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the-oblivious-writer · 2 months ago

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With Her I Die |13|

Past J.T to Eventual S.S x Female Reader

Chapter Thirteen: Cave Sweet Cave

warnings: depictions of grief and trauma, references to death, suicidal ideation/self-destructive behavior, hallucinations/mental health struggles, references to starvation/food scarcity, mentions of blood, and mild profanity.

note(s): j.t coming.

taglist: @morganismspam23 @slutforabbyanderson @serendippindots

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The cave smells like wet earth and animal musk—not entirely unpleasant, but not the Yankee Candle scent of the year either. You've gotten used to it over the weeks, just like you've gotten used to the constant dripping from somewhere deep in the darkness, the way your voice echoes when you talk to yourself. And you talk to yourself a lot these days.

Except it's not really talking to yourself when someone answers back.

"That rabbit is overcooked," Jackie says, perched on a rock formation that juts from the cave wall like a natural throne. Her skin is pristine—no blue tinge, no frost, no evidence of the death that claimed her. She looks the way she did before everything went to hell, perfect and untouchable. "You're going to get, like, food poisoning or whatever."

"Can't get food poisoning from overcooked meat," you mutter, rotating the small carcass on your makeshift spit. "That's not how it works."

"Oh, look who's suddenly the CDC," Jackie quips, crossing her legs. She's wearing the outfit she died in, which seems like a weird choice for a ghost, but you've learned not to question the logic of hallucinations. "Seriously though, it's literally turning to charcoal."

You sigh, pulling the rabbit from the fire. It is, in fact, blackened beyond recognition. "Fuck."

"Told you."

"Yeah, well, Gordon Ramsay you're not." You tear into the burnt meat anyway, hunger overriding any concern for flavor. It's been three days since you caught anything, and the winter berries you've been scavenging have left your stomach growling more often than not.

Jackie watches you eat with that bemused expression she always wore when she thought you were being difficult just to spite her. "I don't know why you insist on staying out here. It's not like it's helping."

"It is helping," you argue through a mouthful of charred protein. "No one's looking at me like I'm about to go full Cobain anymore. No one's walking on eggshells around me. No one's trying to fix me."

"No one's around you at all," Jackie points out, unhelpfully.

"Exactly." You toss a bone into the small pile accumulating in the corner of your temporary home. "Peace and fucking quiet."

Jackie makes that little huffing sound that always meant she was gearing up for an argument. "Except for me."

"Except for you," you concede, unable to stop the small smile that tugs at your lips. "Lucky me."

The nightmares still come, but they're different now. Less vivid, more fragmented. You no longer wake up screaming, convinced your hands are covered in Jackie's blood, her flesh caught beneath your fingernails. Instead, the dreams dissolve as soon as you open your eyes, leaving only a lingering sense of unease, a metallic taste in your mouth.

"You talked in your sleep again," Jackie informs you as you blink awake, the weak morning light filtering through the cave entrance. She's lying beside you on the nest of pine boughs and salvaged clothing you've fashioned into a bed, her head propped on one hand, studying you with unnerving intensity.

"What did I say?" You stretch, wincing at the stiffness in your back. The ground never gets more comfortable, no matter how long you sleep on it.

"The usual charming stuff. 'I hate you.' 'Why did you leave me?' 'I should have been the one to die.'" Jackie ticks each item off on her fingers, her tone conversational, as if reciting a grocery list. "Oh, and my personal favorite: 'I'm going to eat your heart.'"

You groan, covering your face with your hands. "Jesus."

"I mean, it's a little over the top, but I appreciate the passion." Jackie's voice softens, and you feel the ghost of a touch on your shoulder—a sensation your brain manufactures, you know, but it feels real enough to make your breath catch. "You know it wasn't your fault, right?"

"Can we not do this this morning?" You sit up, shrugging off the imaginary touch. "I'd rather just... I don't know, pretend we're normal teenagers doing normal teenager shit."

Jackie raises an eyebrow. "Like what? Giving each other makeovers? Gossiping about boys?"

"God, you're so straight," you mutter, reaching for your boots.

"Says the girl who's clearly in love with my ex-best friend."

You freeze, one boot half-laced. "What?"

"Oh, come on." Jackie rolls her eyes dramatically. "You and Shauna? The longing glances? The way she's been taking care of you since I died? It's like watching a really depressing rom-com."

"That's not—we're not—" You sputter, feeling heat rise to your face. "She's pregnant with Jeff's baby, for fuck's sake."

"And?" Jackie shrugs. "People can have complicated feelings."

"She was your best friend."

"Was being the operative word." Jackie gestures to herself. "Dead now, remember? Kind of releases all parties from prior obligations."

You finish lacing your boots with more aggression than necessary. "I don't need relationship advice from my dead girlfriend, thanks."

"Ex-girlfriend," Jackie corrects primly. "Death is technically a breakup. I'm pretty sure that's in the fine print somewhere."

Despite yourself, you laugh—a rusty sound that echoes off the cave walls. "You're such a bitch sometimes."

"Part of my charm." Jackie flashes that smile that always made your knees weak, the one that lights up her entire face and creates that dimple in her left cheek. "Seriously though, how long are you planning to stay out here? Another week? Month? Until the rescue teams finally show up?"

The question sobers you immediately. Rescue. Such a distant concept now, almost abstract. Sometimes you forget there's a world beyond this wilderness, that once you had a life that didn't revolve around basic survival and crushing grief.

"I don't know," you admit, your voice small in the vastness of the cave. "I'm not ready to go back yet."

"Because of the nightmares?" Jackie asks, her tone gentler now. "Or because of Shauna?"

"Both. Neither." You stand, brushing dirt from your pants. "It's just... easier out here. Simpler."

"Bullshit," Jackie says flatly. "You're hiding."

"So what if I am?" You snap, suddenly defensive. "I'm allowed to take some time. I'm allowed to fucking grieve."

"It's been weeks, hon." Jackie's voice echoes strangely, as if coming from further away, though she hasn't moved from her spot on your bed. "And you're not grieving. You're punishing yourself."

"Same difference," you mutter, grabbing your makeshift spear from where it leans against the wall. "I'm going to check the traps."

Jackie sighs, a sound so familiar it makes your chest ache. "You can't keep avoiding this conversation."

"Watch me," you toss over your shoulder as you head for the cave entrance, ignoring the fact that you're arguing with a figment of your own imagination. That's what Jackie is—a hallucination, a manifestation of your guilt and grief. Nothing more.

But as you step into the cold morning air, you swear you can hear her voice following you: "You can't hide forever. Not even from yourself."

The traps are empty again. Not surprising—game has been scarce lately, the animals either hibernating or migrated to more hospitable territory. You should probably do the same, head back to the cabin where there's at least the promise of shared food, shared warmth. Shared misery, too, but that's the cost of communion these days.

Instead, you find yourself drawn toward the edge of the clearing where the others have made their home. You've done this every few days since you left, keeping tabs on them from a distance, assuring yourself they're still there, still alive. Still waiting, though they don't know it.

You stay hidden among the trees, watching the morning routine unfold. Tai emerges first, as always, vigilant and purposeful even in mundane tasks like gathering firewood. Van follows, her gait still slightly uneven from her injuries. They move around each other with the easy familiarity of people who've learned to anticipate one another's needs, who've found comfort in shared space.

"Couple goals," Jackie comments from beside you, making you jump. You hadn't realized your hallucination had followed you from the cave. "Though honestly, the whole 'mauled by wolves' thing is a bit much for a meet-cute."

"Jesus, you scared me," you hiss, then feel immediately ridiculous for being startled by your own imagination.

"Sorry, not sorry." Jackie leans against a tree, her form slightly translucent in the daylight, like an underexposed photograph. "Oh look, there's your girl."

Shauna emerges from the cabin, bundled against the cold, her pregnancy now unmistakable even beneath layers of clothing. She moves more slowly than the others, one hand resting on the swell of her belly, the other clutching something you can't quite make out from this distance.

"She's not my girl," you mutter automatically.

"She could be," Jackie says, her voice uncharacteristically serious. "If you'd stop being such a coward."

You bristle at the accusation. "It's not that simple."

"It never is." Jackie's gaze follows Shauna as she makes her way to the edge of the clearing, where a small stack of rocks marks a makeshift memorial. Your memorial, you realize with a jolt. They think you're dead.

Well, most of them do. You've seen Lottie leaving offerings at the forest's edge—food, small trinkets, once even a crudely fashioned doll that looked disturbingly like you. You've taken the food, left the rest. Some superstitions are better left untested, especially out here where the line between reality and nightmare feels increasingly permeable.

Shauna kneels awkwardly beside the stone marker, placing what you can now see is a small bunch of winter flowers on top. Her lips move in what might be prayer, though you've never known Shauna to be religious. Then again, trauma changes people. Death changes them more.

"She goes there every morning," Jackie says softly. "Rain or shine. Hasn't missed a day."

Something twists in your chest—guilt, longing, a complicated tangle of emotions you don't have names for. "I didn't ask her to do that."

"She's not doing it for you, dumbass." Jackie rolls her eyes. "She's doing it for herself. Grief rituals are for the living."

"Now you're a therapist?" You scoff, but your eyes remain fixed on Shauna, on the gentle way she arranges the flowers, the careful touch of her fingers against the stones.

"I read a lot of Cosmo," Jackie shrugs. "Same difference."

You watch in silence as Shauna finishes her ritual, as she pushes herself to her feet with visible effort. Something about the way she moves—the heaviness in her steps, the slump of her shoulders—makes your throat tighten.

"She's not okay," you murmur, more to yourself than to Jackie.

"None of you are okay," Jackie points out. "You're all traumatized teenagers trapped in the wilderness, surrounded by death and darkness and whatever weird shit Lottie's been sensing. 'Okay' isn't exactly on the menu."

"That's not what I mean." You frown, studying Shauna more carefully. "She looks... defeated. Like she's given up."

"Hmm, I wonder why," Jackie's voice drips with sarcasm. "Could it be because she lost her best friend, then lost you, is carrying a baby in the middle of nowhere, and oh yeah, thinks you might have been eaten by wolves or bears or whatever the fuck is out there?"

"They found your jacket," you remind her, finally tearing your gaze away from Shauna to look at Jackie. "That's why they think I'm dead. They found your bloody jacket and assumed..."

"Assumed you'd been 'wilderness victim number whatever'?" Jackie completes the thought. "Yeah, well, assumptions are a bitch. Kind of like letting people think you're dead when you're actually just having an extended pity party in a cave five miles away."

The words sting, as they're meant to. "It's not a pity party."

"No? Then what is it? Seriously, what's your endgame here?" Jackie steps closer, her imaginary presence somehow managing to feel confrontational. "How long are you planning to play dead?"

"I don't know!" The words burst out of you louder than intended, and you glance anxiously toward the clearing. No one seems to have heard. "I don't know," you repeat, quieter this time. "I just... I needed to get away. From the nightmares, from the whispers, from that fucking look in everyone's eyes."

"What look?"

"Like they're waiting for the next person to break. Like they're wondering who it's going to be—Shauna with her grief, Travis with his guilt, Nat with her rage. Me with my..." you trail off, unsure how to name the darkness that's been growing inside you since Jackie's death.

"Your what?" Jackie presses, her voice soft but insistent.

"My hunger," you finally say, the word feeling strange and shameful on your tongue. "This... emptiness that nothing seems to fill. Not food, not sleep, not fucking, not fighting. Nothing."

Jackie is quiet for a long moment, studying you with an expression you can't quite read. Finally, she sighs. "So you think the solution is to isolate yourself? To just... what, slowly starve to death in a cave while hallucinating conversations with your dead girlfriend?"

Put like that, it does sound rather pathetic. "I'm not starving to death."

"Your ribs say otherwise, babe." Jackie gestures to your body, and you realize with a start that you haven't really looked at yourself in weeks. Your clothes hang looser than before, your cheekbones more pronounced when you touch them.

"I'm fine," you insist, but the protest sounds hollow even to your own ears.

"You're dying," Jackie says bluntly. "Slower than I did, maybe, but just as surely. And for what? Because you feel guilty about our fight? Because you can't handle feeling something for Shauna? Because you think you deserve to suffer?"

"All of the above?" You attempt a smile, but it feels more like a grimace.

Jackie makes that exasperated sound again, the one that always made you want to kiss her just to shut her up. "You're being ridiculous. And selfish."

"Selfish?" The accusation ignites a flare of anger in your chest. "How the fuck am I being selfish?"

"They're grieving you," Jackie says, gesturing toward the cabin where the others have gathered around the morning fire. "They're going through all the same pain and guilt and anger you felt when I died, except they don't even get the closure of a body. And meanwhile, you're alive and well—well, alive anyway—playing fucking wilderness survival because you're too scared to face your feelings."

"That's not fair," you protest weakly.

"Fair?" Jackie laughs, the sound echoing strangely through the trees. "Was it fair when I froze to death? Was it fair when that plane crashed? None of this is fair, but at least have the decency to let the people who love you know you're not dead."

The word 'love' hits you like a physical blow. Love. Such a simple word for such a complicated emotion, especially out here where survival has blurred all normal boundaries, where relationships form and fracture under the constant pressure of fear and hunger and desperation.

"I don't know how to go back," you admit quietly, your eyes drawn again to Shauna, who's now sitting by the fire, her expression distant, her hand absently stroking her belly. "What do I even say? 'Sorry for disappearing, I've been living in a cave talking to my dead girlfriend's ghost for weeks'? They'll think I've lost my mind."

"Honey, you've lost your mind," Jackie says with unexpected gentleness. "But so has everyone else out here. It's practically a prerequisite for survival at this point."

You can't help but laugh at that—a short, broken sound that feels foreign in your throat. "Great pep talk."

"I'm serious. You think Lottie's all there with her visions and rituals? You think Shauna's in a healthy mental state, carrying that baby while mourning two people she loves? You think any of this is normal?" Jackie gestures widely at the wilderness around you. "We're way past normal. We crossed that line the moment the plane went down."

She's right, of course. You've all been changed by this place, transformed in ways both subtle and profound. The people you were before the crash—privileged suburban teenagers with college aspirations and petty dramas—those people might as well be dead. What remains is something harder, stranger, shaped by hunger and fear and the constant proximity of death.

"So what do I do?" you ask, hating the vulnerability in your voice but unable to disguise it. "Just walk back into camp like nothing happened?"

"No," Jackie says simply. "You walk back in and face whatever happens next. The relief, the anger, the questions. You deal with Shauna and whatever's happening between you two. You rejoin the fucking land of the living."

"While still talking to the dead," you point out wryly.

Jackie shrugs, a familiar gesture that makes your heart ache. "I'm a delight. They should be so lucky."

The casual arrogance is so perfectly Jackie that you can't help smiling, even as tears prick at the corners of your eyes. "I miss you," you whisper. "The real you, not just... whatever my brain is doing to cope."

"I know." Jackie's form seems to flicker slightly, like a candle in a draft. "But I'm not coming back. You need to start dealing with that."

"I'm trying."

"Try harder," she says, but there's no bite to the words. "And maybe start by, I don't know, not slowly dying in a cave?"

You look toward the cabin again, where life continues without you. Natalie's cleaning her rifle, meticulous as always. Travis is splitting wood, each swing of the axe precise and controlled. Mari stands at the edge of the clearing, staring into the forest with an expression you can't decipher from this distance. And Shauna... Shauna just sits, still and watchful, her eyes fixed on something no one else can see.

"Tomorrow," you decide suddenly. "I'll go back tomorrow."

Jackie raises an eyebrow. "Why not today?"

You gesture down at yourself—dirty, thin, wild-haired. "Because I want a chance to clean up first. Maybe catch something decent to bring back as a peace offering. I can't just show up empty-handed after all this time."

"Always making them wait," Jackie sighs, but she's smiling slightly. "Fine. Tomorrow. But if you chicken out, I swear I'll haunt you even harder."

"Is that possible?"

"Try me and find out." Jackie's smile turns mischievous. "I know all your weak spots, remember? I can make your afterlife very uncomfortable."

The threat, delivered in that flirtatious tone she always used when she was teasing you, makes you laugh despite everything. "Fine. Tomorrow. I promise."

"Good." Jackie looks satisfied, her form growing more transparent as the sun climbs higher in the sky. "Now let's go see if we can catch something that you won't burn to a crisp this time."

As you follow your hallucination back into the forest, you cast one last glance over your shoulder at the cabin, at the life you've been avoiding. Tomorrow, you think. Tomorrow you'll face whatever waits for you there—the grief, the questions, the complicated tangle of feelings you've been running from.

Tomorrow you'll stop hiding from the living and start leaving the dead where they belong—in memory, not in constant conversation. Tomorrow you'll face Shauna and whatever exists between you two, nascent and unnamed but undeniably present.

Tomorrow. But for today, you let yourself have one more day of avoidance, one more day of talking to ghosts, one more day of being dead before you have to face the complications of being alive again.

#shauna shipman x you #shauna shipman x reader #shauna yellowjackets #shauna shipman #jackie taylor x you #jackie taylor x y/n #jackie taylor x reader #jackie taylor #yellowjackets x you #yellowjackets x reader #yellowjackets

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stvrnioloslvt-inactive · 8 months ago

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the estes method - Matt Sturniolo

bf!matt × gf!reader

PART TWO HERE

disclaimer: the following content might not be suitable for everyone. please, read the triggers list before reading this story. also, english is not my first language, but i hope you enjoy it nevertheless!

triggers: ghosts, shadow figures, the estes method, kinda scary? (not a lot though, i'm the first scaredy cat out there)

inspired by the trailer of this week's episode of hell week. and yes, sam and colby make an appearance in the story. enjoy!

「 ★ ★ ★ 」

i knew it was a bad idea. i mean, as much as i loved haunted places and acting like a ghosthunter, i knew it had complications that i was not prepared for.

but when the triplets were invited by sam and colby for their new episode of hell week they had no problem in tagging me along. and, frankly speaking, i was excited. the last time i filmed with them nothing much had happened, so i was curious to discover what would happen this time. however, nothing could have prepared me for what awaited ahead of me.

1:30 a.m.

"guys, can i do the estes method?"

"you really love that method, don't you?" the cam that sam was holding went straight to my face, startling me. i chuckled as colby gave me the ok to perform it.

"by the way, am i the only one that has been seeing things since i stepped foot in this place?"

five heads turned towards me, eyes wide open.

"what did you just say?" asked nick, turning pale.

"like, shadows that aren't ours moving on the walls, figures running from one room to another...is it only me?" at that point i felt like i was going crazy: the boys didn't have that much of a different reaction, and the camera was still in my face.

"so basically what you're saying is that you have been seeing things for over an hour and you haven't said anything?" sam and colby exchanged knowing stares, probably making a mental annotation to check the footage to see if they caught anything.

"i mean, even when i saw those shadow figures right in front of you, you didn't say anything, so i thought that i was hallucinating. but like...now it's worse" i ended the sentence with a whisper, as the camera panned to the triplets' faces.

"are they touching you? talking?" at this point chris just went back and forth, watching out in case he missed something.

"no, nothing, just circling us...or me. i'm not sure. hey, do you think it might be because i drew like tons of protective sigils on me?"

"YOU WHAT?" screamed sam and colby. i stumbled back, not expecting such a strong reaction.

"yeah, i figured that it could have been dangerous to come here without some sort of protection. i drew them on the triplets too, one per each, but no one is seeing what i am seeing. do you think that they're messing with me because they cannot touch me or whatsoever?"

"could be. messing with your mind instead of directly attacking you on a physical level is definitely an option. just...let us know if something happens, ok?"

i nodded. and, as we moved through the building, i prayed to whatever existed above us to keep us safe.

i turned towards matt, who was looking at me with a worried gaze.

"baby, are you sure you are ok? we can step outside if you need to"

i smiled and tiptoed to kiss him on the cheek. our hands brushed together as matt grabbed it to keep me close to him.

"eww disgusting"

"fuck off, nick"

"you too, bitch"

2:17 a.m.

"ok guys, now that the triplets have done the estes method it is y/n's turn" as colby spoke to the camera, matt put the blindfold on my eyes. he bent down to whisper in my ear a shy "i love you", then he put the headphones around my neck.

"y/n, are you ready?"

there was something heavy in the air. something wrong, something scary. i could feel the ways the boys were tensing up, anticipating something, anything. i felt my heart beating faster, my hands cold and sweaty as i saw pitch black in front of me.

with a raspy voice i replied to sam "yeah, i'm ready."

and so it begun.

the estes method

"chris is sitting next to you. if anything happens, tap on his leg"

i took a big breath in as the headphones fell snugly on my ears.

immediately i was hit with a multitude of noises: radio interferences, tv static noise, every once in a while i caught on the voice of a woman. she sounded like she was hurting.

"one"

the thing i hated the most about this method was that from the moment in which the headphones started blasting sounds it was as if you were alone in a parallel world. no matter how hard i squinted my eyes, or how much i tried to block out those noises, i just couldn't see or hear the people that were all around me.

"no"

"pain"

"hurt"

that voice, that woman...she was scared for her life. every time she spoke i could hear her whimper, almost crying.

"guys i think it is a woman speaking and she sounds like she is in pain. i don't know if it is related to what you've been asking but i thought you would want to know it"

the noise in my ears started getting stronger, higher. i put my head in my hands that were resting on my knees, then gripped the headphones so i could hear the woman better. there was something sinister about the new noise, it seemed like it was trying to cancel out the spirit in pain.

the best way i could describe it is as if a war had started and none of the two opponents could prevail on the other. i felt my head aching in an attempt to just focus on something, anything. but as soon as i tried to do so, the noises would get even stronger, leaving me panting as if i just ran a marathon. i felt someone's hand grab my thigh and shake it hard enough for me to feel it. somebody else tried to take the headphones out of my grip, but i held them in place.

finally, i managed to hear something.

"help!" screamed the woman.

and as soon as that word left my mouth, all the noise stopped, except for the tv static noise. my breath slowed down, and i loosened up the grip on the headphones. just as i was about to ask the boys if they unplugged the device, a growling, low voice screamed in my ears "go away!"

i screamed, terrified, as i ripped the headphones away from my ears and fell on the ground in front of me. i remember calling out matt's name, and he rushed to take me in his embrace as i cried terrified of what just happened.

chaos ensured: the boys scrumbled all around me to understand what i heard, but as soon as they did that colby called out a figure standing on the doorway.

"let's go outside, we can't stay here anymore!" someone screamed, and just like that matt picked me up bridal style and ran out with the others.

"nick, open the fucking car door so i can place her inside"

"on it"

the car

"baby, are you okay?"

"fuck, she's terrified. y/n. y/n! nod if you can hear us"

i nodded. just lightly, but enough for them to notice.

"baby, can you tell us what happened? what did you hear?"

i pulled matt inside the car so he could hold me while i tried to explain in the best way possible everything without being hindered by the fear that was running through my veins.

"that's crazy. guys, i've never seen anything like that before" said colby.

"for sure. it seemed like she was in a trance. y/n, did you feel us try to take those headphones off of you ears? you had a death grip on them, seriously"

"yeah, i felt it" i whispered, still shaking in matt's embrace. the poor boy could do nothing but hold me and caress my hair in hopes that it might help me to cool down.

"there was like...noise. a lot. at first i heard the woman speaking, then something else came up and started to try cancel out the woman. the last thing she said was help, and then..."

"and then what, baby?"

"and then there was silence. no noise at all, but i still couldn't hear you guys. i was going to ask if you had unplugged the headphones but..."

was i shaking again?

chills ran down my spine at the memory of that awful, awful voice.

"c'mon baby you can do it. say it"

"all of a sudden something growled in my ear. i don't even know how to explain it, it seemed like it didn't come from the headphones. he growled go away but i heard it so fucking clearly and strong that it felt like a scream right in my ears. i'm so sorry, i didn't want to scare you, i swear"

a heavy silence doomed upon us as the boys exchanged worried looks. matt held me tighter, in an attempt to protect me from my own memories.

"we believe you, y/n, we're just shocked that this happened...have we ever lived something like this before, sam?"

"no, never. i had chills, that was fucking terrifying"

"guys i think we should wrap it up here and go home"

"yeah. matt, do you want me to drive you guys home? so you can stay in the back with y/n"

"yes, please. let's go, i really don't want to spend another second in this place."

「 ★ ★ ★ 」

would you guys like a part 2? just pure fluff, matt taking care of y/n. let me know in the comments <3

all pictures were taken from pinterest. credits to the owners!

𝐃𝐎 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐂𝐎𝐏𝐘 𝐀𝐍𝐃/𝐎𝐑 𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐀𝐋 𝐌𝐘 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐊. 𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐏𝐎 𝐈𝐒 𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐄 𝐀𝐒 𝐋𝐎𝐍𝐆 𝐀𝐒 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐆𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐂𝐑𝐄𝐃𝐈𝐓

#matt stuniolo fanfic #matt sturniolo #fanfic #ghost hunting #sam and colby #sturniolo triplets #chris sturniolo #nick sturniolo #matt x reader #matthew sturniolo #matt x y/n #sturniolo x reader #sturniolo x you

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sil-te-plait-tue-moi · 1 year ago

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The idler wheel is wiser than the driver of the screw.

PART 1 ★ PART 2

Quick summary: After one too many drinks, you find yourself unable to think of anything but a certain smart-mouth detective who is in desperate need of a release.

Word count: 11K (I'm sorry)

Warnings: This is basically just SMUTT with a lil feelings (if you squint) sprinkled in there; kind of angsty at points (mentions of canon-typical death and violence (hellooo they're homicide detectives); gets a bit existential at points, watch out; pretentious.

A/N: YAY! I had this obsession with True Detective S1 all throughout October (watched it at my nan's house lmao), so enjoy the lovechild of that. This is just for fun, so, please, nobody be angry at me if they don't agree with Rust's characterisation, or any of the weird philosophical chat, lalallalal, OKAY ENJOY!!

***

The night air is sluggish and humid with the remnants of a warm summer’s rain, pressing down thickly, close, clogging, simmering just below the surface.

A few times, I’ve interviewed people who live in these sorts of places: motel-types, the “in-between”, where folks stay when they’ve either got no money, no choice or nobody. Other residents include passers-by who’re looking to save money on accommodation, skipping on the fancier places. Not that Louisiana really has any “fancier places”. Places without the paint peeling off walls like dead skin, I guess. A bed and breakfast in the nicer suburbia, with a view overlooking a subpar daydream of a ghost town centre.

I’ve leaned up against the crooked, metal railing, felt the influence of my weight almost sending it and myself crashing down onto the faded parking lot beneath. I’ve leaned up there—after knocking—and waited, waited for a grey face to peer through a crack in the cracked door. I’ve smiled and remarked about how the beat-up, brass numbers up there are hanging by a thread. Sometimes, people are real stingy – they slink out and close the door behind them, or they remain in that little slit, just an eye visible, or they plain shut it in my face. Most let me in right away, maybe a little intimidated by the shiny badge clipped up in my jacket – I’ve sat across from ‘em, felt that mud in the room’s air seep into my pores, inviting me under its still swamp.

Seems like the sort of place for him.

Too many a fuckin’ time, Marty’s come grumbling and muttering into the office kitchen, rolling his eyes, scoffing, huffing, the whole lot. And when I ask him why the strop?—“Ancient fuckin’ philosopher fuckin’ Rust Cohle on it again. Birthday’s comin’ up: get me earplugs and a generous bit o’ duct tape for my dear partner over there, would you?”

Or somethin’ along those lines.

For all his apparent talk about us silly, little “biological puppets”, this seems like Rust’s sort of place. Temporary existence, temporary living. Purgatory?

Whatever.

If you ask me, Rust Cohle’s head is so far up his own ass that it’s no wonder his outlook on life is so dark.

If I was more sober, maybe I’d be thinking about it—about him—less—but this night out has had me so drunk I was maybe even hallucinating at some point. Rust?—sure, he’s been in the back of my mind for some part of the last few months – I have to see him most days I go to work, don’t I? – but, sometime in the space between my third and fourth shot of straight vodka, he was suddenly at the very front of it. I’d seen a guy who smoked like him: cigarette pinched between his thumb and forefinger, a simple, deep drag. I’d thought it was him, but then I realised his face was shrouded in the smoke that he’d exhaled, and I recalled that Rust never seems to do that. Never seems to exhale. All the tar and shit stays in.

With a twist of my keys, the engine rumbles off into more-or-less silence. Fuck, it’s a bad idea, yes, just being here. If he likes to keep his distance, well—he’s entitled to that choice.

I glance over my shoulder, out the window, out at the complex which is all yellow and shining, illuminated by buzzing halogen light bars and, of course, the occasional bug zapper. It’s clean enough. The lines of this parking space were white enough. Apartment 11A, said Marty. Second floor.

“Are you drunk?” he’d asked – Marty, not Rust.

I’d replied, “No,” pressing closer to the phone box in attempts to remove myself from the swarm and bustle of the ladies’ bathroom. And it was an honest reply. Sort of. Despite his scepticism, by that time, I’d long stopped drinking, and all that remained from it was a sort of numb tingle in my fingertips—as far as I was concerned.

I don’t think I’d be in this parking lot, stepping out of my car, if I wasn’t still a little bit gone.

Marty’s sigh had crackled through the receiver. “Don’t bring any o’ tha’ party-this-party-that attitude to ‘im, alright? He’ll hate it.” I’d told him okay, my stomach spiking up with excitement. “Fact is, I don’t think you should go at all. ‘f you do, should be a work matter. This a work matter, detective?”

I’d lied, said yes, perhaps with a slur to my voice.

He clicked his tongue. “Okay, buck, whatever you say.” Then, he’d hung up.

There was something disapproving in the manner of the conversation. I got the feeling that he was talking to me in the same voice he used to lecture his daughters. The only reason I’d called him was to get something from him, sure, so that I could basically get something from Rust, his partner. I could see how that sort of thing might’ve upset someone. Not that Marty Hart should have any right to judge, not when he’s coming into work in the same clothes as the day before, stinking of sweat and God knows what. The unsaid agreement of everyone in the office is to turn a blind eye. I’ve met his wife. Someone should cut off his damn dick.

Quiet, now. Hell, who am I to talk? Marty’s fun to chat with, makes a slow day at the office a little brighter. ‘Course, there’s rarely a slow day at the office.

And I’m at the top of the stairs, now. And I knock—one, two, three—on the pilling, forest-green door. Dulled down 11A. Blinds are determinedly shut, slats flat. For a second, I think maybe I’ll be waking him.

Then I remember Rust doesn’t sleep.

A grey face appears as the door swings just a little ways open, grave and sunken-tired. His expression isn’t so pissed-off as it is just his usual expression.

“Rusty,” I say to him with a small nod, words scraping out dryly.

He doesn’t respond right away – ‘stead, he leans his body out partway, eyes absent like he’s searching for some hooligan criminal in the night.

“Marty told you my address?” he asks lowly. It’s more a statement than anything, but I amuse him with a nod anyways. There’s a cigarette flaring up between his fingers. His hand twitches a little like he’s wanting to take a drag, but his eyes are fixed on my shoes, now, like he’s still coming to terms with the fact I’m a foreign body in his domain.

My toes curl up tight in my shoes – there’s that prick of anticipation again. Ice-cold, you could easily mistake it as dread.

Rust doesn’t exactly subject me to an imploring look—not really his style—but he bows his head down just slightly – that’s sign enough for me. He wants to know why I’m here, and he no doubt wants to know the quickest way to be rid of me.

I sigh. I ask him.

My body trembles, and he notices it, records it, stores it away for later reference, for some other time he’ll find that it and me will contribute to his purpose.

Rust has a face of stone. I get to know it well as I search for a sign there that might let me know what lies beneath. But, of course, a statue is solid through and through. Sharp angles and smooth planes carved hollow. If he’s cold to the touch, I’d like to reach out and be sure. Is he cold where a man ought to be warm? Christ, it makes my pulse jump just to think about it.

There is no greater purpose or cruel intention underlying my words, as far as I’m concerned. Rust, however, lingers there, with his arm up on the door, barricading the entrance, while he peels back and flits over every layer of possible meaning, his attention fixed absently on my left ear.

He then looks at me—briefly—in the eyes, with a sort of paralysing intensity. Even the tingling in my fingers ceases to be.

It takes a moment, pregnant with the chorus of cicadas, crickets and other night-creatures, before he steps back neatly to allow me in.

The door clicks softly behind me as I enter into a room that’s bare as bare can be.

Rust grunts, coming up around me and into the kitchen area. “Want anything?” he mumbles around his cigarette, other hand shoved in his pocket. He’s still half-dressed in his work clothes, his tie strewn on the counter, his blazer slumped over a rickety picnic chair perched up in front of a wall of crime scenes and dead bodies. My eyes linger there—how can they not?

“A beer,” I tell him, still looking at those photographs, then at the stacks upon stacks of books. Philosophy, ethics, religion. Names I’d expect only those with PhDs to know.

“Don’t think you’ve had ‘nuff to drink already?”

I shoot him a look. “I think I can handle it, Rust.” He straightens up, raises his brow. I snort, reasoning, “I’ll only have one.”

“One,” he agrees, opening up the fridge and having a rummage around.

White walls and all of them empty, like some sort of psych ward. Half-sure Rust actually did do some time in that type of care, though, so—shouldn’t make any quips about that. I don’t want him thinking I think he’s crazy – he gets enough of that, I’m sure.

Back at my place, though, I’ve got posters or drawings or paintings up around every corner. My niece’s drawing of a mermaid sits on my dresser, and photographs of my family are displayed in the hallway. One up by the TV, I painted myself when I was in high school. About two years after I graduated, they asked if I wanted my portfolio back, and I’d obviously said yes. And I love my stuff! Some ‘cause it’s pretty, others because of memories and whatnot. Guess some people don’t have that creative trait, or they lose it. Or maybe they detest the sentiments, those strings that have been, are and will be attached to things. When my cousin broke up with her boyfriend, she cut her hair and burned his clothes. “I just want to forget him,” she’d snarled. I’d sputtered a laugh into my tea.

Rust plants a Corona down on the counter, already cracked open.

There’s no mirror in here either – I can’t check whether I look as desperate as I feel. When I focus back on him, Rust is taking a swig from his own beer, turning to glance at the crucifix pinned above the messy mattress on the floor. Huh. Didn’t peg him as a Christian.

His honey-blond hair doesn’t look cold to the touch, that’s for sure ‘n’ certain. Wonder if he just wakes up like that or what. Once, Marty had been teasing him at work, even cracking a smile out of the old guy. “Ain’t them just the prettiest curls y’ever seen, buck?” he’d remarked, nudging into me, cooing at him. Silently, in my head, even then, I’d agreed: prettiest curls I’d ever seen. Rust hadn’t looked up to chart my reaction, but, if he had, he’d maybe have seen my fidgeting fingers or hitch of breath. Or maybe he felt it, heard it.

“Sorry to barge in on you like this,” I offer pathetically through a nervous smile.

He blinks, takes another swig, leaning over the counter that separates us. “No, y’aint.”

Jesus, I have to turn my head and shut my eyes for a second. I don’t particularly believe in God, but I ask Him to please give me the strength to resist my urges and act like a normal damn person for at least a few more minutes. And then I apologise for only praying out of convenience. In the face of temptation. This is why people shouldn’t drink – still, doesn’t stop me from downing a good part of my beer.

I turn to the wall and try to turn myself off a little bit. It’s not hard – Rust still has Dora Lange (rest her soul) pinned up on his wall, naked, blue, stiff. I don’t want to know why, so I don’t ask him.

His eyes are adamant on the side of my head. Funny how he never seems to look at me at the same time I’m looking at him. Pisses me off a lot of the time – not just him, but in general. A lot of people share this same fear of not being heard, not being listened to and not being cared about. Men in particular, I’ve noticed, have a tendency to raise their voice over others’, to yell or shout or hit things or push ‘n’ shove. Marty’s that way – a lot of men at the precinct are, too. Women who are raised to be the listeners sometimes act out in the same way, frustrated at all the things they have to care about that men don’t, burdened with manners and politeness. I used to hate having to listen, to wait for the man who interrupted me to finish speaking. Rust always lets people finish their point, for better and for worse. Pisses me off in a different type of way. I can feel his judgement seeping out of him, so potent that’s it’s tangible, lapping at my feet.

He doesn’t push and shove – he’s a listener, too. Of course, he has that male privilege where his silence has a gravity, a magnetic pull, where mine is simply as is. At least he pays attention. Sure, on the surface, it might look like he doesn’t care at all, hunched over a case file at his desk, back turned to me and the rest of the lot, but proximity has its power – assigned workspaces put with his personality, and he knows what’s like and unlike me better than my sister. He’s reading into my refusal to talk, to face him – unlike me.

“So, you’ve given this some thought, then,” Rust says matter-of-factly, and my tummy bubbles up.

I snicker nervously, heart racing. God, I’d expected surprise, disbelief, outright refusal, maybe even a little disgust, but, when I manage to turn around and look at his face again, it just seems to me like a calmness. Stoicism found in the affirmation, maybe, of his expectations. It’s like I’m walking right into one of those little theories of his: a proved hypothesis.

I take another sip from my beer, feeling too shy for my liking. “Well, yeah,” I drawl, slumping over the kitchen counter and propping my chin up to look right back at him in a surge of liquid confidence. “I always think ‘fore I do anything that’s anything, Rust.”

Almost immediately, he retreats, standing up straight and resting the small of his back against the lip of the sink behind him. He hums, glances away. “We both know that’s a lie,” he combats, hands tucked into his pockets, chin tilted up, eyes down. A mouthful of beer numbs the sting of rejection. “What you mean is you think you can justify all your decisions. You think you can justify why you knocked on my door and said what you said—” he elaborates quietly, eliciting a snort from me, “—but, at the end o’ the day, all your decisions boil down to what you feel is right, not what is right.”

“‘n' you think you ‘n’ you alone know what’s right?”

Slate-grey eyes flit up and down my face, like I’m a specimen on a slide.

“I think that the girl who’s stumbled up on a fella’s door asking him to fuck her is less inclined to know, without bias, what’s right, yes.”

I swallow thickly, sucking the remaining flavour of beer off of my tongue before going in for another swig.

Christ.

Not a single bat of his eyes. Not a quiver of his mouth, not a twitch to his nose, not a morsel of natural, human hesitation. Does he have to be so crass? I did the courtesy of making it palatable, at least to my own ears, with a euphemism. But when have I ever known Rust Cohle to water anything down? No drink I’ve ever consumed will match his body’s preference of alcohol content. He’s nursing his beer close to his chest, but who knows what poisons lay dormant in these cabinets?

“Rusty,” I say lowly, maybe asking for a break – I close my eyes for just a second, part because I couldn’t bear it if I caught some sort of disapproval on his face, and part because it’s just past two o’clock in the morning.

Late nights have consumed my life recently, what with that sicko rapist connected to a Christian fertility cult. Children of God – “go forth and multiply”. His confession had turned my blood cold. Johansson had offered to sit in the box instead, but I did it anyway. I went home and cried over it, then came into work the next day to talk to some press and then receive my new assignment.

He hums, taking a drag from his cigarette, swallowing the smoke down. Rust knows how it is. To be honest, I’m probably the one who doesn’t know the half of it. One night at the office, he’d casually confessed to his insomnia, like he was just commenting on the state of the weather ‘n’ nothin’ else. So, I guess I won’t pretend to get it.

I gnaw on the inside of my cheek. “Are you into that whole abstinence thing?”

The weak light above flickers gently as he pauses, turns the question over in his mind. Anyone else would’ve surely laughed.

“I believe that man is susceptible to desire, yes—but he can resist it and its consequences should his willpower be stronger than the false promises posed by that temptation.

I snort again, because, now, I really am tipsy, and I can’t hold in my attitude any longer. It’s not that I think he’s lost it or whatever. It’s just—he’s so—objectively—absurd. Well—“objectively”. He’s got points, but those points lose all meaning in the spiralling darkness of overthought and deep contemplation wherein he’ll explain that everything really means nothing—and he’ll be right about that, sure, but also unintentionally prove a point about himself. I’d ask him what it means when, in a world where everything means nothing, a child will give their friend a flower found on the way to school, but I feel like his answer would be too morbid for my liking. Does that make me an unreliable source? The fact that I want to live?

He's absurd. He’s also a little bit awry in the head. Don’t know what he’s lost or what he’s lookin’ for, but it’s not a good look on him. He’s honest, yes – that’s a good trait. But honesty without kindness is cruelty. And he is kind – underneath, he’s kind, and I know that because of how hard he works to weed out evil people in this world, most times at his own risk. That’s kindness, albeit unconventional, whether he realises it or not.

The kindness almost cancels out his arrogance.

“So, what?” I challenge under the guise of a teasing grin. “You can go mouthin’ off for hours on end about how up themselves religious people and all’at are, but you can’t draw the similarities between their philosophy and your philosophy? How does that work, Rust?”

While I was working that Children of God nightmare of a case, he just couldn’t seem to restrain himself – every bullshit word that left him revealed to me his hubris. Now, I’m not angry, and he’s not stupid – we’re not arguing. In fact, he seems intrigued, lean body shifted toward me. He sets his beer down on the counter, crosses his arms over his chest after securing his cigarette between his lips, and lowers his head as if to listen to me better.

I sigh, continue. “D’you know what I think? I think you oversimplify humanity. You’re a great detective—‘nd I guess you know it—and, within the confines of your job, it serves you well, makes you good in the box. But your assumptions are too general. People are who they are, sure, but they also decide to be those people. By their environment and those who surround ‘em, people make the decisions that define ‘em. A lot of the time, their circumstances ain’t fair. People born into badness are trapped by the badness—either physically, or up in their heads—and they have a tough time escapin’ it.”

Rust inhales the smoke again, the only evidence of it happening being the soft whisp that curls away from his nose. I wonder to myself how his lungs are still standing.

“‘s that how you explain that—homicide case you’re workin’ on?” Three-year-old boy died of neglect, his siblings found locked in cabinets, one in a dog cage, by their mother and stepfather. Rust’s eyes flash silver. “Killer had a tough time?”

Asshole.

I narrow my eyes dangerously. “Don’t be mean, Rusty,” I scold, and he blinks in concession. “I think evil exists. I think it’s complicated. I think you summarise things that ought not to be summarised.”

He’s silent for a heartbeat. Then, his hand comes up to pinch away his cigarette, and he waves it in a small flourish, explaining, “When I say “people”, I mean society. Human culture.”

“Last I checked, Rust, you don’t know everybody on the planet. You don’t know their “culture”, or experiences.” That seems to shut him up. My eyes wander to his broad shoulders, trail along the meat of his arms beneath the cheap, polyester shirt that hugs close to the muscle, and they linger there like the quiet that settles between us.

He nods slowly, once. “Our decisions define us?”

I bob my head, unabashedly staring at the elegant column of his throat, his neck, and the stretch of tan skin that is settled beneath the white undershirt revealed by the first one, two, three buttons which have recently been undone.

He’s quieter when he asks me, “Well, how does this decision define you, then?” There’s nothing malicious about the way he says it, or even lustful – just a calm curiosity.

“Ain’t it obvious?” I grin again, laugh a little, blush hotly. “I’m horny!” I hide my face in my shoulder, trying to compose the hiccups of laughter in my stomach. “I’m sorry,” I snicker, wiping my palm over my brow, my eyes. “This probably isn’t very attractive to you.”

“You’re a very pretty girl,” he replies. He mutters my name solemnly, like we’re in a formal meeting or something.

I glance up, check whether he’ll offer me eye contact again, but he doesn’t – he’s staring at the wall, lost.

I scoff. “You’re a very pretty guy, Rust.”

God willing, none of the boys at the precinct will ever find out about this. If Marty lets it slip that I even asked for Rust’s address, then I’ll never hear the end of it. Worse, everyone’ll think I’m dead-gone over him. Guess I don’t really fit the standards expected of women around here: “wife”, or “whore”. Or “dead”. It’s hard enough to be taken seriously going about pretending I’m not interested in sex at all. Once sex comes into the equation, I’ll be reduced to that and nothing else.

Anxious, I start flicking up under my fingernails. Is Rust already starting to think those things, too? I’m a great detective, but that’s the only capacity in which he’s really known me.

I wring the neck of my bottle. “I should explain—”

He holds his hand up, stating, “I don’t need you to. Do you feel the need to?”

Curious, wary, I watch his face, a blank slate. Still waters run deep. My eyes drift down, to where his hands are together in front of him, one relaxed beside him the other curled around his wrist with two fingers resting on the pulse.

“No,” I reply.

“You thought it over,” he says, eyes tilting up at the ceiling, aloof, bored, maybe. His words are sort of monotone, like he’s reciting a passage from a book that he’s just recently read: “You chose me because you know me. You haven’t been sleeping well. You’re stressed, you’re scared, you’re frustrated.” He blinks. “You’re attracted to me due to some—unfortunate trigger beyond your control in the reptilian part of your brain.” Brief as the flicker of a candle in a still room, he looks over me, brow raised slightly as if daring me to tell him that he’s wrong. He pauses again, takes a short puff. “It makes you think I can take care o’ your needs.”

Look at the state of him: sallow and wilting on the inside. Reducing me down to a sentence or two, and being right about it.

“Well, can you?” I ask weakly, feeling small. He looks over me, blinks blankly. “How do you take care of your needs?” No reply. “You do have needs, don’t you?” I remark, tapping the rim of my bottle to my warm temple. “Programming ‘n’ whatnot.”

He tilts his head away in dismissal.

I smile, more to myself than to him. “Beat off in the shower, is it?”

For a second, Rust is still. My eyes grow heavy, admiring the strong profile of his nose. He then nods helplessly, like there’s no point in trying to lie.

I hum, a soft, self-satisfied smirk edging its way onto my face. “Must feel like a sin,” I snicker.

He squints slightly, like he disagrees with my logic, but does not interrupt to protest.

“I remember takin’ baths as a teenager and double-checkin’, triple-checkin’ I locked the door,” I confess. “Couldn’t take my time. ‘S that how it is for you, Rust?” I probe, tilting my head to the side, losing his eyes as quickly as I catch them. “You ever let yourself enjoy it? Let yourself want it—?”

“I don’t want it,” he snaps quietly.

“But your programmin’ says you do, right?” I point out, scrambling to hold onto the flaw in his argument. I search his face, my own bright, eager.

He quirks up a miraculous smile, and I myself burst into a wide grin. Still smiling—though, you’d have to admit, it’s such a strange sight, sort of gratifying, almost patronising—he shifts his weight between his feet, scratches at his nose with his pinkie, sniffs, takes a long drag of his dying cigarette. I know he must feel disjointed, though he doesn’t show it: he’s misstepped, and I’ve caught him. And how often does Rust Cohle misstep? I should’ve checked the news for a blue moon tonight.

Interested, now, is he? Breathing quietly, rolling his jaw – he’s entertaining the competition I have goin’ up in my head. From the looks of the gentle smirk on his face, he’s enjoying it, too.

“No,” he corrects with a dry husk to his voice. “No, I know what I want, and, when I think those things are necessary or useful, I know how to get them.”

In this type of context, I’d like to see him try. Though, he is an undeniably attractive man. Thick, solid all the way through, like a rich wood. But he’s got these brittle eyes: fraying.

He continues: “Most of the time, though, what we want is born out of dangerous feelings, like rage or lust. Ruminating on the consequences of those potential actions seems to me the more sensible thing to do than to just leave it and find out.” I sniff. “Desire is inescapable for most, including the sexual kind. I feel it—“ he eyes how I wriggle beneath my skin, “—you feel it. But it can be resisted. You’re lettin’ it dictate what you do ‘n’ say. If I do to you what you want me to, have you thought about how it might affect things down the line? Tomorrow, next week, next month—?”

“Yes,” I hiss, a little too emotionally, such that a gleam of satisfaction crosses his grey eyes at the strain and stretch of my voice. Christ. Desperate much?

I take several seconds to think before allowing myself to speak again, all while staring at him straight on and refusing to look away: I’d just die if I let him catch me out. “Well, how can you be sure of the fallout? How do you know the good won’t outweigh the bad? Not “you” specifically, but, also, yeah, “you” specifically. I can think about something morally ambiguous, and I can evaluate the potential consequences, and, just as you are satisfied to observe, I will decide to follow through with this somethin’ and deal with what I gotta deal.”

He sighs. “Because decisions define a person?”

I tuck my hair tight behind my ears. “Yes.”

And he hums – that beautiful noise resonates in my stomach before sinking down there, low, its weight a comfort. “I agree with you in that respect,” he admits.

A laugh erupts out of me like the sputter of an engine. Luckily, I’m easy to laughter – it’s like me, as is my genuine grin. “Rust Cohle’s agreein’ with me on somethin’?—Call the police!”

“We are the police,” he replies smartly, watching me snort and smile and grow flushed in the face. I feel very grateful to that beer – at least my giddiness can be blamed on the effects of alcohol and save me from embarrassment.

As I simmer down, he looks away, adds, “I agree to an extent. People all think that they’re one-of-a-kind. That they make these—amazing decisions. They speak and do and walk and play and work and fuck and eventually die – all of ‘em.”

“You’re part of the people,” I argue.

He hums, nodding in acceptance. “Yes.”

“If a person acts due to their instinct, whether it’s succumbing to it or fighting against it, then isn’t man simply his programming?” He lowers his head. “You can be aware of it, and you can be a part of it, too. Who are you to deny yourself the good parts?”

He fiddles with his cigarette, svelte fingers nimble and acute. I cross my legs, flex my hips; he notices.

“Because of the consequences,” he replies, a soft whisper.

I thought that everything meant fuck-all?

For someone who sees no meaning in life, he sure seems to spend a lot of time contemplating it. Here, I thought I’d have hot hands sliding all over me, gripping, spreading, pushing, but instead find myself defence in an unprecedented debate.

Rust is breathing slower, deeper, almost unable, now, to look me in the eyes, even look at me in general, whereas, before, it had been a choice, whether that choice be conscious or unconscious. His cigarette burns weakly in his fingers, forgotten. The muscle in his jaw flexes, his expression hollow.

My body buzzes with want, leaves me scrambling for breath like I’ve just run a race. I want. I want, I want, I want. The rough pads of his fingertips, the surest and most confident I’ll have ever known. Sharp tongue, quick and precise. Something about how he smells. All my compliments to pheromones – even in the heavy musk of the bar, I’d smelled him, ashy, warm, alive, and now it’s wreathing all around. Or maybe that’s just me – it’s like when you try to take someone’s pulse with your thumb, and all you’re feeling is your own heartbeat.

I want – my breath trembles with it.

“Rust,” I say softly. He shakes his head a little, looking away still, vulnerable like a wild animal. I sigh, gnawing at my lip. “I really want it. I—I’ve—it’s not just a rash decision,” I explain. “I’ve wanted it for a while, now.”

He shudders – I notice. “Since when?”

I huff out a sheepish laugh, fix my eyes on my restless hands. “You won’t remember it—”

“I will.”

His voice sounds clogged. It sobers me right up.

“A year back,” I tell him. “You were working at the office—late, in the dark. You called me, and I asked you why, and you said—it was because you were tired and thinkin’.” I glance up to check if he’s maybe looking, but he’s not – he’s turned his head even further away. The soft, gentle curls of his hair tempt me.

Blindly reaching for the bottle, securing it almost immediately, he finishes the rest of his beer, then sets it back down.

“I—” he begins, scratching his nose, “—I was—tired.” He pauses to re-thicken his voice. “And—thinking—”

He doesn’t finish his sentence, but the both of us know what he said that night: Of you. Thinking of you—of me .

My stomach flips, leaving me almost nauseous, just like it did when I first heard those words. At first, I thought I’d misheard, that I was so tired my mind was playing tricks on me. Then, I thought he was being cruel, or maybe he was drunk. Those two instances weren’t—aren’t—unlike him, but he never, ever calls to be mean or to be stupid. He’d been quiet and warm through the phone after that, a presence so thick I could’ve sworn he had his arms around me right then. I hadn’t slept well for a time, then, of course, and that made it all the more vivid. His voice had made me shiver all the way through as he told me he had to get back to work.

When I saw him the next morning, I couldn’t look at him. It was the first time I couldn’t, not wouldn’t. It was also the first time I felt him paying attention to me.

I shift, ask the question I’d wondered since that call: “Why?”

A pause.

Then: “You brought me coffee that morning,” he explains softly, speaking to the wall opposite. “I was—looking at the mug on my desk – it was yours. Green one you like to use.” He sniffs. “And…” He teeters on the precipice of that word but does not finish the thought.

Hmm. That’s something to think about. Rust Cohle thinking about me and not picking apart why and why he shouldn’t be. It had been a mindless enough gesture – it’s not unheard of me to be makin’ coffee for other people in the office, not because I have to but because I like to. For the people I can stand, that is: Johansson always, and him for me; Cathleen; Marty, when I’m not pissed off at him; and Rust, from time to time. Everybody knows that green mug is mine, though – nobody touches it, not even the boss. Rust reads far too much into things. Most of the time, he’s dead-on. I should’ve known from the moment I placed that coffee on his desk, from the sharpening of his eyes (that did not spare me a glance) that lingered on my lingering hand on his table, that he knew. Figured out something I hadn’t even quite figured out myself. Not until later that night.

I wonder if he’s ever thought of me when fucking his own hand. I wonder if he thinks about me sometimes, when he can’t sleep, in between horror stories and brutal blows and uncovering the secret truths of the universe. I do, sometimes.

When I push myself back to my feet, stand up, Rust’s attention springs back, and he watches me, looks at me.

Quietly, I relish in the satisfaction of his stare, crossing on light feet to toss my empty beer bottle in the bin. He steps aside to let me open the cupboard under the sink, his hand curled in a loose fist by his side. I’m not trying to tease him – I grant him the space he so clearly needs, retreating about five paces back, leaning slightly myself against the counter.

I could say anything right now, no matter how insane, and he’d treat it with total and utter respect. I could reveal to him the reaction my body has to seeing his fingers fiddle like that with his cigarette, and he’d manage to identify the cogs and wheels in what, when you step back, actually turns out to be a hidden machine. Christ, I could probably remove all of my clothes, stand naked in front of him, and he’d look on as one would look on at a piece of evidence at work. Going over the details, once, twice, scribbling it all down in that big, leather ledger.

Here’s what I think: he needs it. For all his talk about how unoriginal, how predictable mammals are at the end of things, he probably knows that himself. The tension in his jaw, the perpetual tightness of breath. That clipped way of talking he has, wound so tight around himself, like a compressed spring fighting its natural urge to let go.

I could make him let go. Maybe. I wish he’d let me try. It’s nothing possessive, really: wanting to be the one to unravel his tightly coiled body. Just—the release of seeing him be. No thinking in particular – just being.

He is still, however, uncommonly mute, avoiding my eyes.

I sigh. I ask him tentatively, “You think I ought’a be ashamed o’ myself?” biting down on the fleshy inside of my cheek.

“No,” he contradicts.

“But—you think I should be findin’ my fun elsewhere, with—some other guy?”

He sort of pins his hands behind his back, pressing his weight against them there at the edge of the sink. He looks a lot taller from this angle. “I think there’s a lotta fellas stumblin’ over themselves to be with a girl like you.”

“Maybe,” I scoff, “but my reptilian brain don’t want none of ‘em.“ I blush warmly when I glance up and he’s there watching me, though there’s no bashfulness at all on his side of it.

I expect him to maybe dart his eyes away again, like he does, and then walk me to the door, maybe even to the car if I haven’t offended him too badly, and then call it a night. I could stuff it in; I can compartmentalise. Monday would carry on as it always does, except now without the wondering and the yearning and the delusion. Did he have to be so good-looking? His cheap, wrinkled shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows—like they are now—and those lean forearms braced up on the table, caging in the neatly set-out notes scrawled up in his ledger, like they have mind to escape. And he’s—beautiful. He’s tall. Out-of-place sort of tall, where he has this bend to his neck, sometimes, as to not draw attention to himself. Other times, though, he stands to full height, regal, elegant, authoritative, like when he comes out o’ the box.

He sees into people. He feels it all so deeply.

And he’s looking at me, seeing into me, deeply. His eyes are brittle like china pieced back together with store-bought glue. The low light casts long shadows down his neck and harsh face.

“Come here to me, Rust,” I say to him, beckoning him over with a tilt of my head. To my surprise, he does. He does immediately, peeling himself off the counter, eyes drifting somewhere just behind me as if disinterested.

He stubs his cigarette out on an old plate, abandons it there officially, before stepping slowly towards me, feet never dragging, dodging my searching eyes like the plague.

Hmm. Maybe I made a good argument “for” to his “against”. Or maybe he was never “against” to begin with. I’ll watch him carefully tomorrow and see if there was anything I missed.

I reach up and touch his face gently. I used to do this with my husband before he passed, and he’d close his eyes and whisper my name and lean into the touch, tender, loving – my fingers shake slightly with the memory. Rust Cohle does none of that, because he is nothing like my husband. He’s perfectly rigid against my fingertips; his stare flits briefly up right into my soul, his mouth pressed in a hard line. Everything about him is so sharp. The ridge of his cheekbones, the defiant slant of his nose. The lean muscle of his arms and shoulders, slightly sinewy just beneath the skin.

But when I brush my thumbs up along his eyebrows, easing the sharp line between them, he sighs and closes his eyes, neck bowing down, still as stiff as before, just—different. A small gap, an opening, to that locked room of his upstairs.

“Rust,” I whisper, nose brushing his. He hums again, lowly, eyes shut. “What do you think of us havin’ sex?”

“Sex,“ he replies softly, “is the illusion of connection constituted by the release of a mess of happy hormones, simply by touching all the right places—and nothin’ more.”

I hum and watch the look on his face grow brittle as our breaths mingle closely. God, he’s so near to me that my head swings in a bout of lightheadedness, heady, vision centring in on him and only him, such that I wouldn’t know if this place was burning down all around, even if the flames started eating us alive.

“I think you’re full o’ shit, Rusty. Know how I know that?”

He sighs shakily. “How?” It’s like the word is dragged right from the pit of his chest, barely a breath to show for the effort of it.

“I can feel you against my leg.”

He swallows thickly, but he does not blush, and he does not open his eyes. And, contrary to what he might seem, Rust is not cold like stone. When my fingers grow more confident, when they trace and drag lightly along the line of his cheeks, he is warm there. His pulse, when I find it, exists and is hot and slightly erratic, a fact that leaves my mouth dry and open. I can feel the inflexion of his throat as he swallows again, the shift of the skin and the rhythm of his heartbeat, the gentle influence of his breathing.

I wait for him to say something, but he doesn’t. So, I ask him, “Can I kiss you?” ever so gently.

Softer still, he replies, “Yes,” with that slight Southern whistle of his, barely moving.

Give me strength. Give me strength.

That look on his face is filling me with a delicious, vibrating power. As I stretch my neck up to brush a kiss against the corner of his mouth, my eyes are open and watching him, charting him: Rust breathes strongly out of his nose, eyes still determinedly shut, like he’s absent and meditating. He is not tough as stone – parts of him are soft. He barely returns the kiss, but, as far as my brain processes, his lips are soft. Hesitant, maybe.

Then, these soft lips part, and he is sucking in a hot, shuddering breath, capturing me in a deep kiss, as if to breathe all of me in, a strong hand threading through my hair. It hurts a little at first – a small noise escapes my throat at the slight shoots of pain tugging at the roots – but Rust doesn’t seem to notice. Not at first. No, he’s still breathing me in. His lips are dry, rough, a push and tug, a twist, and he’s kissing like a punch, knocking the breath right out of my lungs. Whatever oxygen I manage to hold onto is sucked out of me promptly.

I whine, my body going all slack and tired as he smooths the hair out of my face, palms dragging clean back across my cheeks. Those hands cradle the back of my head, making it impossible to keep my eyes open.

Content, I sigh, eyes succumbing to the sensation and falling shut. The last thing I see is his own eyes slipping open to look at my face.

Boy, he’s a good kisser. Must be that lizard brain he has such a distaste for.

My fingers blindly reach and fumble at his belt, hooking into the waist, pulling him flush against me. Rust must forget what he’s doing for a moment, and he pauses where he is, in limbo, eyes far away. When I begin to unthread his belt from its quietly clinking buckle, he goes stiff again, blinks rapidly before perceiving me.

Holy shit, he’s gorgeous.

His hands hover over my shoulders, not quite committed to the contact.

He’s seeing me—really seeing me—as I unzip his trousers and spit crudely into my palm and curl around the length of him, warm, tight. I begin to understand the gentle throb and strain he feels, a delightful thrill running rapid all through my insides. He feels deliciously alive.

But then he turns his head away, neck straining up, breath choked back in his throat. His hands come away, raised, it looks like, as if trying to seem non-confrontational, trying to come away unscathed from a bad situation.

My stomach burns with desire. “Let yourself like it, Rust,” I mumble against his cheek. “Are you here with me?”

I can feel him swallow.

“Yes,” he responds. I guide his face to me, stroking his cock confidently once, twice, as encouragement, maybe. Temptation. Whatever you want to call it. My mouth waters, my head goes airy, when I feel his sex twitch in my embrace.

“Kiss me again, then.”

And he does. Brows furrowed as if in pain, he does, with the tip of his nose dragging and pressing into my cheek. He kisses me sweetly once, then again, and then pants down hotly into my mouth, hovering there before sliding his tongue deep inside, close, smooth.

I let myself love it. I let myself let go with every kiss he blesses me with, growing looser and easier and lighter each second.

The weight of him in my hand inspires a beautiful urge to have him lay down and let me feel every part of his body. Even though his hips stutter, he doesn’t buck up into my fist, doesn’t whine, doesn’t moan, doesn’t curse. Not yet. He just breathes and breathes, and kisses me and kisses me, like it’s all he was set on Earth to do. All he’s allowing himself to do.

Desperate, perhaps, my thighs are pressed against his, feeling unnaturally weak and warm. The throb between my legs coincides with my heart rushing in my ears, a steady ache, impatient. Part of me wants to drag this out as long as possible, because what if this never happens again?—and another part wants to push him inside me already, have him fill me up, fuck me stupid.

This thought stuffs me up to the brim, like cotton punched down into a pillowcase. I whine shallowly and try to slot his thigh between my own.

A switch in his brain must flick on.

It’s like he’s inside my head, like he’s in on my desperation, like he can see and feel every sinful image and thought circulating my alighted brain. He knows it all so well, such that he uses his hips to press us firmly against the counter, spreads my legs with the nudge of his foot between mine, and immediately pushes the rough pads of his fingers right where I need it, through the fabric of my skirt, letting me grind myself against him, hips and all. He circles there generously. I can feel my need dripping from me. He can too, no doubt.

I sigh, he breathes. I gasp, he breathes. My eyes flutter open and shut, but he looks on, eyes half-lidded but stare immovable.

He then lifts his knee to place against my cunt.

“That feels good, don’t it?” he says gently, rocking me over his knee up and down, back and forth, fingers digging into the soft skin of my hips.

My legs widen. When I gasp out weakly, he raises his brow and scans my face, like he had predicted the shaky, wordless nod that I offer to him too late in return.

“Did you want it like this, girl?” His voice is low, intimate, a hit of something just shy of addictive. “Or did you want somethin’ else, too?”

He kisses the hollow of my neck.

His other hand grips at my ass, up my skirt, kneading the flesh there, manipulating it, and his fingers ghost my slit, spreading me around his knee. He fucks up into my hand. I slide my fingers through his hair, which is soft and warm like butter.

Fuck him. Fuck him and his stupid, pretty curls. I’ve proved my point: regardless of whatever act he may try to put on afterwards, we’ll both know that Rust isn’t as numb as he wants to be, that I made him feel good, that I made him want me, and that he’s hot-blooded and thrumming with life. I can feel how alive he is . I hope he thinks of this again some time, whether by himself or surrounded by people. I hope it drives him a bit mad, remembering this.

A hot, sharp breath fans out across my cheek, his mouth slotting back over mine, open, daring me.

I rut against his knee, my fingers teasing the wet head of his cock. I look down between us, at my hand on him, with half a mind to drop onto my knees and make him cum down my throat.

Rust lets out a grunt and swallows hard again.

Then, he gently grabs my wrist and pulls my hand out of his pants, leaving me dazed and confused. With nimble fingers, he unzips my skirt, pushing it over my hips and dragging his hands over my bare skin. He asks me, “You want the bed?”

I step out of the pool of fabric around my feet, slide my shoes off. “‘s not a bed.”

I slide my fingers beneath his sweaty, white undershirt, feeling the taut muscle there, feeling the steady breaths that contradict his racing pulse. He holds my eyes, dipping slightly when I dip, tilting when I tilt. “Seems like one to me.”

How unlike him.

A smile spreads over my face, and his pupils blow wide, dark, imploring. “You wait ‘n’ see what happens when the dust-mites turn up.”

His eyes on me alone are enough to leave me breathless, chest caving in on itself. Of course, when he kisses me softly, it only makes things worse – his long fingers curl around the base of my throat, watching me watching him, and his other hand slides up under the hem of my blouse, palm spread over my bellybutton.

I sigh, try not to squirm.

“You want the bed?” he repeats, heavy, rough. I bite back a needy whine that sits at the back of my mouth. His fingertips press down slightly into my pulse, tightening my breathing.

I nod. “Yeah.”

Think of all the times I’ve sulked over his lack of eye contact with me. Was I annoying? Uninteresting? That, obviously, was an immature way of looking at things, definitely not improved by my distinct femininity undergoing some kind of unspoken disapproval by most I met on the job. This is the most present he has ever been in a moment with me around.

As he pulls himself away, steps back, his eyes are darting over my face, less like he’s judging me and more like he’s trying to find and memorise every detail. I do that, sometimes: if I pay well enough attention, it feels like I’m re-living the moment when remembering.

His hands slot sensibly into his pockets as if his cock isn’t blushing and poking out of his fly right now, belt undone, hanging low about his narrow hips.

Legs don’t fail me now. I slink out of the glowing kitchen and carry on to where the mattress lies in a dim, blue corner, the strange crucifix watching over, a long shadow cast over the empty wall upon which it hangs. He follows shortly behind me, his warmth radiating out onto my back.

I pause and look out onto the darkness revealed behind the half-open slats of the floor-to-ceiling blinds that shield the room from the window to the outside world.

Rust’s presence is intoxicating behind me. He smells like cigarette smoke, still, enticing. I’m trying to quit, but he makes it damn hard. His nose is just shy of my hair, his body so close to enveloping me into him – the prospect of it makes me shiver in delight. I must hallucinate his fingertips along my spine.

I unbutton my blouse with slow fingers, then slide it off and undo my bra.

His breathing is level and grounding by my ear as he comes close, sliding his strong, wide hand up my stomach, along my ribs, and cups under my soft breast. He rubs over my nipple in gentle circles before squeezing over me warmly. He then comes around to pinch the creamy tissue gentle between his fingers and thumb, closing his hot mouth over, drawing along his feverish tongue. I sigh, stroke his hair, let him press soft pecks and kisses to the curve of the soft flesh and to my sternum.

My fingers, cupped around the nape of his neck, dip under the collar, cool. This touch, for some reason, causes him to make some sort of breathless, pathetic noise against me. His eyes are half-shut.

“Anything else philosophical y’wanna get out before we fuck?” I quip smartly (though, not feeling so smart altogether), hand placed innocently on his hip.

He lifts his head, removes his hands from my body – he looks so tragically beautiful in this light. “You want me inside you?” he asks genuinely, seemingly aloof to the fact I’m naked in front of him, open and wanton and pressing my thighs together, his eyes never drifting from mine.

“What do you want, Rust?” I whisper.

He seems to really think about it – he’s always thinking. Briefly, his eyes flit down to my mouth. Then, he looks away, scratches at his forehead.

After a moment longer, he swallows thickly and tips his head down over to the bed, tells me, “Lie down on the mattress,” in a gentle, decisive tone. He’s so soft-spoken – it makes my toes curl.

I do as told, transfixed by the dark shadow in his eyes, and sink down to sit and then recline back on his coarse mattress, coarse bedsheets, with my weight on my forearms and chin tilted up towards him. He watches me, tucking his thick cock back into his underwear.

Still fully dressed in his work attire, he takes a step forward, looming over me, powerful, assertive. Saliva pools in my mouth—again—as I play with the thought of him sitting heavy on my tongue with his stomach tight, shaking, hands in my hair, fucking down my throat. I would let him. Hell, I’d probably let him do anything he wanted to me at this point.

Does he know that? Maybe. I don’t know.

As he reaches his hand out too smooth the hair out of my face, I try to figure it out, but I can’t – he seems too wrapped up in his own desire to be thinking anything at the moment. I feel a flicker of satisfaction jump up in the pit of my stomach. Or maybe that’s something else.

“Lie back, girl,” he tells me.

My cunt flexes.

I thump onto my back, breathless. “Take off your shirt, Rust.”

Without replying, he sinks down to his knees in front of me, my thighs. Instinctively, I prop myself up and watch him unbutton that wrinkled shirt all the way down, shrug it over his broad shoulders. I could fuck myself silly just over the thought of those shoulders, I remark inwardly. He tugs the wifebeater over his head, lean muscles catching the low light, strong, study, solid, and tosses the thing to the side thoughtlessly. My hands reach out to touch him, to feel him and know him. When my fingers press into his skin, glide up his neck and down over his chest, he sighs deeply. He then carefully removes my hands, urging me to sprawl down under him.

“Said lie back, didn’t I?”

Rust doesn’t say another word before placing his large hands on my knees and easing them apart, lowering himself to press pecks and slow, open-mouthed kisses to my thighs, closer, closer, stroking my sensitive skin gently. I almost flinch at his every touch, like it burns. His face is awful serious, like he’s concentrating. I wriggle in anticipation, eager.

“Rust,” I whisper purposelessly. He looks up, hums, searches my face for anything the matter.

I watch on desperately, on the brink of feral distress. A sob clogs my throat as he kisses my fluttering stomach, ducking his head down and curling his forearms, his hands, around my thighs. The dark stamp of his bone-bird tattoo curls over his arm. I realise he is waiting for my attention to return to him, his eyes patient but glazed over with something cardinal. Hungry.

“Can—?”

“Yes.”

He hums. And then he breathes hotly over my underwear before pressing his nose right there into the damp fabric, inhaling my scent there. I whimper at the pressure he applies with the strong bridge of his nose, at the wetness of his open mouth against me. He breathes heavily into me, groaning slightly beneath it all – I can’t tell past the thrumming of my heart in my ears.

“Rust,” I whisper again, my shoulder straining with the task of keeping me up and looking down at the sight of his sweet head buried between my glistening thighs.

“Lie back.”

He kisses me through my underwear, dutifully kneading the flesh of my hips, my inner thighs.

I thump back against the mattress, helpless, keening into his touch as this grey man roughly tugs my underwear down, down, all the way down, until they’re clean off my body, long gone, and then returns his nose to the cleft of my pussy, unseaming me with his tongue, opening me up, breathing me in. It’s enough to draw a shallow, hoarse cry from me. He doesn’t say anything, and I can’t say anything, biting down on my white knuckles.

Rust licks warm over my clit, sucking gently on the bud of nerves (then not so gently), before sliding down, down through my very centre.

Whining breathily, the twist in my stomach tightens and spasms as he presses my hips and thighs right down against the mattress, slow, strong, giving me time to notice it, realise it, give into it, deny the natural instinct to curl my limbs tight all over his face, his neck, his mouth.

Holy fuck. Rust Cohle has his face buried between my legs right now. I have Rust Cohle’s tongue pushing deep into my cunt – he sighs softly, a sound with its own powerful gravity a black hole to envelop me in, and grinds his hips against the edge of the mattress for a split second, just once. My mind pulses with the thought of making him cum. I wonder if he feels the same hunger.

Then, he’s sinking his long, elegant fingers into me, one, then two, and just the knowledge that those fingers belong to him makes my thighs quiver and shake, makes me sigh again. Thick, confident, they curl inside, slow like an experiment, right up to the knuckle. When he taps up against me, when I squeal and crimp up into his hold, he returns himself to mouth dutifully over my clit. My hand threads itself into his hair, holding him steady – I offer a breathless moan when his grip across my hips loosen, an invitation to begin rolling myself up over his pretty face. He pulls his fingers out of me, wet and hot, and encourages my thighs upon his beautiful shoulders, clinging onto them urgently. He shudders a little, I think, when I lock them firmly around his head and grind myself shamelessly against his mouth, his nose. He moves his jaw, his face, in tandem.

I cum after a while like that, because how can I not? The searing buzz reaches a roiling static.

I go loose, moaning softly, melted down flat, and stroke fuzzy fingers through Rust’s pretty hair as he sucks my clit still, as he inhales again and sighs again, reduced to something primitive and needy.

Thick, my heartbeat throbs and echoes like a drum in my skull, threatening. I feel so full that I could mistake the beat of pleasure for nausea pressing in my throat. It was silly to think that this could all be satisfied just from one time. My eyes closed, Rust’s light touch over my abdomen, up to my throat, is acute and heightened, like a million tiny, individual sparks. His fingers fumble over my jaw, then press lightly over my pulse.

He retreats just as I’m playing with the hairs at the nape of his neck, coming to stand to full height above me, unthreading his belt from his trousers with quiet, precise hands. I press my shaking thighs together, watching him breathe strongly through his nose, trying to remain somewhat respectable in the presence of the darkening look in his eyes that is locked down on my body.

He pauses, wipes some shine from his nose. Before he can continue with whatever, I find myself sitting up on my knees, grabbing his hips hard enough to bruise all pretty and purple, shoving the trousers down to his knees, and palming him through his boxers.

We don’t have to say anything. He just watches me passively, pushing my hair back again, behind my ears, my shoulders, rolling my earlobe softly between his fingertips.

I remove his underwear, take him into my mouth, thick and long and wanting; he sighs, holds my head with two steady hands.

When was the last time someone helped him like this? I honestly couldn’t have told you, even given a loose theory, prior to this moment: Rust is simultaneously the hottest and most non-sexual being I’ve ever come across in my life. He just happens to be beautiful; he just happens to inspire these sort of feelings choking up inside me. No overarching intention that he’ll ever admit to, no vanity, no preening. So strict to himself, so tight, like a piston, something that fights and pushes and hurts.

So, as I hold him firmly and suck at the head of his blushing cock, kissing him, I watch his face, savour the tart taste of him, and press my thighs together: he’s becoming warmer, looser.

Still, as much as I want him, I know he’s wanted me. However vague he tells it, he’s wanted me. Good Lord, he looks even more stressed now, somehow, than when we had just been talkin’. Hands gently cradling my skull, he tilts his head away, watches the cross on the wall, as he succumbs to it, maybe, and begins to gently, languidly fuck my face. I tuck a hand between my thighs, and I love him, my other with the fingers digging into his hip, his ass. If I’m lucky, maybe it’ll leave some sort of mark, just to remind him I was here, so that, when he’s being all indifferent again, with his eyes lowered to the floor as he shares a report with me at my prim, little desk, we’ll both know that we were once in this room together, here like this.

Rust breathes and breathes, almost mechanically, and slides his cock further into my mouth. The weight of him in there drives me half-insane. If I could consume him, envelop him, and we could be one and the same, I’d readily allow it. When he sinks deeper still down my throat, I sigh around him, rub myself the way I like.

His eyes are determinedly shut, like some part of him refuses to be here.

Before I can make him cum, he shakes his head and tugs my hair back a little bit, mumbling for me to stop and sit away.

For all his mouthiness just a half hour ago, would you look at him now?—Rust Cohle, plundered by the human sensation of speechlessness. I’ve never seen him out of his element before. When he comes down and cages me with his body, hot skin flush against hot skin, I don’t mean that in a bad sense. Shit, he’s far from it. But there’s nothing to say. Nothing of note, nothing to pick apart, no deeper meaning, no theory. Just an itch that has to be scratched. He wants, he is, and it’s heaven to see.

In the dark, he sinks in to me as he is, eliciting from me a soft moan that curls over the shell of his ear. I have to bite down on his shoulder when comes the push, the stretch, the sink, the comfort of him inside. I curl my legs around his waist and grab at his ass, willing him deeper still. He shudders silently over me, thick ripples of pleasure rolling through his lean body.

I curse, but I’m sure it barely registers with him.

His head lifts and his eyes clamp shut as he braces an arm against the wall, lifting one of my legs up over his hip and fucking into me deeper, slipping out and in, and again, and again. I know what I’d see if I took a look down, saw his cock pumping into me, but I can hardly do anything but buck my hips up to meet his effort, my stomach stuttering with that building pressure, hands gripping desperately around his neck and shoulders.

Though, I’m not even sure it is effort that’s driving him.

I mumble into his shoulder, dumb, focussing on the feel and press of him in my belly. I doubt he’s really aware of anything more than the sensation of it, evident from the small grunt that passes his lips as he fucks deep in me. His stomach presses heavier down onto mine, crushing a delicious pressure there, teasing out a long, breathy whimper. He snakes an arm around my hips, pushes his free hand to the back of my knee, tilting my legs back a little more, and then pulls me wider. Tight, he moves me how he wants me, my flesh dipping and carving, fucking himself raw with me, with my hot cunt. His mouth moves over mine, not kissing me, not speaking, just there, present, hot, panting. He doesn’t open his eyes, so I close mine, and I breathe.

Rust stutters and cums and spills over into me with a grunt. He pants sharply, harshly, rhythmically into my mouth, tense again, and then he collapses over my body, and he lays there. I lay there too, burning on the far inside.

I think he only really remembers I’m there when I shift under him.

His eyelashes brush against my cheek. “Sorry,” he murmurs, but the sound of his voice scrapes directly against my brain with the shock of a flesh-wound.

I assume he’s referring to the thick cum that I can feel leaking out of me now. He shifts his hips, adjusting himself in the grip of my cunt. My fingers wrap around his arms, squeeze as I feel him easing out.

“It’s okay,” I reply.

He glances down between us and guides himself out with a lewd noise, swallowing hard. I shiver.

Quiet, sedated, he shrugs his trousers, his underwear, off of his ankles, slipping the bedsheet over both our naked selves. His hand spreads and flattens warm over my abdomen, feeling the gentle swell and sink of the breaths I take and release.

#true detective #rust cohle #marty hart #rust cohle x reader #rust cohle x reader smut #okay cool this is a bit niche hope you liked it #this show made me question my life's purpose #the first season at least #thanks matthew mcconaughey #anybody else here like Fiona apple or what #the idler wheel TD

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extasiswings · 1 year ago

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Okay, SO! In the category of "I think it's possible that Eddie has a brain tumor/is sick in some way":

Eddie is acting weird. Eddie has been acting weird from the beginning of the season, and I know there has been discourse about "it's just that we haven't seen him so happy before" but I respectfully submit that multiple things can be true at the same time. Eddie can be happy AND it can be out of character for him to impulsively drop everything to take a helicopter ride with his new friend he met two seconds ago to see a fight in Vegas (the last time we saw Eddie be truly impulsive I'd argue was S3, buying a truck while in the midst of a serious crisis). Eddie can be happy AND it can be out of character for him to ask his girlfriend of five minutes to move in (and I recognize that we were given an explanation from Eddie in the episode, but Eddie is an unreliable narrator and his explanation also doesn't totally square with what we've seen previously - him rushing introducing her to Christopher tracks, him jumping into moving her into his house without knowing basic information about her life does not).

Then there are the Eddie-coded calls. The guy with the alien hand who is all about rigid self control and being the master of yourself - his body turning against him not because the control failed but because of a blood clot in his brain. And now the guy with encephalitis (the same condition that ultimately caused Chim to hallucinate dead people), who has amnesia and has forgotten the marriage that ended in divorce but recalls the happy time before that when his wife was just his fiancee, the guy who was experiencing chest pains that he thought was a heart attack only for Chim to say he was having a panic attack. They had Eddie be so open about his own experiences with panic attacks and coping mechanisms in 7x01 for a reason - he's genuinely doing better with his own mental health and isn't ashamed or afraid of talking about his mental health struggles. But looking at these two calls, the underlying reason for the call (alien hand, amnesiac/presumed stalker in vent) theoretically could have had mental health explanations, but instead both resulted from physical ailments in the brain. [Tangent: I also think there's something really interesting in the potential callback to S5 and the way Eddie and Maddie were sort of mirrors - Eddie with a seemingly physical problem that was caused by a mental health issue, Maddie with a seemingly mental health issue that turned out to at least in part be the result of a physical problem]

Then there is whatever they're doing with ghosts. Shannon's ghost has lingered over the narrative and was actively put on screen in 7x01. For Chim in 7x06, the ghosts were hallucinations because there was something wrong with his brain. For Bobby, I'm guessing his arc with the burn unit nurse from his past will be more of a metaphorical haunting, bringing up any number of old ghosts (but I'm also going to guess his wife will be one). For Eddie...unclear. Ryan was filming with Devin (ostensibly for 7x09 but if they're doing anything with Shanon's ghost I'd be shocked if it wasn't introduced in 7x07, "Ghost of a Second Chance"), but she didn't exactly look like Shannon. Is she supposed to be Shannon? A dream or hallucination of a different or older her? Is she a real woman who just happens to look like her? If Eddie is hallucinating, then something is clearly very wrong. If it's a random woman and he's, idk, pursuing her in some way because he's drawn to her/the fact that she looks like his dead wife, that's still another point in the "Eddie is acting weird" column (because Eddie is a bad boyfriend and wasn't the greatest husband, but what he has never been is a cheater, even when he and Shannon were separated).

And then of course there's the will of it all. The will that Buck and Eddie haven't talked about since the shooting. Now, it's no secret I love the potential of a trapped dads experience circling back to the will, but I also think there is an argument to be made for a callback to "You're the guy who likes to fix things, maybe this isn't something you can fix." Because usually, when Eddie is in danger, Buck can do something about it, take some actionable step even if a futile one - he can dig through mud, he can drag Eddie's body out of the line of fire and into an ambulance and keep him alive. And for someone who, I would guess, still thinks of himself and the will as a backup plan/contingency, who if put in a trapped dads situation may not be able to stop himself from trying to save Eddie or, if necessary, sacrificing himself to do so, because in his mind, Eddie is Christopher's dad/who Christopher needs most, it is deeply compelling to imagine what happens if Eddie is in danger from something Buck can't fix, can't fight, can't save him from. And Eddie being sick in some capacity does that.

Anyway...I just think it would be Neat.

#chapel for ts #eddie diaz #911 spoilers #911 speculation

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vikkirosko · 5 months ago

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🚬 Tim Masky x Reader Oneshot Ghosts of the past 💊

You were usually pretty quiet. So quiet that Tim forgot about your existence.

It didn't matter if both of you were at the mansion or during assignments, you always remained quiet, as if immersed in yourself, but as long as you did what was wanted of you, he was fine with it. You didn't bother him, you didn't annoy him, which meant he could forget about you until you caught his eye again.

But sometimes there were days like today. The days when you could talk softly, as if to yourself. That's what everyone thought, but today Tim heard you talking louder than usual. You were in the mansion, early in the morning he woke up and wanted to drink water when he heard sounds from the kitchen. When he looked in there, he saw you making breakfast and chatting cheerfully with someone. But you were the only one in the kitchen.

You definitely didn't notice that he was standing in the doorway and watching you, continuing to cook for several people and talk.

"Oh, sure, then I'll make pancakes for you next time, I'm not sure if I'll make them like my mom's, but I think they'll be delicious"

It's the first time Tim has ever heard you talk so cheerfully to someone, and it's the first time he's ever seen you smile. It was obvious that you were seeing someone, but it was a good thing that they weren't frightening hallucinations. Tim didn't want to hear you screaming in terror because of the illusions your own mind was showing you.

He took another look at the three plates that you had prepared and came to the conclusion that you saw two people, someone who was dear to you. Perhaps sibling? He didn't know. You've never talked about your past, and he's never asked you about it. He only remembered how his boss brought you to the mansion, covered in someone else's blood, with a dazed look and a bag of things that you brought with you. He didn't know what exactly was there. Perhaps Toby, whom you seemed to have become friends with, knew this. Maybe you saw him as a brother and that's why you treated him so warmly, but he never talked about it.

"Hmm? Oh, don't worry about me. This place, of course, doesn't look like the house where we lived, but it's nice here. There's a forest here too, but now I have neighbors, so I won't be lonely, I'm more worried about you"

You kept talking to your hallucinations, and Tim kept watching. He wouldn't say it out loud, but he was curious to know what was going on in your head. He was curious to know who you missed so much that your mind was ready to create their illusions just to numb your pain.

You would have continued to talk further, but when you turned around, you saw him and the smile on your lips became uncertain.

"Oh, Masky, good morning… I'm sorry, did I wake you up?.."

"No"

He was looking at you intently, and you didn't know what to do in this situation. You felt awkward and it was obvious. You hurried to put the cooked breakfast on the plates.

"Let me make you breakfast too…"

You wanted to say something else, but you froze, as if only seeing that there was no one next to you.

Your gaze became darker and sadder again, and then you slightly pushed one of the plates towards him.

"Here, you can eat it if you want…"

"Are they gone?"

“no… They're still here… I just completely forgot that it's not really like that…"

Masky was surprised that you were actually aware that you were hallucinating, but it would seem that you weren't feeling very anxious about it.

You looked up at him and smiled wistfully.

"Every time I see them, they look the same as the last time I saw them, when they were no longer alive… But talking to them like that, even knowing it's not real, is better than being in pain… It's just that sometimes I forget that they're not really here…"

You sat down on a chair with your head down. Tim watched you for a few seconds, then pushed another plate towards you.

"Eat, and someone will eat the third portion"

He watched you eat, realizing that your mind was in chaos. Perhaps you needed someone who would listen to your story, help you move on with your life, or deal with your pain in a different way. Masky wasn't sure if he could be someone who understood your pain, he wasn't sure if he could support you the way you needed to, but he could at least try to talk to you, and then if he couldn't to help you, he could have sent you to someone who lived in the mansion, who could have treated your grief with more understanding. But first, he wanted to try to help himself.

#creepypasta oneshots #creepypasta #creepypasta x reader #marble hornets oneshots #marble hornets x reader #marble hornets #tim masky #Tim Masky x Reader #tim wright #Tim Wright x Reader

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crushedsweets · 2 years ago

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Would you ever consider including nurse ann in more of your art/ stories? She's one of my favorite characters and I think your design for her is amazing lmao- I'd also sort of like to know what her relationship with the others would be like

yes. actually. i would love to . ok i have some vague ideas for how shed fit into the lore so thatll be under the cut !! i also start rambling about lulus lore too cuz i decided theyre friends.

ok so, again, my au is based around slenders forest being like... some sort of magnet for the paranormal. slenderman wants to keep all of these cryptids within the forest.

since its in a fictionalized forest in tuscaloosa, where marble hornets was filmed, i decided to move the abanonded hospital they visited up north of the tuscaloosa lake. she roams there.

SOOOOO nurse ann is just... a demon. slenders forest is sort of like limbo for a lot of the cryptids and kinda puts them in like.. a long daze and loops unless they're consistently leaving or being grounded by humans.

i dont EXACTLY know why/how she's in that specfic hospital, especially since i dont believe she has an official origin? maybe when the hospital shut down, she was let go and wasn't transferred to work in a new hospital, so she lost her shit and preformed some crazy rituals that ended up making her an undead nurse ? now she's forever roaming the hospital. or maybe she was killing patients when she was a human and kept doing weird demon shit with their bodies and the operator/zalgo fed off of her bad vibes. LOL IDK.

now about lulu cuz i drew her too.

i used to be sooo fond of lulu. and i originally said she was just going to be another ghost roaming the forest pointlessly, mourning everything and being incapable of interacting with humans, BUUUUUT. she is 24 and NOT A GHOST?!?!??!?! IDK WHY ALL THIS TIME I THOUGHT SHE WAS JUST A GHOST WHO AGES CUZ YK HOW CHIBIWORKS STUFF WAS BACK THEN LOL... i def am tired of little kids being tortured and all these children ghosts tho so im kinda glad to have smth new to write. anyway. so im thinking lulus just another little demon thing... i'm thinking her story goes.

she was in strict private schools all of k-12, and went to uni on her own in tuscaloosa. she wanted to branch out, have a little rebelious phase, make friends, etc. tried to join a co-ed frat. she experienced an absolutely horrific hazing when she was like 19, the frat fully believed they killed her by accident and in their panic, tried to bury her in slenders forest, and some demonic entity in the forest infected her before she was buried fully. she ends up climbing out of her shallow grave, never having died. perhaps the operator did it, perhaps zalgo like in her og lore ? PERHAPS ANN CUZ SHES A DEMON HERSELF?

anywaaayyyyy :3 l think theyd be cute friends. they just look really cute together and i could see good chemistry so i totally would love to expand on them and make them friends. maybe expand more on the type of species they are, what kind of powers they have(esp if i make ann the demon who infects lulu).

BUUUUT ALSO this made me realize i should totally look into adding zalgo to my lore. cuz it doesnt make sense for the operator to make anyone a demon, thats not really what he does.... and i dont want him to do that i just dont like the vibes. so mmm yes.

anyway in terms of relationships..

lulu and her are cool good besties beautiful they would take selfies and do tiktok dances together.

masky and hoody are incredibly indifferent to her, because they dont have to worry/visit her often. she stays in the hospital thats in the forest, and thats exactly where slenderman wants her, so theyre content. theyre kinda grateful she keeps lulu in the hospital too, cuz lulu actually freaks them out bc she'll be jumping at them and shit talking about their eyes.

tobys EXTREMELY scared of ghosts (bc of his hallucinations of his sisters ghost . . ). he eventually gets over it(kinda?) with sally, but he keeps accusing ann and lulu and the sort of being ghosts cuz they just.. kinda pop in and out. at least jack has to walk into the room to show up. so he doesnt like them

mmm jack wouldnt like her IF he knows that she kinda turned herself into a demon through like, a ritual or smth. he'd be beyond pissed to know someone CHOSE to be what he is. if he doesnt know, he doesnt care for her. he kinda jokes about 'well why dont YOU be their medic' and shes like 'dont fuckin wanna be'.

jane and liu and kate prob dont know her... kate might but wouldnt care.

jeff would prob think shes hot or some bullshit and nina would be beyond pissed. at first ninas like AHHH SHES SO COOL cuz shes a fangirl at heart, but the second she hears a single 'goddamn' from jeff shes livid.

ben prob wouldnt care much for her... hes so uninterested in demons idk why i just feel like he doesnt care.

clockwork would LOVE HER. she'd think she's so fucking cool. she'd try talking to her all the time but ann prob wouldnt be interested in clocky at all...

ofc the proxies purposefully come into contact with the paranormal the most because thats their job, so i wrote the most for them, but that doesn't mean theyre the closest or anything.

ok thank u anon you did smth to my brain that benefitted my mental health cuz i love writing this shit for the creeps thank u sm .

#asks #creeped #hcs #sweetart #creepypasta #nurse ann #lulu creepypasta #creepypasta art #creepypasta fanart #creepypasta headcanons #ticci toby #masky #tim wright #aaahhhgghg #i love doing these so much seriously #heals me #toby rogers #Lucille-Tiffany Greatfeild

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baked-potatoes-rule · 5 months ago

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I really want to eventually find out who/what possessed Lottie during the séance.

Money's on the ghost of a croissant munching, pipe smoking, French gentleman.

That or the Canadian wendigo spirit.

Or well...cabin guy who for some reason lived alone in the middle of nowhere. Or did he?

Her schizophrenia aside... people don't just start talking in other languages on the spot.

And I doubt they all hallucinated the same thing at the same time...even if they're on top of a resource mineshaft that's making them go cuckoo.

When Jackie was freezing to death and saw the man standing behind the YJ, he said something along the lines of "come join us"? I don't exactly remember. Who is "us"?. Another plane crash caused by some kind of anomaly in the atmosphere and it's passengers who didn't make it? Will they find more skeletons,buried somewhere? Perhaps the bunker Lottie saw in her vision? Did cabin guy kill his family and then offed himself?

The antler theme, the symbol carved all over the place, the visions and signs...they all point out towards external forces being present.

Rational explanations : starvation + Lottie's encouragement + possible effects of the mine poison.

Supernatural : they happened to crash at the worst possible location

Could it be both? Hopefully.

I still don't have a rational explanation of Nat's vision of Misty at the bonfire...or Lottie saving her and her parents from the crash when she was a child.

Oh look where my late night croissant daydreaming led me...🫢

#yellowjackets #lottie matthews #shauna shipman #jackie taylor #natalie scatorccio #misty quigley #taissa turner #van palmer #travis martinez

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brain-depositary · 7 months ago

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Okay, here are Arcane spoilers for Act 2. I have thoughts on Viktor, as there's been a lot of back and forth over whether what we're seeing is really him or if he is being controlled by the hexcore/arcane. And people are missing the narrative explanations, which seem to make what happened really obvious. And the biggest sign of this is that Viktor has been hallucinating Sky the whole time. The man has clearly lost his marbles.

The show is very clear that Sky is not there physically, but she's also absolutely not there mentally, spiritually, magically, whathaveyou. Her ghost isn't in the hexcore or whatever. There's simply no way.

It's not that we know for sure there are no ghosts in the world of Arcane. It hasn't been proven one way or the other that they exist. All sorts of fantastical things exist in Arcane and maybe ghosts do, too. But we know Sky isn't one because it makes no narrative sense for her to be.

Thematically, all of Arcane has been about people handling grief and loss not just poorly, but destructively. Powder hallucinates the people she's lost as critical voices and behaves erratically and dangerously whenever they do. Both Vander and Silco twist Vi and Powder's mother's dreams of peace into more violence and oppression. Jayce can't deal with the loss of Viktor and uses the hexcore to save him which Viktor specifically told him to destroy. Caitlyn becomes a dictator after her mother's death and uses the ventilation system her mother created against the very people it was intended to help. Ambessa has gone on a rampage for her dead son who preferred bloodless subterfuge, and I have a feeling Singed's daughter would approve of all the things her father is trying to do to bring her back, had she ever had the chance to know.

But Viktor, after losing Sky and her dreams, just kind of gets her back, and fulfills them? Yeah, no, I'm calling bullshit. Viktor is not going to be the only one exempt from the Arcane pain train. This would be bad writing.

Sky isn't a ghost here. She's gone. The version of her in the hexcore is purely a product of Viktor's imagination. We don't see Sky a lot, but what little we do, she's different, much more confident. It's not her. Viktor is handling his loss badly, too, but his method of doing so is just wholesale denying that it happened. Sky isn't dead, she's right there. Her dreams aren't gone, they're perfectly within reach. It doesn't matter if he dies now because he's succeeded in his goals of helping people. The sick are healed, the hungry are fed. The commune is thriving. Everything is great.

With whatever power he gained from the hexcore, he's able to project this denial onto the real world, at least for a little while. Everything in his little bubble DOES seem great, but the cracks in the facade come early. When Salo talks to Jayce in the overflow chamber, Jayce's breath condenses, while Salo's does not, implying that he's not breathing. Also, Salo's turnover at the commune is disturbingly quick -- his original personality just does not seem to be there anymore, despite his insistence otherwise. The "no weapons" rule, while idealistic, cannot realistically be enforced -- as much as Viktor denied, reality was going to come crashing in and he was going to be unprepared for it, because he just decided he didn't have to be. Huck didn't even seem afraid at all denying a heavily armed warlord and her contingent entry without disarming first when literally his only character trait has been being cowardly. There's nothing in him anymore.

So, is Viktor being mind controlled, or is this the same Viktor we've known the whole time? Well, it's not really either. This is Viktor snapping and having a mental breakdown. This is Viktor's equivalent of Jinx's tea party at the end of season 1, except he has far more power to make it last longer, seem nicer, and drag far more people into it. Probably, the hexcore is taking advantage of Viktor's vision to build its hivemind, but the vision itself is all Viktor.

So, given all this, my prediction is: Viktor will be salvaged and revived by Singed. He will get a reality check, that Sky is really gone, that the people he healed are hollowed-out husks, that the peace he created was too fragile to last -- and he won't care, he will try to get it back by any means necessary, even if he doesn't have the arcane abilities or ability to completely deny reality that he used to have. And this will create a bitter person, similar to the character we know as the Machine Herald from League of Legends.

#arcane #Viktor arcane #arcane spoilers #arcane season 2 #well this post has one week #we will see if I'm right

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juniperhillpatient · 2 months ago

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hey mutual i was just looking through your jackietravis tag and i just want to say i CANNOT WAIT to hear your thoughts on the finale.

Oh my gosh HI, my beloved mutual!

Well, I think THIS post (not mine) does a great job of summarizing the wildness of Jackie/Travis in the finale lol :)

But seriously, let's talk about the fact that Travis is still thinking about Jackie, still imagining himself as her! THIS is one of my favorite Jackie/Travis moments. Jackie doesn't ultimately seduce Travis with her usual sweet, flirty fun ways that she tries initially at the Doomcoming dance. Instead, she gets him to kiss her by reminding him that they are doomed. The "we're just shells with nothing inside" speech is what gets him to break & kiss Jackie even though he just admitted to being in love with Natalie.

Jackie & Travis don't even necessarily have real romantic feelings for each other. They're just the arms they fall into when they're both hurt & at their lowest - Jackie after the betrayal from Shauna, Travis after what he perceives as a betrayal from Nat. They're each other's comfort, their last recourse when they're both desperate & sad & aware of how doomed they probably are.

Part of what I love about these 2 & their dynamic is that they ARE the definition of "doomed by the narrative all by yourself darling?" They are both so doomed & so tragic & there was never a happy ending for either of them in the books. Not Travis, whose death is the mystery that kicks off Natalie's story in the adult timeline. Not Jackie, who's loss defines Shauna in the adult timeline, forever haunted by her ghost. They're both such dead wives <3

THIS is a really good meta about how Jackie & Travis are both treated as the group's "property" & I think it's interesting that in this season where Travis's mind & body have been so repeatedly violated & used, he thinks of Jackie, who was iced out (literally) & left to die for the crime of speaking up for herself & not acting as "property." (It's honestly more complicated than that, but you know what I mean).

Travis has been treated like Lottie's property for a lot of the season. We know that he manipulated Lottie into thinking Akilah was the new prophet of the wilderness, not him, & that he regretted it when he saw Akilah suffering in similar ways that he did under Lottie's thumb. But let's talk about his time as Lottie's prophet: Pushed to do drugs & make himself see things by the very person who initiated it when the group sexually assaulted him & almost murdered him when he was drugged unknowingly all the way back in Doomcoming!

I know that Travis said the thing about how "his favorite thoughts are Jackie's" & made the comment about Jackie & Shauna's slumber party make-outs partially to piss Shauna off. BUT it's clearly something that was in his head. Whether you want to go with the supernatural explanation or not that's INTERESTING.

Travis also mentions having some of Javi's thoughts, which is heartbreaking. I don't know if I think it's actually something supernatural (I've always sort of leaned toward...no? probably not?) but EITHER WAY. Travis has been hallucinating the thoughts of his dead brother, & the thoughts of his dead situationship who he related to in some fucked-up ways & that's WILD.

Does he think that Jackie & Javi's thoughts come to him because he ate them? He doesn't mention Laura Lee or Crystal & SURELY given that he spent this season interacting almost exclusively with Lottie (& Akilah, but he spent a LOT of time with Lottie) Laura Lee's thoughts would've come up.

Does Travis feel connected to Jackie when he hears her thoughts? Does he remember how they shared that messed-up comfort in each other's arms when they were both at their lowest? Does he look to her ghost for comfort because she was also assaulted by Lottie that night - though not nearly as violently, she was just locked in a closet but she was still humiliated for the blood on her clothes right after losing her virginity & treated like nothing by the rest of the girls. They both lost their personhood, in a way that night. I feel like maybe Travis doesn't see it that way but he might still connect with Jackie because of that, if that makes sense.

Anyway, I'm TOTALLY rambling. I love my doomed by the narrative failed situationship girlies <3

#jackie x travis #jackietravis #travis martinez #jackie taylor #doomcoming #full circle #yellowjackets season 1 #yellowjackets season 3 #yellowjackets meta #well ish #asks #answered #mutuals #HIIII i hope my rambling is sufficient for now i'm still processing sooo much of that finale omg #yellowjackets spoilers

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project-sekai-news · 1 month ago

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A Strange Blue-Twintail Ghost?!

Hello, and welcome back to Project Sekai News! I'm Hoshino Ichika, and this is our faithful journalist, Tenma Saki!

Hi everyone! Glad to finally be back after such a hiatus!

We apologize for being gone for so long. Though this is no excuse, school has become stressful lately, as we are second years. Nevertheless, we are back to report on events around Shibuya Sekai.

As for today's report, I'm sure you've all heard of Hatsune Miku, Sekai's beloved virtual idol.

I have, Ich - Hoshino-san, but what about the people that haven't? Care to share with us who she is?

Of course. She's something called a Vocaloid, developed by Crypton Future Media, and codenamed CV01. A Vocaloid, according to the Vocaloid Wiki, is "a singing voice synthesizer software product." Basically, a software that can allow users to synthesize a singing voice. Hatsune Miku is depicted as a sixteen year old girl with long blue twintails, though there is debate on what color they actually are. Some people say they're teal or green. She was released in August 2007, and since that has become the most popular, cutest girl ever, able to spread hope to all of her fans across the world...

Haha, Hoshino-san! You're getting carried away!

A-ah, sorry! Um, anyway... people have been claiming that they've seen Hatsune Miku around Shibuya Sekai, walking around as if she were a normal human being. Obviously, this isn't possible, since you can only see Miku on a screen. They report they only saw her out of the corner of their eye, and when they tried to look at her directly, she vanished.

Woah?! Are we sure they're not hallucinating?

Most of the people who saw her have never hallucinated anything before, which is strange. A first year high school student reported that she thought she saw Miku behind the corner of a building, watching her, but when she blinked, Miku disappeared, as if she were just imagining it. Multiple people reported a similar situation, actually.

But considering the amount of sightings, it's probably not her imagination, right?

No.

Is it not a cosplayer, or someone that just happens to look like Miku?

If it was a human, no human should be able to simply disappear like that.

Then is she... a ghost?!

Not exactly - she could be a hologram. Miku is a robot, after all. Though how she's appearing throughout Shibuya is a mystery. But since it's Miku and not Kagamine Le - I mean, some really creepy monster from the Backrooms - I assume we don't have anything to worry about! After all, Miku could never cause any real harm to the citizens of Shibuya Sekai.

What did Len ever do to you -

The police are trying to investigate this sudden apperance of Hatsune Miku, but so far have no luck regarding figuring out what exactly she is. We ask that for now, do not approach the Hatsune Miku hologram and report any sightings of her to the police immediately. Until we know what she is, we need to take the utmost precaution.

Even if she is your favorite idol!

U-um! Ichi - Hoshino-san, Tenma-san - is that over there - the Miku hologram?

Where?! - Azusawa, that's red hair, not blue. Oh - it's gone. Well, the vanishing part wasn't a lie...

N-no, there was blue right next to it, I think..

I saw it too...

Um, Ichi? Why do you look so scared?

...

Ok, signing off! Bye everyone! It was nice talking to you again!

Goodbye!

Kohane, turn off the camera right -

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hey, did you see Project Sekai News' report on the Hatsune Miku ghost?

Yeah.

I did! I'm glad they're back, but it was a really weird report, wasn't it? I haven't seen Miku as a hologram yet... and what happened at the end?

I rewatched the video multiple times, but I couldn't see anything wrong. We can ask Amia about it when she arrives. Maybe she'll know something.

...

Is something wrong, Yuki?

Nothing.

...Okay. I'll get to work, then. I'm almost finished with the demo...

Alright.

#project sekai news #context: mafuyu and kanade live together #pjsk #project sekai #proseka #prsk #colorful stage #pjsekai #hoshino ichika #tenma saki #azusawa kohane

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ohnoitsz1m · 1 month ago

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Sorry this is kind of gonna be all over the place but

A lot of the HL2 (campaign based) mods I've played and finished are inexplicably interested in ghosts or otherwise haunted spaces. Which is interesting for a game like HL2 that really doesn't fuck with that type of thing.

And it's not really a super overt thing, it's usually just an Easter egg but like. The frequency that I see it combined with how similarly it's presented is. Interesting to say the least. Like the most Ghost acknowledgement we get in HL2 is a sound effect that plays by the apartment blocks and I'm inclined to believe it's less of "we are hearing dead children," and more of a "hey, you should be thinking: where are the children?" Because it's a relevant plot point that there are no more children. Not that they were wiped out just that we stopped having them.

Okay with that out of the way. Ghosts in HL mods. Starting with Entropy:Zero. Obviously spoilers ahead for literally every mod I talk about.

So in Entropy:Zero after raiding a rebel camp, you can encounter a radio that, when interacted with, plays the voice of a young girl that prompts you to find her doll. This is something you can do for an achievement in the game.

As an honorable mention- he's not a ghost but the cannibal in the next chapter is presented in a way that very much leads you to believe he is until you actually meet him.

Another honorable mention: whatever the fuck is going on with Wilson.

Okay next isss Entropy Zero Uprising. EZU has two instances of "ghosts" I wanna talk about. Neither of which are actually ghosts but like. Functionally they're ghosts ok. First and most obvious is Victor's wife. She's more of a dream/hallucination but she is very much haunting the narrative, calling out to Victor, and her appearance as a fuzzy, glitchy shadow is a kind of common way these ghosts are presented in HL2 mods.

There's also. The man. Idk how to really explain this one. He's a guy who shows up sometimes in EZU and he doesn't reeeeally do anything it's likely you never noticed him. But he is some Entity and he can kill you. Is he a ghost? Maybe. For the sake of this post yes.

Aaand finally because I'm getting tired but this is not an exhaustive list ok?

Dark Interval has several instances of ghosts and weird haunting type shit. In the apartments there's a guy in the dark who disappears once you look at him, he's presented similarly to Victor's Wife in EZU. I can't remember where exactly but there's a similar effect later in the game. Some shit falls off a shelf out of nowhere when you do a task in the early game. Dark Interval just has weird shit going on in general and I love it for that. ALSO THE PATH TO ELIS????

Okay I'm done goodnight

#ramble #half life #half life mod #entropy zero #entropy zero uprising #dark interval

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ofmermaidstories · 4 months ago

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Hi mermie! I was scrolling though your yan deku posts (as one does.) and your tidbit about Deku putting bakugous partner in the basement if Bakugou ever dies was in my head the whole day so... here I am in your inbox to talk about it, months later fjfhhdhdl

I think you meant for izukus attachment to be platonic since he is doing what he thinks Bkg would have wanted or maybe even asked for!

But.... what if it morphed into something... idk more? Assuming scribbles doesn't exist here. It's dark soryyyyyyy.

It's just that the initial resentment would fade 1) bc isolation will take a toll on you 2) it's hard to keep telling yourself that Izuku the bad guy when he just sits there and takes your insults with this shaky smile(yk the one!!!!) 3) The only person who can grieve Bkg the way weeds does is Izuku.

I image one day after weeds tires herself out yelling at him she tells Izuku about her and bkg night routine. Izuku bviously asks for more, wanting to see a side of his friend he was never privy to.

It would start so slow. Sharing anecdotes about Bkg... Weeds laughing at their teenage antics, Izuku learning about the meals Kachan prepared for him on weekends, delivered on Mondays.

The relationship turns friendly, on account that they are the only ones who understand just how monumental the loss is. That neither of them can move on the way the world so clearly did.

As time progresses and they both start to see what kachan saw in the other. Besides, given how starved for human contact weeds would be, idk... they would both grow a bit touchy?? Nothing too serious at first. A hug before izuku goes out, knee to knee under the kitchen table.

After a while neither speak only about him. It's also about izukus day, the books and manga he brought for her, wether she needs anything.

And then, one day, a slip really. Maybe they're both tired, drowsy or drunk. And one of them twirls the others hair with the index. and the other looks to them at the right time. And kissing seemed like the natural thing to do.

Nothing too deep. Nothing heated. Just the slighest pressure. And it's enough to end the little world they built for themselves.

And!!!!!!! What would they do? Would Izuku try convince himself this is better? Of weeds is lonely! And Kachina entrusted her to him! Anyone else would hurt her! Besides, only he knows kacchan as wells as weeds does!!! If anyone can approximate how Kacchan would treat weeds its Izuku!

And weeds? Omg the guilt would eat her alive!!! But it's been so long since she touched anyone. And Katsuki talked so much about Izuku that he's always been part of their household in a way. And he has that same fire in his eyes Kastuki did. It's close enough. Not quite of course, it could never be but, as close as possible. Maybe she hallucinates him around the house after that. Never blaming. Never approving.... just there.

Idk.... such a twisted dynamic..... I can't help but picture them both sitting on the sofa, looking anywhere but at the other, with their hands sitting in the lap of Bakugos ghost.... reaching for the other, but unsure.

Sorry for madness I shall retire to my chambers now.

baby ur only mistake is assuming i ever thought things would stay platonic* in that AU.

i think izuku would think things were platonic, lmao, if not just intense, but obviously for weeds it would be a horror story right off the bat LMAOO. like!!! imagine you’ve just lost your boyfriend: the boyfriend who was quite literally thrown into your life, and then so violently taken from it (and it was always going to be violent, the way weeds and bakugou separate. one way or another). you feel sick, you’re grieving. waking up every day means leaving the blissful emptiness of sleep into the sickly reality that he’s gone. he’s just gone. the bed next to you is empty, the apartment is quiet. he’s not coming back. this isn’t some—work trip he’s going to stroll in through the door from, a bag thrown over his shoulder, his perfect face annoyed until he sees you. even though his shoes are still by the door, he’s never coming home again (god, you think, his shoes. you spend one evening on the floor of the entryway, curled around a pair of his more worn loafers. the leather of them is so soft—he’s had them for years, you think, as your tears drip on them, leaving shinning rivets). you can barely eat, you’re shunning noise—no tv, no music. all you can do is cry until you’re empty of it, and the rest of the time is you just sickening in bed, aching, like his absence is a physical thing, an organ (your lungs. your heart) that has been ripped from you. your whole life has changed—for the worst. it will never be the same again. and maybe—maybe his friends make it worse, you know? LOL. what can they say to you? do they even know how to begin to approach you??? none of them got to him in time. and you can’t blame them for that—some of them weren’t even there—but grief isn’t about logic, it’s about pain. and it’s scary!! it’s scary to go through it, yeah, but part of its blessing is that when you’re in the thick of it you don’t care what’s going on for anyone else outside of it. for the people on the edges of that, though? how do they approach you??? kirishima obviously does. he’s there the first night, he’s there proceeding ones, whenever he can, whenever you let him. denki, too. in some ways denki is like, better at it than kiri LMFAOOOO. they’re all heartbroken, obviously, but kirishima is just as lost as you are in some ways, maybe in more tbh, they have way more history together—teenage besties, the friends who started an agency together, riot ground now thrown in the middle of a frenzied media storm as the public wants to know what happens to the agency now. when kirishima is there, it’s because he’s just as lost and needs something to hold onto, he needs you, he needs to think you need him. with denki though—he’s there for you. but he’s there for katsuki, too. he’s there because katsuki would want him to be. denki’s not a bad cook, you know? in those early days when you’re waking up at disorientating hours—3pm, 4pm in the afternoon—it’s to the noise of denki and kirishima in the kitchen, denki whistling to himself as he makes a stirfry, or something, kirishima’s face pulled down and sad until he sees you, where you’re standing silently at the edge of the hallway, unwashed and puffy eyed. it’s denki who keeps up the chatter, denki who checks in, who cajoles you into being cared for. kirishima might hover, unsure of how to handle you, but denki is the one that makes sure you don’t slip into some grief-stricken catatonic coma.

others come and go—especially in the early days. everyone. shinsou. monoma’s there for a while, subdued, respectful for you, letting himself be ordered around by denks. yaoyorozu is there often, she organises the groceries denki’s merrily cooking through, and then a roster of pro heroes to visit, show their respect, check in on you. mina comes and goes when she can, squeezing you in a tight hug. shouto—not as often as you’d think. you’re not sure why. it’s the same for ochako, though she’s sweet when she is. iida visits, once or twice, squeezing your shoulder tight, promising that bakugou’s sacrifice will not be vain, that they will ensure his legacy, that they will protect you.

protect you from what, you don’t know. you don’t really care, either, at this point. maybe you should’ve, though, though the warnings would’ve never helped you nor the others anyway.

izuku for his part like. idk. goes AWOL lmfao. he’s devastated. the reason shouto and ochako and iida aren’t at the apartment as much as the others is because they are trying to keep him from falling apart. he’s waking up in the middle of the night, drenched with sweat, screaming for kacchan. he’s getting dark, dark circles under those big eyes. and he can’t—he can’t face you. ☹️ he’s so scared to!! he failed you, by failing kacchan. how can he go to your apartment—kacchan’s apartment, that glossy penthouse he saved years to get into—and walk through that door and look at you when kacchan can’t, anymore? how could he? how dare he? the only thing izuku can do is—idk. make the world a better place!!! save who he can!!!!! maybe it was just a violent accident that killed katsuki, something horrific and just—unblamable on anyone. maybe izuku spearheads multiple demolition of unsafe/unstable buildings, to make sure no one ever gets caught in them again. but it’s not safe enough. maybe some assholes crawl out of the woodworks, like, gloating that ground zero is gone. when they disappear no one beyond a few naive journalists question it. but maybe more people should’ve.

i think it takes a few months. maybe you’ve just reopened the store—god, your little store. 😭 you and by extension it have been through so much. and you’re still so, so sad. and like, maybe you didn’t have to return to work. maybe you had options, now, thanks to katsuki, thanks to his parents not contesting the new additions to his will. but sitting by idly was just driving you further into your grief. and maybe you still ache (you always ache) and maybe yeah it does hurt with an acute pain when you’re serving some young guy who’s excitedly buying some flowers for someone he loves, or you get an order to congratulate a couple on their baby—but you love your flowers, their cheery little faces. you trim ribbons and wrap bouquets in tissue paper and you smile, still, even on the days it feels like it’s going to wobble. even on the days you go home afterwards—to the too big, too empty apartment—and go straight to bed to cry.

kirishima pops in a lot! and then of course akane’s next door, keeping an eye on you. haru is a big kid now, not as clingy as he used to be when he was smaller, but he still zips in and out, the two of you talking silently, his hands sharp and fast with their signs. sign language is a comfort to you, in those days. you don’t have to vocalise anything, hear the scratch of your voice. sometimes kirishima comes in when haru’s there, and you have to relearn words all over again, your voice cracking with them, the look of concern on his face worse, somehow, than his instant need to pretend that everything is okay, that he can smile both your way out of this new reality.

it’s probably here though that you finally see izuku again.^ like—you knew he was avoiding you. izuku’s not subtle, lmao, and neither are his friends. they’ve all been covering for him because they love him, and in some ways you suspect they see his grief as—deeper as yours, maybe. a different beast, but one they have to take more seriously. but maybe izuku comes late one afternoon as you’re unboxing a delivery; there’s the scuff of shoes at the door, the hesitation of someone pausing and even though you know, you know it’s not katsuki, it can’t be anymore, you glance up—hope tugging you along until you see izuku’s hesitant face. the way his shoulders drop, when your face does.

(and this is why he hasn’t come sooner. this is why the last you saw of him was in the stiff black suit at katsuki’s funeral, a room between the two of you. because you know you hurt each other—just by standing in the same place and wishing things were different.)

“I’m—I’m sorry,” he stammers, and you could play pretend and say you don’t know what for—but you do know. It’s why you don’t flinch when he drops to his knees, when he touches the cool concrete floor of your shop with his forehead, his arms folded in apology. “I’m sorry,” he says again, muffled, and you think you can hear his tears.

Your heart is thundering in your chest. You have a hundred thousand different things you could say, that you want to say. Instead, after a long long moment when you finally blink and come to your senses and realise you can’t have the symbol of peace bowing to you on the floor of your shop, grovelling, that you move to him, silent, a few flowers still in hand as you kneel before him, too.

Your face is wet with tears, though you don’t realise it at the time. You can’t let Izuku grovel like this, though. Katsuki would hate it. You hate it too, no matter what you’re feeling right now. You go to touch his shoulder, maybe, but instead your hand curls into the material of his collar and he shudders and now you can hear the sobs he’s choking back and you can’t, you can’t—

You curl over him, your face in his soft hair, shuddering with him as you whisper it’s alright, please don’t, Izuku he would hate this, please, please don’t, i forgive you—

(they’re all the same sort of things you’ll whisper to him later on, when his tears collect in your collarbone, his hands bruising your hips. after months spent in a dark, cold underground shelter somewhere. when you’re so lonely and scared and all you have is yourself and this man who comes home—home! like this is a home!!—to you whenever he can. It’s alright. Please don’t. Izuku, he would hate this. Please. Please don’t.

I forgive you.)

* well, idk if you can ever rightly call being kidnapped and shoved into a basement against your will platonic, but, details.

^ it’s probably here at the store that Izuku makes his move, eventually. it’ll be just like the last time you got abducted—except it’s kirishima left standing in the ruins of your store, destroyed, his world falling apart as behind him, denki grips his shoulder tightly, wordless.

#ofmermaidstories-asks #cw: yandere #cw: grief #tw: noncon #prompts and drabbles and other things #into the basement we go — yandere things

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