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stanananathon · 3 years

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Feels Like Summer by Weezer a Reddie au

be warned…this gets sad

Climbing up the tower, just a boy and his computer

I'm still in my bathrobe, hiding in the shadows

I'm not used to losing, bye-bye, sugar blue eyes

You're home with the angels, thank you for being so kind

Richie made his way up the tree outside Eddie’s bedroom window before very graciously crashing onto Eddie’s floor. He had a blush on his face from biking as fast as he could.

“Jesus, Rich. Did you nearly pass out on your way over here?” Eddie asked with an eyebrow raised. Richie felt the sudden urge to kiss that eyebrow. He shook his head.

“Can’t keep my spaghetti man waiting, can I?” He pushed himself off the floor and plopped beside Eddie on his bed. He was fresh out of the shower and still in his fluffy robe. Richie rubbed his head into his shoulder and pretended to purr like a cat.

“So soft.” He hummed. Eddie laughed and pushed Richie off of him before standing up to get changed.

“I didn’t know you get here so fast. I haven’t even put clothes on yet.” Richie tucked his hands behind his head and crossed his legs, relaxing against the wall.

“We’ll don’t mind me.” He grinned. Eddie threw a pair of socks at his face.

“Shut the fuck up Trashmouth and close your eyes.” Richie cackled and laid his head back, resting the pair of socks on the bridge of his nose.

“Change away, spaghetti. I can’t see a thing.” Richie waved his hand and smiled to himself as he heard Eddie shuffling around. After a few moments, there was a punch to Richie arm and he blinked open his eyes. Eddie was standing over Richie, hands on his hips. Richie knew he should come up with some kind of funny remark but he was lost in Eddie’s eyes. Richie swore if you tried, you could see them sparkle like sugar in the light.

“Hellooooo. Earth to Trashmouth.” Eddie waved a hand in fron of Richie’s face. He shook his head to clear his thoughts and sat up. “Where’d you go?” Eddie asked, crooking his head curiously.

“Excuse me, my dear Edwardo. I must’ve zoned out thinking about your sweet mother in my bed last night.” Eddie groaned and shoved Richie for the second time that afternoon.

“Beep beep, Richie.”

“Anyway! What did you wanna show me?” Eddie got up and pulled out a grey box-of-sorts. He unclipped two sides that folded out and set it on the floor. Grinning at Richie excitedly, he exclaimed,

“I’ve got my very own battleship! Mama let me get it at a garage sale because it was so cheap.”

“Sweet!” Richie jumped up and went to kneel down at the game. “You’d better prepare yourself, Eds. I’m not used to losing.” Eddie grinned in response.

“Just you wait Tozier. When I’m done with you, you’ll be home with the angels.”

I’m holding on, and I don’t wanna let you go, woah

Richie held his grip tight as Eddie thrashed against him, water flying around them. Richie laughed at the way Eddie scrunched up his nose.

“You’re not getting out of this one, Eds!”

“Just you watch me, Tozier!” Eddie managed to free one wrist and turned to swim away, but Richie just reached out around him and pulled him into his chest. He could hear Bev’s snicker behind him, but he didn’t care. Eddie was huffing loudly but his muscles started to relax as he realized he wasn’t going to win this fight. Right smiled and tucked his head over Eddie’s shoulder.

“This isn’t so bad is it?” Richie cooed. He couldn’t admit it, but he loved the way Eddie felt him his arms. Eddie was small enough that Richie felt like he could wrap him all up in his gangling arms and legs. Plus, Eddie was always warm. Richie really liked that about him. Just as Richie was getting comfortable enough to dream about staying in that position forever, he received a swift kick to his legs.

“OW! Jesus, Eddie!” In his surprise, Richie let go of Eddie, who was able to swim away, hollering triumphantly.

“I told you I’d get out!” Riche couldn’t help the dreamy smile that painted his face as he rubbed his throbbing shin bone.

Yeah it feels like summer, yeah it feels like summer...

When s(he) was a lover to me

Eddie had fallen asleep next to Richie in the middle of the movie they were watching. He’d had a particularly stressful day with his mom, so Richie had invited him over for a chill afternoon.

They’d picked out snacks and a movie to rent at the local video store and been in Richie’s bedroom all afternoon. Looking, down at Eddie’s face now Richie felt an overwhelming sensation. His chest was warm and floaty and before he even knew it, the words slipped out of his mouth,

“I love you.” It was barely above a whisper, and Eddie didn’t stir from his sleep, but it scared Richie to admit. It made him think of the clown, but he shoved it down. He would not let that motherfucker ruin the way he felt about Eddie. Eddie was too special. He was loud and argumentative, but he was goofy and caring and gave off a warmth that made Richie feel like it was always summer when he was with him. Richie Tozier loved Eddie Kaspbrak, there was no doubt about it.

Which way is the graveyard? I’m an iceberg with a warm heart

I’m spiritual, not religious. I’m a libra, if it matters

Richie pulled a yelling Eddie behind him through the darkness.

“Richie! Where are we going?” Riche wound around a tree and held Eddie closely to his chest, quickly putting a hand over his mouth just in time to hear the jeering calls of Bowers in the distance, egging them to make themselves known.

After a few minutes, they heard an engine rev and a car speed off, and Richie released the breath he was holding. He gently took his hand off Eddie’s mouth.

“Sorry about that, Eds. I saw the headlights and just ran.” Eddie nodded.

“Don’t call me Eds.” He looked around slowly. “Why a graveyard, Richie? This place gives me the creeps.”

“If it scares you that much, you’re welcome to hold my hand, Eddie.” Richie teased.

“Yeah, no thanks, your hands are always freezing. It’s like holding onto ice.” Richie feigned hurt at Eddie’s response.

“You wound me, Edward!” Richie gripped his chest dramatically, “at least my heart is warm! Unlike your cold, stone one.” Richie glared at Eddie in faux-anger, who just rolled his eyes in response. There was a sudden snap of a twig and Eddie’s hand darted out to hold onto Richie’s forearm. His eyes began to widen and he pulled on Richie.

“C’mon, Rich, let’s go. I don’t wanna stay here any longer.”

“Why not, Eddie? Afraid the ghouls will get you?” Richie teased, but he moved anyway. He could make fun of Eddie all he wanted but he wasn’t so mean as to force him to stay somewhere that clearly bothered him.

“Beep beep, Richie. Do you even believe in ghosts?” Richie shrugged as they made their way into a familiar street, Eddie’s still pulling Richie forward by his arm.

“I guess I don’t know. I’m not very religious. I did recently find out that I’m a pisces, though.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“I have no idea.”

June bright, shine so bright

Flowers in (his) hair but it just ain’t right…

We look good together, aw yeah

The summer sun shone down on the losers club in mid-June. They were all dressed up and getting ready to take photos in the backyard of Bill’s parents house. The Derry high school had some unfortunate flooding right around the time that prom would normally happen, so it got pushed into the summer. As the rest of the losers were all getting ready to take some parentally-mandatory photos, Richie couldn’t stop messing with his tie.

“Why do these damn things have to be so tight?” Richie pulled on his tie again, finally getting it to loosen. He went to undo the top button of his shirt before he felt slender hands batting his away.

“Stop ruining your suit, Richie.” Eddie’s hands took the place of Richie’s as he carefully fixed his tie. Bill’s mom had set up a mirror against the house while she went to find her camera so they could do last minute touch ups. While Eddie was finishing up, some fluffs from a dandelion has blown into his hair. Before Richie could think to stop himself, he reached up delicately to pull them from the chocolate locks. Eddie’s hands stilled on Richie’s chest and he looked up into Richie’s eyes. There was that sparkle again.

“Sugar.” Richie whispered. Eddie’s eyebrows quirked.

“Huh?” Richie shook his head, finally tearing his eyes away from Eddie’s to make sure he’d gotten the last of the fluffs out of his hair.

“Oh, nothing, Eddie my boy.” Eddie nodded, retracting his hands from Richie’s chest. Richie tried to ignore how it felt heavier without Eddie’s hands on it. He turned Eddie around to face the mirror just so he could put his hands on some part of him.

“We look pretty good together, Eds.” He grinned at them into the mirror, slinging an arm over Eddie’s shoulders and pretending not to notice the blush on Eddie’s cheeks as he nodded.

“Yeah, I guess we do, Rich.”

Yeah it feels like summer

Yeah it feels like summer, when s(he) was a lover to me

The dry August hair pushed his way through Richie’s tousled curls as he stood on the curb next to his truck. It was packed full of all of suitcases and boxes, ready for his move out west. Maggie Tozier wouldn’t stop fussing, trying to make sure Richie had everything he could possibly need.

“Ma, it’s fine. We’ve checked and double-checked the list. If I really need anything I’ll call when I get there and you can mail it to me.” Maggie nodded tearfully before pulling Richie into a tight hug.

“I can’t believe my baby is all grown up!” She cried. “I love you so much, Richie.” Richie smiled and rubbing his mother’s back soothingly.

“I love you too, ma.” Just as he pulled back he saw a familiar shape over his mother’s shoulder. The rest of the losers had already left for their respected destinies but Eddie would be the last to go. Richie tried to ignore the prickle he felt at the corners of his eyes at the thought of not seeing Eddie tomorrow. Eddie made his way up to Richie somewhat slowly, hands in his pockets. He looked a little uneasy. Maggie went inside to do one last sweep of the house as Eddie finally made his way up to Richie.

“Spaghetti! You came to say goodbye!” Richie scooped Eddie up into his arms. Eddie didn’t have enough time to get his hands out of his pockets, so his arms were pinned to his sides. He laughed anyway before Riche put him down.

“Yeah, I figured I couldn’t let you leave without one more of these.” He reached up and punched Richie in the shoulder.

“Ouch, Edward! You wound me!” Richie held himself dramatically before grinning up at Eddie. Eddie couldn’t help but smile back. The only thought running through Riche’s brain was IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou. They fell into a small silence before Eddie broke it with a sad, scared voice.

“Do you really think we’re all going to forget each other?” He said so quietly Richie almost missed it. “Just like that?” Richie stiffened. The question he’d been avoiding asking himself for weeks. Before he thought about it too much and gave himself too much time to let the tears well up in his eyes, he pulled Eddie into another hug. He splayed his hands across Eddie’s back whose hands made their way up past Richie’s shoulders and into his hair.

“I don’t know how I could ever forget you, Eds.” He felt Eddie nod lightly and give a little sniffle.

“You know I love you, right, Rich?” Richie nodded fervently and cleared his throat before croaking out.

“Yeah, ‘course. Love you too, Eds. Love you most.” The pang in his chest flared as he heard his mother’s footsteps on the porch and he let Eddie go. He rubbed furiously at his eyes.

“Well, Richie. I guess you’re right. I couldn’t find anything else to that looked like you’d forgotten.” Richie looked up and plastered the widest grin he could muster on his face.

“Told ya, ma.” He glanced between Eddie and his mother before clapping his hands together.

“Well, it’s time for Trashmouth Tozier to hit the road! Won’t get rich and famous just standing here.” He forced himself to keep the grin on his face throughout the rest of the goodbye and only allowed the tears to finally stream down his cheeks when he could only see the faint outline of Eddie waving goodbye in the rear-view mirror.

Let me see the smile, stay with me a while

I cried for you, you were the song in my life

Richie scrambled over to Eddie’s frail body.

“No, no, no, no please no.” Richie’s voice broke into a sob and he held the love of his life tightly against his chest. He put his forehead against Eddie’s and another sob broke through his aching lungs. Eddie’s skin was so cold, too cold. He felt the same temperature on his cheek as Eddie’s hand made it into his hair like when they were kids.

“It’ll be okay, Rich.” Richie shook his head furiously.

“No, no it won’t.” He gripped Eddie tighter and added his hand atop of Eddie’s. Eddie feebly nodded to try and reassure him, but Richie just continued shaking his head.

“No. You have to stay with me, Eds. Okay? We’re gonna get you out of here and we’re gonna save you and everything is going to be just fine.” Eddie gave Richie a broken smile.

“Don’t call me Eds.” A broken laugh escaped Richie’s mouth at the ridiculousness of it all. He could hear the rest of his friends fighting the clown in the distance but he didn't care to help. The only thing he cared about was Eddie right here in his arms. He felt Eddie’s arm go limp but Richie only pressed the cold hand into his cheek harder.

“Please don’t leave me. Please.” He cried. Eddie took a labored breath.

“Rich, you know I... I..” and Richie felt the last breath leave his body. He couldn’t stop himself from watching the life leave Eddie’s eyes and Richie felt the world was crumble around him. He chest felt ripped open and raw as the sobs racked his body. He pulled Eddie’s limp body tight against his chest and pressed his lips to his ear.

“I love you, I love you. I love you, Eddie, please, please come back to me.” Richie never stopped trying to get Eddie to come back. Even when his friends peeled him off his body and dragged him out of the sewers. He cried and kicked and screamed. He felt like he was drowning. And he wanted to. He wanted to go back into the sewers and die with Eddie. So that just maybe they could be together that way. But he didn’t. Instead he cried and cried and he turned his back to the summer sun that refused to go away.

Didn’t the sun know how much it hurt Richie? How it reminded him of the memories he promised himself not to forget? The sun was too warm and Eddie’s hand on Richie’s cheek had been too cold. Richie wanted the sun to go away forever.

The next day the sun was still too much. The heat was harsh and biting against Richie’s back and he lightly traced the letters. R+E forever etched into the bridge and into his heart. Hot, heavy tears made their way out of Richie’s eyes again as he cursed sun and the summer and the wood under his fingers. The real warmth in his life had gone.

Yeah it feels like summer,

when he was a lover to me...

#reddie #Richie x Eddie #richie tozier #It (2017)#The Losers #the losers club #it stephen king #it spoilers #canon compliant death #I'm sorry about this one #angst #Eddie kaspbrak #I hope this is okay #it's been a minute #constructive criticism welcome!#I'm still getting back into writing about my boys #eds #eddie spaghetti #Trashmouth Tozier

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kca1516 · 4 years

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Summary:

Draco and Y/N are rivals...until they are most certainly not.

~~~~

This is a oneshot (with potential to be expanded on) where the reader and Draco are enemies through their years in Hogwarts. One day Draco's insult goes too far, and the reader starts avoiding him. Outraged and jealous, Draco tracks her down and forces her to tell him what's wrong.

She finds out not everything is as it seems.

(Gryffindor!reader)

Warnings: Smut, light dom/sub, dom!Draco, angst with a happy ending, slight dub-con (at one point the reader tries to escape from where draco has her pinned, this leads into the smut but the smut is consensual) also this was edited quickly so mistakes will pop up hear and there

This fic can also be found in full on ao3

https://archiveofourown.org/works/26475127

Hope you enjoy Part 1!

The gloss of his silver and emerald tie flashed in the sunlight streaming in through the arched stained glass windows.

His sharp tongue peaked out from behind that cocky smirk that could always be found at home upon his lips. The boy tilted his head back in triumph, claiming victory before he had achieved it. The battle had only just begun, and you were nothing less than a formidable enemy.

Then there were his eyes. His storm cloud gaze struck through you, parting your flesh and searing your insides with a brand you would never admit lay there.

Draco Malfoy.

The Slytherin Prince.

“Where do you think you're going, Y/L/N,” he called from behind you, “I decide when I’m through with you.”

His voice was an ominous echo off the domed ceiling. You could feel his steps vibrated through the floor despite the other students in the hallway. It was a silent promise that he would catch up with you, and there was nowhere you could go that he wouldn’t find you.

It didn’t mean you were going to make it easy on him.

You could hear Malfoy’s gangle of idiot friends snicker at something the blonde said. Smoke seemed to trail off of your frame as you burned with pure loathing.

Not today, any other day but today...

You had met Draco Malfoy as a measly first year at the age of eleven.

Your hair had been an unruly mop on top of your head, there had been dirt built up under your jagged fingernail edges, and you had been alight with hope and excitement for the years that would come.

Even from such a young age, you had always been kind, and adventurous, and alive with an inhibited joy that burned through you.

Never had you thought that while you were about to embark on a journey where you would meet the most amazing friends you could ever ask for, you would also meet a boy that would turn your world upside down.

The rivalry had started on the Hogwarts train platform. You had just stepped into your new adventure, the howling of the trains whistle fading into the distance.

You could distinctly remember obsessively adjusting the collar of your shirt. Your mother had ironed it for you this morning, but all your fidgeting had left it creased and wrinkled, destroying her hard work.

You weren’t used to the stiffness of the uniform, having grown accustomed to wearing dresses when you played as it gave you more freedom.

You had been plucking at one of the buttons when you heard something that would change your life forever.

“Watch it,” sneered a voice followed by a jarring thump as somebody collided with the ground, “don’t you know to get out of the way of those who are better than you? You're a pathetic excuse for a pureblood, Longbottom.”

As you would grow to expect, ridiculous, wild laughter followed his comment despite the lack of something funny. Uneasiness molded in your stomach; you couldn’t sit back and do nothing.

Ignoring the beckonings of the tall bearded man ushering the first years his way, you turned around. The crowd rushed over you. Despite the bodies knocking into you, you were able to spot your intended target easily enough.

Your gaze landed on a disheveled boy planted firmly on the ground. His chin was quivering, and you knew his hands must be cut up from where they had scraped the gravel. Then you trailed your eyes to the boy standing over him. His platinum hair was slicked back and his hands were bunched into fists. Two larger boys towered over his shoulders, as if they were guarding him.

You couldn’t control the sudden anger that flushed through you. You didn’t like bullies. Rolling up your sleeves you stomped your way to the boys.

“The only pathetic one here is you,” you’re eleven year old self seethed, marching up to the scene with a clear purpose.

You made sure to get right up in the bullies faces so as to take his attention away from the boy on the ground who shot you a grateful look as he picked himself up from where he was frozen on the platform.

The blonde seemed to have lost his bearings at your sudden appearance for only a moment. He hadn’t expected there to be a third party in this interaction, but too quickly for your liking his self-satisfied smirk played along his lips once more. It would come to be one of your greatest irritants when dealing with him in the future.

“And who might you be, flower?” the boy asks, a condescending tone to his voice you didn’t know was possible to achieve at the age of eleven. Nonetheless, you weren’t cowed.

“Someone you’re going to be having problems with if you don’t apologize for pushing my friend here,” you said firmly, then added as an afterthought, “And don’t call me flower.”

You could feel your nose scrunching angrily in the way that made your mother smile, and hoped it didn’t hinder the intimidation you're trying to embody. The blonde boy merely narrowed his eyes, as if unsure what to make of you.

“How do you know I pushed him?” the boy asked.

That caught you off guard.

“Excuse me?” you said, knowing full well what the boy had done even if you hadn’t seen it with your own two eyes.

“I asked,” the boy said, annoyed that he had to repeat himself, “did you see me push him? How do you know I wasn’t trying to help him off the ground?”

You huffed out a breath of disbelief. Of course that wasn’t the truth; it was ridiculous. The fear in the others boys face would be enough to prove what had truly happened.

“Just because I didn’t see what happened doesn’t mean I didn’t hear it. Also-”

Unknowingly, you had just made your fatal mistake.

“So you agree, that you didn’t actually see what happened?”

You felt the presence of the blondes’s two bodyguards stepping closer to you, and the boy from the ground had all but escaped into his cloak like a turtle to his shell. You didn’t foresee getting any help from him, though you couldn’t blame him.

“Well I-”

You tried to hold your ground, but your opponent wasn’t going to let you gain leverage.

“I don’t think you had any idea what was happening before you butted in.”

The boy took a step forward. You had no choice but to take a step back. The fire that had burned in you, and pushed you to step in was now nothing more than dying embers on a cold winter’s night. Embarrassment heated your cheeks.

“I-”

“Maybe if you weren’t so nosy you would have come to find I was helping our friend Nevile here pick himself back up from where he had clumsily fallen over his fat feet- Ow!”

You had panicked.

Despite being nothing more than a child at the time, Draco Malfoy was already able to spin words and create wild tales of half truths that had you second guessing the validity of reality. As a young girl you hadn’t been accustomed to that type of manipulation, and had only understood the basic instinct that told you you wanted it to stop.

Before you had any chance to think things through, you had hastily flicked the boy's forehead. His focus had stuttered, cutting him off mid sentence. Momentarily, you had regained control. Even, who you would come to recognize as, Crabbe and Goyle hadn’t known what to do as their leader was indisposed.

You knew better than to waste the escape presented to you.

“Hey Nevile,” you had said before grabbing the boy’s hand and sprinting to the boats, “if we don’t want to start our year off with blackeyes I’d suggest we run.”

~~~~~~~~~~

From that point on you and Malfoy had had it out for each other.

Your houses turning out to be natural enemies, Slytherin and Gryffindor, didn’t help matters. The age old feud only strengthened the hatred you had for each other, and when caught in a battle of words and whits neither of you were known to back down. Some of your fights had become legendary during your growing years at Hogwarts.

There was the time in second year where Malfoy made one of your Hufflepuff friends cry so hard she could barely take in a breath. Naturally, you had tracked him down and hadn’t given him the chance to say your name before you had given him a bloody nose.

Your third year together had only amped up your antics. It had found the two of you arguing over the true origin of the accio spell in the middle of Professor Flitwick’s Charms class. Your teacher had turned bright red as his voice was lost in the mayhem of the two of you screaming profanities at each other until rain clouds had formed above your heads.

But maybe the most infamous argument the two of you had ever partaken in started when Draco thought it would be funny to dye your skin green and silver. He had conveniently forgotten the countercurse.

You had chewed him out in front of the entire school in the Great Hall, including Professor Dumbledore. The teachers not only had to drag you from the room, but had to reschedule your classes so the two of you had as little contact with each other as possible. Of course, now the two of you knew how to keep your arguments underwraps so as not to get into any serious trouble with the school.

Looking back, you had always been drawn to each other. The explosive energy between you was unbearable unless unleashed in a form of chaos.

The two of you thrived off of weaponized words, aimed to kill like that of a well casted spell. You orbited each other; burning stars ready to erupt in a shower of blinding dust should they ever collide.

But maybe for the first time in your life you found yourself running away from a fight with Malfoy, despite his voice beckoning you from further down the hall. What you wanted to do was escape, despite being a Gryffindor.

This thing you shared with Malfoy had gone too far; you were freefalling without an end in sight.

It had all started in Potions class. It was the only period you didn’t share with any friends which meant you were stuck listening to Malfoy without being able to snap back at him. Especially because he was one of Snape’s favorites, and you were very clearly not.

Just as class had been coming to an end, and your patience was wearing thin, you heard something that turned the fire inside to an icy tundra.

“I’d hit that,” Blaise, one of Draco’s friends, said.

You could tell by the way he whispered that you were not intended to hear it.

Something in your gut curdled.

You never liked when Malfoy’s friends were around to witness the arguments between you two. They changed the rhythm of things, ruining the routine that you and Malfoy thrived off of.

They warped Malfoy into something nasty and cruel where he’d once respected boundaries.

That was the thing, when it was just the two of you there were boundaries. As hard to believe as it might sound, you two were equals. You regarded each other with a certain amount of respect that could not be guaranteed when there was an audience.

For one, Malfoy had never used your body against you. Sure, he used to pick on you for being a girl when you were younger, but as you had grown older he never made vulgar sexual innuendos about you.

He had never made you feel disgusting.

To hear this conversation taking place behind you, made your skin tight as if it were about to shred off your bones.

“I mean yes, she’s annoying as all hell, but she has a nice body. I’d use her for a night,” Blaise continued.

You held your breath, waiting to hear Malfoy’s response. You couldn't help but hope that Malfoy wouldn’t cross that line.

You didn’t know what you had asked for.

“You’re sick, Blaise,” Draco said, his voice as cool and smooth as always.

The heaviness in your chest eased.

You should have known it was too good to be true.

“Why the hell would you want to sully your name with the likes of her? It’d be like fucking an animal; we are not the same breed. Have some self respect.”

A knife had lodged its way in between your ribs.

You couldn’t breathe. You had never had delusions of grandeur concerning Malfoy’s feelings towards you. He hated you, and the feeling was mutual despite the bond you shared.

But to hear him say you were nothing more than an animal to him, something dirty and other and not worthy of him in any way?

You couldn’t breathe.

The rush of hurt was more than you ever could have anticipated, and you were forced to come to terms with something you had holed up inside of you for so long.

Along the way you had fallen hard for Draco Malfoy, and he had just broken your heart.

That was how you found yourself running from him in the hallway.

His words repeated over and over in your mind.

We are not the same breed.

To him, you were nothing more then something he could torture in hopes that you would twitch and bare your teeth when you were hurt.

For a brief, beautiful moment, that anger you had felt back when you were a child rushed you. You tried to cling to it, though you knew it wouldn’t last.

If he thought you were nothing but an animal, you would sprout claws and fangs and wings and tear him to pieces.

It was with that thought that a hand came down on your shoulder. The touch seared your flesh through your robes; there was no escaping him.

“Where do you think you’re going, flower?” Malfoy whispered in your ear, his breath warm and persuasive as it dewed on your skin.

Goosebumps pimpled along your arms.

There might have been a time where you had longed to fall back into his hold, but in the span of fifteen minutes everything had changed.

You could have sworn he started to rub minute circles into the tense part of your neck with his thumb, you ignored it.

A cackling came from behind the two of you, helping you strengthen your resolve. His posse had followed him out in hopes of catching a show, you hated to disappoint.

Blaise would be with them.

You kept your tears firmly at bay, refusing to show a hint of weakness.

Quicker than Malfoy could have anticipated, you spun around to face him. Your wand pointed at his neck, the tip grazing his jugular.

You saw red.

For the first time since you were younger you didn’t care if a teacher came out. You didn’t care if you got in trouble for threatening him. He deserved what he got.

A visceral crack sounded in your ears as your heart fractured a little more.

It was like you were truly seeing him for the first time.

He had grown into his height, no longer a mess of gangly limbs. His face had lost all baby fat, now structured from marble, and his hair was no longer slicked back as strands hung delicately in his face.

The only thing that had not changed, and never would, were his storm cloud eyes.

“What exactly do you think this will accomplish, flower?”

There was danger in his voice, but he was unafraid. You dug the tip of your wand deeper into his neck if only to get him to shut up. His ability to condescend you had always been the cold press of a blade slicing your nerves. You hated how he could turn your own argument against you.

“I will put you in your place if I have to,” he promised, as if to remind you of something you couldn’t possibly forget.

A warmth cradled the fierce cold within you, begging you to give into the heat.

He saw it, too. His eyes almost softened, calling to you to give into him.

We are a different breed.

You tensed your jaw, and your nose scrunched up.

“Leave me alone,” you said, “I’m done.”

You hastened away from him before he could stop you.

Part Two Here

#draco x reader #draco fuckingmalfoy #draco malfoy #draco malfoy x y/n #draco malfoy x reader #draco x y/n #malfoy #draco #draco malfoy fanfiction #draco malfoy fic #ao3 #AO3 fic #ao3 writer #draco x you

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byakurenbreak · 7 years

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Those who have known me for long enough already know how much I ADORE Vocaloid and the amazing Portal 2 fanfic, Blue Sky by the very talented @waffleguppies (read it here if you haven’t already!) So I decided to make a little playlist of Vocaloid songs that fit certain parts of the story. Feel free to have a listen, and perhaps drown in the feels with me!

Song list below the cut!

1. EZFG feat. VY1 - Cyber Thunder Cider - “There was no alternative. She needed her.”

2. SEDO Sounder feat. MAYU - I Can Only Hear the Sound of Tears - “That’s what I need. A proper conversation would be absolutely amazing right now.”

3. Neru feat. Kagamine Rin - Lost One’s Weeping - "Do you know what I learned? Perspective. You taught me that no matter how bad things are, no matter how unfair life seems to be, no matter how small and pathetic you feel, there's always someone even smaller and more pathetic than you.”

4. Hario feat. Kasane Teto - Typewriter - “Chell returned her part of the ritual - a smile and a covered crate of her own”

5. Kikuo feat. Hatsune Miku - Hikari Yo - “Just- please come and get me. Please. I am quite literally begging you. On my knees. Figure of speech, obviously, if I had knees, I'd be on them.”

6. DECO*27 feat. Gumi - Mozaik Role - “It’s you! It’s you, you came back!”

7. Giga-p x Crusher-p feat. Hatsune Miku and Gumi English - Hibikase x ECHO Mashup - “ The avatar the system had picked for him was in its- his- mid-thirties, thin, gangling, and not nearly as well-groomed as the presentation model. He had a face like a hare caught in the headlights of an articulated truck, all goggly eyes overmagnified behind thick-framed glasses, and his generous allocation of mouth was stretched in a wide grin.”

8. Denpol-P feat Hatsune Miku - Hitorinbo Envy - "All I wanted to do was to make everything better for me!" He was almost shouting, now. Not really at her, so much- more at himself, at the part of himself that was unable to shut out the look in those hurt tired human eyes of hers. "And I did, I did it, I'm here, aren't I? I'm so close! I bloody deserve this!"

9. Nantoka-P feat. Hatsune Miku - Love Love Nightmare - “You’re not a good person, you know that, right? Good people don’t end up here.”

10. 164 feat. MAYU - Ama no Jaku - “Ever heard of ‘three strikes and you’re out’?”

11. Ryo feat. Hatsune Miku - Melt - “He stood up to get another fork, glanced absently over the partition in the direction of the photocopier- -and fell helplessly, hopelessly, in love.”

12. Giga-p feat. Kagamine Rin and Kagamine Len - Childish War - “You bloody used me!”

13. Sasakure.UK feat. Kasane Teto - Nekosogi Matter Bop - “Soon as I get her working, you’ll find out. She’s going to put Eaden on the map.”

14. Honeyworks feat. Kagamine Rin and Kagamine Len - Suki, Kirai - “Nice straight corridor, no pits, no turrets, just lots of handy portal surfaces if we need ‘em.”

15. Junky feat. Kagamine Rin - Sweet Magic - “We... are making bread.”

16. Hachi feat. Gumi - Donut Hole - “Is... your holding my head going to help me remember?”

17. Yukke feat. Gumi - Transient Apple Salesgirl - “So yes, that’s basically what I’m asking. You, me, some sort of place that isn’t in here. Thoughts?”

18. EZFG feat. VY2 and VY1 - Hurting for a Very Hurtful Pain - “It’s not fair, it’s not FAIR! They told me I was- they- they gave me a sticker!”

19. Mitchie M feat. Hatsune Miku - Freely Tomorrow - “It’s perfect, Wheatley! You did it! IT WORKS! SHE WORKS!”

20. Agoaniki-P feat. Megurine Luka - Double Lariat - "Hey- ding, that's a thought; music, legs, since we're here and everything- would you- would you like to dance? With- with me?"

21. Jin feat. IA - Outer Science - "Be careful out there. This is not a standard test. I'm not kidding, there are a lot of potential hazards."

22. Kurosawa Madoka feat. Kagamine Rin - Giga Cartoon Witch - "Orange let out a high-pitched little screech of celebration and went into a quick, hippy sort of touch-up shuffle, making the cut-and-shut construction on its back clank and slosh. Blue twisted its torso in a stiff-jointed moonwalking shimmy. The two of them high-fived with a hard metal-on-metal clack, then jogged towards the single, blinking red light."

23. Creep-P feat. Hatsune Miku English - Cotton Candy - "You're not human."

24. Maki feat. Gumi - Flower of Blood - "I'm going to be honest. You're good at this. That's not a compliment, by the way, it's just a statistical observation."

25. DECO*27 feat. Hatsune Miku - Ghost Rule - "That's- that's fine by me, Fox." His voice might have been a little on the shaky side, small and quivery and not exactly the epitome of dauntless heroism he would have liked it to be, but at least it sounded sincere. "Do it."

26. Kurage-P feat. Yuzuki Yukari - Chururira Chururira Daddadda - "Hey, hey, whoah-whoah-whoah, keep your knickers on, who said anything about controlling your facility? Did I say I wanted to control your facility? No way, ha, nonono, that's aaall yours. Wouldn't touch it with a bargepole, if I'm honest. Not after that whole utter bloody shambles we ended up in last time, ohohoh, no, not if you paid me. Incidentally, that little corridor you've got her in down there, bit sort of stuffy, isn't it? Not exactly showing your full hand there, are you, in terms of interior design- ooh! I know! Why don't you give her a bit more breathing space?"

27. Cosmo@Bousou-P feat. Hatsune Miku - The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku - "...Give up. Alright? Do that for me? You're- you're safe, and- and I..."

28. Shikemoku feat. Gumi and Hatsune Miku - Hocus Pocus - "That's right! Some people are just... oh, boy, they're one in a million, they're so bright, so brilliant- you watch them doing what they were born for, and oh, they just light up like stars. They can take on the whole world. But they still need you by their side, just being good old you. Yes, sir! I'm always happy to help a helper."

29. Dios/Signal-P feat. Gumi - Aitai - "It was somewhere in the middle of this- right bang in the middle of their very first, gloriously fiddly, uncertain, awkward, amazing kiss- that the full meaning of what Chell had just, actually, said finally slammed into Wheatley's battered, overloaded mind. It was a toss-up as to which factor did it- the kiss or the words- but it was probably a combination of both."

BONUS SONGS

30. Jimmy Thumb-P feat. Hatsune Miku, Megurine Luka, Sasumi Zimi - Re_boot - Wheatley Stinks

31. Furukawa-P feat. Hatsune Miku - Alice - “ Somewhere else, somewhere else entirely- far beyond Her reach, miles beyond the range of Her vision- a young woman (barefoot, her dark hair escaping from a ponytail, her face both slightly mischievous and strikingly content) tugged her stumbling, uncomplaining, mad-grinning companion (ludicrously tall, really, and drowning in a rough-knit sky-blue sweater) along a long path worn in the knee-high cricket-humming meadowgrass.”

32. Nanou feat. Hatsune Miku - Hello/How Are You? - That’s a No, Then

33. Doriko feat. Hatsune Miku - Romeo and Cinderella - The Itch

34. DECO*27 feat. Hatsune Miku - Two Breaths Walking - The Kick

#Portal 2 #chelley #blue sky portal #waffleguppies #vocaloid

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whenisitnottimeforbed · 8 years

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Sweet Treats

*So, I've been away for quite some time(namely since one of the largest amounts of dissapointment in television I've felt since I lived through the Steve-Joe crisis on Blue's Clues), but have decided to write again because my muse struck me and I've got like 3 places I should be productively using it and instead of choosing one and forsaking the others, I've decided to ignore all three and use my precious creative currency on fanfiction.

(Also, because apparently people have started following me after said event, and it's not like I do anything else of value on here, so you know, don't bite the hand that feeds you...)

----

Never before had the lieutenant wanted a way to seek legal retribution on a weather person, but after today, she was seriously contemplating spending time googling what she could fit into the criteria of 'fraud' as a means of, at the very least, an entire 24 hours of grating inconvenience. In exchange for her own of course. She has been promised a week of sunshine, highs in the 90s and lows in the 80s, and perfect swells. A whole week, promised with 75%. If you aren't sure say 50%. Why did they even have a 50% as a thing? It literally meant they had no idea whatsoever; whatever it was was just as likely to happen as not as far as they could tell. You say there's a 50% chance of rain and who the h*ll knows what would happen and they're still allowed to call themselves 'right'. Ugh, Jaime Gordon, weather extraordinaire, was in for it if 'it' was at all, at any point, possible.

Abbie's head swung toward the door as the bamboo feature slammed open and the dim midday light flushed in against the golden florescent along with a onslaught of fat, juicy raindrops. That was, until the lights flickered and cut out. Not the first time today. Neither took too much notice as the light turned what could only be described as lukewarm.

"I've managed to retrieve a plate of buffalo wings," The gangling man pronounced the words with the same amount of semi-disdainful reluctance he mustered for all anachronisms he found ridiculous, "Though I fear the storm managed to claim our...tapas? As well as one of our drinks- as of yet I know not whose. The fried spam on rice, however, has made it unscathed within its styrofoam confines."

Looking at the man, unfitted to the tourist shirt, so bright and covered in stylized lei flower print as well as a new pair of Bermuda shorts he held up with an also fresh belt, the end hanging out like it was 1985, Abigail couldn't help a smile. The thin shirt fabric clung to the contours of his torso and teased transparency in its moistened state. He had looked so annoyed when she told him he couldn't wear his normal clothes to the beach- even though she had told him before they left to borrow somethings for the trip. On the other hand, the goofy smile he'd managed once he'd dressed himself and finally allowed her to snap a few pictures to keep for until the end of feasible time was well worth it. Now though, he dripped heavily on the wood floor and over to the lush carpet placed at the sides of the beds they'd acquired.

"Oh, Babe- I'm sorry you had to go out in that-" Abbie began, getting up from the plush bed to get to the en suite and grab one of the soft towels.

"-Or let you brave the winds otherwise? Dash the thought." Ichabod called to her as she went and he picked the shirt of his chest, flapping loose droplets from it,

"Storm like this might well have carried you away." She could hear the smile in his voice.

"You joke, but watch something like that actually happen one day. There are reasons I've never been to Chicago." Her own smile matched his own by the time she re-emerged and came to him with the linen spread between her arms. Without thinking much about it, but feeling the posture as soon as she'd made it, she stood up on painted toes and reached around his head. It was awkward to her and still somewhat unfamiliar, but just as she'd become recently accustomed to he stooped over toward her, his scruffy, warm, comforting, delicious face nearing hers, while she massaged the rain from his long hair, down the edges of his jaw; his neck. His chest. Her thumb caught on one of his buttons. It was amazing how easily it popped right open.

"Perhaps we'd do best to eat first..." His breath, the dropped pitch of his voice on the cusp of a whisper, and his sheer closeness quite nearly made her eyes roll back and sent a shiver down her spine. Her head closed the space between it and his softly, feeling the not-so-soft strands of his beard against her cheek bone and temple. She breathed his scent, exaggerated by the rain, and turned her head to press her lips to his cheek quickly before she lost her resolve to indeed eat the food he'd fought his way back here for at her off-hand remark about the possible lack of room service in the wake of the storm.

It had taken some time after finding out that- surprise, surprise- Danny was not only a no good, selfish, flaky superior but a pretty lack-f*cking-luster prospect for a progressing future lovelife for Abbie to recover. First Andy- sweet but too easily misguided, and then Danny. She tried to choose carefully but she had begun to doubt either herself or her prospects, maybe even a combination thereof. And on top of all the other crap that had been just falling from the sky, raining down like the seventh plague in work, from work, outside of work, it was just a period of turmoil.

Lo and behold though, she emerged on the other side with a clearer vision of what she needed, what she wanted, and what was waiting for her if she decided to reach out for it. She had reached almost 2 weeks ago, and now was on this vacation to reach a little farther. Well, that and to get away from the absolute f*ckery of the current FBI.

At some point in her life she had resolved herself to not brooding or nitpicking at finding the perfect 'moment', and so she did not wonder now, by sheer force of will, if she should have forgot the carry out boxes. Grabbing the two of them as well as the cup and plate while he took of his wet shirt, and draped the towel over his shoulders, she looked around.

"Where'd you put the forks?" The look on his face communicated his lapse in thought,

"Usually they put that in the container- that's what they do at the MacDonald's even. I didn't think it any different than usual." He began to stand.

"No- no, don't worry about it." She quickly stopped him, "You're not catching pneumonia on account of plastic ware. We can eat with our hands." Sitting down on the bed next to him, a knee up to face him, she passed him one container and opened her own. Inside was an almost overflowing pack of rice topped with delightfully edge-crisped spam pieces, a little thing that Abbie could only equate visually to a triangular hush puppy, and a little cubby stuffed full of pineapple chunks swimming in a clear glaze.

Around the conversational exchange about plans when the storm let up and comments of posted quips from friends on photos from the first day before they'd decided to use their phones as little as possible, were chuckles and giggles around falling food and messy hands. The food tasted superb- Ichabod gave it his own, tenuous, stamp of approval, citing if this is what they had to work with they had worked it well when speaking of the canned meat. The fruit went decidedly last, and after the salty meal, the sweet flavor popped even more.

"Abbie, these bananas-"

"The plantains?"

"Yes- Heaven alone knows why your temporal kin have made it their crusade to see what, if anything, can't be fried- but I must say this is delicious. On occasion of course, not for the day to day, but a strikingly delicious treat nonetheless. Have some." He offered happily, his fingers pinching two slices of the browned banana meat, lifted before her lips. Giving them a poking lick, she leaned in and pulled them into her mouth with a soft bite. He was right, they were good, but that wasn't why she gulped them down so quickly. She looked down at her container and licked her lips once again, pulling the plump flesh in to be as inconspicuous as possible while she reached in and pulled out a pineapple wedge, waiting for one of viscous drops to fall before lifting it to her lips and taking a bite out of it, nodding to it's own clear, citrus-y flavor doused in a thin, sweet syrup. She offered the rest it to him.

He glanced into her eyes for a moment that hovered in air for about as long as her missing heartbeat, but accepted the offering, his mustache tickling her outermost knuckle while his lips closed around her fingertips softly, briefly. Without thinking about it, and at the same time thinking of nothing else, she pulled her syrupy fingers back to her own lips and easily sucked them clean.

Who knew pineapples could be an aphrodisiac?

"You've missed a bit." he noted quietly, reaching out his hand, large and well used, to cup her whole cheek, brushing his thumb against the corner of her lips. Eyes glittering in each others' reflection, Ichabod's dropped to the thumb still softly stroking. His chest and shoulders heaved with a hungry breath as he looked to her lips and she felt hers fall slightly apart under his gaze. His face leaned closer and who knows where it was exactly when she closed her eyes and pressed forward to meet him.

His mouth engulfed her bottom lip, an ample supply of flesh for him to focus on. His facial hair tickled her the way she liked, and she lifted her hand to its place against his own cheek to keep him pressed to her, inhaling deeply through her nostrils as their mouths parted wide, readjusting and searching motivatedly for new corners of each other. She leaned into him more, lifting her bottom from the bed, chest now glued to his and feeling, somewhere in the peripheral of the sense, the styrofoam tipping onto her.

In movements slow and deliberate, and somehow at the same time quick and wasteless, Ichabod scooped the woman up into his arms off the bed and without breaking contact with her lips, moved her to the second bed merely a step away. He laid her down against it gently, leaned upon her body, her legs dangling over the edge on either side of him, the large t-shirt she had worn to cover her bikini when their plans had still included a day outside riding up to where it covered little to nothing at all. While she pulled the towel away from his shoulders, he pushed the hem of the garment up over her head and scooted her body under his deeper into the comforter and soft mattress, and in the fraction of a moment they had to part to get the thing off, he saw the smile on her face, and felt, as she did, at one with space, time, and partner.

#ichabbie #fanfic #ichabbie fanfic #ignoring what I want to make this go as smoothly as possible #abbie mills #ichabod crane #sleepy hollow #sleepyhollow #If you want the smut you're in the right place #well not this specific fic #but tumblr in general #trust me #i don't write smut yall #enjoi

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hey-i-wrote-a-story · 7 years

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Chapter 27 The Farm

Scott and Stiles rode at top speed down the old and crumbling highway that led to the Willoughby Farm. Even though it took very little time to get the trio of amateur conjurers settled in with a promise not to wander off (and most certainly not to try to help), it was already early afternoon by the time the best friends began to approach the legendary bleak homestead.

“How much farther is it?!”, Stiles yelled in his friend’s ear.

Stiles had to shout to hear himself over the rush of wind and the sound of tires buzzing over the pavement. He sat on the back of the seat of Scott’s motor bike, his arms clutched around the waist of his friend. A helmet that did not suit him in any way also covered his ears, hampering his hearing further.

“You don’t have to shout”, Scott answered. “I have pretty good hearing, you know!”

“What?!”

“Just speak normally!”, Scott called back.

“I can’t hear you!”, Stiles persisted. “There’s wind! And whooshing noise! A-and gravel bits being shot up my nose and—why is it so damn cold??!!”

Scott had noticed it too. Even as the scenery around them had steadily devolved from lush surroundings or grass and forests to dank, open areas of depressing grays, so had the temperature grown cooler to match it. Both he and Stiles had bundled up for the long ride, with Scott in a fleece-lined denim jacket and Stiles in two hoodies, but it didn’t seem to make any difference. There was something about The Wasteland that discouraged warmth, and shunned sunlight. If they didn’t believe in the legends about the cursed land shared as they were growing, this journey would be enough to convince them.

“I don’t think it’s much farther!”, Scott called over his shoulder.

“SPEAK! UP!!”

Scott was almost ready to go wolfen and roar a reply at Stiles, despite the risk of the sound knocking the skinnier lad off the back of the bike. But before Scott could give that idea any serious thought, his eye caught something up ahead. He nudged Stiles with his elbow and then extended his arm forward, his finger pointing. Stiles’ eyes followed where Scott was indicating and he saw it, too. Sitting squat within a thick expanse of wild, mostly dead grass, was the remains of what must have once been a farm house. Broken posts, cracked foundation, jagged and mysterious pieces charred black jabbed upward at the overcast sky. Nearby the house was some kind of stone or brick structure, also in a dreadful state of disrepair. It could have been a flower shed, a guest house, a garage, or any number of things. Now it was a crumbling mass of rugged detritus with no discernable purpose besides being an eyesore. A dirt road led form the wreckage of the house perhaps a few hundred feet into the property to a large barn. It was still in one piece, but that was all it had going for it. It swayed ever so slightly in the bitter wind as if it were aching to fall over. This was the place, alright. Stiles swallowed when he saw the farm, and even Scott had to suppress a shiver which he knew was not from the cold.

The dirt and gravel crunched under Scott’s tires as his motor bike came to a halt halfway up the lengthy driveway that led from the old road to disheveled property. As he and Stiles dismounted, he paused as he sarcastic best friend started lodging his first complaint. “Tell me again why we didn’t come by car? Kira has a car, we could’ve asked her, ‘Say, my best friend’s true love, would you mind lending us your vehicle that actually has sides and a roof so we could ride in it the long way to the spooky Scooby-Doo setting so that Stiles won’t freeze to death before we can reach the latest monster that will try to kill him?’ I’m sure she would have said yes.”

Scott was slowly removing his helmet as he answered, only half paying attention to his own words. “Kira should have the car in case she needs to get Kaitlyn, Aadesh, and Freddie out quick. I don’t trust Freddie’s truck, and I—“

Stiles set his helmet on the bike seat and walked up to his friend. “Scott, you okay?”

“There’s something about this place. It puts my senses on edge. The dank smells, the lack of moisture in the air…and have you noticed how quiet it is? No animal or nature sounds at all.”

Stiles paused long enough to pick up on it, too. “When I stop to listen, yeah. There’s literally nothing to listen to.”

Scott handed his helmet to Stiles, who secured it on the bike. The closest structure was the stone building, which Scott approached first. It only took a few more steps to see that the stone building wasn’t a building at all, at least not anymore. Two walls were still standing, but that was all that was left of it. The back wall, and the wall facing the highway were still upright. The front façade, other side, and roof were all gone. Those that remained were lashed with scorch marks, still visible after all these years, despite all the weather and inspects that had come and gone. Stiles followed behind Scott, seeing nothing but an open area, there was no reason to hesitate. If anything was going to jump out at them, it would have already, and this spot offered no camouflage or objects to hide behind. As Stiles stepped forward, the floor creaked beneath his feet. Both boys looked down to see that the floor was planked wood. Scott raised an eyebrow, having expected the floor to be either dirt or concrete. Weird.

Beyond the cluster of dead leaves off in the corner and the abundance of cobwebs and wood rot, the only thing of note was an old wooden beam. It was charred black, but still sturdy. Its thickness alone made it obvious why it hadn’t fallen over long ago. As it was, the beam was lodged tightly in place on an angle, jammed between the wooden floor and the longer of the remaining walls. The boys looked behind them at the foundation of the old house. The foundation was pretty much all there was left of it. It had been devastated by fire, as they’d been told, but they expected to find some small part of it that remained. They were out of luck.

“Whatever it was that blew the house apart must have had a lot of power behind it”, Scott said, pushing a bit against the beam. “If it shot one of the supports through a cement shed and left it stuck here for decades.”

Stiles stepped out of the wrecked structure and ventured to the house. It took a couple tries to get up onto the raised floor, as any steps or inclines had evidently been long destroyed. Stiles looked around, seeing that there was nothing much to see. Blackened, devastated flooring, a couple standing beams, equally black, in varying heights, at three of the four corners of the house. Stiles turned to see Scott sniffing around the outside of the foundation, hunched over, trying to discover something…anything that could tell them more.

“You get anything?”, Stiles asked.

Scott stood up and declared, “Yes. From what I can determine here, all the evidence points to this house having burned down at some point in the past.”

Stiles stuck his tongue in his cheek, his eyelids now drooping. “Had you been on the case, the Zodiac Killer would have been locked up years ago.” Scott snickered and moved to get up onto the floor with his best friend. Stiles extended a hand. “Here. It can be tricky. If you need a hand—“ Scott deftly jumped from a standing position four feet in the air to land deftly beside his friend. “—which of course you don’t.”

Scott walked through what was left of the house, which wasn’t much. Just about everything was charred black, and the burnt smell still lingered beneath all the dust, bits of dirt, leaves and dead branches, and insect nests scattered across it. There were no walls to be seen. The house was not a large one, so if there were walls at one time, the rooms would have been cramped. That was typical of some farm houses of the period. The least time of the farming family was spent inside, as all moments of light were spent outside engaging in hard work. Scott eyed a large, nasty-looking spider slipping through some cracks in the floorboards, and that was about it. He looked over to Stiles, who was leaning on some kind of tool handle—for perhaps a shovel or a rake—that had been stabbed into the ground at one time and never picked up again, its daily use interrupted by the attack of an interdimensional monster. The handle was now covered in weeds and vines, but still offered support to the gangling teenager who held onto it as he leaned forward, groping for an ancient but formidable axe that was buried in a petrified tree stump just beyond the foundation.

“What are you going to do with that?”, Scott asked.

Stiles jumped back, like a kid with his caught in the cookie jar. “Nothing. Just…yeah, just checking out the axe.”

“We’re not going to find any answers here”, Scott decided. “Which means we’re going to have to go over the rest of the property. Dig for anything that can give us some clue about the Unspoken.”

“Let the sleuthing begin!”, Stiles said, leading the charge out of the wreckage and down the dirt driveway leading further into the property. His determined tone did little to hide the fact that he was creeped out of his mind and wanted nothing more than to turn tail and get the hell out of there. Despite that, he ventured on. Scott’s presence helped. Although the young werewolf was just as aware of the wrongness of their surroundings, with his senses on alert, and his powers at the ready, he seemed almost at home there. He was very much in his element.

The weeds and underbrush had grown tall and thick beyond the house’s foundation, making it difficult to navigate. It was too dense to walk through freely, and its height obscured even Scott’s heightened vision.

“How can something look like it’s been dead for a hundred years get so thick?”, Stiles complained. “We’d be further ahead doubling back to the driveway-road deal and going around.”

“You may be right about that”, Scott said, then he noticed that the underbrush thinned markedly before them. The duo pushed through the shafts of weeds to find an expansive area of the wild growth that had been flattened down to the ground. It was easy to deduce how, as a massive tree trunk lay on the ground atop the weeds and yellowed grass. It was from a graying tree that was taller than the section they were seeing, as the end that was not torn roots looked to have been snapped in half. The two best friends stared at it for a moment. They looked around, searching for a spot of torn-up earth from where the tree may have come. There was nothing within sight.

“You’d think that when big trees get uprooted, swept up into the air, and crash to the ground in giant chunks that that may be a good indication your magic spell had gone sideways”, Stiles observed.

“You’d think so”, Scott agreed.

Seeing the devastation in front of them, they wanted answers, clues, anything that might help them, the sooner the better. They followed the fallen tree’s length to the dirt road that led past the house into the farm proper. The spot where they stood was not exactly rife with clues. A crushed metal structure that may have been the remains of a corn crib, which the dirt road encircled in a wide berth. Presumably that was the spot where large equipment could make a turnaround when needed. Not far from the crushed crib was the chassis of a bisected tractor, covered with rust, missing three of its wheels, and unable to turn anywhere. A couple large wooden barrels stood nearby, their planks bulging outward, ready to snap their rings. That was it. That left what was at the very end of the dirt road; the only other standing structure on the property, the barn.

Located about one hundred feet from what was presumably the house’s front porch, the old barn was gray and weather-worn, sagging and dilapidated. How it had remained standing all these years was anyone’s guess, but it also made it somewhat suspect on a patch of land scarred with death and devastation. Scott and Stiles approached the barn with caution, opting to avoid the large door on the front of the barn, less because of the large browned chains immobilized by rust and a padlock the size of a fist, than that they didn’t want to risk it falling down on top of them. Instead, they used a smaller door they found around the side. Scott reached for the old wooden handle, and even opening it gingerly, had the door come off in his hand.

“Did you use wolf strength?”, Stiles asked.

“No. It’s just really that messed up.” He set the door aside and let it fall down onto the dead grass.

“Good thing we didn’t knock”, Stiles commented.

“Just be careful”, Scott cautioned. And the two stepped through the doorway into the aged barn.

The barn was as gray and bleak on the inside as it was on the outside. Divided into sections, the first portion of the barn beyond the open doorway was a large storage area with a high ceiling supported primarily by rafters that did not look long for this world. As the wind blew through the wall’s wooded slats , the rafters creaked and whined, an unnerving sound that gave voice to the old support beams’ desire to be free of its long-held burden and let it fall to the ground. Thankfully, it held. But the walls of the barn moved slightly in and out with the lashes of the wind, making the building look like it was gasping for breath in its dying state. Cobwebs, abandoned nests, and dirt and dust piles decorated the large empty room. A large spider skittered up the wall to their right, taking refuge in a crack in the wooded paneling where it seemed to vanish.

“Well, this isn’t at all creepy”, Stiles said.

A few empty wooden crates, as gray as the building, were present under the high-roofed room, two of the three that were immediately visible were shoved against the walls and into corners. It was unclear whether this had been done to get them out of the way or offer additional support to the sagging walls. The floor was covered with an uneven carpet of old straw, the husks either yellowed and crackling, or faded near-white and damp. Small piles of animal droppings littered the edge of the walls and collected in the corners. The smell of the place was pungent, and after only two or three footsteps inside, the dank stench caught the boys full in the face.

“Pyew!”, Stiles said involuntarily. “This is the result of no spring cleaning since 1927, huh?”

Scott glanced back over his shoulder at his friend. “Be thankful you’re not me.” He pointed to his nose, indicating his enhanced senses. The smell of the place had to have been ten times worse for Scott. Stiles nodded in understanding.

“Consider me thankful.”

The duo ventured on beyond the large room quickly. They could see nothing there worth investigating, and their conclusion was bolstered by the desire to escape the horrible smell. Another door on the far side of the room led them to a few other separated areas. The smell was much less pungent there. Most had open doorways or partitions that rose only four or five feet tall, making it easy to take stock of everything quickly. To their immediate left was another small are filled with rusted, ancient tools. Further ahead to the left, a gate which lead out to what might have been an animal pen back in the day. Straight ahead was an uneven stack of old hay bales, some of which were arranged to be used as steps to climb into what appeared to be a hay loft. To their right were the large double doors of the front face of the barn. There seemed to be very little for them to discover here. Still, better to be sure.

“You look in there”, Scott instructed, pointing Stiles toward the tool room. “I’ll check out whatever’s up there”, and he indicated the hay loft.

“Should we be splitting up?”, Stiles asked. “This exact decision in every horror movie always leads to the moment when people get chopped up by 7-foot guys with chainsaws.”

“Stiles, we’re going to be like twenty feet away from each other. I think this once we can risk it.” Scott waved his friend away as he moved toward the dank hay bales.

Stiles entered the doorless entry of the cramped tool room. There was very little to see, beyond a rake, a hoe, and an assortment of shovels all rusted through and crumbling as they rested on the floor, amid small piles of straw, or tacked to the wall on equally rusty nails. A tightly-wound circle of straw in the far corner looked to have been home to a fox who had long since vacated the premises. The floor itself was constructed of more of the gray paneled wood that gave a little as Stiles walked on it. He knew that were the room not on ground level, he most likely would have fallen through it. He was about to turn and rejoin Scott when something caught his eye. “Scott?”

From up in the hayloft, Scott called back, “Yeah?”

“I found some kind of closet or cupboard or something.”

“Okay. What’s in it?”

“Dunno.”

“Is it locked?”

“Doesn’t look like it.”

“So what’s in it?”

“Dunno. Not sure I wanna know.”

Scott scampered down from the hayloft and stuck his head into the tool room. “Stiles, will you open the stupid closet? I don’t want to stay here any longer than you do.”

“Well, I don’t want to be the one to open this up and have the skeletal remains of farmer Willoughby come tumbling out onto my feet.”

“There’s not going to be any farmer skeleton in there”, Scott assured him.

“You promise?”

Scott eyed Stiles with an expression that said Just do it, willya? Stiles steeled himself and slowly turned the old wooden latch on the closet door. It turned easily. Damn it. Gingerly, Stiles slowly started to open the door. When it was open by perhaps a foot, Stiles flung it wide quickly to reveal what was inside. A slumped form that looked like a skeletal farmer lurched forward onto Stiles, causing him to leap backwards while rising a good two feet off the ground. “OHH my GODD!!!” Stiles flung himself against the wall in an attempt to escape whatever had attacked him. Scott stepped forward, although if he was rushing in to rescue his friend, his pace seemed incredibly slack.

“Look out!”, Stiles yelled. “Dead farmer remains! Don’t let it touch you! It’s the Willoughby Crypt! I knew it!”

Scott knelt down and picked up Stiles’ would-be attacker. In his hands he held an old straw hat, some ragged flannels, and dusty worn bib overalls. “I don’t think you have much to fear from this”, Scott said. Scott reached into the open collar of the flannels to find a very old, spindly wire clothes hanger that snapped apart between his thumb and forefinger with very little pressure. Scott stood up and surveyed the contents of the open closet along with the ancient garb he held in his hands. “It’s a clothing cupboard”, he said.

Stiles stopped cringing long enough to see what they had discovered. “It is?” Stiles beheld an old wooden closet stuffed with dusty flannel work shirts and perhaps half a dozen pairs of bib overalls. A crooked shelf above the hanging work gear held an assortment of old-time farmer’s hats that would look comical in any other setting. At the bottom of the closet, four pairs of tall rubber farm boots were lined up. Perhaps once jet black and shiny, they were now worn and gray, with splashes of white discoloration blooming along their shafts.

Scott pointed to the severed end of a wire hanger still hooked around the wooden post that once held the fallen ensemble. “It’s so old, it probably broke off a long time ago. The door was the only thing holding them up.” Scott tossed the bundle of overalls and flannel to Stiles and said, “Have a look and see if there’s anything in there except old clothes.” With that he left the room to continue his search.

Stiles rolled his shoulders and craned his neck as he attempted to brush off his frightened outburst. It was immediately evident that the old clothes cupboard held no secrets or clues beyond decades-old farmer wear. Stiles knelt down and picked up one of the tall rubber boots. “How did anyone ever wear these things?”, he pondered aloud. A pointy little face popped out of the boot as if to answer him. Stiles hurled the boot back into the closet and screamed like a little girl.

“YYEEEAAAAGGHHHHH!!!”

Scott came running around the corner again in response to Stiles’ cry. “What? What is it now?”

Stiles point at the closet. “It’s a rat! A RAT in the BOOT! It’s the size of your forearm!”

Scott rolled his eyes and moved to pick up the discarded boot.

“Careful!”, Stiles warned. “I saw its eyes glow red! It’s an alpha rat!”

Scott looked inside the boot and then pulled out a tiny squeaking creature by the tail. “Stiles, it’s a mouse.” He held it up for his friend to see. He then tossed it lightly onto a nearby hay bale, where the tiny rodent scampered away.

“It could have been an alpha mouse, then”, Stiles conceded.

Scott held his thumb and forefinger about two inches apart. “It was this big.”

“You were the shortest berserker on record. You were still scary.”

Scott turned away to continue his half of the search. Stiles attempted to return the fallen clothes to the closet, only to have more fall from their hangers. As he moved to pick them up, a couple pairs of boots tumbled out. Reaching to hang the overalls and flannels back while bending over to retrieve the boots, Stiles slipped on some of the boots, bumped the shelf holding the hats, which came free of one of its moorings and fell down to hang at an odd angle. Hats spilled everywhere. Stiles stared at the mess for a moment, then simply dropped everything, and pushed the door closed as far as he could against the mound of old clothes. “Close enough”, he decided, and turned to follow Scott.

Scott was already climbing down from the hay loft when Stiles emerged from the tool room. “Nothing up there either”, Scott said. “There may not be anything here to find after all.”

“Fine by me”, Stiles was quick to say. “With all the killer rats and uncooperative clothes and creepiness and general stench of evil, I am more than happy to don my riding helmet and—“

“Whoa.”

Scott’s quiet remark cut Stiles of fin mid-ramble. Stiles noticed immediately his friend’s stiff posture and knew his sarcastic comment could wait.

“What is it?”

Scott tilted his head slowly, searching for a sound, a scent, anything beyond the feeling of unease that had settled upon him. He gestured for his best friend to follow him. Without turning, he said, “Slowly. Stay alert.” Unseen by his friend, Stiles nodded in agreement. The exited through a side door beneath the hayloft that was similar to the one through which they’d entered on the opposite end of the barn, but with sturdier hinges. This one creaked a bit, but stayed connected to its moorings. As soon as Scott stepped out into the dim light of early evening, he felt a rush of freezing cold air cut into him.

“Holy--! Do you feel that??”

Stiles was right behind him. “Feel wha—Yow! Okay, that’s frigid. What just happened?”

Scott pointed at the ground about ten feet in front of that. “I’m guessing that.”

On the ground was a circle drawn into the dirt, about six feet across. At various points around the circle, various objects had been placed in a very specific manner. The objects themselves were common; stones, twigs, twine, a collection of leaves gathered from the branches of trees from a time when trees in the area still bore leaves. Markings that may have been chalk lines at one time now stood out as gashes; wounds that had healed poorly and now stood forever as protruding scars. It was emanating cold. The ground and every item encircling it was coated in white, like frost.

“I think it’s a summoning circle”, Scott said.

“Not knowing anything about raising demons and monsters from the underworld, I’m going to go out on a limb and back you up on that one”, Stiles said.

“Do you think this is the circle they used to bring up the energy monster?”, Scott asked.

Stiles slowly shook his head. His eyes made their almost imperceptible shift from smartass to investigator. “No…I don’t think so”, he said. “Look at how small it is. Could something as big as our guy even get through that?”

“It’s made of energy, Stiles. It can probably work its way through anything.”

Stiles stroked his chin. Yes, that was probable, but still… “Maybe. But why is it cold? Our guy is blazing hot and this is freaking freezing.”

Scott had knelt down beside the circle and held his hand above it. “It is really cold down here”, he described. “Like sticking your hand in a freezer.” Gently, cautiously, Scott placed his fingers against the ground. So very cold, it stung to touch it. He pushed down slightly, then placed his palm flat and put his entire arm, then his shoulder into it. This was nothing like the soft and sandy soil everywhere else on the farm. This felt solid. Solid like marble, or like bedrock.

“There’s no give”, Stiles observed.

“No, it’s like this one area is—aah!” Scott pulled his hand away from the circle, leaving a small bit of flesh behind. He looked at his hand and saw his skin discolored to a mottled bluish-purple. The pain was intense, even with Scott’s healing factor working quickly to repair the damage.

“Scott, let me see!”, Stiles said anxiously. He took his friend by the wrist and examined his hand. “This is second degree frostbite.” He watched as the color changed steadily from purple to bright red to pink as the hand healed. The muscles of Scott’s arm relaxed as the pain subsided, but his body remained tense. He was still unnerved by what had happened.

“Stiles, I think this is the summoning circle that was used to bring the monster to earth the first time.”

Stiles titled his head. “You think so?” Scott nodded. Stiles looked at the circle and frowned. “Look at this stuff around it, though. Sticks, string…leaves, even. You think this stuff just sat here since the late 1920’s? The leaves never blew away, no birds took the string or sticks for its nest? “Have you heard any birds since we got here?”, Scott asked pointedly.

“Still, a pile of leaves that hadn’t budged in over half a century--”, Stiles began, kicking the leaves for emphasis, expecting them to scatter. They didn’t. “Ow! Heyyy.”

“What?”

Stiles looked at Scott. “It felt like I was kicking a tree stump.”

Immediately, the two went down on their haunches and grabbed an object from the edge of the circle. They pulled. In a few seconds, Stiles gave up tugging on a twig and yanked his hands back. “Okay! Too cold! Way too cold!” Scott had his hands around a stone no larger than a grapefruit. He was pulling with all his might, his muscles straining, the veins on his neck bugling. He let go, panting. The stone wouldn’t budge, any more than the twig or leaves would.

“It’s all fused to the ground. I can’t be moved”, Scott said.

“This may or may not be how the monster got here the first time”, Stiles realized, “but it is definitely how it went back. This spot was the exit. It went through here when it was banished, and that sealed the path.” Stiles took a step back, taking in the gravity of what they were standing around. Scott moved a bit closer, marveling at how this ordinary circle in the dirt with its scattered objects could hold back a monster. His reflection was cut short as Stiles patted his friend on the arm. “Scott. Look.”

Scott turned to see what Stiles was looking at. Some sixty feet from where they stood, there was a clearing. It was not a natural occurrence. Trees and tall grass lay thrown aside, broken, or flattened by something that had come through that clearing. Something big. And something very, very strong. Scott looked at Stiles with renewed purpose in his eyes. This was what they come for. Scott started moving quickly toward the clearing.

“Oh by all means, yes”, Stiles called after him. “Let’s run right over to the big gaping hole of recently erupted chaos. Nothing bad can come of that! Scott?” Scott was already well ahead of him, more than halfway to the clearing. Stiles made a groaning noise of frustration and took off after him. Scott slackened his pace a bit when he heard Stiles making his way through the tall yellow grass behind him. They reached the clearing together.

They stood at the edge of another circle, larger than the first, at least fifteen feet across, perhaps twenty. Unlike the rough scratches in the smaller circle by the barn, this one was composed of an intricate and arcane pattern etched three inches deep in the ground. Scott and Stiles stood there a moment, taking it all in. Then Scott turned to his best friend. They both felt a rising unease creep into their bellies.

“Think we should be on the lookout for the monster? In case it comes back around here?”

“Either him or a really big blond guy with a hammer”, Stiles said.

Scott stared blankly. “Who?”

Stiles felt his brow scrunching into creases. “Don’t tell me you haven’t seen that one, either.” Scott just shrugged. Stiles held up his palm to halt the conversation and turned away in exasperation. Scott, meanwhile, turned his attention back to the pattern on the ground.

“It’s hot”, he observed, getting down on his haunches. He rested his palm flat against the surface. “The ground is hot. This circle, this pattern, it’s radiating heat.”

Stiles squatted down to see for himself. He held his hand above the strange pattern and felt nothing, but as he lowered his hand down much closer, to about an inch above it, he began to feel the heat too. He pulled his hand back right away. “Okay, that does not seem like a good thing.” He stood up and took a step back. Scott remained on his haunches, his hands feeling along the pattern in the ground. The ground was still a bit soft, a sharp contrast to the hard, cold circle by the barn.

“The four of them never mentioned anything about carving a pattern in the ground, did they?”

“Not that I can remember”, Stiles said.

“So that means this happened when the monster came into our world. But this pattern…it wasn’t burned into the ground. It’s not blackened, there are no scorch marks. So where’s the heat coming from?” Scott dug into the ground with his finger, seeing if he could uncover a heat source. All he found was more warm dirt. But as he pulled his hand up, the dirt clung to his finger like glue. Scott felt a strange suction on his finger, and the dirt rose with him, rising along with his hand like a grainy funnel. Scott then jerked his hand back quickly, causing the vortex of soil to collapse back to the ground, spreading evenly as it had been before, looking now as if nothing had happened. “Whoa”, Scott said. “Did you see that?”

“I saw”, Stiles confirmed.

Scott picked up a small branch from a few feet away and poked at the pattern with it. The branch sunk in about as far as one might imagine when poking a branch into dry earth. Scott pressed down a little further, and the suction could be felt. He tried to lift the branch out of the ground, but this time the pull was stronger. Curious to see what would happen, Scott let go of the branch and watched wide-eyed as the warm ground sucked it down in an instant with a short slurping sound. “Holy crap.”

“Scott”, Stiles said, his voice sounding a bit strained.

“Yeah, what is it?”

“Scott, get up and step away from that thing.”

“Just a second, I’m still checking it out—“

Stiles grabbed Scott’s collar. “Scott! Get away from it!”

Scott scrambled to his feet quickly and looked at Stiles in surprise. “Dude, what?”

Stiles looked at Scott, but pointed at the intricate pattern in the ground. “Scott, do you realize what that is?”

“Well, yeah. It’s definitely the spot where the energy monster came through. It’s a…a portal, I guess.”

Stiles paused for a moment before speaking again. He wanted to be very clear. “What if it’s not that complicated? What if it’s not some strange, magic portal or cosmic wormhole? What if it’s just…a door?” Scott looked at him askance. Wasn’t that the same thing? Stiles continued, “Do you remember what your dad used to say to us when we were little, when we’d burst through the front door and leap off the porch to go play in our hoodies whenever it got cold out?”

Scott smiled as the memory came to him. Mimicking his father’s voice, he said, “Close that door! I’m not paying to heat the whole neighborhood!” As soon as he realized what he’d said, his smile disappeared. Stiles nodded. They both looked at the pattern in the ground again. “But…if that’s just a door, and we can feel heat, maybe from the other side…”

“Scott, that means the door is still open. Which means if we’re not careful, we could fall through it.”

Scott felt a chill run up the back of his neck as he added, “Or anything down there could get out.”

They both stepped away quickly, the cool air dispelling any lingering warmth they’d felt from the supernatural gateway. The sudden chill was a welcome thing indeed.

“You know what we have to do now”, Scott said.

“Yes!”, Stiles answered. “Leave. We have to get far, far away from the scary hot springs hole in reality as quickly as possible. Leaving is good!”

“Fast as we can”, Scott agreed.

Quickly, the two friends rushed beyond the clearing, pushing past stray dead branches and shrubbery that was brittle and brown. They had scrambled beyond the tall grass back to the farm proper, and kept on moving until they hit the dirt road that stretched the length of the farm. Stiles was close to halfway to Scott’s bike when he realized his friend was no longer at his side. He whirled to see Scott, just a few paces behind him, having just stopped in his tracks. His body was tense, his eyes wide. He was still balancing himself on the balls of his feet, as if he’d been frozen in mid-stride. Scott slowly spread his arms out at his sides, fingers unfurling as he felt the chill air.

“Scott”, Stiles said, trying to catch his breath, “we gotta go.”

Scott did not respond to Stiles’ statement but instead looked at him and asked, “Do you feel that?”

Stiles felt the fear begin to rise within his belly, in anticipation of what would come next. These kinds of questions rarely led to something good. Stiles swallowed and licked his lips, bracing himself. “No. What are you feeling?”

Scott slowly cocked his head to one side. “I’m not sure. It’s like…the feeling in the air before a thunderstorm.” Stiles glanced up to confirm that although the sky looked gloomy, there were no storm clouds in sight. “But”, Scott went on, “it’s…thicker, stronger, if that makes any sense.”

“It doesn’t, but that’s long since stopped being a prerequisite for us.” Stiles was now beside his friend. “Scott, come on. We need to go. Now.”

Scott lifted his head. His eyes were wide and blazing red. Stiles froze.

“Scott? What’s going on? Are you okay? Your eyes—“

Scott opened his mouth to reveal that his teeth were already transforming into fangs. He spoke, his voice a low rumble, “I know. I can feel it. Something’s wrong…”

“Wrong? Wrong how? With you? Your powers?”

Scott held up his hands to see his claws slowly extend. It was almost painful. Like a forest animal that senses danger and instinctively goes on guard, Scott’s powers were asserting themselves through an instinctive need for protection. His ears becoming pointed, his hair growing thick and coarse, his face shifting from human to werewolf, he looked at his best friend. “Can’t you feel it??”

Stiles began to ask, “Feel wha--?” when his question was interrupted by the feeling of the air growing hot. This was no warm front or natural change in temperature, to be sure, and they both new it. Stiles looked down as their shadows caught this attention. It was now too late for them to see any shadows. The sun had dipped too deep on the horizon. But there they were; long, dark cast shadows beneath their feet, and growing longer by the second. Scott sniffed the air, and his face spasmed as if he had inhaled something foul. It stung his nostrils.

Scott whirled around to see a large light glowing in the distance, just above the barn. And it was growing larger as it moved closer. In less time than it takes to tell, the monster was upon them, crackling with energy, wings spread menacingly, and mouth gaping as it howled a hideous cry that hurt Scott’s ears.

Scott saw that Stiles wasn’t moving. He stood transfixed and horrified by the creature before them, unable to budge. Scott clasped his hand on Stiles’ shoulder and shouted, breaking him out of his paralysis. “RUN!” He emphasized his command with a strong push that sent Stiles flying some fifteen feet, sprawling in the dirt driveway. But when Stiles rapidly collected himself, bringing himself to his feet in a heartbeat, he was already running.

Scott looked up at the huge monster that hovered above him, beating its wings and crying out its ear-splitting warning. The fiery wings cut the air, sending waves of heat down upon Scott. The temperature soared, any moisture in the air evaporated. It felt as if a desert climate had been dropped like a bomb onto the abandoned farm. Scott squinted against the heat, keeping his arms wide and his claws visible. He was not going to back down. He roared back at the monster, expecting it to answer back at twice the volume, drowning out his challenge as a way of showing its dominance. Scott was astonished to see instead that the monster closed it mouth and pulled back about twelve feet. Its eyes glistened, seeming to glow brighter for an instant. It seemed more curious than afraid, as a small spark of orange energy arced out of its left eye to vanish with a pop in the night air. It had clearly never seen anything like Scott McCall before. The monster than looked past Scott, and though it was nearly impossible to judge expressions on its hideous face, Scott could have sworn that it had just smiled. Scott whirled to see what the creature had spotted, and his own expression switched to one of terror.

Stiles ran for all he was worth toward Scott’s bike. He had no idea how well he’d be able to handle it, but he needed to get away fast; much faster than he could on foot. No sooner had the thought come to him than he felt a flush of shame. He knew he couldn’t leave Scott. He could never leave him alone, certainly not to face something like this. But if Stiles were to use the motor bike, perhaps ride it to the very end of the driveway and turn back around, gain enough speed to ram it…

Stiles’ poorly-thought plan of heroism was short-lived. The creature swooped high in the air and then back down with tremendous speed. It spat a volley of eldritch energy at the ground in front of Stiles, causing a small explosion, but more than big enough to send the young man flying off of the driveway and into the nearby brush. Paying no further attention to Stiles, the monster flew a rapid circle around the bike and swung its crackling tail right into the tires. The tail sliced the air like a knife, passing through the bike like a ghost, but leaving in its wake a rush of heat that made Stiles cringe even from where he’d fallen, thirty feet away. The monster took to the air again, rising fast in an arc over the dried fields, letting out another piercing cry that might be mistaken for laughter.

Scott looked to Stiles, relieved to see he was unhurt. Stiles returned the look to his friend, feeling the same. When Stiles Saw Scott’s eyes widen and his jaw fall slack, Stiles turned quickly to find the source of that shocked expression. It didn’t take long to find. The bike still stood where it had been parked, its standard undisturbed, and primarily intact. The tires, however, were another matter. The rubber tires had been melted completely. What little remained of them was flowing down the driveway and seeping into the dirt like syrup. Both young men looked up to see the monster completing its arc, now high in the sky, its victorious cackle ringing clearly. They realized that the monster had never intended to hurt Stiles; not yet. It merely wanted to cut off his means of escape. The monster didn’t have to destroy the bike, just cripple it. It was a taunt. The monster was not ready for them to die. He wasn’t done playing with them.

Stiles ran towards Scott. If he was going to be exposed out in the open, he would least do so while at his friend’s side. Plus, he would prefer to have one of the most powerful supernatural creatures he’s ever known having his back. So there was that. Scott did not share Stiles’ confidence in his abilities and was less than thrilled with his friend’s decision.

“Run! Go! Get to safety—I’ll hold it off!”

Stiles yelled back, “Go where?! There IS no safety out here!” Then he added, “We’re in this together!”

Scott knew it was pointless to argue. “Then at least find something to defend yourself with! Anything!” Stiles nodded. It was a good point. He dashed toward the closest thing that might provide some means of protection; the demolished house.

The monster was coming back, faster than it had departed. It was on top of Scott in seconds, its wings pushing wave upon wave of heat down on the young werewolf. Scott went down on his haunches, his arm held up to ward off the heat. Gathering himself, he leapt up at the monster, going on the offensive with slashing claws. Left arm, right arm, left, right, right, left again; Scott’s fingers sliced through the air with ten razor-edged claws seeking to wound the massive energy monster. But air was all he sliced. The monster was incredibly quick, and it dogged and weaved away from Scott’s attack with ease. It was clearly very much at home in the air. Scott snarled in frustration and attacked again with renewed fury.

Stiles rummaged frantically through the wreckage of the old house’s blackened husk, tossing aside old scorched and fragile chunks of timber in search of some kind of weapon. His arms dug through the soot and tossed about debris frantically. Nothing. Then Stiles eyed the old axe, buried in the stump just beyond the house’s foundation. In the dim light, he’d nearly missed it. Leaping over the edge of the rotted floor, Stiles landed next to the stump, stumbling, but quickly regaining his feet. “Gonna slice myself up some flying monster cutlets!” He grabbed hold of the axe handle with both hands, and with a red-faced expression of furious determination, he let out a battle cry as he yanked with all his might to pull the axe free. “RAAARHHH!!!” There was a terrible CRACK and the handle came free; but only the handle. The axe handle had snapped off at the head. The blade was still buried deep in the stump. Stiles puffed an angry breath of frustration.

“Are…you…serious?!!”

He then spotted an archaic shovel planted nearby the stump. It was entwined with lifeless climbing weeds and cobwebs. Hardly impressive, but easily accessible. Stiles grabbed the shovel and pulled it free of the dry earth and dead weeds easily. He hefted it for half a second. It was heavy, solid. It was no baseball bat, but it’d do. He raced back toward Scott with all that his legs would give him.

Stiles found Scott gaining some ground against the monster, slashing at it relentlessly as the monster flapped its wings more slowly and made less progress backing away from the fray. Stiles felt hope rise in his chest. Maybe Scott could take this thing after all. Then Scott lunged right into the creature only to go right through it. The monster made its mocking cry again, delighted at how it had played Scott. Not one to give up, Scott whirled around without missing a beat and continued his attack, unfortunately to the same result.

Stiles realized what he was seeing. He’d already witnessed it up close (too close) when it drove its tail through his jeep. Seeing it at a distance made for clearer deduction. The monster was composed of raw energy. It only made sense that it could control its density. It twisted its head on an odd angle at the end of its elongated neck, widened its eyes, and fired lances of what looked like orange lightning at Scott. The bolts of energy arced forward faster than Scott could dodge. One grazed his side, briefly setting fire to his shirt. The other went right through his shoulder, cauterizing the wound as it entered and exited, causing Scott agonizing pain. The teen werewolf howled a desperate wail, even as his body fought to heal the wound.

The monster did not give Scott any time to recover. It descended upon him quickly, its gaping maw opening wide to envelop Scott’s head. Scott looked up, still reeling from the previous blow, and feared the monster was going to eat him. There was another roar then. High pitched, panicked, and wild. Stiles swung the shovel at the monster from behind. It was like hitting a sack of concrete mix, barely giving under the impact. Stiles felt it more than the creature had, with the force of his strike driving up his arms, but it was enough to distract the monster. It turned its attention to Stiles, who was already winding up for his next blow.

Scott made good use of Stiles’ timely distraction by lunging with claws bared at the monster. This time it was not content to let him simply pass through its form by becoming insubstantial. It solidified its body and lashed at Scott with the back of its wing, sending him sprawling down the dirt driveway. Stiles swung his shovel, which the monster fired upon with its lightning eyes, severing the spade from its handle like a tree split during a thunderstorm. Stiles stood frozen, staring at the blackened, smoking end of his shovel, able to think nothing other than Well, that’s not good.

The monster lashed out with its wing again, slicing the wooden handle in two, and then striking again at Stiles with a broad sweep of its wing, catching him in the chest and sending him flying over Scott’s head to land in a heap just ten feet beyond him. The monster had enjoyed its play, but now its demeanor indicated that it felt it was time to get down to business. It advanced on the two boys, its smoldering eyes focused mainly on Stiles, still prone in the dirt, groaning, and far slower to recover than Scott. Scott realized its intentions immediately and threw himself between Stiles and the monster, protecting his best friend with his own body. He then stared down the gargantuan monster that towered over him and he roared. This was different than the roar of challenge Scott had sounded before. This was a roar of warning. It struck the monster like a physical thing, the sound forcing its way through it like a fist. The roar could be heard for miles, and its resonance lingered in the air well after it had ended. This was the roar of a True Alpha. Its meaning was clear. If you dare to touch a member of my pack, I will kill you.

Stiles sat up like something had stung him. “Hell-o!” He saw Scott positioned, battle ready, between himself and the monster and knew immediately what had happened. Gotta love that Alpha roar, he thought.

The monster stopped in its tracks. It stared at Scott, mesmerized by his glowing red eyes and primal ferocity. In all the millennia that this dreaded monster had existed, it had never encountered anything like this. The monster took to the air again, but only by a few dozen feet, where it hovered, eyeing the duo below it no longer as prey, but as adversaries. It studied them. The creature had seen countless monsters and supernatural beings born, thrive, and even fall to extinction. But it did not know what to make of Scott McCall. The werewolf that had actually frightened the monster that was unaccustomed to feeling fear now tenderly helped his companion to his feet. He showed as much concern for this lesser being’s welfare as he did his own. Perhaps more. What an odd world the monster had found itself in.

The monster blinked its eyes once, and the blazing orange shifted to an oily dark green. It peered intently at Scott and Stiles.

“What’s it doing?”, Stiles asked.

“I have no idea”, Scott admitted.

What neither Scott nor Stiles could see was the view through the monster’s eyes. Its vision had shifted, and it beheld its opponents on an entirely different plane than others are capable. To the monster, Scott now appeared as a figure of blazing red energy. An Alpha. This tiny thing was an Alpha of its species, the monster realized. More than that, it was what the inhabitants of this world centuries ago once called the Zenith Monster. The Transcendent Creature. The High Alpha. For a split-second, the gelatinous mass that served more or less as the monster’s heart skipped a beat. It then looked at Stiles. Stiles glowed a subdued, soft blue. Human, good for provender or chattel, but this one glowed far more brightly at its center. Possibly due to its youth, possibly something more. As the two moved closer together, bracing for the next attack, the monster’s eyes widened, caught off-guard by what it saw.

Streams of energy flowed back and forth between them; from Scott to Stiles and back again, causing their auras to blend. In that moment, the monster knew that these two were connected so strongly that each would never stop fighting to protect the other. The monster growled softly. It knew it could end the human youth first, but not before receiving considerable damage from the Alpha. If it focused its energy on the Alpha, the monster might eventually destroy him, as his focus would be divided between fighting his opponent and protecting his companion. But two more corpses, the monster didn’t need. However, something else it required was currently in short supply. The creature squinted its eyes, which shifted back from their inky pools to miniature suns. If its expression could be read it all, the best guess now would be that it was grinning.

Rough, truncated snorts emitted from the monster’s mouth as it flapped its wings harder and lifted itself another twenty feet in the air.

“Scott…is that thing laughing?” Stiles swallowed hard, not wanting to know what something like that would find funny. Scott said nothing. He almost told Stiles to get ready to run, but he knew how futile that would be. All they could do now was stay sharp and brace themselves for whatever came next.

Suddenly, the monster shot upwards into the air, higher and higher, soaring in an arc and then rocketing back down toward the boys. Its wings spread wide, it plummeted with increasing velocity, opening its mouth wide. Scott spread his own arms wide, readying himself to pull Stiles behind him or push him out of the way so he could take the brunt of the attack. Stiles dug his feet into the dirt, knuckles white as he gripped the shovel handle, prepared to thrust its jagged end up into the monster as best he could.

Neither of them got to do anything like that. Just as it was near impact, the monster rolled its shoulders back, opening its wings to serve as break, slowing its velocity unexpectedly. Its gaping maw emptied a flurry of energy thistles down upon Scott and Stiles. Once more the monster flapped its wings, pushing itself back as well as sending the glowing thistles whirling around the two boys like feathers in a whirlwind.

“Oh my God, no!”, Scott cried, his arms slashing around him in attempt to fend off the flurry of thistles that spat and hissed as they flew ever closer to him. Many had already settled on the back of his jacket, tiny nettles burrowing into the material, their heat radiating through to Scott’s skin.

“Get ‘em off me, get ‘em off me, get ‘em off!”, Stiles shouted. He’d dropped the shovel handle and his arms were now flailing about as if he were having a seizure. He tried madly brushing the thistles off his sleeves, shaking them off his back, and swatting them off his pant legs. He had no success. The back of Stiles’ neck burned as a halo of thistles settled around his jacket hood, fastening themselves there, and slowly lifting the hood upwards. In another few minutes, the thistles would bring the hood down upon Stiles’ head, there to wrap it tight around him and bore through the soft cotton toward skin and sinew. The way Stiles’ frantic flailing did nothing to swat the thistles away, it wouldn’t have mattered if he had a few hours.

Scott was covered in thistles. His arms and legs already glowed brightly as the thistles sparked and gleamed like distant stars growing dim just before going nova. Scott’s head whipped back and forth, his fangs snapping at empty air, his claws slashing at his own limbs. His efforts did nothing to disperse the energy thistles. His claws were merely drawing his own blood.

Scott looked up at the creature as it hovered above them. Their eyes met and the monster seemed to smile before it was gone in an instant. It shot high up into the sky, then some hundred feet up, it banked sharply and vanished into the horizon, its glowing body lost amid the blanket of stars.

Stiles watched as Scott clawed at his own face in a desperate attempt to save himself. As the thistles were on Scott’s clothes and not his face, Stiles feared his friend was losing his wits to panic. That only made Stiles’ own panic worse, as he needed his friend to save him. Scott couldn’t do that if he couldn’t even save himself.

“Scott!”, Stiles cried. “Don’t lose it man! Don’t—I need you!”

Scott lowered his arms and raised his head slightly to look directly at Stiles. Scott’s glowing red eyes faded in color to be replaced by the intense orange of the monster. Scott’s head twitched to one side harshly. As he straightened himself out, for the briefest moment he saw with the eyes of the monster. Without knowing what he was looking at, he saw a ribbon of energy connecting him to Stiles. As he looked at it, that flow of energy twisted and warped. It grew very dark and pulled itself taut, thin, and began to fray. Scott blinked, and the odd vision was gone. Now all he could see before him was Stiles. Small, weak, frail, pathetic human Stiles. Thrashing ineffectually at the glorious prickled energy spheres which settled so majestically upon him.

Stiles was flailing, but even under the growing heat, the sting of the energy thistles, he could see what was happening to his best friend, and that frightened him more. “Scott! Come ON, man. Fight it!” Tears were now streaming down Stiles’ face as he wailed in higher pitch, “You can do this, Scott! PLEASE!!”

Scott lowered himself down to his haunches, legs tensing to leap. He let out a low growl as he bared his fangs. Scott’s eyes were no longer those of Scott McCall, werewolf and True Alpha. Now his malevolent eyes looked at the frightened boy before him as would a predator sizing up its prey.

Stiles’ cries devolved to begging. “D-don’t you kill me, Scott! Don’t do it—DON’T!”

Scott’s answer was a small roar, a declaration of oncoming attack. Stiles gasped, and in that moment the thistles covering Stiles’ clothing sparked tiny lightning-lances across his brow, stinging his eyes. Stiles blinked away the pain as new heat evaporated his tears before they could fall. Now his eyes also glowed an inhuman orange. His fear had reached its peak and crossed over into rage. Stiles’ expression was one of naked fury. His jaw set in anger and frustration, small sparks flashed across his eyes. Burning tears still welling up in his eyes only to steam away from his face, Stiles’ stared down the monster that moments ago had been his best friend. No more. No more Stiles the victim. No more Stiles the weakling. Not this time. Enough with the monsters, enough with the crippling panic attacks, just…enough.

Stiles screamed at Scott, “Well, COME ON, then!!!”

Scott lunged forward at Stiles, fangs bared, claws out and slashing violently. Stiles barely had time to scream.

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