, she tilted her head a little to the side without really looking at her.

"I'm here to give you something." Cat explained calmly. "Would you like to know how it happened? Her death?"

Yelena's tone was condescending. "Some heroic act, she probably did it to spare someone... she was ridiculous."

Cat's face showed a shadow of a smile, she switched back to English. "Nat was right. We're going to get along."

"I don't want friends," Yelena responded.

"Me neither," she shrugged, walking towards the exit. "You want a free beer or not?"

"I want pizza."

Cat couldn't help but feel like she'd known Yelena her whole life.

The other girl was transparent. If she'd tried to be kind, or keep the conversation going, the mutant would've immediately lifted a wall between them to keep a safe distance. Instead, Copycat decided to annoy her a bit more.

"So?" She ate half of her slice in one bite. "How's your pizza?"

"Fine," Yelena replied without looking at her.

"New York's is far better," Cat replied loyally. "L.A. has something nice going on, but—"

"Are you going to tell me the sob story or are we waiting for God to come down and tell it, huh?"

"Alright. Sorry if I'm taking my time with this... it's hard to talk about it."

Yelena glanced at her. "Were you there when it happened?"

Cat began to tear her napkin into small pieces. "I was in 2012 stealing a tesseract."

The blonde raised a brow. "I thought it was all crazy rumors."

"Isn't it weird how a green guy undid what a purple guy caused?" Cat grabbed her drink and sipped on the straw with absent eyes. "I'm half green myself, but my eyes are purple... makes you wonder..."

Yelena stared at her. "You have red hair and brown eyes. I'm beginning to think you're who started those crazy rumors."

Cat's gaze regained focus. She pushed her food away.

"I've had a tough couple of months. Most of my loved ones died, your sister was one of them—"

"I don't care," Yelena retorted harshly. "I just want to know what happened to her."

Cat narrated the story as best as she could knowing as little as she did. Once she finished she searched through her pockets and showed Yelena the keys to a storage unit.

"Before the mission, my brother asked the team to hand over stuff they'd like to have delivered to friends and family. Nat lived in the compound for five years, but she kept her stuff away. Things she wasn't comfortable leaving there."

"For an American hero, your brother sure is pessimistic, making them write a last will," the young agent pointed out.

"My brother was Sokovian," she replied, "and he was just a guy throughout most of his life... normal. I've been an agent since birth. We're taught to be practical, make sure things stay in order even if the missions don't go as planned."

Yelena grabbed the keys to the storage unit. "Is Barton a hero, or an agent?"

"He was an Avenger."

"So?"

"A hero, obviously," the young woman frowned.

"It was convenient that it was her and not him... nothing to lose..."

"She had everything to lose," Cat remarked. "Nat wanted nothing but to see you again, she talked about you all the time."

"Nat trusted you?"

"With her life."

"But she's dead."

"Look, she's not the only friend I lost. Tony, Vision, Steve, my brother..." her voice broke, she gathered the napkin's pieces and squeezed them into a single ball of paper. "I promised Nat I would give you the keys and I did. You're free to think whatever bullshit you want."

She stood and drew out her wallet. Yelena caught her wrist.

"Now you're honest," she pointed to the seat in front of her. "We haven't ordered dessert, you can't go."

Cat wanted to leave now, but she'd spent months hiding, away from the others...

"She told me about you too," Yelena let go of her hand. "The last time I saw her she said she'd been training a kid that had potential. She said you were cold, but you sound whiny to me."

"When was the last time you spoke to her?"

"Six years ago," Yelena finished her drink in one massive gulp.

"I must've been sixteen," Cat sat back in her seat.

"And you had tougher skin than now, it seems."

The mutant looked out the window, her gaze grew distant. "You probably know she didn't mean that as a compliment. It worried them, having a psychopath in the team."

"Yes, something about a bad childhood— but the women in our field rarely have pleasant lives, right?"

Cat lifted her coke as if making a toast and drank. They were sounding like two people catching up in the middle of a funeral. Under the cynical jokes and careless comments, both women were grieving enormously. Cat had lost most of her caretakers and brother at the same time, her school friends were no longer fitting company...

She could visit Kurt, she could call Happy, she could even have lunch with Harley or Matthew, but none of that felt real. She would drift away from conversations, her mind kept thinking of ways in which she could've stopped each tragedy from happening. She didn't know how to make it stop.

If she could only find a big distraction, maybe her sanity would heal faster. She'd managed to snap out of it after Peter's death, so what was the problem now? The corpses, of course. Not only did she have to hold Pietro and Tony while they died, but she also had to bury them.

"Hey!"

Yelena snapped her fingers in front of her, Cat gave a start.

"What?"

"I asked if Cat Maxwell is your real name."

She raised a brow. "Why wouldn't it be?"

"It sounds fake."

"No, it doesn't."

"It sounds stupid. Did your parents hate you?"

They stared at each other, their expressions scarcely changing.

"Mimi."

"Absolutely not," Yelena made a face.

"Zero?"

The widow snorted. "They pulled you out of the womb so quickly they had no time to give you a real name?"

"Copycat." She said grumpily. "Copy. Cat. Whatever. Names don't hold any meaning when you're referring to me. All my friends call me by a different alias, so go ahead, get creative."

"Do you have a favorite?"

She shrugged. "I really don't care how you decide to call me. It's not like I'll be seeing you often."

Cat had just arrived at her place when her phone started buzzing. At first, she thought it was Kurt calling to ramble about a new revelation he'd gotten during mass that day, but when she picked it up and saw N. Fury on the screen, she almost pierced the screen with her thumb while trying to answer.

"Hello?"

"Agent," the man said. "Are you busy?"

"I'm bored as hell! Tell me you have a mission..."

"I have something for you, but it ain't a mission," he replied. "When can you come?"

"I just came back from L.A. but I'm free tomorrow. What's this about?"

"Stark's will."

Next Chapter—>

Taglist.

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[clockwayswrites]

Little Living Bones Part 2

Part 1 WC: 816 CW: necromancy

As soon as he could stand, Danny scrambled back to the teleportation sigil he had scratched into the dirt when he first arrived in Madagascar. He was always sure to have an out, and he really needed one right then. The tiny skeleton was clutched against his chest. Danny could feel the thin rib bones moving as if the little creature was breathing.

Somehow he made it back through the winding streets to the hotel he was staying at. He locked the door, set the skeleton on the tiny desk that was shoved under the window, and backed up as far as he could in the shoebox of a room.

“Okay,” Danny whispered, his voice mostly lost in the hum of the window unit. His eyes were locked with the hallow skull of the little gecko. “So you’re alive now. Again. You’re alive again.”

The gecko tilted it’s head. Their head? They were alive now, they weren’t a thing anymore.

“You’re alive and I did that. Okay, right.” His hands were shaking. When did he start shaking so badly? “That’s… alright. Guess you’re my responsibility now? Good thing you don’t need to eat, I have enough trouble feeding myself.”

His laugh was stilted in heavy humidity of the air. Danny could feel the nerves bubbling up under the sound, threating to turn it hysterical if only he could get any air in his lungs. When had he stopped being able to breath?

Danny sat down hard on the ground, tucked between the edge of the bed and the wall. When Danny had managed to get his breathing back under control and uncurled, he found himself face to skull with the little gecko. Impossibly, the little one looked worried.

Exhausted, Danny rested his head on his knees. “I guess I’m not being fair to you. Here I brought you back to life and I’ve just been ignoring you. I’m sorry little one.”

The little lizard moved in such a way that their bones gave a little rattle. It was kind of a pleasant sound. Danny smiled, just a little, and reached out to run a finger over the skull.

“I don’t know if you’ll, um, last—” though the idea of lizard falling apart to death again made Danny’s breath hitch again “—but even if you’re only around for a little, I guess you should have a name.”

Carefully, he picked up the skeleton and set them on his shoulder. Danny stumbled as he pulled himself up off the ground. “And I guess I should have some water.”

He pulled his dinged metal waterbottle out the side pocket of his rucksack before rooting around in the front one for his notebook. Settling on the rickety chair at the tiny desk, Danny found a blank page to write on. He tapped his pencil against the paper a few times before he he started to just list any name that came to mind.

By the time he had managed to fill most of the page with names and was just scribbling idle lines in the bottom corner, Danny was feeling frustrated. None of the names felt right. He had tried names from all over his travels, but nothing was clicking.

“Well, what name do you like?” Danny asked the gecko, who had crawled down to sit on the desk during the process.

The little thing tilted their head.

“Names, which do you like?” Danny asked again, tapping the paper.

The gecko watched the finger for a moment before waddling over and flopping down on the overlapping curves Danny had doodled in the corner.

Danny gave a tired sigh. “Sure, why not.”

-

A few months later, Danny stepped out of an alley and onto the streets of Paris. He had to consult his half legible note a few times to get to the set meeting place. The hunched, trench coat shrouded form of Constantine was easy to pick out where he was slightly tucked back in a different alleyway.

“Hey, Constantine,” Danny called out as soon as he was close enough not to draw too much other attention. The crowd was sparse, but there were still people milling about even at the late hour.

Constantine turned to greet Danny and froze— going still in a way that for the man was downright creepy. It made Danny’s hackles go up.

“What?” What was that look for? He was clean and fed and had even splurged and gotten his coat dry cleaned before meeting up with Constantine. So what if he’d been alone for several months now.

He’s fine.

He has a pet now.

“Kid,” John said slowly.

Oh, John wasn’t looking at him. His eyes were fixed on the lapels of Danny’s coat and who must be peaking out of it.

“What the hell is that, kid?”

“This is Squiggles, they/them. Constantine, Squiggles. Squiggles, Constantine. No biting, either of you.”

-----

AN: And things completes this little fic: the origins of Squiggles the Undead Gecko! And proof that Danny is a necromancer? Maybe, maybe not. This will probably by the second fic in the story, the first being done by Moku and and explaining how Danny met Constantine! You can find her first part of that in the masterpost.

Stay delightful, darlings!

Please remember that I'm no longer tagging people due to the shadow ban! If you go to the master post, you can subscribe there for update notifications!

[nottivagos]

HELLOOO!! Welcome Notti's "Not So Innocent" Notebook where I write some filth to make your Thursday a little bit better <3 || 18+ mdni pls and ty

Rockstar!Daniel Ricciardo who gets a little jealous at a rumour that his lovely Popstar!Reader is cheating on him, then alleviates the stress with... an amp?!

an: NESSA BARRETT. this is all your fault. going into this fic, i thought "hey, let me listen to nessa barrett for a bit, pornstar is a pretty good song!" THEN I FOUND S.L.U.T.?! im sorry but it just SCREAMED this idea.

Daniel was sick and tired of this bullshit. He knew he'd taken a risk by dating a popstar, but he was able to overcome the knowledge that sleazy gossip magazines would be like vultures on him all the time.

Eyes glued to his phone, the grip tightening as he read each headline with growing irritation. You'd been allegedly sleeping with a collaborator featured on your latest album, blurry pictures of you two together outside a nightclub ‘disclosed’ and plastered on the front pages.

He shoved his phone into his pocket with an annoyed grunt, ignoring the buzzing notifications from his manager with gritted teeth. Trying to clear his head, he held his guitar in a death grip, attempting to strum— or at least make some noise to distract him from the social media crisis happening.

On the other hand, there was you, basking in the morning of a new found freedom after a hard slog to produce your own music for the past 5 months. You hadn't had a morning to laze about for a while, and you knew that Danny would be busy trying to compose something, so you made your way to his little home studio.

Soft footsteps entered the room, signalling Danny to snap his head up, brown eyes staring like daggers at you. Tossing his guitar back onto its stand, he strode over to you, tense and irked.

“Are you fucking someone else?” his voice was an irritated growl, jaw locking tightly into place as he looked at you with that piercing, dark hazel gaze. “Answer me,” the tone of his voice was dangerous.

“No.” Your voice calm and collected as you replied, swallowing the small, sour lump forming in your throat. “I'm not.”

“Then why the hell is your ass all over those stupid gossip mags, posing you like a cheating whore?” He words bit, each syllable striking like a sharp gash of a knife on your skin, the intensity of his anger suffocating you, silencing you.

“It's just a rumour, Daniel.” The full name flowing bitterly off your tongue twisted the knife deeper, as he gripped your neck, engulfing it with one hand. “Did that hit a nerve?” you jabbed again, “Didn't realise full naming you had such a dramatic effect.” Your poison spoke whilst smirking, as he pinned you firmly against the wall.

Despite the cocky demeanour, you were boiling inside. Adrenaline pumped through your veins in the heated moment, the bubbling heat pooling down, creating a slick heat as Danny's eyes flared with rage.

Hot, ragged breath fanned onto your face, Danny's flushed cheeks radiating anger and pent-up stress. “Do you understand the stress this is bringing me, huh?” He asked, gritting his teeth as he let go of the vice of a grip he had on your throat. “Do you?” barking angrily, lips dangerously close to your own.

“No, Danny, I don't.” a whisper escaped your glossy lips, nose nuzzling closer to his. “Are you angry at me?” the sweetness of your pretty voice drawled off your tongue, plump lips pouting, teasing the distance between you.

An annoyed grunt was your response, chapped lips crashing onto your perfectly kept ones immediately after. Moaning softly into Danny's mouth, his tongue intertwined with yours, your shared saliva mingling together.

A distinct line of saliva connected both of you together, lips pulling away for a brief moment. “You're torture,” he gruffly panted, rage simmering underneath his large, brown eyes, “pure fucking torture.”

Wrapping a firm hand around your wrist, he yanked you across his music studio with a swift tug, treading across the scattered wires and other various equipment. He gave you a firm but gentle shove forward, pushing your chest flush against the amp.

A large hand tangled in your hair, wrapping it tightly into a makeshift ponytail, whilst the other gripped your curved hip, holding you in place. An abrupt tug of your locks made a yelp escape your lips, back arching so your round ass stood high in the air.

Letting go of your hair, fingertips trailed down your spine to the hem of your dress, already riding up your curve, pushing it up to reveal your soaked panties, the cold gush of air against your slick heat causing you to gasp.

Hooking two fingers underneath your underwear, he pulled them down to your ankles. “So fucking wet for me already, huh?” his voice was dark, kneading the bare flesh with his palms.

You bit your lip, suppressing a small gasp, rubbing your thighs together for some friction. Danny, however, had other plans. One hand came in between your legs, splitting them open again.

“Danny—” you were cut off by the harsh crack on your ass, causing you to yelp and your knees to buckle.

“You want to whore around, huh?” He growled into your ear, one hand wrapping around your neck again. “Cause me all this stress,” he muttered as he slapped again, a red handprint revealing on your asscheek, “ruin my reputation. You deserve some kind of punishment for that.”

Whining, your cunt dripped, a few overflowing juices trickling down your thighs onto the amp below. Danny responded with an unamused tut, followed by the clinking of metal dropping onto the floor and a faint zipper.

He let his slacks fall to the floor, rubbing his clothed erection against your wet hole, making your hips buckle and thighs tremble.

“Needy girl.” He drawled out the degrading comment, pulling down his boxers to let his hardened length spring free. Teasing the tip at your slick folds, you whined again, face flushed with the electricity shooting through your body from the sexual anticipation.

Calloused hands cupped your hips, grabbing them as Danny's erection thrusted deep into your cunt, stretching it open.

“So fucking tight f’me, aren't ya,” he groaned, pounding into your ass like a horny teenager, thrusts erratic and uncomposed. “Taking me so well,” he grunted breathlessly, your sweet moans filling the room as you raced your release.

“D-Danny, please—” you whined, mind fuzzy from the overwhelming pleasure, hips moving and jerking with Danny's erratic movements, as your thighs began to tremble, gripping onto the amp until your knuckles went white, “I’m gonna—”

“Then come,” he spat, chasing his own release with gritted teeth, “come all over my cock.”

In one final thrust, you let go, pussy walls fluttering and clenching around Danny's cock. You moaned loudly, eyes rolling back as back arched in pleasure, feeling your release pool out of you like a waterfall.

Danny wasn't far behind, burying his hard length inside as thick ropes of cum painted your walls white, a large, guttural groan leaving his lips.

“Good girl,” he praised, pressing a soft kiss to your temple as he pulled out of you, watching his cum overflowing out of your ass, dripping down your bare flesh. Quickly, he pulled up his trousers and boxers, revelling in the twitchy, messy state you currently were in.

Pulling out his phone from his back pocket, he flashed a photo of your leaking cunt, your combined juices trailing down your thighs with a low chuckle.

“Maybe I'll send this to one of those magazines to show them how much of a slut you are for me.”

danny is infiltrating my every thought. is this a curse, or blessing perhaps? maybe the filth is a drug. we'll never know... unless you send me your dirtiest thoughts for an edition in my notebook.. your choice though.. - notti <3

[q-gorgeous]

My Hero

fanfiction

ao3

What happens when Dash finds out about Danny's secret during the events of Micro Management? prompt by @ectopal

word count: 1573

IGNORE THE HORRIBLE TITLE bjhg the only other one i thought of was an ed edd n eddy themed title but clearly that doesnt work for danny phantom jnbhgv

“I gotcha!”

Dash stared up at his hero as he struggled to hold him up, dangling off of the monstrosity that sat on top of the Fenton’s roof while he was the size of an ant. Phantom’s eyes were squeezed shut as he held on tight to Dash’s wrist. 

Phantom’s appearance had been changing ever so slightly as he lost his powers after being hit by a Fenton device, so when a bright white ring appeared around the ghost’s waist, he hoped it would mean that his powers were returning. 

But instead of giving back any of his ghostly abilities, the ring traveled up and down his body. Phantom’s eyes shot open and he gasped, looking down at himself. White hair was replaced by raven black and the Phantom t-shirt turned into Danny Fenton’s signature tee that he wore everyday. 

His head lifted up and Danny Fenton’s blue eyes met Dash’s and he felt his stomach drop. 

Thoughts started spiraling through his head.

What the fuck. The kid I wail on everyday is my hero who’s trying so hard to make sure I don’t die. Why is he doing this?

Rockets flew past Dash’s back and into the metal above Danny’s head. A determined look that was normally worn by Phantom appeared on his face. 

“One, two, three!” 

Danny heaved Dash up onto the windowsill. 

Dash sucked in a couple deep breaths as he watched Danny run over and try to open the window next to them. 

Danny Fenton was Danny Phantom. 

QQQQQ

He still couldn’t believe it. 

Danny Phantom, Dash’s hero, transformed into Danny Fenton right before his very eyes. Saved his life! He had millions of questions but ever since they unshrunk themselves and Danny flew him back to the sidewalk, he had the gall. The audacity. To not even talk to Dash. 

What was even worse was that Danny sat right in front of him in their english class. He ignored everything Dash did to get his attention. Kicking the back of his seat. Tapping on his shoulder. Pulling on his hair. 

Dash huffed and rested his chin in his hand. He didn’t know why Fenton wouldn’t talk to him. 

He looks over to the side and sees two of his classmates exchanging notes. The girl who opened it blushed and scribbled something down before passing it back. 

Brain blasting, Dash ripped off a piece of his notebook paper and scribbled a smiley face on it. He threw it over Danny’s shoulder and onto his desk. Only a few seconds went by before he threw it back over his shoulder and into Dash’s face. He frowned.

Dash aggressively scribbled four more smiley faces and threw all five pieces of paper over Danny’s shoulder again.

Danny sighed and finally, finally turned around to face Dash, a scowl on his face. 

“What do you want Dash?”

“I think you know what I want.” Dash pointed a finger at Danny. “I wanna talk about the other day.”

“Dash-” Danny started but he was interrupted.

“No. I know what you’re going to say. But you can’t just drop something on me like that, accidental or not, and just. Ignore it.”

“I don’t have to talk to you about anything. It��s none of your business.”

Dash groaned and laid his head against his desk. “But I’m so curious.”

“Why? Why do you even care? I’m just the kid you beat up everyday.”

“But you’re apparently also my hero.” Dash mumbled into his elbow.

He could just feel Danny staring into the top of his head.

“Okay.”

“What?” Dash lifted his eyes up to look at Danny who was still staring.

“I’ll talk to you about whatever it is that you want to talk about.”

Dash bolted up in his seat, mouth forming an O shape before he started trying to shoot off a question. Before he could finish, Danny was waving a hand in his face.

“Not here! There’s too many people around. If you meet me outside during lunch we can talk about it then.”

Dash closed his mouth and nodded his head. After a moment he threw another smiley face at Danny.

QQQQQ

Dash walked outside the front doors of the school and looked around. After a bit, he saw Danny sitting on top of the picnic table surrounded by some trees. He walked over and cleared his throat.

“Hey.”

Danny turned around to face Dash, an apple in his hand. He took a bite of it and started talking with his mouth full.

“Charming.” Dash sat down on the bench of the picnic table. 

“What can I say.” Danny shrugged. After taking another bite of his apple, Danny looked down at Dash from where he sat on the table, an apprehensive expression on his face. “So, uh, what did you want to talk about?”

Dash fidgeted with his hands. “You’ve only been like this since freshman year? When Phantom first started showing up all over the place?”

“Yes.”

“How did it happen?”

He saw Danny tense up out of the corner of his eye so he looked up at him. Danny was looking anywhere but at Dash and he brought a hand up to rub at the back of his neck.

“Uh, usually our deaths are a touchy subject for ghosts but.” Danny lifted his shirt just high enough so Dash could see a trail of lichtenberg scars. “It was my accident I had before the school year started. Sam and Tucker were over and we were messing with the ghost portal because it didn’t work and they convinced me to go inside. I tripped on something in the portal and my hand hit the power button and…” 

“Oh my god.” Dash paled. “That must’ve been terrible.”

“Yeah. It was.”

Silence settled over them again after that. 

“Sam and Tucker were there. That must mean they know, right?” Dash asked softly.

“Yep.” Danny started scratching something into the surface of the picnic table. 

“Does anyone else know?”

“Just Jazz. And all the ghosts. But they never tell anyone so it’s fine.”

Dash gawked at him. “All the ghosts? All of your enemies know your secret identity?!”

“Yeah, but they’re not snitches.”

“Danny!” Dash shouted. “What if they told your parents? Or the other ghost hunters?”

Danny shrugged. “They haven’t yet. I’m not sure why, but they never go that far.”

Dash placed his head in his hands. “They have a weird sense of camaraderie then considering they’re always trying to kill you.”

Danny just shrugged again. 

Slowly lifting his head back up, Dash looked at Danny. “Can I see?”

Danny’s brows furrowed. “See what?”

“You change, your transformation, whatever you call it.”

They stared at each other for a moment before Danny took a deep breath.

“Okay. But no recording it or anything. Your phone has to stay away.”

“I wasn’t even thinking of recording it!” Dash exclaimed. 

Danny stood up and hopped off the picnic table. He walked a few steps away and turned to face Dash, his feet spread apart and his hands in fists at his side. He closed his eyes. 

“I’m going ghost!”

Dash watched in awe as a white ring appeared around Danny’s waist, illuminating his face and his hair as it traveled up and down his body. Soon it disappeared and all that was left was Phantom.

“Woah.”

Danny did some jazz hands. “Tada. That’s how I transform, but you already sort of knew that.” He floated so that he was laying on his stomach in the air.

Dash was still too busy studying Danny in his ghost form. He never believed that Fenton and Phantom looked so alike before but now that he knew it was impossible not to see it. He was broken out of his thoughts by a hand waving in his face.

“Did you have any other questions?” Danny asked.

“Uh, maybe just one more.” Dash said sheepishly. “Can you show me some of your powers? Oh! Like your ghostly wail?”

Danny scrunched his nose up. “That’s for emergencies only. The ghostly wail would take out all these trees and the parking lot.”

Dash’s shoulders slumped.

“But.” Danny continued. “I can show you this one.”

Looking back up, Dash saw Danny cupping his hands together. A blue blow shined inside them and when Danny opened them back up an ice crystal was in his hand. He held it out to Dash and he took it. 

Looking at it, Dash saw that the ice didn’t melt at his touch even though it was cold. He looked up at Danny with a puzzled expression on his face.

“Ghost ice. It follows its own laws of chemistry.”

Dash nodded even though that didn’t give him any sort of answer. He tried to hand the crystal back to Danny. “Here.”

Danny shook his head. “Nah, you can keep it. It shouldn’t melt or anything.”

Looking back down at the crystal, he stared at it for a moment before stuffing it safely in his pocket. He opened his mouth to say something but the bell rang.

“Well.” Danny said, the rings appearing around his waist again and turning him back to normal. “Time to go back to class.”

He started walking away and Dash watched him go. He took a deep breath before jogging to catch up with him. 

“Hey! Let me walk with you. We have our next class together.”

Danny smiled and together they entered the school.

[maria-scribbles]

we’re just like kevin bacon!

prompt: for @bricksatanakinswindow​ ‘s halloween writing challenge! this was initially inspired by "mortal enemies accidentally showing up in matching costumes every fucking year" but once i started writing it kind of snowballed from there and i ended up with this lmao

ship: jj maybank x fem!reader

word count: 4.6k+ (i think this is the shortest thing i’ve ever written lol)

warnings n stuff: childhood enemies to lovers, swearing, mention of underage drinking, halloween shenanigans, makin' out, smut (not too explicit but i still think it's spicy enough to need an 18+ warning), jj and the reader being cute lil nerds and quoting movies back and forth, the author blatantly using some of her personal favorite movies/shows as inspiration for costumes, the author also making her opinions on ghostbusters clear (instead of the human trash can peter venkman, stan the adorable dork known as ray stantz for clear skin)

a/n: this was hella fun to write and i already have so many more halloween fic ideas bouncing around in my head (it's spoopy season, y'all!). title of this fic comes from guardians of the galaxy 😊

Of three things in life you were certain.

One, you loved Halloween more than any other holiday of the year; after all, you and your twin brother Mason were born just after one AM on October 31st so you could say a penchant for all things spooky was in your blood.

Two, Sarah Cameron was your best friend. Being neighbors your whole lives, the two of you were thick as thieves and spent almost every day together, much to the annoyance of both your brother and hers; as much as you loved Mason, sometimes you wished Sarah was your twin instead of him and you knew without question the blonde girl would trade Rafe for you in a heartbeat (with little to no guilt, in fact.). 

And three, you absolutely hated JJ Maybank. You'd been at the top of each other's shit lists ever since you were both six years old, when he made fun of you for the stutter you'd had back then and you dumped a full milkshake over his head as payback, and even as time passed and you grew out of your stutter, your disdain for the blond pogue only grew stronger. He was infuriating, plain and simple, and the mere mention of his name made steam come out of your ears. 

The boy was just good at being annoying and seemed to love pushing everyone's buttons, yours especially, and always found ways to get under your skin without fail every single time your paths crossed (which was way too often for your liking, but running in the same friend group made it hard to avoid each other). It became an unspoken thing, the great Y/L/N-Maybank feud, with both of you trying your hardest to piss the other off until one of your mutual friends or your brother broke it up and pulled you to opposite corners of the metaphorical ring to take a breather before the next round.

You'd never admit it but deep down you kind of liked it. You liked being at the center of his attention (granted, it was antagonistic in nature but it was attention all the same), his bright blue eyes following your every move whenever you were within his sights and you liked that you were in his thoughts even when you weren't around, a fact proven to you by the tiny notebook Kiara carried around in her pocket recording how many times he mentioned your name. Knowing you lived rent free in his mind brought you an embarrassingly high level of satisfaction that you'd absolutely deny feeling if anyone ever asked, just as you'd deny the fact that he lived rent free in your mind, too.

...At least for most of the year. Everyone, including JJ, knew that to you Halloween was a damn-near sacred time. He knew never to mess with you during the weeks leading up to the holiday and definitely never on the day itself, lest he want yet another milkshake dumped over his blond head. He knew that, the whole damn island knew he did and yet...somehow, some way, he managed to get your blood boiling every. single. year. And you, like a masochistic idiot, let him. 

It all started when you were twelve.

You, Mason, and your friends were finally old enough to go to the annual youth party held on the sprawling lawn of the Island Club, an event you'd been looking forward to attending every Halloween since you were eight. Of course, you were excited for the dancing and games and food but the thing you couldn't wait the most for was the costume contest, a chance to show off your skills and prove to everyone on the island that Y/N Y/L/N was the undisputed queen of Halloween.

So what if your hopes were a little too high (considering you were only twelve and going up against kids ranging from your age to fifteen), you were still gonna give it your all; you spent weeks perfecting not only your costume but your brother's as well with your mom, helping her cut fabric and sew zippers, styling wigs and painting props until everything was perfect. 

"Oh my God, Y/N!" Sarah, dressed as Cinderella, yelled from the passenger seat of her dad's SUV when they swung by to pick you up. "You look amazing!"

"So do you!" You said, slipping into the back seat in between a miserable-looking Rafe as Sarah Sanderson ("I lost a bet," he explained with a scowl) and Mason, holding your mini R2-D2 on your lap. Was it kind of cheesy, dressing up as the most iconic twins in movie history? Probably, but you really didn't care because Leia Organa was a total boss bitch and Mason was practically over the moon that he got to be his ultimate silver screen hero and swing around his very own lightsaber as Luke Skywalker.

"The Force is strong with you two." Ward joked, earning an eye roll from both of his children as he drove to the Island Club to drop you off. Rafe immediately disappeared into the crowd to meet up with Topper and Kelce and the three of you went off to find your own friends, skirting around the edge of the party toward the snack tables, also known as the most likely place for them to be.  

You spotted Kiara first, looking like an actual princess in her Tiana costume and waved, smiling when she waved back and beckoned you over as she said something to Pope, dressed as Albert Einstein, that made him start laughing hysterically.

"What's so funny?" You asked, reaching between them to grab two handfuls of pretzels and immediately dropping one into your brother's outstretched palm, careful to keep the sleeve of your white dress away from the bright orange-iced cupcakes on the table. 

The two of them exchanged a look that instantly made you realize something was Up™ but before either of them could answer, Mason asked around a mouthful of pretzels, "Where're Tweedledee and Tweedledum?"

"J, why didn't we think of that?" John B's voice came from somewhere over your shoulder and when you turned to face him, you nearly dropped both the droid cradled in the crook of your elbow and the snacks in your hand. Not because of John B and his hilarious Chewbacca costume but because of the fact that JJ Maybank, the one person you hated the most on the whole entire island, was dressed as Han freakin' Solo. 

"Yikes." Someone muttered behind you -it sounded like Sarah but you weren't really sure- and Mason nearly choked on his pretzels as he tried and failed miserably to keep himself from laughing. 

"You've gotta be kidding me." You huffed, rolling your eyes as JJ crossed his arms and glared in your direction, blaster hanging from the holster on his hip.

"Listen, Princess, I'm not too happy about this, either."

"Oh, shut up, you nerfherder."

"Who you calling-" Mason and John B cut in and pulled you both in opposite directions before either of you could turn it into a shouting match, your brother physically grabbing you around the waist and carrying you off while the latter caught the back of JJ's vest and dragged him away. Despite their best efforts to keep you apart, you ran into each other more times than you could count and spent a minute or two squabbling like cats and dogs each time until one of them intervened once again. It was childish, it was immature, and it was fun, even though you'd never, ever admit it. Ever.

You didn't win the costume contest that year in the way you'd imagined at all. Still, first place in the group category was a win in your book and it felt good, even if one of the members of your unintentional Star Wars posse was someone who tested every bit of patience you had. The four of you split the cash prize and you went home 25 bucks richer, stashing it away for next year's costume and pushing the thought of accidentally matching with your mortal enemy from your mind. 

You had no idea this thing was only just beginning.

The next year, you let Sarah and Kiara convince you to match with them and the three of you rolled up to the party as the Pink Ladies -you as Rizzo, Sarah as Sandy, Kiara as Frenchy- only to run right into the boys, your brother included, dressed as the T-Birds. John B, perfectly in character as Danny, immediately whisked Sarah off to dance while Pope, the most adorably awkward Doody you'd ever seen, went to grab some snacks with Kiara, leaving you stuck with the bane of your existence as, of course, fucking Kenickie (Mason, as Sonny, dipped sometime before then without you noticing). The two of you spent the whole evening glaring at each other and hurling insults back and forth at breakneck speed, more in character than either of you'd ever want to acknowledge and for the second year in a row, you won first place in the group costume category.

At fourteen, you went as Princess Buttercup and JJ showed up as Westley, fake sword in hand as he followed you around all night like an annoying fly, sarcastically drawling "as you wish" every time you so much as glanced in his direction. Your brother, dressed as Inigo Montoya, nearly pissed himself laughing and you wanted to snatch both of their prop swords and shove them up their asses. You came in first again in the group costume contest and begrudgingly split the prize three ways. 

At fifteen, you worked hard on a Dr. Ellie Sattler costume from Jurassic Park, he strolled in as a disheveled Dr. Alan Grant with mud splattered boots and tattered clothes, and you really regretted not taking the offer to be the Tai to Sarah's Cher and Kiara's Dionne. Once again, Mason laughed so hard his face turned red and you were tempted to grab the sword he was holding and beat him over the head with it, not just for laughing at you but also for the completely atrocious Jack Sparrow costume he wore. To your absolute horror, you and JJ won the contest in the duo category and you wanted to melt into the ground when they called you onto the makeshift stage to collect your reward. 

When you were sixteen, you and your friends "graduated" to the party held for the older teens inside the club itself. With costume rules a little more lax than they were for the younger kids, you decided to go as (an only slightly sexy) Janine Melnitz, complete with a prop telephone you answered every so often with a loud "Ghostbusters, whaddya want?!" much to the embarrassment of Mason, who was once again dressed as Luke Skywalker, this time in the fatigues he wore while training on Dagobah in The Empire Strikes Back.

You strutted into the party in your heels and pencil skirt only to nearly fall flat on your face when you caught sight of JJ in a terrible black wig and glasses, proton pack strapped to his back and 'Spengler' printed on the front of his jumpsuit. Your brother winced when you all but screeched "Again?!" right into his ear and grabbed your elbow, dragging you over to an empty table and depositing you into an open chair.

"There's no way this is a coincidence anymore! He could've picked Venkman, with all the womanizing and lowkey being a creep and thinking he's God's gift to mankind? It would've been the perfect choice! He's not nearly adorable or dorky enough to be Stantz or sassy enough to be Winston-"

"Jesus, you have a lot of feelings about Ghostbusters," Mason muttered, rolling his eyes when you shot him a withering glare.

"Shut up! Listen to me, there's no way in hell Maybank randomly decided to be, out of alllll the 'Busters, Egon fuckin' Spengler, okay? He had to have somehow known I was coming as Janine and did it just to piss me off!"

Your brother heaved a deep, heavy sigh that made you want to smack him and fixed you with a deadpan stare. "Or, have you pulled your head out of your own ass long enough to think that maybe you're just becoming...predictable?"

You really did smack him then, hard on his exposed shoulder and he yelped, scowling as he rubbed at the red mark you left behind. "Ow! What the hell, bitch?!"

"Don't you dare call me predictable, you dickhead! I pride myself on my costumes being very unique and unexpected -you know, out of the box!"

"Hate to break it to you but they're not really out of the box if Maybank shows up in a matching one every single year." He said with an infuriating, shit-eating grin, patting your shoulder before straightening the plush Yoda strapped to his back. "I'm gonna go get some food, wanna come with?"

Still miffed at his comment, you shoved his arm away and glanced down at your lap, ignoring your brother's sassy "your loss" as he headed toward the snack tables. Not even a minute passed by before his empty seat was taken and you groaned when you looked up to see who it was, your eyes meeting a pair of bright blues behind tacky, oversized glasses. 

"Hi, Janine."

"...Egon."

The two of you sat in silence after that, watching the dancing crowd under the flashing neon lights and sparkling disco ball until you saw him turn to face you out of the corner of your eye.

"Why Janine?" 

"Huh?" You turned to face him, too, one eyebrow raised in a perfect arch as he gestured toward your costume.

"Why did you dress up as Janine, Y/L/N?"

"I've always liked her sassiness and 'I like to play racquetball.'" You offered a casual shrug of your shoulders and carefully stuck a finger under your wig to scratch an annoying itch above your ear. "Why'd you pick Egon, Maybank?"

"He's my favorite." He answered simply with his own shrug, shooting you a genuine, real smile that you, for who knows what reason, found yourself returning without a second thought. "Smart, hilarious -plus, 'I like to collect spores, mold, and fungus.'"

For the first time in your life, your eyes rolled out of amusement and not annoyance at something that JJ Maybank said and, to your complete surprise, it kind of felt...right. "Really? I'd have pegged you for a Venkman stan."

"Are you kidding? He's the worst!" 

Never in your wildest dreams did you ever think you'd sit across from your hated enemy, not only having a civil -hell, downright enjoyable- conversation but actually smiling right along with him, laughing at his jokes and doing your best to ignore the sudden flutter in your stomach each time you caught sight of his slightly crooked teeth when he grinned. You didn't even notice when your brother returned with Kiara, dressed as Moana, at his side and two heaping plates of snacks in his hands until his chair scraped gratingly across the hardwood floor. 

"Kie, are you seeing this? Pigs must be flying 'cause they're actually smiling at each other." Mason said, cackling as Kiara turned to squint out the window.

"Yeah, I think I see one or two soaring around out there." She giggled and sent a mischievous wink in your direction. With your face feeling like it was on fire, you flipped them both the bird and took off, disappearing into the crowd and leaving all your traitorous, confusing thoughts about JJ behind with the boy himself; it was Rafe's last party at the Club and he owed you a dance anyway, but even as your best friend's older brother, cute as hell in his Thor costume, playfully twirled you around the floor to the Ghostbusters theme song, you felt more than your partner's blue eyes on you.

To no one's surprise, you and JJ won the duo category for the second year in a row and when you joined him onstage to collect your prize and didn't feel like you'd rather die than be up there by his side, you suddenly realized you were only certain about two things in life instead of three. 

At seventeen, you were confident you and JJ wouldn't be matching for once (after last year, though, you were kind of thinking it wouldn't be that bad of a thing). You'd gone cult classic for your costume, pulling inspiration from your mom's favorite move, 1999's The Mummy, and put together a screen-accurate Evelyn Carnahan in her iconic black dress, including a handmade Book of the Dead and matching key. You blackmailed Mason with pictures of him, drunk as a skunk and dressed in your Janine costume from the previous year, and got him to go as Jonathan, complete with a pith helmet and prop bottle of The Glenlivet.  

But, as always, JJ managed to surprise you. You literally ran right into his chest and if it wasn't for his arms instantly wrapping tight around your waist, you would've bit it hard.

"Whoa, careful there," He said, one hand keeping you close while the other moved to help you hold the book in your arms. "'The Book of the Dead? Are you sure you wanna be messing around with this thing?'"

Of course he'd make the perfect Rick O'Connell, you thought as you playfully raised one eyebrow and curled your fingers around the strap of the gun holster draped over his shoulder. "'It's just a book. No harm ever came from reading a book.'"

Mason was a little too in character as well as he dramatically rolled his eyes and wandered off, muttering "puh-lease" under his breath and shooting Sarah a conspiratorial wink that you didn't see. The blonde girl glanced between the two of you -arms still around each other and identical smiles on your faces- and grinned. The party flew by in a blur of movie quotes, laughs, and more dances than you could count and by the time you made it home, 50 bucks in the pocket of your dress and another group costume win under your belt, you were almost positive you never actually hated JJ Maybank in the first place.

Now at eighteen, you pulled out all the stops for your last party at the Island Club. You'd spent the last few months slaving over your costume, sewing custom pieces, hand-crafting your prop, and spending way too much money on body makeup and a wig but when you saw the final product in the mirror, you knew it was all worth it. You were ready to slay the competition this year and take home first place for the final time.

Mason, indifferent as always about the contest but willing to do anything to keep those pictures from seeing the light of day, didn't protest one bit when you forced him into the matching costume you'd made for him -in typical Mason fashion, he liked that he didn't have to wear a shirt and could show off his muscles- and spent a few hours perfecting his makeup.

You felt on top of the world when you walked into the party that night as Gamora, a replica of her Godslayer sword in hand and skin painted a perfect shade of green, followed by your brother as Drax, already flexing for anyone and everyone looking his way. The rest of your friends came to win as well: John B and Sarah as Flynn Rider and Rapunzel, Kiara as Eleven, Pope as T'Challa, and, of course, JJ as Peter Quill, Baby Groot perched on his shoulder and twin blasters at his hips. 

"Lookin' good, Gamora!" He called over the music, shimmying his way over to you with some dance moves that would impress Star-Lord himself.

"Flattery will get you nowhere, Quill." You replied in a sing-song voice, even as you took his outstretched hand and let him pull you into the crowd of bodies hopping up and down to some terrible EDM beat under the twirling disco ball.

"It got you out here with me, didn't it?"

You rolled your eyes and hooked the sword to your belt before stepping closer and draping your arms around his neck, twirling your painted fingers in his hair. "Just remember, 'I know who you are, Peter Quill. And I'm not some starry-eyed waif here to succumb to your pelvic sorcery.'"

You should've known you spoke too soon the second you saw the spark in JJ's eyes that all but screamed 'wanna bet?'

And that's how you found yourself in the middle of the single hottest make out session you'd ever had the pleasure of participating in an hour later: back pressed against the locked door of someone's deserted office, legs wrapped tight around his waist and his hands hooked under your ass, both your sword and his blasters abandoned on the floor at his feet, and he was either a sinfully good kisser or trying really, really hard to blow your mind.  

"I'm not gonna end up green after this, am I?" He mumbled against your mouth before trailing his lips along your jaw and you breathed a laugh, tightening your grip on his hair.

"This is professional makeup, dumbass. It's gonna take more than some kissing to smudge it."

"I'm down for some smudging if you are." 

You pulled him back for another kiss in response and gasped into his mouth when he walked across the room, one strong arm reaching out to sweep whatever was on the desk to the floor before setting you down on it.

"Confident, are we?" 

JJ smirked at your breathless question and the way you hooked your ankles around the backs of his thighs to pull him closer. "So is that a yes to the smudging?"

"Just shut up and kiss me." 

He did -very well, you might add- and you kissed him back, untangling your hands from his hair to slide them under his jacket instead; you helped him push it off his shoulders and it had barely hit the ground along with poor Baby Groot before your fingers were tugging his shirt from the waistband of his pants.  

"Someone's impatient." He teased, leaning back just far enough to let you pull it over his head and toss it somewhere behind you.

"Someone doesn't know how to stop talking." You whispered your reply low in his ear and then trailed your lips down his neck, smiling in satisfaction at the tremble in his voice when you kissed the purple mark you'd left behind earlier.

"N-never was very good at that." 

"'You should've learned.'"

"'I don't learn, it's one of my issues.'"

One of his hands gripped your wig, pulling your head back a little roughly -you'd have so been into that if it had been your real hair he pulled- and you winced at the way the bobby pins holding it it place tugged painfully at your roots. "Ow, not so hard!"

"Wait, what the fuck? I thought you were wearing a wig!" 

"I am but it's still pinned to my actual hair!"

"Sorry, but how the hell was I supposed to know that?"

The sight of JJ's face slowly turning red made the butterflies in your stomach go haywire and so you just shook your head, mumbling "don't worry about it," before pressing your lips to his once again. He was gentler this time with the pulling and you dug your nails into his bare shoulders at the thrill of his mouth against the exposed column of your throat, leaning back further and further until you laid flat on the desk.

His fingers had just unbuttoned your pants when your phone started to ring from your pocket, blaring the Star Wars theme you had set as your twin's ringtone. 

"Mason's timing is impeccable," JJ said sarcastically, chuckling as you clamped a palm over his mouth and answered the call.

"What the hell do you want?"

"Jesus, no need to be pissy!" Mason loudly replied over the applause crackling through the phone's speaker. "I just thought you'd like to know that we just won best group costume with Maybank. Again." 

The blond winked at the mention of his last name and pulled your hand away from his mouth, pinning it to the desk beside you with one of his while the other started tugging your pants down over your hips.

"Oh, that's cool, Mase-" You inhaled sharply when his lips touched the edge of your underwear, so close to where you wanted him most but at the same time so far away, and your fingers held your phone in a white-knuckled grip. "But I-I'm kind of in the middle of doing someone -something!- right now."

"Smooth," JJ said, not even trying to be quiet as he released your pinned hand to finish pulling your boots off, along with your tight leather pants that he casually tossed aside. "And I knew you weren't green under these!" 

Your laugh quickly turned into a gasp when his fingers hooked under your panties and pulled those off, too, and the touch of his tongue against the skin of your inner thigh sent white-hot lightning racing through your veins; the phone slipped from your grip, falling with a clunk onto the desk as your fingers tangled in his hair and he lifted one of your knees over his shoulder.

"Okay, I'm hanging up now! I already know you're getting laid but I don't need to hear it." Mason's loud grumble drifted up through the speaker and if you weren't so preoccupied with the boy between your thighs doing some downright wicked things to you with his mouth, you might've noticed that your brother didn't actually sound that grumpy before he ended the call and your phone's screen went dark, right as you lost control of your voice.

"Fuck me."

"Funny, I thought that's what I was doing?" You felt more than heard his response against you and a shiver ran down your spine when his bright blue eyes flicked up to met yours in the dim light of the office.

"You know what I meant, Maybank."

"Trust me, Y/L/N, I know. Question is: where do you want me?"

You tugged on his hair, grinning wolfishly at the way his eyes fluttered closed and a low moan rose from his throat. "Everywhere in this damn room, starting right here."

"I was hoping you’d say that.”

- Back at the party, Mason looked up and met Sarah's gaze, both of her eyebrows raised expectantly as she asked, "Well?"

He took his time slipping his phone back into his pocket before giving her a quick nod, grinning triumphantly when she immediately burst into gleeful giggles.  

"Yes! I just knew they had a thing for each other! Mortal enemies, my ass."

"I think that was the very first time in my sister's life that she didn't give a shit about the contest." Mason said and reached over to snag a cookie from her plate, chuckling when she pushed his hand away from the chocolate chip ones and toward the peanut butter. "We couldn't have pulled this off without you. I mean, making sure they showed up in matching costumes every year? Genius, Sarah. Absolutely genius." 

The blonde girl grabbed her own cookie with a wink. "Think they'll ever figure it out?"

Your brother just threw his head back and laughed. "I hope not! I wanna save that story for my best man speech at their wedding."

taglist: @sinkbeneathwaves @cordeliascrown @maysbanks @jjpogueprincess @jiaraendgame @alexa-playafricabytoto @sexualparkour @agirlwholovescoffee​ 

[five-rivers]

Doctor

The final continuation of Science and Stuck!

.

.

.

Jack and Maddie had never been in the Ghost Zone before, and they watched with fascination as the camera they had attached to Phantom dipped and bobbed, weaving through a complex maze of impossible and decaying architecture. Really, this whole endeavor would be worth it just for this.

But they'd already learned so much more. The interaction between Phantom and the box-obsessed ghost had been enlightening, giving insight to why Phantom did not simply destroy weaker ghosts who trespassed on his territory. They hadn't believed that ghosts could make deals like that.

It put Phantom's fights in a very different perspective. He might be coordinating with the ghosts he 'fought' to make himself look good. After all, if he could bargain with that ghost, why not others?

Admittedly, that theory was a bit out there, but it was plausible.

They had also been interested to see that Phantom was aware of the camera and its function. They had designed it to bond with the ghost's body, to trick it into accepting it as part of itself. They had assumed that the ghost's mind (such as it was) would be similarly fooled. But, it wasn't. Phantom appeared to have understood the camera almost immediately and had attempted to remove it.

Phantom swooped around another twisted staircase. Maddie tapped on the glass screen.

"I wonder what he's trying to hide," she said.

"Well, we'll see it sooner or later," said Jack, cutting off a corner of his emergency fudge. "There's no way he'll be able to get the camera off." He snorted. "Even if there was a ghost intelligent enough, they don't have the equipment."

Maddie nodded. "I suppose it's just frustrating. All this time, trying to figure him out, and now we have to wait even longer." She sighed. "Him knowing it's a camera is going to skew our results, too. He'll be on his best behavior while people are watching. We already know that from his whole hero routine."

On the screen, Phantom turned a corner, and the Fentons were treated to a view of a vast, open expanse. Floating islands charted their own paths against a green and swirling sky. Clouds of ectoplasmic mist scudded along the not-horizon. Disembodied doors flew by without rhyme or reason.

The picture shifted from side to side as Phantom took in his surroundings. It stopped, lingering on an oddly skull-shaped island for several long seconds before Phantom turned away.

.

Danny had known the portal the Box Ghost had shown him was close to Skulker's island, but he hadn't quite realized how close. It was a good landmark, he knew exactly how to get to the Far Frozen from here, but he didn't really want to run into Skulker.

He didn't want to deal with any of the ghosts he usually fought with his parents watching, and maybe listening, through the camera. They might not actively try to expose him, but a number of them were too comfortable with shouting out things like-

"I'll wrap Ember's gifts with your pelt, halfa whelp!"

Ugh. Like that.

Danny twisted and froze a tracking missile, not watching as it began to arc to his left, caught in the orbit of the staircase maze Danny had just left. He sent a few blasts at Skulker.

"I think you should find something to put in the gifts first!" he shouted. "Unlike last year. I heard you were begging MP3 players off of Technus minutes-" he cut off to dodge a net. He hated nets. Why did Skulker even bother with them, when he was trying to kill Danny, anyway? "Minutes before the party!"

"Like you're one to talk! You completely destroyed the party!"

"Hey, blame Ghostwriter for that one!"

"And you don't understand! You don't even have a girlfriend!"

"Well, neither will you for much longer if you don't come up with better present ideas!"

The fight had wound down into the two ghosts just yelling at each other. For all the violence Skulker regularly subjected him to, Danny sometimes wondered if Skulker actually wanted to skin him, or mount his head on a wall, or any of the other threats he belted out, or if he just wanted the thrill of the chase.

"Can't you just give me a break for once? I don't have time for this!"

"Oh, please, you have all the time in the world, whelp!"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, what with you being a hal-"

Danny flew over and clamped a hand over Skulker's mouth. "Not another word," he hissed. "We're being watched."

"What do you-?"

Danny cut him off, pointing significantly at the camera. Skulker immediately started laughing.

"Oh, yeah, laugh it up. Wait 'til it happens to you."

"Ha! That is why I, with my modifications, am superior! Something as ridiculous as that could never happen to me!" He started laughing again.

"Whatever," grumbled Danny. "Are you going to keep attacking me, or can I go to the Far Frozen in peace?"

Skulker waved him off. "Consider it an early truce present!" he said. "But don't forget! I'll get your pelt eventually!"

"Sure," said Danny, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. He floated backwards for a ways before turning, wary of being stabbed in the back. Or shot in the back. Or blasted in the back. Or whatever having missiles or nets launched at him from behind would be called.

But, once again, he was on his way to the Far Frozen. With his luck, he'd only be interrupted a dozen more times before he actually got there.

He sighed, thinking of ways he could block the camera in an emergency. Ice, perhaps? He could always put his hand over it, too. Maybe he should have done that from the beginning, but a part of him, the part that had argued with them before, wanted to show them the truth about ghosts. Part of him wanted them to see.

So, even though he kept fiddling with the camera as he flew, even though he definitely wanted it off, and quickly, he couldn't quite bring himself to cover it.

"Hey! Phantom!"

Danny turned, trying to place the voice. "Sydney?" he asked, surprised, spotting the sepia-toned specter. "What's up?" He slowed so that the other ghost could catch up to him. Sydney didn't often leave his lair on his own.

"Wow! It's lucky you came out here! I thought I'd have to go through your portal to find you." Sydney shuddered. He caught up to Danny. "I'm throwing a truce party this year!" he said, happily. "I'm inviting everyone." He handed Danny a small envelope. "It's a bit early, because I wanted to make sure that it didn't overlap with anyone else's party."

"Thanks, Sydney," said Danny, both surprised and touched. "I don't know if I'll be able to make it, you know what my l- my afterlife is like." His smile turned into a grimace at the awkwardness of his phrasing.

"Afterlife? But you-"

"I have a camera strapped to my chest right now. I'm pretty sure it's broadcasting. I don't really want to talk about it."

Sydney blinked at him. "Your existence is very difficult, isn't it? I'm glad I didn't manage to steal it from you when we first met."

"That's both of us. The shades in your lair still behaving?"

"Oh, yes. It's all fine. Thanks for asking! I've got to go deliver the rest of these! Good luck with your camera situation!"

"Yeah, stay safe, okay, Sydney?" called Danny, as they sped away from each other.

"You betcha!"

Danny tucked the invitation into a pocket. He'd have to check out the details later, when he wouldn't have to hold it at a weird angle to keep the camera from seeing it.

Now, if there were no more interruptions, he could get to the Far Frozen before- He stopped. That forest had not been there before, and, usually, the floating islands didn't move like-

Not a floating island Undergrowth oh Ancients he looked mad run run run.

It was a good thing Danny was faster than Undergrowth. He didn't want to fight the plant ghost on his home turf... if there even was any turf underneath all those plants.

The chase (not to mention dodging and fighting off the seed bombs that Undergrowth had lobbed his way) had drained Danny, and he was flying significantly slower. The hope that he'd get back home before dawn looked distinctly forlorn. He sighed. That was just his life, though, wasn't it?

.

Maddie had filled half a notebook with questions.

Ghosts appeared to be much more complex than previously believed, even if it was clear that what rudimentary social structure they had was founded entirely on violence. The three encounters Phantom had had in the Ghost Zone thus far illustrated that perfectly.

The first, with Skulker, served as a sort of average. The ghosts had fought, demonstrated that they were more-or-less equals, and then parted, apparently not wanting a more definitive contest. The second had been with a smaller ghost who was obviously submissive towards Phantom. The third, with the plant ghost was more along the lines of what she and Jack had expected: Strong ghosts attempting to defeat and consume weaker ones.

"I wonder what this 'truce' they keep talking about is," said Maddie, tapping her pencil on her notebook.

"I wonder what that sound is," said Jack. "The microphone shouldn't be picking up this kind of interference."

"I think it's core noise," said Maddie. "We can analyze the sound later and compare it to his ectosignature, after we find out where he's going." She glanced at the clock. "And after we get some sleep. Everything is being recorded."

"I'll have to double check all the connections before we do this again. I bet it's a loose wire." Jack pouted.

Maddie nodded. "Where do you think he's going? You don't suppose he thinks he has some way to get it off?"

Jack shrugged. "His lair, maybe? The distance might be why he stays in Amity Park."

"Lairs are still pure speculation, though," said Maddie. "Although, one hypothesis is that they help ghosts reform and heal, so he might think it'll get rid of the camera."

Jack grunted in acknowledgement. "What do you think that white dot is?" he asked, pointing at the screen.

"I think it's one of those floating islands," she said. "It's a different color than the others."

They watched as it grew larger on the screen. "I think Phantom is heading towards it."

"Maybe it's his lair," she said. "He does have ice powers. Ice and snow could be what gives it its color."

"It does look like that could be," said Jack.

The island grew larger and larger, and eventually the picture showed that they had been right. The island was covered with snow and more.

"I think those are buildings," said Maddie, pointing out little mounds. "Crude, but still buildings. Perhaps Phantom is trying to replicate features of Amity Park in his lair?"

"You don't think it could be some kind of," Jack waved his hand vaguely, "rudimentary ghost settlement?"

Maddie wrinkled her nose. "What would they have to gain? Why would you say that?"

"Because I think I see some ghosts moving around down there."

Sure enough, Maddie could see movement where he pointed. The ghosts were white-furred, and difficult to see against the snow, but they were there. They looked fierce. Animal ghosts of some kind, Maddie assumed, but warped over the years.

"They all look so much alike," said Maddie, fascinated. "I wonder what could have caused that."

"Well, they say form follows function!" said Jack. "Or the 'native' theory could be correct, and they formed that way, without human consciousness involved!"

"Hm," said Maddie, making a note. "We'll have to look into that again."

Phantom's hand flashed in the camera's peripheral vision. "He's waving to them," said Jack.

"Great one!" shouted one of the ghosts on the island, voice made small by distance.

"Frostbite!" yelled Phantom in return, voice much louder. He swooped down, and was embraced by the other ghost, who was much, much larger.

The other white-furred ghosts cheered. Maddie frowned.

"If he has this sort of reception here, why come to Amity Park?" she asked. "If his Obsession is attention..."

"Maybe it's human attention he wants," said Jack, rubbing his chin. "Either way, they're... enthusiastic, aren't they?"

"I can't believe they've banded together like this," said Maddie. "It doesn't make sense. The structures... they don't make sense, either. Ghosts shouldn't need things like that, especially not in the Ghost Zone."

"Maybe they're a different species of ghost that does need things like this," said Jack, most of his attention on the ghosts greeting Phantom. "We've never seen any like them here. They might only be able to exist in cold. Or they could have Obsessions related to, uh... igloos?"

"They aren't really shaped like igloos, though," said Maddie. "I think there's stone under there."

"The ice could just be dirty."

"That wouldn't surprise me."

.

Getting to the Far Frozen was a relief. Danny felt a the tension he'd been carrying within him relax as soon as he spotted Frostbit.

It was replaced with embarrassment once everyone started fussing over him. Technically, this was in front of his parents. Still, he'd take embarrassment over what he was feeling earlier. His core was singing that he was safe safe safe among allies and friends, and the cold felt wonderful against his skin.

"What brings you to the Far Frozen today, great one?"

Danny chuckled nervously and reached back to rub his neck. The motion was stopped when he encountered the collar around his neck. "I'm actually here to see a doctor. I've got a bit of a medical problem. At least, I think it's a medical problem." Danny touched down on the surface of the snow, wilting slightly as he tugged fruitlessly on the collar. "I don't really know. Can you help?"

Frostbite's eyes went wide for a moment before shifting into pure concern. "Of course, great one. We'll take a look at you right away. Unless you need to rest? We know we are far from your home."

Danny shook his head. "I want to get this fixed right away," he said.

When Frostbite scooped Danny up and put him on his shoulder, it wasn't a surprise. Neither was the short flight to the Far Frozen's medical 'cave.'

Oh, to be sure, it was a cave, but Danny always felt like calling it something like that, something so crude, was a disservice. For one, the entrance chamber was gorgeous. A huge, underground atrium with an intricately grown and carved ice ceiling, geometric patterns spiraling down the walls; ghost writing above graceful arches, indicating what each space was used for. Shining, high-tech devices that made even Tucker salivate. Some people might judge them on what lay above ground in their village, but appearances were often deceiving in the Ghost Zone, and the Far Frozen was one of the most advanced societies around.

Only an idiot would mistake the tribe of the Far Frozen for savages.

Frostbite carried Danny into the diagnosis area, set him down in a chair, and began going through the routine of cleaning his hands and putting on medical equipment.

"Oh," said Danny, leaning forward, "Frostbite, you don't have to, I know you're busy."

"Nonsense, great one! You deserve the best of care, and I am here to provide." He sat down on a stool across from Danny. "So, what seems to be the problem?"

Danny began to explain.

.

Jack and Maddie weren't talking. This is because they were in shock.

The ruins at the beginning had been one thing... Those were expected, the ghosts of buildings, so to speak, ectoplasmic echos. But this place? This level of technology- It shouldn't be possible!

"I know," said Jack, and Maddie realized she had spoken out loud. "But... it's here, isn't it? We're seeing it."

"It could be a trick," said Maddie. "A facade. There's no way any of this is actually functional."

"But if it is... Jazz and Danny, they might be right," said Jack. He sounded troubled. "If ghosts can form societies, and create technology and art like this, even if the societies are based on violence, that indicates some form of sapience, of intelligence, even if it isn't human intelligence."

Maddie nodded. "I think we should withhold judgement until we actually see results," she said.

"Yeah," said Jack. "Just... I feel sort of like the bad guy in a sci-fi movie, you know? The one who insists the aliens or people with superpowers aren't really human."

"It isn't the same, Jack. These are ghosts."

"But what does that even mean anymore?"

Maddie sighed. "We'll have to change our theories," she said.

"Ah," said the ghost known as 'Frostbite' on the screen, scanning Phantom with some kind of unknown device, "yes. I see what the problem is. I'll take the camera out, now, and then we can work on the other bits."

The screen went blank.

.

Getting the collar removed was both easier and harder than Danny had expected. Easier, because all he had to do was take a drug and let Frostbite peel it off, harder because he had to come down off the drug before he went home, lest he get into a fight and wind up with semi-permanent injuries. At least he was able to send a message to Jazz to ask her to cover for his absence.

He didn't get home until four in the afternoon. Nothing remarkable happened on the way back, because the Far Frozen decided to send some warriors along with him to make sure he got back safely. He was a bit surprised, however, to find his parents passed out at their desks in the lab, apparently reviewing recordings from the camera they had stuck to him.

Recordings like that could be dangerous to him. Should he delete them?

No, he hadn't said anything incriminating, and they were unlikely to be able to use the footage to attack the Far Frozen. The floating islands moved, after all, and he had entered the Zone from a random portal. It should be fine to leave it like that.

He let himself turn human. The air down here was chilly. He should get them blankets or something and let Jazz know he was back, then he'd pass out himself.

While he was draping a quilt over Maddie's shoulders, he caught sight of her notebook and the last line she had written.

The kids are right. We'll have to revise our theories concerning Phantom and the other ghosts.

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Smalltown Bringdown 3

Warnings: blood, violence, groping, more to be added.

This is dark!biker!Bucky and explicit. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Summary: Your new job does not offer the stability you crave.

Note: So, I’m thinking 4 to 5 chapters. I had another migraine last night which meant an early sleepy time for me. I work today so I’ll be running around as you guys get to read this! To those who take the time to read, thank you. Love you guys!

Please, leave some feedback, like and reblog <3

Your mother wasn’t happy about your new job. Neither were you. Yet, you couldn’t tell her why you accepted the job at The Asp or what Bucky said; what he had implied. You fed her some tripe about the pay and benefits and you didn’t lie when you said it was all you could get. He made sure of that.

You were dressed all in black; jeans, long-sleeved tee, a pair of narrow toed boots. You were nervous. You liked The Saucer because it was quaint, you dreaded The Asp because it was anything but. A biker bar, the seediest place in town where boozers and gamblers alike spent their cheques. Your mother always told you to avoid the place. For good reason; your father had never returned from that very bar.

You ran your hands along your stomach and down your thighs. You took a breath and pulled on your jacket as you turned away from the mirror. Your mother was in the kitchen, just home from work. You walked through and Ash danced at your feet. The speckled Dachsund always thought a coat meant he was going on an adventure.

“Before you leave,” Your mother said as she wiped her hands.

“Not really hungry, mom,” You grumbled.

“I know, I know,” She rounded the counter and grabbed her purse. “It’s not food… for once.”

She pulled out a small cylinder and held it out.

“Is that mace?” You chuckled.

“Oh yeah,” She shoved it into your hand. “Any of those boys start giving you a hard time, you give ‘em an extra spray for me.”

“Mom.” You shook your head. She wasn’t making you any less nervous.

“Ash has a good sixth sense. He didn’t like that man one bit,” She crossed her arms. “And I’m inclined to share the sentiment.”

“Mom, look, this is what I got,” You grabbed your own bag and dropped the mace inside. “And you know if I got him as my shadow, no one else is gonna give me anything.”

“You be careful, honey,” She grabbed your shoulders and drew you close. “Maybe… apply to college again.”

“Mom, it’s a little late for that and you know I can’t afford it.” You hugged her and pulled away. “I can handle myself. I have so far.”

“God,” She touched her forehead. “You sound like your father.”

You stuck your tongue out at her and went to the door. 

“Mom,” You turned back, “I love you. It’ll be okay.”

“Love you, too,” She said glumly, “I’ll leave your dinner in the stove.”

“Alright,” You took a step out into the hall, “Thanks.”

💀

It was almost dark out as you walked up to The Asp. You stood across the street and looked up at the moniker. Cleopatra was chipped and faded but her eyes shone beneath the spotlights. It was more Liz Taylor than the actual queen. You crossed the road and held your head up as best you could as approached the bouncer.

“Here for a job,” You said plainly. He didn’t bother to card you.

“I heard,” He grumbled as he pulled a smoke out. “The man’s in there somewhere. Waiting for you.”

“Thanks, Lonny,” You pushed through to the dim barroom. 

Lucy was pouring a pint at the bar for a man in a tattered flannel. He slid his money across and she returned his change. He tossed a few coins over the wood and took a swig. You neared and leaned a few feet away from the man. Lucy wiped her hands on the towel tucked into her apron tied around her rounding stomach. A pregnant barmaid was a peculiar sight.

“Hey, didn’t believe him when he said you were starting,” She smiled as she waved you around. “Grab an apron,” She pointed to the pegs along the wall. You grabbed a plain black smock and tied it around your waist; pockets big enough for a notebook and change, though it reached no further than the middle of your thigh. “I’ll show you the ropes; figure if I can get it, you can.”

“Figure you’re right,” You followed her behind the bar. You glanced at her faded roots that topped her yellowed bleach blond hair. Little different than the girl who’d gabbed loudly in the back of your Lit class. 

“Beer,” She pointed to the shelf of pint glasses, “Wine,” She continued to the stemmed ones, “Whiskey, scotch, liquors. Me and Bobby do most of the pouring so you worry about beer and serving.”

“Alright,” You followed along and she turned around. 

“Just as they’re labeled,” She pointed to the taps. “This is water, soda,” She touched the hoses along the counter. “Grab a cloth and a tray. Looks like we’re startin’ to get our usual crowd.”

“Thanks,” You said and she gave you a mocking smile.

“Oh, and there’s a little closet just inside the kitchen. Put your stuff in there.” She advised.

You did as she said and took your small notebook and pen from your bag. You grabbed a round tray and a cloth from the stack of folded linen. You tucked it in your pocket along with your notebook and went back to the barroom. Lucy glanced over at you as she rubbed her stomach and nodded to the group of men around a table by the far wall.

You smiled at her and strutted around the bar. You recognized the man with his back to you. Steve Rogers sat with four other men, their voices a buzz that permeated the bar. You held back your venom as you approached and stopped just by his shoulder as you greeted them with your simulated cheer.

“Can I get ya anything?” You asked.

“Beer, the us--” Steve began but as he looked to you his voice died. He smirked. “Hey, doll.”

“Hello,” You said to the table. “So, what’s the usual?”

“Just a bud,” He turned in his chair and slung his arm over the back. “Well, pardon me, I just… seeing you here is… funny.”

“Funny.” You repeated. “That it is.” You looked to the rest of his party. “And the rest of you?”

“Coors,” Danny raised two fingers in a half salute and the rest of the men chimed in as you tallied their order in your head.

“Right, I’ll be back.”

You spun and felt a light pat on your ass. “Thanks, doll,” Steve said and you ignored him, not even missing a step.

You went to the bar and leaned your tray on it. “A Bud, two Coors, and two whiskey neat.” You said. “Extra foam on the bud if you can.”

She scoffed and went about her work. “That Steve’s silly but he means no harm.” She said.

“Mhmm,” You pursed your lips. “No harm at all, eh?”

She handed you the drinks one at a time and you set them on the tray.

“Really, not so bad here, once you get to know them,” She sang. “And it’s good to be on their side.”

“I’m sure,” You balanced the tray and turned away.

You returned to the table and smiled as best you could. You began to unload your drinks; whiskeys, Coors, then the single Bud. As you leaned in to set Steve’s pint before him, you felt another brush along your ass, followed by a pinch. You paused and sneered at him.

“Sorry, doll, hand slipped,” He smirked.

“Yeah?” You looked at his beer and dumped it in his lap. “Oops, hand slipped.”

He stood and the beer dripped down his jeans as he looked down in shock. The bar was silent but for his cursing and you backed up as he pulled the wet hem of tee away from his stomach. “You little bitch.”

“Sorry, it’s my first day,” You grinned. “I’m still getting the hang of things.”

“Don’t be fucking smart,” He lunged at you and grabbed your arm. Your tray clattered to the floor as he yanked you close. “You work for us now, means you belong to club. You belong to all of us.”

He turned you and gripped the back of your neck as he forced you against the table. He squeezed until you bent over and gasped in pain. 

“Get off of me!” You tried to kick out at him blindly.

“Do you know what that means? Hmm? Belonging to the club,” He slapped your ass with his other hand. “Boys, you wanna have some fun tonight?”

“She doesn’t belong to the club,” A deep voice cut through the dull music rising from the jukebox. The air stilled and you breathed heavily against the wood. “Let her go, Steve. I’m sure it was an accident.”

“She poured beer on me.” Steve growled.

“And you pinched her ass. Must have scared her and caused her to spill on you,” Bucky’s boots sounded across the floorboards as he neared. “It was an accident, wasn’t it, honey?”

He came up on your other side. 

“Y-yeah,” You sputtered. “Yeah. Like you said.”

“See?” Bucky said. “So, let her go.”

Steve released you roughly and huffed. You stood and Bucky bent to pick up your tray. He held it out to you and you took it with a mumbled thanks. 

“Steve, go get dried off and she’ll get you fresh pint,” He clapped his friend on the shoulder. “Oh, and let this be a warning.” He squeezed and looked around at his men. “She’s not the club’s. She’s mine. Any man finds his hands wandering and they might just find them gone.” He said through his teeth. “Got it?”

The men agreed at once, a flurry of ascent. You backed away and quickly retreated to the bar before he could turn his attention on you. Lucy’s eyes were wide as she watched you.

“I didn’t know were his,” She gaped. “You’re a lucky girl.”

“I’m not,” You snarled as leaned on the bar. “Go on, need that Bud.”

💀

At the end of the night, you cleaned up the empties and wiped the tables. You counted your tips and yawned as you zipped up the coins in your purse. You hung your apron and helped Lucy with the bar. You grabbed your jacket and signed the time sheet. She said her goodbye and waited for Bobby to finished in the kitchen. 

You headed for the door but were stopped by your name. You turned slowly as Bucky stood at the other end of the bar. “Gotta talk to you.” He said.

“About?” You asked.

“My office.” He replied. “Just work stuff.”

You tried not to roll your eyes and shrugged. He turned and you followed him across the barroom. He led you into a room opposite the restrooms. He waited for you to enter and was sure to close the door behind you. You paused and glanced over your shoulder. His hand rested on the knob as he watched you.

“Go on, sit,” He gestured to the leather chair that faced a desk. “You been on your feet all night.”

“To be fair,” You stayed where you were. “I’d rather just home and go to bed.”

“I know this isn’t home but the bed part I can accommodate.” He snickered. His arm rubbed against yours as he passed you and sat on the other side of the desk. “We gotta go over a few things about this job.”

You sighed and dragged your feet to the chair. You sat and crossed your legs as you hugged your purse. You stared at him without emotion.

“You understand those men didn’t try anything further because of my say so,” He pointed to the door. “Now, I could’ve let them and what do you think would happen? Who would stop it?”

You gulped and stay silent.

“You know the cops, they don’t come here for nothing more than a drink,” He shook his head. “Maybe a bit of pool but they don’t come here to work, you understand?”

“Yes,” You uttered quietly. “I understand.”

“I didn’t have to do that. Didn’t have to claim you but you went and poured that beer all over Steve. Like you want him to do something.” He laughed. “Trust me, you don’t want that.”

You looked away and shifted in the chair.

“But I did it because I don’t want anyone else touching you. As the leader of this club, I share many things, I make sure my men have what they need, but you are mine,” He said the last three words deliberately. “I know you don’t get it, not yet, but you will.”

“You’re fucked,” You hissed. “This place, is fucked. Who are you? King Shit of… Birch? Birch?! This pile of trash.”

“I’m the king of your world,” His jaw ticked. “Now, I can be… a kind king and patient even as you… adjust but you don’t talk to me like this in front of anyone. I mean it because the moment that tongue lashes out I’m gonna have to lash back.”

You shuddered and looked down at your purse. “I just…” You slowly looked up. “You tellin’ me you can’t get a woman who wants to be here? The standards around this town aren’t that high.”

“I can get anyone I want,” He smirked. “And I think you’re just realizing that, honey.”

The breath went out of you. The tone of his voice, the heat in his eyes. You struggled not to look away. You bit down. His eyes drifted down and his lips parted hungrily.

“We’re just about finished here but one more thing,” His voice was dusky. “There’s a dress code. Jeans and short sleeves. A nice hint of what’s beneath… skirts at the thigh.” He ran his tongue across his lip. “Now, you can go… should go before I change my mind.”

You stood. Your nerves bounced around your chest wildly. You gripped your purse and nodded. 

“Got it.” You muttered.

“Right. See you tomorrow night,” He sat back and pushed his legs apart. He winked at you as you neared the door. “You have a good one.”

“You too,” You eked out before you slipped out. 

You closed the door behind you and stumbled numbly through the barroom. You couldn’t get home quick enough.

💀

When you got home, your mother was asleep. You were thankful for it. She would ask you how your night was. You didn’t wanna talk about it. Ever. Didn’t want to think about the dread of those to come. The fear that bubbled in your stomach. So unfamiliar to you. Growing up in a small town, there wasn’t much to be afraid of because every day was the same.

You turned the stove on and waited for the ravioli in the glass pan to heat up. You took it out and sat alone at the table. The light overhead shone a spotlight on you as Ash snored in the hallway. You ate without tasting. You opened the book you’d left on the table and opened it to your mark. 

‘I'm as pure as the driven slush.’

You laughed to yourself and swallowed. Lu was right, Tallulah was funny. Cynical. And ballsy. You admired her. You wondered for a moment how she would deal with this life. With this town. Well, she never belonged in a small town, she would’ve found her way out.

You cleared your plate and rinsed it. You set it in the rack and checked the doors. They were locked. An old habit; some would call it a compulsion. They said in small towns people don’t lock their doors. In this one, they always did.

When you were a girl, your father gone, the reason obscured from you, you imagined it was the monsters that hid in the night who took him from you. In a way, that was true.

You were tired but restless. You couldn’t help but hear Bucky’s words in your head. See his eyes staring back at you; menacing and dilated. A predator tracking its prey. That’s what you were; you both knew it. There was no way out.

Your mother said you took after your father. Had he died protecting her too? Or for his own selfishness? It didn’t matter, he’d left you both behind.

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Eccentricity [Chapter 9: Now I Love Your Shadow And I Love Your Curls]

Series Summary: Joe Mazzello is a nice guy with a weird family. A VERY weird family. They have a secret, and you have a choice to make. Potentially a better love story than Twilight.

Chapter Title Is A Lyric From: “Til I Die” by Parsonsfield. 

Chapter Warnings: Language, references to sex, violence, and drug use.

Word Count: 7.6k.

Other Chapters (And All My Writing) Available: HERE

Taglist: @queen-turtle-boiii​ @bramblesforbreakfast​ @maggieroseevans​ @culturefiendtrashqueen​ @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark​ @escabell​ @im-an-adult-ish​ @queenlover05​ @someforeigntragedy​ @imtheinvisiblequeen​ @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhyee​ @deacyblues​ @tensecondvacation​ @brianssixpence​ @some-major-ishues​ @haileymorelikestupid​ @youngpastafanmug​ @simonedk​

Field Trip

“You want to go to Chicago with me?”                

I coughed, having almost inhaled a chunk of pineapple off my slice of GrubHubbed pizza. We were sitting on the grass outside Forks And Spoons under the shade of the maple trees, which were turning from jade to ruby to amber to fool’s gold, rejoining the earth they once rose from one fallen leaf at a time. It hadn’t rained in almost four days—was that some kind of record?!—and the leaves littering the ground crunched when I stepped on them, which I did purposefully and often. The breeze was soft and whispery and temperate. I could get used to this whole having actual seasons thing. “What, in like a hypothetical, at some point in my life kind of way?”

Joe smiled. His U Chicago hoodie of the day was black. “No, as in this weekend.”

“Really?”

“The Cubs have a game on Saturday, and it’s supposed to be rainy and overcast the whole time, and I just thought...” He shrugged, toying with a piece of pizza crust before tossing it to the squirrels. He’s nervous, I realized. How the hell do I have the ability to make the sexy undead Italian man nervous? “It might be nice for us to be able to get away for a few days. Away from my family. Away from Charlie. Not that I don’t appreciate the ambient noise of his snoring from the living room couch, it’s super endearing, I seriously consider dating him instead of you at least twice a week.”

“Go for it. Charlie could use a rich husband. His pension is pathetic.”

“You wouldn’t miss me?”

“I am not necessarily opposed to clandestinely seducing my sugar daddy stepdad should the occasion arise.”

Joe crossed himself like a nun passing tattooed, cursing, lip-pierced teenagers on the sidewalk. “Lord, protect me from this harlot.”

A weekend away. No Charlie, no constant and chaotic whirlwind of Lees, no Ben. I hadn’t spoken to Ben since our misadventure in the Lee kitchen; if he wasn’t avoiding me of his own volition, he was following orders to stay away. Joe claimed that they’d talked it out. I wasn’t sure if I believed him. “I accept your invitation. Although, truthfully, I’d rather get hit by a bus than watch an entire real-life, no-commercial-breaks baseball game.”

“I accept your acceptance. And I’ll throw in a visit to the Shedd Aquarium, just for you. They have baby sea otters.”

“Sweet.” I checked my iPhone. “I’m gonna be late for Chemistry.”

“Anything fun planned?”

“We’re doing a lab involving hydrochloric acid. I’m highly concerned that Ben will accidentally spill some on himself. The miraculous instantaneous healing thing might raise a few questions.”

“Hm,” Joe replied. But he wasn’t looking at me; he was looking at my bandaged hand. And he wasn’t smiling anymore.

“Joe, I’m fine.”

“Yeah.” He took a preoccupied swig of his Dr. Pepper. Solemnity never seemed right on him; it was like he was wearing somebody else’s skin. “You’ve mentioned that.”

“Hey. Mob guy.”

Now his eyes flicked to mine.                              

“No more sad spaghetti.”

“Okay.” He surrendered, took my face in his hands, gave me a kiss on each cheek and then one quick parting peck on the forehead. “You win. I’m not sad. I’m ecstatic, actually. I’m gonna be eating my weight in hotdogs and mustard-slathered pretzels on Saturday. What’s there not to be ecstatic about?”

“The fact that your license says you’re only twenty and consequently can’t get a beer?”

Joe blinked, remembering. “Fuck.”

I drained my Diet Coke, flung my pizza crust to the skittering grey squirrels—no eerie albino forest friends today—and pulled on my backpack. “See ya. Have an awesome time in Game Theory.”

“Thanks, I probably won’t!” he chimed, waving, grinning compliantly; and yet did I still sense some lingering menace of disquiet, of fear? I suspected I did. Chicago would cure everything.

Ben tensed when I walked into Professor Belvin’s classroom, ran his fingers through his unruly blond hair, peered fixedly down at his notebook and feigned obliviousness. There was already a metal tray of Erlenmeyer flasks, labeled bottles of solutions, burettes, goggles, gloves, and an unassembled ring stand crowding our small table by the open window. Autumn air poured in like seawater through cracks in the hull of a ship.

“Guess who’s gonna see the Cubs play up close and personal this Saturday?” I announced.

He pretended to have just noticed me. “...You...? But that doesn’t sound like you.”

“It was Joe’s idea. I’m acting like I’m not totally thrilled and freaking out about it, but I am. Don’t tell him.”

Now Ben was the one staring at my bandaged hand. His green eyes were large and unfocused.

“I’m fine,” I insisted.  

“Sure,” Ben returned noncommittally.

I started skimming through the packet of lab instructions and setting up our titration experiment as Professor Belvin circulated through the classroom, observing, commenting, offering suggestions and critiques. My wounded hand—still sore in the lull between Advil doses and relatively useless—was quite the embarrassing hinderance; I fumbled with a large glass flask and almost dropped it.

Ben shook his head and reached out to stop me. “Here, oh my god, this is so pitiful, sit down. Please sit down. I’ll set it up. It’s the least I can do.”

“Thanks.” I peeked at his notebook. “Your handwriting is atrocious. Haven’t you had like a century to work on that?”

“Penmanship was never at the top of my to-do list, tragically.”

“What language is that, anyway?” The phrases scrawled in black ink in Ben’s notebook definitely weren’t English. Or Italian. “Elvish? Are you a lowkey Lord Of The Rings fan? Magic and self-sacrifice and nearly insurmountable evil, I could see that being your thing.”

He smirked, struggling with the ring stand. “It’s Welsh.”

“Welsh,” I repeated, perplexed. “Welsh...like how Gwil is Welsh?”

“Precisely.”

Professor Belvin checked in on us, nodded in approval, reminded me that I was always welcome to stop by at bowling league activities, and resumed his wandering.

“Gwil still speaks it,” Ben continued. “The rest of them speak it too. At least enough for basic communication.”

“I didn’t know,” I said, fascinated, examining the long, unfamiliar words riddled with Ls and Ws and Cs. “But that must be very useful.”

“It is. Welsh is nearly a dead language at this point. It’s like talking in code. I always refused to learn it on principle...or maybe I was just being difficult. I would study other languages, Arabic, Japanese...but not Welsh. That was always Gwil’s language. Their language. It was a Lee thing. But now...”

“Now you’re sort of a Lee too,” I finished for him, smiling.

“Whatever,” Ben said, hiding behind his bangs.

I watched him as he at last tamed the ring stand, secured the burette, placed the Erlenmeyer flask. Then he began reading the labels on the solution bottles. “Guess what else.”

“What, Baby Swan?”

I grinned, showing off my unremarkable, entirely benign human teeth. “I’ll bring you back your very own U Chicago hoodie.”

That night, after a pleasantly prosaic dinner with Charlie—burgers, one veggie and one of the conventional variety, and milkshakes at Danny’s Diner—I started packing a small, Arizona-sky-blue suitcase as sparse raindrops pattered against the roof and moonlight streamed in through the open window. Then I ticked off my mental inventory.

“Jeans, sweaters, pajamas, socks...”

I pawed through the top drawer of my old, scratched dresser—the same one that had once upon a time been Renee’s—and contemplated the bra and panty options. Would my theme be comfort and practicality, or feral impenitent seductress? Friday and Saturday in Chicago would be our first nights alone together. That had to be significant, right? After some deliberation, I gathered a handful of lacy, transparent, and/or exceptionally skimpy lingerie from Victoria’s Secret that Jessica had more or less forced upon me during a shopping trip in Port Angeles last month. As I dropped them into the open suitcase, I glanced up to see the albino owl outside my open bedroom window.

“You never know,” I told the owl, shrugging.

It leered judgmentally back at me with those gory red eyes.

“Oh shut up. How many eggs have you laid in your lifetime, Casper The Unfriendly Ghost? Probably like a bazillion. Freaking feathery trollop.”

The owl had nothing to offer in its own defense.

“Why don’t you ever come around when Joe’s here? I’m sure he’d love to meet you. He’s pale and weird too. Although I like his eyes a little better than yours. No offense, Snowflake.”

The owl blinked, tilted its gaze at me, ruffled its feathers and sent the raindrops that had gathered there flying in every direction.

I slid my iPhone out of my back pocket, spun around, and snapped a quick selfie with the owl in the background. “Say cheese, Marshmallow!”

The owl immediately unfurled its wings and flapped off into the trees, vanishing.

“Huh. I guess homegirl is camera shy.” I texted my selfie to Archer, typing out with my thumbs: I am the Steve Irwin of Forks. Behold, one of my many forest friends.

Archer replied a few minutes later: WOW! Pasty and mildly disturbing. Exactly your type. :)

“Yours too, apparently,” I murmured, smiling in my empty room.

I went to my full-length mirror with the plastic, teal-colored border, briefly appraised my reflection, felt a dull swell of approval for what I saw there. The version of myself that had once been so consumed by fears of inadequacy seemed impossibly far away, maybe even fictitious, a dream so vivid I could mistake it for truth. Three things were taped across the top of the mirror: Joe’s Official Citation!! No More Sad Spaghetti!! post-it, his Official Whatever You Want Pass, and a photo of us dressed up together and standing in front of the limo in the Lees’ driveway just before the Calawah University Homecoming dance. I peeled off the Official Whatever You Want Pass, carefully folded it into a neat little square, and tucked it into my wallet.

When the rain began to pour and thunder rolled in off the Pacific Ocean, I closed my bedroom window; but I remembered to leave it unlocked for Joe.

Departure

“Got your license?”

“Yes, Dad,” Joe sighed.

“Got your airport snacks?”

Joe held up the gallon-sized Ziploc bag filled with pumpkin and white chocolate chip cookies. “We’re ready to rock.”

“Call me when you get there safe,” Mercy fretted, hugging me and then Joe. “And Joseph, sweetheart, you make sure you keep an eye on her. She’s never been to Chicago before, it’s a big city, and O’Hare is an absolute nightmare, it’s so easy to get lost...”

“I don’t think he needs any reminders, love.” Dr. Lee laid a hand on her shoulder, stroked his neatly-trimmed beard with the other, watched us with a vague and wistful smile.

Mercy went back to trimming the flowers she had spread out across the kitchen countertop, white calla lilies that she threaded one by one into a translucent sapphire blue vase. “Now don’t forget to say goodbye to your brother. He’s out back feeding the new ducks. And I expect these ones to stick around for a while, thank you very much.”

“Mom, I don’t need to say goodbye to Rami. I’ll just think it. Really loudly.” Joe rubbed his temples with his fingertips and squeezed his eyes shut. “Peace out, you nosy bastard.”

“Joseph,” Mercy pleaded.

“Okay, okay, I’ll go say goodbye. Don’t get all aggressive. Don’t take it out on the flowers.” Aggressive...what a joke. I doubted that Mercy Eleanor Lee, formerly Martin, had a single aggressive bone in her immortal body; not even the infinitesimal stapes of her inner ears or the sesamoids of her feet.

“They’re calla lilies,” she replied dreamily, tending them like children. “And they symbolize love, and beauty, and fidelity...”

My nostrils itched and burned faintly in dissent. “I think I’m allergic to them.”

“You’re allergic to fidelity?” Joe asked, raising his eyebrows. “That’s it, now you’re definitely not getting my reclaimed virginity. No ma’am. I am not hit-it-and-quit-it material.”

“Oh sweet baby Jesus,” Mercy murmured.

“I’m going,” Joe said, showing his palms in capitulation and disappearing out the back door. I dragged my suitcase to the front one, politely declining Mercy and Gwil’s offers to help.

Lucy—her bleached hair in a high half-ponytail and wearing polka-dotted black tights, combat boots, a plaid miniskirt, and an extremely Octoberish orange sweater—was sitting cross-legged on the roof of Gwil’s Volvo. God, he’s such a dad. “Have a nice time,” she chirped artfully.

I opened the hatch of Joe’s Subaru and threw my suitcase inside. “Why do you sound like you already know I will?”

“I might have some relevant clairvoyant insight.”

“No way.” I stared up at her, stunned, my hands on my waist. “But you can’t see me, right...?”

“True. But this vision wasn’t of you. It was of Joe. You just happened to be there.”

Interesting. Very interesting. “And what transpired in this vision?” A night full of hot, steamy, blissful vampire sex? A girl could dream.

Lucy closed her eyes, recalling it fondly, maybe even cherishing it. “You were sitting in the stands of a professional baseball game. I could hear the crowd roaring, the umpire’s trumpeting interruptions. Blue and white...everyone was wearing blue and white. And you were there together—Joe a vampire, you human, side by side, almost entwined—shouting to each other over the thunderous noise and laughing and pushing nuggets of soft pretzels into each other’s mouths. So happy. I’d never seen Joe so happy.” Her striking pale eyes came open. “And he’s someone who’s already rather prone to happiness, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

“I have,” I agreed.

“He’s never been serious about anybody else. I hope you know that.”

“I know that’s what he tells me.”

“It’s the truth,” Lucy insisted. “I would know if it wasn’t. Rami would know, Ben would know. Joe...he’s kind of the opposite of you. He’s always been the easiest to read. He’s the one Rami hears most loudly, the one who shows up most often in my visions. He’s clear, you know? Uncomplicated. Authentic. And what you mean to him...it’s something everybody sees. It’s a contagious sort of lightness, of joy. So thank you for that.”

And if whatever mysterious genetic switch that renders me immune to your talents wasn’t flipped, I’m pretty sure I’d look the same way. “I should definitely be thanking you,” I said. “You guys have a pretty cool existence going on here. And I’m so grateful to be invited into it.” For however long this lasts, anyway.

“None of us really invited you,” Lucy demurred. “We just let it happen.”

“So everyone knew I was coming? Because you saw it?”

“Everyone but Joe.”

“You never told him?”

“No. Not even now.” Lucy turned sharply towards the trees, as if she heard something in the soaring western hemlocks that swayed drunkenly in the wind. After a moment, she continued. “I’m not sure if I can even explain why. It wasn’t that I feared changing the timeline or something...my visions always come true regardless. Always. But I guess...” She tugged on her short half-ponytail, pondering. “I guess I didn’t want to cloud any of his decision-making, any of his emotions with the specter of the inevitable. I wanted whatever he felt for you to be completely organic. And it is.”

I considered her. “You are extremely thoughtful for someone who spends as much time shopping as you do.”

Lucy laughed in a high-pitched, almost juvenile trill, netting her fingers beneath her chin, her elbows resting on her bent knees. “I do like to shop. I didn’t always though.” She peered off into the trees again, this time pensively. “Did Joe tell you anything about my life before Gwil saved me?”

“Aside from the copious hippie jokes, not really.”

She nodded, her eyes far-away and still lost in the forest. “Gwil and Mercy are inordinately wonderful people. My biological father and mother, unfortunately, were not. And maybe they couldn’t help it, because from what I understand their parents were monsters too. I don’t think of them very often now, not even to resent them. But when I was alive I burned with it, with all that hatred, with all that bitterness. Every bruise was another log on the fire. Every screaming match or hurled plate was a splash of gasoline. So I ran away and found what I fancied to be a new family, and I lived on basement couches and out of vans and in abandoned buildings, and I explored increasingly inventive ways of putting that fire out.”

The October breeze cascaded through the trees, carrying echoes of birdsong and disembodied distant voices and the scent of pine. It reminded me of Joe.

“Chemically speaking,” Lucy said, “that first hit of heroin, that first high...it’s the best you’ll ever feel in your entire life. Nothing else will ever compare. Not skydiving, not backpacking through Southeast Asia on some Pulitzer-prize-winning journey of self-discovery, not winning the lottery, not the births of your children, not falling in love. And once you accept that, what’s the point in stopping? Everything you ever experience will live in the shadow of that needle. You’re twenty-five and you’ve already seen the endgame. You’re born, you suffer, you catch a glimpse of paradise, you pay bills and push shopping carts down the aisles of grocery stores and insipidly smile your way through your husband’s work parties until you die. What’s the fucking point? So I didn’t stop shooting heroin. And the whole time, I knew it was killing me. That’s what they don’t tell kids when they force them to make those idiotic classroom promises to never do drugs. You know it’s killing you, but you don’t care. Because it feels so goddamn good. Because it becomes the only sliver of your existence that doesn’t cut like glass beneath your skin. Sometimes you love things so much you let them kill you, isn’t that ridiculous?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer her; still, I heard my own voice: “Yes, it is.”

“It took dying for me to see that life is worth living. That there’s magic in the mundane and the frivolous. And that there’s beauty everywhere if you bother to look for it.” Lucy uncrossed her trim legs, leapt gracefully off the Volvo, and—with definite but not unkind scrutiny—pulled at the collar of my thrift shop sweater. “Even in your very, very, very misguided fashion preferences.”

The front door of the Lee house swung open, and Joe jogged out, carrying his suitcase. Gwil, Mercy, Scarlett, Rami, and Ben appeared on the porch to wave us off.

“What’d you do?!” Joe demanded, pointing at Lucy.

“Nothing,” she quipped.

“You guys gotta stop doing this!” Joe exclaimed. “You know what you’re doing, you know exactly what you’re doing, you gotta stop cornering people and forcing them to listen to your creepy tragic backstories! Nobody freaking asked!”

Lucy chuckled patiently and stood on her tiptoes to hug him goodbye. “Have fun.”

“You know it.” Joe tossed his suitcase into the Subaru and opened the driver’s door. “Ready, Baby Swan?”

“Almost.”

I walked to the wrap-around porch, climbed the steps, held my hand out to Ben. My stitches had almost completely dissolved over the past week, and the clunky impediment of bandages was no more. Joe crossed his arms and watched from beside the Subaru with an uneasy frown, but he didn’t try to stop me. He nodded to Rami, so subtly I almost didn’t notice. Rami nodded back.

“I will miss your melodramatic brooding immensely,” I told Ben. “Please do some fun family stuff while we’re gone. I’ll see you soon. Dan eich bendith.”

“Dan eich bendith,” he replied, taken aback. And then, after a moment’s hesitation, he ignored my outstretched hand and embraced me, his grasp so strong and yet so careful. His scent like crisp leaves and salted caramel and autumn sieved into a bottle unfolded in my lungs like an opened book.

“I Googled that especially for you,” I whispered. “You’re welcome.”

“I’m in awe.” His words were characteristically sardonic, but I heard warmth in them as well. When Ben pulled away, I saw that everyone else was smiling. Mercy had tears in her eyes.

I retreated back down the porch steps and met Joe by the Subaru. “Okay, mob guy. I’m good.”

He slid on his sunglasses, shook his head, flashed a proud and toothy grin. “You definitely are.”

All the way down Route 101 to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, we listened to Joe’s classic rock mixtapes and my NOAA Ocean Podcast episodes, reviewed the weekend itinerary, ran through the bare essentials for me to understand an MLB game (“Which I am totally not excited about whatsoever,” I informed Joe, who knew enough not to believe me).

When the Boeing 747 ascended above the clouds and unimpeded sunlight poured in from the other passengers’ windows, Joe put on a black sleeping mask over his sunglasses and reclined his seat, tried to nap, passed the time until he would be safe beneath the curtains of the sky again.

Somewhere over the Dakotas, as I leafed through a book about the Great Barrier Reef for my Marine Botany class, Joe’s hand bumped mine. “Hey,” he said drowsily, seriously; and I braced myself for some emotional declaration, some dire warning, some grave realization of the futility of what we agreed—almost always wordlessly, and yet unfailingly—was love.

“Yeah?”

“It’s an emergency.”

“Uh oh,” I replied, smiling now.

“Flag down the flight attendant and get some more of those honey roasted peanut packets,” Joe said. “I’m starving myself back to death over here.”

The Windy City

The bat cracked deafeningly against the baseball pitched at nearly a hundred miles per hour. It was a home run. The crowd erupted into mindless, primal shrieks of conquest; and when Joe jumped to his feet, clapping and cheering and nearly spilling his blue-and-white bucket of popcorn, I found that I did as well. I screamed for the team of a city I’d never lived in, sank back into my seat beside Joe, nestled against his chest as his right arm closed around my waist and hauled me in closer, as his left hand teased me with a soft pretzel nugget hovering just out of reach. And in that moment, I felt like Lucy, snatching Polaroids out of the space-time continuum of the present and the future and the past. There was where Joe and I were right now, of course; the day we had met each other in the nonfiction section of the Calawah University library; the dance floor at Homecoming; the first night he snuck soundlessly into my bedroom window; all those years we still had left to spend together. Not forever, but perhaps long enough.

“I like this baseball thing,” I told him over the roar of the crowd, twirling my fingers around the curling locks of dark hair that stuck out from under his Cubs cap. Or maybe I just like you.

“Whew, thank god.” Joe wiped his forehead with the back of his hand in mock relief. “Now I don’t have to break up with you.”

After the game—a 5-3 Cubs victory, close enough to keep the spectators’ blood pumping throughout—we boarded the L, held onto the metal railings as the packed train car bumped and swerved along, and disembarked in Little Italy. Historic brownstones were interrupted by a freckling of pizzerias, Italian ice stands, and sports bars spilling out shouts of triumph and despair. We were staying in the Four Seasons with a view of Lake Michigan; but we had an hour of daylight—albeit chilled, dreary, and forever threatening rain—left in our Saturday. Tomorrow would be the aquarium, and then dinner before catching our flight back to Seattle, back to the greenery and fog and eternal dampness that I was beginning to think of as my home. Had I really only left Phoenix two months ago? Had I ever really lived there at all?

“So,” Joe said as we walked under shedding green ash and black cherry trees, his arm draped across my shoulders. “Guess what the University of Chicago has. In addition to a killer Economics PhD program, which yours truly will be graduating from in approximately 2027, astonishingly aged not a single day. Maybe he’s born with it, maybe it’s Maybelline.”

“Hideous sweatshirts?” I guessed.

“One of the best Marine Biology departments in the world. And the affiliated Marine Biological Laboratory up in Massachusetts, where they send their PhDs to do research.”

“Wait, seriously?” I stopped abruptly, the heels of my boots squealing against the sidewalk. “You mean...for me?”

He rolled his eyes. “No, for my other girlfriend who is also inexplicably super obsessed with the ocean. I clearly have a type.”

“You want me...to come to Chicago...with you...after graduation? For like...a five to seven year commitment?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Well, that just sounds...serious.”

“Huh. What do you know. I guess we’re serious after all.” He took my hand and pulled me gently forward, leading me down West Taylor Street. He seemed to have a destination in mind.

“How is this going to work for you, anyway?” I asked, beaming uncontrollably now, trotting along beside him. “Living in a place that isn’t Washington or Scotland or Alaska?” Chicago was cold and cloudy for a lot of the year, true, but few cities were Forks-level wet and sunless. Forks-level tyrannically depressing, I would have said two months ago.  

He shrugged, unphased. “Night classes. Sunglasses. Faking a chronic illness so I don’t have to leave our house. I’m really good at that one. Plus I can get a doctor’s note any time I want one. I’ve got connections, you know.”

Our house. He said OUR house.

Joe came to halt in front of a stately yet plain brownstone which now operated as a trendy bookstore, the kind that sold six dollar lattes and hosted anarchist poetry slams on Friday nights.

“Is this where we’re going to crack hipsters’ kneecaps as a bonding activity?” I asked.

“This is where I grew up.”

I looked again, studying the earth-colored stone quarried over a century ago, the wrought iron railings that framed the front steps, the rectangular windows revealing the illumination and shadows of other families’ lives. “Joe,” I said softly, leaning into him, searching for my words.

“There were eight Mazzello kids: Joseph, Charles, Mimi, Salvador, Donna, Lucia, Bianca, and Giuliano.” He rattled them off like a jingle from a fast food commercial. “And I was the oldest. So when my dad dropped dead of a heart attack in the middle of his shift at the Zenith Radio factory, it was my job to step up and figure out how to keep everyone fed. I was seventeen and completely hopeless at school back then; Sal was always the smart one, the disciplined one, he ended up as a math professor at Loyola University. I was just some directionless, grieving kid who never shut up. But there was a place for boys like me in Chicago in the 1920s. The mob could get you money. The mob could turn that same incessant chatter that got you bruised at school into something useful. And the mob could give you a family.”

Joe watched the brownstone solemnly, meditatively, his hands in his pockets.

“My mom sobbed for an hour the first time I brought home an envelope full of bills with Hamilton’s face on them. She knew how I got it. But how could she say no, how could she tell me to stop? We’d never seen money like that. All my siblings could finish school. My sisters could have new dresses on days that weren’t Christmas and Easter, my brothers new shoes, Sal the glasses he needed so badly. My mother always had something to put in the offering plate at church. And once you were in the mob, it wasn’t exactly easy to leave. But they took care of their own. After I died, they sent my mother money for years, until her own children were established enough to support her. That’s when I learned that money wasn’t just something that put food on the dinner table or kept the lights on. It’s a way of showing loyalty, of giving people peace and comfort and meaningful choices in their lives. It’s how I’ve been taught to give back to the world. So I guess I shouldn’t have disparaged my fellow vampires back in Forks, because there’s a slice of my tragic backstory, Baby Swan. Now you know. And you should know everything, since we’re in this thing together. Or maybe I just want you to.”

I laid my palm against his cool and flawless face, ran my thumb lightly across his cheek. “You really are serious about me.”

“I am alarmingly serious about you.”

“Even though this thing of ours has an expiration date?” Since I can never become a vampire. Since I will never have the distinction of being a permanent fixture of the Lee coven.

“That’s not a problem for today. That’s a problem for ten or fifteen years from now, whenever you decide you want to settle down and have kids and do the whole Great American Dream bit. You’ll be sick of me by then anyway. You’ll be dying to get away from us. Hahaha, get it? It’s a pun. Dying to get away from the vampires.”

I couldn’t imagine ever being sick of Joseph Francis Mazzello. Still, ten or fifteen years felt almost as good as forever to me. Fifteen autumns, fifteen Christmases, fifteen journeys around the sun that he avoided so deftly. “Why me, Joe?” I asked, incredulous. “You could have anyone. Any human, any vampire. Why me?”

“Because you’re you,” he said simply. And his mystified dark eyes added: What kind of a question is that? “You’re smart and you’re hilarious and you actually care about the world, about where it came from, about where it’s going, about people and places and animals that you’ll never meet. You’re indomitable. You’re fearless almost to the point of recklessness. And yet you’re so kind. You’re even nice to Ben, and humans are never nice to him...they’re either horrified or confused, or they’re too busy fantasizing about him to remember that he’s a real fucking person. But you’ve always tried to see the good in him. Even when he didn’t deserve it.” Joe shook his head, marveling. “And yeah, I’ve...I’ve screwed around, full disclosure. I’ve done the hookup thing. And it was great for what it was. But I never wanted more. I never felt some gnawing, sentimental, Hallmark-channel need for connection, to understand who they were as people. And then I met you, and...I want to know every single goddamn thing about you. I want to know your favorite color, what books you read, what the hell is so appealing about pineapple pizza, what you dream of. I feel like I could never get tired of trying to understand you.”

A refrain circled through my mind like a whirlpool, dragging every other thought down into oblivion: I love him, I love him, I love him. “Blue,” I said at last.

“What?”

“Turquoise blue, like the sky in Arizona. That’s my favorite color.”

The smile, slow and wonderous, rippled across his face. He took my hand again. “Come on.”

Joe led me onwards, down a few blocks and around a corner, as the muted sun receded from the sky and the first stars took its place, pinpricks of celestial light in a blanket of violet, azure, amber, rust. He stopped in front of the Church of Saint Lawrence, established in 1902 according to the sign mounted on the brick wall that faced the street, perhaps the same church that he had once visited with his family as an impatient child, snickering with his brothers and sisters and kicking the back of the pew in front of him with shoes that never fit quite right. There was a fountain bubbling with transparent water, a statue of the Virgin Mary at the center, coins made of copper and nickel and zinc glinting through the water under corridors of silvery luminance cast by the streetlights.

“I lied about not having my own superpower,” Joe informed me mischievously, not at all serious.

“Oh, did you now?”

“Absolutely.” He opened his wallet, rooted around, pulled out a penny and handed it to me. “I can make wishes come true. So go ahead.” He nodded towards the fountain. “Make your wish.”

The penny was worn and nearly indecipherable, but I was just barely able to read that it had been minted in 1928. The same year Joe was turned. “Joe...I can’t just throw this away!”

“You’re not throwing it away. You’re exchanging it for a wish. Now wish.”

I closed my eyes, chose my wish, tossed the penny into the fountain. The plink it made when it hit the water was bright and yet mournful somehow, like windchimes, like flickering candlelight.

“Outstanding job,” Joe complimented.

He was so visibly proud, so content, so faultless. The streetlights threw shadows across the sidewalk, the fountain, the whole world it seemed. I laced my fingers behind his neck, gazing up at him. “What are we doing tonight, mob guy?”

“I’m so glad you asked. You see, we have options.”

“Let’s hear them.”

“Door Number One,” Joe began. “It’s been a long day, and you’re exhausted from the illustrious honor of witnessing a Cubs victory firsthand. So we go back to the hotel, find some shark documentary on tv, order room service, shower, and drift off into a peaceful slumber. Just like last night.”

“Not bad. How about Door Number Two?”

“Door Number Two. You’re tired, but not that tired. We go back to the hotel, find that same aforementioned shark documentary, but totally ignore it and make out instead. Maybe we even round second base, in the spirit of the Cubs. Whatever you’re up for. Then we shower and drift off into a peaceful slumber.”

“Even better,” I said, and I meant it. “And what’s Door Number Three?”

Now Joe became jittery; his eyes darted to the fountain, the church, the cars that rolled lazily by. He was so desperate to conceal his hope, to not impose any undue influence upon me. I felt infinitesimal, almost weightless drops of rain against my cheeks, my collarbones, the downy undersides of my arms. “Well, uh, Door Number Three is...it’s...well...uh...it’s...”

Door Number Three is a home fucking run. “I want Door Number Three.”

“Really? Because you don’t have to say that, you can say no, that’s completely fine, it’s more than fine actually, it’s awesome, it’s totally cool, I’m seriously fine either way, and you can obviously change your mind whenever—”

“Wait.” I broke away from him, yanked my own wallet out of my purse, found the Official Whatever You Want Pass, hastily unfolded it, and presented it to Joe. “I want Door Number Three.”

He barked out a shocked laugh, accepted the pass, studied it in disbelief. “You are full of surprises, ma’am. It took me a hundred years to find a woman like you. And I don’t think I ever will again. Makes one wonder if this whole eternity thing is all it’s cracked up to be.” He tucked the pass into his pocket and kissed me beneath the streetlights, beneath the stars. “So there’s one tiny caveat to my wish-granting superpower.”

“Yeah?”

He smiled impishly, nudging the tip of my nose with his. “You have to tell me what you wished for.” He was joking, as he almost always was; I didn’t have to tell him anything. He wouldn’t press the issue. I doubted that he was really expecting me to answer at all. And yet I wanted to tell Joe; I yearned, for once, to be as clear as Lucy had said he was.

“For you and me,” I replied in little more than a whisper. “And for forever.”

Home

The only thing that startled me was how profoundly unstartling it all was, how wholly uncomplicated, how effortless.

I didn’t feel like a different person afterwards. I didn’t feel that some latent spark of lust, of carnality had been ignited, had singed through me, had left me forever marked like the heights of children ticked off on a doorframe over decades; I felt neither ruined nor awakened, no wiser, no older, no more enlightened as to the incalculable eccentricities of the vast and enigmatic universe. I felt only happiness, and exhausted satisfaction, and a deep, dreamless peace that engulfed me like frothy fingertips of waves dragging pebbles and shells back into the sea. I felt only a homecoming that was measured not in miles but in soul.

We slept in as the morning sun rose over Lake Michigan, bought Ben a hoodie (black, of course, per his usual aesthetic) from the University of Chicago gift shop, strolled unhurriedly through the dimly-lit, relentlessly blue pathways of the Shedd Aquarium. As I stood in the glass tunnel and watched sawfish and blacktip reef sharks soar by overhead, Joe linked his arms around my waist, tucked his chin into the dip of my collarbone, kissed the slope of my jaw.

“What do you think?” he asked, perhaps a touch apprehensively. “Could you get used to the Chicago life for a few years?”

“I would be tempted to kidnap some of these guys and bring them home to live in our bathtub. But yes.”

And Joe murmured, smiling, his lips to my temple: “That’s illegal, ma’am.”

Our flight back to the West Coast took off after dusk, and there was no blinding sunlight for Joe to avoid; only immense glooms of clouds and gleaming distant stars and the unfathomable void of space, cursed with crushing pressure and darkness like the cervices of the ocean floor.

Fifteen years might not be enough, I thought, resting my forehead against the cold airplane window as the city lights died behind us, as Joe’s hand weaved through mine on the armrest. But forever sounds just about right.

Larkin

There once was a boy born in a stone cottage with a dirt floor in a vanishingly inconsequential village just west of Clifden, Ireland. It was February 9th, 1672, bitterly cold, miserably wet, and the sea was murderous with storms. His mother was illiterate, as her mother had been, and as her mother had been as well, all the way back to people who painted mammoths on cave walls with their fingers; she was thirty-three and already exhausted with living, her seven children forever underfoot, her full and ruddy cheeks perpetually smudged with dirt from the field and ashes from the fire. Her husband was a failure and a drunk, but half a day’s worth of work once or twice a week was better than none at all; and as much as she never would have admitted it, he was a tether for her in a world that was often, as she had learned, both lonely and cruel.

She gave the baby boy a name—a strong Irish name, none of that audacious English rubbish—that meant rough or fierce, just like the sea that rose and ruptured against the rocky cliffs outside. He would need to be rough to survive in this world. He would need to be fierce.

He began like all the other children had been: sweet and yet anonymous, yielding, needful, worryingly small. She rocked him absently with one arm as she stirred the stew pot with the other. She sang to him, told him stories long before he could comprehend them, tales of the Lord and the saints and all their malevolent adversaries: serpents, pestilence, demons, dragons. She tossed stray sticks to him so he could carve pictures into the dirt floor and keep out of the way as she labored with the laundry or the sewing. And he grew, and he grew; and there was nothing remarkable about him at all, that boy speckled with mud and soot and the perpetual bruises of children mostly left to their own devices, that boy with pallid skin like his mother’s and black hair like his father’s and eyes so light and vibrant a brown they were nearly gold.

The boy was a baby, and then a child, and then a young man. And his mother realized one day—all at once, as a mother does when their attention is divided among so many other lives, when the children’s analogous faces bleed into each other and even their names sometimes escape her, even those names that she had chosen herself from the stories her own mother once passed to her through threadbare whispers—that people had a habit of following him, of listening to him. That there was an ether of allure that hovered around him like the mists that clung to the precarious, crumbling cliffs that touched the sea; that there was something like what the heathens called magic. And when the war came, that boy who was no longer a boy left his mother’s stone cottage and enlisted in Clifden, lied about his age, signed his name with an X because that was all he knew how to spell. But he was sure to tell the man who handled the ledger that he did have a real name, a good Irish name, a name apt for a soldier, a name that his mother had told him meant rough or fierce: Larkin.

There are men who join wars out of loyalty, principle, love for their homes; and then there are men who join to escape their homes, perhaps to forget them entirely. If you were to consult that ledger signed in a pub in Clifden, Ireland in 1688, you would read that I fought for Ireland, for the Catholics, for Christ the Lord and all his saints. But what I really fought for was my own resurrection: to take that boy stained with dirt and ignorance, drown him in the blood of other mothers’ trivial sons, and dredge up some greater version of myself that I had always known existed, that was hidden somewhere in the netlike darkness of the marrow of my bones.

People follow me, and they always have. I couldn’t tell you why. When I called them to enlist, when I thrusted swords and pikes into their calloused farmers’ fists, when I told them they could fight and live to see their wretched homes again, they believed me. I climbed the ranks like a ladder, like a mountain made of bones. And all those other mothers’ sons laid down for me so I could walk across the bridge of their spines to what I mistakenly assumed was invincibility.

At the Battle Of The Boyne, my horse was shot out from under me. A Williamite caught me beneath the ribs with his dagger. And as I bled out, staring up at the sky and impatiently waiting for the pain to vanish as my consciousness withdrew like low tide, I became aware that someone was lifting me, holding me, spiriting me through the battlefield and then the wilderness; and that my pain, in a disconcerting turn of events, had swelled to a vicious and unrelenting inferno.  

Three days later, I woke to find that I was resurrected again, this time as something more than human. The man who turned me was blond-haired, light-eyed, agile and yet gentle, ancient and yet ever-changing.

“I thought you’d survive,” Nikolai said in a thick Slavic accent, standing over me with a kind smile. Then he helped me to my feet. “You have greatness in you. It sweats out of your pores, it’s in every word you speak. What a shame it would be for all of that to go to waste.”

He taught me everything: how to read and write, how to hunt, how to dodge the sunlight, how to survive an existence that was both theoretically endless and yet forever on the precipice of being cut short. He introduced me to the Draghi, to vampires who were remarkable for their ferocity, or their creativity, or their curiosity, or their cleverness, or all those things at once: Victorien, Honora, Elizabeth, Kestrel, Zhang, Sergei, Ana, Gwilym. And most crucially, Nikolai showed me that my human talents were magnified several times over, that his own followers were not immune to them, that there was power in collecting exceptional individuals like pieces of china stacked in a locked cabinet; and that if I could learn to climb immortal bones, the ladder never needed to end.  

You never quite get used to the power, to the invincibility, to the promise of eternity. You never take it for granted. It hits you, again and again, in ceaseless and victorious waves. Once I was a barefoot toddler who sketched dragons and Catholic saints from the stories my mother told me into the dirt floor of our drafty stone cottage. Now I live in palaces with marble floors, with spiral staircases and libraries and gold-dripping ballrooms, with unobstructed views of any sea I choose. Now I am the dragon.

My phone rang, and I checked the name on the screen. Then I answered. “Hello, beauty. How’s the other side of the Pacific treating you?”

And Liesl answered, in a soft and astonished voice: “I don’t think Lucy can read her. I don’t think any of them can.”

I could feel it again. Another wave, crashing through me like the ocean, like the unstoppable rolling of time: power and insatiability and exhilaration. I smiled in my twilight-lit study as long-dead stars rose outside and the wind howled like wolves over the East Sea. “You know what to do.”

[simwoman2002]

Xenophobic for Piper and Nick V?

Here you go! Thank you for the request!! 😊💗

Original List

  “Hey, synth! A word?”

  Just by that simple address, Nick Valentine could easily discern that this guy was going to be a complete, old fashioned jerk.

  And he had been having such a wonderful day. Well, that is, until Diamond City’s newest security guard decided to come over and officially ruin it.

  But Nick had his fair share of synth-haters in his lifetime, and this man was no different from all of the rest. So, when the guy kept on asking questions and prodding, Nick just sighed, allowing his cigarette to rest between his lips as he leaned against Takahashi’s counter.

  “Look, fella, I’m not looking for any trouble, alright?” Nick told him, his gold orbs shifting in the direction of the security guard.

  Naturally, this statement did not go over well. If anything, this actually seemed to anger the guard more, and Nick clenched his jaw slightly, knowing well that a blowout was well on its way to happening.

  “You being here is trouble! In fact, I oughtta just lock you up for—”

  “Hey, hey, hey, what’s the deal here?” a voice suddenly piped up. Nick turned to look behind him in the direction that the sound came from.

  Standing there quite ridiculously in a somewhat oversized trench coat was a lanky girl that almost resembled a reporter. Of course, given the somewhat crudely printed “PRESS” stuffed in a deep fold of her cap and a small notepad clutched in her hand, it was no surprise that the word reporter was what was dredged to his processors.

  She was a cute kid, there was no doubt about it, and the cap somehow managed to add to this silly, harmless, adorable look. She couldn’t have been any older than seventeen, and she had attitude oozing from her gaze and posture.

  Ultimately, Nick had to swallow a slight smile and a chuckle at the sight of her. She was honestly one of the strangest sights he had ever seen. And that was really saying something considering the state of the Commonwealth.

  “Kid, this is none of your business, so stay out of it,” the security guard told her, trying to raise himself to his full height in an attempt to intimidate her from her goal. However, Nick could not help but note that the man was truly not much taller than the girl even with his straightening.

  “Besides, this synth,” the guard spat as if the word was some sort of filth between his teeth, “is a danger to us all.”

  “I beg to differ, sir,” she boldly proclaimed, her entire expression turning to one of extreme determination.

  “This is grown-up business, okay? So scurry along and play with your little friends,” the man told her, and Nick immediately frowned at the condescending tone that the guard took with the kid. If it was not obvious before, it was certainly apparent now that he was definitely new around town.

  “Oh-ho, that’s cute, officer. But I’ll go. Just as soon as I take a few notes so I can draft a little article about how Diamond City’s finest are bullying citizens,” the girl breezily told him, withdrawing a pencil from her pocket as she started jotting down some things on her little notepad. The officer’s posture sank a little as he stiffened.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You see, I’m new in town, but I just happened to lug an old printing press with me when I moved in so that when I got settled in here, I could make a Diamond City newspaper. Or well, more specifically, a Commonwealth newspaper that traders and potential settlers from all around can read to keep up on Great Green Jewel events,” she explained, and Nick smirked, knowing precisely where she was going with this statement.

  “Y’know, I actually am going to have you to thank for my first headline,” she continued, her face lighting up with the statement. He shrunk back a little as she stepped nearer.

  “‘Armored Bullies: Diamond City’s Finest Gone Wrong,’” she called out loudly enough for several people around to turn and look at the scene unfolding. The guard glanced about as she spoke.

  “Ah, yeah… That’s a keeper,” she commented to herself, scribbling a little in her notebook. The man shook his head, trying to collect himself.

  “Look, kid, I’m just doing my job,” he told her, attempting to deter her, but she just looked at him innocently, widening her eyes.

  “Terrorizing people is your job?”

  “No, that’s not what I said—”

  “Readers are gonna find that interesting,” she trailed off, raising her eyebrows and writing on her notepad.

  “Alright! I’ve got better things to do than fight with a stupid kid. Danny needs me anyway for… security… business,” he told them, quite obviously searching his mind for something intelligent to say so that it did not appear like he was running from a teen with a notepad. The girl smirked lightly at him, waving her notepad as he turned and stomped off in a huff.

  “Xenophobic moron,” she muttered under her breath with a humorless chuckle as her expression faded, watching him as he straightened and tried to rejuvenate his sense of pride.

  Nick gaped in mild surprise, watching as the girl tucked her notepad and pencil away in her pocket and nodded her head resolutely.

  “Well, well, you sure showed him who’s boss,” Nick stated after a long moment, shaking himself from his stunned stupor.

  The girl turned her attentions to him and grinned, offering a hand.

  “Piper Wright, investigative journalist,” she introduced herself, and Nick instinctively extended his right hand. It was only a moment too late when he truly considered the fact that it was his more robotic hand, but just as he was about to withdraw and offer his left hand instead, she took his right one without hesitation.

  “Nick Valentine, detective,” he introduced after the surprise of her complete lack of trepidation had worn away, and she chuckled, withdrawing her hand and placing it on her hip.

  “Huh. We’re kind of in the same line of work, aren’t we?”

  “How’s that?” he asked, furrowing his brow, and Piper raised an eyebrow with that sass that Nick was beginning to think was simply her personality instead of some sort of defense mechanism.

  “Well, we both go poking our nose in places we shouldn’t, right?” she pointed out.

  “I guess so,” he shrugged, tilting his head and offering his agreeance with the statement as he smiled at her slightly. He had to admit that he was rather impressed and taken aback by the girl. She had more spirit than anyone he had seen in a long time.

  So, going on an impulse, he gestured to the stool beside him at the bar.

  “Why don’t you take a seat, kid? I’ll buy you some noodles,” he told her. Piper’s eyes lit up with the invitation, and she looked at him with a slight smile.

  “Really?” Piper asked, and he nodded.

  “Sure,” he warmly addressed her, and she beamed, wasting no time in sitting down. After only a moment, Takahashi had dipped a bowl of steaming hot noodles and Piper was happily indulging.

  After a moment of watching her, he shook his head with a grin.

  “Y’know, I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship, my dear fellow snoop.”